My work evolves from an inquiry into the nature of my materials, my working process, and the paper itself. What I learn from my media I use as a frame of reference for the real world. The pieces in the River Rocks series express some of the common ground shared by natural processes and my art-making methods.

North Regional Art Sampler, Century Gallery, 1988

Paper as a Metaphor for River Rocks

I have always tried to find ways in which the drawing or printing and construction of a piece expresses the process of nature at work when making a representation of that subject. Hand made paper and the paper making process itself suggested a strong connection between the paper and the process of the formation of rocks. The process of casting a representation of rocks is parallel to the way rocks are actually formed in nature: i.e. rocks are fragments of mountains or earth that are “torn away” in smaller pieces (just like I did with pages of silkscreens) and, likewise, the landscape is reformed by compression and the extraction of water (just as paper is formed). This insight led to much elaboration on the relationship of hand made paper and silkscreened and art papers with the subject of rocks.

In the River Rocks series, there is a thread of dialog about paper; its basic flat whiteness, the illusions it creates, its 3-dimensional presentation and its flat representation and its sculptural dimension against its negative impression. (More Sandy Bleifer at this link)