From around 1992 through 2001 I focused my attention on machines, factories, and urban infrastructure, ideally decaying. Rather than try to understand how anything works, I used observational drawing and some photography to collect then riff on information from sites in Tegucigapla and Chicago, documents from my temp job at a company that makes processing machinery, and vintage electronics manuals. I invented machines. And maybe I wanted to be one.
Made before and during graduate school, most of this work has lived in storage for decades. Its re-emergence when Renny Pritikin and Mark Johnson included some of the drawings in a show at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco (February-July 2018). This fresh look at old work prompted me to reconsider how I define what I do as an artist. I include here a small selection of a much larger body of work.
Above : One Quarter Century. 100" x 33" Ink and gouache on paper. 1994
Below : Three views of Exploded Drawing, three layers of not-quite-transparent plastic vellum, ink and gouache on one or both sides of each layer. 120" x 40" 1995
Cognoscenti. A DymAxion comic, with writing by Susan Choi. Ink on vellum. 1994
Details of DymAxion No. 4. Ink on vellum. 1994?
A series of 17 machines. Ink on paper. Also printed as color copies and wheat pasted in my Chicago neighborhood. 1993-4
Above, Emplaiding Device. Below, three other drawings from the series.
A machine? I thought so when I made it. Or a game. Digital print, 1998.