W AV E R LY P L A C E
FOR DAN CHRISTENSEN
There was nothing like a visit to your studio where we would sit up on high chairs to look at your new work and drink Rolling Rock. The chairs were from a pool hall, perches from which to watch a game of nine-ball, but instead of viewing spheres in primary colors rolling over the rectangle of a green baize, we might be staring at pastel spirals on cotton, yellow coils on a field of mustard, optical targets, planet blobs, tiny blue and pink afterthoughts, and more than once, a color I had never seen. The movement in your pictures is you moving, pacing, layering, splattering, a wild laborer with his odd tools—rake, spray gun, squeegee, spoon. So even now, in this catalogue on my lap on a far-away white couch, signs of your kinetic presence are visible. On every page I can see the looping traces of your living hand.
BILLY COLLINS