1994–2003
30 gelatin silver prints; 20” x 24”; edition of 5; I image edition of 5 plus 2 artist’s proofs; archival inkjet pigment edition printed 2010; edition of 6 plus 2 artist’s proofs; sizes vary from 33.5” x 34” to 34” x 46.5”
After completing Animus, I started pursuing two ideas generated by that series. First of all, I wanted to create a feeling of dark luminosity equivalent to what I had obtained with the white fabric, but with a black fabric rather than negative prints. I sensed that this kind of dark light would have a different emotional resonance, which I wanted to explore. The light was, indeed, beautiful and different; yet it created a similar sense of volume and spatial ambiguity, a kind of other-worldly glow. Additionally, I soon found that in order to transmit enough light through a black fabric, it had to have a large weave, which created a rich sense of texture not unlike conté crayon.
Secondly, I wanted to use the vases from Animus without the inherently dramatic skulls in order to create images that had no implied narrative, yet still felt dramatic. Most still lifes are static, focusing on the objects that constitute the subject of the image. I wanted to change that focus: to animate the space between the objects so that it became as important as the objects themselves – a dominant concern in all of my work. And I wanted to maximize the sense of fluid movement between vase and fabric with the two seeming to merge, thereby creating the feeling of a mysteriously alive image.