artist statement?? i’m interested in the incalculable. In a time of algorithmic certainty, I am drawn to the space of not knowing, to the malleable universe, because that’s where I find hope and magic. Wadada Leo Smith, the great trumpet player, once said: To see and listen isn’t anything without feeling. A central ongoing conversation at the heart of my work is born from my love of photography. For as long as the camera has existed, there has been the question, are photographs objective or subjective? Are they fact or fiction? Now, more than ever, images “captured” or drawn within a camera are accepted by the general public as plastic, a soft malleable material able to be manipulated into many forms, the plastic picture. and just as I am a different person every day, every time I approach an image, it is being interpreted anew by a slightly changed artist from the previous encounter. The boundary between photography and painting feels finer than ever. is there one at all? Rauschenberg is a spiritual guide. He challenged the boundaries between painting and sculpture. In common with Rauschenberg, an artist whose generation was engaged in reacting to the abstract expressionists who came before them, I am deeply involved with materials, unlike the postmodernists who came before me. materials are not only containers and transmitters of information, they allow the hand to create gesture, and these materials participate in the composition by providing their own gestural quality within the work. Milford Graves describes Art as: Transfer of energy, a healing force My work is a combination of the handmade and the technologically processed and printed. This is noteworthy because the marks and scars, the push and pull of the hand, leaves a record of time passing. The work grows into its own through a conversation between it and me. The work is not forced into being, but developed through a relationship, a dialogue. Between technology, the hand of the artist, and other materials, there's an emotional and intellectual exchange. As a percussionist and sax player feed off each other, affect one another, call and respond to one another, or obliterate one another, the work is the evidence and outcome of that back and forth making of music. A large part within that dialogue between myself and the work, is the room or space I leave intentionally open, The space of un-intenionality, my significant collaborator.. The NY bass player William Parker once described the process of being a jazz musician, when asked how does he know what to play when he's about to perform, he plays improvisation jazz or free jazz/ avande garde jazz..... Parker explained that he practices every day at home so that when he goes to perform he is confident that magic will happen. It's this magic that I intentionally leave room for to occur, to participate in our process.... magic man ( a title by joe McPhee - jazz musician and composer.) Its through working (or practicing every day) and that open space of dialogue and unintentionally that the magic comes in and the work grows into itself. Along with the materials I’m using, there are a group of more ephemeral forces at work in my process as well, such as light, time, and other atmospheric effects. Is it possible to To treat interiority as a space of time travel? "A space experienced in motion as a series of compositions dissolving into each other rather than as a static picture"? (This quote comes from Rebecca Solnit, writing about French Gardens in the 17th century, but it speaks well to my investigations of 2020. ) Palimpsests are layers barely discernible underneath a text or picture, suggesting an often discontinuous and illegible history of false starts and obliterations - the discarded, retried, sudden change, carelessness, and mindless oblivions, of the performance..the conversation. By building up my work using transparent materials, which contain layers upon layers of information, my works are palimpsests, spaces of time travel, records of creation and destruction. The activity of looking creates the experience of seeing. Rather than being grasped as static and pictorial, my work asks to be experienced as cinematic and dynamic. As I mentioned previously: My work is a combination of the handmade and the technologically processed and printed. Materially the work is created using organic material such as silk, paper, and linen…. but also the inorganic transparent plexiglass. This shift between hand and technology, organic and inorganic… challenges a thread of questioning "is there a separation between technology and the physical world? what is real? We see and experience the world through technology, entering and exiting digital and physical space seamlessly. Is the physical object or the experience we have via the screen real? Is the gesture made by a hand have a different gravity than gesture created by technology? Can one tell the difference? ” As Duke Ellington once said: Never get caught up in categories, they will imprison you. Influenced by the free jazz musicians using their music as a form of self expression, rather than an interpretation of a composer. they expressed and developed their own unique voice… Expressing philosophy and freedom through their music, by breaking down the old jazz conventions such as regular tempos, tones and chord changes…. and pushing the definition of music to complete abstraction…. Face paint & body paint … on the island of Kiriwina, in 1916, the anthropologist Malinowski described how the islanders used face paint & body paint ceremonially in accompaniment to magical spells...to transform an ordinary person to an extraordinary person…or even to a god. Rei Kawakubo titled one of her collections “Ceremony of Separation.” Its about how the beauty and power of ceremony can alleviate the pain of separating… Fashion has left a lasting impression on me. Code mixing, gender bending, armor, telegraphing and the theatrical of self expression... Through fashion I learned to appreciate clothing not only as cover for our bodies, but an armor we wear out as protection when we participate in public life, as well as an extension of ourself ...a self expression…a transformation.. a conversation with others… a form of projecting ideology and philosophy…. a form of connection. This has all seeped into my being and my work. How? I will have to get back you. Avante Garde French new wave…. The acting and dialogue can be a comedy, yet the music is ominous… Here are some artists, designers, and musicians who have informed my thinking in manifold ways: Robert Rauschenberg Japanese Provoke Movement, Anni Albers Cosimo von Bonin. Dieter Roth Polke Rei Kawakubo Alexander McQueen Vivienne Westwood Milford Graves Sun Ra Eileen Myles Virginia Woolf Junichiro Tanizaki Lauryn Hill Kendrick Lamar Christopher Wool Charline Von Heyl Albert Oehlen Robert Irwin New Wave French Cinema THE END. for now?