Pixel Rug Drawing Summer 2021 - 02

PIXEL RUGS by Travess Smalley is a series of pen plotter drawings on paper.

like an icon,
like a punch card weaving,
like an LCD screen,
like a game asset,
like a rug in my minecraft house

Pixel drawings constructed in Photoshop. Scripted and subsequently rendered with a pen plotter in black ink on cream card stock paper. The drawings are letter size and warm. Drawn with a ball point pen, the impression in the paper shows irregularities. Some pen lines are darker, others lighter. The ink pools in certain spots. It fades in others. The drawings present the dogged mechanical consistency, precision, and symmetry of the pen plotter along with the errors or misalignments the artist and environment bring to that system. Much like a photocopier or a compressed jpg, the limitations of the pen plotter codes in new textures and new readings: topographical, corroded, and outlined.

Working with grids of pixels as small as 8 x 8, the works are experiments in pattern and repetition within the the tight black and white pixel constraint. As the project evolved the pixel density increased and resulted in more complex forms that still recall their gridded origin.

The drawings reference abstracted ideas of pixels that extends back thousands of years – a continuation of the pixel matrix from ancient mosaics to the animated game sprite.