Paul Shore
515 West 110th St., #3C
New York, NY 10025
212-749-3779

Some Notes About Funnels & Braids:

My initial attraction to funnels was that they embody both male and female qualities. My work prior to this time had been figurative, usually intimate in nature, sometimes erotic. I incorporate these traits by anthropomorphizing the funnels.

The funnels examine the nature of flow, with particular regards to the body and its fluids. I'm interested in blood and sometimes reference menstrual blood. The aesthetics of it alone overwhelm me. The power of the forces at work. The touch, the smell. The blood that signals life, screams potential while weeping of loss.

In attempts to translate the idea of flow from drawings into sculptural form, I used torn paper as streamers through the funnels. When I began braiding the paper the outpouring more closely resembled laminar flow. Slowly my focus changed from the funnel forms to the flow itself. The shift to braids had begun. And as the braids became more solid, they too took on body references.

The blood in the drawings and sculptures is my own. For over a year I used a lancet to prick a finger and collect the blood in a shot glass. Now a friend who is a doctor draws my blood into tubes that I store in the refrigerator. An awareness that informs the work directly relates to the fact that the blood is hard to get. Not that I am always spare with it, but I am always aware of its precious quality.

The use of blood has reinforced my understanding and projection of myself as a temporal being. As opposed to Renaissance paintings that emphasize an upward compositional structure, my funnel sculptures and drawings convey a sense of downward flow and terrestrial rootedness.

Transitional states and moments of change have always intrigued me. The charged nature of these events or states of mind generates excitement and anxiety. The funnel serves as a metaphor for transition. You cannot be stationary in a funnel. Its entire purpose is to act as a link in the midst of change. And in doing so, it serves as both guide and witness to the resulting transformation.

Paul Shore,