Collective Ruminations (2019 - Present)
Archival Pigment Prints

In a world filled with distractions and uncertainties, Collective Ruminations represents a sense of simplicity and balance. In this series, white on white shadow narratives portray memory, contemplation, spatial ambiguity, perception, circumspection and curiosity.

 For Collective Ruminations, Grant juxtaposes infinite white patterns (both natural and fabricated) with historic illustrations that evoke multiple meanings similar to meditative states where active thoughts and tranquility co-exist. These juxtapositions reflect the artists lifelong fascination with meditation and childhood memories of pictographs and simple line drawings from the dictionary that evoked a pictorial language of wordless narratives. 

In creating the images that make up Collective Ruminations, Grant portrays a sustained attentiveness and sense of natural order. The technique of juxtaposing pattern and illustration generates a conflict between perception and cognition, what one sees and what one knows. Grant’s interest in myth, memory and metaphor as well as the science of neural pathways is ever present in this work. As one contemplates the deeper meaning of these juxtapositions, there is complexity in the apparent sense of quiet serenity.

 Inspiration and resources for the series include images Grant fabricated in her Dallas studio and images made on locations in the USA, Europe, China, and Japan. Historic image sources, many of which are from the 1800’s and some well into the 1940’s, include old dictionaries, medical books, patent drawings, encyclopedias, atlas’s, instruction manuals, and catalogs.

Acquisitions
For Acquisitions & Exhibitions Contact
Conduit Gallery or Susan kae Grant