Drawing From The Creative Unconscious. Work with what you do not know, to create what you know.
My work centers in space, a space between space really. The lines I create consider synaptic clefts, spaces between neurons in the brain. A seemingly empty, yet vital field that allows neurons to communicate with each other at the subtlest level. Due to this elemental (subtle) occurrence, we are able to experience realities of varying degrees at the material (gross) level. The work I create investigates this process.
I consider my work as action based studies, which use the dominant and non-dominant hand to facilitate an activation of the right and left side of the brain. This is done in order to develop conscious awareness of thought itself and to study the process of how thought (element) becomes reality (material). Each piece is a case study illustrating ‘action potentials’ (thoughts) being transmitted from one neuron to the next through a process called neurotransmission. This world, exists in a space that is approximately 20-40 nano-meters (nm) wide. For an idea of scale, one inch is about 25.4 million nm long.
It is small, but vast. If it were not for this space, communication and reality as we know it, would cease to exist.
This nano-reality, is currently being investigated by particle and theoretical physicists through the studies of (Super) ‘String Theory’, (M-Theory), and particle physics. It has also been observed and practiced in the yogic traditions for centuries. What has been known/felt through the experience of spiritual practice and pseudo science (subtle), is now in the process of being quantified by hard science and technology (gross).
Scientists are working on quantifying space as an element we can not only feel, but use. It is an element that has always surrounded us but has not been known or understood by most, much like fish in water. They are surrounded by it but not entirely conscious of its existence or potential. Space is the building block of everything. After all, “The world is space, with stuff in it.”(Craig Hogan [no relation], University of Chicago.)
That ‘stuff’ is made simply, of vibration. Vibration that creates a particle. A particle that creates a line. A line that creates communication and communication that creates reality. This is what my work studies.
Space is not always something you can see, but it is something you can feel, something you can know. As you close your eyes, stretch out your arms, and spin, you can not see what you are spinning in yet, you know it is space. You can not see your arms stretched out, you just know they are. You know this because you can feel it. This is where my work resides. In conscious thought, and known feeling, space. A world so often unseen and seldom felt.
I believe, through practice and provided space, one can begin to ‘see’, feel and know this subtle field and learn to communicate through it with a simple line. My hypothesis, is that the neurotransmission (communication) that occurs at this subtle level, is fundamental to understanding how subject (thought) turns to object (reality). It is through a constant stream of vibrations, flowing from one neuron to the next, communicating internally to create what we externally experience. I believe we occupy this field of vibrational strings, my work as an artist illustrates what I understand this space to look like. Currents of lines, creating a cohesive material that form the fabrics of our universe. Seemingly invisible but very much present and real. As Einstein investigated The theory of Relativity through what he called “Thought Experiments”, I investigate the fabric of space through what I call “Thought Illustrations”.
Space is water we can breathe in. I am simply illustrating what it looks like and investigating how it works.
Enjoy.
Laura Hogan 