For local painter and sculptor Mark Fox, natural disaster forms the inspiration for a new body of work. His drawings, films and sculptures, on view at the Linda Schwartz Gallery and Semantics, find a metaphor for creativity in the destructive power of tornadoes.

        The evolution of this artist's current work began in his studio with something he was about to throw away. While making a drawing, Mr. Fox noticed the marks made as he wiped excess ink from the brush onto a separate piece of paper.

        Impressed with the visual quality of these afterthoughts and intrigued by the concept of accident in the process of creation, he began carefully cutting the shapes out and pinning them to the wall, turning them into sculpture.

        This act led Mr. Fox to reflect on the ideas of accident and intention.

        It is often assumed that artists who have mastered their craft are able to control tools and materials perfectly. Practicing artists know even their best plans are subject to change because chance events impose themselves on the process.

        Artists often feel helpless because the works themselves seem to dictate their own direction. Downburst explores the various ways that disorder foils our attempts to control our actions. The title refers to the main work — an entire wall of swirling objects drawn in ink.
       

Inspired by memory

        Downburst was inspired by a childhood memory of a tornado. Mr. Fox remembers the chaos it brought undermined his faith in the order of the world, yet it created an awesome spectacle.

        He re-created this state of mind by imagining a twister hitting his studio, wreaking havoc as it went. He made carefully rendered ink studies of almost everything he owned — screws, paper clips, an electric drill, a Swiss army knife — and installed them in the gallery to give the impression of mayhem.

        The backs of the cutouts reflect green light onto the wall to suggest the color of the sky during severe weather.

        Mr. Fox's point in Downburst is that the creative process is akin to the kind of dismantling and reconstruction that occurs after a tornado. Just as new growth emerges from natural disaster, art is the product of continual revision.

        In some pieces, Mr. Fox explodes an actual machine, displaying its parts for all to see. For the animated movie Double Vortex 2001, his second work in the Schwartz Gallery, he has taken apart a film projector and spread it throughout the space, while still keeping it operational.

        Viewers can watch the film threading its way across the ceiling and across giant spools before it projects an animation of object silhouettes swirling in space. This idea of destruction and renewal is also reflected in another film, shown at Semantics, which depicts a continuous cycle of disintegrating moths that Mr. Fox painstakingly photographed in his studio.

        Mr. Fox has also created a miniature projector (perversely in the form of the Mr. Peanut cartoon character) that projects a film loop of a tornado.

        Other oddities include tornado-shaped cups that amplify dire, disaster-related sound recordings of statements like “get under the desk.” The Schwartz show also has more traditional works. Large, simple abstract drawings complement the elaborate quality of the other pieces.
       

Alternative forms

        There is an air of theatricality about Mr. Fox's art, but he is not trying to dazzle us with technical displays. The alternative forms that he uses in his exhibitions reflect the contemporary ideas that underlie them.

        His interest in random events as an aspect of creativity has its source in chaos theory, which is now an established branch of physics.

        Similarly, the idea that the artwork seems to have a direction independent of its creator relates to the science of self-organizing systems, known as emergence. Mr. Fox's interest in these concepts reflects a restless search for the nature of creative processes. His recent exhibitions invite us to participate.
       Downburst at Linda Schwartz Gallery, 315 W. Fourth St., downtown through Oct. 13, 241-4202. Twist, Semantics, 1107 Harrison Ave., Brighton, through Sept. 29. 241-4202.

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