Drawn to go beyond pen and paper
Artists use vellum, thread, brass, wood, and glass to create visual delights.
By Cate McQuaid
Globe Correspondent / April 12, 2009
Danforth Museum of Art, Framingham, through May 17. 508-620-0050, www.danforthmuseum.org
Visual Arts
Four strong Boston-area artists are highlighted in "Material Drawing," an exhibit at the Danforth Museum of Art that relishes all kinds of mark-making beyond that of a stylus. They have been meeting regularly for two years, but unlike many artist groups, they don't assess one another's art. Curator Katherine French quotes one of them, Audrey Goldstein, in the show's catalog: "This is not a crit group. I consider it my drawing group." They get together and talk about ways to draw.
Goldstein, Julia Shepley, Michelle Samour, and Debra Weisberg all clearly love the touch of materials and the sensuality of making art. For them, says French, "drawing erupts out of materials." Those include vellum, thread, brass, wood, and glass. It's a low-key but wonderfully nourishing exhibit because the drawings, like the artists, jump into deep conversation with one another.
Each artist has her own fully developed vision. The works don't borrow from or seep into one another, yet the correspondences are undeniable.
Look at Shepley's whispery "Nightshade Series," in which she layers translucent vellum in lightboxes, and Samour's "Bundle" installation of gouache drawings on translucent handmade paper. In many ways, they're radically different. Samour's brightly toned circles, squiggled with Day-Glo colors, represent individual cells, drifting and clustering across and beyond a wall. Shepley interleaves shadow and light, cutting and painting over the vellum and making staticky sutures across the surface. Yet both artists deploy that translucence; their work seems to capture light and hold it, fluttering, like a moth.
Weisberg builds eddies and explosions out of scraps of black and white tape. Her brawny "Tape Drawing #1" is a spectacular, whirling burst of fragments, concentrated at the center like a clatter of needles.
Like Shepley and Samour, Weisberg makes light a tangible part of her work in the "Glow Drawing" series, which hangs in a closed-off section of the gallery, where you're invited to look at them well lit before you flick off the lights.
Made with luminescent tape and powder, the "Glow Drawings" are smaller than "Tape Drawing #1," and intricately crafted, often setting thrust and momentum against deep space. Turn off the lights, and everything shifts: Black disappears into shadows, white turns to an eerie, luminous green, like stars suspended in the maw of the universe. It's a terrific surprise, and such a simple trick. I clapped my hands in delight like a 3-year-old.
Weisberg's tape drawings, with their layers upon layers of fragments, are not unlike Shepley's nearby tumultuous "Mining the Storm" series, which sports etched glass over gouged, painted plaster. The plaster makes a topography, the glass the weather system through which we view it. Like Weisberg, Shepley works in black and white; her gestures are lush and expressionistic beside Weisberg's staccato splatter.
Then there's Goldstein, who makes the most explicitly conceptual work in the show. She goes to art openings and draws the social networks she finds there, sometimes in knotted wire, or in the case of the "Network Theory" drawings, in oil stick on Mylar. In these, she threads hair-thin lines in black or white over a smoky atmospheric ground; the energy of these febrile lines echoes that of Shepley's "Nightshade" stitches.
Using the "Network Theory" drawings as a starting point, Goldstein then builds tensile little wall sculptures evoking the same networks, in a series called "Point-to-Point." They're Rube Goldberg-style contraptions made up of planes, screens, and joined and jutting wires, some firmly in place, some seeming tenuous indeed.
Samour provides the only color (other than Weisberg's fluorescent green) in the exhibit, and her "Bundle" wall, crawling with cells that may be diseased, is like a bouquet of alien flowers amid the spare, monochrome palettes of the other artists. These extravagant differences, together with the warm connections, make "Material Drawing" a feast.
French has mounted another show in the hallway just outside "Material Drawing" that explicitly ties into that show. Deborah Davidson's "Recent Paintings" exhibit straddles the gulf between text and the artist's lexicon of visual images. She collages cut-out shapes into her painting, then sands them down and builds them up again. The abstract works read almost like music, with each gesture a note against the silence of the background. Sometimes they work into a terrific chatter; sometimes they're more spare, like the chanting of monks. Like the artists in "Material Drawing," her gestures take off from the stuff she works with. You never know where they will go.
from
earth
to
sky
1991 Decordova Annual Catalogue
The abstract
language
in Michelle
Samour's
large-scale
hand-made
paper
pieces
consists
of circles,
ovals,
sinuous
lines,
and points
of light
embedded
within
dark,
textured
grounds.
These
intuitively
derived
images
simultaneously
suggest
stars
and atoms,
galaxies
and microbes-constituent
elements
of the
infinite
and the
infinitesimal.
Presented
as an
encompassing
installation,
the two-dimensional
works
appear
as juxtapositions
of discrete
yet related
meditations
on cosmology,
biology,
and mythology.
Samour
also creates
large,
ovoid,
three-dimensional
forms
surfaced
with hand-made
paper
patterned
with similar
macrocosmic/microcosmic
imagery.
This format
works
to intensify
the artist's
chosen
content.
The egg
suggests
birth,
both organically
and metaphorically,
and has
also been
used as
a symbol
of absolute
totality:
the "cosmic" egg." On
each egg,
a curious
tension
exists
between
the materiality
of its
paper
surface
and the
infinite
depth
suggested
by its
imagery.
The eggs,
and their
nested
cluster,
are visual
expressions
of some
of the
most profound
cosmological
questions
of our
day. Is
the universe
an open
or closed
system?
Do multiple
universes
exist
simultaneously?
Nick Capasso
FIBERARTS
September
2002
The
Largest
Reaches
of
Life
by Micah
Pulleyn
The
works
of
paper
artist
Michelle
Samour
seem
to
throb,
dance,
vibrate,
glow,
and
breathe,
and
rightly
so,
for
her
images
are
direct
references
to
cosmology,
biology,
archaeology,
religion,
chemistry,
and
other
fields
of
inquiry.
Samour's
drawings
allude
to
things
seen
through
both
a
microscope
and
a
telescope.
She
writes:
In
my
work,
the
paper
is
the
field
for
discovery.
It
is
at
once
earth
and
sky.
The
images
that
emerge
from,
or
float
on,
the
surface
make
references
to
fossils,
stars,
atoms,
and
microorganisms.
These
images
talk
about
beginnings
without
end.
When
I
am
working
I
think
about
digging
away
the
earth
or
opening
up
a
rock
to
reveal
a
fossil. I
think
about
looking
through
a
microscope
and
seeing
the
seemingly
inanimate,
move.
I
think
about
gazing
up
at
a
night
sky,
waiting
for
my
eyes
to
adjust
enough
to
find
a
star.
From
dark
to
light,
from
finite
to
infinite,
my
work
is
a
meditation
on
the
power
of
the
unknown.
Michelle
Samour
approaches
her primary
medium,
pigmented
paper
pulp,
as a means
to an
end and
believes
that the
conceptual
and intentional
backing
is of
utmost
importance
to her
work.
At the
same time,
she is
a deeply
skilled
craftsperson
committed
to her
studio
experience.
She has
been working
with paper
and exhibiting
her work
for more
than 25
years
and currently
teaches
papermaking
at the
School
of the
Museum
of Fine
Arts in
Boston,
Massachusetts.
She has
worked
collaboratively
with other
members
of the
papermaking
community
to refine
her process,
and in
1999 she
visited
paper
making
villages
throughout
Japan,
a trip
that deepened
her respect
for the
craft.
Her pieces
show a
mastery
of material
and an
understanding
of the
organic
nature
of paper
pulp.
The process
is simple,
but not
easy.
She pigments
both abaca
and gampi
pulp with
aqueous
dispersed
pigment
specific
for papermaking.
She then
manipulates
the pulp
in a 4-by-8-foot
vacuum
table,
which
sucks
the moisture
out, or
applies
the pulp
onto large
wooden
stretchers.
After
it has
dried,
she uses
gelatin
to size
the paper
and then
draws
on the
paper
with oil
stick
or paint.
Samour
is not
only committed
to advance
her career
as a paper
artist
but also
intent
on honoring
her curiosities
for nature.
In 1992,
she studied
fossils
in the
Southwest
United
States.
It is
evident
that there
is no
distinct
differentiation
between
Samour
the artist
and Samour
the mystic.
She is
able to
touch
upon the
innate
awe and
wonder
with which
we honor
the riddles
and paradoxes
of the
world.
The pieces
she creates
on behalf
of her
wonder
seem as
though
they are
at once
visual
anthems
to the
spontaneities
and timelessness
of the
universe,
meditations
on the
intricacies
and the
mysteries
of nature,
and offerings
of gratitude
for the
creative
explosions
in her
life.
The
Middlesex
Beat
May 2002
Michelle
Samour:
Pulp Fiction
by Beth
Surdut
Organic
life,
we are
told,
has developed
gradually
from the
protozoon
to the
philosopher,
and this
development,
we are
assured,
is indubitably
an advance.
Unfortunately
it is
the philosopher,
not the
protozoon,
who gives
us this
assurance.
(Bertrand
Russell,
Mysticism
and
Logic,
1917)
The
worktable
in
the
barn/studio
is
squiggling
with
movement.
Artist
Michelle
Samour
has
laid
out
a
grid
that
resembles
over-sized
slides
for
a
giant
microscope.
Where
does
life
come
from;
where
does
this
all
begin?
While
scientists
and
the
rest
of
us
have
been
asking
these
questions
for
as
long
as
humans
have
existed,
a
more
immediate
question
is
how
does
she
create
these
lovely
pieces?
As
I
shuffle
and
overlay
elements
of
Samplings,
a
series
of
luminous
shapes
pressed
between
8-inch
clear
acrylic
squares,
Samour
holds
out
a
length
of
dried
vegetation
called
gampi.
That
this
tough
earthy
dead
thing,
minutia
of
the
universe,
can
be
manipulated
into
a
color-saturated
slice
of
art,
is
intriguing.
Samour's
use of
pulp produces
results
that are
unrecognizable
as what
most people
would
describe
as paper.
Sounding
like a
cross
between
a chef
and a
chemist,
Samour
describes
the metamorphosis
that includes
cooking
the gampi
with soda
ash, washing,
beating,
grinding,
and adding
light-fast
pigments.
The delicately
organic
images
of Samplings
ooze from
squeeze
bottles
that Samour
uses to
free-hand
the designs
onto fabric
that is
put in
a press.
She then
peels
the designs
off of
the fabric. "I
do love
the process.
I'm dealing
with plants-breaking
them down
and reforming
them.
It's not
paint;
it's colored
plant
material.
The tactile
quality
is so
important
to me," said
Samour,
who has
worked
with paper
for 25
years
and has
taught
at the
Boston
School
of the
Museum
of Fine
Arts for
18 years.
Samour's
work,
which
shows
an evolutionary
continuity,
acknowledges
cosmic
mysteries
without
trying
to explain
themIt's
not my
nature
to reveal
too much.
I want
to respect
the viewer
and not
dictate
what they
see, she
said.
The influences
are sometimes
telescopic
and demand
attention
first
for their
overall
size,
then for
the tiny
elements
incorporated
within.
The child
of a polymer
chemist,
Samour
did not
gravitate
towards
science
when she
was growing
up. "Now
it's fun
to show
my father
what I'm
doing
because
he understands
what draws
me to
it. Scientists
appreciate
my work
in a very
different
way."
Samour
first
began
constructing
collages
and gluing
objects
to paper,
which
buckled,
so she
embedded
the objects
into the
material.
The finished
pieces
that appear
to be
canvas
with thickly
layered
oil paints
are actually
bases
of plywood
attached
to a wood
frame,
layered
with pulp,
then drawn
upon with
oil stick.
There
is an
aqueous
quality,
not in
any obvious
water
images,
but in
the fluidity
and movement
reflecting
a process
that is
as dependent
on water
as the
plants
that are
Samour's
medium.
Whether
Samour
calls
up stars
or forms
reminiscent
of fossils,
the scope
of these
works
allows
the viewer
to enter
a world
that has
no edges.
With installations
that can
grow to
fill a
room or
a wall,
the large
pigmented,
thickly
surfaced
pieces
are darkly
inviting.
Huge eggs
that could
accommodate
dinosaur
young
are covered
with nameless
constellations.
What is
important
to me
is that
the images
emerge
from the
darkness.
There
is a process
of discovery,
of making
connections
between
the earth
and sky,
the world
and outer
space,
enlightenment
and understanding,
said Samour.
The newest
series
is small,
light
and microscopic,
looking
like dyed
biology
experiments
or a pathologist's
challenge. " I
was very
interested
in doing
one of
the 'samplings'
that mirrored
the anthrax
structure.
It's so
horrific,
but at
the same
time it
is so
beautiful,
especially
of you
don't
know what
you're
looking
at."
Samour
is an
experiential
artist.
While
some artists
gather
objects
and carefully
manufacture
models
to use
as information
to paint
or draw
in their
studios,
Samour
gathers
visual
and often
less tangible
information. "I'm
intellectually
and intuitively
familiar
with my
images.
One bit
of research
seems
to feed
another." She
has received
grants
that have
taken
her to
papermaking
villages
in Japan,
allowed
her to
study
fossils
in the
southwestern
United
States,
research
building
construction
in Norway,
and live
and work
in Strasbourg,
France. "Sometimes
I describe
the process
as taking
the information
and putting
it into
a bag,
shaking
it up
and seeing
where
things
fall out,
she said.'
I can
see the
connection
right
back to
the earlier
pieces.
I feel
like I'm
exploring
the same
issues
in different
ways.
I was
doing
drawings
of branches
that started
to look
like veins,
the egg
forms
looked
like cells.
I was
making
free standing
houses
that contained
sticks
and eggs.
I have
houses
packed
with eggs. "Raised
as a Unitarian,
I was
brought
up questioning.
That's
what you
do as
an artist.
I'm coming
up with
specific
parameters
of what
I'm putting
down,
but within
that,
there's
the question
of what
the heck's
going
on. I'm
trying
to leave
people
room to
bring
their
own stories."
Hand
Papermaking Summer
2001
Wondering
Out
Loud
by
Michelle
Samour
I
wonder
about
the
stars
in
the
sky,
an
egg
in
a
nest,
the
cells
of
my
body.
I
wonder
about
the
space
around
the
stars,
the
shell
around
the
egg,
the
skin
around
me.
How
does
it
all
begin?
What
holds
onto
what?
Always
moving
or
about
to
move,
never
still,
never
completely
understood.
I
wonder
when
the
sun
goes
down
and
the
stars
emerge,
whether
I
am
on
the
inside
looking
out
or
on
the
outside
looking
in.
Microscopes,
telescopes,
biology,
cosmology.
I
am
lost
in
a
meditation
between
earth
and
sky,
looking
for
answers
and
finding
only
questions...I
wonder.
Nothingness
Among
the
great
things
that
are
found
among
us,
the
existence
of
Nothing
is
the
greatest.
Leonardo
da
Vinci
I
am
interested
in
making
work
that
offers
the
viewer
a
passage
into
contemplation
(the
empty
space).
Scientists
refer
to
this
space
as
a
vacuum;
philosophers
refer
to
it
as
nothingness.
The
imagery
that
I
use
in
my
work
is
only
a
vehicle
for
asking
questions
and
entering
into
that
space.
Lao-tzu,
the
founder
of
Daoism,
compares
the
Dao
to
the
empty
space
within
a
pot,
without
which
the
clay
would
have
no
function.
I
often
ask
myself
what
it
means
to
be
a
Westerner,
working
with
materials
and
processes
indigenous
to
the
East
and
using
imagery
that
is
not
iconographic
but
which
references
Eastern
philosophy.
I
think
of
the
irony
of
having
Korean
and
Japanese
students
take
my
papermaking
classes
because
they
want
to
learn
Eastern
sheet
forming.
Many
have
told
me
that
because
paper
is
so
much
a
part
of
their
culture,
they
have
taken
it
for
granted.
It
seems
that
many
of
these
students
have
learned
Western
papermaking
in
their
own
countries.
What
kind
of
assumptions
do
we
make about
one
another's
cultures?
Do
we
desire
more
what
we
do
not
have?
The
Japanese
word
for
handmade
paper
is
washi.
Wa
translates
as
Japan,
and
shi
as
paper.
Wa
can
also
refer
to
harmony
between
humans
and
nature,
a
desirable
state
of
being.
Some
Japanese
papermakers
say
that
making
good
paper
depends
directly
on
this
harmony.
This
dependency
between
one's
inner
spirit
and
the
formation
of
good
paper
relates
to
my
imagery
and
the
intention
of
my
work.
My
drawings
and
the
journey
begin
when
I
make
the
paper.
Process:
Chaos
and
Control,
or
Order
and
Disorder
To
be
ignorant
of
motion
is
to
be
ignorant
of
Nature.
Aristotle
I
make
my
sheets
on
a
4
ft.
x
8
ft.
vacuum
table,
which
is
edged
with
a
5
inch
lip.
After
pigmenting
several
different
batches
of
gampi,
I
mix
them
together
with
a
coagulant
so
that
the
fibers
maintain
their
distinct
colors
(a
process
I
learned
from
Donna
Koretsky).
I
fill
the
table
with
water,
then
pour
in
the
gampi
and
disperse
it
with
my
hands.
In
this
process
of
making
my
sheets
in
the
vacuum
table,
where
the
fibers
float
in
a
sea
of
water,
I
am
forced
to
let
go
of
some
control
over
their
formation.
When
I
drain
the
water,
a
moment
of
time
is
captured
as
the
fibers
settle
themselves
into
a
modulated,
tweedy
sheet.
After
drying
the
sheets
on
boards
and
sizing
them
with
gelatin,
I
am
ready
to
work
into
them
with
paint
or
Cray-Pas.
Each
drawing
is
different,
a
response
to
the
individual
sheet.
The
drawing,
in
part,
illustrates
and
magnifies
the
sheet
forming
process.
Recently,
I
have
begun
to
place
strained,
pigmented
pulp
directly
onto
sealed,
wooden
stretchers
or
shallow
boxes.
I
refer
to
these
pieces
as
paintings.
Because
I
am
working
with
less
water,
I
have
slightly
more
control
over
the
placement
of
the
fiber.
My
intention
remains
to
create
an
amorphous
field
that
I
can
work
back
into
with
drawing
materials
and
paint.
Beginnings.
There
ought
to
exist
a
painting
totally
free
of
dependence
on
the
figure-on
the
object
which,
like
music,
represents
nothing
at
all,
tells
no
story
and
propounds
no
myth.
Such
a
painting
limits
itself
to
evoking
the
incommunicable
realms
of
the
spirit,
where
dream
becomes
thought,
where
trace
becomes
existence.
Michel
Seuphor
Before
I
began
working
with
handmade
paper,
I
was
making
collages
with
sticks,
stones,
and
other
found
materials.
I
used
glue
and
tape
to
attach
these
materials
to
the
paper
but
it
began
to
buckle
under
their
weight.
I
wanted
more
integration
between
the
paper
and
the
materials,
so
I
began
as
many
do,
recycling
papers
in
a
blender
and
embedding
my
materials
during
sheet
forming.
I
moved
from
recycled
drawing
paper
to
linters,
and
proceeded
over
the
next
twenty
years
to
use
pulp
in
a
variety
of
ways
to
support
my
imagery.
I
began
using
pulp
in
1975
during
the
beginning
of
the
revival
of
hand
papermaking
in
this
country.
Much
of
what
I
learned
came
from
workshops,
and
from
consultations
with
and
phone
calls
to
other
artists
around
the
country
who
used
handmade
paper.
As
I
lived
in
Boston,
I
drew
upon
its
rich
resources.
I
first
learned
how
to
make
Eastern
sheets
from
Elaine
and
Donna
Koretsky
at
Carriage
House
Paper
in
Brookline.
Until
that
time
I
had
been
working
with
recycled
papers
and
cotton
linters.
Not
only
were
the
method
and
the
fibers
new,
they
also
gave
me
a
deeper
understanding
of
the
process
of
making
paper.
I
consulted
often
with
Lee
MacDonald.
When
Lee
wanted
to
carry
a
line
of
pigments,
he
asked
me
to
test
them
for
him.
I
did
a
series
of
color
tests
using
pigments
from
different
manufacturers
and
experimented
with
retention
agents
and
other
additives.
Much
of
what
I
learned
from
this
investigation
had
a
direct
impact
on
how
I
used
color
in
my
work.
My
palette
expanded
from
the
earth
tones
of
powdered
pigments
to
the
more
intense
and
much
larger
range
of
the
aqueous
dispersed
pigments
that
I
now
had
access
to.
My
pieces
became
louder
and
more
active,
partly
because
the
image
was
responding
to
the
color.
I
was
invited
to
make
some
large
pieces
at
Rugg
Road
Paper
Works,
where
I
had
the
support
of
Joe
Zina
and
Bernie
Toale.
What
a
luxury
it
was
to
work
in
such
a
well-equipped
studio
and
benefit
from
their
expertise.
I
first
learned
how
to
use
a
vacuum
table
there.
Teaching
at
the
School
of
the
Museum
of
Fine
Arts,
Boston,
has
also
had
a
significant
impact
on
my
work.
The
school
does
not
require
students
to
choose
a
major;
instead
it
encourages
an
interdisciplinary
approach
to
art
making.
This
approach
supports
my
belief
that
paper
and
pulp
should
be
used
as
a
means
to
an
end,
and
that
the
concept
or
intention
of
the
work
is
paramount.
The
use
of
paper
or
pulp
should
support
that.
Teaching
has
also
challenged
me
to
learn
new
processes.
My
students
and
I
have
experimented
together
and
learned
from
one
another.
This
shared
investigation
has
been
stimulating
for
me
as
both
a
teacher
and
an
artist.
Closer
Investigations:
Microscope
and
Telescope
I
render
infinite
thanks
to
God,
for
being
so
kind
as
to
make
me
alone
the
first
observer
of
marvels
kept
hidden
in
obscurity
for
all
previous
centuries.
Galileo
Galilei
After
viewing
the
night
sky
through
his
telescope
Twenty-five
years
ago
I
was
building
sculptures
of
lath
and
used
lumber.
They
referenced
rural
structures
and
housed
materials
(sticks,
eggs,
hay,
broom
corn)
that
juxtaposed
the
natural
world
with
the
man-made.
These
pieces
also
spoke
about
gathering,
collecting,
and
protecting.
I
went
on
to
further
explore
these
materials
through
drawings
and
castings
in
paper.
This
work
was
in
progress
when
my
family
and
I
moved
from
Boston
to
a
rural
suburb
several
years
ago.
My
walks
in
the
city's
arboretum
were
replaced
by
walks
in
our
country
woods.
Paved
paths
gave
way
to
dirt,
pine
needles,
and
stones.
As
I
walked
through
these
paths,
often
cut out
of
dense
brush,
I
would
stop
periodically
to
look
at
a
branch,
a
leaf,
something
up
close.
The
rhythm
of
walking,
moving
quickly
through
this
space,
was
interrupted
by
these
stops
to
investigate.
This
distinction
between
the
peripheral
chaos
of
what
I
saw
while
in
motion
and
the
ordered
or
focused
viewing
when
I
stopped
to
observe
intrigued
me.
I
chose
to
leave
the
peripheral
information
off
of
the
drawing
surface.
The
formation
of
the
sheet
and
the
actual
drawing
became
the
focused
investigation.
In
the
earth-related
drawings
that
resulted,
I
attempted
to
enlarge
a
piece
of
nature
the
way
the
lens
of
a
microscope
might
capture
and
reveal
a
piece
of
a
larger
whole.
The
microscope
gives
us
an
opportunity
to
go
deeper
into
this
world.
Just
as
the
microscope
is
a
vehicle
for
deeper
understanding,
the
telescope
magnifies
and
isolates
distant
objects.
In
junior
high
school,
my
science
class
made
stargazers
using
protractors.
I
remember
my
mother
driving
me
around
late
one
night.
I
stood
on
the
back
seat
with
my
head
and
upper
body
emerging
through
the
sunroof
of
our
car,
my
stargazer
in
hand,
finding
constellations
and
marking
locations,
marking
time.
A
Dialogue
Between
Earth
and
Sky
At
one
end
of
the
size
spectrum
there
is
the
inner
space
of
the
most
elementary
particles
of
matter
and
the
perplexing
puzzle
of
space
and
time
itself;
at
the
other
end
lies
the
outer
space
of
stars
and
galaxies
which
constantly
surprise
us
with
the
drama
of
their
cataclysmic
evolution...
John
D.
Barrow
As
I
worked,
the
images
that
referenced
nature
and
the
earth
began
to
reference
the
body.
The
sticks
and
eggs
became
veins
and
cells.
While
my
earlier
drawing
was
dense
and
covered
much
of
the
surface
area,
in
the
new
work
my
drawing
became
sparser.
As
more
of
the
paper
was
exposed,
the
space
around
the
drawing
became
at
least
as
important
as
the
drawing
itself.
I
was
now
in
a
dialogue
between
earth
and
sky.
Nick
Capasso
has
described
these
works
as
circles,
ovals,
sinuous
lines,
and
points
of
light
embedded
within
dark,
textured
grounds.
These
intuitively
derived
images
simultaneously
suggest
stars
and
atoms,
galaxies
and
microbes:
constituent
elements
of
the
infinite
and
the
infinitesimal.
1
My
interest
in
outer
space
has
coincided
with
the
recent
popularization
of
science.
John
D.
Barrow
writes
in
Between
Inner
Space
and
Outer
Space:
...ultimate
questions
about
the
origins
of
life,
intelligence,
human
behavior,
the
Universe
and
everything
else,
have
ceased
to
be
solely
matters
of
speculative
philosophy
and
theology.
Scientists
have
found
new
things
to
say
about
these
problems
that
are
not
merely
restirrings
of
the
brew
of
philosophical
opinions
we
have
inherited
from
thinkers
of
the
past.
2
While
I
had
felt
emotionally
grounded
in
my
use
of
images
that
referenced
the
earth,
I
felt
that
now
I
was
throwing
myself
into
a
place
of
disequilibrium.
Raised
as
a
Unitarian
Universalist,
I
was
always
encouraged
to
live
in
the
question.
However,
as
I
like
to
feel
the
ground
beneath
my
feet,
this
was
often
disconcerting
and
became
even
more
so.
My
recent
images,
which
simultaneously
reference
fossils
(sea
urchins
and
barnacles),
stars,
and
planets,
attempt
to
link
earth
and
sky.
Reconfiguring,
Not
Reinventing
Sure
there
is
music
even
in
the
beauty,
and
the
silent
note
which
cupid
strikes,
far
sweeter
than
the
sound
of
an
instrument.
For
there
is
music
wherever
there
is
a
harmony,
order
or
proportion;
and
thus
far
we
may
maintain
the
music
of
the
spheres;
for
those
well-ordered
motions
and
regular
paces,
though
they
give
no
sound
unto
the
ear,
yet
to
the
understanding
they
strike
a
note
most
full
of
harmony.
Sir
Thomas
Browne
The
piece
that
evolved
from
this
questioning
was
Hours
of
Night.
I
made
it,
in
part,
in
response
to
Diane
Katsiaficas's
visit
to
the
School
of
the
Museum
of
Fine
Arts
in
the
fall
of
1997.
I
had
met
Diane
when
we
were
in
a
show
at
The
American
Craft
Museum
and
International
Paper
Headquarters
in
New
York
in
1982.
She
was
working
with
handmade
paper
and
mixed
media
then.
Although
handmade
paper
is
not
as
much
a
part
of
her
current
work,
what
I
had
always
responded
to
was
her
ability
to
reconfigure
her
ideas
and
her
imagery.
After
working
with
Diane
and
the
students
for
several
days
on
an
installation,
I
went
back
to
my
studio
and
asked
myself
how
I,
too,
might
expand
my
work,
by
reconfiguring
but
not
reinventing.
How
else
could
I
tell
my
story?
I
decided
to
make
the
eggs
that
I
had
drawn.
I
carved
them
out
of
dense,
closed-cell
foam,
which
I
had
used
in
earlier
work.
During
the
process
of
carving
these
forms,
I
read
that
the
Egyptians
were
the
first
to
divide
the
day
into
twenty-four
hours.
The
hours
of
night
were
marked
by
the
emergence
of
decans,
stars
or
groupings
of
stars
that
appeared
on
the
hour
on
the
eastern
horizon.
Hours
of
Night
grew
out
of
this
investigation.
It
became
a
piece
about
marking
time,
the
night
sky,
creation,
reversals,
balance,
inside/outside,
and
revelation.
I
have,
in
effect,
taken
the
drawings
off
the
wall
and
wrapped
them
with
themselves.
Sometimes
the
drawings
bring
attention
to
the
surface
or
shell,
while
in
other
instances
the
drawing
defies
the
surface
and
becomes
the
night
sky,
stars
or
constellations
floating
on
its
surface.
In
1999
I
reconfigured
this
piece
for
an
exhibition
at
the
DeCordova
Museum
in
Lincoln,
Massachusetts.
The
two-
and
three-dimensional
work
was
presented
as
an
encompassing
installation.
The
formality
of
Hours
of
Night
gave
way
to
a
more
random
presentation
of
the
work,
allowing
for
broader
interpretation.
Still
Surprises
The
universe
is
real
but
you
can't
see
it.
You
have
to
imagine
it.
Alexander
Calder
After
all
of
these
years
of
working
with
paper,
there
are
still
surprises.
Papermaking
continues
to
take
me
to
places
I
have
never
been.
It
satisfies
my
love
of
being
physically
immersed
in
process
with
my
love
of
creating
illusion.
It
informs
my
work.
It
constantly
reminds
me
to
be
respectful
of
nature
and
of
my
desire
to
understand
and
reveal
mysteries
that
can
only
be
imagined.
1.
Nick
Capasso,
The
1999
DeCordova
Annual
Exhibition
catalog
(DeCordova
Museum
and
Sculpture
Garden,
Lincoln,
Massachusetts),
21.
2.
John
D.
Barrow,
Between
Inner
and
Outer
Space,
(Oxford
University
Press,
New
York,
1999),
1.
Quotations
from
each
section,
in
order:
Leonardo
da
Vinci:
quoted
in
John
D.
Barrow,
Between
Inner
and
Outer
Space,
(Oxford
University
Press,
New
York,
1999),
202.
Aristotle:
quoted
in
Dava
Sobel,
Galileo's
Daughter,
(Walker & Company,
New
York,
1999),
30.
Michel
Seuphor:
title,
publisher,
city,
year,
page
#
Galileo
Galilei:
quoted
in
Galileo's
Daughter,
6.
John
D.
Barrow:
Between
Inner
and
Outer
Space,
1.
Sir
Thomas
Browne:
Religio
Medici,
1643,
part
2,
section
9.
Alexander
Calder:
quoted
in
Between
Inner
and
Outer
Space,
260.
