Erosion Tiles
Mess has options the abstract expressionist painters didn’t. He scrapes, furrows and extrudes his slabs as well as building onto them- revealing additive and subtractive sculptural logic.
- Daniel Kany, Portland Press Herald/Maine Sunday Telegram
For the first month of 2011, I created a new body of experimental wall tiles or “slabs”, working in a sort of reverse, monoprinting style in a press mold, using colored slips, stains, glazes and a variety of clays. Various remnants in the molds of slip drawings and paintings from previous tiles transferred to the surfaces of following tiles, giving rise to the title Traces. With this series, I also continued the series of Erosion tiles that I began in the summer of 2010, emulating natural erosion processes in the layers of colored slips in the surfaces of the tiles.
My recent work has involved several series that visually and metaphorically reference land, landscape, maps, strata, geology and geography. Those influences are still present in this work, but these tiles are looser. They’ve become about mark-making and action. Process and its evidence have emerged as an essential aspect of this work.
