studio sketches, August

Last summer I sat across the studio from a huge, white painted square on the wall. It was almost the same color as the wall in general, but fresher, more crisp. It was where slides and videos were shown, and also reflected everything that passed by it: sound, light, dark, and shadows.
I slowly became obsessed with it: everything existed in that huge square for me.
I wanted to recreate it somehow in my own work, work with that amazing expanse of a form.

But I've never done that before...so how could I start ... at all?

Today in studio, while working on a sculpture sketch using discarded wood from a house project, I caught these glimpses of perhaps what I could work with rather than the Big White Square. Similar to what I have already been working on - two aspect of the same thing in the same space - but only using the white surface to reflect what is around each piece: shadow, light, etc.

Then I thought: wow, big leap for me, but am I reinventing the telephone thinking I'm the first person to invent the telephone? I'm not sure if these are direct rip offs from Donald Judd and Sol LeWitt, or if these are translated enough into my own language to make them mine. It feels like a bit of both. And art belongs to everyone. I can make hundreds of these - they're made from wood we used to make our kitchen shelves. All the leftovers are right outside my studio door.

Thoughts?

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Site, after Robert Morris (and missing Blinky Palermo)

Oil on Canvas

5' x 6'

2014 

Detail of Morse code translation of
Ingrid DeKok's poem The Transcriber Speaks