2013-2014 - Works with Movement

Recently, after working with contemporary dancers for many years (drawing from video and live dance rehearsals), I returned to my own dance roots, and began studying the movement of my body when impacted by music. The compelled body, and the relationship between our body and sound (sounds in nature, incidental sounds and music) have always intrigued me, and have been a subconscious part of my practice. Listening for me, was always more of a corporeal experience rather than an acoustic one.

I began with attending live concerts and making direct linear drawings, mapping the folds and stretches of my body as they were happening as a result of my reaction to the sound. The initial drawings looked like subterranean water maps, and consisted of a continuing line swirling over and over again, sometimes stretching and filling up the whole paper. Later, my way of drawing changed, it became more "filtered" and indirect by the use of materials like neon twine, home­made brushes, traced projected dance performances (of my own). All these made for new mark making. The filtered lines and marks have become a new visual language. The drawings in their overall shape look like japanese scrolls, but they have no recognizable content. They are a mark of body­sound coupling.

Movement marks new forms, marks new space, makes time. As my drawings grow in length due to time, I have turned them into installations by folding the drawings and creating forms and pathways to invite the viewer to move around them. The drawings represent a map of my own movement to music and a map of the movement that is not ­yet, a movement that is about to happen as the viewer starts observing the work. With this, the viewer is in an active space that is fluid and not fixed. The work has arrived from force to form, and becomes force again.



2012, "Core" - Silkscreen Prints and Collagraphs

Trained in drawing and printmaking in my native Macedonia (where the course of study is rigorous, incorporating anatomy and other traditional pursuits), I came to the US primed to break out, ready to discover my own esthetic 'voice.' Over the last few years, I'm happy to say: I've found it. It's no surprise that my work often depicts people breaking out of a chrysalis state. In many ways, that's how I feel as an artist.

I continued my formal education in the United States at Montclair State University, where I earned a BFA in printmaking in 2003. My practical, 'inner' education, however, has come from the process of working itself. My knowledge of anatomy has stood me in good stead; the body, with which I've always felt comfortable, has now become a visual instrument that I use again and again in my work—all the better to play out my own, inner voice. 

Over the last two years I have been striving to find ways to let go of my need to control the outcome of a work, and to bring more spontaneity in. "Core," my newest series, does just that, and more, arriving as it does out of both the immediacy of gestural drawing and a great deal of experimentation in the printshop. First, in early 2012, I attended the dance rehearsals of an amazing experimental dance group based in Brooklyn called "KoreResponse." While at their rehearsal space, I used india ink and litho pencil on mylar, working rapidly, capturing not simply the dancers' forms but what I felt to be the essence of their movement. Later, in the studio, I transferred these transparent drawings directly into solar etching plates. I went through almost 40 artist's proofs as I experimented with a huge variety of processes and media, eventually settling on silkscreen and collagraph. The silkscreens show a brushy quality of line; the collagraphs,* by their very nature, add something less literal, more 'felt.' I like the fact that this latter technique didn't leave an outline, but rather an embossment, a more internal synonym for the idea I was striving for with 'Core.'

When does a figure, abstracted, stop being just a figure? How far must it be abstracted until it becomes a metaphor, a part of something greater than itself? I asked myself these questions as I worked. "Core" was my exuberant, enigmatic answer.

*Collagraphy is a printmaking technique in which various 3-D textures are applied to a board; the board is then inked like a regular intaglio or relief plate, and run through the press.

2010-2011, "Trapped" and "Waking Up"

"Trapped" , 2009-2010 began as a series of monoprints, silkscreen, and finally R&F pigment stick‹a medium that I feel allows for a great deal of movement. Knowing anatomy as I do has stood me in good stead; the body, with which I've always felt comfortable, became, in "Trapped," a kind of visual instrument I could use again and again ‹all the better to play out (my) inner, psychological states. Nude figures appear trapped with their hands behind their back (that's me); caught in free-fall with no end in sight (me, again), and then of course engaged in more romantic/ passionate/ tense relationships of yin and yang (that was once me ‹and still is, in the abstract). It's amazing how art can at once provide a sense of clear boundaries (the demands of one's medium, the weight of tradition) and a means of ultimate liberation.

"Waking Up," my newest series, is more about the latter. Here, the figures are stretching, making acrobatic leaps, almost dancing. Lately, in my monoprints (30 x 44" and 32" x 47 1/2" on heavy, Rives BFK paper) I am making their movement through space more abstracted, even at times abandoning the figure altogether in favor of dense, interconnecting lines. Sometimes these bodies are floral, vegetal; they fracture and chart trajectories that, ironically enough, will allow them to be "trapped' one again ‹only this time in a more meaningful (and, ultimately, artistically fruitful) way.

Put another way: sometimes exceeding your boundaries is the best way to more truly know who you are ‹to more fully inhabit your own body, feel comfortable within your own 'space.'