In the Iteration Series, I was interested in exploring images of tree branches as metaphors for the  interconnectedness of things.  The branches of trees look like thoughts, brain scans, and images of synapses.  When I look out at the sea of bare trees outside my house in the winter, the layers of bare branches map the depth of the space, but the depth is only really perceptible when one moves.  Then the depth and the relationship of trees to each other becomes apparent.   Trees are separate entities when they have space, but once they are crowded, they become more like one organism.  When one tree falls, it takes down others.  The world is becoming more interconnected in this way.  You don’t see the density and structure until you move around, and you don’t necessarily know what is supporting what, and what the effect will be if something falls.  All things that branch out, roads, lightning bolts, rivers, smoke, plants, internet, wealth, religion and urban sprawl are all open systems.  All the edges are in some way permeable.

Iteration Series is constructed from 20 rectangles of cut, Japanese paper.  I printed photographs of tree branches on the paper, using the images as guides for cutting the paper.  One byproduct of this process was a collection of irregularly shaped paper pieces, essentially the negative space-shapes that were framed by the tree branches. 

Iteration Series 1. 2009. Inkjet print on cut Japanese paper. 60x48”

Iteration Grid  evolved from cutting up the negative space-shapes from the tree branch images in previous project, and began as a random experiment. Although I had ideas related to repetition, fractals and the golden section in the back of my mind.  The first step I devised was cutting the shapes into concentric rings. The shape below is 2x3”.

Next, I would arrange each set of ‘rings,’ sometimes in order of size, and sometimes slightly out of order.  I tried not to stick too closely to my own set of instructions.

 Once I had made a dozen or so of these sets, I would assemble three or four together to create a resolved arrangement.  I wanted each of these pieces to be visually balanced and have a sense of gesture or attitude.  As I made these pieces, I was struck how each one evoked some sort of creature, sea shell, plant, insect, or skeleton.  I made over 50 of these delicate, linear forms and assembled 45 of them into an installation entitled Iteration Grid.  The negative spaces of the earlier work,  Iteration Series,  had morphed into forms that seem to have come from nature, but in fact, are pure invention.