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Drawing Light
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Photo – light. Graph – drawing. Photographs are light drawings. These photographs also include drawings of light. Though I’ve always drawn, since infancy, this body of work presents my first finished electronic drawings. While sometimes drawn to emphasize what is only dimly seen, more often than not these new drawings of light present geometries imposed on the no longer blank canvas of the photograph.
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Symbol of Light
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Throughout the ages, in many cultures, the mystery of light has been used as a powerful symbol. To this day, the word light connotes many things including enlightenment, wisdom, truth, information, purity, non-materiality, energy, spirituality, inspiration, life, divinity, infinity, and the eternal. Light has many dimensions. Light makes the material world visible. Light makes visible the non-material. Often we see the invisible (magnetism, gravity, wind, temperature, etc) in the effects it produces on the visible. Seen only when it is passing through different media or when it reflects off of solid surfaces, light may have the subtlest effects. These images, this poetry of light, embraces the fullness of this phenomenon.
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Geometry
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Number, geometry, music, and the study of patterns in the heavens are considered the four great liberal arts of the ancients. These universal languages are found in all known cultures and sciences. Galileo wrote, “Philosophy is written in this grand book — I mean the universe — which stands continually open to our gaze, but it cannot be understood unless one first learns to comprehend the language in which it is written. It is written in the language of mathematics, and its characters are triangles, circles, and other geometric figures, without which it is humanly impossible to understand a single word of it; without these, one is wandering about in a dark labyrinth.” Geometry (‘measure of the earth’) charts the unfolding of number in space, scientific understanding. Sacred geometry attaches symbolic meaning to number, philosophic contemplation. Number has always been seen as a key to understanding the universe, a window into nature. Geometry is one way of making number visible. These images make visible both particular ephemeral nature and archetypal eternal patterns. It is fitting that at their most fundamental level these digital images are created from, stored by and retrieved with numbers.
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Quantum Mechanics
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These images are deeply influenced by the new information coming to light in many fields of science, especially quantum mechanics. They are an attempt to find a felt connection with our strange new worldview we have not yet come to fully understand. Reconciling relativity is extremely challenging on many levels.
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Consider the following.
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Physical structures are made of atoms.
Atomic structures are made of subatomic particles or quantum objects, more space than matter.
Quantum objects are simultaneously both waves and particles.
Waves are non-material, fields of probability that can be described by numerical ratios.
Subatomic particles are material, having mass and energy that can be described by numerical units.
Subatomic particles disappear and reappear in other locations without existing in the spaces in between.
Subatomic particles are in more than one place at the same time.
Subatomic particles travel along many paths simultaneously.
Although particles appear randomly, they follow a distribution pattern.
The wave persists as an invisible guiding principle.
When the wave functions of different particles become entangled, their states mutually influence each other no matter how far apart.
What happens to one is instantaneously mirrored in the other.
Information about the state of one part of the universe is encoded in every other part of the universe, like a holograph.
The universe is becoming increasingly information encoded.
Observation influences.
The observer influences the observed.
What the observer observes influences them.
The questions asked and the way they’re asked influence the answers.
The quality of observation influences the results.
In light of this information, contemporary western materialism requires a radical reconsideration.
A new worldview is necessary.
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Quantum Editions
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In developing these images I found that many variants of the same image worked. It’s my standard practice to present only the variation I feel is best. In this case, presenting multiple variations simultaneously seems appropriate for the nature of the work. So I offer these images in quantum editions. The collector selects how many and which variations to acquire, taking an active hand in how each image is finally manifested for themselves. Ultimately, the viewer completes the manifestation.
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Nowhere / Everywhere
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A majority of my images are created and presented in a way that is not site-specific. These unplaced places could be virtually anywhere on earth. They are meant to be seen as being simultaneously nowhere and everywhere. So too are the drawn patterns in these images. This universalization of location is designed to do many things. It suggests that we are not as removed (or separate from) from these ‘exotic’ places and states as we might think. As each event portrayed is recreated (perceived, interpreted, and internalized), redrawn within each viewer (me/you/us), we are all drawn closer to it. We are drawn closer to us. The real event for each viewer is the act of perception. The real event is here and now. This may be the real art.
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