Why do I choose the materials I use? How do I start a new project?
Honestly, I don’t do a whole lot of traditional sketching. I may doodle a rough thought onto a page but then mull out the process in my head. I’m continually rummaging and bouncing ideas off of artist friends and non-artist friends gaging reactions and enthusiasim. Even before I make anything I’m already thinking about how to display and invite viewers into experiencing my work. This helps and hinders.
A lot of my inspiration comes from what I find around me and from the informal research I do online. I love finding new artists and figuring out what and how they do what they do. I enjoy investigating my environment, science topics I’ve heard about via my engineer sister or NPR, local history, and science fiction.
I like redeeming materials like much of the materials I currently use: silicone caulk, freezer paper, knitting. Materials that are not typically associated with high art. I like looking at materials and objects and think about what kind of pseudo painting or art objects I can make out of them. This ability probably comes from my mom. For years we had a wall wreath hanging in the kitchen made out of biscuits cloaked in polyurethane–never molded or decayed.
Colors I’m intuitively drawn to come from some sort of nostalgia and memory. I find myself similarly drawn to color in the way the Mary Heilmann is drawn to the color. She’s a big hero for me. I’d like to be a fly on the wall of her studio to watch her broad movements with her brush and to the wonderfully disparate musical choices she’s known for–Sex Pistols and Neil Young.
Lists are important to me and documenting in-progress are incorporated in my process of working. Right now I’m trying to develop a way or project that I can display my obsessive way of researching, developing, mining, cataloging ideas and information that I process via lists and folders.
Sam Dorgan 