Jeff Weiss

In 2021, I retired from my academic medical career as a pediatric hospitalist at Phoenix Children’s Hospital. For years, while attending meetings and lectures, I mindlessly doodled on napkins, scrap paper, and styrofoam cups. Because so many of these little drawings had hard edge architectural shapes, I called them “Subconscious Constructions”. I now use these little drawings as “blueprints” for abstract, colorful pieces that involve multiple layers of laser-cut plywood. A second body of work involves a technique called decalcomania, in which paint is compressed between two flat planes. When the planes are separated, surface tension and the paint viscosity form branching patterns, called viscous fingering, much like in a Rorschach test image. This technique was popular with Surrealists such as Man Ray,Max Ernst, and Oscar Dominguez because the images were created by chance rather than through conscious control.