It began because I believe in the wonder of the world that shakes you to life, and I imagine that that wonder needs a place of its own to live when it’s not busy lighting our souls on fire… This is why I started making archives, and how archiving materials became a part of my practice as an artist. The freaking wonder of it all, and how material has the ability to hold and know all that has been and all that could be.
Read moreA Ground from the Ground– gypsum & gesso deep dive
Interrupting the continuous colorscape of the Atacama Desert were white mineral veins winding through the cliffs, clustering in the sand, glinting in the sun. Gypsum. I smiled to myself, recounting the mineral’s characteristics in my head, its uses from plaster of paris to traditional gesso. I visited the material from my favorite painting ground in its natural habitat: the ground.
Read more"What's in a Name?" – the nomenclature of pigment and color
“What’s in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell just as sweet.” Shakespeare certainly wasn’t thinking about artists’ pigments when he wrote this. Let me start by establishing that a pigment is a single substance with a consistent chemical composition, whereas a paint may include one (or many) pigments mixed with an adhesive binder that cures into a paint film. Where the convolution of pigment nomenclature closes doors to immediate clarity, it opens other doors to a deeper understanding.
Read more"I find security in the inexhaustibility of the unknown" – the long and winding road of learning materials
This knowledge [of painting materials] simultaneously brews inside me and constantly evades me. It’s not something I have, but seek. And through all of this seeking, it’s become harder and harder for me to write about what I’m learning. Why? For a while, I couldn’t tell you. Now I think I know. The more I have learned about paint and its long history and many characters, the more I realize I don’t know. Maybe this is actually a coming of age story. I remember the question crossing my mind, “what place does my voice have when there’s so many people who know so much more?”
Read morePurity Complex – the history of pastels and how to make them
Pastels are, without contest, the purest medium you can use. Although pastel may technically be considered a drawing medium, it’s often referred to as a painting medium because of how generous and workable the soft, chalky marks are. I say “pure” because of how minimally the binder visually shapes the pigments. When you look at an oil painting, the luscious oil has just as much presence as the pigment itself. Pastels don’t operate in this fashion. The pastel binder has very little presence, only asserting itself enough to hold the pigments into the shape of a stick and to loosely adhere them to the surface. Essentially, the pigments are able to operate chemically and optically with very little influence from the binder itself. Now, I don’t say “pure” as a qualitatively good thing or a bad thing– don't be wooed by the notion of purity as idealistic. For my work, the physical presence of the binder and its countless possibilities for manipulation is pretty essential, as we've been over before. I personally find pastels to be a bit too loose and difficult to have autonomy over. But man, do I love to make them.
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