The Cosmogram

 

submerged in the San Francisco Bay and coastal regions of the Pacific 2016

 

96x96”, acrylic, ink, pigment, pastel, sand, glass, silk, paper, canvas, collage, oxidation on steel 2016-2025

 

Water holds memory.  The steel has its origins in the SF Bay .. literally .. it was submerged in the intertidal zone under a circle of rocks near Candlestick park. 

I was exploring the ghosts of tidal nature-cultures by inviting the ocean to express itself / its vanishing in iron oxide, red ochre, blood of earth.  After a period in Treasure Island it was brought back east and painted with the seasons- spring rains, hurricanes, and snows of Princeton.  Years it stayed outside.  Exposure to the storms first dramatically dissolves the painted forms but soon there is a consistent marking that bursts through each particle of space like dark energy.  Upon the painting there was a battle between the principle of the Dragon (Heaven) and the energy of the Tiger (Night), but that dissipated- hard to see now that they ever fought, wounded each other, and found Love and union like Shiva and Shakti.  In this sense the image becomes an archive of all actions that have happened upon the sphere and vibrated within.  I cut pieces from various other paintings, silks from India, squirrel hair, stained glass, a piece of my busted timing belt, yupos etc.  These slivers of other worlds embed into the circle as an evocation of the holographic principle, in which it is postulated that everything that falls into a black hole is preserved or projected along the event horizon in a different dimension and perhaps radiated in perpetuity.  As it crumbled and persevered through the summer, fall and winter leading into 2025, I felt it evoke certain aspects of the Kongo Cosmogram, stages of cyclic time, the sacred colors, the realm of the white clay (Mpemba) and the idea of Kalunga, a threshold, a crossing, an Ocean, memory.

 

(the silk was painted in the Badlands SD within a space in the tall grass where a Buffalo lay and I was driving cross country to SF to profess my feelings to Z but was called back temporarily, east and north..  that’s a story)