This work is composed of two interrelated series: Warp & Weft: (Figure), and Warp & Weft: (Ground).Both series are composed using the same grid design.
The basic rectangular “unit” is a grouping of three photographic elements: a tall vertical image on the left, a larger rectangular image on the top right, and a long horizontal image in the lower right. The final grid is composed of twelve of these units, four rows and three columns.
The title “Warp & Weft” references weaving generally, and more specifically a tapestry, which was a way to illustrate adventures or events to be remembered.The Warp & Weft: (Figure) series alludes to the front of a tapestry – the event(s), the adventure(s) brought back in photographs.The Warp & Weft: (Ground) series alludes to the back of the tapestry – the merged and more generalized echo of what is vivid in the front.The fundamental grid structure of weaving, of the loom, was given a precision, and an algorithmic repeatability with the invention of the Jaquard loom at the beginning of the 19th century – arguably the first “general purpose machine”, or computer.I adapt this weaving metaphor for the arrangements of photographs, as a way to give the notion of a relational database a visual form.
The “front” of the tapestry, the Warp & Weft: (Figure) images are composed of photographs taken during trips, walks, or just looking around.They are the traces of adventures, albeit fairly ordinary ones – a trip to the zoo, to the beach; a look around the garden, in the kitchen.Clusters of photographs are arranged within a matrix that has the feel of both a panorama and a comic book – a narrative of multiple threads.
The “back” of the tapestry, the Warp & Weft: (Ground) images are more similar to each other, more merged together, as the back side of things often are.The photographs are arranged in the same grid as in the “front” side, but are of a single location: the steep edged ravine in my backyard that holds a small creek at its bottom.The variations are not of place, but time.
The two series taken together, the (Figure) and the (Ground), constitute a unity of how we see and process the multiple perceptions that make up our daily life; the front and the back; that which remains vivid and distinct on top of that which becomes merged and integrated.