conjure

This time next week, I'll be in Spring Green, Wisconsin setting up a show at my friends' gallery, Red Squared. Michael Desbarres and Ryan Hewson, recent graduates of Taliesin, the Frank Lloyd Wright School of Architecture, refitted an old auto parts store that covers 5000+ sf on two levels. They've organized a series of shows relating to art & architecture, the next of which is entitled CONJURE and will feature the artists who have come to Taliesin over many years.

My work on display includes MIGRATION, a collection of needle felted birds (seen on this blog over the past year). Indicative of invisible change, MIGRATION is conceptually and symbolically the slow process of change that is, however, immediate. The time spent in slowly felting the fiber using a single barbed needle is in line with meditation. Meditation is simultaneously an effort to cultivate stillness and a basis for progress and growth.

Also included is BREATHING ROOM, layers upon layers of translucent white paint and the transcribed syllables of the breath, are again a result of meditation – breathing and meditative mark making. The focus upon one’s breath, the sound and sensation of it, is a simple meditation technique here made visually apparent. The end product is a created atmosphere of stillness and the simple knowing of one’s living by breathing.