Andrea Way   recent works on paper 19 november - 20 december, 2004 opening friday, 19 november, 7-9pm catalogue available     byzantium, 2004 30 x 22 inches ink on fabriano           byzantium (detail), 2004 30 x 22 inches ink on fabriano         half moon bay, 2004 26x 40 inches ink on arches           half moon bay (detail), 2004 26x 40 inches ink on arches           particular corner, 2003 30 x 44 inches ink on bfk           particular corner (detail), 2003 30 x 44 inches ink on bfk         webbed veil, 2004 22 x 30 inches ink on paper sold           string theory, 2004 22 x 30 inches ink on paper           canon, 2004 26 x 40 inches ink on arches         cathedral, 2004 30 x 22 inches ink on fabriano           cathedral (detail), 2004 26 x 40 inches ink on arches           chevron flight, 2004 14 x 20 inches ink on arches           colonial rule, 2004 22 x 30 inches ink on paper           piscean isle, 2004 22 x 30 inches ink on paper           piscean jewel, 2004 22 x 30 inches ink on fabriano     Catalogue essay:   Andrea Way's Dense Abstraction by Stephen Bennett Phillips, 2004 No art movement ever really informed my work that much. My work has always been about evolution. The one thing I know about life is that nothing stays the same. (Andrea Way)   From afar, Andrea Way's work is experienced as machine-generated reports, scientific data from distant planets, or microscopic views of cellular activity. Up close, the intricate systems by which the artist has mapped the features of her dense world are revealed in layers of amazing detail and in a geometry of circles, squares, arcs, and lines. Systems inform Way's work. Classically trained, she began to work in her present style in 1981, after the death of her father, a systems analyst. "What I wanted to do was create things based on systems and codes, the DNA strands of all life. The work is about...the nature of being in existence. It's an endless question because evolution doesn't stop." Critics and Way herself use the terms "rules" and "codes" to discuss her working method. But these terms connote a rigidity that is at odds with her working practice. Way likes patterns in nature, especially patterns that can only be seen from the air. Her starting point in her work is a series of systems combined with chance to produce unique overall patterning. The role of chance is to prevent her from fully anticipating the final visual outcome. There is no set rule for how the systems work. Once a satisfactory initial pattern, often a grid, is in place, Way embellishes it according to another set of systems, creating an intensely intricate web, superimposing layers and marks, such as circles and x's, each applied according to its own system, until the work is complete and the whole page is filled, leaving no unfinished white space. In the mid-1990's Way began to play with a Doodle Top (a top with a felt marker on the end) to apply ink to paper. She liked the process of spinning the top, the random way it applied the ink, as well as the outcome on the surface of the page. Most of all, she liked the automatism of the process. The expression of the natural world through the top's gyroscopic rotations seemed to her to be the ultimate natural process, paradoxically more natural than the manual work of a pen wielded by an artist. The Doodle Top was the starting point for a group of lively, loopy drawings, Spinning Light (2003), Canon (2003), and Chevron Flight (2004). In both Canon and Spinning Light, the Doodle Top marks created a dense, painterly ground layer of playful arcs. Onto this layer, Way drew a grid and developed a counting system for coloring in the squares. In Chevron Flight Way used the Doodle Top to create organic-looking spirals. Then she meticulously drew the chevron pattern in the white space between the spirals, creating a wonderfully joyful drawing. Way experienced a mixture of emotions following the death of her mother in 2003 after a long illness. Having devoted half her time to caring for her mother, Way's sadness was tempered by feelings of relief and liberation as she found herself able to concentrate on her artwork again. Her subsequent work is characterized by looser patterns. Cathedral (2004) was the first work she did after her mother's death. Way lives near the National Cathedral in Washington, D.C., and she can hear its carillons from her apartment. On one level Cathedral is about distant sounds, but on another it relates to her mother's passing. Way used watered down colored ink to draw free flowing stripes across the page. She applied the yellow to the remaining white areas of the paper. The transparent luminous colors give the work a mystical quality. Way is not a representational artist, but we sense the cathedral itself, a hulk in the background, far behind the patterned scrim. Half Moon Bay (2003), a flowing composition of rhythmic, swooping curves and crystalline surfaces contained by a rigorous grid, was inspired by the view of the Pacific from the window at her brother's house in California. With its glassy palette and lyrical lines, Eel River (2004) is a glorious evocation of the ocean. Like Half Moon Bay, the drawing started with horizontal patterns of colored waves, which look more like eels here, hence, its title. After superimposing a grid system, Way colored in the curving lines. The resulting eel forms have character, personality, and strength. They rise to the surface and the grid falls to the background. Little droplets of ink fill in all the free spaces, giving the work an organic and poetic quality. The palette and imagery of water are common to several of the works from this period. Piscean Jewel (2004) is one of the artist's favorites. The beginning layer is a hand-drawn grid. Then the artist put an "X" through each square and added concentric rings to each of the squares. After inking each square Way added lines in a zodiac-like web to the surface. Way consciously varies her working methods. Having created several works in the spirit of her mother, she reverted to making drawings using gravity pools, achieved by dropping ink in a pool of water on paper, a process she developed in 1997. The magnificent and playful Broken Ocean (2004) with its deep, rich, aqueous palette continues work Way created after her mother's death. Way made the big blue pools first, followed by the turquoise pools in the remaining space. Next she drew squares and inked them green before making pools of water on them and dropping white ink. On the top layer she drew three concentric rings of dots around all the blue gravity pools. She added thin blue lines with white dots that hook up across only the blues, stopping at the squares. Her rule was that nothing could travel across the squares. Two more splat pieces followed. Way made them by dropping ink out of a dropper some four feet above the paper. While some works involve only a few systems for applying elements, String Theory (2004) uses many. Uncomplicated in themselves, the systems create immense diversity and complexity when combined. Way started by dropping layers of undiluted black ink. She followed these with increasingly diluted layers, making the resulting spats lighter and lighter. Over the splats, she drew a grid. Next came the most time-consuming step, executing the pattern of coloring in the squares. A second beaded grid followed, and over it, a pattern of dots connected by straight lines. Way titled it String Theory, because it reminds her of the way astronomers map the universe in relation to clustered patterns. Like String Theory, Colonial Rule (2004) references the real world. Way began by creating splats of watered down brown and blue ink and, using a template, added turquoise circles to the spaces between the clusters of splats. Adding dots between all the splat marks in the negative space, Way was reminded of how things are colonized in nature, as well as in the human world. Colonizing species like to maintain contact with other members of their kind, so Way created three webs that connect the three different colored circles. The work can be read as relating to human interactions. Without a grid structure or connecting lines, Piscean Isle (2004) is somewhat anomalous in Way's recent body of work. After creating colored splat marks, Way drew amoeba-like shapes in the spaces between the splats. To add definition, she used a template to draw crisp circles around each splat, providing a contrast to the freeform edges of the shapes in the spaces between the circles and giving the work a dynamic visual tension. Then she inked the circles with vibrant colors, strengthening their presence. The final product looks like a map of the ocean floor or a microscopic view of a fluid sample. Way finds inspiration in unlikely places. She became intrigued by the crackle lines in a teacup and used them as the dominant elements in Cracked (2004) and Craqueleur (2004). The cracks adapted perfectly to her fascination with subdividing things and making each section unique. In Cracked the pattern is tight and mosaic-like, while Craqueleur looks more like a close up view, yielding larger spaces between the crackle lines. In One World (2003) and Byzantium (2004) the patterns radiate from a central point. The focus of One World is a dot in the lower left corner. Way drew concentric bands of dots, but as the bands got bigger, the dots turned into circles, eventually dissolving the concentric pull of the composition in the upper right section of the work. At a distance, the work looks like a slice of the cosmos or a solar system revolving around a gravitational field. After creating a counting system to guide her in coloring the circles, Way drew a series of lines or dotted lines, connecting the circles and breaking the potential stasis of the implied centrality of the composition. In Byzantium the web of activity radiates from the center of the picture. In creating the work, Way was consumed with drawing concentric rings around each dot on the paper. The rings overlap one another, creating an intense, vertiginous visual experience. For the final layer, she used white ink to draw a banding of concentric rings over the entire paper, outlining each section of color in white, giving it visual prominence and power. Way's choice of subjects and her multifaceted approach to her work reflect an abiding interest in diversity and evolution on a micro level as well as on a cosmic scale. Webbed Veil (2004), Way's most recent work, is exemplary in this regard. Setting herself a new problem in her quest for diversity in her methods, Way decided to construct a work using only vertical marks. To create strong vertical lines, she rolled the paper loosely, tied string around it, and dropped ink down the tube with an eyedropper. After hours of dropping rivulets of ink inside the tube and letting the paper dry, before dropping more ink, she finally achieved a dense layer of inked lines. Where white paper still showed between the lines of ink, Way filled in by hand with blue ink. She then created a top layer, a web of activity with intersecting dotted lines, solid white lines, blue dots with rings around them, all applied according to prescribed systems. The resulting clustering pattern reads against the background to produce a riveting tension between the surface and ground. Understanding Way's methods allows a better appreciation of her work. She is rooted in the present, and she relishes the rhythm of her work. A seeker in her life as in her art, Way is a Zen practitioner. Each mark she makes is a manifestation of her meditation practice. She spends hundreds of hours on every drawing. Each involves deliberate steps in the creation and solution of new problems. It is fair to say that in her artistic practice, Way finds analogues for her spiritual life. [This essay is based on conversations with the artist over the past several years and a formal interview in her studio in Washington, D.C. on Friday, August 27, 2004. Way's words quoted in this essay were first published in reviews by Ferdinand Protzman in the The Washington Post on September 30, 1995 and September 17, 1998.] "Andrea Way's Dense Abstraction," copyright Stephen Bennett Phillips
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