The Geometry of Silence

Silence is not the absence of a line. It is the part of the page that has not yet agreed to become one.

I used to fill every plane. A fear of blankness that masqueraded as rigor — more edges, more faces, more proof that work had occurred. The objects got louder and said less. What they needed was a withheld vertex.

In the studio the window does most of the drawing. Late light crosses an icosahedron and twenty triangles take turns being the subject. For one hour the object is a sundial of itself. Then the light leaves, and what remains is the memory of which face was quiet.

I am trying to write the way that light writes: one plane at a time, and never all of them.

The sentence, too, has a silhouette. Cut a clause and the remaining air becomes structural. White space is not rest. It is load-bearing.

When I sand plaster I am listening for the moment the form stops asking for more. That moment is geometric. It has a measure, even if I cannot name the unit. The work is finished when the silence around it can hold its own shape.