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Post 41: Aluminum Water Bottle, Paper Napkin

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As published in The Goose Egg, Issue #10 Surely there are many practical differences between drawings and sculptures. Saying this feels like a reliable and also necessary place to start from. Why distinguish two things that are already clearly different? Pronouncing “the difference between”--as a title, as a phrase--seems to imply that differences not obvious or immediately known that separate one thing from another are about to be exposed by the pronouncer. It seems to imply that the two subjects in question must be pretty similar. Why is this the case? It is as though to call something out, to form a distinction with words is worthwhile only if what is expressed is not as present in sight as it will be once it lands in language. It is true that the two subjects here, drawings and sculptures, do have obvious differences. One takes place on a flat surface, is that flat surface with two-dimensional forms; the other, something three-dimensional, volumetric, constituted of depth and thick...
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Post 40: Notebook exchange with Daisy Diamond

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Seeing Daisy in Cleveland makes me want to draw with a more wobbly line. [This initial sentence led to a notebook exchange between Daisy and me: We began by each writing a question in our notebooks and then trading notebooks to write our corresponding answers. So, we had two writing/drawing conversations going simultaneously. We continued this asking and responding for a few rounds, and ended on questions not yet answered.] — — —  Here is what took place in my notebook: OG: Daisy, what do you think your line is like? Would you say it’s wobbly? DD: I think my line, or a line more broadly, can be expressed in different ways… line type (quality, size) relationship to other lines (perpendicular, parallel, random, contained) image function (creation of planes ↔ breaking up planes, representational ↔ abstract, etc.) I like lines that create a feeling of repetition and also a sort of layering. This repetition and layering, I feel, leads to a sense of place or space. I like when looking at...
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Post 39: Looking

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Closeness is important for writing. What kind of closeness? I have to feel like I’m looking at something in order to write about it, which I believe is often why I write about the things I am looking at. What is this closeness you have when you look at something? ? Seeing something is to experience the truth of there being nothing between you and the thing you are seeing. Maybe not nothing at all, but where something would prevent you from seeing what you’re seeing, there is nothing. It’s nice to think of emptiness as the space occupied by sight. Sometimes seeing has the felt experience of that particular nothing that allows it to take place, but often it doesn’t. I only experience the nothing when seeing is incredible, when I am seeing something incredible. In looking at a striking thing, there is a wonderment about the sight of it being there at all. A “how could it be?” kind of feeling. Seeing something incredible is to feel that the sight at hand has been exposed, or even that it h...
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Post 38: A few things from The Pond Froze Over at Procession Gallery

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One wall of The Pond Froze Over The other day, I dashed into what was a radiant and sensitive show up at Procession Gallery, The Pond Froze Over . I stepped through the space with the slightness and waver of a pencil’s line--just in the way that the space’s atmosphere compelled me to; you could not step boldly through the room for you would drown out the sound of the works--quivering as they were as though (or perhaps they actually were) balancing on a singular spot of softness. Early in my arrival, in the midst of getting my bearings, I happened to turn around and face the outside that I came from, and there happened to be someone out there, on the other side of the street, tagging, with black spray paint, a few objects that were leaning against the brick side wall of a building. This filled me with glee. It fulfilled the strange rareness of witnessing someone mark-make while being surrounded by mark-making in the past tense--unwitnessed marks already having been made. These few thoug...
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