How do you proceed?

Using drawing, woodblock carving, and mark making onto an inked plate, I’m creating figures to represent the nuances, the “ambivalences,” in the way we form, choose, and vocalize language as we encounter what may seem like ordinary situations. 


Though ordinary, day to day social situations bring a myriad of decisions. 

  •  How does one decide when and how to utter, what does it mean? 

  • Are there rules or a system that structures the taking of turns, the filling of space? 

  • What do you do when your turn comes? How do you proceed?  

  • How do you recognize when the space is yours? 

  • How do you respond when you feel you have more to say? 

  • What are the relationships here? The systems and structures that guide? 


How does the placing of a figure or a mark mirror that of improvisation? What are the structures which guide; what are the intuitive knowings of response? 


What are your criteria for when you voice your thoughts - are they consistent? 


How do you communicate? Is this working for you? 


In my inquiry, I’m creating a documentation system to identify patterns in how I structure my own social systems and then improvise within them. 


I’m seeking to capture a geometric, or systemic ascetic through woodblock prints, which involve repeatedly printing a specific “shaped” form. Within the same work, I’m additionally seeking to represent the “ambivalences” and improvisations in communication within a structure by using the monoprint technique to print an “improvised” figure overtop or “within” the marks of the woodblock print. 


Within this layered process, I’m deeply interested in the hesitations or negotiations we engage with within ourselves before words physically leave the mouth and enter social space. What keeps us from voicing our wants and needs? 


These processes also lend an element of “taking away” or “removal” (removing wood from the block as it is carved into, or taking away ink from a plate to make a monoprint) which serve as a metaphor for the removal of hesitation, doubt, or fear we must process in order to speak. 


This is especially when making a request, expressing a need, or voicing the disagreeable.