Re-opening

After sending the next draft of the thesis off, I dove back into the studio work. This week's exploration is around the forms - looking at the possibilities for opening them up in different ways.

I took 7 - 8 small models - out of tag board - all of the same crooked oblong box structure. Then I cut different sides away and looked to see how much loss and destruction the forms could handle. When would they stop reading as box forms? My mentor Robert wants me to scale some of these up in archival cardboard now and see how they read at a different size. They have a very delicate feel at this scale and I'm curious.

covering them

This last week I've been doing lots of experiments with the surfaces around these boxes. I have my usual array of

newsprint with markings in ink and paint - many are words and other marks - varying scale and

texture - some acrylic spray paint in the mix. I have been collecting process color from mailers, advertising inserts in the paper, magazine ads - I have sheets of red, yellow, green, orange, blue. It takes a long time to make a sheet, because I am trying to obscure too much readable content - lots of layering and cutting up.

So now I am exploring where to use this color - some things work, others don't. Sometimes I completely cover a form again. Here are a few examples - most are 12" high or smaller. Commodity sized, I call them.