Very well saint | 1999-2000
Having established the physical arena, I work as directly and unhesitatingly as possible. Each drawing becomes its own adventure. I can’t predict what the experience will be or what the evidence of that experience will look like, and in that sense the work is always ahead of me. I don’t impose a theme or consistent spatial organization; each drawing develops in the way it does. I am a birthing nurse, attentive and ready to perform whatever intervention is required. Although the drawings look different one to the next, the accumulation allows deeper consistencies to emerge. My intention is to involve as many levels of myself as possible in this process.
As in any serious play, there are rules and restrictions. Each drawing is made with two 12 1/4 x 17 1/8 inch sheets of Okawara handmade paper, layered and sewn together at the top edge. Marks (sometimes in the form of actual cuts, punctures, and piercings that are pathways to the space that is inside) can be made with pencil (eraser), scissors, needles, or by the inclusion (or removal) of felt, paper, silk thread, band-aids, wood (toothpicks, discarded popsicle sticks, or ice cream spoons found on the street).
The paper chosen has a relationship to light, beautiful feathery edges, and is a color that hovers. It has the quality of refinement: thin with a delicate, porous surface. Sensitive, it bruises easily but is surprisingly tough. (It can take abuse.) A worthy opponent/collaborator, it resists.
I use a soft pencil with a sharp point. Like a surgeon, I mean to be precise and penetrate the surface. By contrast the other “ingredients” sit on top in tactile relief, while felt offers patches of softness, warmth, comfort, silence.
Very well saint was exhibited at The Drawing Center in New York in 2000.