My Big Braddah

When in New York last weekend, I stayed with my brother Stephen and his wife Gelah, and had the occasion of visiting their art studio, where Stephen has constructed a unique device:

I think he should patent this thing.

The upper, hanging frame serves to hold a horizontal piece of rubberized screening, which is I think dipped in pigment and then lowered via the pulley and pressed down onto paper (or plywood or foam-core board or something), making a variety of striking two-tone images:

The background is one color and the paint is another, so the variations are pretty much endless:

 

What I like about these things is that they suggest pictures without really being pictures. Stephen pointed out to me that the dot-picture image is the same technique as is used in newspaper photographs. So there's sort of a "What do you see?--I dunno, what do you see?" effect running through these, which I really like. I compared them to the marks on the shroud of Turin: you see pretty much whatever it is you're looking for. If you're not looking for anything in particular, then the randomness of the pattern can surprise you.

Go check out Stephen's web site (and Gelah's too) for more interesting images.

All these images are copyright 2012 by Stephen Maine.