Tugging at the Lower Decibels

I am a modernist but mostly I am an audiophile - albeit with peculiar and often eccentric taste. Consequently, in my artistic practice I am interested in examining, locating or commemorating collective culturl experiences in historic moments of creative transition. I attemp a marriage of art history and black history within the realm of the abstract languages they constructed. This notion is manifested through multi-disciplinary pieces that incorporate sound, works on paper, and site based projects all focusing on music, specifically the aage of modern music-the more avant-garde or Be Bopera, aperiosd with intense social and cultural implications. Complimenting today's deluge of hip hop culture as defining black culture, the audio pieces transform the gallery space into concert hall via speakers or private listening zones vie headsets. Assembling fresh pieces by means of jazz concepts like "call and response", tempo chanes, "stop-time" and counter melody, I build variations on the original compositions themselves, not unlike a musician riffing on a "standars" tune. Future project ideas range from the transcription of sheet music (scores) into large-scale drawings, collaborating with musicians to then "play" those works - to site related projects in and around Harlem.