Kelcey Christen​

when I remember my spine, i run and i run, 2025. ​​

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The grid is a structure made by humans to create order. This sterile, logical, seemingly equal invention was made to be a system order for the world to fall into. On the contrary, these socially constructed systems have been crafted in ways that let some people break out of the grid. I am thinking about the grid as a structure, but also as a repetition and meditation of having things repeat over and over again. Within this realm, I am looking at actions I participate in that have a rhythm of meditational repetition that goes against the white man’s idea of order. I am thinking about weeding and gardening as an act of resistance and thinking about what Bell Hooks says about the margins being a place for resistance. This undesired action of mending and weeding a garden is essential. There is a strengthening that comes from weeding in body, mind, and spirit. I’m thinking about the repetitive tending to, mending of, and strengthening of the garden and the labor that goes into that humble act. Thinking about a continual, slow strengthening of one’s own world without a payout. The straight, perfect grids created to sustain order are not the only recollections of order in our world. I notice natural grids everywhere– natural separation and breaking into order, natural grids created in trees, mycelium, roots, biology, etc. These seemingly chaotic grids make sense and sustain life without the need for strict order and containment.  

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I’ve been working through the idea of true recording and using drawing to transcribe a moment I experienced. I think even though the intersection of AI and art makes me sick, and I have avoided even trying to process this weird invasion of creativity, the conflict has drifted into my work. I think part of the reason I love to slowly record the natural grids and their tensions between the man-made artificial grids is because drawing the natural patterns is a sort of conversation. A listen and response. It's not about perfectly recording an exact image that I am drawn to; it's the conversation of me observing it and recording it at this time. It’s incredibly forgiving– In this insane time of change, it's a meditation on observing a constant. I think AI’s invasion of the art world (separate from being a tool in installations and research) is alarming when it is told to create art or work that takes the artists out of the equation. My anger and repulsion of the artificial grid have to do with the Western idea of having an urge to control. It intersects with many different ideas I’ve been thinking about– labor, craft/art, light/ exposure, cleansing/dirtying, gardening/ weeding, rhythm, etc. 

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My work sheds light on the importance of slowness and deep looking through the lens of repeated meditations. In thinking about light, my work exposes both the western, systemic, grid-like social structure, and the physical, man-made grids I observe day to day. Perfect straight lines are made to create order in a repeated equal shape– in theory, structuring the world into order. My work examines this Western need for control and how it intersects with natural organic networks. It illuminates a rhythm and a constant in naturally occurring repetitions and how it is more beautiful, resilient, and forgiving when you let life have its own will. My work examines how there can be chaos in order and order in chaos. Through many different processes and investigations of material, my drawings work at taking time to process systems that are out of our hands.