Comb Crate

Artist Gay Outlaw is recognized for her rigorous and unexpected explorations of material—from printmaking and photography to sculpture made of wood, glass, caramelized sugar, and bronze. Gay Outlaw's work in photography and sculpture explores form through structure, pattern and translation. Her process often begins with a form from one of her photographs. In 2003, we invited Outlaw to produce an edition of mixed media prints that extended this inquiry. These works stem from the artist's use of photography to record images that strike her in the course of her day. The series she explores here involves unintentional diptychs—sequential images that accumulate in her camera over time. The double-images are scanned and printed as a ground for the silkscreen process that follows. Outlaw creates screens to mask out all but certain areas of the print so as to draw a more concise relationship between the two images for the viewer.

"What is so intriguing about Outlaw's work—whether in sculpture or photography—is how she synthesizes her disparate vocabulary of forms, materials, volumes, and surfaces to create a visual language at once coherent, particular, and indeed exquisite."