This publication contains conversations. Conversations between interior and exterior spaces, between what is public and private, what is revealed and what remains hidden—concealed and protected. Conversations between the individual and the collective, between what is seen and what is unseen, what is made and what supports making.
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Fall 2018
Saddle stitched book
5in x 7in.
24 pp.
I am interested in making connections between what is mass produced by hand and what is mass produced by machine. I am thinking about how the mind, the hand, and the machine, work with and against each other.
I am considering ways to translate the vulnerability and imperfection of the raw materials I use to make into the completed work—to recognize not only what is made, but what supports making—from the straightforward and immediate to the complex and conceptual.
In my practice, I am supported by the action of making. Through repetition, my mind connects to my hand and my hand connects to my materials, providing me with a balance of thinking and making.
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Fall 2018
Felt Coils
Various Sizes
Sound Systems x 4 is the sound of making visualized. It is the result of a generative system. Using an audio recording of myself wrapping felt around a fiber cord and a system of color codes and graphic patterns, a series of printed posters were generated.
For this work, I was interested in the visual patterns that could be created from sound, as well as the contrasts and similarities that the same sound sample could create.
By dividing the recording into increments of time and assigning a color coded system, the top of the sound for each increment determined the color code at the bottom. The color code was translated to graphic patterns. The graphic patterns generated the posters. The form and material changed completely from an audio file on my computer to a series of printed posters on the wall.
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Fall 2018
Prints on bond paper
24 x 36 in and 11 x 17 in
Objects + Methods is a free public lecture series hosted by VCUarts Department of Graphic Design.
*Peter Burr is a master of computer animation with a gift for creating images and environments that hover on the boundary between abstraction and figuration. His practice often engages with tools of the video game industry in the form of immersive cinematic artworks. His work been presented internationally by various institutions including Documenta 14, Athens; MoMA PS1, New York; and The Barbican Centre, London.
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Fall 2018
Mixed Media
Animated GIF - 1000px x 1000px
Print - 11 in x 17 in
Lightbox - 36 in x 48 in
Using a collection of images, shapes, and patterns printed on materials of varying transparency, I’m exploring techniques of layering, obscuring, and interaction in print design.
// How is meaning altered by obscuring images?
// What are the visual connections between the organic (natural) and the inorganic (man-made)?
// Can digital patterns mimic the patterns found in nature?
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Spring 2018
Spiral bound book
8.5in x 11in.
36 pp.
I am exploring the use of reproduction as a tool—altering and transforming my work to generate formal and conceptual divergences. Through reproduction, three-dimensional letterforms became two-dimensional pixels on a screen. Once in digital form, I created animations that move through a series of letterform combinations.
This work began with an interest in the connection between the grid and modernism. In a 1979 paper, Rosalind Krauss, describes the grid as being ‘antinatural’ by saying ‘‘the grid is what art looks like when it turns its back on nature. In the flatness that results from its coordinates, the grid is the means of crowding out the dimensions of the real and replacing them with the lateral spread of a single surface.’’ Antinatural is a collection of letterforms created by removing sections of a plastic mesh canvas. For this work, I wanted to challenge the ‘flatness’ that Krauss refers to by building depth from the voids created from layering multiple letters.
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Fall 2018
Mixed Media
Plastic Canvas [6 in x 6 in]
Animated GIF [1000px x 1351px]
An Emblem and a Myth visualizes the conceptual connection of the grid to modern and post modernism. It also builds on the idea of the grid as an ‘antinatural’ being.
For this work, I was interested in the contrast of scale and materials—from small to large, from hard to soft, from rigid to malleable—to further my investigation of methods to disrupt the grid.
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Fall 2018
Mixed media installation
Various sizes
Altered, Transformed, Reproduced explores what is lost and gained through reproduction—focusing on the time and labor of making, materiality, and visualizing what is often unseen or overlooked.
// Fiber works took many hours over several days to produce. This time and labor of making is concealed in the print reproductions as scans were done in seconds, and prints were done in minutes.
// Textured surfaces became smooth.
// Prints allow for both the front and back to be seen at the same time—revealing
the hidden support structure of the fiber works.
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Fall 2018
Mixed media installation:
Fiber works, 7 x 7 in
Prints, 24 x 36 in
Invisible Structures is an investigation of the unseen support structures in print design—meaning everything that supports making but isn’t seen in the finished work.
By documenting the frameworks within InDesign that aren't typically included in the final, printed work, I'm shifting the focus—the containers for the content become the content for the publication.
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Fall 2018
Coptic bound book
8.25in x 10.75in.
52 pp.
Objects + Methods is a free public lecture series hosted by VCUarts Department of Graphic Design.
*Eric Timothy Carlson is a Brooklyn-based artist working with the themes of symbolism and semiotics through drawing and the process of accumulation.
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Spring 2018
Mixed Media
Print - 11 in x 17 in
Lightbox - 36 in x 48 in
Using the Conditional Design Workbook as a reference, I invited my cohort to participate in a prompt I created.
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The Conditional Design Workbook invites readers to actively participate in playfully designed sets of rules and conditions that stimulate collaboration between participants and lead to unpredictable outcomes. I am interested in the rule based approach and focus on process over product that the Conditional Design Workbook promotes.
(Maurer, Luna, Paulus, Edo, Editor, Puckey, Jonathan, Editor, and Wouters, Roel, Editor. Conditional Design Workbook. 2013.)
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Fall 2017
Mixed media
Various sizes
Inspired by the public artwork of Jaume Plensa, and thinking about dimensionality as it relates to space and materials, and dimensionality as it relates to concept and process, I asked myself the following questions.
// How does our background and identity affect how we, as artists and designers, make and interpret artwork, specifically public art installations?
// How do past experiences inform our point of view, our process, and our choice of materials?
// How does accessibility and human interaction contribute to the complexity and meaning of artwork in a public space?
// What are methods of translating three-dimensional artwork to a two-dimensional surface?
Pattern Language replaces alphabetical characters with patterns. To show how the system responds, I used the first names of my graduate school cohort. When the characters of our names were collapsed, new patterns and combinations of patterns emerged.
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Spring 2018
Animated GIF
1000px x 700px
(Embroidered shapes over images.)
By photographing and displaying the back of the work, the process of making is revealed.
An exercise in generating ideas. Inspired by Erwin Wurm’s One Minute Sculptures.
Since the late 1980s, Erwin Wurm has developed an ongoing series of One Minute Sculptures, in which he poses himself or his models in unexpected relationships with everyday objects close at hand. The sculptures are fleeting and meant to be spontaneous and temporary–captured only in photos.
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Fall 2017
Mixed media
Various sizes
Exploring the patterns created when art, science, and technology converge. The Murmuration Festival was a 3-day festival that brought together artists, musicians, innovators, scientists, and entrepreneurs to engage the public and share their work via conversations, talks, panel discussions, and musical performances. The festival took place in the Cortex Innovation District, a 200-acre innovation and technology hub in St. Louis, Missouri.
I designed and fabricated the event signage for the Murmuration Festival. When designing the signage, I knew I wanted to embrace the hands-on, maker approach the festival was centered around. To achieve this, I used raw materials including concrete and plywood. The signage was directly printed on plywood and attached to oversized a-frames and concrete stands. I mixed and poured over 700 pounds of concrete by hand. I utilized the TechShop St. Louis to construct the signage.
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Fall 2016
Mixed media
Various sizes
Text and Textiles is language in translated form. Each alphabetical character is reproduced as a band of colored fiber.
Control is imparted in the text I authored and chance is in the color combinations that the text generates.
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Spring 2018
Mixed media installation
42 x 60 in
Participatory art emphasizes the process over the product and champions the idea of collective authorship. In some cases, participation creates the artwork, in others the participatory action is itself described as the art.
This publication was generated using Conditional Design methodology and subjective intentions. The most important aspects of Conditional Design are time, relationship, and change. By choosing a translucent paper, over time as participants add to the publication, they can see the residue of the pages added before them.
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Fall 2017
Prong fastened bound book
8.5in x 11in
20 pp.
