"You've gotta activate the surface", says Jeremy Rockwell, artist from Kansas City. I find this advice useful every day. Whether making art, starting a conversation, or even writing this paragraph, you've gotta start somewhere.

When Rockwell starts working on a painting, drawing, sculpture, etc., the first step is surface activation. This could be anything from splattering ink and spray paint to leaving a canvas in an old barn for three months until it accumulates enough bird poop to serve as the background for a self-portrait. These automatic art techniques "break the ice" of dialogue between the artist and his work, starting a psycho visual conversation, which allows the subconscious to speak for itself, finding significance in forms and textures, which the conscious mind might overlook.

The subject of the piece, incidentally, usually comes as a surprise to Rockwell. When a rich array of visual elements accumulate, converse, and eventually converge on a common ground, the artwork is finished, the conversation over. The duality of delicate forms and percussive blasts in Rockwell's work are evidence of the freedom, which these conversations have: no subject too poignant, with a playful eye turned towards ridiculousness.

The art supplies, themselves, often begin the activation with the marks of their own history. Between universities and neon sign factories, Rockwell frequents all the best dumpsters in town, gleaning junked computers, rolls of industrial paper, grates and grills for use as stencils, etc., etc... He and I once got hired to demolish the third floor of a burned up house, coming out of the deal with scorched panels, wires, dog tags, and metal shards: art supplies with an attitude.

We also cleaned a storage shed once, and came out of that deal with an antique sewing machine. Most of his recent paintings on canvas were cut up and resewn together along with pieces of fabric and wires, imbedding activation deep in the surface and blurring the line between painting and sculpture. Along with his mastery of spray paint stenciling, these new sewing and textile techniques have helped Rockwell raise the bar in mixed-media painting by rendering figures and textures that speak louder than these words ever could...

--Yuri Zupancic,





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featured in the PRESENTMAGAZINE gallery

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SHOWS:Currently @ the BOURGEOIS PIG. Lawrence, KS.

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photos by LUKE BENDER and Jeremy Stephenson