I explore my own lived experiences and my body’s interactions with space as subject matter for my biogrammatic work, in which I seek to give physical presence to my own ethereal encounters with the external world via lived diagrams. My biograms are...
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I explore my own lived experiences and my body’s interactions with space as subject matter for my biogrammatic work, in which I seek to give physical presence to my own ethereal encounters with the external world via lived diagrams. My biograms are records of the lived moment, of specific periods of time and particular spaces, of my own life. They consider how I move through and between familiar spaces such as my studio, home, and workplace, as well as how places and routes change me. They present the body and its innards in an abstracted and somewhat playful way in efforts to examine how the body and the spaces it inhabits are intertwined both in reality and as conceptual architectures in the imagination. I explore how abstract and imaginary qualities are shared by buildings and bodies. Both are defined by membranes that take in and let out masses and substances. Blood veins, for instance, appear in my work as moving pathways in the body between oft-visited locations, or between particularly important rooms in a building.
In one series of work, the movement occurs as “book cells” duplicate in mitosis. The alignment of cells during reproduction calls for them to arrange themselves in straight rows, much like books upon a shelf. Reading books (or acquiring knowledge of any kind) literally changes me (and others) both intellectually and physically because the connections between brain cells actually multiply as we learn. Psychological events are thus capable of creating effects in the physical world, even when not consciously intended.
In the process of investigating my own interactions with space, I seek to better understand how humans use proprioception (the body’s sense of its own parts, their locations relative to each other and to surroundings, and memorization of repeated familiar actions) and synesthesia (the psychological phenomenon of experiencing strong associations between seemingly unrelated things, such as a number and a color) as new windows into how people experience environments. My work is imaginary in that it is based in perception, cognition, and symbolism, without allowing cognition to be first among equals. My biograms are therefore subjective maps of my experiences with both physical and psychological spaces.
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