side, and I will literally climb up on a ladder,
mix buckets of paint, and heave them onto the
paper and just let them dry how they will.
AT: Why did you choose to paint on mylar for
these?
JF: I like its association with architectural
presentation drawings. If you go to shows, say,
of the architecture department of Museum of
Modern Art you’ll see that architects working
during the early to middle part of the 20th
century used mylar to make their presentation
drawings—often, almost at this scale, a big
concept drawing of what they’re trying to
achieve.
It’s a material that allows you to work very
wet, because it accepts wet and dry medium—
but only reluctantly, and I like the resistance
that it provides.
Also, I like the transparency of it, because
part of this project is to balance the solidity
of the detector, which is this hulking
machinery, with this ephemeral explosion
that’s happening—to equate those two layers.
Also, my signature style, which I used for the
previous series, involved a lot of transparent
layers of acrylic paint. Using mylar gives me a
lot of formal possibilities in terms of painting
on the front and the back sides, and the ability
to do an isolation layer.
AT: I read in one of your artist statements that
you envisioned the collider as a cathedral, and
this made me think of stained-glass windows.
JF: Yes, there is that reference. There’ 2F