Passing thoughts on material use.

Inspired, yet still troubled. Material is too easily a fad.

Recreate a landfill mound without any dirt, so one can see what lies inside beneath the dirt, some of it biodegradable, much of it not. That which isn't biodegradable is a structure; that which is rots away. It's the rot we want, the decay that is healthy, not the imposed random structure.

Recreate a thick dust cloud within a transparent balloon, gravity strangely sinking the cloud down toward the ground, lightness defied.

But if re-creating an object or phenomena is the goal, it's restrictive: scope ends with the re-creation. Is everything real and fake?

Color study

Thinking about what is "defining" and what is "relevant"

Essential: Gravity. Space. Differentiation among elements. Prior identity. Points of departure. Discovery. Present/Monumental. Lyricism. Light/Shadow. Integration. [Try to reduce this to three].

Relevant: Separating line and area/volume. Transparency. Color accumulation. The wall. Four walls. Level of transformation. Scale. Presence different than inspection. Stopping point/vacillation.

Irrelevant: Clarity, representation,

Undecided: Material, randomness, accident, figurative, narrative

Opposing: Mass amalgamation, linear, message delivery.

Gimmick, Trend and Forgetting About All That.

Art is hard.

It is a giant flashing indicator of too much isolation from what else is going on and being shown when one pauses and realizes how quickly trend can overtake what starts out as unique and novel and warp it, making it feel like a gimmick, or worse, derivative, even if it isn't either. Hovering work near without touching gimmick just might be feasible and interesting -- because of the tension -- but a few days/weeks/months later, such hovering work would probably sit well inside the gimmick camp.

I am done for now worrying about the gimmick effect in the use of some non-art materials -- and how widespread such uses seems to be becoming. It isn't the materials themselves that matter, it's why and how you use them and what you say with them. Either that works and is appreciated or it doesn't and isn't -- the difference between what might be relevant and what is defining.

I had a good few hours creating new work today. Getting back to playing.

Risking Failure

At my presentation yesterday, I shared my thoughts on the failure of my Artprize piece. Liberating. While one would rather fail in private and toss out the bad work or rework it until it managed to succeed, I am glad I risked failure.

I went to look at the piece before the presentations. It had deteriorated more from the weather, but it did not bother me the way it did as I was struggling with making it.

Upcoming Presentation, and more on the dreaded "Gimmick" potential

I present my art tomorrow at Grand Rapids Community College, along with three other Artprize artists with work at GRCC for Artprize. Three out of four of us speaking are using recycled or re-purposed materials. So, again, I'm wondering if my work is too inside a trend, just due to the numbers and not the content of these other artists' work. I look forward to their presentations.

Some consternation comes from a recently rejected submission. One never quite gets used to rejection, even if one "knows" acceptance/rejection can depend on a lot of factors, not the least of which is juror "taste." My piece was made of ephemeral materials, although that may have nothing to do with its rejection as the show may turn out to be filled with predominantly ephemeral work, given the material trend that keeps popping up when I look around these days. The piece was not fully realized -- it was a proposal with a sample rather than a final work, which may have been a wrong approach for this particular exhibition. Or again, the exhibition may turn out to be filled with realized "proposed" works; my "sample" and write up may itself not have been sufficiently realized. Or the jurors disliked the concept, compared to the works they selected. Or. Or. Or. I think the concept is good; so, I'll have to work on it more, and create more samples to present a better basis for visualization the next time I submit.

When I look at the work on my studio wall, the direction looks strong, though individual pieces need more development. And it looks different, for the moment, from what I see out in the world. This can't be a bad thing.

More Thinking About Material

Devastating thought, sort of... I may be the only one who shares my aesthetic. I'm grumpy. And a piece fell off the wall when I was taking pictures, which made me grumpier. Still, lately, I keep having this concern about being too singular.

I watched Artprize's Critical Discourse over the Internet tonight. Panelists and an audience discussed the ten pieces selected as finalists. The discussion led me back to evaluating non-art materials in art: the moderator started with a "contextual" bit about a drawing of a cosmetics model in a private collection in Napa Valley (I missed the artist's name), made from cosmetics and kept in a room imbued with the scent of cosmetics. Hits multiple senses hard with non-art material. The cosmetics theoretically at least were used aesthetically, materially and conceptually. The "painting" -- that's what the art looked like in the slide -- did not appeal to me; everything, if anything, about the "painting" seemed to come from its "cosmetics" shtick. I looked up art with cosmetics on Google and came across another "cosmetics" artist (I don't think it was the same as the rendering did not look as the slide shown in the discussion). Bottom line, anything one can think of probably has been used as a material, but does the "art" in which the material is used need the "material," verses plain old paint or clay or wax or metal or glass, etc., or does the art transcend the use of the material.

Fiber is an art material, but can be used in unexpected ways. My favorite top 10 Artprize piece (I hope it wins) -- the simply elegant suspended threaded red disks by the installation artist from Texas (need to look up her name) did transcend material and process -- the piece when viewed did not feel like it was about the "material" per se -- though the narrative of the art suggests the material was conceptually integral. I cannot recall if the threads connected to one another at all, consistently or inconsistently with the narrative. A small question comes to mind, however: Is it possible to make this kind of suspended display in a way that is not aesthetically pleasing? Undoubtedly. [Update: even if it were not, perhaps that is the brilliance of the piece.] Is it easier or harder, assuming intentionality, to make such mono-colored suspensions pleasing than non-pleasing? There's a choice in making it comfortable, inviting, relatively uniform, visually pleasing, etc. rather than ominous or uncomfortable or incongruous or difficult on the eye. It's interesting to note that the artist had planned for viewers to be able to walk through the piece, with the disks closer to floor level, and make a wave -- that would have added non-visual sensation, as well as another visual dimension, to the experience of the piece.