Rain | Collaboration
Can an artist collaborate with Nature on a project? Does the very word “collaborate” imply a willingness to contribute? My proposed exhibition of works will address these questions and raise further questions regarding our current relationship to Nature during this present Age of the Anthropocene. Last summer, while participating as Artist-in-Residence at the Burren College of Art in Ireland, I began a collaborative mixed media series with the rain. I painted an abstract watercolor on recycled paper based on the emotion of wonder that I felt while immersed in the region. While the painting was still wet, I set it out in the rain. After the work had dried, I painted lines derived from linear patterns from a found computer microchip. The result was a work which sought to call attention to the existential multiplicity of the present. That is, the need for both the holiness found in Nature and the need to find our place within a culture of hard lines, structure, technology, and progress.