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These two-dimensional works are a direct outgrowth of a series of prints that I made in graduate school, many long years ago. They can all be categorized as "prints about printing." They explore how a technology reflects our nature and how it in turn affects our perception of the world around us. Of all the visual arts, printing is the most dependent upon technological innovation. Most of these innovations have to do with creating and reproducing images in the simplest way possible. They are therefore attempts to break down the process of vision to its most basic terms. Full color is simulated by a set of three primaries whose tonal gradations are simulated by rectilinear arrays of halftone dots of varying sizes, all reflecting the limitations of our visual system, both in terms of resolving power and spectral sensitivity, and our highly evolved ability to perceive forms. Like most technologies, printing is expansive in nature. The fact that the creation of multiples is facilitated by dividing the surface into a regular array of elements suggests printing as a metaphor for a technology based view of space, a primal visual space delineated by the gridwork of Cartesian geometry.
I explore these and related themes in the two-dimensional prints I create. There is an attempt to involve the viewer, to create awareness of one's physical relationship with the print and of how that influences the perception of it. There is always a tension, especially in my most recent works, between order and chaos, the intuitive and the structured. My production techniques for these prints have always appeared to be more closely related to technology than art, even when I was creating the stencils for them by hand. The most recent prints have taken this relationship even further. They were all created using digital means, some were output digitally, and even those printed using traditional screen printing techniques employed machine cut stencils. At the present time, the creation of this type of print is not the primary focus of my artistic endeavors. I've included images of some of them to provide insight into my creative process. Like my floating images, these pieces are designed for direct personal interaction, which on a computer can only be simulated. Click on the <+/-> buttons for a more detailed view of the image structure.
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