Jeff Mayry. Dream House. 2018
My process is boredom. I have art ADD. In my work I always feel like I need to go all over the place cramming as many diverse marks and forms as I can into a composition. This installation is the opposite and a result of a very conscious effort to focus on one main pattern, that I repeated on 60 large sheets of paper. It was very gratifying for me to repeat this pattern over and over, as opposed to the way I normally work, where I am usually going out of my way to get in the way of myself, which is often a very dizzying experience where I feel as though I get very desperate for something to reveal itself. My pattern drawings were very straight forward and calming for me internally. Aesthetically they are fluid, calligraphic, and gestural. After completing the drawings I decided to chop each sheet into 8 pieces to be reassembled in the space; a logical way to disrupt the pattern while still furthering its potential. On the ground of the installation there is a little tiger that I made out of Bristol paper. I do not know why I chose to make the tiger, but in the moment I felt like I wanted to do so. Accompanying the tiger is a skittles wrapper and an empty lemon head’s box. I left the wrappers in the space because I ate them while I was constructing the installation.
I make things because I enjoy making them, but also because I simply do not know what else to do. Over the years my creative practice has become so engrained in who I am that I do not know what I would do without it. I have become so attached to making things that it is a part of my existence, identity, and the way that I experience and interact with the world. I develop my work without any true aim in hopes that it will be an extension and an expression of my inner logic, and my inner life.