These are layerings that are done so many times, it creates a solid object that can then be cut. That is, I layer an object with paint over and over and then it is sliced. This shows in inside negative space of a flower, for example. The mere air within a "valueless" object is shown to be something of immense beauty.
My work has evolved to be something like it was, but radically different. Several decades ago, I did simple layerings, planes. I think I was the first artist to do them intentionally (fordite, which I was unaware of when I first did my planar layers was created unintentionally).
But I came to do these solid layerings again after considering what objects where and wanting to "hold the world in my hand" -- coming "as close as the air".
So, doing this process shows the beauty that is often invisible. It seems to have taken the creation of the plastics industry for us to perhaps truly learn this. Thus, these works are the actual Purpose of the Petroleum Age.
They are “Be That Empty”.
Acrylic. Hydrangia invisibly present.
Acrylic.
This is one of the few surviving pieces from my having done work in the late 1980s.
Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches. Snow, invisibly present.
Acrylic on paper; snow as catalyst.
Acrylic on paper; snow as catalyst
Acrylic on canvas, 40 x 30 inches.
Acrylic on paper
June 22, 2017
Acrylic on paper with flora, body of bird and possum invisibly present.
Acrylic on paper with flora
Watercolor on paper
Done at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center.
Done at Pyramid Atlantic Art Center.
Conceived of in late 1980s, finally executed in human scale in 2006 at the Albany Bulb in California. See more photos and video of chame. Here is related work.
Chame: chair and frame; connected with metal, wood and stone, often covered in barnacles.
This was a photo series done in 2007. It got some coverage in 2017 when the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority had workers paint the Union Station metro walls. Rachel Sadon wrote in DCist: "Architects, Artists Weigh In On The Metro Paint Brouhaha": "In an email to DCist, Metro spokesman Dan Stessel counters that 'if anything, [paint] makes removal of dirt easier.'
"For artist Sam Husseini, that's exactly the problem.
"'Nature asserts itself and we keep pretending that it doesn't,' he says. 'I certainly understand keeping the structural integrity of the trains, but there's this wanting to cover up the fact of nature, and it's childish. It's a way of pretending that you control things that you don't or can't.'
"He's found such beauty in the striations and growth on the walls that he undertook a personal photography project to document them about a decade ago, calling it 'Concrete Expressionism.'
"In the abstractions on Metro's walls, he sees shades of the works of Sam Gilliam, Joseph Turner, and Clyfford Still. The Mt. Vernon station particularly reminds him of Rothko's Chapel. 'The walls are beautiful,' he says. 'People should actually look at them.'..."