Jeff White
Jeff White
Sometimes I think to jettison the curves off my ff's; a cutting away, like woodcut & so much else that is reductive, both inevitable (decay) & strategic (elimination). Invariably they grow right back; my more complex Jeff nature bubbles forth ; )
Through the medium of woodcut and in drawing, I give harmonious form to unsettled mental meanderings on the nature of experience.
In an ongoing series of woodcuts, I distort dominos to fit non-domino proportions as if to offer immutable facts; the number of dots on a domino retain their unequivocal value no matter how that domino is stretched or spun. Amidst discord, they aspire to be totems for transparency, connection. balance, simultaneity, parity, and the BOTH/AND principle.
In another series, I carve a single line in plywood that enters one side and exits another. I apply ink, register paper and apply pressure. In this method, called reduction woodcut and taught to me by Karen Kunc, I carve away more from the same block, apply translucent ink, register the same paper & repeat multiple times. Eventually I am left with nothing on the block but a second continuous line that enters one side and exits another. That line is printed as the final, darkest layer. These two lines escape the margins, connecting to the next & previous print. They carry the same ideas as the domino forms but also notions of time.
In either series, I layer subthemes that both mark & transcend the moment.