Kelsey Reiman
Reno, NV
http://www.kelseyreiman.com/

Snap to Grid
2022
Pressure prints on Kitakata Paper
6.125″ x 5.75″ x 2.125″ (closed box)

Artist Statement

Snap to Grid is an artist book and animation that employs real and arbitrary systems to explore the relationship between digital and analog processes and analytical and playful approaches. When closed, the book structure shows a series of squares that are stacked on top of each other, systemically rotating, changing in size, and shifting in color. When open, the book reveals a long accordion structure that is a linear representation of the animation. The animation was made in response to a musical composition written by Christopher Pierce which responds to the book structure. The animation shows a shape that is transforming while rotating and orbiting the center of a circle. It begins as an eight-pointed quilt star and gradually changes into other star and flower-like shapes inspired by decorative motifs.

Waves radiate from the circle’s center and spirographs populate the circle in response to a bell chiming in the music. Together these elements evoke ideas of planetary motion and waves of sound or light energy. The color of the image gradually transitions through a complete spectrum of colors. The persistence of vision that allows the viewer to see a series of frames as a smooth animation also impacts their perception of the color that they are seeing, depending on what was seen before and after. But the color also slightly flickers throughout the animation and exposes the imperfections in the printing. The title Snap to Grid refers to the fantasy of complete digital control and perfect adherence to a system. But the animation reveals the impossibility of humans acting as infallible machines and questions whether that is a worthwhile goal.

As an artist who works within the context of letterpress and book arts, I enjoy working within the constraints of these mediums, which are dictated by the machinery, processes, traditions, conventions, and rules of the mediums. I impose additional constraints onto my work by creating book structures that follow mathematical and geometric rules of my own making. I seek to find sets of rules that result in resolved outcomes and find comfort in being able to predict and control my work. But I also question what rules are real, which are arbitrary, which are superstitious, and if adherence to these rules ensures success or is instead detrimental. While I carefully engineer my book structures, I work with color more intuitively. I am interested in colors that glow, shift, and change depending on the light, the colors surrounding them, and the materials that they are printed on. I find beauty in the uncertainty of color. By juxtaposing an intuitive use of color with a rigid book structure, I hope to question my desire to control things in an unpredictable world, rather than seeing possibility in uncertainty.