I’m not really convinced there’s ‘forward’ or ‘backwards’ with movement or making, but I do like to joke about working backwards. Setting type unfolds upside-down AND backwards. I’m left-handed, so I often start at the right side of an image and work right to left so I don’t drag my hand across wet media or graphite and make a mess. And then there is unmaking or obscuring; that’s the ‘backwards’ I’m thinking about lately…working from a “something” (text or image) towards a “nothing” that’s not really nothing. This week, I’m working backwords from a failed broadside until it becomes nearly unrecognizable, a process I find much more intriguing than starting with a blank page.
In-progress
Eroding Alphabets
Before I had the vocabulary to describe it, I perceived certain forms and beings in the landscape as ‘texts’: tracks, patterns in dry earth or tree bark, lichens and mushrooms fruiting, stones piled on a beach, waves, plant structures, and so on. These forms and patterns were communicating something, even if that something was inscrutable, … Read more