There is a lot of making and unmaking to make my work. The Parchments are a document of the work within the work, in one way a view of the process, the part between mind and eyes: when all the parts, and the relationships of one feather to the next, the poetry and the music, are complete and come to a rest. They are each a navigation map, working towards the final work.
My thanks and appreciation to Tonya Hough, San Francisco photographer and digital master, who took on the parchment project, to capture the fragility of ink and tracing paper and my marks, to figure out a way to both shoot it and make it visible, with all the tools and very special skills of her own studio, including her own perfection.
PARCHMENT: It’s full as Opera/
As I am working, the Parchments are a system to follow to finding the whole again once I have taken the work entirely apart: the trace of what holds the work together and my guide to the heart of the piece. As a friend puts it, my maps. There is also something satisfying about numbers, as much as I could not make the work without them, since every number has a meaning. And once the work itself is final after months or longer of looking and making, the process is contained within; and I see the Parchments as an abstraction of the work itself.
