If I was a mathematician I might have sprung into action quicker but, slowly as I began to realize by the scoring and the odds I would be one of the emerging artist grant 2023 grantees I, without delay opened jerry’s artarama page where I found some items already in my cart so that if some day I would be able to buy them, all I would have to do is click “confirm purchase”. Lo and behold that day had come. Click.
Two rolls of 83×400 inches of beautiful, heavy canvas 6 tubes of paint that I promise I will put the lids back on after every use and some damar varnish for the finishing touch. I spent it all, all at once.
I spent weeks on my application followed by weeks of waiting too see if I would be selected followed by hours of listening to the judges followed by minutes of joy and pride followed by seconds of “shopping”.
The work is now. I am excited, panicked, and forward looking. I have pulled out paintings I will revisit, revise and review with my mentor and begin to unroll the 400 inches of new canvas on which I will describe the world as I see it. At the moment I am not daunted. I know what I have to do. I can’t wait. I’ll have months, days, hours and moments to work and think and sit and worry and ask and answer. I am now faced with the question how is my work going to make a difference? In time I will find an answer.
Being a grantee at #creativepinellas, working toward a #groupshow and working on all the other aspects that the grant requires gives me a glimpse of what I should be doing with my time. Time is of the essence.
The idea I am obsessing over at the moment has a lot to do with time. The scrolls I am referring to is how I am approaching a sense of a calendar, a documentation or a diary of sorts. Scrolls – reams of data – the act of scrolling impies ignoring the world around us but the scroll itself is different. It’s the fact. The document. The evidence.
On these long unstretched canvas rolls are depictions of an abstract language, a personal iconography detailing global climate migration where fence lines demarcate restricted territory. Where a corral of space highlights the idea of the grass is always greener and where it quite literally is greener and unattainable to some.
“Beyond the Fence” starts off this series on climate crises. The viewer sees the jagged fence line and the corral like space looming large in the scape of the canvas. There are large swaths of the canvas painted over with grey alluding to the diminishing green space global warming causes. I don’t think we humans have time not to acknowledge what is happening to the world.
The endless scroll verb/noun are the outcome for the overall work which will ask – how much data do we need to believe climate crises is a fact?
Over the next couple months watch this space. Lets see what happens here, over time together.
