Jordan Scott (b.1968) | Artist Statement
@ Wright Art Gallery, 2010
The Stamp Pieces
The stamp pieces are painstakingly put together from thousands of canceled USA postage
stamps. They are all USA stamps, no foreign countries. The dates of the stamps range from
the turn of the century (1900-1910) to pre and post World War II (1930-1950), all the way onto
the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s. Besides their obvious physical beauty, the pieces are interesting on
many other levels as well. Postally used, or canceled stamps, by their very nature, are richly
evocative and the many different types of cancellation marks and other imperfections beg the
questions: where did they originate? who sent them? what letters did they carry? They each
represent a person, or persons, and what was sent in the envelopes that each stamp was once
attached to remains a mystery.
Each stamp has this hidden history of its own and each represents a currency that carried a
letter from a point of origin to its intended destination. Each small stamp represents this
unknown and unique story and, in addition, the expanded web of the larger life and context to
which they were connected. These works touch on both the individual and the collective, on
both the original sender and the society as a whole.
The physical beauty of the pieces is another dimension and is self-evident. What is the most
striking is what happens as the viewer sees the pieces from a distance, often thinking they are
fabric/textile in nature, and then moves closer to inspect and discovers that the color field, or
color bands, are actually composed of thousand of individual paper elements. At first glance,
the elements themselves are all seemingly the same, but on even closer inspection, they reveal
their individual differences, variations, and imperfections --especially in reference to the different
cancellations marks that represent thousands of different towns and cities across the country.
Originating Ideas
When I was very young my mother took me to a press proofing for a printed product
advertisement and I looked into the glass loop and saw all of the tiny dots that made up the solid
colors. Traveling to downtown Chicago and looking up at all of the sides of the skyscrapers, the
John Hancock Building, the Sear’s Tower, and seeing all of those windows, each with its own
unknown world going on inside. The ideas of Carl Jung and the collective unconsciousness.
Ant colonies. Digital pixelation. Remote viewing. Breaking a world down into its component
parts and/or observing the big picture created from the connection of all these parts. The Hindu
concepts of the Atman and the Brahman and the interconnectedness of the universe. Slight
variations on similar things. Neutrinos. The postage stamp collages are each composed of
thousands of similar elements but create an interconnected and interdependent whole much
greater than the sum of its parts.
Use of Materials
I always use materials outside of their normal context. These materials are used and arranged
in ways that they were never really intended. They are identical or very similar items that can
be accumulated and assembled in large numbers but have, or can be made to have, slight
variations, or imperfections. Resin, like liquid glass, helps to create and hold together the
interconnectedness of the individual elements, and at the same time heightens and helps to
clarify and define the qualities of the individual elements.
Repetitive Process
One at a time basic construction with great repetition. A single gesture repeated thousands of
times. A moving meditation. Slight variation upon close inspection, creating a new thing by
destroying, altering, rearranging, or misusing another thing.