EMERGING RHYTHMS

By
Sarah Nordean
BEd, University of Victoria, 2000
BFA, Alberta College of Art + Design, 2009

A THESIS ESSAY SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE
REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF
MASTER OF APPLIED ARTS
in
Visual Arts

EMILY CARR UNIVERSITY OF ART + DESIGN
2014
© Sarah Nordean, 2014

ABSTRACT
Considering art as both a metaphor for place and a place in itself, this thesis project
investigates the organic and fabricated rhythms in everyday life and art making. The project’s
concern is the effect of repeating seemingly simple gestures associated with the minutiae of
everyday life. The rhythmic act of walking through place is a foundation and preliminary activity
for the resulting paintings, drawings, and sound work. Echoing the action of walking, the
rhythmic and temporal quality of music provides additional focus and inspiration. The works in
the project present place from an aerial view, and considering the writings of philosopher Michel
de Certeau, explore the complexities and tensions of representing absence, and creating intimacy
in spite of an alienating view. The writings of sociologist and philosopher Henri Lefebvre provide
a context for analyzing rhythms and noticing difference. Repetition in sound is considered as a
parallel to repetition in the visual. The music cognition researcher Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis
outlines the phenomenon of semantic satiation, which is used as analogy to analyze the rhythmic
nature of the work in the project.
The work of artists Mark Bradford, Richard Long, and Roman Opałka are drawn on
through their use of repetition, focus, and interactions with place. Artist Avis Newman’s writings
influence discussions of the nature of the unbound, unframed form of the work in the thesis
project. The unbound form of the work connects it back to notions of the everyday and its
incessant nature. An interest in the everyday informs the thrust of the work, indicating the aim of
the practice: to create work that eschews spectacle, elevates simplicity, and recognizes the
significance of the ordinary.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Abstract……………………………………

ii

Table of Contents…………………………

iii

List of Figures……………………………..

iv

Introduction……………………………….

1

Personal history: music and time………

2

Part 1: Pattern in Space and Time………..

4

Rhythm………………………………..

4

The everyday………………………….

6

Walking………………………………..

6

Part 2: Rhythm and Place…………………

9

Place……………………………………

9

The view from above…………………..

13

Intimacy………………………………..

16

Part 3: Rhythm and Focus………………..

18

Repetition………………………………

18

Walking Loops project.............................. 20
Walking Loops 1……………………….. 21
Walking Loops 2……………………….. 24
Ticks……………………………………

26

Conclusion………………………………..

34

Addendum………………………………

36

Graduate exhibition: Transactants…….

36

Works Cited……………………………….

38

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LIST OF FIGURES

Fig. 1

Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking……………………..

7

Fig. 2

Sarah Nordean, The Islands………………………………… 10

Fig. 3

Sarah Nordean, Bluff………………………………………. 11

Fig. 4

Sarah Nordean, Bluff (details)……………………………… 12

Fig. 5

Mark Bradford, Scorched Earth……………………………… 14

Fig. 6

Roman Opałka, Detail 1-35327 (detail),
from the series 1965 / 1 - ∞………………………………..

20

Fig. 7

Sarah Nordean, Walking Loops, Installation view…………

21

Fig. 8

Sarah Nordean, Walking Loops 1 (detail)……………………. 22

Fig. 9

Sarah Nordean, Walking Loops 1 (detail)……………………. 23

Fig. 10 Sarah Nordean, individual drawings from Ticks…………… 28
Fig. 11 Sarah Nordean, Ticks (1,678 minutes)………………………. 29
Fig. 12 Sarah Nordean, Ticks (detail)………………………………. 31
Fig. 13 Sarah Nordean, Keeping track………………………………..

32

Fig. 14 Sarah Nordean, Keeping track (detail)……………………….. 33
Fig. 15 Sarah Nordean, Ticks (5,404 minutes)……………………….. 36
Fig. 16 Sarah Nordean, Ticks(5,404 minutes) (detail)……………….. 37

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INTRODUCTION
Rhythm as a subject sits at the heart of my practice. My interest in rhythm has to do with
how it at once encompasses the natural and organic, as well as the mechanical and artificial.
Rhythm is the beat of the heart, the action of walking, the dripping of water, the cycles of the
tides and seasons; it is also the tick of a clock, the beat that propels music, our daily habits and
rituals, the grid of the city. French philosopher and sociologist Henri Lefebvre (1901-1991), who
analyzed everyday life and its component biological, and social rhythms, asserts that rhythms are
“simultaneously natural and rational, and neither one nor the other” (19). My practice deals with
this complicated idea of simultaneity and how it conflicts and interacts with notions of
temporality, rhythm, and place. A preliminary aspect of my practice involves mental and
physical investigations of the way place is organized - examining the organic and fabricated
rhythms on maps, and also walking the pathways and grids of my city. The resulting paintings,
drawings and sound work aim to explore organic and mechanical rhythms and their relationships
to the supposed fixed nature of place.
As a pattern of sound, rhythm develops over time, as do my artistic projects. Each work
in this thesis project is a larger scale piece comprised of a number of smaller components.
Together, the smaller components work to demonstrate an accumulation of repetitive acts,
gestures, and marks, influenced by notions of place, time, and the everyday. Beginning with the
seemingly static basis of location, walking - an embodied gesture - is an immersion into, and a
way to connect to a place. The repetitive and rhythmic actions of walking and music are both
influences and departure points for my repetitive and rhythmic art practice. Through repetitive
actions in everyday life and art making, my work attempts to establish or reveal organic and
fabricated rhythms as a way to see things that may go unnoticed, to transcribe the intangible, and
to find significance in the everyday. My aim is to foster emotional engagement with the work
through subtlety and simplicity as opposed to sentimentality or complexity. This thesis project
works to create art that has the potential to be powerful in spite of its concern with minutiae or
the mundane.
In this paper, I outline the influences that have informed the thoughts behind my artwork
with sections reflecting on my personal history, rhythm, the everyday, walking, and place. I refer
to a number of works from my thesis project that show the development of my research
considering the accumulation of rhythm in my work. Within the project there is an intuitive shift
from painting to drawing, and a gradual paring down toward increased simplicity. The evolution
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of the project is about focusing on the pulse of my practice, allowing the work to be propelled by
a consistency. Rhythm influences imagery and format, and becomes more salient as it begins to
guide method and methodology. The emergence of a rhythmic way of working now determines
how I formulate and develop new projects.

Personal history: music and time
My interest in rhythm has been developed and refined through my strong interest in
music, as well as my experiences as a musician. I am a bass player, and the role of the bass in
popular music can be likened to the way I make art. The bass, part of the “rhythm section” in a
band, acts as a bridge between the steady beat of the drums and the melody and form of the
guitar or vocals. The bass can sink back and keep time, or it can tentatively move to the
foreground and contribute melody. It is a subtle voice, often only noticeable through its absence.
When it drops out of a song for effect, a listener may then realize how it had been propelling the
rhythm. My work as an artist is not a translation of my work as a musician, but these two
practices are entangled. In music, I have a desire to downplay melody - the focus, foreground, or
lead part of a song - and this is connected to the gradual downplay of representational imagery in
my visual work. Additionally, I am drawn to driving, pulsing rhythms, which is connected to my
interest in repetition and commitment in art.
Part of the reason that I came to play music is the nature of my childhood. I grew up in a
family that elevated popular music practically to the realm of the spiritual. My father worshiped
the driving rhythms influenced by Merseybeat, while my mother revered the brooding,
monotone poetry of folk singer-songwriters. Listening to (loud) music was a family affair, and
something we did regularly together on car trips, or at home on weekends. Now, much of how I
come to understand the world is through music, musical concepts, and the notion of music as
both everyday practice and as ritual. Because of my history with music, much of the ideas and
concepts in my thesis project use music and sound as inspiration for understanding the visual.
And related to music and rhythm is time. As a loner, I am energized through time spent
by myself. Before starting my own family, I would spend hours at a time making art, thinking,
and researching. Now, as a mother of two young children, part of my art practice is dedicated to
carving out moments of aloneness or focus, however short. These moments have become
routinized and ritualized. The restrictions of daily life dictate the times that I may spend alone,
and as such, I have come to live a somewhat regimented life. The very early morning before my
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family wakes, brief moments during the day, or the evenings when they go to sleep are the times
when I walk, write, read and make art. These moments are not long, and because of this I have
made a habit of taking and using every second that is available, and found ways to spend this
time productively. My practice has evolved to include ways of working that consider the
allotment of time, and which allow an immediate engagement with process, like turning a switch
or pressing a button. On, then off.

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PART 1: PATTERN IN SPACE AND TIME
Rhythm
My desire to explore rhythm in my art practice is connected to the qualities in music that
I admire. The link between music and visual art has developed over several centuries; in the 18

th

century, writers on aesthetics began to link the two. Art historian Andrea Gottang (German,
contemporary) describes how writers subjected painting and music to a “paradigmatic
comparison and were allocated by means of the categories, respectively, of space, stasis, and
understanding to the eye, and of time, movement, and feeling to the ear” (247). Music became a
model for visual artists in the 19 century; it was “fascinating as an art form that was free of the
th

obligation to imitate nature” (248). The work in my project tends toward abstraction, and I am
interested in how this relates to music. In 1911, Wassily Kandinsky, in Concerning the Spiritual in Art,
wrote about how music is “the art which has devoted itself not to the reproduction of natural
phenomena, but rather to the expression of the artist’s soul, in musical sound.” Kandinsky
suggests that visual artists who are not satisfied with mere representation to express themselves
“cannot but envy the ease with which music, the most non-material of the arts to-day, achieves
this end” (41). In 1943, Dutch painter Piet Mondrian (1872-1944) describes how to him, boogiewoogie music is “homogeneous” with the intention in his paintings: “destruction of melody, which
is the equivalent of destruction of natural appearance, and construction through the continuous
opposition of pure means - dynamic rhythm” (Daniels 257). His words speak to me on a few
levels: there is the simple fact that music inspired the artist’s work, as well as the notion of rhythm
- by way of music - as an influence. My own work is tied to music in its non-objectivity, and in
the repetition of a measured form.
A particularly influential piece of music for my project is the work Sagittarian Domain1 by
contemporary Australian musician Oren Ambarchi. I first heard the 33 minute, one-song album
after its release in the late summer of 2012. After returning from the Emily Carr MAA program’s
first summer intensive and beginning to seriously work on my thesis project, I was struck by this
repetitive yet transformative work. The instrumental composition, drawing influences from

1

You can listen to Sagittarian Domain here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_hVhqw9c48&feature=kp

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minimal music, drone music, and Krautrock, begins with a driving, pulsing bass line that remains
steady throughout. Guitar, drums, and eventually strings build upon and accent the pulse,
creating a multi-layered and propulsive work that subtly builds tension. Ambarchi’s record label
describes how the song is “founded on hypnotic almost-repetition, the accents of the drum hits
and interlocking bass and guitar lines shifting almost imperceptibly back and forwards over the
beat as they undergo gradual transformations of timbre” (“eMego 144 / Oren Ambarchi:
Sagittarian Domain”). The first time I heard the song, I was working in the studio, in a focused
attentional state. At approximately 13 minutes in to the piece, there is a slight shift, which caused
me to take note of the work. The way I was listening to the song transformed and I was
unexpectedly enthralled with it. This sudden rapture seems directly related to the song’s
profound repetition and to the subtle shifts that would not seem as significant if they had been
condensed into a 3-minute composition.
As I had been writing and thinking about the effect of subtlety and repetition in my work,
hearing Sagittarian Domain inspired me to ruminate further on what it is about these qualities that
interests me, and how they could influence my own mostly visual practice. The transformation that
the song had for me at 13 minutes intrigues me, as well as the ability of repeating something to
cause the insignificant to seem significant. Or, to put it in another way, to recognize the
significance in the seemingly insignificant. What happens when something, however simple it
may seem, is restated again and again… and then again? (I consider some theories regarding the
effects of extended repetition in Part 3.) However, the song also prompted me to think about the
process of transference of an idea from one mode to another (like boogie-woogie and De Stijl).
Once I thought about the commonalities between music and visual art, I extended the concept
further to more general aspects of everyday life.
The Handbook for Acoustic Ecology defines rhythm in general as, simply, “pattern in space
and time.” It indicates the regularity of cyclic rhythm “found in such patterns as the inhalation
and exhalation of breath, the systole and diastole of pulse, the ebb and flow of tides” (Truax). The
period of repetition is referred to as the measure, and it is its sustainment that forms rhythm.
Henri Lefebvre asserts that there is “no rhythm without repetition in time and space, without
reprises, without returns, in short without measure” (16). Everyday life is a continual flow of
overlapping rhythms, and I am interested in this incessancy, thinking of it on the same terms as
the extended, repeated measure of Sagittarian Domain. Could turning our attention to repetition
5

allow for an awareness of the seemingly insignificant components that make up daily life? How
can rhythm be a catalyst for meditative, self-reflexive, critical thought? Lefebvre suggested that
repetition does lead to something more: “when it comes to the everyday,” he writes, “there is
always something new and unforeseen that introduces itself into the repetitive: difference” (16).
Contrasts, slight shifts, and even very small differences become notable in patterns. Turning our
attention toward seemingly insignificant patterns can allow for the awareness of an unexpected
“newness” within the accumulated rhythms.

The Everyday (beyond spectacle)
Contemporary English theorist Ben Highmore suggests that the notion of “the everyday
makes the particularity of lived culture inescapable.” He argues that considering the everyday is a
way of “registering the unregistered” (174). Artist Stephen Johnstone (English, contemporary), in
the book The Everyday, describes how art that is informed by the everyday is “drawing on the vast
reservoir of normally unnoticed, trivial and repetitive actions comprising the common ground of
daily life, as well as finding impetus in the realms of the popular and the demotic” (12). The
research methods in my practice include shifting attention toward, and training focus on
seemingly mundane or insignificant aspects of life, everyday actions, and ways of making art.
Turning to the ordinary is what Johnstone calls “a recognition of the dignity of ordinary
behaviour,” but also “a distrust of the heroic and the spectacular” (12). This can be seen as akin to
wresting our attention away from the spectacle of a swaggering guitar solo to the subtle elegance
of the rhythmic, inconspicuous bass line. Specifically what interests me about the everyday are
the rhythms generated though repetitive actions, and relationships with place. The artworks
produced employ methods and processes that support the ideas of the everyday that inform
them. Using strategies of repetition and serialization, repetitive mark-making, everyday sounds,
and simple materials, the focus of my practice is to make simple works that subtly command
attention (or register) through accumulation.

Walking
The rhythmic action of walking informs my practice. I walk alone, early in the morning
through my neighbourhood, which lies in the heart of my city of Calgary, Alberta. My regular
6

walk takes me down quiet residential streets, over bridges crossing the river, into the outskirts of
downtown, and through parkland. During the day this route is normally animated with activity,
with business people rushing downtown, parents pushing strollers, dog walkers, tourists, joggers,
cyclists and inline skaters. At the time of my walk, however, it is comparatively still and quiet. For
this project I use a Global Positioning System (GPS) on my smartphone to record my
movements, and a camera to record the imagery of the environment. The GPS, using satellite
technology, provides a record of my presence in the form of a line traced onto a map. The
generated GPS paths, as well as fragments of the photographs are compositional elements in the
resulting drawings and paintings.

Fig 1. has been removed due to copyright restrictions

Fig. 1: Richard Long, A Line Made by Walking, 1967. Photograph and graphite on board, 15”x13”.

I am drawn to walking as an everyday action. It is simple, mundane, and generally
utilitarian. However, part of my research is to carry out purposeful, non-utilitarian walks on my
own - walking for the sake of walking. Using walking as an element of my art practice is a way to
simply interact with a place by moving through it, touching it. My practice explores how my
tracked movements are a sort of “drawing” through a location. I am inspired by Richard Long’s
1967 work, A Line Made by Walking, a simple and repeated gesture that leaves a subtle imprint (fig.
1). The themes of walking and place are relevant to my practice, but it is the particularly the
understated nature of Long’s use of walking in this work that has influenced this thesis project.
7

The photograph and the walked line are static, but Long’s repeated movements are implicit. This
dedicated, simple action has a subtle, yet powerful impact on the landscape, dividing it, claiming
it, and proving an unquestionably human presence.
The more I walk, the more my thoughts about it are developed and refined. My research
considers walking not only as an everyday action, but also as an organic rhythm that responds to
the imposing and organizing forces of the city. French philosopher Michel de Certeau (19251986) describes how “walking manipulates spatial organizations, no matter how panoptic they
may be” (101). While it is mundane and relatively slow, walking is also imbued with a power of
its own. Unencumbered by a vehicle, walkers have choices in how they will respond to the space
through which they move. De Certeau suggests that while the spatial order offers possibilities to
walkers, the walkers actualize the possibilities, causing them to exist. They have the power to
transform spatial elements through choice and improvisation, creating shortcuts or “condemning
certain places to inertia or disappearance” (98-9). In spite of the organizing forces that define the
city, walkers find their own way. I have chosen my particular route based on the amount of time
that I have alone to walk, as well as on my own habits and idiosyncrasies. The walked path is the
boundary of a place that I have defined with my body.
Through the rhythm of walking and by making repeated walks, the act has become
something more than just an immersion into place. My research considers how walking is a way
to interact with the controlling forces of the city, as well as a way to respond to the controlling
regimen of daily life. In Wanderlust: a History of Walking, contemporary American writer Rebecca
Solnit proposes that walking culture has developed as a resistance to the speed and alienation of
industrialized society. “It may be countercultures and subcultures,” she suggests, “that will
continue to walk in resistance to the postindustrial, postmodern loss of space, time, and
embodiment” (267). Walking is a kind of freedom: I am alone, unencumbered and intentional.

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PART 2: RHYTHM AND PLACE
Place
Human geographer Tim Cresswell (English-American, contemporary) describes place as
“a meaningful location” (7). He refers to phenomenological geographer David Seamon
(American, contemporary) whose theories suggest, “places are performed on a daily basis through
people living their everyday life” (34). This thesis project began as an exploration of the meaning
of place, specifically urban parks. My research considered the meaning of urban parks within a
city that celebrates development and growth as much as my home city of Calgary does. Calgary
is a city that is constantly expanding upwards and outwards, organizing and “civilizing”
decomposing urban areas and surrounding farmland and wilderness. While parks are intensely
planned and controlled, in the sense that they do not generate revenue (as condominiums, office
buildings or shopping centres do), they can be considered outside of traditional urban
development. Parks can be viewed as symbols of antimodernism, as an indication of a society’s
values regarding conservation, and as cultured representations of nature. Parks can also be
considered as traditional places to create idealized images of landscape, as scenes of fetishized
nature, or as an “escape” from urban life. The work I created in the first year of the MAA
program, which was exhibited in a solo show at a small, artist-run centre in Calgary, uses
“islands” as a conceptual and connecting framework in the sense that parks are both isolated and
focalized within a city. In this collection of paintings and drawings, islands are, in a
representational sense, urban parks and green spaces, the traced GPS pathways of my
movements, and also actual islands. In addition, these works consider the poetic associations of
solitariness and seclusion that are commonly attributed to islands.
The painting The Islands (fig. 2), is a kind of title page for the project. The ground is a
roadmap of Calgary onto which I have painted a layer of pale yellow, but the parks and green
spaces I have painted a dark grey. Visually, my intent here is to show the urban parks as positive
space and to cancel out the other elements of the city. Islands within water: parks within a city.
Parks are places in which individuals pause, and it is because we pause here that these spaces
become places. Human geographer Yi-Fu Tuan (Chinese-American, b. 1930) describes how a
space can become a place in terms of movement: “if we think of space as that which allows
movement,” he writes, “then place is pause; each pause in movement makes it possible for
9

location to be transformed into place” (6). I see the pale yellow areas as non-places, as areas of
movement, as means to get to the next place, even as erosive or shaping forces. Likening parks to
islands imposes a stillness to them within a sea of activity.

Fig. 2: Sarah Nordean, The Islands, 2012. Acrylic on paper map, 80”x37”.
Photo: Marc Rimmer. Used by permission of the artist.

While The Islands is the most literal example, it illustrates my thinking in the thesis project
and my practice in general. The works are akin to a place that is viewed from high above, and
The Islands is a kind of filter that highlights a particular view of a particular place. A cartographic
view of the earth reduces the complexities of place to a flat network of data, and my practice
considers the effect that this distant vantage has. I discuss this in more depth in the section below:
“The view from above”. When I am making two-dimensional work, I imagine my vantage to be
10

vastly removed, beyond a human scale. I think of the surface I am working on as a place, and my
tools as a presence in this place.
Exhibited alongside The Islands, the painting Bluff is a gridded grouping of 55 small
canvases (fig. 3). In this work there is a juxtaposition of cartographic representations of actual
places, with abstract paint formations - made by pouring paint onto canvas - that take on the
appearance of an aerial view of the earth. Pouring the paint is a way to relinquish control,
allowing the media to respond to gravity, spread out across a surface, drip, or mix with another
colour or material. Representational imagery and drawn grids are “controlled” decisions that
respond to the organic forms. Both the representation and the grid are the elements of
fabrication, civilization or the human in Bluff. What I want out of a work is a balanced image
that exhibits a tension and synchronicity involving the rhythms, tendencies and organization of
the organic and the fabricated.

Fig. 3: Sarah Nordean, Bluff, 2012. Oil, acrylic and graphite on canvas, 42” x 98”.
Photo: Marc Rimmer. Used by permission of the artist.

The tension within the convergence of organic and fabricated rhythms can be seen as a
complex layered relationship of temporalities. Invoking the organic and fabricated is not an
attempt to establish a conflicting duality, but an interest in how things exist at the same time. An
element of my research is to examine how different layers within place and within art respond to
11

each other, disregard each other, and interact with each other. For instance, on my morning
walk, I am walking through a place where once the Blackfoot Nation moved freely, and where
settlers later established a lumber mill - both now absent. Michel de Certeau discusses the
“moving layers” that make up the history of a place: “it is the very definition of a place, in fact,
that it is composed by these series of displacements and effects among the fragmented strata that
form it…” (108). A place is a buildup of memories, histories, temporalities, and I am interested in
how this translates to art. English contemporary artists Tacita Dean and Jeremy Millar in Art
Works: Place convey that “art, like place, is a process of accumulation” (21).

Fig 4: Sarah Nordean, individual canvases from Bluff, 2012. Oil, acrylic, and graphite on canvas, each 7”x7”.
Photos: Sarah Nordean. Used by permission of the artist.

An awareness of the method of making in Bluff reveals it to be a convergence of layers of
media, colours, marks and imagery that were built up over time. By responding to the previous
layers, I am, in a sense, trying to make a place. Each canvas begins with a single, brightly
coloured under-layer that asserts its presence even as subsequent media are layered over it. On
top of this, variably, are layers of acrylic, drawn pencil lines, collaged paper, and oil that may
12

conceal or reveal the layers beneath them. Layered over the abstract and representational
imagery are the meandering, painted representations of my GPS routes connecting one canvas to
the next. Using techniques of wiping and scratching, or using semi-transparent media, the
buildup of the work - the time spent making - becomes evident to the viewers. Demonstrating a
layered temporality, this way of working is highly detailed as I interact very closely with the
canvas to make the work. In this sense, the art itself can become a meaningful location - a place.

The view from above
The cartographic view in my work removes viewers from a place and allows them to
contemplate it as a whole. Walking is a rhythm that is generated over time and through space,
and the view of a walked path from above presents an expanse of time at once, in a space that is
flattened. While the act of walking immerses me into a place, the resulting artwork often presents
a detached and distant vantage. My practice looks at the tension that a cold and removed
perspective presents to its viewers, preventing them from knowing a place as an inhabitant. De
Certeau discusses how the view from above can be intoxicating, how “the fiction of knowledge is
related to this lust to be a viewpoint and nothing more” (92). Being able to perceive an expanse of
place at once, as on a map, indeed constructs a fiction of knowledge that conceals the meaningful
social rhythms of a place. It is a panoptic view, the view from the ghostly data cloud that records
the paths of my walks.
The view from above can expose the rhythms of place. Henri Lefebvre insists that in
order to “grasp and understand rhythms, it is necessary to get outside them” (37). He describes
how the optimal vantage for analyzing the rhythms of a city is to look down onto a street from a
window or balcony, “where one dominates the road and passers-by” (38). It is a view that reveals
the choices that people make in how we organize and classify our environment - that is, how we
deal with nature. I am particularly interested in the associations conveyed through the pattern,
measure and rhythm of the grid, and as explored by artists such as Sol LeWitt (American, 19282007), Sean Scully (Irish, American, b. 1945), Hanne Darboven (German, 1941-2009), James
Hugonin (English, b. 1950), and Agnes Martin (Canadian, American, 1912-2004), among many
others. In her 1979 essay “Grids”, American art theorist Rosalind Krauss (b. 1941) points out
how the grid is “an emblem of modernity”, as it did not appear in art before the 20 century (10).
th

Krauss characterizes the grid as “flattened, geometricized, ordered, it is antinatural, antimimetic,
13

antireal. It is what art looks like when it turns its back to nature” (9). However, the steady rhythm
of the grid can also be viewed as soothing and reliable. The paintings and drawings of Agnes
Martin exhibit a less rigid approach to the grid. American art historian Barbara Haskell describes
how Martin’s grids of rectangles create “an all-over pattern which eradicated the hierarchical
balancing of parts” (104). My practice considers how the grid can be cold and aloof, yet also
meditative and rhythmic. In my own city this “emblem of modernity” is tight and ordered, only
occasionally yielding to the will of the river. Sharp corners in the loop of my repeated walk
indicate where I follow the lines of the grid, while sweeping curves reveal the influence of the
river.

Fig. 5: Mark Bradford, Scorched Earth, 2006. Billboard paper, photomechanical reproductions, acrylic gel medium,
carbon paper, acrylic paint, bleach, and additional mixed media on canvas
95 ¼ x 118 ¼ x 2 ¼ in. Used by permission of The Broad Art Foundation.

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Contemporary Los Angeles artist, Mark Bradford’s large-scale paintings/collages, built
up in layers, read as urban aerial views. His 2006 work Scorched Earth (fig. 5) positions viewers as a
viewpoint, where it is possible to assess the rhythms of place, but impossible to recognize the
characteristics that would invest a place with meaning. Viewers are instead presented with work
that arrests attention through its massive and immersive scale, and textured layers of media.
Using de Certeau’s language, the work reads as “an immense texturology” (92). American writer
and curator Katy Seigel describes how Bradford’s topographic paintings, “taking the view from
above, imply a power dynamic in which position distinguishes somebody from nobody” (116).
The viewer then, like the artist, is this “somebody”, unaware of the seemingly non-existent people
who occupy a place. Similarly invisible, are the individual features including architecture and
nature. If place is “a meaningful location”, the invisibility of its individual features can separate a
location from its status as “place”. Through the presentation of the view from above in my work,
the gulf between viewpoint and the surface of the work is alienating, and the meaning of the
place becomes abstracted. Instead of seeing individual characteristics, viewers become aware of
the patterns and rhythms of natural forms, and urban or agricultural development. The loss of,
or change in meaning - from a place with particularities to a collection of shapes or lines on a
map - is akin to the kind of transformation that took place when I became aware of the patterns
and rhythms in Sagittarian Domain.
Similar to this transformation of meaning, the action of the walk itself is not present in the
cartographic line of a GPS route. De Certeau describes how the traced path on a map refers only
to, “the absence of what has passed by” (97). Once a walk is completed, all that is left is the GPS
data - evidence that the action occurred. The action itself, however, is an invisible absence. “The
trace left behind is substituted for the practice,” de Certeau continues. “It exhibits the (voracious)
property that the geographical system has of being able to transform action into legibility, but in
doing so it causes a way of being in the world to be forgotten” (97). This transformation from
performed action to readable trace speaks of an anxiety related to the irreversibility of time. A
GPS path is like a drawing (or a photograph, or a sound recording), an attempt to hang on to the
present, to capture an action. I repeat the walk and the drawn route again and again, not as a
way to translate the experience but as a way to perpetuate the action—a perhaps futile attempt to
keep it from being forgotten.

15

My research considers this problematic nature of the view from above, and how its aloof
presentation is nothing near the truth of actual experience. The GPS route is the result of an
experience of a place, but its presentation from a remote vantage distorts and perhaps completely
conceals this experience. Attempting to translate an experience in or through an artwork is
likewise problematic. A 2001 work by contemporary English walking artist Hamish Fulton seems
to capture this: superimposed over a spectacular landscape photograph from one of his walks is
the dominating text, “AN OBJECT CANNOT COMPETE WITH AN EXPERIENCE”. This
phrase certainly clarifies how I feel about my own practice. I walk, and while walking is essential
to my practice, it is not the work. The alienation of the removed vantage point severs the
significance of my own individual experience. My intent is not to attempt to represent the
experience. Part of my objective is to draw relationships between walking, art making, and
looking, and how each of these actions on their own can generate intimacy.

Intimacy
Although my work presents a removed, aloof view of place, I am very interested in
generating a kind of intimacy. As mentioned above, close interaction with the work can frame it
as a place in itself, and there are further parallels in how we interact with a place, and with an
artwork. In the essay “Ways of mind-walking: reading, writing, painting”, anthropologist Tim
Ingold (English, Scottish, contemporary) draws connections between physical and imaginative
practices: “…the mental and the material, or the terrains of the imagination and the physical
environment” he writes, “run into one another to the extent of being barely distinguishable” (17).
He claims that there is little difference between walking on the ground and “walking” in the
imagination. Rebecca Solnit draws a similar connection: “walking the streets is what links up
reading the map with living one’s life, the personal microcosm with the public macrocosm. It
makes sense of the maze all around” (176). In my practice, proximity and connection are a way to
establish intimacy; my walking practice is an intimate engagement with a place, and my art
practice is an intimate engagement that links my tools, processes, and ideas. Through walking,
the rhythmic contact of my feet with the terrain, and the imaginary line drawn with my body,
like a line on a map, suggest a sense of connectedness with place. I see this also in quiet gesture of
Richard Long’s presence in A Line Made by Walking.

16

Repetition fuels the intimacy. The cycle of my footsteps and breath in my walking
practice, as well as the fact that I walk through the same place again and again adds an element
of ritual and elevates this everyday act. In my artworks, the repetition of certain subtle marks or
shapes in a single visual work and across a multitude of works is a meditative process that leads to
an extended connection with what I am making. Contemporary English artist Avis Newman
describes the marks in a drawing as evoking an “essential rhythm”. She points to the “musicality”
of “the hand marking out contact with the surface on which marks divide, separate, bind, and
measure - marks defining a schema of space in which the mind can exist” (12). Repeated, small
details encourage viewers to approach the work, regarding it from a close proximity.
Invoking the writings of Kandinsky, Tim Ingold pushes the proximity further, going so far
to say that viewing a work of art can “directly touch the soul” (21). Ingold outlines Kandinsky’s
views on the internal and external. One can choose to view a work of art “as if through a pane, or
one can plunge into it, become an active part of it” (21). Newman asserts that it is possible for
viewers to form a connection with the artist’s experience of making. For the viewer, the event of
drawing “perceived in such close proximity, in its registration of the hand - draws the mind in to
a space of touch.” Newman describes this interaction that the viewer has with the work as “a
rhythmic encounter that… generates a unity of experience” (13). In my work, there is the view of
the idea of place from above as a macro view; however, the intimate gestures and details are a
way to pull viewers inward, past the removed view into a micro view that requires commitment
and closeness. My aim is for the work to engage from a multitude of proximities, and for viewers
to feel compelled to move very close to the work. The small, repeated marks, unquestionably
hand-drawn, infuse the withdrawn nature of the viewpoint with a warmth and familiarity
connecting viewers to the action of making.

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PART 3: RHYTHM AND FOCUS
In Bluff, I dealt with a number of ideas and images through layering. While making the
work, I could keep adding or cancelling by adding more layers. After completing this work, I
decided to try to examine my practice more closely and pull some of the layers apart. In the
following works, the Walking Loops project and Ticks, I investigate ways to focus - to home in on
particular concepts, to exercise commitment, and to allow outward (as opposed to upward)
accumulation to shape the work. In these works, my research considers the effect of committing
to methods of repetition.

Repetition
The effect of repetition in sound and music elucidates my interest in exploring how
regular recurrence can lead to a change in meaning in my practice. Music cognition researcher
Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis (American, contemporary) outlines the familiar concept of
semantic satiation, where the continual repetition of a word leads to a gradual “detachment
between the sounds and their meaning.” Although the actual meaning of the word becomes
detached, there is a shift in focus that leads to different levels of understanding.2 “As the word’s
meaning becomes less and less accessible, aspects of the sound become oddly salient” (Margulis).
One may pay more attention to the forms of the sounds, or idiosyncrasies in pronunciation. “The
simple act of repetition,” continues Margulis, “makes a new way of listening possible, a more
direct confrontation with the sensory attributes of the word itself.” My research considers how
this could be linked to the transformation that occurred when listening to the repetitive Sagittarian
Domain. This project looks at the concept of semantic satiation, and explores how the simple act
of repetition in visual art could lead to a potential shift in meaning.
Expounding on the notion of semantic satiation and regarding how repetition can lead to
a development or a becoming, I am drawn to a reference from contemporary Dutch ceramicist
Helle Hove in her essay “The Magic of Repetition”:
The psychologist Henrik Høgh-Olesen emphasizes that every development is based on
repetition: if you can get beyond the immediate boredom threshold and continue into a
In Concerning the Spiritual in Art, Wassily Kandinsky describes this process, how repetition “will not
only tend to intensify the inner harmony but also bring to light unsuspected spiritual properties of
the word itself” (31).
2

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state of immersion in the process, doors will be opened up to brand new layers of
experience. Through repetition . . . you reach deeper levels than any number of new
infatuations can ever give. (104-5)
Through repetition, the shape of the walk comes to mean something more than just a line on a
map; it becomes a kind of icon for a particular repeated action through a particular place.
Repetition can be monotonous, but it also has the ability to emphasize no matter how ordinary
or unimpressive. This “deeper level” for me is a gradual awareness of the everyday and of
simplicity. It is a recognition of the elegance and dignity of the ordinary.
The paintings of Polish artist Roman Opałka (1931-2011) demonstrate how a seemingly
ordinary or mundane subject (consecutive numbers, or the action of counting), becomes a poetic
reflection on presence and time through profound repetition. His work Opalka: 1965/1-∞ is a
series of canvas paintings he began in 1965, where he painted consecutive numbers on 77” x 55”
canvases. The first painting began with the numbers 1 2 3…; the series finished with his death
in 2011, reaching a number in the 5 millions. A visual rhythm is apparent in Opałka’s work
formulated through the repetitive practice of charging the brush with paint, using the brush until
the paint is gone, and then recharging again. Not only does this draw attention to and connect
viewers to the physicality of Opałka’s actions, this simple undertaking groups the smaller units numbers that consecutively increase by one - into visibly apparent larger cycles created by
dipping and painting. An awareness of this is only evident through the repetitive and consistent
action, and this allows viewers to contemplate the enormity of the artist’s project. Artist and art
historian Desa Philippi (English, contemporary) indicates that the significance of Opałka’s process
is derived from its “ceaseless realization” (154). And I see this echoed in the cycles and rhythms of
everyday life. Because the work could only be completed through Opałka’s death, the intense
commitment and repetition of a simple concept allows the work to transform over time - in this
case “how an abstract sequence becomes a form we recognize - a biography” (Philippi 156).

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Fig 6. has been removed due to copyright restrictions

Fig. 6: Roman Opałka, Detail 1-35327 (detail), from the series 1965 / 1 - ∞, 1965. Acrylic on canvas, 77” x 53”.

Walking Loops project
Walking Loops, the project exhibited for the Emily Carr graduate program’s interim
exhibition, is comprised of two works, the drawing Walking Loops 1, and the sound piece Walking
Loops 2. Both works in the project are informed by my repeated daily walk - a loop that begins
and ends at my front door. The walk itself is a larger unit made up of smaller repetitions: there is
the cycle of my breath, the beat of my heart, as well as the metronomic rhythm of my footsteps. I
have repeated this walk so many times that it has become a kind of ritual for me. Drawing a
parallel between semantic satiation and ritual, Elisabeth Hellmuth Margulis outlines how ritual
encourages individuals to consider gestures at a basic level. “Outside of ritual,” she writes,
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“individual gestures are not usually interpreted on their own terms; they are absorbed into our
understanding of the larger flow of events.” As a ritual, I am moved to consider my walk’s
particularities, such as the quality of my breathing, the way I turn a particular corner, at what
point the sun rises, or the fact that I often pass the same people on their own daily walks.
“Ritual,” claims Margulis, “shifts attention from the overall pattern of events toward their
component gestures.” By repeating my walk, the particularities, as Ben Highmore suggests,
become inescapable. Ritual, as an aspect of the everyday, is a way to “register the unregistered.”

Fig. 7: Sarah Nordean, Walking Loops, 2013. Drawing and sound recording, dimensions variable. Installation in the
Concourse Gallery at Emily Carr University. Photo: Minttu Maari Mäntynen. Used by permission of the artist.

Walking Loops 1
A further repetition in Walking Loops 1 is the consistency in the mark-making technique.
Using a tightly controlled, angular scribble with coloured pencil on frosted drafting film, the final
work is comprised of 22 layered and overlapping shapes that stretch to 13 feet across. Through
repetition, my aim is to draw attention to the particularities of the drawing. When the multitude
21

of drawings are layered and laid out horizontally, one is drawn to distinctions of the shape, small
recurring details, the material quality of the drafting film, the effect of the layering - the
component gestures that make up the overall pattern.

Fig. 8: Sarah Nordean, Walking Loops 1 (detail), 2013. Coloured pencil and acrylic on frosted drafting film.
Photo: Minttu Maari Mäntynen. Used by permission of the artist.

It is through repetition that we notice difference. “Not only does repetition not exclude
differences,” writes Henri Lefebvre, “it also gives birth to them; it produces them” (17). In Walking
Loops 1, there are slight differences between the overlapping shapes, areas where the GPS routes
differed slightly, or inconsistencies in my drawing. Slight changes in shape, variations in drawing
pressure, or differences in colour become evident. The value of allowing differences to emerge
through repetition, as opposed to purposefully producing them, is indicative of my interest in
making art that is understated and simple. Inspired by Richard Long and Roman Opałka,
among others, my practice considers the effect of making work that builds up over time and
22

reveals complexity through cumulative gestures. This has led to the development of a sort of
rhythmic methodology that I use when generating new ideas and projects. With this
methodology, rhythms and differences are generated through repeated actions. It begins with my
walking practice, which becomes a generative tool for art making where it becomes possible to
notice randomness and difference. Solnit writes that, “the random, the unscreened, allows you to
find what you don’t know you are looking for, and you don’t know a place until it surprises you”
(11).

Fig. 9: Sarah Nordean, Walking Loops 1 (detail), 2013.
Photo: Minttu Maari Mäntynen. Used by permission of the artist.

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Walking Loops 2
Listen to Walking Loops 2 here: https://soundcloud.com/windkick/pedestrian
or here: http://lowresgradstudios.ecuad.ca/snordean/projects/walking-loops/
Sarah Nordean, Walking Loops 2, 2013. Single channel sound recording, 08:42.
Engineered by Arran Fisher

While Walking Loops 1 visually presents the removed, cartographic view, Walking Loops 2 is
more aligned with the act of walking as an immersion into place. It is the representation of a
direct experience. For this 8:42 minute sound recording, I took a sound recorder with me on the
usual route of my daily walk, capturing the sounds of place. The sounds have been sliced, looped
and repeated, imposing a regulated measure onto existing urban rhythms. The piece begins with
a droning loop of the hum of traffic, then the metre is established with the muffled clicks of my
footsteps on the sidewalk, and a backing beat of the thump of wind hitting my microphone.
Sounds gradually build on to the metronomic rhythm of the footsteps: choppy traffic sounds layer
and swell, and construction noises bring the work briefly to a throbbing cacophony. The gradual
building and constant rhythm suggests movement through space. The continual movement of
walking pauses briefly as the motion of the LRT, Calgary’s Light Rail Transit, interrupts the
footsteps, yet maintains the rhythm. Isolated moments of difference punctuate the repetition: bird
calls, static interference, the sound of a gate slamming.
During the process of slicing and looping the sounds, I was not sure what the effect would
be. As I arranged the individual sounds, I would play it back, and it sounded like random chaos
to me. However, as soon as I repeated the sounds as a loop, they seemed to become organized
and eventually came to sound musical. After working on the piece for a whole day, I found that I
was humming along to the sounds of traffic. Margulis asserts that, “repetition is so powerfully
linked with musicality that its application can dramatically transform apparently non-musical
materials into song.” In Walking Loops 2, a repeated looping of the LRT reveals a three-note
melody that would not be evident without repetition. In this work a rhythm is created, and the
sounds of the city become music. Margulis explains that just as in semantic satiation and ritual,
the “musicalisation” of sounds through repetition “shifts your attention from the meaning of the
[sounds] to the contour of the passage (the patterns of high and low pitches) and its rhythms (the

24

patterns of short and long durations).” Shifting to the visual, it is repetition that reveals the
contours and rhythms in the drawing.
The drawing presents rhythm in space, while the sound work presents rhythm in time.
Before making this work, I would have considered myself exclusively a visual artist, but I am very
interested in exploring how sounds and images work to convey similar sorts of experiences
through unique circumstances. My use of sound to characterize a walk is inspired by the audio
walks of contemporary Canadian artist Janet Cardiff. Cardiff’s walks involve guiding participants
through a place as they listen to a layered narrative soundscape that includes sounds sourced
from the place itself. Cardiff writes of how sound interacts with the visual: “I am interested in how
audio affects our perception of the physical world. We understand three-dimensional space by
using our vision, but also by the character of sounds we hear” (Collier 81). The inclusion of a
sound work in Walking Loops contributes a quality of three-dimensional space to the flattened
space of the aerial view.
Sound can enrich a visual experience. It “enlarges one’s spatial awareness to include areas
behind the head that cannot be seen,” (16) writes Yi-Fu Tuan, and I think of this “enlarging” as
relating to the data cloud that tracks my movements through GPS. “More important,” Tuan
continues, “sound dramatizes spatial experience” (16). While the drawing and sound piece are
separate works that exist on their own, Walking Loops 2 has the effect of bringing forward more
direct notions of movement, time and experience to the project. Additionally, the project is
significantly defined by the notion of the “loop”. Both the drawing and the sound piece use
recordings of my walked loop as the bases for their separate compositions - GPS data and
recorded sound. The drawing presents a spatial representation of the walked loop, and the sound
piece expands on this, “looping” the sounds as an enactment of repetition to create rhythm.
Presented together, viewers/listeners can engage with both works at the same time, and this
becomes a way of being able to layer sound and images. Each work may influence the other, and
I am excited about the possibilities of being able to fuse the non-objective drawing with repetitive
and recognizable sounds of the everyday.

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Ticks
Ticks, the final work of my thesis project, follows directly from Walking Loops in its concern
with temporality, place, rhythm, and the everyday. This composite drawing was started in
Vancouver at the end of the MAA program’s 2013 summer intensive, and has been slowly
growing. The work was initiated out of a desire to make something that was directly connected to
the idea of time, to rhythm and also to walking. Solnit reflects on how walking begins with a
regulated unit, but leads to something more: “It starts with a step and then another step and then
another that add up like taps on a drum to a rhythm, the rhythm of walking” (3). While a step is
the “beat” of a walk, the “tick” is the single rhythmic unit of this work. Additionally, just as I see
my walking practice as continuous, there is not a planned end for Ticks.
This cumulative work is comprised of small drawings of tally-like marks with a dip pen
and ink on toned grey paper. I make rows and rows of the ticks allowing the accumulated marks
to form an organic shape that is determined as it is made. The paper is shifted occasionally, and
the rows of marks change direction, responding to the previous rows. In determining the form, I
continue to think of the work as a metaphor for place. As I try to make a shape that resembles a
natural form, I am thinking about landforms and bodies of water. The marks, however, are a
decidedly human impression, as they resemble the organized structures of the grid, or written
language. Each small, island-like drawing is completed in one sitting, and the date and number of
minutes it took to make it is recorded. Similar to Walking Loops 1, each drawing is cut out around
its edge. The smaller drawings are displayed together as a larger conglomerate, the form of which
is determined by the amount of drawings completed as well as the particularities of the exhibition
space.
The absence of representational imagery in Ticks allows the process of repetition, the
action of making, and the forms and materiality to be a clear component of the work’s voice. The
allover and consistent nature of the mark making means that the work lacks an obviously defined
and central subject, an image (objective or not) that helps to focus the meaning of the work for
the viewer. This highlights the repetitive action of the tally mark spread out across myriad
drawings. The lack of representation is connected to a lack of melody in music, and I will again

26

quote Mondrian on music, who is struck by the “destruction of melody, which is the equivalent of
destruction of natural appearance [in painting].”3
However, like noticing an unexpected melody, and in spite of its non-objective form,
through contemplation Ticks is suggestive of the material world. Viewers of the work have
indicated that it suggests to them, variably, rows of crops in a field, balls of yarn, stones, or a
malignant growth. To me, the drawings are places and I consider the marks as property lines in
an ever growing, and decidedly tumorous city not unlike my own city, a rapidly expanding victim
of urban sprawl. In this sense, Ticks expands on the thoughts driving The Islands and Bluff about
parks as places of pause within a city. As Ticks grows it becomes an unfathomable map of an
impossible place. If this tumorous mass is a city, it is a place without pause, without escape. Ticks
is relentless.
The idea of tallying or recording is present in Ticks. The cliché of prisoners counting their
days in confinement, or a castaway recording the days stranded on an island prompt thoughts
about time, routine, restriction, waiting and boredom. Highmore writes that the notion of
“marking time” suggests “the standardizing of time and the routinization of daily life that
accompanies it.” He cites Susan Stewart who writes in “On Longing”:
The pages falling off the calendar, the notches marked in a tree that no longer stands-these are the signs of the everyday, the effort to articulate difference through counting.
Yet it is precisely this counting that reduces differences to similarities, that is designed
to be ‘lost track of.’ Such ‘counting’, such signifying, is drowned out by the silence of
the ordinary. (9)
And Ticks is the ordinary act of stealing moments of time alone. Each small drawing is a record of
what might seem like a notable moment alone in my routinized day. While the drawings are all
different and each moment may feel unique, the work is characterized by consistency and
monotony, putting forward notions of labour and obsession. Repetition and predictability
prevent anything from standing out as the focus.

3

I see this as related to minimalism in music and art that developed in the late 1960s and early 1970s. In
regards to such artists as Sol LeWitt, Hanne Darboven, and Steve Reich, Gerhard Daurer writes: “Instead
of representing time and space (in the illusionist tradition), artists recognized in repetitive procedures the
potential for a tactile-phenomenological experience of spatialization and temporalization. A linear and
organic concept of time ceded to a presence- and place-oriented concept of synchronicity in the sense of
spatially located time” (351).

27

Fig. 10: Sarah Nordean, individual drawings from Ticks, variable dimensions.
Photos: Sarah Nordean. Used by permission of the artist.

Ticks presents a collection of sequential moments, but unlike a walk or a song which
conveys the temporality of the sequence, allowing rhythm to develop through time, viewers are
presented with the entirety of the marks at once. In his essay “Audiovisual Perception”,
contemporary Viennese multi-media artist Gerhard Daurer writes, “the ear… tends to specialize
in the perception of temporal processes and the eye in the detailed resolution of static
phenomena.” Because of this, sound is associated with “ephemerality” and, images with
“permanence” (330). The desire to record, to make a mark, is partly inspired by the desire to
transform something fleeting and make it permanent. There is a certain anxiety in Ticks, an
28

urgency that suggests a desire to remember, to record, to capture the present. Each mark is a
“now”, “now”, “now”. However, once recorded, the present slips into the past, and now becomes
then. Thus Ticks, in spite of its simplicity, is characterized by paradox. This proof of presence is a
record of absence; an individual mark is just one of many.

Fig. 11: Sarah Nordean, Ticks (1,678 minutes), accumulated drawings as of Feb 13, 2014. Pen and ink on grey
paper, approx. 42”x48”. Photo: Sarah Nordean. Used by permission of the artist.

Ticks builds up and takes shape as it is made, and the amount of time that is put into the
work determines its limits. In addition to Ticks, each work in this thesis project reveals a
boundlessness, echoing the incessancy of every day life. Avis Newman discusses how the
enclosing frame in a finite artwork can be a “reassurance”, suggesting “ordered limits or
completion” (9). Although the smaller constituent canvases of Bluff are framed by their individual
stretcher bars, its variable grouping suggests an ambiguous border. Walking Loops 1 expands
horizontally across the wall space, and could potentially expand further in either direction. Ticks
expands outwards, each new smaller drawing changing its overall boundary. Newman describes
the effect of the unframed, unbound nature of a drawing: “There is no pressure from the outside
29

inwards; in drawing, it is all pressure from the inside outwards” (9). And this suggests that there
could always, potentially, be more. The form of each of the works in this project builds up and
accumulates over time. They did not begin with a finite, defined space to be filled. The unbound
nature of a work suggests that it is not in a state of completion. However, through the process of
mark-making, Newman suggests, “a somewhat precarious frame [is] constructed, almost as the
byproduct of the articulation of marking thoughts, which by definition are open-ended, in a state
of flux, and suggestive of a perpetual potentiality” (11). Indeed, the work does not feel finite or
complete to me. For each of the works in the thesis project, I made as much as I could, with
exhibition dates compelling me to stop. My research considers the works’ potentiality - because
there could be more, I want more. While each piece was ready to exhibit when it was, there is the
possibility of adding additional components for future exhibitions.
The accumulation of labour and time in Ticks is an indication of a commitment to a
particular way of working. Repetition without significant deviation demonstrates dedication and
imbues the simple action and simple marks with a significance. The commitment is driven by a
soft adherence to a set of rules that keeps me on track and prevents distraction. In “Paragraphs
on Conceptual Art”, Sol LeWitt suggests, “the idea becomes a machine that makes the art” (80).
Ticks is propelled by the initial idea, though perhaps not as rigidly as LeWitt’s conception. The
rules, which are not elucidated as part of the work, are that each small drawing is timed,
recorded, and completed in one sitting. The form of each small drawing is not predetermined.
Decisions that dictate its shape during completion are the amount of time remaining, aesthetic
pleasure, and preventing the shape from incidentally resembling something. Committing to and
following through with an idea is about an artist trusting and respecting a project’s initial plan,
and dedicating the effort and time required to see it through. Part of the impact of Roman
Opalka’s work is his dedication to a simple concept. Distractions and “what if?”s can be tempting
to an enthusiastic artist eager to have some time in the studio; however, committing to some
prescribed guidelines provides a focus, which allows for an immediate engagement with process.
The idea and processes are machine-like, ensuring that the time available is used toward an end,
and is thus recorded in Ticks.

30

Fig. 12: Sarah Nordean, Ticks (detail). Photo: Sarah Nordean. Used by permission of the artist.

A separate work that is connected to Ticks is the performative drawing Keeping track (fig.
13), which took place at the Charles H. Scott Gallery in Vancouver. This work is intended to be
performed in an enclosed window space that has been lined with paper. I draw on the paper in
the same manner as Ticks, and as time passes, the window gradually fills with marks. From the
other side of the window, the work could be viewed as I was making it, with a suggestion of my
presence visible through the translucent paper. Continuing themes of labour, obsession and
counting in Ticks, this work also puts forth ideas of confinement and presence. Witnessing the
continual making of marks has the potential to highlight the futility of the action.

31

Fig. 13: Sarah Nordean, Keeping track, 2014. Performed drawing. Ink on paper-lined window.
Photo: Scott Massey. Used by permission of the artist.

32

Fig. 14: Sarah Nordean, Keeping track, (detail). Photo: Scott Massey. Used by permission of the artist.

33

CONCLUSION
A rhythmic way of working has contributed to the definition of a methodology for the
development of new projects. In concept, format, and process, I consider how I can use
repetition to allow a rhythm and a potential illumination to emerge over time. Walking the Arbutus
Line, a component of contemporary Canadian artist Germaine Koh’s League project, repeats the
familiar process of walking, but in a new place. In July 2013, Koh invited participants to
investigate the history of Vancouver’s Arbutus rail corridor find their own way to walk the line
(Koh). My participation in this walk was undertaken without a predetermined plan, as a way to
be open to what Solnit describes as “the random, the unscreened”. I am currently working on the
art that walk elicited, taking into account that the corridor is now, one year later, undergoing
many controversial changes. The more extensive project Avalon also uses walking in an unfamiliar
place. For this project, which has been ongoing for the past year and a half, a walk is repeated
while drawings, paintings, photographs and sound recordings are made in response. The
timeframe for this project is much larger, and through accumulation, rhythms are emerging.
I am also using the research from this project to undertake a more developed version of
Keeping track (fig. 14) that will look at rhythm and time at an extended level. I am using the
documentation from the Vancouver show to apply for a project residency at a window space
gallery in Calgary. Ideally, the exhibition would run for several weeks, and I would add to the
work on a daily basis, allowing the larger drawing to build up in the paper-lined window over the
course of the exhibition. These new works are about trusting and committing to a process, and
allowing for the accumulation of actions and marks - small gestures that work together to form a
rhythm of pattern and potentiality.
This potentiality relates to the form of the work. The creation of small pieces that form a
larger whole, result in works that exhibit a boundlessness that could amass further. There is also
a potentiality relating to the emergence of differences, or the possible transformation - akin to
semantic satiation - that occurs through extended repetition. Ben Highmore suggests that the
most characteristic aspect of everyday life is its “ceaseless-ness” (21). This project is an attempt to
echo the potential and constant nature of everyday life as a way to elevate simplicity, to create an
awareness of small differences, and to acknowledge the inevitable complexities. Attending to the
everyday and giving it focus means attempting to record absence, capture the present, or
represent moments from an incessant flow allowing rhythm to emerge.

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ADDENDUM
Graduate exhibition: Transactants

Fig. 15: Sarah Nordean, Ticks (5,404 minutes), 2014. Pen and ink on toned grey paper, approx. 60”x80”.
Photo: Scott Massey. Used by permission of the artist

My graduate exhibition, titled Transactants, was a group show in the Charles H. Scott
Gallery. In addition to my drawing Ticks (5,404 minutes) (fig. 15), the exhibition included works
from the six other artists: four separate installations and two large sculptures. In some ways it
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could seem that my work would be lost in the spectacle of the show, but in other ways, it quietly
asserted its presence as the only work on the wall. I had two main concerns for the exhibition of
Ticks. Firstly, I was concerned that I would not be able to settle on a satisfying way to compile
and organize the drawing for display. This concern was founded on the struggle I underwent in
the previous year to display Walking Loops 1, a similarly cumulative and modular drawing.
Secondly, I was concerned that the work would not adequately express the impact of the
repeated, simple marks that comprise the drawing. Regarding display, assembling the work was
surprisingly un-complicated and relatively faithful to its year-long trajectory. The form is
satisfying in its rhythmic accumulation, the interaction between the smaller drawings, as well as
its material qualities - including the curling of the paper and its play with light and shadow.
However, as I suspected, I found the work to be underwhelming in its size. While bigger art does
not mean better art, a quality of monument does benefit a work that considers the repetition of
an ostensibly mundane gesture to the point that it seems important. What I take from this is that
this exhibition is an initial iteration of the work. My satisfaction in other areas, combined with
this disappointment in size points to an obvious next step: make more.

Fig. 14: Sarah Nordean, Ticks (5,404 minutes), (detail). Photo: Scott Massey. Used by permission of the artist.

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