THE EVOLUTION OF BEING INVISIBLE

*This is something I had written about my work fall of 2019. Because of COVID, I think something of this has changed for me. The busy pace of things before COVID made being invisible a luxury, now being invisible feels like indifference.

To be invisible is easy, just stay in place, don’t move, watch the world go by. It’s a noble thing to be filling in the landscape in an altruistic state of quiet.  

These are symbols of local history, or a place that everyone knows, and no one sees. Slowly being erased over time, covered by weeds, and unique for its unkept nature. Who cares if the place looks messy, no one sees anyway.  It’s like standing on the corner of the one main road through town, yet you are invisible.  

I work to expose the sense of place and the uniqueness of the everyday that lives among us. Lines, paint and a surface that contorts like topography, to bring the invisible into view.  

To me it’s the beauty of the past, a place that no one visits, a forgotten gem, or a ramshackle wreck that is alluring. A canvas of physicality with areas of transparency, as though you can see through the work, to the lines, to the beginning, such as the grass in Green Pond, or the fading lines of the birds.  

I reconnoiter what our everyday travels glaze over but not as loneliness and isolation. Being invisible isn’t about being non-existent but is an expression of being part of the fabric of the local.