Time warp

It has been such a long ass time since my last post, and so I will not even attempt to try and fill the gaps of things that have happened. The cliff notes version is this. I moved to Somerville. I love it. Ok enough reminiscing. I am going to do my best to keep better tabs here of my goings on. I am starting with my most recent series of works titles "Totems". The totem has been used for centuries as the representation of a spiritual being or sacred symbol. It has served as protection or warning to the evil who would do harm to those who the totem represents. They were also a symbol of heritage using an animal, which represented the character of the individual or group of people it was serving. Many civilizations on earth utilize the totem to pay homage to the invisible duality that exists amongst the waking life. The totem is the earliest form of ritualistic worship, the backbone for religion and magic. For me, this series represents a personal inward reflection. It is a search for spirituality and perspective through a meditation on nature. Each totem in the series takes the form of one of more animals or human faces. One can find even more when the image is inverted. The process: The work for this series is a combination of processes. It begins with a photograph, shot on black and white medium format film. The negative is scanned, dissected and inverted. Then a pigment print is made on a Japanese Kozo, a rice paper made from the mulberry tree. The print is then mounted on a prepared substrate and sized with a PVA solution. The entire print is then coated with a homemade encaustic made of beeswax, dammar crystals and carnauba wax. After it is cooled, it is hand buffed. The image is then mounted in a hand crafted custom frame made of pine with a border accent of hand cut and hammered aluminum. The piece is wired with the option to hang two ways. It is displayed in the gallery in the artist’s preferred direction.