So I work a lot with patterns and with many types of patterns. One of the most obvious is references to quilt squares. I have an encyclopedia of quilt patterns from Barbara Brackman that I look at a lot and I also collect vintage quilters magazines. Often I'll take a certain square and I draw that as the base for the main shapes in my patterns. Then within that pattern I create other patterns. So I make choices like putting in little squiggly lines, dots, or squares. They are all patterns within patterns.
I’m also referencing game boards like parcheesi or checkers. I’m also looking at patterns from the pattern and decoration movement, textiles, and wallpaper. I think a lot about wallpaper patterns and their endless repeats. I’ll create meditative patterns and endless repeats that come off the page on one side and continue on the opposite side. I initially started thinking in that way when I was thinking about arcade game space. So for example, how it was such a huge deal that Pac Man could leave one side of the screen and return on the other. How that relates to a flattened sense of space and maps. I think of these as a type of abstract map. When you think about a map of the world, it's a globe yet we’ve presented in this flattened way. And thinking about how what is depicted as larger or smaller are actually not accurately represented. And that interesting sense of space is something I’m trying to get at.
