Matter (Marg/Tagore), 2013
38 x 25 inches
Digital C Print
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I wanted to think about knowledge or learning not available in a library or contained in books. I decided to make images based on purely tactile manipulation — no composing (per se) — just a set of moves with bits of fabric and small objects: folding, bunching, brushing, shifting, squeezing, spreading, sliding, swiping, pinching, molding, swirling, twisting, fanning.
I revisited a beautifully written essay by Anni Albers called "Tactile Sensibility" in which she explains: "Matiere is the word now usually understood to mean the surface appearance of material, such as grain, roughness or smoothness, dullness or gloss, etc. qualities of appearance that can be observed by touch and are consequently not concerned with lightness or darkness. Matiere (ma-teer) is mainly nonfunctional, nonutilitarian, and like color it cannot be experienced intellectually. It has to be approached, just like color, nonanalytically, receptively."