NAUTICAL CHART & MACRO SERIES
The charts are a celebration of the beauty of our offshore environment. They also offer clues to the art making process and an opportunity to discover deeper meanings.
The work on the charts is a metaphor for the subconscious, organic and expressive beneath the surface. The land is void of art, dry and measured.
Can the richness and diversity of the reef survive its proximity to land and the effluents of man? Works on the charts reference the plight of our nearshore environment, and changed over the course of the series: the kelp motif went from multicolor to a light blue; the reef from a variety of invertebrates to entirely iconographic green anemones. There are also fewer fish.
I did 8 works, the last in '92, on the same chart, San Francisco Bay Entrance. It was my best seller, and also the best selling chart in the marine industry. This told me my customers were relating to the place, then drawn to the art. John Kjenner was an early supporter of my work, at home in Santa Monica, February 2017.
This work, 10-17-89, 5:04 pm (originally titled S.F. Bay Entrance) was re-created during the Loma Prieta earthquake, when another work, Half Moon Bay, went through the back side, breaking through the core backing and glass in a dramatic conicle shape. Eerily, the break occurred over the approximate area where the Bay Bridge collapsed. Now the work stands as a historical symbol of the violence of a natural phenomenon that profoundly effected our lives. Collection Ralph Teyssier, structural engineer, San Francisco.
The Macro series (Macro I-X) combines relief printing of giant kelp with enlarged, transparent images of plankton. Plankton are plants and animals normally invisible to the naked eye. They are an important link in the nearshore ecology, providing food for larger plankton, invertebrates and fish. Macro shows what is invisible as well as visible in the water column, providing a metaphor for life.
