BLAKE SENINI - Statement

   Last summer I started work on a new piece that, like most of my recent pieces and ideas, begin with no particular image or intention in mind. Developing from the shape of a stain I found on the floor of my studio I ended up with a rather large drawing, which I intended to use as a template to guide me in the fabrication of this piece. I do not know why I decided to stain the piece red at that time and to be honest I still can not remember why it is red, it may have had something to do with blood. I decided I wanted the larger element of the piece to be suspended and slightly moving as the smaller floor element would of course be motionless and a mirror image of the larger piece. I also do not remember why I chose to do this but it may have something to do with my interest in opposites.

One day about mid-way into September of the same year I was looking at images coming out from Burma of the Buddhist monks protest marches. One of the images kind of grabbed my interest so after printing it out I went out to the studio to pin it up. To my delight the image matched perfectly to the drawing I had produced a month earlier that was derived from the floor - stain. The color red now mimicked the red of the monks robes the mirrored effect of the two forms was replicated in the crowd of monks against the temple building in the photograph, even the movement and fragility of a suspended object reflected the tension I felt when looking at this photograph and the situation of these monks.

    This is how the finished work entitled; ` We are all in the Same Air` came to be. I liked the piece and the title so much I decided to do a series of five pieces that share the same concerns both formally and conceptually. This last body of work was recently exhibited together under that same title, `We are all in the Same Air`.