Making Something Out of Nothing is a textile design investigation of voids and nothingness. Beginning with a photocopy of a blank sheet of paper, I repeatedly copied the original until the visual static constructed a dynamic pattern. The final images (translated through a popular pattern-making software, woven on a computer-assisted Jacquard loom, and the cloth finally cut and sewn into a scarf) represent the idea that everything is either devolving towards or evolving from nothingness. The photocopier and Jacquard loom simultaneously assume significant roles in the process and production of the pattern by mechanizing and materializing a conceptual gesture into a wearable object.
“I was haunted by another possibility. Apart from the arrow we had discovered, there was no knowing what other signs might be concealed on the walls or elsewhere. Might there not be a link, for instance, between the stain over the wash-stand and the peg of the wardrobe or the scratches on the floor? We might have spotted one sign, but how many more that we had not spotted might be concealed in the natural order of things? ... [S]urrounding reality was now contaminated, so to speak, by the possibility of innumerable hidden meanings, and this continually distracted me ....” Cosmos, Witold Gombrowicz
In 1961 Truitt began to work in the style for which she later became known: she paints multiple delicate layers of color characterized by subtle variations on wooden constructions which she has fabricated in accordance with scale drawings; the structural elements of these sculptures constitute armatures supporting color. Writing in April, 1965, Truitt stated: "What is important to me is not geometrical shape per se, or color per se, but to make a relationship between shape and color which feels to me like my experience. To make what feels to me like reality." (emphasis mine)
J. Morgan Puett has opened a collaborative installation with The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, a revolving show that will use over 100 glass display cases in the School's new Sullivan Galleries. Read more about "Department Store" on her site, where I found these beautiful images of her work.
"Photosynthesis Robot is a three-dimensional sketch of a possible perpetual motion machine driven by phototropism- the movement of plants towards the direction of the sun. The motion of the plants upon this four-wheeled vehicle would propel slowly over a period of time."