“I began as a painter in the middle of nowhere with few questions… My first real question concerned the arbitrariness of my paintings… I used my paintings as a step-by-step process, each new series of works acting in direct response to those questions raised by the previous series. I first questioned the mark as meaning and then even as focus; I then questioned the frame as containment, the edge as the beginning and end of what I see… consider the possibility that nothing ever really transcends its immediate environment… I tried to respond directly to the quality of each situation I was in, not to change it wholesale into a new or ideal environment, but to attend directly to the nature of how it already was. How is it that a space could ever come to be considered empty when it is filled with real and tactile events?”
-Robert Irwin
Exhaustion and relief are simultaneously evident in the sculptural objects. Inhale a deep breath, hold, then exhale. This is the gesture I capture in the space. The installation acts as self-portraiture at a time in my life where I am benefiting from the relief of mental health education and help. My clinically high anxiety had been showcased in previous bodies of work, through busy and energetic imagery and crowded, hectic gallery space. This installation counters that work and more likened to visual meditation. I feel a sense of calm from my usual anxiety, and this space becomes a snapshot of that new territory- relief.
Hella Full deals with optimism versus pessimism, and the residuals we take for granted as a result. The color flooding the gallery can be perceived as half full or empty, and the objects that cross that boundary are affected. The “fill line” is at 5’6”, which is my height. The objects that inhabit the space are pieces that I have made for other bodies of work. I recycled work as a challenge to incorporate personal history into Robert Irwin’s philosophy of space.
2019
spandex, theater gels, wood, and latex paint.
28’x28’x13’
*Site-Specific Installation at Hamline University, St. Paul, MN