Colleen Buzzard
On the Verge
Artist Statement
If we could visualize the building blocks of thinking what would they look like? I have the irresistible urge to walk physically into an idea. I want a feeling of immersion to help me think. An installation is a way to give ideas a landscape, a meandering where perspective changes with each step.
My focus in this work stems from the idea of emergent order – or complex systems that develop without an imposed plan; phenomena like language, climate, our immune systems, cities, and even consciousness. I was looking for a way to visualize this idea. I started with drawings that might diagram or model in some way the concept of emergent order. Drawing usually slows down my thinking and gives breathing space for thoughts to develop. After a drawing phase I often use other materials and move between the second and third dimensions. Drawing in space and using different materials is a way of circling an idea.
Some of the concepts that turn up repeatedly as I work are connected to nets or filters. Language and maps are especially interesting nets: noticing what the net catches and what escapes it. I like to think of tangles, grids, and graph paper as nets or filters too.
In this show I pay special attention to the negative spaces that were formed in my original drawings. I made large forms from wire screen to give volume to the spaces in between, and to look at them as building blocks. In another new sculpture, I had flat acrylic shapes printed with images from DNA experiments. For me this piece points to the idea of paying attention to what we dismiss without realizing- “junk DNA” turned out to be a huge misnomer.
The projection of shadows in the screen forms and the laser-cut acrylic are a bit like the world behind the world- in both, the shadows seem more real and detailed than the objects themselves. I experiment with using projections of various kinds to suggest the layering of our perceptions onto the world and the feedback loops that form when our expectations collide with other realities.
