Over the past few years, I have been exploring the artistic potential of everyday materials. Lately I have been working with white labels in assorted shapes and sizes to create birds and cloudscapes. The white label is a surprisingly aesthetic product with subtle variations in factory whites from bright white to cream. These labels are layered and patterned to create the illusion of depth and form. (I have alternately chosen to use soft gray, tan, cream and white paper. All of which mimic the color of file folders, envelopes, or padded mailers; the labels “natural environment”.) The white label is a tool for naming and organizing; an empty canvas that can signify anything. Its usefulness is based on a balanced system of raw data and personal interpretation. The information chosen is suddenly meaningful and that which is deselected becomes irrelevant. This mode of making sense of and controlling our environments is a process. As ideas become outdated, there is a new label or system to replace the old. These pieces attempt to explore the visual growth pattern of changing our minds. The bird pieces began over a love of Egyptian wall paintings and bas relief. The ancient Egyptians believed that animals were emissaries to and from the spirit world. Cross-culturally, the bird in particular is a symbol for traversing the limbo zone between Heaven and Earth. I like to think of these birds as agnostic messengers logically waiting and refusing interpretation. Clouds also are constantly in imaginative flux. One minute a cloud is a rabbit with a carrot and the next an old man with a cigar. Mythically, they have symbolized the space between heaven and earth and are the domain of gods and angels. Clouds by their nature hold the dual power of creation (Rain) and destruction (tornadoes). As an Angeleno one is often confronted with contrasts, from jammed freeways to sweeping vistas of ocean. Our “clouds” morph daily from fluffy cumulous clouds to smears of hazy smog. Therefore, my next body of work will reference this range of aesthetic experience by using colored labels to create cloudscapes that layer into vibrant smog sunsets.
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