Community Matters 55 (pi: 342...937) Print

I am an artist who uses numbers. Employing sequences from numbers pi or e, I create wall-based geometric abstractions, where values of digits direct a composition’s formal structure: placement of line and shape, structure of a grid or pattern, color relationships. I look for simple and direct ways to combine industrial felts with acrylic sheet scraps as slow stitching, a traditional craft element found across cultures and time, binds layers together. Recent works drift through multiple artforms in varying degrees. They combine languages of sculpture, embroidery, and weaving. They may allude to painting, drawing, or tapestry. Always straddling two worlds, the works reside on the periphery of established artforms. This I believe to be a consequence of immigrating when young, to perpetually float between two cultures, always residing in between, never fully of one or the other. I spent over 20 years creating works, based on identity narratives, by crocheting fiberglass, a process that engaged my hands at every stage. Number sequences entered as part of an expanding identity dialogue. In 2016, due to a temporary loss of workspace, I transitioned the math to laser-cut acrylic forms. The new process almost completely removed my hand and trace of my hand from the work, and produced boxes full of acrylic scraps. In 2020, COVID shut down the lab where I used a laser cutter. No matter where my studio practice goes, the math and interest in respecting the specificity of a material language and process follow. A longing to reconnect my hand with the material, to combine the acrylic with another, to sew into the acrylic, and the need to make do with available tools, led to my current practice of combining acrylic scarps with synthetic felt while engaging math and various traditional craft forms.