Sydney Cash • Japonese Hand, 2022

Todd Weinstein • Covid Glove State Street, Brooklyn, NY, 2021

…………………………

I've always had a passion to explore the potential and the possibilities of materials and images. Much of my creative life in the last 20 years has been in relationship to black and white linear patterns. Most recently, I discovered that sections of the fine line engraved designs that create imagery in the etchings from the 19th century, look very much like the larger patterns that I've been working with, in both paintings in sculpture.

I do believe that in a past life in the 19th century, I was one of these Craftsman, who engraved the copper plates used for printing etchings. The know-hows from that experience, enhances my capabilities in this lifetime.

Sydney Cash

About the Japanese sculpture photographic images that I’ve been working with from the book: Masterpieces of Japanese Sculpture. This book was printed in the early 1950’s, in large format (13” x 10”), in black & white, using the Rotogravure printing process.

I've been working with these photos for four months. I initially I cut out a page from the book. and drew over the image with white pencils, black pens, and white pastels. More recently I have begun to cut out the sculptural image from the page. Then apply subtle coloration with chalk pastel powders and Q-tips. The cut-out is mounted onto a strengthening matching piece of matboard. This now, object, is then hung by a thread which is cleverly formed over several nails projecting from the wall, into a rectangle or another shape above the object image. There may be 1/2 inch or an inch between the hanging cut-out image and the plane of the wall. The shadows created, enhance the sense of object-ness.

My work has shifted the sculpture from being part of a photographer’s picture, to being an object with its own identity and characteristics.

I'm not just looking at the sculpture, I'm working with the image of the sculpture. Sometimes working with the piece for hours over days and weeks. Tonight, I’ve been experiencing a deep-seeing, that includes a sense of connection and communion with the original creator of the sculpture. A kind of primal artist-to-artist connection and dialogue where I’m fully present and in some way, alive with the original maker.  It's like how the soul can instantaneously connect with another soul where-ever and when-ever. It's subtle and real, and I know about that experience from my earlier work with the Remastered Portraits, work that was made by others, decades and centuries ago. I don't believe that this experience is something that can arise by just looking at an art object for minutes. This is the fruit of a dedication, an awareness, a recontextualizing and experimentation with seeing; qualities developed over the lifetime of my artistic practice.  

Sydney Cash January 1, 2021