To Wit (Picture and Text) by Deirdre Fox

Pic-a-day: Pig

2011-11-15T13:20:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day

2011-10-05T23:25:00.001-05:00

Pic-a-day: Scraps

2011-08-22T10:28:00.005-05:00

It's always entertaining to take some scraps and construct something from them; these are scraps from a kid's activity tent ... short pieces of yard and a few pipe cleaners. Plus, this play inspired a couple large pieces I now have in mind once I collect enough loose pieces of yarn.

Coincidence

2011-07-19T22:28:00.003-05:00

In searching online for the image of Rampant Mythical Lion (from the Art Institute's collection) to link to, I came across this piece, which I had not seen before. The form reminded me of some of my current work.

Switching up

2011-07-19T21:44:00.004-05:00

Working out a new piece after spending time yesterday at the museum. This is influenced by Rampant Mythical Lion (Vyala), a 8th/9th century sandstone piece from India, Madjya Pradesh or Rajasthan. The piece reminded me how artifact images cross cultures and societies as a similar lion form appeared in an Iranian architectural detail from which I previously drew inspiration and in the Book of Kells from which I have also drawn inspiration in the past.

I don't often start with studies anymore, preferring to work directly with the flow of my materials instead, but I decided to do so on this piece to change up my habits and challenge my entry points into developing work. The first study is more literal than the ultimate piece will be. The second is an initial reduction study. After a few more reduction studies, I'll move to a flow study and then to the piece.

pears

2011-07-07T21:03:00.000-05:00

Reduce. Overlay, Recombine

2011-05-30T18:14:00.005-05:00

Playing with reducing images to color overlays (upper) and recombining (lower) with the original image (middle)

Pic-a-day: Combination

2011-04-22T23:32:00.000-05:00

Pic-a-day: Flora

2011-04-22T00:55:00.000-05:00

Pic-a-day: Flora Sum

2011-04-22T00:16:00.002-05:00

Desaturated sum

Feeling Wordy Today.

2011-04-20T16:58:00.001-05:00

No image coming to mind, just a series of thoughts.

Experience Cutting Across Medium

2011-04-20T16:46:00.003-05:00

Installation art is experiential, right, the experience of being in/within the work, as opposed to viewing the work? The work, however, are still viewed (the phone and computer on the desk next to the stapler and tape dispenser are viewed) and can be dissected down to its elements. Each viewing offers a different experience, sometimes within a close continuum and sometimes more broadly ranging.

The best drawing pulls in the viewer, holds the wall, and strives to be experienced immersively. Sclupture holds the space (the spot and air and context where its installed) but can dominate the room/landscape to varying degrees, offering different experiences.

Degree of scale moderates the experience of a piece or set of pieces. One large piece like the mountain overwhelms. A lot of smaller pieces on a wall can be like votive candles or a series of windows or marks in themselves accumulating to the larger experience of a composition on the wall. A bruise. A scar. A tattoo. A mask. An adornment. A combination of some or all of these.

Collage and Review

2011-04-20T15:53:00.003-05:00

Fallen off, lately. Tomorrow, I will listen to a grants panel review my latest work. It will be interesting to hear their thoughts, as this is something one often does not get from a group audience. I have to sit silent and just listen, which means it will just be their reaction to the work (and my brief write up, I suppose) rather than to interactive discussion, influenced by back and forth dialogue with me. The intent, to the extent relevant, will by definition have to stand out from the work itself.

So much is and has been collaged that it's interesting to watch a viewer be distracted from the image quality by the fact that the image was collaged from a bunch of different materials that the viewer was not necessarily expecting.
Collaging is it's own way of thinking and piecing together images, first and foremost because the bits ("marks") carry with themselves their own image references to be emphasized and/or deemphasized and second, because in the end pasting bits is quite different physically and emotionally from boldly striking a line across a page with graphite or paint or shaping a clay vessel. While adding bits conceptually does nto stray that far from accumulating dots and other marks, the collaged bits ("marks") are preselected rather than simply made as a collage bit must be collected and/or cut. Applying/adhering/compiling the bits involves the hand but separated from the paper or other surface upon which the pieces are attached/adhered.

Collage like method does get evaluated differently. Perusing the web in a current moment of procrastination, I have started to think more about the issue of whether relelatively mediocre work -- in the sense of the ultimate imagery -- gets a leg up by being done with novel or different means or method. The post it or push pin face is not judged by how amazing a portrait it is, but rather how "amazing" it is that it was made of post-its or push-pins, even if, in the end, the same image painted would be rather innocuous, perhaps in some cases rather badly rendered.

Color Abstract

2011-04-02T22:18:00.002-05:00

Thinking about the limits of volume and linearity.

Pic-a-day: Doodle Variations (More Division)

2011-03-29T22:03:00.001-05:00

Pic-a-day: Doodle Variation (Division)

2011-03-28T23:57:00.002-05:00

Pic-a-day: Doodle Variations

2011-03-28T20:05:00.000-05:00

Pic-a-day: Doodle Variations

2011-03-26T23:12:00.004-05:00

Pic-a-day: Doodle Variations

2011-03-24T21:50:00.000-05:00

Pic-a-day: Doodle Variations

2011-03-23T22:48:00.007-05:00

Ancient Images, Artifact

2011-03-13T22:34:00.005-05:00

see this site

Pic-a-day: Doodle

2011-03-13T19:17:00.000-05:00

Pic-a-day: Loosely After Turner

2011-03-13T19:16:00.000-05:00

Pic-a-day: Another Ghost

2011-03-13T00:11:00.000-06:00

Figure

2011-03-07T00:08:00.001-06:00

Bust

2011-03-06T21:11:00.000-06:00

Figure

2011-03-06T20:21:00.001-06:00

Working Sunday: new work, rethinking. And a couple proposals to write.

Pic-a-day: Cat

2011-03-04T21:10:00.004-06:00

Slat Progressions

Pic-A-Day: Lemur to Zebra

2011-03-04T20:52:00.001-06:00

Two Layers: Lemur and Zebra

Pic-a-day: Meld

2011-02-20T21:17:00.001-06:00

Two layers melded.

A Break ... Going for Cute

2011-02-06T20:47:00.001-06:00

Looking Back

2011-02-06T19:22:00.002-06:00

Periodically, I look back through old images to observe the evolution -- and the elements that are consistent -- in my work. It's one of the best ways of figuring out what's essential. Plus, usually a mix of "of course" moments and "egad, what was I doing" moments. No surprise that most artists cull old work that has not made it out the door. Digital documentation makes it easier to keep a record.

Pic-a-day: Blizzard 2011 (night)

2011-02-06T00:28:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Blizzard 2011 Combined Image

2011-02-05T18:11:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Blizzard 2011 (more pics)

2011-02-04T00:21:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Blizzard 2011 (more pics)

2011-02-04T00:12:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Chicago River (More Color and Mood)

2011-02-04T00:04:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Blizzard 2011

2011-02-02T14:10:00.002-06:00

Pic-a-day: Blizzard 2011

2011-02-01T19:18:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Spill

2011-01-26T21:57:00.000-06:00

Pic-A-Day: Suburbs

2011-01-18T23:12:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Doodle

2011-01-09T19:26:00.001-06:00

Pic-A-Day: Friday Late Afternoon (Near Merchandise Mart)

2011-01-08T00:10:00.004-06:00

Endpoint Variance

2011-01-07T14:45:00.005-06:00

It's Friday,the first one of the New Year, the start of the year and the end of the week (work week).

Which has me thinking about horizons, beginnings and end points.

The lines of symbols below in the making extended as close to an equidistant end point as each line would go, as one line of symbol text across the blogger entry panel. While reaching close to the same end point in the making, in preview end point variance was wider and in publication, the lines run over to the next row. The output lacks the design character of the input, which appear as a single wide bar.

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Pic-A-Day: Chicago L Over River

2011-01-05T19:42:00.004-06:00

Started with a photo of the L train as it headed over the bridge into the loop, the river below, on a winter day and pushed the photo into a drawing (above). Overlaid a photo drawing of the Chicago River at night.

Reduced it to black and white...

Pic-A-Day: Night River

2011-01-05T19:32:00.003-06:00

River, Sun, Thought

2011-01-04T20:43:00.001-06:00

Started with an I Phone photo of sun hitting the surface of the Chicago River on a cold winter day and twinkling. Thought about the sun and winter and flashbacks from snow and ended up here.

Pic-A-Day: Color and Mood, Chicago River by the Mart

2011-01-04T20:06:00.002-06:00

What a difference color makes!

Pic-a-day: Cow

2010-12-29T23:39:00.000-06:00

Pic-A-Day: Spiral

2010-12-29T01:44:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Primary

2010-12-29T01:30:00.000-06:00

Foreground Lines

2010-12-15T02:27:00.000-06:00

Interruption (foreground lines)

2010-12-12T21:11:00.001-06:00

2010-12-12T19:04:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: foreground lines

2010-12-12T00:06:00.003-06:00

Pic-a-day: doodle variation

2010-12-09T23:45:00.001-06:00

Pic-a-day: doodles

2010-12-08T16:04:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: doodles

2010-12-08T00:52:00.001-06:00

Pic-a-day: Doodles

2010-12-07T01:00:00.000-06:00

Charles Biederman -- Google Search

2010-12-05T23:16:00.002-06:00

painting as sculpture, sculpture as painting, blocks
“a Structurist work is neither painting nor sculpture, but a structural extension of the two.”

Anthropomorphism, Art and Objecthood

2010-12-05T20:56:00.008-06:00

(Not Original)

Michael Fried observed:

“[A] kind of latent or hidden naturalism, indeed anthropomorphism, lies at the core of literalist theory and practice," and "We are all literalists most or all of our lives. Presentness is grace." -M. Fried, Art and Objecthood.

As an observer/viewer, I inevitably relate to and see objects in figural terms or see figural relationships in objects, even where effort has been made to deny the figure/relation to the figure; that is, to only mark and see the dot or line or plane.
____

Other notes to think about from Art and Objecthood:

Continuum of Illusion and Literalness?

Relational character of almost all painting & inescapable pictorial illusion

“[W]orking on a single plane in favor or three dimensions... automatically ‘gets rid of the problem of illusionism and of literal space, space in and around mark and colors ... The several limits of painting are no longer present... Actual space is intrinsically more powerful and specific than paint on a flat surface.’”

The whole as a single object, even if comprised of units?

Literalists “are opposed to sculpture that, like most painting, is ‘made part by part, by addition, composed’ and in which ‘specific elements ... separate from the whole, this setting up relationships within the work.’” (quoting Judd)

“Judd and Morris assert the value of wholeness, singleness, and indivisibility -- of a work’s being, as nearly as possible, ‘one thing,’ a ‘Specific Object” => Morris through a strong gestalt or unitary type form to avoid divisiveness and Judd via wholeness through repetition of identical units. (The whole as a single object?)

Characterizes “Shape” as controlling and central to Judd and Morris’s Minimal Art: “The shape is the object: at any rate, what secures the wholeness of the object is the singleness of the shape.”

Painting/Pictorial and Object perception as in opposition?

“What is at stake in this conflict is whether the paintings or objects in question are experienced as paintings or as objects: and what decides the identity as painting is their confronting of the demand that they hold as shapes. Otherwise they are experienced as nothing more than objects. This can be summed up by saying that modernist painting has come to find it imperative that it defeat or suspend its own objecthood and that the crucial factor in this undertaking is shape, but shape that must belong to painting -- it must be pictorial, not, or not merely, literal.” In contrast, “literalist art stakes everything on shape as a given property of objects, if not, indeed as a kind of object in its own right. It aspires... to discover and project objecthood as such.”

“Whereas in previous art, ‘what is to be had from the work is located strictly within [it]’, the experience of literalist art is of an object in a situation -- one that, virtually by definition, includes the beholder...” (quoting Morris)

Bernd and Hilla Becher -- google search

2010-12-05T17:59:00.001-06:00

Summation; object; reference Fried

Pic-a-day: Doodle

2010-12-05T16:58:00.000-06:00

Pic-a-day: Lost Mouse

2010-12-05T16:43:00.001-06:00

The mouse is lost.

Pic-a-day

2010-12-01T22:56:00.000-06:00

Mark Rothko -- google search

2010-12-01T03:56:00.002-06:00

How Concrete is the Perceived World?

2010-12-01T02:38:00.015-06:00

I once spent a great deal of time drawing from life and from time to time reengage, practice, and hone the eye-mind-hand translation to paper, a connection that was important to learning to see and work with line, color and other relationships, but I had to move beyond, in a sense, away from, life to integrate the connection.

I do not look at objects or scenes while making work or imagine "finished" objects or scenes to relay.

The point of drawing and painting is not necessarily to create "illusion" of objects, devolving to simulation rather than according line, color, etc, each identity and function as spatial agents in the picture plane. There is no need for marks actively to denote or stand in for attributes of a physical object or set of objects.

"Every painter starts with elements - lines, colours, forms - which are essentially abstract in relation to the pictorial experience that can be created with them." - Bridget Riley on Paul Klee

In my view, line, color, etc., when accumulated, create a perceivable object/set of objects, as well as the physical object of the painting or drawing. Perhaps it would be more accurate to say a "line," or "color," etc. is capable of being or acting as an object, or being treated as an object, in relation to another "line" or "color." Labeling lines, color, etc objects is not what an "object" is to most of us -- physical, touchable. One cannot hold a line. Unless it is a physical line. Hence, I turn to a "material" line.

Update: A couple questions came to mind as did some initial consideration ...

Are objects/elements servile to the rhetoric of the narrative or is the narrative servile to the objects/elements relaying it?

The "material" object is being used as a line/form. The fact that it is being used (acted upon or through) suggests servility in the making. So too the particle of graphite or blob of paint used as a line/form on canvas. What of the reception, though?

Can the object or set of objects stand on its own and refer only to itself?

Each object is still an object itself, and when used as a material line/form, it refers beyond itself simultaneously as being itself. Compare the degree to which a painting on canvas can stand on its own and refer only to itself (without scale carrying it to the limits of an observer's range of view) - either itself as an object or its pictorial contents.

Josiah McElheny - google search

2010-12-01T02:17:00.003-06:00

reflectivity, object

"That’s a big subject in my work—how ideas are contained in objects, and how the idea and the object can’t be disentangled. My belief is, there is no such thing as the idea or the object. There is only a kind of fusion of the two." - McElheny from Art21.

Judy Pfaff -- google search

2010-12-01T00:05:00.003-06:00

the whole space, doodle/curvilinear, painting into sculpture/sculpture into painting

Hans Haacke -- google search

2010-11-30T23:53:00.001-06:00

Tara Donavan -- Google Search

2010-11-30T23:41:00.002-06:00

organic, biomorph

Jesus Rafael Soto (Google Images)

2010-11-30T23:09:00.004-06:00

linear, horizontal, vertical, semi-penetrable?

Sigh, and more on accumulation/conglomeration.

2010-11-30T14:39:00.006-06:00

Sigh. Feeling passed and disconcerted today. A few years ago, I sent out proposals for a fishing line web piece that was about interfering with and framing perception of drawing in space. Unfortunately, the proposals were not successful.

Material World, at MassMoca, features seven artists using accumulation and other strategies with non-art materials to occupy and take over space/environment. Looks like an excellent show, though I probably will not get to Boston to see it.

One of the artists, Tobias Putrih, uses monofilament to occupy the space with finely tuned reflectivity and optics bordering on invisibility. The optics aspect reminded me of a piece I saw by Jesus Rafael Soto ages ago in Paris. The near invisibility of this piece (at least from the photo and description) strikes me as the most intriguing of the work because it's subtle. From the Catalogue link (black and white, unfortunately), most of the artists seems to take over through shear scale -- monumentally and literally occupying the space -- a not so surprising tactic.

One can accumulate any object/set of objects and scale up; one can string anything, including the "strings" themselves. Work through these means and methods has varying degrees of success, from little or none to a lot to arresting to unforgettable, same as any media.

Post Lintel

2010-11-29T00:52:00.003-06:00

Two Distinct Lines, Two Distinct Scales

2010-11-29T00:32:00.007-06:00

This is only formal. The same language works for some artists and not for others. Sigh.

Failure and Success

2010-11-28T22:05:00.002-06:00

So much from learning from failure... Sci. America Article: success

Naturally success has a tendency to breed success -- it builds confidence and has a tendency to open up more opportunities.

It also carries expectations.

Mixed issue, as always.

Collecting more notes on Rauschenberg: Elemental Scuptures

2010-11-26T16:29:00.006-06:00

From SFMOMA , Untitled (Elemental Sculpture), ca 1953:

I appreciate the juxtaposition of the pointed "screw" and the chained stone, the apparent fragility of a steel object, and the narrative and visual flow of the piece. I also think of Flintstone characters chiseling words on a slab, which is unfair and not all that connected except for the implied chiseling motion, but cannot be helped.
___

Rauschenberg included audience interaction as part of the piece, for example, with one piece, inviting audience members to rearrange the pieces of the work (block and stones) into different configurations in "ways that were not interesting." B. Joseph, Random, Robert Rauschenberg and the Neo-Avant-Garde Order, p. 88, 2003. [It's all been done, hasn't it?]

Assemblage and Digression

2010-11-26T13:55:00.005-06:00

I did not see and admittedly did not pay much attention to “Unmonumental: The Object in the 21st Century,” show at the New Museum a couple years back. I did not see my work as non-monumental, particularly "object" focused or "assemblage" based in intention, even if I used non-art materials like dry wall, window screen, newspaper, etc.. along with traditional art materials to create elements that were arrayed in spaces.

I cared for what the identity of materials lent to artwork, though I may not always have thought in quite those precise terms. Dry wall has function and connotation and that which it can simulate - broken wall, artifact. I started using it because of that simulated and potential for actual artifact quality, and because it could be dilapidated. I stopped using it because it was too easily dilapidated and difficult to port. Likewise, window screen and newspaper have functions and connotations and that which each can simulate.

Materials can be played with subverted. Whatever material in use (usually a single or confined number of related materials) I explored drawing/painting conventions with the material in space - arrangement of elements into wholes in the context of the physical space/site. I focused less per se on the "objects" that the "drawings" with the materials become, except literally as an artifact of the process and as elements for extending the process.

An artifact is an object, a drawing is an object. Even as it remains drawing based, my work has moving further toward what cannot be denied to be assemblage, even if it came from drawing. Classifications are hard; I'm inclined to try to straddle them and stay in between. One ends up circling back, which has me looking back at "assemblage" historically as an art strategy.

Today, I came across Roberta Smith's NYTimes review of Unmonumental. She writes, among other observations:

"The thesis here is that assemblage-type sculpture, rampant at the moment, may also be today’s most viable art form. Why? It tends to be low-tech, modest in scale, made with found objects and materials and structured in ways that are fragmented if not actually disintegrating. Its ugly-duckling looks, rough edges, disparate parts and weird juxtapositions help stave off easy art-market absorption while also reflecting our fearful, fractured, materially excessive times back at us."

What happens, then, when "assemblage" doesn't have ugly duckling looks, rough edges, disparate parts, etc. -- none of which have to be part and parcel with assemblage. The assemblage of pieces adds up to an object, solid or fragile, beautiful or ugly, etc., either way, but to a different narrative.

Smith also writes:

"The main idea here seems to be to make art that looks like art only on careful examination, guided by the assumption that everything, every detail, is intentional and meaningful. The disheveled surfaces may often say Rauschenberg, but Joseph Cornell’s delicate precision is frequently the more useful analogy.

Note, she focuses her characterization as one of guidance on "the assumption" that each detail matters, rather than one in which each detail actually matters or was considered, intentional or meaningful.

Though not using words about what is assumed in seeing art as art, Steven Stern in Frieze, reviewing the same show, seemed to observe no assumed intentionality and deliberateness, other than perhaps packaging and mockery:

"Industrial fabrication, precious materials, the well-made object – all these were obviously jettisoned. But so too were inherited signifiers of anti-aesthetic value. That is to say, there was no ‘specialness’ conferred by the use of vernacular material: the bits of pop-cultural detritus weren’t glorified as ‘ready-mades’, the adoption of borrowed images didn’t feel like ‘appropriation’. For the artists in the show all this was business as usual, a simple matter of using all the crap that’s around."

"There is a sense that the New Museum is adopting a similar winking, referential, faux denial: the message ‘This is not a museum’ seems to hover behind their recent moves. Whatever else ‘Unmonumental’ was, it was a canny exercise in marketing, an advertisement for the spirit of the organization. However much one wants to believe in that spirit, it is slightly alarming how slickly they are promoting their unslickness."

Use of "all the crap available" hardly seems an unnatural expansive end point for "intention" defining "ready mades" as art, though not a necessary one, since "intention" would seem to imply a means of selection. Making work out of what is available does not have to denigrate art or amount only to an ironic statement on art or preciousness of art. There are times and frames of mind when I have stopped, looked around, and become acutely aware that every random thing seen looks like "art." Also, what does it mean to feel borrowed: does appropriation have to be selective to feel borrowed or appropriated? Is a "feeling" of borrowing even necessary to appropriation as a strategy?

I've digressed. A use "all the crap" sentiment, however precisely or legitimate, is not what my work is about, as the identity of the materials used matters.

Coming back to assemblage, all the same questions one has for painting, sculpture, and so forth apply: formal or conceptual, traditional or experimental, cohesive or disjunctive.... Installation work is a conglomeration of assemblages, which are a conglomeration of materials, which rely on 2-D and 3-D perceptions and conventions.

Place in Context

2010-11-26T12:54:00.004-06:00

I hope -- expect -- that art work itself succeeds in reaching the audience without the need for words to explain or place it.

Submission for opportunities, however, often is by jpeg and not all artwork is jpeg friendly. Some is more jpeg friendly than the artwork itself, although I have never seen "accepted" work rejected when delivered. The submission process also usually asks for explanatory words - an artist statement and/or an exhibition proposal beyond "I make and propose to show the work shown in the attached images").

Perhaps I should try "I propose to show the type of work reflected in the attached images" as a proposal.

Many likely use some combination of intention and hindsight reflection when presenting art work. Intention and hindsight can but do not often merge seamlessly: discovery lies in between.

One way to deal with the question of where one's art sits in the larger Art, cultural, etc., context, is to ignore it. How persuasive will that be in a proposal, in which one usually is expected to concisely place the proposed work?

Some are great at talking in circles. One can go ahead and illustrate (accepted?) jargon, however convoluted, nonsensical, contradictory, circular, dressed-up it may be. The work ends up pretentious even when successful (accepted?), unless the work manages in the discovery phase to move beyond illustration (in which case, intention and hindsight are not merged).

Hindsight reflection is unhelpful when writing proposals for work that has yet to be made: the verbiage has to come before the work. A continuous body of work in the middle of development can be examined with hindsight intermittently and proposals written with plenty of hindsight.

I resort to containment. Discourse and how past and current work and ideas fit or do not fit within it is something to consider and think about before and after, and to forget when making the work... forget, as in excise from the front of the mind and the tips of the fingers (or production tool). Or the work only illustrates discourse and does not move beyond it or all that well within it, as least not in any way that differs from a verbal discussion. Visual interplay should not be simply a platform for verbal discussion or a diagram of it.

The Meaning of Stumbling

2010-11-25T20:54:00.003-06:00

Proverb: “A stumble may prevent a fall.” Done a fair bit of industrious stumbling. All must be well, then,

A really awful stumble is when pieces work amazingly well for the artist, and yet, seem unable to catch on with an audience. The artist is left to ponder the disconnect, to dissect it imaginary reason by imaginary reason, fault or no fault based, and to shrug for while.

More pieces/efforts than one cares to count don't work for one reason or another; a few serendipitous pieces come out surprisingly well with less effort than that of all those failures put together, probably because of all those failures. And most "good" work is in between: lots of effort, works.

As for stumbling in distribution -- how easy is that!

Space as context

2010-11-23T14:28:00.002-06:00

Another thought runs frequently through my mind, since context of the installation space is a variable. There is an option to amass and fill a space, literally come up to or over the line of taking over the space, verging or crossing over into suffocating. There is an option to become a part of the space, literally coming to the line of hiding in and among it to be discovered or missed, unnoticed or irrelevant, entirely. And then, there is what lies between. Every strategy/device has two ends and a vast in-between ... probably sitting on a normal bell shaped curve, which incidentally could both fill the space when enlarged (as a solid volume) and go missed (as a line beneath with area is defined or as a transparent volume) to the scale of the space.

Retread? Looking back...

2010-11-23T12:38:00.004-06:00

A link to a bunch of assemblages by Raucschenberg....

I have not previously spent a lot of time studying Rauschenberg's work. Years ago, when I was in school, I spent some time looking at his silkscreens and mirrored surfaces when I was playing with paint and marks on mirrors and obsessing with the narrow space between a mark and its reflection in the mirror. I had put aside my mirrored work because of the very real and incredibly annoying fragility of the mirrors -- and yet, ironically, it seems a sense of fragility wants to be part of my work, regardless of the material used.

While I've known about Rauschenberg's Combines as a point of departure, I paid little attention to them until now. With the direction my work has taken, I've become more and more concerned about the line between strategy/device and gimmick and am spending time looking back at what others have done. The concern is more in the nature of differentiating from a mere retread across well-covered ground, even where a different path has brought one to that already covered ground.

My look back has taken me to Rauschenberg's assemblages, a very, very good reminder that "new" never seems to be so "new." There's a lot to study here. I have to spend more time thinking about the conceptual and visual space between and around these and Tuttle.

Today, I ran across this interesting critique by John Perreault on the Combines. The success or failure of combines, much like the success or failure of paintings, rests on the visual/conceptual integration producing something uniquely resonant and memorable, whatever media, device, strategy -- and, okay, let's degrade that to gimmick -- which includes conceptual reasons for the materials and device used and successful integration of the materials and device.

Photography in making work

2010-11-19T00:01:00.007-06:00

Thinking of the widening gyre today.

I went back to some I-phone photos from a few months ago to do some tweaking and some thinking about parts to isolate or not to isolate.

I'm not a photographer per se, but I use photography as a strategy and element in my work. I am interested in the translation of an image as a photo is taken and interfering with that translation while taking the picture and messing with it after the photo is taken.

I like the pictures my I-Phone takes -- they are relatively low quality (I have an excuse when they are shaky) and always on the dark side particularly because I tend to take them in poor light with no light enhancements beyond the ambient light available in the space or physical area in which I am taking the photo. They usually need a degree of tweeking, which leaves a lot of room for playing with the image. They are not "precious" as I take them either, which allows more freedom.

With higher quality images to start with (when shooting with an SLR camera), I am less inclined to correct them (though, I do correct for light). Most of the time, I don't shoot raw. I should -- every once in a while, I think that there's an image I finished that I would really like to be able to produce bigger but can't enlarge as much as I would like because it started out as a jpeg. Still, mostly I am playing, and for some reason, I feel freer to do so with the smaller files I know are going to degrade a little each time they are saved. (I do keep the originals; it's the copies I play with).

Aspects of degradation are in all my work. It's one of the issues I must work on balancing against. With the current work, I start with degraded or used materials that nonetheless are materials that themselves should last a long time (a lot of plastic!), which means the work has longevity and a degree of permanence equal or near the materials. At least it isn't floating as part of the plastic garbage island in the Pacific.

Pic-a-day: TD cockatoo

2010-11-11T22:14:00.002-06:00

Here is the Cockatoo... I won't be able to leave him up for long because he is a large file and I want to save space. This is as big as I can post him on this blog site -- he's about 4 x 5.

Edge

2010-10-28T20:03:00.004-05:00

Take away most of the sharp edges but still leave edges distinct, no blending. Use spatial effect for multiple focal points to varying degrees.

Audience Considerations

2010-10-26T23:52:00.006-05:00

Closed in verses relatively open...
Feeling like your on the tail of the curve.

I worked on mutable forms again today (when not doodling as above), playing with varied arrangement, me in the studio, without an audience. I like what I see. That doesn't mean every or any audience will.

There can be a disconnect ... because the work does not quite come together (like at ArtPrize, though I think I disliked my piece more than did viewers), or it does work yet is perceived differently by viewers. Without connecting, the artwork's validity rests with the artist as creator. I think that's one of the reasons making art can feel lonely. When the work does connect and communicate, even if the communication differs from the artist's intention -- one can see connection in people's faces when they look at the work -- the work extends past its creation and the artist.

Art sometimes gets appreciated and hawked merely for the apparent time its creation took, or the many multiples of materials that comprise the work. It's ironic to hear some criticize this appreciation as mass audience appeal -- a la some of the work that was in ArtPrize -- when time and accumulation find appreciation and approval in the higher art world, too. Time and accumulation are valid strategies, as are most strategies, if they result in work that connects aesthetically and conceptually and lasts beyond the initial novelty of the time expended or the pieces accumulated. If viewers keep thinking about the work, something got through.

Experimenting in a Mess

2010-10-24T23:28:00.003-05:00

I'm staring at a mess I have yet to start cleaning up. Sigh. The jumble in the room matches the jumble in my head at the moment; perhaps that's why I am resistant to clearing out the room. Something's gelling.

More Ruminating

2010-10-23T16:36:00.003-05:00

Time goes so quickly and almost always feels like it is running out.

One day, it will stop. Like that.

What will be left and does it matter?

Pic-a-day: Stigma

2010-10-21T11:23:00.005-05:00

Stigma can reflect and feed back on itself, and substitute for identity, irrespective of the particular stigma. Trait (fact) verses label (value judgment, tactic).

Sketch: shapes

2010-10-20T00:33:00.003-05:00

Thinking of framing, containment, aesthetic infinity verses fixed objectness today after reviewing some writings on Mondrian. Also thinking about how some artists shaped their image by destroying old work and writings.

Symbol Story

2010-10-19T02:11:00.003-05:00

Spent a long afternoon and evening of resizing images for submissions. Spent for now. So I ended up playing around with word processor characters to make characters, above.

Originality

2010-10-18T00:35:00.007-05:00

Reference: LasCaux caves, Bison

In a very loose sense, everything that comes after is somewhat derivative of what comes before; however, I like to think enough can be approached or done differently that what is current cannot be pigeon holed as little or no more than something that was past, even if the current incorporates, references, relies upon or in other ways uses history.

On the other hand, it's disappointing how well derivative artwork can do and also disappointing how what seemed original quickly no longer is, if ever it was novel.

Frame

2010-10-17T23:57:00.002-05:00

The top corner edges underscore that this image was created and continues to sit within a rectangle.

Reference

2010-10-17T23:45:00.005-05:00

This burned plastic work is by Alberto Burri is from this site on Italy, including Italian painters.

This work from findartinfo.com is one of Piero Manzoni's AChrome pieces. See also this site dedicated to him.

Playing with Color II

2010-10-16T16:41:00.001-05:00

Playing With Color

2010-10-15T14:50:00.000-05:00

Accumulation

2010-10-15T10:56:00.003-05:00

Some art making accumulation strategies that repeatedly seem to get used ...

-Accumulation into amorphous form
-Scattered accumulation
-Gridded accumulation
-Accumulated pixels
-Accumulated viewer scribblings, comments, doodles, etc. on a provided surface (straight forward, lo tech interaction).

Hovering Near Precision

2010-10-14T14:26:00.006-05:00

Fred Sandback's work, an example shown above from an exhibition at David Zwirner, creates a memorable visual impression and experience out of such simplicity. Good to strive for that level of precision and trust in its impact.

Precision is neither necessarily additive (knowing when to stop) nor subtractive (knowing when to pull back). One could arrive there from either direction. It's interesting to think about occupying the very narrow range just over and just under the point of perfect demarcation, hoping to arrive, overshooting, pulling back, standing still in the clearing haze. And then, to think of leaping as far out or back as possible, disrupting any sense of eventual balance.

Submissions

2010-10-13T22:37:00.003-05:00

Today, I worked on proposals and submissions, a seemingly endless process of resizing images to meet the specifications of each, and wished a standard format could be adopted.

Beyond the mechanics, the submission process affords a reason to assess past and current work, to research context, and to delineate direction going forward.

more formal play

2010-10-12T20:59:00.006-05:00

further thought ... the crossed circle could become a sphere into the space behind the line, but not like this.