J Parker Valentine

Jason [Schmidt] had taken a complex shot of the entire studio with me sitting in the middle of it, and we were certain that was the one. Then he brought my attention to this more direct and active representation of my studio and me. Here you see a few works for Frieze Frame that I recently finished while in residence at Artpace, San Antonio. I'm lifting a double-sided print. The same image is printed back and front, but offset, and the paper is transparent, so the images merge but are just off symmetrical. Behind me are sculptures of lariats on steel supports. Although synonyms, I think of lariat and lasso as being distinct iterations of the same object. The lariat, to me, is the stable, rigid rope, and the lasso is the active form in space. Maybe these works exist somewhere in between, but cowboys just call 'em ropes.