After working on the Drawing-Collages series for over a year, paper no longer offered me the materiality and the weight I needed. I started looking for another medium. It had to be organic, earth-related. Thinking of the Sumerian tablets that have long fascinated me, I rolled out a type of clay that does not require a kiln. Because it turned out too light, I started experimenting with plaster.

 

I mixed and cast my plaster pieces using a variety of flat containers. Once out of the containers and dried, I sanded, fractured, or used a troweling tool to carve the surface. Plaster makes sense in my work process because it not only offers the materiality I was looking for, but also the potential to transform it. 

 

I have been working on these relief pieces similarly to the way I collage. Fragments or whole pieces spark in me the need to construct new ones that are remnants of something that was part of another narrative. It is a slow and deliberate process. With the Reliefs, I have continued to sculpt primordial, essential forms that resonate with the writings/alphabets/scriptures I have worked on in other instances. I believe they also establish a correspondence with old archeological findings. I carve, I sand, I group, and I build with them.