Tad Mike

Is there anyone who hasn’t enjoyed making an abstract drawing — an elaborate classroom doodle, a Spirograph masterpiece, a tic-tac-toe game? Marking up a blank piece of paper, even in these pixel-fixated times, seems an inherently human activity. But the stunning new exhibition of abstract — or mostly abstract — drawings at the Katonah Museum of Art reveals the elements of the sublime in this sometimes mundane pursuit...

Diana Knoblauch: Can you tell me about the artistic process of these two drawings?

Tad Mike: Each work needs to be about a place. In New York City I work in Inwood Hill Park, a beautiful forest really. The works in this exhibition were created while I was an artist-in-residence at the Robert M. MacNamara Foundation on Westport Island, Maine. It was a perfect landscape to create work with wonderful people working there on your behalf...

Tad Mike walks in wooded areas, such as the Maine woods and Florida forests. He picks up bits of organic matter as he walks. Using what he finds, these accumulations become mark-making tools. He likens his selection to combing a beach for shells – one shell sparkles, sings out, is swooped up. What impulse determines this particular selection?