Natural Drawing

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Tree Drawing (2004) Portland, ME

The tree drawing was the earliest concept for natural drawing.  These were built as an inquiry into subjectivity, and how it is avoided or changed by removing the artist’s gesture from drawing nature.   Markers, inks, and various materials are arranged so that the trees can draw “autonomously” through their movement in the wind.

Wave Trap  (2004) Wolfs Neck Forest, ME

The Wave Traps were designed to encapsulate the movement of the Atlantic tide, collecting the movement of waves, deposited detritus, and the changing pitch of the beach. Once the tide receded, plaster casts were made from the traps.

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Wind Compass (2004) Ferry Beach/Mackworth Island, ME

Wind Compass came from questions about the relationship between geometric and organic forms. I was curious to see how something as unruly and uncontained as the wind might create something so geometrically abstract as a perfect circle.

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Wave Motherwell (2004) Long Lake, NY

This device was employed to engage with the movement of waves upon the ocean/lake surface. The design was materially informed by the structures of the remaining Wave Traps, which significantly redirected my investigation from “autonomy” in nature towards the way that material, nature and other “non-human” entities employ intelligence. This model also provided the basis for Armada.

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Leaf Painting (2004) Saranac Lake, NY

Although the Natural Drawing practices continually redirected my attention from the object made back to its making, the Leaf Paintings are a good example of how the unintentional combines with the intentional to create effects and residues, how creation is neither completely calculated nor arbitrary.

Ice Melt Paintings (2005) Saranac Lake, NY

As I pursued Natural Drawing, I became increasingly interested in how to work with processes subsidiary to gravity.   Living in Upstate New York, where the winter weather lasts nearly ½ the year, it is a practical and obvious choice to explore the process of melting and freezing.  These paintings were made by spray painting slabs of ice and piles of snow, then letting them melt down onto the canvas.”

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Eave Drip Paintings (2005) Saranac Lake, NY

This painting was created from the combination of whatever happened to be on my palette, and the most obvious and convenient placement of panels under my dripping eaves. This painting, (Rite of Spring) provided the impetus for the Index paintings, a new format for the study between dissonant but related objects.”

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Gun Paintings (2005) West Barnet, VT

After making the strange spraypaint-can-meteor for an earlier (failed) project, the gun paintings represented the evolution of an idea as its material potential confronts both the possible and impossible. The can ball was thrown into a box of paper, thrown down stairs, chopped with a staff, and narrowly avoided being thrown off a four story building in downtown Portland only to be shot with at 22 gauge rifle in northeastern Vermont.”

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Armada (2005) Mackworth Island, Portland Me

(video for main if you can string both together (floating machines first, me walking out second that would be best, otherwise use floating machines). Use best three or all 5 for thumbs if you can)

Following the design of Wave Motherwells, in August of 2005, with much assistance I launched 75 floating drawing machines on the Atlantic Ocean. The idea was to encourage participation and experience through the spectacle of a process in progress.

The project incorporated approximately 25 participants and yielded 100 drawings. Armada continued my investigation of accessing wilderness as a psychological encounter rather than a physical discovery. The event expanded awareness of how material, circumstances, weather and desire all combine to create occurrences, of how human behavior and intelligence is a merely a part of this tapestry. The difference between treating nature as a controllable/inert collection of resources and embracing our position and interrelationship within it can be made tangible…but this cannot easily be “taught” or “reasoned”…it seems most plausible that people will encounter wilderness when they are confronted with their own presumptions.

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Ice Interventions (2006) Saranac Lake, NY

The Ice Interventions followed two main inquiries…how could something be introduced that would alter/inform the structural or optical manifestation of ice formation in a way that exceeds the expectations. Several of the earliest endeavors involved introducing ways of changing the balance of ice formation as it accumulated weight. I also experimented with ways of introducing natural dyes that would pervade the structure of the ice formations. The Ice Interventions grew in scale from my back yard to more remote and obtrusive locations.

Landscape Painting (2006) High Peaks Region, NY

Following from the Ice Interventions, the Landscape Paintings initially emerged as Ice Interventions in the public domain. The effort to explore evolving ice structures through the introduction of color lead to some interesting questions between natural and artificial. The introduction of color into the landscape directly disrupts the “natural backdrop”, bringing these structures and events into a different prominence.

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Ice Traps (2006) Ausable River, NY

The Ice Traps were inspired by my hikes along the Ausable river, where I saw these beautiful formations resembling a rib cage where the ice cycles had formed upside down from under fallen logs and ice shelves. Five traps were carried into the Eastern High Peaks, and placed in various open points on the river while we hiked Mt. Colvin and Blake. Upon our return, the ice gathering traps were documented and recovered.

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River Kites (2006) Saranac Lake, NY

The River Kites began as a second incarnation of the Ice Traps. I wanted to put something into place that would “cross-reference” other natural parameters with the formation of ice on the strings. The movement of these devices was varied with the particularities of the structure, the movement of the water, and yet again with the accumulation of ice.

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Non Sentient Free Range Organisms (NSFROS) (2006)  Mt. Desert Island/SUNY Canton

The NSFROS were devised by myself and fellow artist Scott Fuller to explore the idea of “Organic Free-Range.” Built from materials generally considered to be non-living (plastic, lumber and metal), the NSFROS operate in the grey area between what is generally considered to be the living and the non-living. Designed as kinetic objects able to move in various directions via wind power, the NSFROS embody a complex set of behaviors beyond their initial conception. They continually manage to place new demands on everything and everyone they interact with, escaping from various containment systems and provoking various attitudes towards the people they encounter.

We have experimented with various mechanisms through which the NSFROS might create a tangible record of their patterns of movement. The earliest incarnation of NSFROS were outfitted with SDS, or “Seed Dispersal Systems,” so that they might plant/sow a record of their passage over the course of weeks. But experience has shown that their patterns of movement extend far beyond the physical….the NSFROS create ripples throughout the social and psychological establishment as well…extending and challenging many of the established boundaries between Nature and Humanity, the living and the non-living.