Material, process and content are inextricably intertwined in Celestial Pantomimes. In this series, I have used black velvet on canvas in a square format. The black square has many referenes to modernism. The color black is symbolic for the night sky, the unconscious and for the jet-black hair --with its ethnic associations--I had as a child. It is also a color of mourning, holiness, sexiness, power, subservience and the universal. Black velvet, purposefully used to absorb light is used in conjunction with paint and other media impacted by gravity, distance, velocity and viscosity to challenge the meaning of materials.