I have always admired calligraphies, sketches, drawings, etchings for these works show so clearly the artist's hand and the eye and mind guiding it. I have always liked to draw. But for twenty years, I have also been in a personal endeavor to use mathematics, personal software and computer driven devices to conceive and produce drawings of a compelling quality, matching the masterpieces of past tradition.

The work is an exploration of the world of lines, supple water colour lines building surfaces like threads make fabrics in abstract landscapes, concrete geometries or minimal scenes. Flexible, innumerable lines: their crafted rhythms organize shapes and shades.

Their accurate arrangement is planned by precise calculations. These calculations are organized by a master plan composed as a framework uniquely describing the piece. A piece results from its concept composed into a plan, then made visible by drawing lines. Preliminary sketches and studies are usually necessary before a good size piece can be completed.

Hand is too impatient to render the accuracy and intricacies of the final design. As a weaver needs a loom to manage one's thread, mechanical help is required to guide pens faithfully and save the elegance and details of the work. Thus empowered, mind can ask what hand alone cannot do.

Each piece is unique and rendered with lightfast inks on quality, acid free paper. According to size and complexity, from a few hours to a few days are needed to set in inks the few yards (or the few miles) of lines making the piece.

Help comes from a mechanical device: the plotter. A computer is needed to drive this plotter. It can also help in the computations mentioned before as a piece is defined by thousands (or millions) of points; and in composing the computations plan. Only custom software is used here. This allows for an intimate dialog with the computer and insures the complete originality of this work.

Although a computer is involved in the creative process, this work is nothing but a tribute to and a continuation of thousands of years of drawing, geometry and fine arts by all civilizations past. In fact, computer as a tool fades entirely behind the aesthetical and spiritual concerns that Art builds upon.

More recently, experiences in new media: from gicle prints to etching plates to three-dimensional printing, from works on wood and steel to glass and sand to installations. In this diversified approach, the above process remains exactly the same. In fact the power of the process is a clear invitation to explore new media as new production techniques extend the process reaches, and new means render the conceptual lines in new ways.

Jean-Pierre H�bert (Santa Barbara, December2000).