I’m going to try and say something about being in a new place, and a new space. A whole new place, that is, as the old place was in the midwest. This new place is on the east coast, and it’s far less isolated than my old place. My old place was 3 rooms in an old bank building in downtown Pontiac, Michigan. I was in the space for around 20 years, spending untold hours learning how to be an artist.

This new place is relatively small, just 125 sq. ft. But the ceiling is 12 ft. high, and there are 3 walls that I can hang paintings on. A room this small fills up quickly. As soon as I begin working, I’m going to need a store room. In fact, I could use one now. This photo doesn’t give any sense of how small the room actually is.

I happened to have with me black and white photocopies of details of an old piece from 2011, titled Pontiac Piece. I’d been carrying these copies around for about 6 months. Pontiac Piece is a drawing made of rectangles of cut paper that I’d drawn on with a brush and gouache. It’s a recurring work in that the motifs occur again repeatedly. It won’t let go of me.

With the blank walls in front of me and the photocopies in a folder next to me, I started pinning them up in configurations, arrangements of elements without anything particular in mind. This was a gesture, a way of emptying my brain, an attempt to get started in a new space.