JOHN CLARKE

Thousands of years ago in south-central France, Paleolithic artists adorned the walls of Chauvet Cave with art. One of the many extraordinary things about the work there is that it was done in two waves, the first some 36,000 years ago, the second 5,000 years later. This implies that artists separated by 5,000 years collaborated on some of these cave paintings, the latter using the already richly decorated walls as their canvas…

Drawing on Memory

Something happens to a memory when it’s written down. Recorded memories lose much of the pliable quality inherent in those that only ever remain in our minds. A memory preserved as a story or even just as notes on a page somehow solidifies, crystalizes. When we recall the incident years later, we retell the story we’ve fashioned. The story becomes the memory…

Drawing on Memory is an exploration of my stories. Based on notes, journal entries, letters, sketches, and short stories, it is a reflection and reinterpretation of my past. Drawn almost exclusively from the richly formative period 1999-2002, these pieces focus on my years backpacking and jumping freight trains throughout the northeast with my best friend, John Roberts, and the profound effect those years had on my life, then and now.

Starting with scans of typed and handwritten pages, each page is enlarged, transformed into a canvas. Stories become short Dadaist poems, edits and revisions become drawings, letters become tapestries. Working to music and reflecting on the original content of each piece, this work brings the emotional quality of abstraction to the bittersweet taste of memory.