Ordinary Time
Ordinary Time is a drawing project that references the format of the Chinese handscroll. Developing an idea I first explored in Curtis St., these drawings are made by taking graphite rubbings of the road, extending the project beyond the boundary of my home. Like the handscroll, Ordinary Time is meant to function as a chronological journey, encapsulating everything from trips to the grocery store to my daily commute to work and beyond. Though I don’t make these every day, the scale of these drawings allows me to keep paper in my truck and my wife’s van at all times.
The handscroll captures the experience of journeying through a landscape where the foreground, middle ground, and background are continuously moving in and out of focus. Rather than presenting a landscape from a single viewpoint, the viewer’s perspective unfolds as the scroll is unfurled, allowing the composition to be discovered as you move through the image. In Ordinary Time, the unfolding landscape of the handscroll gives way to a continuous record of the road. While the work never evolves beyond my original gesture, Ordinary Time is about consciously engaging the world through drawing.
