Dave McDermott's work, in comparison, is characterized by a principle of randomness and rough-hewn craft. Using drawings on paper, photomontage, and a blanket covered in ephemeral color, he turns to random patterns for the central
philosophical filling of his work. Most of his collage pieces involve filling human likenesses with abstract collections of color. It's an effective technique in Lilliput and Untitled (Warwick #1), though Untitled (Return to the Fold) is much stronger, characterized by a subtlety that makes you question whether anything strange is, in fact, at hand at all. McDermott's untitled centerpiece, a 5-by-10-foot blanket covered in a sort of globular macrame, is the inner filling of his collaged humans, brought to life and made tactile. In bringing these color patchworks into our third dimension, McDermott pries open the fabric of being and finds randomness. Together, Hull's and McDermott's pieces make for a canny alchemy. They may not answer any questions, but that's the role of science, isn't it?



San Francisco Chronicle, April 2007