Drawing - USPS Project

Drawing was my first love. It requires time, focus and internal steadiness. For this reason I had to let go of this part of my practice for long periods when time, focus and internal steadiness were in short supply. I am paradoxically grateful to the COVID19 pandemic for returning drawing to me during lockdown. Making work without rules, allowing myself to do anything I was inspired to do, without worrying whether or not the results "fit into my continuing trajectory of projects", was freeing. 

I invited other artists to participate with me in Christina Massey's multi-site USPS collaboration project. Lori Niland Rounds, Lyndie Vantine, and Patti Tronolone each created works that greatly altered the "start" that I sent them. I created new works from the "starts" they gave me and entered these into Massey's shows. 

In response to the small relief print from Lori Rounds that I later cut entirely apart and made into three high contrast collages, I played with the idea of Japanese "Notan" composition in my graphite drawing, Arbitrary Logic. The drawing became filled with seemingly three-dimensional creatures as I reinterpreted the positive lines and shapes I found in her print. (Later I cut her print up entirely and made three mixed media collages from the positive lines and shapes, which I also include here.)

I enhanced the printed brushstrokes of a 1990s screen print on thin paper that Lyndie Vantine sent me, mounting it onto printmaking paper and adding a Tangle of lines in, through and around the strokes to complete the composition via colored pencils.

From a single rectangular sheet of watercolor washes that Patti Tronolone gave me, I cut, reoriented, reattached to larger paper and foam core board, drew with pastels chalks and pencils, and created a low relief work from her start. This one sold at the exhibition at Pelham Art Center, New York.