And the Artist's Statement, As it Stands Now:

Represented are 30 of the 100 portraits I am creating as an exploration of the complexities of human identity.  This is pursued through the searching and creative act of drawing. The drawings strive to represent the proper physiognomy and acute identities of the tremendous diversity of people I meet as a college art instructor. It is this diversity that inspired my initial thoughts of documenting these faces.

Though the repetitive nature of the grid serves to bind and unite the series, I am allowing myself a degree of experimentation with form.  Intuitive abstraction, gesture, erasure, and re-creation become important aspects in mirroring the diversity represented. In the response to each face I choose to draw, I am looking for the ways I can push and pull these drawings from what is expected.  We are wired to recognize faces, so I am particularly interested in how I can play with this instant ability.  I am exploring shifts in pose, focus, and layering to get my viewers to look a bit longer, a bit harder. This suggests the drawings in a constant state of change, analogous to the shifts inherent in physical and psychological identity.  

Often artifacts of society help build our identities.  Beyond their physiognomy I am responding to what I think will get viewers to think most about who I am drawing.  It could be a pair of glasses, the way hair is styled, suggestions of the clothing choices, and more.  This potentially builds complexities and pushes up against what we expect out of a certain face. Finally, an encaustic seal is torched, carved and scraped into the drawings to shift surface quality and visual density.  The way they are drawn is as diverse as those who are drawn.

This portrait series will continue to grow, as I envision that it must be large in scale to become a regiment of human identities.  Even as I look at the 30 I’ve made so far the most impactful part is how the eye jumps from face to face, scanning and seeing the shifts I have been working on.  The ideas I'm generating for future and bigger work will spawn from the concepts and formal work in these. 100 portraits? Yes, but I doubt the form will stay entirely consistent as I continue to work on this series.

Art Fair, ArtPrize, and a Solo Exhibition: From Ann Arbor to Grand Rapids and Beyond

It has been an intensive summer and fall since I last posted on here, with my portrait series making it into several venues as it has grown.

Here are 15 of them at The Necto Night Club in Ann Arbor in July for Art Fair:

And 18 of them in ArtPrize.

Now 30 of these little encaustic encased drawings hang in a solo exhibition at the NCCA-Artsplace in Fremont, Mi.  I'm waiting for the gallery to send me images of the final installation.

This work was also featured in a few articles: 
The Rapidian in Grand Rapids
And The Voice in Ann Arbor

I really enjoyed ArtPrize, it is a professionally run event that has gotten my work more exposure than anywhere.  The venue I had was great to work with, and just down the street from the Grand Rapids Art Museum.  I can see why it is becoming an internationally-known event.  I think tens of thousands of people saw my drawings, and I have had several requests for sales!

So far I have created 30 of these 15"X16" drawings representing a regiment of identities, and this feels like a good benchmark to shift into new directions.  Interestingly, I'm just getting warmed up on this project. Bigger is where I'm heading next, and I've learned so much from the little ones that I cannot wait to see what happens when I scale up!  The levels of abstraction I have been playing with, the textures in the surface (which cannot be experienced through the web), and the sense of all the shifts in identity I have been working with all hold great promise for bigger work.  Once midterm grading is over at the colleges, I think the creative floodgates will open!