commercial

Here is the bottom half of the mural. The final dimensions are 8 feet x 8 feet .

The image designed specifically for the client is fused to 8" tiles.

IDEAS BEHIND THE MAKING OF THE IMAGE:

Initially I was sent information about the Lake Erie Land Company. I was struck by how the core of their philosophy is something I have always agreed with and responded to in my own life. They seem to recognize that life / living is a continual work in progress. They seem to approach projects in a wholistic sense, seeing that one action has wide reaching consequences.

Awareness of not only the exterior aspect of something, its visual appeal, its balance, its strength is important- but also considering aspects that are unseen or not so obviously- in plain sight- interests me greatly.

The piece is comprised of many images. Each I see as a sort of sedimentary layer. The objects and materials I used to ground the piece are actual things I use as an artist all the time.

At the bottom is a paper sculptures, imbedded within a glass text with hand lettering. I photographed illustrations of leaves that stand upright and assert a notion of stainability to their surroundings. Moving up the piece is a blurry horizon line with a great amount of sky and a singular tree. The idea here was about acting on one thing and appreciating the diligence it takes to create something with meaning and resonance. Surrounding the landscape is an old wage punch card with the word OPTIONAL and the dates of the Coffee Creek Center opening. I was trying to suggest here that there are options, choices one can make in the process of building a work of art or creating a community or building on what is good for the earth. Worn sand paper and carbon paper so written on that it appears to be like blowing grasses in field surround the landscape. The top section of the piece is really an image of a cornfields photographed while driving down I57. I altered the fields in computer so that they became a hill and serve to sort of cap construction of the entire piece. The faint dotted line was added to suggest a pathway or boardwalk. Kelle Mobley asked me to include the saying “sitting lightly on the land.” It seems to fit the aesthetic of the piece.

the text included in the artwork

It is from a book called THE ORDER OF THINGS by French philosopher Michael Foucault. The particular section I handwrote in your piece reads, and I did paraphrase a bit…

“So that in this hinge between two things a resemblance appears..... a resemblance of a place, the site upon which nature has placed the two things, and thus a similitude of properties; for in this natural container, the world, adjacency is not an exterior relation between things.
To me these words are about standing back and taking a longer view at things. Realizing the resemblance of what on the surface appears to be two or three or four disparate things- yet when brought together something wonderful, meaningful, lasting is constructed.