This piece is part of an ongoing series sparked by a serendipitous accident. While making work for the show in the dead of winter, the humidity caused the direct positive photo paper to curl, resulting in dog eared corners. This led me to experiment with folding the paper, creating mirrored images that resemble photographic Rorschach inkblots. By folding the paper vertically while photographing flower arrangements, I uncovered a connection between the Straw Inscription works and After Image.

Psychoanalytic themes were already present in the abstraction created by the straws and their distortion of the "poor image," but mirroring the forms allowed that abstraction to move toward transformation. In the top left, I see a dragon’s head, mouth open as if ready to breathe fire. On the right, I see the face of a samurai knight, his crested helmet and chin strap suggesting a worthy adversary. This work draws inspiration from the magical inkblot drawings of Bruce Conner, embracing chance and perception in the act of looking.