Goldsmiths essay:
Recently I’ve become obsessed with triangles. It all started with some photographs that I printed last year in the darkroom at my High School in Los Angeles. Instead of using the standard printing technique I decided to experiment by using a method for cutting paper that I had learned in Kindergarten at the Montessori school I attended in Warsaw. As I began the process of making a paper snowflake, the paper became an almost Rorschach cutout, portraying perfectly mirrored triangular patterns. I placed this over my paper during printing and lo and behold a fractured image arose out of the developing fluid. I’d forgotten about these photographs by the time I left for university, but when I returned for my Christmas holiday I came across a few of them and my interest flickered back to life once more.
Most of my obsessions start this way blooming from small beginnings to something huge. My current “triangular fascination” has led me to cut hundreds of cotton ribbons with triangular cut outs down the center of each; a methodical process that left my right hand feeling crippled for a week and my left hand feeling quite stiff. I also scavenged all over for triangular off cuts of wood to paint on, but unfortunately they has proved to be a much more scarce commodity then I had hoped, though I have found a few that fit the bill.
Before triangles I recall being completely fixated on the life and entourage of Patty Smith. A few months ago while reading her memoir “Just Kids”, about her and Robert Mapplethorpe and their complicated relationship. Her near fixation with Robert and his obsessions enthralled me, as much of their taste parallels my own, (I can take or leave the S&M photography, but that’s just me) The moment she mentioned idol statues and crucifixes I was hooked. At the time (even now), I was completely in love with religious paraphernalia and religious art, not because of its meaning, but just its sheer beauty and intricacy. It all began while I was in New Mexico, visiting Santa Fe and Taos. I had been searching for a present for a friend of mine who loves Santa Maria and The Lady of Guadalupe, (he often dresses as one of them to pose for his own paintings). While searching for his gift, I was completely surrounded by ornate religious art, crucifixes and idols of all kinds, (Taos is religiously very mixed so there was so much to choose from). There was a specific shop in the city that had collections of all sorts of interesting religious beads and statues. There were Indian deities and former Dali Lamas, their likenesses printed on medallions, Oriental crafts of all kinds, Latin American and American Indian art. This shop contained everything that I’ve ever wanted to feed my obsession, but I had no money so I was out of luck and unable to purchase any of these magnificent objects but I came away imprinted with an aura of religious grandeur. Nothing has come of it yet, but I hope to enact a tribute of some kind to those memories in the near future, in fact I have an altar-shaped piece of wood that will do the trick nicely.
A few weeks ago I had a brief fancy for the Native people of Papua New Guinea while in a Visual Communications class (suffice it to say that I haven’t really caught hold of the vis/com tune). Flipping through a child’s encyclopedia and stopping at their entry, I knew they were mine. Drawing after drawing of these natives led me to create countless illustrations of masked naked figures dancing and foraging for animals. I then began to draw short narratives in which my natives fought or played games with each other. My favorite story line utilized mixed media; I cut out all of my drawings and pasted them onto pictures of pages from the Encyclopedia, I also cut out animals and portrayed the natives gathering them up and bringing them to their shrine (also known as the front cover of the book Menagerie Manor by Gerald Durrell, the author of My family and other Animals). I had loved drawing these figures, but after not drawing them for a week because I had moved to a new rotation, I was unable to render them so easily as I had once done. But by then my love for them had passed somewhat, so my heartbreak was much less severe so, than the one at High School when I could no longer draw Indians on the eve of my “Cowboys and Indians” House party (as a result, the decorations were much less entertaining then I had hoped).
During my High School years I became enthralled with many other things including large plastic rhinestones (of all colors), pottery, Rap, R&B and Hip Hop music (my Hong Kong born mum adored these musical genres and got me into them too); birds wings, botanical drawings, Diane Arbus, synesthesia, biology and so on, the list is endless. Biology has always been a favorite subject of my ever since I first took it in Grade 7, the inner workings of mammalian and all other corporeal life I personally find scintillating. I can honestly say that if I were not pursuing the Arts, I would dive straight into Biology.
This wonderful world has so much to offer and study, that one can never get bored. As a rule though, I would steer clear of microbiology, as Maths has never been my strong point. But as with everything else, I could tolerate a bit of Maths if it were to study the brains of human beings and animals as a neurologist. I recently purchased Dezallier d’Argenville’s wonderful book “Muschelkunde” and this has further fuelled my love of the combination of science and art. Every page of this book is covered from margin to margin with stunning illustrations of shells and other crustaceans- simply heaven. Inspired by this I’ve explored the genre of biological illustration further which led me to an article in “The Believer” which introduced me to synesthesia and all of its variations. I began to wonder if I was a synesthiesiac too, but after learning more about the subject it became clear that there was nothing especially interesting about my senses. Still, one can always live in hope.
Many of my friends in High School collected animal carcasses to use in their art. I was not one to do this but would never turn away the chance to see a sheep’s heart in formaldehyde or the wings and talons of a raven, cut from the body after being found as fresh road kill, (plentiful on the open roads and highways of California). Anatomy has always interested me more then the actual preservation of the animal after death. Taking apart a lobster that’s been served to you in a Chinese restaurant is always more interesting then eating it and leaving it without being thoroughly looked over and dissected. Some of my friends were lucky and found entire preserved skeletons of deer and coyote while on a hike and had the guts to lug them down the mountain to show us. Through my experiences with these people I picked up several tips on how to preserve these specimens (the best way to clean and preserve bones is to bury them in the earth for a month or two). When they are unearthed they should been clean of all flesh and ready to work with. Even if I may never use these skills its comforting to know that I have something to fall back on if Art doesn’t work out!
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