Many artists throw all logic and reason to the wind when they stand before their easel. Senior painting and drawing major Cooper Gage, on the other hand, uses her medium to practice control in an unpredictable universe.

“It’s like meditation in some way,” Gage said of her painstakingly detailed drawings. “I don’t try to control my life, but I can control a pen and paper.” Gage compares her attraction to drawing elaborate patterns as others’ magnetism to knitting or smoking.

“I’ve always loved ferns,” said Gage. “A fern leaf has all these little leaves that come off of it, and each one of those has more little leaves that come off of it. Something is growing, and it keep something into something else. Something like that is pure doodling.”

Despite the complexity of Gage’s pieces, there’s nothing complicated about why she draws.

“I like art that looks like the artist was having fun when they were making it,” she said, citing filmmaker Kenneth Anger as an example. “The best art is when someone thinks, ‘I want to make this,’ and then they make it. That way there’s no pressure.”

Gage proves that she doesn’t take herself too seriously by revealing the inspiration behind one of her drawings, a young man sitting on the side of a bathtub with his shorts sagging in the back.

“I had to do a project that I wasn’t excited about, and the theme was ‘lure.’ I waited until the night before it was due and couldn’t think of what to do.”

Gage thought back to an amusing miscommunication in her class.

“I’d heard someone say in class that day, ‘a broken heart.’ Somehow I heard ‘a plumber’s crack.’ I thought it was a good idea.”

Gage has taken her free-and-easy yet arduous-and-thorough expression onto the music scene. Local band Premonitions uses Gage’s shadowy photographs to promote its music, some of which are featured at www.thepremonitions.com.

“I like to do things that are extremely time consuming, but have a great ‘awe’ factor when they’re done,” Gage said. “But first and foremost, I have to have my own kind of fun.”