Devotions to Dualisms.
D
Within these marks there is a week of steady rain, the heat of the August sun dispersed with shadow by the poplar canopy above, the creek rising and spilling over on shallow roots, as worms writhe through black soil between the maze. Chaos and order, yin and yang, material and spirit, order and adornment. As humans have done throughout the ages through the present Anthropocene, I begin with an approach of creating order; lining each foraged pokeberry up in a diagram of horizontal and vertical axes. It is a meditative repetitive process. Yet, no two marks in this series are the same. In striving to create order, it is the chaos that resonates in the work. It is the cloud within the berry, the unpredictable elements that created the hue of the pigment, the thickness of the innards, that spew across the page in random fashion with a mere touch of my finger. It is the chaos of natural matter that resonates. No mark can be predicted. No mark can be controlled.