Early Erratics

I'd already been recycling papers from earlier installations for new exhibitions, but it was the fortuitous discovery of red rosin paper, or builder's paper, that made possible bigger articulated pieces. The first Erratics installations at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art (1997) featured 10 articulated forms, on the floor, ceiling, and walls. I'd been at a residency in Newfoundland in March of that year, and was eager to work out my experiences of glacial erratics and coastal rocks in a material less weighty and hard to move around. 

The materials for those 1997 Erratics were used again for the three pieces in the first Portland Museum of Art Biennial (1998), and yet again in 2006 for the installation Erratic Locations at the University of Southern Maine (Lewiston-Auburn). Over the years I'd begun to see the Erratics less as individual forms and more as an ephemeral world where paper indexes geological forces. Like boulders, the builder's paper I used would be rolled again, back to the studio to wait for another exhibition.

Since those early installations, I've installed the materials at the University of Maine's Orono and Farmington campuses, and as a special exhibition for Coastal Mountains Land Trust in Rockport, Maine.  Some of the original materials from 1997 have survived, and as the installations have gotten larger, I've added to the mix with newly prepared builder's paper and other elements including woven tapestry, 700 sediments canvases, large format watercolors, and oil and watercolor paintings from the Jars series.