When gazing upon “Seeing i”, one sees i. I see i.

i is seen, by me.

When looking at the piece, one sees not just i, but a surrounding field of texture. i seems to float, fuzzy and distant. There is more to i than meets the eye, you might say.

i is not clear to see. One has to wonder why I chose the letter i.

i looks like a body. i looks like a figure. i even looks like me. I chose i through a process of erasure. I started out with a page of text and boiled it down all the way to the individual pixels of data. All the way down to the raw information. And along the way, I settled on i.

I saw i, and I chose i.

i became more than just a letter, a signifier of the self. It became a manifestation. Another sort of being. i managed to transcend itself through the act of being abstracted and presented as an object or an image.

Perhaps subconsciously I thought of i as representing me, or a being, or a generalized ego existing in the world and being subsumed in the bottomless ocean of sensorial input. The i floats in a sea of pixelated sense information, its outer skin like a semi-permeable membrane.

It’s interesting to think about what others see when they see i. Do they see themselves? Do they see me? Or do they see no one in particular?

When you look closely, you’ll see the pixels aren’t square.

Screen-printed enamel on sheet glass

11” x 17” x 2”

2024