Forwarding: Gates
Forwarding: Gates, 2023, aluminum, acid free binder’s board, MDF shelf, 128 1/2 in x 15 in x 3 3/4 in
Working Drawings for Forwarding: Gates, 2021, pen and ink, ink jet printing, carbon transfer, Gampi and Stonehenge papers on Arches (each 9 3/16 in x 6 5/8 in)
Between 2014 and 2022 a large part of my practice has involved collaborating with a set of 306 shapes drawn in the late 19th-century by quilt-maker Rachel Blair Greene. This began with a piece called Correspondence from the Piecework series and has continued through the many projects grouped under the common title Forwarding.
Forwarding: Gates is an opportunity to see eleven of these shapes individually, without the structural complexity of the large groups in Forwarding I-XI or the interrelationships between shapes described in Forwarding: Provisional Pairs. For Gates the shapes were laser-cut from thick sheets of aluminum and acid-free book-binder’s pressboard. The aluminum shapes were hand-polished to achieve a cloudy finish that holds the light so you can see right into and through them, this a nod too the idea that Greene’s shapes exist as time-gates in between us and her.
The choice to make this particular group of eleven shapes refers to the initial Forwarding I-XI in which the 306 shapes were broken down into eleven groups. Each of the shapes seen here in Forwarding: Gates, and similarly in Forwarding: Lenses, has been chosen at random from one of those original groups. 27 other groups are possible and should be produced.
For more information about the connections between the various Forwarding projects please visit Forwarding Related Media.
Image Credits: Tom Powel Imaging and Sollins Studio
