lines

My art making practice is ecotonal. Ecotones are areas of transition between different adjacent ecological communities. If we consider mediums to function as ecological communities then the matrix functions as the terrain (and the artist is the ecotone). This is our definition of a world. According to Wikipedia: "Ecotones are particularly significant for mobile animals, as they can exploit more than one set of habitats within a short distance. This can produce an edge effect along the boundary line, with the area displaying a greater than usual diversity of species." Diverse species are dissimilar organisms. If we look at objects from a Hylozoic point of view they are organisms. The concept of objectification may be moot. I like the analogy of the mobile animal in reference to the artist. The mobility may be more mental than say a Geselle or journeyman but no less active.
I use the moniker woodcliffe. It's a bardic name. Woodcliffe is the name of the street that I grew up on in Lancaster, Ohio. It was an appropriate title. Behind our house was a large stretch of woods and in front was the street that led right into the center of town. In her book Color: A Natural History of the Palette Victoria Finlay tells us about traveling Glaziers. When a new cathedral was in the finishing stages Glaziers would arrive to create the stained glass windows. Townspeople, often suspicious of strangers, were particularly wary of these traveling artisans because they would camp out by or in the forests or woods near the town. They did this in order to be close to the fuel supply for the furnaces they would build to heat and make the glass. The edge of the woods is an ecotone between the wild and civilization. These artists lived on that edge, the cliff of the woods.
I feel as though I exist there too.



yet to be titled 2007, Marys 2006, yet to be titled 2006 © R. Sullivan