I began this project by contemplating what it meant to collage. The assemblage projects of Marcel Duchamp and the Dada art movement of the European avant-garde in the early 20th century came to mind. I then came to realize that the art making in this sense is not about the creation of a new, original piece of work completely out of my imagination and fabricated through the manipulation of materials. Instead, it is about the mundane, humdrum parts of our everyday that go unnoticed and passed by as we journey on our walks of life. I wanted to collect through the recollection of our memories, the landscape of our life’s journeys.
There is an underlying importance and emphasis placed on numbers in our everyday as well as the structure in which God rules by. For us, our lives revolve around numbers that dictate our very modern existence. Without numbers, we would be aliens in a country that will not acknowledge our very existence. Without social security numbers, phone numbers, pin numbers, routing numbers, I.P addresses, weights, scales, time, calendars, and rules of measurement, we would be completely lost in chaos unfound, unwarranted. Our universe is justified and made wholly by the rule of numbers.
God, in an effort to be made relevant to a senseless universe, created structure and physicality in seven days and gave ten rules for man to abide by. God utilizes days and years, the derivatives of time, to create in seven days, to destroy in forty, and to raise the dead in three. Numbers are repetitious in the Bible and entire studies can be done on just one number alone. At the time of this writing, we befall the forty days of lent, thus I will give examples of the many reiterations on the number forty. In addition to the forty days and nights of rain that destroyed our first world, the Israelites wandered the wilderness for forty years similar to that of Jesus and Moses when they encountered God in the wilderness for forty days. Isaac was 40 years old when he married Rebekah. As opposed to the forty days it took to complete the embalming of Jacobs body after he died, after Jesus’s death and resurrection, he walked a mysterious forty days before his ascension into heaven.
Because I acknowledge the theological importance of numbers both Biblically and temporally, I often try to find a numeric interjection between the two worlds. In addition to offering thematic correlation between differing pools of thought, numbers offer a means to an end for a collection such as this. It can also make a prophetic gesture of significance when beginning or ending on a suggestive number as well as offer value and order to a system or series. I will not chase down the prophetic natures of art in this edition but rather begin to emphasize how I made sense of my project theologically, within itself, and in relation to a contemporary, cutting edge society that places substantial advancements into higher definitions in clarity, correctness, and resolution.
I chose to make my collage at 1ppi or one pixel per inch, containing an assemblage of one inch by one-inch paper clippings. I thoughtfully chose to use the one-inch unit of measure as to reference the imperial system of measure we are so accustomed to in the United States. Although the pixel has no native size, I still use the pixel as a unit of measure because of its square display. The pixel is essentially our current digital equivalent of a mosaic that is illuminated with LEDs, plasma gases, or liquid crystals. Because the project needed a conclusive end, I decided on the number 1080, which is the number used to signify full high definition in today’s electronic market. In relation to my collage, what this meant was a rectangular display of twenty seven one inch by one inch paper squares in height by forty paper squares in width. Twenty-seven by forty is the standard size for movie posters, and the movie industry is generally the driving force for technological advancements in video media. When twenty-seven is multiplied by forty the equivalent is 1080. Should I continue on with this project, I would progress with pairings of 720, 576, and 480, which are alternative resolutions that degrade from high to low resolutions respectively. I decided that instead of enlarging the one-inch by one inch paper squares to a larger size that would fill the frame; I would use fewer squares that appear to be a deterioration of the overall image.
In medieval art, the landscape is often neglected and disappears almost entirely. Later, from the 14th century and onward, the landscape is given more attention, even religiously through the admission of an existence of God in nature. We often define our landscape with remission to what is in between. After our coordinates are plotted, the journey from point A to point B begins; however, what we forget is the “in betweenes” of those points. We cannot simply omit all of the integers and fractions of A before we reach B. The in between is that landscape where 14th century artisans rediscovered God. The power of a place is in its humble exaltation of a God who enjoys dwelling in it. In that stillness of the “in between”, by entering into that landscape, like Moses and Jesus, we can meet our God.
Because art is that journey from start to finish, its success is not fully governed by the execution of the piece but rather the inquisition of getting there. Once we approach art as a journey of time and space, we can draw on the similarities it has with the most ubiquitous journey of all: life. Since the journey of life comprises of a birth and death, all the space in between could be considered the landscape of life. As we meander the highs and lows of this landscape, it is immediately apparent that its trajectory is not linear but ripples with activity. In this space of worship, we can encounter our God. Through our art, in our lives, may we posture ourselves and approach God with a worshipful heart.
I began by collecting 1ppi squares from such spaces of neglect where God exists in the color of the background. Instead of drawing from imagery in the foreground and cropping out what may seem important, I exclude the phenomenon and extract colors and textures. I am in my own right rediscovering the landscape by assembling new landscapes through the use of these pixels.
Initially, I had wanted to randomize the selection of clippings, but after discovering through the process of arranging random pixels together, I found the overall imagery to be too distracting and busy. Instead, I needed to intentionally arrange similar tones and vary textural pixels with solid color pixels. Additionally, I had also intended on only selecting solid color pixels and omitting textural pixels, but I quickly found the arrangement too boring and reminiscent of pantone color swatches. My decision on orientation ultimately boiled down to two choices: portrait or landscape view. Since the size I chose for this piece is the standard size for movie posters, it would not be out of the question to hang the work in portrait view, which is also the traditional orientation for movie posters. Although, the scale of the work does ride on the dimension of a movie poster, the “resolution” still echoes that of the high definition, widescreen video display. I would consider this piece a landscape, so based on the traditional configuration for film, painting, Microsoft word, as well as the optical view of land; I decided to compose my piece horizontally. The dimension and orientation slightly plays on the dichotomy of tradition and modernity. Traditionally, movie posters are hung vertically while movies are seen in landscape view. However, as we move past tradition, the orientations of videos are already beginning to shift to a vertical orientation with the new surge of videos shot with smart phones. Ultimately, the work can be viewed in any orientation and can be flipped and adjusted as easily as our mobile devices allow.
Through the process of adaptation and critical decisiveness that is unique to every artist, every work of art is a journey. It is a journey that is heavily woven into the intricacies of an artist’s life and can be felt emotionally and experienced visually. It is very much a spiritual journey that takes place in the hours, the weeks, and the months of contact between the material and the spiritual. The artist is tapping into the creativeness that can be manifested in each living person, by the most primal design of a creative God who has deposited a fundamental desire to co-create with him into the vast landscape of life. We all emerge as worshippers and creators. The act of art making only suggests our innate desire to ultimately worship a wholly deserving God and commune with him in a way that is most natural.
Through my ritualistic act of cutting and gluing, the process that I have come to desire and disdain over the period of months, a simple solitude is enacted every time I come before the altar. Every square, every hour becomes an offering placed before God as I worship him in the holy place. My studio is instantly transformed into the tent, that Holy place, where God dwells as I encounter and connect with him. The mundane, the meticulous, the work is that journey. It is the long haul and the forty years wandering in the desert hoping to reach the Promised Land. It is also the place where we hunger, thirst, and encounter the miraculous nature of God. Moses, who met God in that place of solitude in the wilderness, would emerge inspired, bright, and shining with a transformed, radiant countenance. The time we spend in solitude making art is holy. It is an act of worship that should not be discounted because it lacks the harp and the bowl. This time can be deeply prophetic and spiritually inspired.
As much as the art making process is a worshipful time of solitude where the artist intentionally withdraws into the holy place, it can also be a corporate, communal act of worship. As members of the worshipful community enter together into the realms of creativity, their lives become intertwined and woven together by commonality, which can only be explained again by our innate Godly desires. The viewing of art is often seen in the public realm where the masses would congregate and see or hear the revelatory icons that behold them. Note that the artist, who is transformed by their journey, is not the icon, rather it is their art, the relic which holds all transcendence that receives praise beyond the bounds of time. As the artist ends their journey, what lasts is their art. Their art is that stone tablet, the song that sings the triumphant, creative nature of a God who is revealed in our landscapes.
