erasure and residue, 2024 is the first in an on-going series titled blueprints (2024-)
In 2024, I started an ongoing series titled “blueprints”. These works are a way to (re)process my memories of places I’ve lived – through the lens of being recently diagnosed as neurodivergent. There are fifteen ‘homes’ that have meaning for me that I plan to include in this interdisciplinary series. The architectural drawings in the works are drawn from memory. The found windows/frames evoke how physical architecture contains psychological and emotional experience. Window is also a metaphor. The layering of imagery (using the cyanotype process), with writing and other physical marks – is meant to reflect the layering of an experience. There are layers of inside (the experience) and outside of it (looking through a window). The partially erased language is stream-of-consciousness writing; memories of experiences within the rooms. The wax process refers to how the layers of unconscious erupt into the conscious. Language is embedded in the walls. The palette is textures of blue, with neutrals/wood. Blue has psychological connotations for me, and is also used in architecture via blueprints. This series creates a tension between the literal and the metaphorical, the tangible and the psychologically intangible.
The first group of works in this series is titled “erasure and residue”, and is based on the house I grew up in. The cyanotype images are from photographs I took when I lived there. In “Montague Drive”, there is a picture of a window taken in my bedroom, and is placed where my bedroom is in the drawing. In “Exhale”, images are placed like an interior architectural drawing of my bedroom.
The marks are made through a process of erasure and residue. In “Skin”, fingerprints are the residue of physical touch. In “Montague Drive”, blue wax stains the paper after removing it – to form a shape that was a space of safety. The residue of my experiences in my family home left me feeling erased.
Montague Drive, 2024 48” H 34” W 1.5” D
Found window, Vellum, Cyanotype print, Encaustic paint, Pencil, Colored pencil, Wax, Curtain, House paint.
Skin, 2024 28” H 30”W 2” D
Found window frame, Vellum, Pencil, Colored pencil, Ink, House paint.
Exhale, 2024 34” H 30” W 1.5” D
Found window frame, Cyanotype prints, Watercolor, Pencil, Colored pencil, House paint.
