If I told you I worked in series, how many pieces would you imagine I’m herding along? Let’s just say, I can’t conceive of working on one thing at a time, start to finish, let alone just one series. That is just ONE of the many piles in progress. It’s no wonder they take years to resolve — I just can’t get to them all fast enough in turn!

At the studio, I recently hung some work with multiple years of additions and subtractions: my Analog Aerials project. These are grid-like compositions with loads of texture; I’d love to keep going. How about I continue the theme into a digital series? Well, that’s the plan, at least. Here’s one original, left, with some digital edits, right:

In addition to the work I finally titled and hung, I have some starts and trials, from when I abandoned sketchbooks and started working on loose pieces of mixed-media paper. Here’s one progression, from newest to oldest:

Each of these loose pieces of paper makes its way from the “under consideration” pile, to “needs more detail” aka the collage pile, then to “needs less detail”, also known as the print-over-it pile, and back again. The piles feel tall enough to topple; I struggle to keep them contained. But I want to give each piece its due, and develop that sense of age and history with each printing layer, collage layer, or removal. And yet, I’d so like to be DONE.

Because I’m not just working on these many, many pieces. I’m also working on series: more minimal compositions, abstracted landscapes in various forms, and the Rectangles project, in its own pile at the studio, awaiting a new form, both physically and digitally.

And yet, isn’t that the definition of art in general? Isn’t the process a work in progress itself? It’s a form of continuous improvement, a spiral that cycles back through forms and palettes. The struggle is in finding the dividing lines: where are the series separated? When does one series finish and another start? And where can I call maybe a few pieces done, if not a full series? Frustrating as it may be to this completion-loving human, it’s a delightful problem to have.