Lately, I’ve been working on proposals, a process that is both demanding and inspiring. It begins with reading the instructions on exactly what to include and how to include it, and I often find it tricky to make the necessary switches between examining the application forms to the wild inventiveness of creating and curating the art I would like to exhibit. In balance, the discipline fuels my creativity, leading to fresh discoveries and stronger work.

The plan for a Colorfields and Folds exhibit is inspired by the percussion-electronics ensemble Loop 2.4.3. This show would feature ten new prints that are based on nearly two hundred images created for large-screen projections during their performances. For those images, I worked with three ideas: botanical matter, stripes, and colorfields. In making the prints, I uncovered and developed new themes – from the metamorphosis of minerals taking millions of years to accomplish, to the fleeting moments of connection and wonder we experience as humans on earth.

Scene from the performance at Alma College, in Michigan, with Loop 2.4.3 and the Alma College Percussion Ensemble, December 4, 2015. Photo by Tom Burnett.

As a multimedia option, Thomas Kozumplik, composer-performer and co-founder of Loop 2.4.3 and the recording label Music Starts from Silence would perform during an opening event, with Tom Burnett, director-performer-musician, creating video projections. An audio soundscape could also be recorded for Colorfields and Folds and installed using simple technology.

It’s exciting to be part of Loop 2.4.3’s forward-thinking tradition of working with visual artists, including David Derickson (Fist Fight Films), Stephen Gilewski, and Jon Waldo. You can listen to the haunting and melodious Zodiac Dust at www.youtube.com/watch?v=H7lqw3pmOsk and watch a full Loop ensemble in rhythmic action for So Strong at www.youtube.com/watch?v=PNhQOE92u30.

What is a ‘colorfield’? According to About.com’s Art Glossary, “A color-field painting is one in which color is the subject, characterized by large areas of single color. The color is what dominates, not texture nor brushwork. The paintings are generally very large, so that when you’re viewing it from up close your entire field of vision is filled with the color.” Technically, these prints diverge from the painterly model in many ways. But I think of colorfields as sweeping intensities, and color is most certainly the primary subject, building into a multi-faceted view, as if you were watching the sky through a window, lodged deep inside a rock formation, or recording the landscape via satellite.

The pic at the top of this post, by the way, is December’s Geology. Here below you’ll see Electric Gemstone, Echoes Echoed, Whorling Trace, Tropical Compression, If You See the Full Moon, Faster than Air, Strike and Dip, We Visit Again, and Curtain Call. The names make me happy, too.

 The images and text are original work by Catherine Rutgers © 2016