A plumb line is an ancient device still in common use today consisting of a long string with a pointed weight attached to one end, used to level the uneven surface of the Earth. It shows the true vertical path of something because of gravity and wherever you are the weight will always point the line to the center of the Earth. With this simple tool you have a connection to the entire history of almost everything ever built. But to me its a symbol for finding one's place over and over again in a wild and uneven world.
Plumb paintings start with a poem or several poems from poets I admire. I alter the shape of the words in the poem, working letter by letter and use the letters as a kind of readymade element albeit ones with emotional weight. Poetry might be the highest art form humans have, as language itself is a miraculous set of sounds and symbols which make everything else we've ever done possible.
Plumb 106 (Moon) uv polymer on aluminum 50.5 x 44.5 in. 2023
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 36C. uv polymer on aluminum 50.5 x 44.5 in 2023
source: poems by Emily Dickinson
Come slowly - Eden!
Lips unused to Thee –
Bashful – sip thy Jessamines –
As the fainting Bee –
Reaching late his flower,
Round her chamber hums –
Counts his nectars –
Enters – and is lost in Balms.
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 114 (Sakura) uv polymer on aluminum 50.5 x 44.5 in. 2023
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 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
Sketch for Plumb series. A reference sketch on paper prior to diving into vector space for the final.
