Sunspots

2020

Ink on paper.

The day before quarantine started in Panamá, I saw a shifting, dancing spot of light on a tree trunk in the forest. Mesmerized, I called it a sunspot. But that term really refers to dark spots on the surface of the sun. The next day, inside, I began looking at online images of sunspots - inky blotches with outward swirling radiations. They are dark, cold, and magnetic, and their activity is felt on Earth. It is impossible to get close to the surface of the sun, so pictures are vague and fuzzy. The mysterious, dramatic sunspot images allured me, just as my access to the sun was restricted, and on instinct I started drawing them. As I drew, trying to give form and definition to the imperceptible, I saw the darkness as disease and the radiations like contagion or connectivity. Their shapes recall to mind the formal structure of our galaxy, evoking endless radiations and connections, and varieties of organic growth forms. Are they symbols of doom or possibility? This contradictory, uncertain metaphor is both frightening and comforting, as is drawing it.

I usually look to my immediate surroundings for metaphors of human behavior and our interactions with our natural, physical and cultural world, to make videos, drawings and other works in an experiential process based on things I can touch and see clearly. But as the walls closed in, I looked to the physical world that exists beyond my reach at impossible-to-touch temperatures. During these times of contemplation, isolation, and longing it became vital to me to engage in a more pensive exploration of the unknown and indiscernible in this world we inhabit.