I was struck by an ongoing interest in the grotesque, which manifests itself in my work as creatures or abstractions of humanoid and not so humanoid forms, maybe speculative forms would be a better description. Part of my project for this semester utilized stalagmites and stalactites in an attempt to generate a grotto affect. Utilizing the etymological relationship of grottos to the grotesque and imparting the formal language of a grotto’s structure to suggest a space where one might chance a run in with the other.
This idea of the grotto as a place to encounter the other, is compatible with my interest in the dynamics between the hidden and the revealed and the objects that demarcate these zones. These traditionally might take the form of a temple curtain or a veil over a brides face or a flag over a casket, or a handkerchief over a magicians hands. There are also popular cultural references to the veil or curtain symbol as with the green curtain in the wizard of OZ and Scarlett Oharahs green curtain dress. I also have come to loosely associate the ceremonial use of a wool cloth called a baize with games of chance like like billiards black jack ad craps, games of chance being concerned with the act of speculating on an outcome from the vantage point of the unrevealed. Heidegger defines the reveal as Aletheia. I am starting to relate this to the idea of the Sublime. I have come to interpret the moment of the Sublime as a liminal juncture of time and space where we begin encounter and confront the unknown and then begin to sublimate the experience into something not so alien.
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