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The Sporozoan

The Sporozoan Suite

The Sporozoan is a project I have been evolving for over 30 years. It revolves around the idea of sight and the serendipitous moment when a viewer decides to look just a little closer. Decides to invest the time in the thing at which they are looking. Once this moment occurs The Sporozoan takes hold. Encouraging them to continue to look. Look into the work but also to look into themselves. Explore the act of looking, explore the void of their consciences, explore joy and sorrow, pleasure and pain, excitement and dread, masculinity and femininity, good and evil, explore the duality of our nature. 

The Sporozoan Suite is currently broken into five chapters of seeing. Each piece informs the other and discusses a different vantage point of The Sporozoans existence. The Suite is ever evolving and may give way to new to new chapters. 

Until recently The Sporozoan was contained within the realm of The Cavities prints. This changed as I began to see the origin piece, Robin, show up in my paintings and drawings. The Sporozoan has been so long in my head it has now manifested in all of my work.  

The Sporozoan Cavities 

The Sporozoan Cavities is a suite of 16 Intaglio prints. Each print is a representation of The Sporozoan in its multiple forms. The origin of The Cavity comes from an Intaglio print I made in 1991 entitled Robin.

Robin was a model in a figure drawing class my sophomore year at Pratt Institute. I loved drawing Robin. He was a dancer with a fantastic body to draw from. He always found fantastic poses and could hold the most awkward of pose very well. Robin was also annoying! He talked incessantly interrupting the professor and in general breaking concentration for everyone in the class. One fateful day I had had enough and started tearing him apart in my drawing. I tore him limb from limb. At the end of class I had at least ten drawings of Robin torn to bits. I converted one of them into an Intaglio print that was basically a slab of meat. No head, missing arms, one missing leg and an open chest cavity. That is the day The Sporozoan was born. I didn't know then though. I was almost 13 years of struggle with my work before the idea fully coalesced in my head. Even now it continues to grow.

The suite is comprised of 15 prints that are 24"x18" and one that is 24"x 36" While all of the plates are made and proofed the Suite has yet to be printed. Each image will be an edition of 25. Of the 25 in the edition 5 will be kept complete and will only be available as a set.  

The Sporozoan Swarm

The Sporozoan Swarm is an ongoing custom installation made up of torn Intaglio prints, some of which have been drawn on that are pinned to a wall in a free form way that activates the space telling a visual story. The lines and masses that are formed through The Swarm resemble forms in nature. There is a push and pull that occurs through light and shadow, mass and line, depth and angle, and finally the prick of the pins through the paper suggest insect taxidermy, addiction, and the pain pleasure response. 

The Sporozoan Trophies

The Sporozoan Trophies are a metaphor for the highest level of art collecting. This level of art buying revolves around art being a show piece of wealth. Even at the museum level major purchases have more to do with money than art. The more popular or well known a piece is the more people will walk through the doors. I totally understand. The Sporozoan Trophies are not a condemnation of this but they are here to call attention to it. These pieces are made with prints specifically printed to be turned into Trophies. They are mounted on plaques with steel wire, string, rice paper, and pigmented resin.

The Sporozoan Shrine

The Sporozoan Shrine is one piece comprised of woven intaglio prints forming an interior. Inside is a sculpture consisting of a table and two objects. This piece is not yet fully realized. 

The Sporozoan Habitats

 

The Sporozoan Habitats grew from The Swarm. I always felt that the larger Swarm installs needed some sort of anchor. A central place to radiate from. Unlike insects The Sporozoan grows and spreads into the world in a serendipitous way. Like spiderlings on the wind it casts it web into the wind waiting to be been seen and then it travels on the viewers mind until it lands some where else. 

In this way the Habitat is less of a home than an origin. The origin is me. The origin is that fateful day in 1991 when Robin became so annoying I had to tear him apart.