I put physical objects to abstract use in visual poems, painting with toss-away materials that contain and substitute for pigment. Within what initially is thought of as disposable, the pigment fleetingly appears.

The preservable/disposable plastic bottles and bags that I use—modern artifacts—only partially shed their functional identity to serve as points, lines, areas, and volumes. I place these containers within the lineage of the adorned vessel. Historically, visual poetry sat upon and surrounded the vessel’s surface. I move it in, through, and around the surface by extending the principles of analytic cubism, as well as the work of Eva Hesse, Robert Morris, and others who painted with physical materials. Material, physical volume, and what is or is not contained must be accommodated or countermanded.

Making preservable visual poems that appear disposable counters the wasteful modern paradigm of planned obsolescence. Still, as in storytelling, each hanging loses and gains on retelling, and the ephemeral remains in particular experience.