complexity

One recent addition to the stable has been a four-point glyph. For each mark on the grid, a closed loop of four lines (bezier curves, actually) is placed. The curves curve the way they do based on color variables so similar colors produce similar glyphs. For some pieces, I’ve let the glyph retain the color information, and in others, I’ve made them all the same stroke weight and gray in color, so that the glyph is divorced from the color that produced it. This makes some nice, alien alphabets, daring one to read meaning (or at least intent) into them. Layering multiple grids of the gray ones with a slight opacity shift reads like pencil lines.

I’ve had a book of art by patients at a 19th century German insane asylum (a gift from a friend) by my desk for the last couple of weeks, and the frenetic, obsessive nature of these lines reminded me of Emma Hauck’s terrifyingly sad scrawls. Or, more recently and less insane, perhaps certain Cy Twomblys.

At the colorized end of things, the glyph-maker worked best with a severely oversized grid (that is, each glyph overlapping a lot with its neighbor). This one looks chaotic from a distance, but in the detail view there’s an obsessive regularity that invites curiosity.