The large pastel drawings/paintings on paper were inspired by the book, "Eunuchs for the Kingdom of Heaven" by Uta Ranke-Heinmann, where she analyzed the directives behind Catholicism and its millenia-long teaching that women were/are inferior creatures. It meshed with some of my own experiences having come of age before women were legally allowed financial credit in their own name in this country; I couldn't finance a car without a male cosigner until the age of 34, even though I was a university department chair. The Glimses of Reality paper sandwiches are more universal, consisting of pastel drawings between layers of handmade paper; the top layer was applied wet.
Sometimes, realities have no dimensional divisions. They just are. The circular drawings narrate communal astral projecting. Objects in flight may be from a parallel universe that went awry or may be viewed as fragments from the hostility between the industrial world and the natural one. All objects have a life force. The text drawing was simply signaling my moving on from figurative works into a fascination with text. The flight and war drawings precursed the Earthclouds installation where manufactured goods became so excessive that they attained consciousness.
Museum of South Texas History, Edinburg
The ranch themes are from photographs shot during research visits to five South Texas ranches in 1980, juxtaposing their imagery for a humorous take, and visually merging the ranches together in a comprehensive and psychological view of South Texas ranch culture. These are a few of the drawings from the larger museum exhibition. It was not literal enough for South Texas.
Looking at America's social landscape with pencil on Stonehenge paper.
Further Adventures is about moving the Earthcloud concept into different media and art forms.
This continuation of my Earthcloud concept is mixed technologies. Initiated and completed during the COVID19 lockdown, it began by commenting on the malignancy and malice of the virus, but soon morphed into echoes of political anxieties. To imagine the world to which the Earthclouds have migrated and which turns out to reflect our own proclivities, I continued to use photographs of rags, shaping them into smaller Earthcloud clusters and new photographs of Mexican hemp rags. After printing and heat transferring them onto hand-made papers, I created the emotional expressions that form the environment with ultra-fine sharpies and conte. In this dimension reflecting the transcendence of manufactured products, they are joined by obsolete objects and spirits of their own kind, some are benign, but some have become predators. They mirror our own fragmented story.