Permutations

The viewer starts the journey by navigating through a hanging, ethereal, deck of cards, the suits themselves watermarks in hand-cast paper. With jokers there are 54 cards, to encounter by chance. (I first showed this ghostly deck of cards in a 13th century chateau in France a nod to the inevitable collapse of the feudal system: a literal Château de cartes. But cards also represent our luck of the draw and I use them often in my work.) 

        Near the back of the deck, things start to change, turning from white to blue to brown, landing the observer in a salle d’attente with peculiar baroque elements backlit by tapestries of warm browns and azurian blues.One rough, yet ruffled form, turns slowly observing the others—some stately and some arrogant. There are several Permutations of unexpected forms, creating an atmosphere where the spectator is invited to cast their own narrative, find the equation: the balance between the elements, the message and the medium, stationary versus static, before returning through the hand they’ve been dealt.

         Permutations is at once a celebration of the paper-making process: the ultimate hand-cast paper, the foundational fabric, and the screening, all essential elements in my studio. But it is also full of ghosts of things I lost when my studio burned in March, 2016.