I don't know if its all the home improvement projects (drywall?) or reading about the history of plaster in art (think: pyramids, frescoes, Rodin, Cynthia Plaster Caster, etc.) but I just couldn't get the thought of painting on a dry, rough plaster texture out of my mind. The process and the product have some similarities to the excavated screen prints I was working on last year at Kala, the repetition of additive and subtractive application of color. And not only the hue (colors with a connection to body fluids) but also the subject matter relate to the marbled paper I was working on but never finished. These plaster pieces may or may not be complete either. I've been thinking of adding another layer that contains some sort of image transfer but I'm not sure if a photograph or print would add anything. Maybe all of these bits and pieces will pull together eventually.
I am loving working with plaster, for me it communicates a sense of fragility and at the same time strength. It is heavy to lug around but can easily be chipped or broken by a fingernail. My undergraduate 3-D teacher (whose artwork I've always admired), Georgia Strange had us create several plaster sculptures from cast blocks that we chiseled away at. Boy, was that intense and difficult. After a few hours of sculpting with a hammer and chisel my hands would be dry & aching and my ears would be ringing. At that point, I learned to really appreciate physically demanding art making. I started to think about not only the object but the effort and strength needed to create it. What I'm doing now with plaster is much more fluid and easier on my hands. I don't feel like I'm fighting the materials. I've applied a thin layer of plaster to the substrate that I carved into while it was still wet. Then I did several washes and glazes over the textures, filling crevices and wiping the paint away from the high areas.
In the last 4 or 5 years, all of my work has related to biological structures and human reproduction either conceptually or in form. I have always been attracted to the intersections and overlaps of art and science. Circular elements or cells have crept in as a powerful part of my visual language. infinity, cyclical, building blocks of life, unity, clusters, organization, growth...
