I began this large-scale visual journal on paper during the end of the summer of 2011 through parts of 2012.
The lace of relationships that run through our lives and fill the natural world around us are filled with beauty an paradox. At one glance, we can be inspired by the grace and power that pulses through our grand collective world. At the next glance, in each microcosm, lay the delicate and fragile threads where we and those we know and love live, breathe, work, entwine and embrace.
I began this body of work on a large scale. On a cold winter day in 2012, with both trepidation and excitement I unfurled six 50 inch wide blank bone white Stonehenge paper canvases from tether in the choir loft to the main floor of St. Josephats, nineteenth-century Catholic church in Cleveland, 15 feet (170 inches) below. I stood alone, looking up and feeling small, hearing the echo of each breath and footsteps in this reverent space, which was mine for two months.
St. Josephats was a thriving Catholic Church until the threads holding its community together were slowly unraveled to reconnect elsewhere by the tectonic forces of cultural shift, globalization, ethnic diversification and urban flight. In a new life, St Josephats has been wonderfully restored by my friend Alenka Banko as hall for the art and life events. Where better to start visual exploration of the delicate balance between power and fragility in our lives.
This journey in pigments, kaolin clay and graphite forms drew me into a myriad of mixed natural forms. I became embroiled in the tension of dualities: vices and virtues, restraint and seduction, loneliness and awe, the lechery of envy and hate, the eternal hope of transcendence. On this journey, what began as grand became small, and many new pieces and image emerged. The impersonal became intimate. Hate and longing, while ever present, were absorbed in a boundless and resilient world of greater spirits. Yet fragility remains – its power and beauty.
