Rima Shaffer

To hold eternity in a grain of sand...

My earliest memory, at about age two, is watching dust mites dance in a beam of light.  Time stood still. I was captivated. The light fell on our hooked rug, illuminating its delicate shades. That moment remains embodied, etched deeply within. I continue to be mesmerized by light, shape, color, and rhythm of pattern. I love discovering how many shades of gray I can create and how the smallest line or dab of color can completely shift composition and mood.

I can’t draw worth beans. I constantly feel inadequate to capture and record what I see. Yet I dare to be, to call myself, an artist. I am an artist, a poet, a fabricator, not an illustrator.

I like to think I capture the essence of an encounter.  My art is meditation, a fractal, a distortion, a distillation of what I see and feel. I like making magic. My art stretches and challenges boundaries.  I am drawn to subtlety. I engage in alchemy. My photographs may turn a leaf, a sepal, a petal into an abstract painting.

I am fascinated by and create new processes and combine them with historic ones. I often destroy what I have made and use the remnants to create something new, something different from what just was. Things are never what they seem to be.  Micro can become macro; macro can become micro.

I mix media and invite the unexpected. Books may leap or overflow their pages. Clothing may become metaphor. My work is usually exploration, not decoration.  I may explore color, thickness, or thinness of line.  I work in series.  In my eighties, I am still learning to see and create in new ways.