At first glance, the 44 red lines floating in the center of a sheet of Japanese paper convey a sense of order and pure geometry (a particularly modest Agnes Martin drawing, perhaps). A closer look, though, reveals the wavers, the hesitations, the minute tremors which identify this as a series of gestures from an imperfect (human) being, however disciplined or focused she is on the goal at hand.

Watching a video of McDonnell creating the piece is essentially the witnessing of—and to a degree, participation in—a meditative act. She stops occasionally to reload her pen and briefly regard what she’s accomplished so far—surveying the marks she has laid down, perhaps absorbing whatever energy their shaky, mesmerizing parallelism throws back at her in order to continue. For the viewer, the video documenting her process is also a kind of suspense film: each new line she creates ups the ante, and every time her hand makes its journey across the surface without a straightedge as guide, one is inclined to hold one’s breath. Something tells me she doesn’t share that inclination.

These lines are the iron-red of blood. Here, paper is skin, and these marks, created with the sharp point of a quill pen, function more as scores into its surface than lines on top of it. This effect is compounded by the pooled beads of ink that appear in four of the drawing’s upper lines. These strike me as the deeper cuts—caused once again by an all-too-human quavering—that draw the sustaining force beneath the membrane of the paper, and underneath all two-dimensional representation, upward and outward.

Tad Mike walks in wooded areas, such as the Maine woods and Florida forests. He picks up bits of organic matter as he walks. Using what he finds, these accumulations become mark-making tools. He likens his selection to combing a beach for shells – one shell sparkles, sings out, is swooped up. What impulse determines this particular selection?

Bonyon Preserve #1 and Bonyon Preserve #7 are part of a series of ink drawings executed in Maine on Westport Island, “a beautiful preserve,” during an artist’s residency in 2007. In these works Mike’s hand guides the tool in a continuous sweep from left
to right across the page. The marks form a thick
horizontal band, like a progression, movement, or
musical score of sorts.

In Bonyon Preserve #7, a hemlock branch was dipped and re-dipped in walnut-colored ink and slid across the paper. There is a slow curve in the band – a hump, a lazy rise, an elevation – then it descends again before leading you off the page. Two contrapuntal paths are recorded as a hand’s steady sweep, and the tools’ evolution and decay become evident.

In Bonyon Preserve #1, the marks are denser, with a heavier ink concentration in the central core suggesting a spine – prone, supple, with a crescendo in the middle. Tidbits, fragments of the action, leave traces; spits above and below elucidate verticals like a conductor’s wild motion, or like embers ascending, snapping as they ride the summer night’s air.

( four hundred thirty-two times )

this is who I am
finger
stamp pad

meditate
repeat
commit
chant

the act
affirmation
a seal
emblem
visual declaration
elemental
as Lascaux