These works explore inherent and contradictory characteristics of drawing as a medium, an activity, and a means to other ends. Intimate, immediate, investigative, irresolute and indeterminate aspects of drawing invade and intersect with each other, complicating and enriching those impulses and gestures that manifest themselves in marks. I refer to marks not in a formalist context but with socio-political terrain in mind. Whose traces are erased, whose stains remain, whose tales do we imagine while gazing at these remains?

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Orange Wings/Pink Body), 2007, 23” x 15”

 

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Standing Eagle Head Girl), 2007, 22” x 17”, ink and gouache/paper

 

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Green Tip Wings), 2007, 23” x 15”, ink and gouache/paper

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Big Black Wing), 2007, 30” x 24”, ink and gouache/paper

 

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Green Body/Red Eagle), 2007, 21” x 14”, ink and gouache/paper

 

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Orange Body), 2007, 21” x 14”, ink and gouache/paper

 

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Yellow Wings/Blue Neck), 2007, 23” x 15”, ink and gouache/paper

 

 

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Fallen Head/Green Wings), 2007, 30” x 24”, ink and gouache/paper

 

 

 

 

Extraordinary Renditions (Red Antelope/Blue Man)  2007, 25” x 17”, ink and gouache/paper

 

 

 

Swathe II, 2006, 8.5” x 10.5”, ink on paper

 

 

 

Swathe I, 2006, 8.5” x 10.5”, ink on paper

 

 

 

Swathe IV, 2006, 8.5” x 10.5”, ink on paper

 

 

 

Swathe V, 2006, 8.5” x 10.5”, ink on paper

 

 

 

Swathe III, 2006, 8.5” x 10.5”, ink on paper

 

 

 

In His Own Image: Intellectual Property Rights, 1998, 10" x 22", ink and acrylic on paper.
The gods, ineffectual and divisive; nature, beneath contempt; flesh, corrupted by desire; leaves but one bond of humanity--- the unalienable copy right.

 

 

 

 

 

Basic Conditionalities or the Assumption of Burden: Stalking the Countryside, 1998, 13 3/4 x 27 1/2"; Oil, ink and gouache on paper.
IMF-World Bank programs come with requirements. Governments are generally forced to remove subsidies to the poor on basic foodstuffs and services such as rice and maize, water and electricity. --Davison Budhoo.

 

 

 

 

 

Licking Earth, 1994, tongue imprint, egg yolk, earth on paper, 9" x 39".

 

 

 

 

 

Found No More at All (I), 1998,
29" x 25 1/2", graphite, wine, human blood, mold/graph on tracing paper.

 

 

 

 

 

Found No More at All (II), 1998, 42" x 31",
graphite, wine, human blood, mold gouache on handmade paper.
Where leads, bleeds, feeds, compassion after dark?

 

 

 

 

 

Found No More at All (II) detail, 1998,
42" x 31", graphite, wine, human blood, mold gouache on handmade paper.
Where burrowed, where deemed, where sung, a constellation unborn?

 

 

 

 

 

Until Human Voices Wake Us, (18 drawings), 1999, 42" x 31"each, 128" x 191" total; Installation of the cycle, Earth, glue, insufficient rain, ink, blood, dust, spit and muck/paper.
Until Human Voices Wake Us is a drawing cycle that creates a contemplative chamber of mirage, of salvage, of dust.

 

 

 

 

 

Until Human Voices Wake Us, 1999, one of 18 drawings.
'Yes, as everyone knows, meditation and water are wedded forever...'* but what place hath reflection 'in a dry and thirsty land, where no water is'**?

*Melville **Psalms 63:I

 

 

 

 

 

Until Human Voices Wake Us, 1999, one of 18 drawings.

 

 

 

 

 

Until Human Voices Wake Us, 1999, one of 18 drawings.

 

 

 

 

 

Until Human Voices Wake Us, 1999, one of 18 drawings.

 

 

 

 

 

Until Human Voices Wake Us, 1999, one of 18 drawings.

 

 

 

 

 

Until Human Voices Wake Us, 1999, one of 18 drawings.

 

 

 

 

 

Vassals and Tributaries: Maniacal Monkeys, (center panel of triptych) 1998, 21" x 21", ink and gouache on paper.
The euphoria of our lamentations, the syncopated measure of our ruin, keeps everybody hop(e)ing.

 

 

 

 

 

Vassals and Tributaries: Maniacal Monkeys, (detail from left panel of triptych) 1998, 21" x 21", ink and gouache on paper.
Amidst the squalor of sincerity and the obscenity of our sacrificial state, there remains no business like show business.

 

 

 

 

 

Vassals and Tributaries: Delusional Dogs, 1998,
13 3/4 x 27 1/2"; Ink and gouache on 2 sheets of layered paper.
The bone of contention, the scepter of the governed, remains (distant) until death.

 

 

 

 

 

Clamorous Cats: Lifting of Foreign Investment Restrictions & Hope, 1998,
13 3/4 x 27 1/2"; Ink and gouache on 2 sheets of layered paper.
The collective cries too loud not to quiet down.

 

 

 

 

 

Test for Doing the Post-colonial Shift (to greater dependency), 1999, dimensions variable; Ink on balloon.
The small characters that run along the bottom of the balloons evoke an enlarged phenakistoscope except that they don’t turn for us; we must run around them. No matter how fast we run there will be no illusionistic movement created. Instead, there is our actual movement around arrested and arresting images.

 

 

 

 

 

Expendable Expectations: Popular Sovereignty, 1999, dimensions variable; Ink on balloon.

 

 

 

 

 

Reverse Financial Flow: Lifting of Foreign Investment Restrictions & Hope, (balloon version, recto), 2000, 72" x 72" x 72", ink on weather balloon.
First, the presentation of the central inflated balloon is an anti-cyclorama. Rather than the panoptic model with its privileged position of the world laid at one’s feet, revolving around the viewer, here viewers must alter their vantage continually to try to take in the whole.

 

 

 

 

 

Reverse Financial Flow: Lifting of Foreign Investment Restrictions & Hope, (balloon version, verso), 2000, 72" x 72" x 72", ink on weather balloon.
The balloons when inflated are translucent and so the images painted on them are seen through themselves. This requires the viewer to concentrate on particular levels and emphasizes the act of perceiving and the necessity of constant refocusing. No single vantage is satisfactory since there is always more to take in; although from any limited vantage, flights of fancy are stimulated. Memory is tasked to piece together an image of the whole.

 

 

 

 

 

Praying for Disasters That Have Already Come, 2000, 19" x 42", ink on weather balloon and pin.
Equally important and difficult is trying to imagine this complicated and wonderful experience of encountering these utopic images on an apparently crystalline ball when viewing the folded, shriveled balloon bits. Here we confront the power and limits of the imagination. Is it possible to create from these shards anything like what it must have been? And if we are successful in this nostalgic enterprise, are we deluding ourselves from acknowledging the current state of affairs, denying what is actually before us?

 

 

 

 

 

Praying for Disasters That Have Already Come, detail, 2000, 19" x 42", ink on weather balloon and pin.
Each viewer will doubtless have varying degrees of empathy with the plight of tributaries and engagement with the political allegories. Themes of dreaming, disillusion and potential strike personal chords in any viewer regardless of age. But it is my wicked aspiration to contemplate the implications of a society that adopts the unthinkable slogan "Parity or Bust".

 

 

 

 

 

The Marriage of Hope and Debt, 1999, 9" x 12", ink on paper.
The most egregious, unwarranted, unrealizable, and therefore extreme personal aspiration and social standard is to demand equal measure.