Can one reveal by eroding? Is there a difference between emergence and submergence?

 

What defines us? Are we form or detail? Area or volume? Depth or surface? all of the above? What does ‘What defines us?’ mean? CAT scans and biology textbooks offer material advice. But how to pictorialise the non-material? Not its imagery, already so well represented, but its mechanics? Like CAT scanning cave art, Egyptian pictograms, Greek bas-reliefs and finding ghostly archetypes informing all. Its about how humans look for meaning, not about meaning itself.

I took photographs of myself, used photocopier to set size, carbon papered onto template rubber, cut out template, cut raw stone to size, prepared surface, applied templates, sand blasted, peeled off templates, traced stone with charcoal and 90 gsm tracing paper, traced around drawing, carbon papered onto template rubber, cut out rubber, applied negative cut out to stone, added elements of previous template manifestations of the process, sand blasted, applied positive to stone, sand blasted. Now in process of tracing sculpture of drawing of sculpture of photo copies of photographs with view to making sculpture on which i will draw directly. This process has been punctuated and driven by risk and at times, disaster. The results have been thrilling, revelatory and perhaps disturbing…

…as I am left with the troubling thought that I may be a Surrealist. These are forms I would not consciously aim to produce.