A look at how the mind processes and stores stimuli by examaniing the act of doodling with large metal sculptures.

I demonstrate my simultaneous revulsion and fascination with disposable goods. I photograph myself with such chemically toxic substances as cosmetics, sodas and cleaning products, speaking to their harmful nature while also reveling in their shimmering color. Their clever design is no accident and I find myself giving into the marketing seduction. The same goes for such other harmful behaviors as obsessive use of cell phones and social media, and rabid consumption of reality television and gossip magazines. In my work I want to show we are the consumers and the consumed.

I embrace excess with piles of wires, trash, screaming colors and all sorts of environmentally unfriendly materials such as foil, resin and neon spray paint. It feels a bit over the top at times, screaming for attention like an ad in a swarm of commercialism. We have become hoarders and foragers, sifting through endless stuff: accumulated waste, material goods, and information. This proliferation of technology has enabled greater access to our global community, but leaves us feeling helpless without it. I try to assault the viewer with extraneous material, in the same way media has assaulted me.

My ambition to make a political statement has evolved into a paradox. I criticize aspects of contemporary society while simultaneously celebrating them. My work asks the question: Is there a way out of these cultural addictions?

- Julie Orr

The combination of recognizable and abstract imagery establishes the core of my work, aiming to characterize the relationship of place and time. While objects, people, or places can sometimes be found in the finished pieces, nothing is complete – colors and shapes collide and overlap, reflecting the mind’s capacity to rapidly recover thoughts and formulate ideas. With every change, manipulation, addition, or subtraction that I make, meaning shifts, ideas connect or rupture, and the vague, ambiguous images in my mind are given a physical presence. I am an active, conscious participant in the replacing of my old thoughts with new, physical objects that include multiple ideas and moments in time.

My paintings operate as a map to strange destinations—charting weird trips through swampy, melancholic emptiness, as well as encounters of sweat and bliss, all in a wild expedition for joy, light and truth. These works are an outcome of pleasure experienced through observation of water, light, space and paint. These are the swagger and the dance; the reward and fruit of risking the life of the painting for the possibility of a new discovery in the realm of technique, mark-making, and communication. Each painting has survived and come to term—winning the battle for the full measure of their embryonic experience. They will; see life.

Harmony is desirable, but one must be aggressive to find it. I pour and slush chemicals onto canvas to mimic the physical characteristics of water. I wash dark solvents over the breadth of the canvas to create a filmy barrier over sunken gestures. By tipping and turning the surface plane, I watch the character of paint as the colors blur. I assume the role of audience as well as artist, and bear witness to pure color communion. I nurture the environment on the surface of the canvas, giving the paint a habitat in which to thrive. If I have a plan for a painting; a visual endgame—I often deviate from it—to let something unimaginably wonderful happen. Indeed; unplanned pregnancies happen all the time.

When I am closer to confident in their chemical configuration, I let them outside to oxidize, and greet the sun and sky. My canvases weather the elements as they age; naked and bare in the yard. They are exposed to others’ eyes; collecting ash, dust and other natural particulates in their sticky skin. I consider them to be sunbathing survivors. They harden under the glare and grind of the Outside.

When I am traveling abroad garnering experience, I am aware of the awesome, powerful, force of nature which in a moment can consume me. So I desire to consume it. Nature has no desire to consume me, but it can. So I seek to consume land, sea, sublime vistas of endless atolls, islands, and reefs. This is an illness, you see—for I am part of nature, and how can I consume myself? How can I consume you?

In nature; in water—I can forget my body and become aware of the spiritual. My heart flutters from lust, envy, and greed for territory; to humility, pleasure, and gratitude for being alive, and for the opportunity to see lands far from home. I give way to translations of true experience when I relinquish my desires. It’s unnatural, and I cannot do it on my own. I’ve made new symbols for a New World which lingers just below the waterline.

-

WATER + RIOT + TERRITORY = Treasures that I found through sober encounters with raw and unfiltered experience. Stand by as I battle my ego which absorbs my own light. Disaster is a landmark; they have made shipwreck of their faith. She calls out a warning: don’t let your true life pass you by. Paintings encourage you to project your ego onto their face, but I wish their own light to shine, bright.

Fashion propaganda tends to dismiss the power of certain populations. While I slip into the role of unacknowledged laborer of a psychological product, the object of envy, a carefree identity of extreme relevance, sweatshop workers in remote locations are set aside. A denial of the reality of self seems requisite. The projection of desire onto products, and ultimately onto human flesh, is contingent on the fallacy of a non-existent producer. I invoke an affirmation of the laborer, especially in regards to the woman, bearer of humans, on whom the psychic shroud is doubled down.

While I repudiate the deceptive attitude of fashion, I won’t deny simultaneously seizing the joy of faulty glamour. There comes a particular satisfaction in the lifting of rejected culture, and its transformation into exquisite specimens of communication. Beauty thrives on the make-do of its bankrupt beginnings.