Colored pencil on Bristol vellum paper
11 x 17 inches (27.9 x 43.2 centimeters)
2021–2024

These colored pencil drawings expand on my series of ripple tank studies, incorporating architectural elements, features of ironwork balconies, banisters, and railings, and carved stone rubble to map the frame, edges, and partitions of a drawing in an expanded way. As necessary compositional features, these boundary markers set up interactions of waves, negative space, and interference patterns — making visible vibrations of energy and combining rhythm and motion on the surface of the sheet of paper. As architectural features resulting from urban development and decay, they reiterate the physical and psychological effects of space on everyday city life.

The ripple tank experiment refers to American photographer Berenice Abbott’s series Documenting Science, created between 1939 and 1958, in which photographic exposures of light waves in water are captured with a patented ripple tank camera.