Large-scale containers are fascinating to me because of their immensity and simple geometry.
The shadows on the silos create massive shapes on the curved planes — that is really the whole subject of the painting. Two cylinders, a flat wall behind, and the light doing something enormous and soft across all of it.
Acrylics · independent project · 2009
An indoor drip system, so that a green interior could take care of itself.
While doing landscaping work in the desert of New Mexico I learned how to install outdoor drip irrigation. Working with those water-conserving systems made me wonder whether there was a way to produce a similar system indoors — the sheet works out a valve and a timer, a source that is either municipal or rain, and tubing that could be exposed or hidden.
The note in the corner reads plants absorb pollutants and improve indoor air quality. That was the argument: not decoration, infrastructure.
Twenty-one years later I built it. The Smart Tillandsia Care vase is this drawing with sensors in it — the same enclosed green interior watering itself on a schedule instead of on my memory. The valve and timer sketched here became a piezo atomizer and a microcontroller.
Watercolours, ink and pencil · independent project · 2005
A fallen leaf, mounted in a photo enlarger and projected straight onto photographic paper. No camera, no negative.
The veins blocked the light and printed themselves — so what you are looking at is the leaf’s own structure at one-to-one, rather than a picture of a leaf.
I feel that directly observing nature can give us insights about patterns and functions. This is about as direct as observing gets.
Photogram on silver gelatin paper · independent project · 2003