Welcome to “Mixing” and the "Collaboration Suite" !
While I hope everyone enjoys this exhibition, as a university professor, I’m aware that the Salem College students are my primary audience. With that in mind, I want to briefly describe the way this body of work developed.
Parenthood is a life-changing event to say the least. As an artist, it became increasingly difficult to create work that was ordered, still and quiet. In order to paint from life¾reflect and share my world¾I decided to embrace and collaborate with the forces experienced at home.
One of these forces is my son Will. He is six years old now, but was three at the time the idea for this first suite began. He and I collaborated on the paintings in this exhibition. It began with my gift of a disposable camera and the invitation to take photographs of the house. He had a unique perspective being 36 inches tall and enjoyed particular subjects more, such as the bathrooms. The first layer of these paintings came from his photos.
Next I appropriated and arranged some of his drawings to paint over the initial layer. I picked the drawings in part for their suggestive audio potential. For example, dots could be understood as percussion and long lines could be understood as a string instrument. I also sampled actual house sounds- doors, bottles, toys, etc.
I then translated the existing painted composition into a short musical composition. After I could see and hear the results together, I underscored the major percussive movements with yellow, green, red, and blue blocks of varying sizes denoting cymbals, snares, toms, bass etc.