About the Project

HISTORY

Read an interview with the artist

Several years ago, an eight-year-old boy stood watching me as I completed a laborious handmade wood engraving by rubbing the block to transfer a print. Finally he asked me, with a child’s instinct for simplicity, “Why don’t you just Xerox it?”

Despite the fact that I have spent thirty years as a professional artist trying to perfect the ancient craft of wood engraving, I loved the directness of his question.   It struck at the heart of the age-old debate: what is art? Is it the mastery of specific techniques that achieve unique values?  In my case, does that mean art can only emerge in handmade prints produced by a hand-run Vandercock press on handmade Japanese papers? Or could art be work generated with mass-production photocopying techniques? For years, I would have argued that art and the techniques and technologies that produce it have to be fused with the artist’s own hands, eyes, and aesthetic judgments.

But even as I maintained that position in my work, I also knew that in art there are no permanent answers.  And the boy’s question stayed with me.  So when I first started drawing the 0 work, my curiosity took me in the direction he suggested. Just as an experiment, I tried Xeroxing it one night.  Little did I realize that this would lead to my 0 images ultimately being printed by a FASTSIGNS commercial printer, wrapping a building, or being projected on walls. I certainly wasn’t expecting that I would go from woodblocks, fine papers and hand presses to building materials such as  DuPont™ Tyvek®, commercial ink products, and computer-generated cyberspace.

My past work always has been private and personal both for the viewer and for me.  What I created and what the viewer saw remained separate.  My chief concerns related to producing the work.  That’s where I am most involved in my art—in the act and art of creation. When I’m done, I’m done. Then the viewer takes over, her reflections perhaps in tune with my inspiration, perhaps anchored in other experiences, memories, and concerns.  I’ve been happy with that; it leaves me free to move on. But the 0 Project has generated a different experience for both the viewer and me.The 0 Project is more public than private and draws many others into its unfolding creation through their interpretations and reactions.  This keeps the 0 Project alive for all of us, and it’s exciting for me to be involved with a work of art to which others can add. I strongly feel that the expressive message in this case is better served by printing in this manner rather than the traditional fine art technique.  I could never achieve the public scale or broad rhythms of the work as a wood engraver.  I couldn’t make it so open and available, breaking open the small framework of contemplation within which I normally develop my art.

CONCEPT

Recently, a man asked me if he could see the original drawing for the 0 Project. I had to explain there is no original drawing. The concept means nothing without repetition. It was always conceived as a work that had no size limit. Its lack of a definitive beginning or ending and its unlimited nature are built into the design and are part of the conceptual meaning to the piece. Its title 0 suggests eternity.

Despite its scale, there is something elemental in this image. It expresses voicelessness but also the inverse, a howl of protest. The project demands response and response has come from sources worldwide—from musicians, writers, artists, photographers and others. In a very real way, their reactions are extensions of the artwork itself.  And as the project develops, their reactions build on each other as well as on the artwork.  One response is modified or amplified by another, and so on. Inevitably the project multiplies in the same endless manner as the original 0 art work. The project is designed to demonstrate that when art acts as a catalyst and invites responses, the ensuing dialogue becomes a form of art in itself.  Reactions to the piece, whether in words or through complementary artistic means, generate an endless and timeless continuum.  Eventually the meaning of original artwork no longer exists without them.  It’s alive because the viewer keeps it alive, and I am amazed  that the endlessly reproducible image itself, thanks to technologies with which I had never experimented, stays alive within me, too, as an unfolding artistic experience.

THE PROJECT HAS NO BEGINNING AND NO END