letter blocks say what?: Relic Series

i'm not working on anything that i haven't made before, i guess i'm just kind of looking at it differently. assemblage work is nearly always built from junk or found objects, and obviously, the first step is laying out the pieces. in the past, it was simply a step to what i was working on, but now i'm finding interest in the puzzles before the paint.

'relic 13 (guarantee)'

in looking at older work, i've done this type of thing before. i made a series of 4 square assemblages a few years ago, using mostly pattern stencils, as-they-were pieces, and a few found images. it's a series that has never been ripped up, because i really like what they are. and now i'm taking a similar approach, with new angles and understanding. so far, i'm intrigued with what i'm doing. i hope it can continue, and it can help get me out the creative funk i've been lingering around in this year.

i've been referring to this series as 'relics.' and they are relics. the parts and pieces that i use to build these assemblages, themselves are relics of my studio and of my community. the pieces are discards either by me or by people in my neighborhood or near my studio. my year of frustration is evident in the many of the pieces that have been a part of other assemblages that i've painted and torn apart only to rebuild and repaint and tear a part again. they end up simply as abstracts, some looking a bit like a landscape or cityscape, others simply looking like color studies. but for me, they are abstract social studies. the pieces that i build with have a history of their own, sometimes that history is known, most times it is not, but history is evident in each collected item that i build with. many of my previous series of assemblage work has been focused on a social message, like the poetry of rap music. this series is still focused on a social message, but the poetry is more understated and layered like a buddhist koan.

these works are an obvious response to my overuse of imagery. in these pieces, i'm eliminating the meaning of the image all together and focusing much more on using the cropped, cut, and broken pieces to create a visually balanced psychological narrative based in the understood history of the parts and pieces of each assemblage.