Resolute Unknown

 Hello, I'm Jeremy Grant, and I'd like to tell you a little about my piece, the Resolute Unknown. I began this piece by building a rectangular wood panel, sturdy, simple, plain, and I immediately took that panel and cut it into slices with a saw. I was looking to capture some of the spontaneity of my collage process in a dimensionalized form.

I took those slices and I rearranged and assembled them into a stack that I liked, that I felt held a sort of precarious balance. I assembled them, firmed them up, gave them a new backing, and then I cut through that new surface of the stacked panel and I cut a winding line into the surface to reveal a collage that I created behind it.

You've probably noticed there are many winding lines in my work. Those lines often evoke the paths of rivers, which is understandable because I was a whitewater guide for seven seasons. I lived in a tent by the river each day becoming infinitesimally more acquainted with the same stretch of water day in, day out. And even now, many years later rivers still feel like they're in my DNA.

But for me, the lines of my artwork are not specific references or places. They're not maps necessarily of a, of a particular place. They're more about a movement, a feeling, a journeying. I have equally welcome references of associations around branches and topography, or some people have even said the boroughs of insects. I think those are all really interesting.

Many times for me, the lines in my work are about mental mapping. It's about what do we do when we come to the end of our understanding. Are we turning back to the familiar and forcing the future to conform to our previous understandings, or are we continuing to add to our maps?

Are we continuing to embrace the unknown?