"Uncovered," began from a failed gardening project. During my first year here in the Albuquerque, I attempted to remove unwanted weeds from growing by laying down cardboard and covering it by mulch and wood chips. I had used this method in the Pacific North West, where it rained nearly everyday and the cardboard would decompose into the damp moist ground. But here in the high desert, the cardboard simply curled it's edges and poked out from under the ground I attempted to cover. After a year of hoping it would disintegrate, I gave up and began to pull all the cardboard out. As I did so, I was drawn to the texture and beauty of the earth stained cardboard.
Utilizing the materials from the failure of my gardening project, I began to glue down the pieces on top of one of my Queen Sheets. Using a heavy matte medium gel, I pressed them down with cinderblocks which I otherwise used to edge my garden beds. The Result was a beautiful dark surface which I sat with for sometime before making further decisions on how to proceed.
After sitting and looking for a long time (maybe months) I began to acknowledge the buttressed land-formations of my new South West Landscape, which were being suggested to me.
While the vast open skies and the arial perspective of the Southwest landscape were not present in the collage I constructed, what did appear to me was a non-western way of seeing space which in Eastern Asian Culture is perceived as stacked perspective. An example of it can be seen in this Chinese painting, "Landscape in the manner of Song and Yuan Masters," by Yun-Shouping (Qing Dynasty 1644 - 1690).
By combining these interpretations, I arrived at my final piece.
