Yves Klein used his body. Pollock his shoulder. Agnes Martin the elbow. Morandi and Michaux the wrist. Bruce Marden his five fingers, Tom Marioni one finger, Jacob El Hanani his fingertips -- I basically use my brain to draw.
Artist’s statement
I have always admired calligraphy, sketches, drawings, etchings for these works show so clearly not only the artist’s hand but also the eye, the mind guiding it. I have always loved drawings and loved to draw. Also for twenty years, I have been in a personal endeavor to create a new kind of drawings, drawings where my mind or my eyes or my hand would no longer be a limit. Drawings that would not be constrained by fatigue, cramps, inaccuracies, distraction or the limits of time. Drawings where new levels of imagination, patience, surprise and desire would become possible.
To conceive and produce these drawings I have studied the micro gestures drawings are made of and I have created and tamed tracing devices to handle them for me. As Victor Vasarely or Sol Lewitt did instruct their helpers, I pair the creative concept behind each piece with the necessary instructions for the helpers I employ to produce it.
My helpers are tools & devices, not people. My helping devices are balls, magnets, pendulums, plotters, smart motors, spinners, syringes, teflon tubes, tops, water, wires combined and driven by natural forces or by software. I write the latter myself, using many of the paradigms found in nature for the creation of shapes. This is how my abstractions often inherit their organic character.
My material is the line, the thread, the filament my tools can trace. My favorite medium is pen and ink or graphite on paper. Sometimes I may trace these lines into sand, or wood, or etching plates; or align blobs, drips, drops, or use a brush. Often I add hand marks of some sort.
I like the works of Max Bill, William Blake, Fan K’uan, Helaman Ferguson, Jacob El Hanani, Paul Klee, Agnes Martin, Henri Michaux, Mi-Fu, Piet Mondrian, Robert Motherwell, James Siena, Yves Tanguy, Mark Tobey, Wols, and many others. I am interested in the plays of concept, time and ephemerality in art. I read Jorge Luis Borges and Umberto Eco.
Jean-Pierre Hébert, Santa Barbara, October 2002.
http://hebert.kitp.ucsb.edu/ and http://dam.org/hebert/