Department of Art

Architexture 2000

(AKA The Virtual Drip Project)

Though I consider myself primarily a painter, I work in a variety of media and with this installation my aim is to defy clear categorization. I have intentionally engaged vast and diverse influences and media to produce a hybridization of the familiar with the unexpected. Painting is often associated with traditional craft, regarded as antiquated and accused of no longer being an innovative medium in relation to current technological developments such as digital imaging. I believe however, that rather than posit these two traditions as oppositions or hierarchical, they should be explored in relation to each other. It is through an analysis and synthesis of the idiosyncrasies of these approaches that I am able to offer new insight into their interface. For this specific project I am shifting the focus from issues of formalism in painting to the relationship of painting to other media. By utilizing many forms of art-making, I have produced an interdisciplinary model that combines painting, sculpture, architecture, video, digital imaging and sound into a coherent form. In animating a series of paint drips, set to digitized sound, and projecting the drips back onto the painting, I am synthesizing all the media into a single object enhanced by movement and sound to explore the relationship of all the senses, not just visual. The imagery also references a variety of sources from Rococo and Baroque architecture to Dutch still-life painting, and the work of American abstraction artists like Morris Lewis and Clyfford Still. The found objects and sculptural elements expand the possibilities for individual interpretation, further allowing the audience to invent their own meaning through association.

This project was organized by CAF (The Contemporary Arts Forum, Santa Barbara , CA ) and supported, in part, by the Interdisciplinary Humanities Center , and an FCDA Grant made to the artist from the University of California at Santa Barbara . The artist and CAF would like to thank the following individuals for their time and energy in assisting in the realization of this installation: Philip Argent, Annie Aukeman (Sound), Richard Dunlap, Ryan Even, Penelope Gottlieb, Arnold Johnson, Faina Khait (Monitor), Candace Kim, Diane Lewis, Ian McDonald, Olivia Morad (Monitor), Lisa Mihm, Adam Prentiss (Projector), Steve Shein, and all the other silent partners working behind the scene to make this installation a success.