4”4”1” Series with a nod to John Cage, who in the year of my birth composed 4’33”.

Cage enlightened the world to the recognition that any auditory experience may constitute music. It’s about the nature of things, the nature of nature.

Presented here 4”4”1” by Mary Gillis, every piece is a whole, every whole has its pieces. Our lives are a mosaic. How we see is edited by what we allow ourselves to see. The nature of things; shifting tides; there is no inexactitude in nature, however contentious. We grasp it by allowing it to grasp us.

Under the aegis of each 4” square of four 1” stripes nature is presented as a humble gift that has surprised me by its resulting magnitude. Known imperfectly and unevenly, yet with the elemental basis of melody, harmony, rhythm, and dynamics - four stripes.

Parsing nature into 1 x 4” wave-like phrases my geometry frames microcosms of much larger works. Movements of different cadence, consonant, and dissonant harmonies with instinctual rhythm keep quadruple time unified by melodies of various colors.

Oceans, rivers, ponds and puddles, the air we breathe, the nature of things.

Mary Gillis

MARY GILLIS

MARY GILLIS