The Firerocks Series

Original Photoshopped Firerocks picture from 30 years ago

Adapting Firerock to Without Square

To show the progression from then to now, I include this image from my Fireworks series—created roughly thirty years ago—where I combined live musical performance with layered fireworks imagery using early Photoshop techniques. At the time, I didn’t have the language, the tools, or the resolution to fully realize what I was reaching for. I was cutting, isolating, recombining—removing bodies, breaking forms, letting energy exist without its original container.

Looking at it now, this work reveals itself as an early instinct toward what would later become Without Square. The image wasn’t framed in the traditional sense. It was assembled through subtraction and displacement. The subject was already escaping its original boundaries, even if the final result still carried the weight of the square it lived inside.

This wasn’t a finished idea. It was a signal.

What’s changed isn’t the intent—it’s the precision. Today, the tools allow the concept to complete itself. The square no longer needs to be disguised or worked around. It can be acknowledged, stripped of authority, or removed entirely. What began as experimentation has become a deliberate system.

In that sense, Without Square didn’t appear suddenly.
It was forming long before it had a name.