Test Images

1st Mentor Meeting, Sunday, January 12th

It was great to meet with Shellburne again.  She always cuts through to the essence.

Shellburne said that I should constantly re-evaluate my need to build.  She said “Less is More”, and it takes courage to just let things sit.  She said the quartets were over-kill, and the wire was too fussy and keeping the viewer from getting into the image.  She said I’m not respecting my images, and I need to get out of my own way.  She said I could try using shadow boxes to mix interiors and exteriors, the way my reflection images were both the inside and the outside.  She said the boxes themselves would have to be much more discrete, though, so the frames wouldn’t get in the way.  She said I should let the viewer bring his or her own associations.  Or she said I could think about printing my images on silk and let them float as the viewer walks by.  She was also intrigued by my experimental black and white vellum image over a color image.  She said that was worth trying more of.  She said to think of how memory, like dreams, doesn’t necessarily make sense.  She said I needed to go back and regroup, and not confuse myself.  She said I have a tremendous amount of imagery to work with, and I should spend some time composing with the computer.

January Residency

     The weather wasn't the only interesting happening at the residency.  Stacey Piwinski said it best: I came with four separate bodies of work, and I had to choose.  So with this I had four differing camps of opinion.

     The quartets should function 5 ways: each as individuals and then as a group.  In the quartets I’ve already determined what’s fractured and what’s put together.  But the photos are more ephemeral, and allow the viewer to explore and make determinations.  In the quartets things have gotten too externalized and flat.  I need to go deeper into the visual form.  The more specific things become the more general things become.  Although there were also some who loved my quartets and their fencing and wanted to see more and have them expand and grow.

     With the shadow boxes I’ve mediated what the viewer is seeing.  It is not straight on imagery.  The transparent layers provide a lot of ambiguity, as the imagery shifts as the viewer moves.  They are painterly without being a painting.  But the boxes are kind of clunky and the lights should not be in suck a straight and even line.

     Jan Avgikos said the materiality and craftiness of both the quartets and the shadow boxes disrupted and got in the way of the content.

     Robert Smithson has written a lot about materials and manifestation and entropy.

The house is not dramatic enough.  There is no emotional distance.   Nesting metaphors of house and wall are present but murky. I should challenge my approach.  The house is distance, but Kiefer is not distance.  Washy & watercolory doesn’t convey emotion.  Things have to be more unexpected.  And where are the interiors of these structures where the actual living occurred?  Where are the objects, the pieces of things people hold onto? 

     Memory and reconstruction of the past needs more than the outside of the house.  There is not enough to explore this idea.  It needs to be more nuanced.  I am showing only one side of our sense of security.  I need to branch off and explore other ramifications.  I need to describe the psychology of memory of a place.  I should spend time writing down what I miss or want from my memories.  I need to give a clear indication of what the memory is.

     Sunanda Sanyal said to frame memory in terms of the American idea of memory.  He said I should widen my view of the house, but also discuss the limitations of the house.  As an artist he said not to just look at possibilities, but also the limitations.

     Dissolution and transformation – something lost, something gained.  Find a way to imitate this process: not literally, but emotionally.  I should aspire to a lot of emotional content.

Many people liked my experimental piece with a black & white vellum image over a color image.  Deb McDuff said she liked that the best, because the vellum represented memory, and the color behind symbolized life.

     What most people liked the most were my straight pin-hole camera images of my sculptures.  Lynne Cooke said the detail in my images didn’t automatically correspond with a known process to her.  She said it adds to their mystery and ambiguity.  Assya Makawi said she loved how much clarity and detail was in my pin-hole images, and yet so much ambiguity.  She said all of my other work is a support for my pin-hole images.  Jan Avgikos said I should investigate the idea of haunted houses. 

Large Work & a Couple of New Cameras

I continued on with by tearing and collaging of images, but on a larger scale.  The base is four straight pinhole images each printed at 17" X 22" and mounted of foam-board.  On top of that is chicken wire, to act as a barrier to the past.  On top of that are torn double exposure pinhole images to represent the fragmentation of our memories.

Since I am still exploring and experimenting I thought I would try the same idea with a different method.  In this quartet the double exposure top layer is printed on a transparency that acts as a veil over the past (chicken wire and single exposure image).

I also decided to use some of my silkscreen images as fronts to a couple of new cameras.  I like the idea of have black & silver negative images facing future imagery that will result in black & white negatives on silvered paper.  I still need to construct my sliding shutters, and then will be able to glue the aluminum to the cameras.

November 22nd Mentor Meeting

     I started off my meeting with Judy by showing her my pinhole photographs of my sculptures at the location of their inspiration.  She really liked these images.  She said that in the past my sculpture photographs were more self consciously done, stating “this is this”, and “that is that.”  But now there is a unification where lots of different things are stating to talk together.  She said that the way Charles Sheeler photographed factories, and Hilla & Bernd Becher photographed water towers, spoke of “this place is iconic”.  But the way I have photographed my sculptures is very internalized, the way Gaston Bachelard’s writing in The Poetics of Space is very internalized.  She said the low vantage point has an ambiguity, and makes the images feel more in the moment.  She said they are also enigmatic, and not completely knowable. She said my images echo “house” without overly defining the deconstructed overlay of damaged house.  She said they feel like the occludedness that happens in memory.  She said the viewer has the sense of being within the piece as opposed to looking at it.  She said they’re visceral, with everything collapsing together right in the image.  She felt the images were very active, with an openness: the copper house levitating, the barn fracturing, and the form moving to image to texture. The fracturing and diagonals repeated keeps the images vibrant, and she liked the play of the geometric with the biomorphic.  She said I really need to consider how to display these, because the paper surface is so rich: glass or no glass, perhaps mount on aluminum and have them come out from the wall.

     Judy was very excited about my large 34” X 44” images (printed on 4 separate sheets of 17” X 22”).  I told her my original intent was to piece them together into one, but I actually loved the fracturing that occurred by having them as 4 separate images.  She agreed.  I talked with her of my plans for layering torn pieces of color images onto them, connecting them with chicken wire, and so on.  She opened up that discussion to include other ideas of how they could exist and evolve.  So I think I will break with my original intent and experiment a little further.

     I showed Judy my larger transparencies for my fire series, and we discussed how their larger size changed the image.  I told her I wanted to pick 3 images and frame them in a box.  She said I needed to lay three out together, and work them as a trio to see how they would work in concert.  She said I am composing now, so I need to think about how they flow together. That was good advice, and not at all how I’d been approaching it.

    Judy was also excited about my material exploration.  She said it was interesting, though, that the only substance I poured as a sheet and then broke was the plaster.  I hadn’t really thought of that.  I said I really enjoyed breaking the plaster, and like the fracturing that occurred.  But one of the plaster pieces I had to stop fracturing because all the material wanted to fall away, and both of them kept shedding bits.  She said I should try lining the back with paper before I pour the plaster.  And then when I break the plaster I can burn away the pieces of paper where I want the plaster to fall away.  She also really liked the grittiness of the dog hair pumice gel medium piece.  She said I should try combining these two materials with the plaster and see how that would be.  She also talked quite a bit about armatures, other backings, and methods of hanging plaster pieces.  She said to experiment further within this narrower range.

     Judy said I should look up the artist Elaine Spatz Rabinowitz.  She said she does hyper-realistic paintings on broken plaster.  She said it might give me a good idea of how to marry my images with broken things.

     I told Judy I felt like I had all these parts and pieces, with no definitive completed project to show her.  She said she thought I was right were I should be, and should just keep carrying on.  So I guess that’s what I’ll do.

Going Large

I wanted to try making some of my torn collages large, so I scanned some images in to be 32" X 40", and divided them into 4 pieces to print on 17" X 22" paper.  I originally thought I'd piece them together, but I really like the fracturing that happens with them by printing them as four separate units.  So I've decided to embrace this.  The first image is of the front of the house, and the second is of the back of the house.

I made some small mock-ups of how I envisioned my series (I thought I'd eventually add a third image).  But the three together look a little too stripy and vertically lined.

So my idea now is to abandon the color, and use double exposure images to be the torn up companion.

Material Experimentation

Judy suggested I experiment with a variety of materials to form my chicken wire house assemblages.  I trimmed (by tearing) the top of My paper collages to follow the shape of the buildings' roofs per several people's suggestion (including Judy).

This is Scultamold modeling compound with ground up autumn leaves.

This is Scultamold modeling compound with nylon fibers and dry grass.

This is matte acrylic heavy gel medium with ground up burnt wood.

This is acrylic crackle paste gel medium with milkweed seeds.

This is acrylic course pumice gel medium with dog hair,

This is matte heavy gel medium with nylon fibers, acrylic paint, and dry grass.

This is plaster mixed with dirt, poured in a mold, and then broken.

This is plaster mixed with ground up burnt wood, poured in a mold, and then broken.

I was hoping fo melt transparencies onto chicken wire, or to paper, or to itself (with wire sandwiched in between).  But all that happened, after a remarkable amount of time, was the transparancies began to curl. So this idea doesn't work.