Minor Planets

Iron gall ink on Arches and Fabriano papers, dimensions variable.

This series reduces materials, mostly to homemade iron gall ink and gum arabic, and reduces the evidence of the hand of the artist. The casualty of ink, following laws of gravity and resistance, creates an order and an event frozen in time.

The evidence of the passage of time, a rarified expression in twisting trees, wrinkles, sags, erosion—shows slowness. The process of work and settling is affected by relative humidity, dilution, surface type. It shows the results of gravity, the imperceptible waves of resonance and vibration, the earth’s rotation. There is emergence. There is chaos, flow, and meanders. Evidence of the solar system, and evidence for natural forms in symmetry, fractals, crystal habits, spirals, and cracks. There are dense periodic orbits, flow separation, there is Fibonacci. Cymatics, the evidence of time as sound, as influence.

Oak galls are scars, hardened blisters

Of bark around oak wasps.

They are dense but spongey,

it may take many seasons before they fall within reach.

They are tannic.

When crushed and quenched with white wine for a fortnight

They give off a color like strong tea.

Iron is ferrous sulfate, rusted

Corroding water

Just a few drops turn the tea dark

Growing like an apocalyptic cloud.

The most common ink of the millenium

Comes from disease and contamination

And comes from a rebirth. the wasp feeds and escapes from a minuscule perfect circle.

Minor Planets #1, 2015