The Moon + Digital Collage

"Heaven, a Detail or Hell, a Detail"

This is 22" in diameter. Was a concrete encrusted lid when I found it on a jobsite. It's meant to be exhibited on a floor..

Black is a property; a black shape can hold its space and place in relation to other things, and holds itself in a compressed field. It is the densest color material, absorbing and dissipating light to a maximum, changing the artificial and natural light in a room. There are no metaphorical or other misreadings when you cover a surface with black. A substrate covered with black is an extension of drawing, which is an extension of markmaking. Using color, extends coloration as its unavoidable allusions.

Collage is about shifting relationships, willfully dismantling assumptions and rearranging them to suggest what is conceivable. Collage makes use of contradictions. It is the medium of surprise and hopefully startles us out of ambivalence.

I am blatantly using my poetry in these pieces. What you are seeing here is a digital sketch for the painting. I am planning to apply black stick-on vinyl letters for the text. Or maybe white vinyl letters (?) The decision will be made in the doing- I am intentionally disengaging hand writing with chalk on the chalkboard surface- it’s too obvious and less ironic. That said, if the vinyl letters don’t work for this piece, I could chalk over them, remove them, and leave the negative space of their past presence…

Audre Lorde wrote: "It is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation." Sister Outsider (pg 115)

Talking with my students over the past 5 semesters, it is obvious that we are of a time that, particularly for young men and women, is not very cordial to idealism. The early 21st century is characterized by a cynical worldview; the danger is not to have the hope to affect change. Anger is as disjointed as our communications; there is too much to be angry about. There are so many issues, all at once, that sometimes we feel powerless.Most of these young women and men—in group discussion—reject ideological generalizations of the sexes. Young women do not call themselves feminists, they consider it part of who they are. They say they stand up for up for themselves. But the question is, will they stand up for other women?