The individual works here show a range of marks I have engaged in making with chalk-lines for the past 19 years. Chalk-lines have been traditionally employed from antiquity to lay-out the perimeters and dimensions of building structures and monuments.
My work with these instruments has evolved with another concern: the instantaneous condition of a snapped, powder-coated line on the various surfaces of paper, film, optical filters, stone and wood, and directly on walls, in site-specific installations. The registrations of individual snapped lines amount to exposures, and perception of color reads specifically with each selected surface; opaque, reflective, transparent, or flat.
I have gathered vintage chalk-lines, utilized in mark-making, from their use as traditional measurement instruments, by unknown carpenters, adapting new, large-capacity reels, fitted with various diameters of line and rope, to allow a range of thickness in the snapped lines, and inform their metrical positions in expanded groups of line-sets. Powdered pigments are hand-ground with mortar and pestle and applied directly to selected cordage and rope.
The spacing and interval relationships in chalk-line drawing are informed by arithmetical progressions, Fibonacci sequences and traditional increments of measurement, including the Egyptian djeser, and the old Scottish nail. From this determined matrix the work evolves intuitively, drawing cues from the direct apprehension of metrical proportions and precise marks being made, gradually balanced in the elapsing scale of the whole.
The result of my practice is highlighted here in the range of selected images.