Things that

Abstract

This thesis explores the artistic practice of the author by investigating selected art work she has produced within the last nine years. The writing avoids explaining, and instead aims to share with the reader by exploring how divided attention has been a major topic of research for her visual art practice. Recurring forms in her practice are investigated: repetition, circling, tracing, and listing. The writing emphasizes process over final product. This acknowledges that ideas about the work, and the work itself, change in the process of creation, and when put into association with a larger body of artwork. By discussing her own work along side the work of other artists, writers and theorists, the thesis explores a process of "attending to things" through an art practice. How can one's attention be absorbed by, reflective of, or projected into objects being studied? How might these different configurations between subject and object cause a conceptual erasure of the observer, or the object of study? The artist is absorbed by the objects she observes when she conforms her body and her attention to their specificity. Her process reflects the world as she samples and gathers empirical evidence using various digital tools. She projects her own ideas into objects as she attempts to describe; this process effectively erases what is unknown and unfamiliar about them.