The Red Book

Mail art project with Sarah Wolfe, recently rebound.

The Alphabet Book - first pages

Letterpress figure

Mail art project

Color tests for silkscreen

Color me blank

In the 1800's when Christians adopted the pagan tradition of bringing in evergreens during winter they decorated them with apples. This is the origin of baubles.

I recently returned to this geometric female figure, the form is predominantly straight lines and angles and the head was inspired by various tools including the hammer and screwdriver. The size of this silk screen is 33'' by 17''

Most of my drawings live tucked away in the pages of a sketchbook for months or years before I use them in a final piece. I find the subconscious intent needs a gestation period before the work can be realised.

List of Elements:
Outer: Sweets, Beast, Breath, Scan, Pipe, Rubber.
Inner: Blood, Sighs, Rod, Line, Dog, Panties, Mud.


This is a mask I bought in Venice last year. I bought two and gave one to another artist in the States. A month ago he told me I would soon be receiving his adaptation in the mail which kick started me into working on mine. I started playing with tape and stuffing and morphing the original shape. As I worked I realised I was obscuring the very form which attracted me to it originally. It is not one of the traditional theater masks but a very blank natural shape that I felt could be approached as a person and portrait. I started again with a pencil using the outside to represent the female form and as it dried decided it was not done. There was something more, something less obvious. I started painting the inside red and remembered a map I had drawn full of words years ago that had represented the elements of man on the inner circle and the elements of the individual on the outer. I used this format and rewrote the map showing the exchange of physical/archaic and intellectual/modern information that occurs with outer and inner elements.

My sketchbooks more and more lately are pages of text; notes, quotes and plans for work. This is probably due to the practical nature of working on long term projects and feeling the importance of binding work with the literature that partly brought it about. I have found that to return to the practice of mark making I must be enticed by something as undesirous and simple as brown packing paper.