andyvanoverberghe: roboctopi, stone, & exhibition 2012

despite an extremely short 2 month turnaround, I had to fill another show at The Goodfoot in Portland, OR in February 2012. I'm not quite sure how all of this came to be in under 2 months. But it did, and this is what it was. 2 months ...outside of my day job.

     Once upon a time there lived a tree. I don’t know where and I don’t know when. Over time this tree branched out in random organic direction. This tree grew in a specific pattern and grew to a specific size. It was cut down at a precise height and sent to a mill where it was divided into slabs of specific proportion. These different slabs were transported to different places and further cut down by different people to deliberate specifications. Eventual pieces of the pieces crossed my path at a given place and a given time. Upon looking at a particular section of grain of a particular cut out section of this particular slab of wood which came from a living tree somewhere somewhen, my subconscious happened to see recognizable shapes and images based on the grain and layout of knots. So I drew what I saw.
     Stone has a similar life story. I have a similar life story. It is vastly more complex and I could waste yours and my time writing pages about why I see what I see, why I think the way I do, and why I draw what I draw. I am a puppet of my subconscious. I look at a given texture. I listen. I see what I see, and I begin to draw. Medium manipulates style. I have had a decade of silence with this medium. Introducing myself to wood and stone as a canvas has reawakened a style of drawing from years past. Combined with my modern hand a new direction is formed. This collision of timelines of the living universe presents my current artwork.
     Ink, stone, colored pencil, wood, and time all converge in a balance of design; dictated by my subconscious and translated into recognizable language.