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New Artwork – TEN BOXES ON A BOX – uv cured inkjet on cnc cut acrylic – A Study in the Precariousness of Balance

TEN BOXES ON A BOX, 2022
uv cured inkjet on cnc cut acrylic mounted to composite aluminum
dimensions variable (72″h x 30″w), edition of 3

This artwork is about the precariousness of balance. Balance is a constant in life. We all struggle to achieve it. When life and the world is in balance, existence benefits. Unfortunately for many across the globe, life is out of balance and suffering ensues. As a species, humans, with all the technology and knowledge we have accrued, still, in the 21st century, we seem to be as unbalanced as ever. The war in Ukraine demonstrates the brutality and evil that still stains humanity as it is putting millions out of balance.

The 1982 film Koyaanisqatsi spoke to this. Koyaanisqatsi is the Hopi Indian word for “life out of balance”. Filmed over many years, with a haunting score by Phillip Glass, the film shows the collision of the urban environment and technology against nature. The Hopi believe that nature was to be respected and protected. The industrial revolution and the rise of technology did bring balance on many fronts with better living conditions and medicine that cured once deadly diseases, but at a great cost that threatens the viability of a sustainable and livable planet.

On a personal level, having balance in my life is an everyday endeavor to strive for. Some days I do better than others in its pursuit. My art making is a balancing act as I counteract the pain I’m in with the joy of creating as they simultaneously intermingle. I think these counteracting forces merge together in balance and brings together what is needed to create.

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Art Using the Symbol Unicode Standard U+1F7BA Extremely Heavy Six Spoked Asterisk

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These multi-layered cnc cut artworks are an exploration of geometric abstraction utilizing symbols, in this piece, the underappreciated Asterisk.

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Symbols from cave paintings – From TED Talk by Genevieve Von Petzinger

The hashtag is getting all the fame. But before the hashtag became so celebrated with the advent of instagram, the asterisk has been used throughout the ages. The iconography of the Asterisk is deeply embedded in the human psyche. The symbol of the asterisk, ubiquitous today, used in computer language and mathematics has ancient roots going back to pre-history in cave paintings by ice age humans.

Paleoanthropologist Genevieve Von Petzinger studies the origins of graphic communications of early humans and as her list of symbols found in early human cave paintings shows, what we know today as the asterisk and the pound/number/hash symbol are from our beginnings. She says in her TED Talk Why are these 32 symbols found in ancient caves all over Europe?

Early writing systems didn’t come out of a vacuum. And that even 5,000 years ago, people were already building on something much older, with its origins stretching back tens of thousands of years, to geometric signs of Ice Age Europe and beyond, to that point deep in our collective history, when someone first came up with the idea of making a graphic mark, and forever changed the nature of how we communicate.

From there it has gone on throughout history to be used in many ways; literature, mathematics and today in the languages of computer code. And lets not forget it’s use in todays language to tone down expletives.

The digital age has encoded the asterisk symbol into the system known as the Unicode Standard. The Unicode Standard is a character coding system designed to support the worldwide interchange, processing, and display of the written texts of the diverse languages and technical disciplines of the modern world. The Unicode Standard designates all symbols, giving them coding data that can be uniformly used in technology internationally. As a starting point in my exploration of the asterisk as subject matter, I went to the Unicode Standard website and found multiple versions of asterisks with different sizes and thicknesses of lines. The symbol I used in these artworks is the Unicode Standard U+1F7BA, the designation given to the symbol named “Extremely Heavy Six Spoked Asterisk”. U+1F7BA is distinguished from other asterisks in the Unicode Standard by the thickness of its spokes versus more delicate asterisks in the code. Transforming this symbol from something of use in computer code, language, telecommunications and mathematics into the realm of geometric object is an expression of technology transformed to an aesthetic that speaks to our technological times.

ASTERISCUS III, 2021
uv cured inkjet on cnc cut acrylic mounted to composite aluminum panel
dimensions variable 54.5″h x 41.75″w, edition of 3
ASTERISCUS I, 2021
uv cured inkjet on cnc cut shaped acrylic – mounted on composite aluminum
dimensions variable (48″h x 43.25″w overall), edition of 3
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HAPPY HOLIDAYS 2021

Like all of us, as the year Two Thousand Twenty One is about to fly away into memory, Bruce and I are grateful that we made it through, though it hasn’t been an easy one. But are any years ever easy? Each of us has our challenges that live among our joys. As it looks like we have another difficult year to come as the pandemic continues to be an unwelcome companion and an existential threat to our democracy looms, we look towards the year to come with hope in our hearts and wish you and all the loved ones that touch you, joy in your hearts this holiday season and the year to come.

Andrew & Bruce
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Exhibition – COVIMETRY at the Ely Center of Contemporary Art

Exhibition Statement

Living with a lifelong passion for Geometry and year-long isolation from the devastating pandemic Covid, artist and curator Mark Starel of Warsaw Poland brought the two together (geometry & mask) with his newest exhibit COVIMETRY.

Today human survival is dependent upon our using an “antivirus” mask covering our most noted communication tool, our mouths, along with noses and much of our face. The mask has hindered our ability to read others expressions and feelings. By adopting the mask as a template and canvas, it now becomes a form for expression- even if just a fragment of a bigger picture of our times metaphorically.

Starel also brought together over 300 artists, uniting continents and likeminded geo-zealots. His intention is to grow the exhibit until it reaches 1000 artists, representing every country as a global community. Different artistic strategies are conveyed, exploring the shape and structure of the mask through the inclusion of a variety of media, styles and techniques that allow for contemporary notions of how geometry is being investigated today.

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My Entry

How I tackled my entry was to look at the hexagon and how it might fit in relation to the shape of the mask. I had just finished the artwork CIRCULUX I, a celebration of spinning circles at the corner points and centers of hexagons. Superimposing CIRCULUX I on top of the mask, I aligned two sides of the hexagon with the side corners while centering a hexagon between them. The V rests on top of the central hexagon locking it’s geometry to that of the mask.