Thursday Night: Tomlinson and Sheridan

Ruth Tomlinson works are inspired by small infatuations such as writing, reading and places.  She was mostly influenced by Montana.  Tomlinson first got into into lighting because when she saw the shadows spill across the paper from tree branches, she thought it was interesting and copied down those shadows on the paper with ink.  In other words, Tomlinson started "tracking" down shadows across the entire paper.  She also noticed light while she was tracking down shadows and also tracked down light.   She tracked down dates related to a specific event in time or place.  Tomlinson got to know the the weather in Montana very well and she wanted to track down the strange weather patterns.  Tomlinson paired up with a scientist and started to play with weather symbols.  She did a series of observable weather.  All of this work was for discovering where she was right then and trying to find an answer through observations.

Kelly Sheridan is interested in the creativity itself, creative cognition.  Her influence comes from people who she has cared about  that she has lost or just people in her in general.  Sheridan is very interested in texts, drawings and patterns in her work.  She has done photo manipulation and was interested in the idea of stalking television with her camera.  Sheridan also had done oil painting and became interested in the idea of watching other people work, a stalking perspective.  Her work now is both very digital and dada based.  Research also plays a main role in her work.  Art for her is to give life a greater meaning and purpose.

Some similarities and differences are that they both love to have patterns in their work.  Tomilson chases after natural patterns such as, light, shadow, dates, and weather.  Sheridan creates patterns in her work.   They were both also influenced from a small infatuation with things.  The differences are that Tomilson does her work in mostly inks and coffee while Sheridan does most of her stuff in digital.  They both also do completely different subjects that are not related to each other.