Statement: Circle Reinforcements

An ever-present restlessness and a love of the material world drive me to uncover the secret beauty in the ordinary. The materials I choose are often overlooked: swept up in a studio cleaning spree or found in the back of a desk drawer, they come from the activities of daily life. They acknowledge in-between moments, times when people seem most content: picking up mail from the post office box, going for a drive, stopping to pet a dog at the corner deli. My work identifies the material substance of these moments and celebrates their nobility. Notebook reinforcement labels, maps and security envelopes were the cumbersome artifacts of daily life, yet they once safeguarded privacy and preserved the otherwise transient life of the documents that defined us. Often the materials I choose have a poignancy for their inevitable obsolescence.  

In these drawings from circle reinforcement labels I explore the way the play of light can show off this once important office supply. Freed from their task of holding sheets in 3-ring binders, these small white circles within circles are infinitely mutable and when arranged can evoke early American white-on-white quilts or the Minimalist drawings of Eva Hesse and Sol LeWitt. They connect the past paper world to today’s information age. They have a presence when layered and folded, casting and reflecting light as the ambient light changes, or as the viewer changes position.