pomona college senior art exhibition
claremont, california
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| mandala/orb (25 tea bags dropped at once on paper) |
My
interest in natural processes and phenomena originates from an attraction to
beauty that exists outside of human control. There is something inherently
compelling to me about tree bark and rocks and spider webs and leaves; due in
large part to their color or form, but also because they exist and occur
independently of humans. My desire to preserve these things has manifested in
the laminating of leaves, the photography of spider webs and dewdrops, the
mounting of tree bark onto my walls. In some ways I have not come to terms with
the transience and eventual decay of these objects. In some ways I refuse to
believe that my human intervention cannot immortalize them or the process by
which they came to be.
An
awe of the natural world coupled with my desire to control it has led to the
creation of work that allows natural processes to occur but with minimal
control on my part. While I did facilitate factors preceding the making of
these imprints, the marks themselves develop out of processes that have little
to do with me. My implication in both processes is meant only to emphasize the
natural imprint; and so my control comes in the making of these objects (the
tea bags and ice blocks), not in the resulting marks that they leave behind. In
one, the pigment is natural (the tea), but the imprint is facilitated by human
intervention (dropping the tea bag). In the other, the pigment is facilitated
by human intervention (ink insertion into the ice), but the imprint is natural
(allowing the ice to melt). While I controlled the size of the objects and the
surface upon which they made their mark, much of the making was left up to
gravity and chance.
In
a sense, the pieces made themselves. The way in which the pigment spread and
flowed and dried was fascinating to watch, because it was not up to me. Both
the tea bag and the ice blocks acted as vehicles for pigment, and so color and
form were born not of the human hand but of the objects themselves. Not knowing
what the resulting mark would look like was at the same time freeing and
exciting and uncomfortable. Returning to the piece ten minutes after the ice
block had been placed would reveal something entirely different, and then again
something vastly different after a day. If the colors bled, the colors bled. If
the tea bag started to mold, it started to mold. If the splatter travelled off
of the page, it travelled off of the page. These processes demanded that I
surrender to the medium. They demanded that I let go.
Giant Tea Bag Drops
2 feet x 2 feet hand-made tea bags (fabric, looseleaf tea) steeped in water and dropped on paper
The tea water left over from the giant steeped tea bags was frozen into ice blocks and left to melt on paper. The melting process took a few days, and the drying, much longer. The process was fascinating to watch!
Ink-infused ice:
I arranged the colored ice cubes in various patterns and grids, looking to explore how human imposition and desire to control affects a natural process.
Ten by Ten
Diamond
Spiral
