work in progress

So, all of this requires explanation (especially at this stage) but I don't think it is all as disparate as it appears. My artist teacher, Karen Dunbar, is beyond phenomenal, it almost worries me, how great she is, I'm afraid no future AT will measure up.

These first three images are all apart of a single project. The reductive woodcuts (in progress) are a collage of media images I've taken from the magazines and newspaper articles I have collected. All the stories I am focusing on surround American and military involvement in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.





This project was inspired by the wood block prints I've done in the past (below), and these pieces always made me nervous and uncomfortable. They can be construed as too decorative and ultimately disrespectful. This current piece is an effort to to contextualize these images so they have a greater impact. Now the cataloged magazines and newspaper articles (along with the notes I have taken on all pertinent articles) are a part of the piece, as it is about my setting out to be come more informed and more receptive (otherwise a lot of these stories around our military's actions go a little over my head) to these current events. The pieces below appeared to many to recall camouflage, so I am tailoring the pieces above to appear as camouflage for the source material. The end piece is to be cut out in a manner similar to the woodcuts below. How I will present it (maybe draped over or wrapped around my source material?) I don't know yet.





So, while I am doing my best to stay in tune with the real world in some way, Iam also hard at work, hermited in my studio (aka my bedroom or, other times, my work place), inventing and constructing an imagined world centered around invoking an awareness of the body and one's physical relationship with material and space. These sewn relief forms of the body are fashioned after plaster casts from my own body.



This last image is just the tracing paper templates I traced over the plaster casts I made and then used as patterns to create the sewn relief forms above. I was drawn to the templates visually and was initially reluctant to get rid of them completely. But right now I can't see where this project could go that would take it beyond decoration, so I am leaving it alone for the moment (maybe forever).