Discus Series
I play with chance and choice.
James Joyce once wrote to a friend, “Chance furnishes me with what I need … I’m like a man who stumbles; my foot strikes something, I look down, and there is exactly what I’m in need of.” Chance and choice often merge in the making of my work.
A multitude of small parts coalesces into an organized field, like a discus thrown into space and drawn back into a current of order. The Discus series evokes ancient cosmologies, in which spheres of existence are represented through concentric circles, as well as the mandala, a meditation on unity.
The work reveals the labor of its making: selecting, cutting, wrapping, and assembling. I want the work to move beyond the conventions of printmaking toward the sculptural, creating an object that suggests an illusory space.
Viewed from the front, the eye is drawn toward the center, where the forms appear to rotate like a molten core moving from the inner circle toward the edge. Each work carries a fundamental principle of printmaking: the use of fields of discrete marks to create the illusion of continuous tonal gradation.
Viewed from the three-inch projecting side, the individual pieces proceed one after another like marching bricks, alternating between gaps and solid form. This physical presence—the objectness of the work—keeps the viewer looking. Moving inward, the layers of the disc become increasingly compact strips of dots, accumulating into ever-denser tonalities. At the center, solid colors finally materialize: first red, then a flash of gold.