Mari Marks: A Reflection
By Terri Cohn
(Terri Cohn is a San Francisco based writer, curator,
and art historian. She has been a contributing editor to Artweek since 1988,
and her writings have appeared in numerous other publications including Sculpture,
Release Print, Art Papers, New Art Examiner, and Camerawork. She has written
and lectured extensively about Conceptual art and new genre public art, and
contributed a chapter to Women Artists of the American West (McFarland &
Co., Inc., 2003)
Mari Marks encaustic and mixed media works consistently evoke a sense
of suspended time. Marks employs the plastic qualities and translucent properties
of wax as a medium in which to form textures and suspend materials and pigments
in ways that elicit memory.
In her earlier series such as Intervals and Of Time, Nature, and the Space
Between, Marks embedded ginko leaves and other natural elements in layers
of beeswax and pigment as means to create compositions of rhythmic regularity,
and to induce a quality of recollection. Her choice of the ginko leaf
to symbolize memory is materially matched by the way she floats these elements
in the liminal space between surface and ground; vitality and decay. Marks
creates a quality of golden luminescence with layers of wax, which diffuse
and refract the light. This captures a mood that suggests discrete
experiences of time, place, and emotional resonance that have a parallel with
natural phenomena and cycles. She explains her interest in working this
way as, "nature heals and sustains me."
Marks' recent Sedimentary Series reveals her continuing interest in natural
materials and their expressive potentials. It simultaneously suggests
her move away from more fragile and ephemeral elements and attraction to
such earth based elements as graphite and soil. She uses these materials--graphite,
red brick clay granules, ashes, and asphalt--as finely ground substances,
suspended in solutions of denatured alcohol, water, and citrus solvent that
are applied and allowed to dry. Then she uses heat and light to manipulate
these mediums, which results in patterns of melting and flow. The more
minimal compositions, such as Quartet, reveal her attraction to fundamental
textural exploration and mark making. In others, like the diptych Nocturne,
Marks suggests the duality of landscape over time as it moves from dark
and scabrous to luminous and delicately incised. With its juxtaposition
of convoluted and simple planes and transition from accumulation to pared
down, this work also reveals Marks' sculptural interests.
The Sediments and Circles portion of this series is alternately assertive
and somber, depending on her use of color and the viscosity of the wax. Each
segment of the gridded composition contains a textured circle, created with
heat held in place until the wax flows. Some, like Sediments and Circles
- Red, are bold and playful, while others like Sedimentary Series - Graphite
and Sediments and Circles-Natural, suggest celestial or microscopic worlds.
Marks describes how her work in this series was influenced by the events
of 9/11, and how the layers of small particles that comprise these paintings
suggest what is lost and what remains. It is meaningful that such manmade
disaster is paralleled in the natural processes that create Marks' primary
materials and form the core of her work. Her media and creative process
become metaphors for her sense of personal affinity with the solidity yet
ever shifting disposition of nature's materials and cycles.
Terri Cohn, 2005