Solo show in Stockbridge, MA, May 2021

In this work I linger in what for me is a familiar and uncomfortable space: between two minds, one verbal, analytical, logical, and conscious, the other nonverbal, illogical, and intuitive.  I make warring efforts to contain, organize, and understand, while also striving to create without conscious purpose or boundaries.   The hand personifies this conflict: at once it is an extension of the mind, trained in hand-eye coordination to obey and execute a planned action, while also accessing subconscious knowledge.  The sensation that the hand “knows” something the mind does not is exhilarating and terrifying.  It is both explained by muscle memory and entirely inexplicable.  The disembodied hand comes to symbolize a disconnect—a separate creator housed in a distant body part.  In this body of work, I look with curiosity at the felt separation and make mind-driven attempts to connect myself.

This work reflects the efforts of experimenting with the interface between the conscious and the subconscious, in many attempts to lift off from bounding surfaces and organizing principles.  The efforts of the mind are embodied in grounded figures, flat surfaces, walking, repetition, and frames.  The accidental magic and deeper knowledge of the hand is embodied by the more dimensional and near-limitless space of water or sky, by literal flight, by creatures that move in three dimensions. 

The frames of an animation have a grounded and linear logic that the conscious mind can explain.  The mystery of “flight” is found in the aggregate of frame and the in-betweens.  The flight test is the moment between leaving the surface and returning to it.

Animations and drawings