Plumb series paintings start with a poem or several poems from particular poet. I alter the shape of the words in the poem, working letter by letter and use the letters as a kind of readymade element. Poetry might be the highest medium humans have come up with. It is language itself, which is a miraculous medium which makes everything else we've ever done possible.
A plumb line is a long string with a pointed weight attached to one end. It is used to determine the true vertical path of something with respect to any uneven surface, hanging the weight will point the line to the center of the Earth because gravity points everything to the center of the Earth. Its a very old device still commonly used by architects and engineers. This simple devise isolates gravity into a vertical line in relationship to uneven Earth and with it you have the entire history of almost everything ever built.
The idea of finding one's place in the world, a level place in an uneven universe is best expressed with poetry.
Plumb 22 (The Clock Strikes One That Just Struck Two) uv polymer on aluminum 57 x 40.5 in 2019
source: poem by Emily Dickinson
The Clock strikes one that just struck two－
Some schism in the Sum－
A Vagabond for Genesis
Has wrecked the Pendulum－
Some schism in the Sum－
A Vagabond for Genesis
Has wrecked the Pendulum－
Plumb 102 B (Moon) uv polymer on aluminum 61 x 54 in. 2022
source: poem by Ki no Tsurayuki
A singular
Thing, it was, I thought, yet
From the water’s depths,
Not from the mountains’ peaks,
Comes moonlight
Plumb 114 (Sakura) uv polymer on aluminum 61 x 54 in. 2022
source: poem by Ki no Tsurayuki
While closed in and
Of the progress of spring
All knowing,
These long-awaited cherries, too,
Have faded
Plumb 106 (Moon) uv polymer on aluminum 61 x 54 in. 2022
source: poem by Ki no Tsurayuki
While I gaze upon it
I feel a certain distance:
The moon light
Makes its way to dwellings
Everywhere, I feel
Plumb 20 [Leaves Of Grass] uv polymer on aluminum 63 x 52.5 in. 2020
source: poems by Walt Whitman
As I ebb’d with the ocean of life,
As I wended the shores I know,
As I walk’d where the ripples continually wash you Paumanok,
Where they rustle up hoarse and sibilant,
Where the fierce old mother endlessly cries for her castaways,
I musing late in the autumn day, gazing off southward,
Held by this electric self out of the pride of which I utter poems,
Was seiz’d by the spirit that trails in the lines underfoot,
The rim, the sediment that stands for all the water and all the land of the globe.
Plumb 104 uv polymer on aluminum 47 x 44 in. 2022
source: Anonymous Japanese poet
In some way
The wind has twined them;
Green willow
Branches in dreadful
Disorder
Plumb 17_D uv polymer on aluminum 76 x 43.5 in 2020
source: poem by Walt Whitman
On the beach at night alone,
As the old mother sways her to and fro singing her husky song,
As I watch the bright stars shining, I think a thought of the clef of the universes and of the future.
A vast similitude interlocks all,
All spheres, grown, ungrown, small, large, suns, moons, planets,
All distances of place however wide,
All distances of time, all inanimate forms,
All souls, all living bodies though they be ever so different, or in different worlds,
All gaseous, watery, vegetable, mineral processes, the fishes, the brutes,
All nations, colors, barbarisms, civilizations, languages,
All identities that have existed or may exist on this globe, or any globe,
All lives and deaths, all of the past, present, future,
This vast similitude spans them, and always has spann’d,
And shall forever span them and compactly hold and enclose them.
Plumb_28 ultraviolet polymer on aluminum 60 x 51 in 2019
source text: Emily Dickinson 'We grow accustomed to the dark'
Plumb 41. uv polymer on aluminum 52 x 51 in 2020
source text: Walt Whitman 'As I ebbed with the ocean of life'
Plumb 49 H ultrachrome ink on aluminum 45 x 40 in 2022
Plumb 16 C (Leaves Of Grass) uv polymer on aluminum 60 x 50 in 2020
Plumb 30 ultraviolet polymer on aluminum 70 x 50 in 2020
Plumb 74 ultraviolet polymer on aluminum 58 x 32 in. 2020
Plump 40 ultraviolet polymer on aluminum 58 x 32 in 2019
Plumb 80 B uv ploymer on aluminum 67 x 76 in. 2020
Sketch for Plumb series. A reference sketch on paper prior to diving into vector space for the final.
