Consortium for
|
Artist Statement I am interested in how we use the systems of math, language, and especially time to elicit a sense of control over the chaos that fills our exterior and interior lives. A spinning top is the subject matter of much of my work and is my metaphor for a person on life’s path. When I use yardsticks as my canvas, themes of time and space as well as measurement and judgment are in play. The hardware store slogan, “Do It Best,” which is printed on the yardsticks is very important to these themes. Duchamp and Rauschenberg are influencers in the use of a ready-made item in my art. The paper with the colored stripes on which I work is also a ready-made and is reclaimed from a paint chip printer. Filled with a palette of this season’s colors, these sheets allow me to reserve a bit of the right now as my canvas. Indexical color systems, used for house paint to colored pencils to crayons, illustrate our desire to control chaos by naming and numbering. The colored bands stand for each moment in time, for I relate to time as staccato rather than continuous. Language, in the form of typography, is involved in most of my work. My goal is to move the viewer back and forth between letters as part of a word or alphabet and letters as pure abstract form. I use many media and processes, but the one that is the most concerned with time is pyrography, or wood burning. This practice is exceedingly slow, taking as long as thirty seconds to render a line an inch in length. It is in the total immersion of this act that I experience a loss of the dimension of time that I have been so keenly aware of in my life. My biggest influence is advertising – words, pictures, communications, the chaos and order of deadlines and the meeting of them. I find the amount of information created by man’s desire to communicate to be as vast and intimidating as a night sky.  |
|
rethink the role of science in society
The original works of art shown on this site are by artist Audrey Riley, http://www.rileyco.com [read the artist's statement]
Top: Conversation, 2008/2009, pyrography, colored pencil, acrylic, ink, collage and encaustic on yardsticks
Center: Evolvelove, 2006, colored pencil, pyrography, acrylic, collage, ink on yardsticks
|
