Archive · Est. Des Moines
John Nadler — Des Moines, Iowa
Archive portfolio of John Nadler
Web designer and artist based in Des Moines, Iowa
Statement
A record kept by firelight — work made, found, and left to cool. Some pieces are finished; others are only the mark they left behind. Look close: the silver hides in the ash.
Twelve entries · ongoing
What the fire keeps after it forgets. A close reading of grey on grey, where every edge is a thing that used to burn.
A catalogue of reflections with nothing left to reflect. Catalogued, numbered, and quietly mislaid.
One light held open against the dark long enough to mean something. Or to mean nothing, patiently.
The drawing and the wound are the same gesture. Heat as a kind of handwriting.
Carried in from the edge of a property line and given a frame, a year, and a second life.
Everything that survived the cooling, arranged by how much it still glows.
A territory you can only navigate by what has already been spent. Roads of soot, towns of spark.
Made hot, left to tarnish on purpose. The patina is the point; the shine was only the beginning.
A score for a fire, written in a language of small persistent heats.
Two preservatives — one white, one black — arguing over the same surface.
An account book for things that cannot be counted. Kept anyway, in a careful hand.
Light thrown across a hanging cloth until the cloth forgets it is cloth and becomes weather.