observing a spear of summer grass

In my recent work this year, I have been jigsawing shapes from thin wood and painting/assembling them into wall-mounted compositions, occupying the space between two and three dimensions. Those shapes are oblong and round, stacked adjacent to each other in rows or appearing to be piled on the same flat plane.

In this new series, the layers of cut and painted wood evoke a dense and fantastical field of grass. and the piece interprets the sense of confronting wild greenery by representing the shapes and shades of it like that your imagination might conjure. The largest piece, 48"x50", is titled after a line in a Walt Whitman poem, ‘observing a spear of summer grass’. They may all be titled a variation of this, as they all grew from the same idea. Noting the word ‘spear’ instead of blade, both words descriptive and dangerous, as these sharp wood spears softly writhe and tangle around each other.