PACA Show

Tonight is the opening for my show at the Portland Arts and Cultural Alliance, at 549 Congress Street in Portland, Maine. The show will be up until the end of October, so please do stop in if you're in Portland. 

I am showing eight drawings, six of them are pen and ink and two are white pencil on black paper. Each piece features many simple components like triangles and ovals that accumulate as if they were cells into incredibly complex organic forms. Here are a few of the pieces in the show:

Infiltrate, 2007

Growth, 2008

Zygote, 2008

Some mushrooms (out of HUNDREDS) I found in the woods this morning

white pencil on black paper

more "grown" forms

detail

I'm using some color again.

I'm doing a whole mess of paintings like this one. This is one of the random Haeckel-style pile paintings. Other drawings I've made of this type are more ordered. They are fun to make because the forms grow so unexpectedly. I just make branching lines grow evenly until there's no room left, then I stop. The lines end up competing, the stronger of them reach the limits of each form. I was skeptical about using color, but it really does help to focus on particular areas of interest. 

Bones I found in John's garden

A friend of mine just fertilized his garden plot with crushed sea shells. I decided to look over the little white pieces, and I found a little vertebrae. Then I found another. I kept looking until 5 minutes had past without me finding any more. They're so delicate, porous, and surprisingly intact.

More cool things to have around, yay!

emergent properties of pen lines

draw a line down the middle left to right
stay parallel to the previous line, but add a bubble somewhere along the way
alternate sides
try to keep the sides symmetrical
don't let lines touch one another
end as you began

start anywhere by drawing a short line
branch it on both sides so that it grows exponentially forming mirror gingko leaf shapes
do this several times, working simultaneously so the leaves grow into one another
decide when growth is unsustainable
decay is reversed growth
detail:
one lineage
free will determinism

detail: