These prints grew out of a series of about 100 drawings Jessica made over the last couple of years that called 'Strip Drawings.' In them Jessica proposed to the possibility that alphabet shares a similar function with geometry for us as we generate visual meaning. Both embody a kind of abstract constant that we share amongst us. The drawings provided Jessica with an opportunity to explore the eccentric nature of her own thoughts and the serendipity of particular moments meeting known constants - moving from left to right - line relying on shapes derived from the motion of the body and folding into the shapes of alphabet characters sitting on lines. The shapes of alphabet characters resonate with the shapes of the human body - and the movement of, or placement of, these 'characters' on the page parallel the movement of and placement of people's bodies in space.
The drawings are very abstract - and they are varied. It's difficult to pin them down with prose. Making each drawing is an adventure - a kind of jumping off a cliff. The enormous variety of what could happen in each drawing is funneled through the more paired down collection of behaviors we are accustomed to experience as alphabet letters make their way across a page. Jessica realizes that these drawings - and the prints, don't look like alphabet characters.
Though the drawings move from left to right they are more satisfyingly displayed in groups forming more conventional pictorial rectangles. Jessica likes the way they can also be read up and down with the lines of drawing resonating with one another. So in this series of prints she played with the repetition that is inherent to the printing process and worked with variations on the movement across the page both left to right and up and down. There are small changes inserted into the repeated elements with both color and line. There is predictable rational change and eccentric serendipity.
Abstraction arrived at by way of metaphor.
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