Authors and Antidotes

ARTIST STATEMENT:

The series Authors and Antidotes is intended to encourage the audience into meditative spaces. The exact direction of this series was reconfirmed while on my first trip to Santa Fe this Summer while doing research attending the Daphne Odjig opening and panel discussions with Joseph Sanchez and Alex Janvier. It was in Santa Fe, while in the initial stages of my residency at the Alternator Centre for Contemporary Art in Kelowna, B.C. when I came across a red Pueblo sun symbol that is circular with four rays shooting in the four directions and centered in a yellow field. The symbol represents balance by drawing focus equally on mind, body, spirit and community.

In the installation there is a series of works that concentrate specifically in red and yellow or black and white. Red and Yellow represent the mental and emotional. Black and White in the medicine wheel reference body and spirit. This work was developed initially from the creation of a series of writings on personal healing as well as for the community at large. These writings were then abstracted so that they became unreadable to the naked eye, intended to invoke intuitive responses. These writings served as the premise for the greater compositions in the paintings as well as on the the digital wraps on the florescents. This is the first time light was used to directly unify composites as well as bridge new media pieces. The lights conceptually and physically serve as beacons for whatever the viewer may want to inspire.

 -J. Baerg