AMES FINNEY

In time spent across Portland, OR, Chicago, Brooklyn and now the mountains of Western North Carolina, Ames has curated a collection of his own works as well as constantly championed inspirations—which have taken the form of a CD-R magazine, podcasting + a music and illustration blog.

Ames’ roots are in illustration and life-drawing (his focus at SAIC). Over the last decade, he’s embraced brush and ink drawing as a primary outlet.

Artist Statement- The nature of Slippery Geometry is an exercise in futility, by design. One could say, half-joking, that makes an excellent metaphor for life. Centrally, it’s a collection of single-material works of layered geometric repetitions–aiming to be an even field, with no single focal point. Instead, each piece is infinitely divisible into sub-compositions as the eye moves around the work. The wet materials defy precision, but add nuance, complicating the delineations.

In practice, it borrows freely from multiple 20th century movements that rarely crossed paths: the rigorous shape play of Op Art, the gestural freedom of Abstract Expressionism and the textured tones of Color-Field paintings.

Slippery Geometry is a well established but flexible concept that has grown into separate sub-categories, broken out by material. Each series finds its own voice within the whole, while staying true to the core idea. Now that the vocabulary is defined, and expanded, there’s new room to experiment: seeing if the work retains its essential nature if one part or principle is disregarded or altered—keeping it an ongoing body of work.