2018

(artist statement) The poetic gesture behind the removal and replacement of a site where a traumatic event occurred has initiated this work. A vast chasm of memory for the one lost, "...writing his dream inside a rectangle." is an exploration of the story behind the location at Canfield Drive (38.738360, -90.273701). In a minimalist form, 950 pounds of hand painted gravel takes on the trauma's abyss in a 8x20 foot rectangular floor piece. The labor put forth is an action by myself to communicate the void of absence - mixed and adhered with presence in a deep immeasurable space.

The title for the work comes from 
James Baldwin’s obituary. Otto Friedrich, a friend of Baldwin, wrote the words and recalled a story from Paris when he was writing Baldwin's obituary for Time magazine. He wrote “...he would occasionally take out a ball-point pen and start drawing a large rectangle on what was left of a beer-stained paper tablecloth. Inside the rectangle he 
would slowly write, ...the dream that enabled him to survive the bleak and penniless early years in Paris, the dream that... really was a novel and would someday make him famous.”1 The shape of the rectangle is a container in which can hold.

www.insidearectangle.com