Putting the psycho back into psychogeography / ice storms and opportunities

When I moved to central Mass in August, I began almost immediately trying to figure out what it might be like to live in a cold and snowy and icy place. I started a couple of aerial paintings with this sort of "cold place" re-imagining in mind. Not really knowing the lay of the land and still learning how to get around, I didn't have a grounded reference for making work about my new locale. This lack of knowledge and experience led way for paintings that were open-ended, still quite speculative and, I soon found out, imbued with unconscious material – like the image below, which is a photo of one of the paintings in progress taken in October.


The painting has changed since I took this in-progress photo sometime in October, but if you look closely at the center, you can make out this triangular-shaped freezing, teeth-chattering, eye-squinting, nose-dripping "face." I find it both curious (and actually quite hilarious) that this material appeared from what I was intending to be planes and shards of splintering ice, blinding sunlight and confused movement through winding and forking roads. I also find it curious that this work was a bit of foreshadowing.

In mid-December, Fitchburg was the epicenter of a huge ice storm that took out the power grid for much of central Mass. Frank and I were without heat and electricity for a week and intermittently thereafter for the following week. We had friends, and knew of many others throughout the city and countryside, who were without services (some including water) for 2 weeks and even more.

The storm was unbelievable and devastating in ways I can't accurately describe. To understand the full effect of the damage would require an eyewitness view of what a war zone this area had become... roads blocked with debris, power cables stretched across and dangling in the streets, cars destroyed, military and emergency vehicles crawling and flashing lights day and night, bulldozers and chainsaws and work crews in military fatigues, busloads of refugees coming into the city's shelters. For weeks, the streets were a flurry of activity toward cleanup, recovery and repair.

Frank and I and one of our neighbors had two trees fall on our cars. My car took the brunt of the damage and was declared "totaled" by the insurance co. The neighbor's car lost a back window, which was easily replaced. And Frank's car had damage to the moon roof, which is relatively minor. My car is still drivable, but does need to have the roof repaired from what appears to be mostly cosmetic damage. Though I've finally settled up nicely with the insurance company and have the money sitting in the bank and ready to put toward the repair, there remains a waiting list on every local auto body shop... for obvious reasons.

Still... somehow in the midst of all this crazy weather, which also included several snow storms, I've had some exciting professional opportunities open up. First, as I mentioned in an earlier post, I moved back into a public studio. I am now part of a local art collective, Rollstone Studios, in downtown Fitchburg and a member of the Fitchburg Cultural Alliance. Secondly, I have been slated for a solo exhibition at Fitchburg State College in the fall. Third, I received a call from an out-of-state client (during the storm, no less, when I had very little cell phone battery left) telling me that her alma mater had gotten the okay and is raising funds to commission a large piece of work from me. That work will begin next fall. And finally, I've picked up a couple of courses to teach at the college. So... all's well that ends well.

The above painting has progressed over the months as have I. I've actually adapted to the cold much more quickly than I thought I would. I've learned to drive and walk in the snow, but it's still quite a lot to contend with. The teeth-chattering face is no longer visible in the painting or a prominent feature of my psyche, but the resonance (and humor) of that image still resides and peeks through in the painting on some level.

The City Without Clothes and the 4-year process

For the New Year, I've been doing a major de-stashing -- donating and giving away to fellow artists many fabrics and materials for which I no longer have use. In the process, I've been clearing out some older work as well. Some pieces I'm re-working or mining for materials, others I'm destroying, but many I'm bringing back out into the light of the studio as that's often my process.

I've heard other artists say similar things about their own work -- that from its conception to the final completion, a piece or series often undergoes about a 4-year process. Some ideas are born fully formed, but many need to ferment in a notebook or project box or even sit partially-formed until mature enough to make their way into the world.

Below is one of those works-in-progress that I started while I was still in Los Angeles. It's another in the aerial / psychogeography series. Forgive the dimly lit image.

City Without Clothes (potentials of paradise) work in progress

The materials are velvet, velour and fleece. The colors may be a bit difficult to read in this dim studio image, but they are very vibrant, yet fleshy: reds, golds, purples, browns, pinks and tan.

In the de-stashing, I also brought out small buckets of velvet buttons in some of these colors that I'd like to add to the piece once I get it stitched together on the machine.

A couple of links in reference to the title:

"The Naked City" is Guy Debord's 1957 psychogeographic map of Paris. Here's an interesting English language article with an image of Debord's map (mid-article). The paper proposes contemporary collaborative and digital mapping of usage (rather than the geometry) of urban spaces.

The "Body without Organs" is a deterratorialzing term from Deleuze and Guattari. This Wikipedia entry offers one explanation that's pretty easy to understand.

My work-in-progress is a sort of map to nowhere (as in utopia). It's bodily, bold, joyful and full of hope. It's personal, in that it's potentially everywhere I may have imagined living, but have yet to even visit. It articulates possibilities and parallel lives that have yet to be lived.

Quilt Coincidences

I went to my first meeting of the Smoky Mountain Quilters this weekend. ...lots of talented quilters... and a few odd coincidences.

The first coincidence was that I was invited to the meeting by one of the quiltwriters for this beautiful book on Gee's Bend Quilts right after I'd been studying it for a client who wanted me to create a similar (though still very different) string quilt from family clothing.

The second bit of coincidence was that the studio space beside me was almost rented a few days later by another artist who won an award for this piece in the last SMQ's show. This sheer quilt was a part of a recent exhibit at Ewing Gallery on the UT, Knoxville campus.

And third coincidence is that the Smoky Mountain Quilters were the group that sponsored the fiber award I received a few weeks ago at the Oak Ridge Open Show. The award was decided by the juror (and not SMQ) and was for this piece:

Los Angeles Aerial #3: Psychogeography of the crazy quilt (in the fashion of Jackson Pollock)

Not the best pic. As soon as the work comes down in early November, I'll have the piece professionally photographed.

Aerial Paintings

I finished these paintings:

Random Pastoral Aerial #3: Flows and fissures
acrylic and water soluble oil on panel

Random Pastoral Aerial #4: Pools and micro-climates
acrylic and water soluble oil on panel

I’ve changed the viewing orientation from previously.

September First Friday

Last night was First Friday. I didn’t have much work up this month because I spent a lot of time on a commissioned fiber piece last week and, before that, re-stitching and stretching a canvas for another exhibit.

Since the commissioned work-in-progress was hanging on the corkboards in my studio, it got a lot of attention. People were very curious about all the fabrics and the possible history behind them. The best way to describe this piece, which is so unlike most of my work, would probably be: part Mondrian abstract and part Gee’s Bend string quilt. Out of respect for the client, I won’t show an image of the work at this point in construction.

Below is a pic of another stitched drawing. This map-like drawing is a detail of the new back of this aerial, Los Angeles Aerial #3: Psychogeography of the Crazy Quilt. Because the aerial was so heavy (layers and layers of canvas, fabrics, threads and yarns) I wasn’t really happy with the rod pocket for hanging, so I attached it to yet another piece of canvas and stretched it onto a canvas frame.

Aerial Fragments

Below is a detail of what was originally a 5' x 6' canvas that I dyed by pouring fabric paints and fiber dyes onto raw canvas and then filling with fabric paint in between the pours. The process and rationale is similar to what I did here. I finished painting and dyeing the canvas in 2005, but have been periodically cropping and tearing smaller works from the original canvas (the scale and proportions of which needed some alteration). This is in fact a detail of one of the smaller fragments. I'm still cropping and playing with the proportions. Sometimes I'll begin this type of alteration by cropping photos in Photoshop.


West Coast Fragment #7: Water and concrete, 2005-07
30" x 30" (detail, 15" x 24")
Dyed and painted canvas with hand and machine stitching

And here are some of the earlier fragments torn from the same large canvas.

June First Friday and meandering with neckties

This weekend was the First Friday art walk and the group show for the Arts and Culture Alliance. I finally finished the large fiber aerial and included it in the show. Here’s a photo:


Los Angeles Aerial #3: Psychogeography of the Crazy Quilt
mixed fibers and fabric on canvas, 3' x 4'

The photo isn’t the best quality because I haven’t had the final piece professionally photographed yet, but you can still see how it has changed from earlier. I’ve sharpened the edges and drawn lines with machine-couched dark yarns… and I’m very pleased with the results.

This piece is made up mostly of men's neckties that I wove into a thick fabric, hand-stitched together with other hand-dyed fabrics, cut into squares, reconstructed into a grid, stitched to canvas and drew over with machine stitching. I invested months of meandering, free-associative stitching into this painting / crazy quilt. Both the long process and the final form reflect my personal response to the flows and restrictions of everyday life (which involves so much driving) in Los Angeles.

In another associate gesture, I pulled out the Necktie Ballgown (because it’s made of men’s ties as well) to do some repairs and exhibit it on the dressform in my studio. I’ve been replacing the few silk ties (which have begun to fray and rot as silk does) with more sturdy, thick polyester ties from the 1970s. I love these ties for all their patterns and brilliant colors, which give them a particularly peacock-y quality... and since I've taken this masculine trope and given it this feminized form, I find the 70s era ties even more appropriate to the project.

First Friday visitors loved seeing this fun piece, and one brave person even wanted to try it on and feel its weight as she strolled through the galleries both upstairs and down. Here’s a picture that Frank took on his cellphone of the beautiful Victoria Lenne wearing the Necktie Ballgown. Several people said that the piece came to life with her wearing it... apparently Freida the dressform just doesn’t do the dress justice. Thank you, Victoria, for your boldness and your delight in wearing the Necktie Ballgown.

Victoria Lenne is a painter. Here’s a website (she says is a bit out of date) where you can see some of her work.

April First Friday and Random Aerials

I showed 10 Aerials at this month's First Friday, including some newer paintings with the ones I've been working on over the past several months.

Random Aerial #1: Water, desert and ocean with no city
mixed-media on panel
48" x 56"

Above is one of the older pieces and below one of the newer (and possibly still in-progress) pieces. Both are part of the Random Aerial series. On the painting below, I didn't use any topographical media (fabric or paper) to sculpt and give dimension to the surface as I did with the top piece.

Random Aerial View #3: Pastoral Kaleidoscope
mixed-media on panel
24' x 24'

The Pastoral Kaleidoscope is an abstracted agrarian landscape that suggests dynamic motion though the patterning is flattened and the viewer's orientation to the picture plane is static / perpendicular.

Here's a side view of the gallery box construction:



I constructed all the boxes myself from oak... hand mitered the corners, secured the plywood panel and finished the wood with a natural stain and buffed wax. The panels themselves are finished with 6 coats of sanded and damp burnished gesso.

Lest we forget the reasons we left Los Angeles…

…David Maisel will show us our immersion, remind us of our experiences and invoke our readings, i.e. Mike Davis.

I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got on the internet and began searching for more aerials of Los Angeles and happened upon the work of David Maisel – specifically the Oblivion series (Los Angeles) and Terminal Mirage series (Great Salt Lake in Utah).

I feel terribly ignorant not knowing this work, but glad I found it at this time when it's so relevant to my own work. I must have come across it before now… and even have vague memories of reading something in Art in America (5 or 6 years ago?) about someone’s exquisite aerial photography of toxic sites. Something must have lodged in my subconscious… though I can recall no names or specific details about the work.

Maisel’s photos of Los Angeles are haunting. When I look at them I’m both mesmerized and simultaneously sinking inside. I loved so many things about living in L.A. (the diversity, the people, the food), but there were other things that deeply disturbed me and contributed to my misery.

I don’t remember a day of living in L.A. when I didn’t feel trapped and implicated, when I wasn’t engulfed in noise, pollution and over-consumption. I was weighted with an enormous guilt for the near decade I was there – always thinking of the environmental destruction: the driving, the water consumption where there is none, the city sucking the life and resources from elsewhere to support its overgrowth.

This is why Frank and I were so eager to leave. So whenever we begin to feel nostalgic for L.A., we have these images to remind us of why we left… which makes me think that, as cultural and historical documents, they’re already embedded with a future potentiality for viewers to feel both loss for the great project, regret for even pursuing it and resignation that it could have been no other way.

But of course, the consumption and environmental destruction are not limited to L.A., and a lot of what I associate with L.A., SUVs in particular, were less to do with place than time. What was happening on a grand scale in L.A. was happening in sprawling suburbs across the country. There seems to have been a consumption explosion that just happened to coincide with our years in L.A. It’s not just L.A. – the entire U.S. is caught up in the all-consuming destruction. We are all implicated.

I wonder about those North Americans who haven’t had their consciousness raised through lived experience in a place like L.A. where the reality is visible and undeniable – will they continue to ignore the seriousness of the problems because it’s not in their face every day? Does the whole landscape and climate have to transform into versions of Los Angeles before we stop and take notice? And if we can’t even take notice, what has to happen before we take action? I say this because at least in a place like L.A., there is a discourse about the problems (because they are so obvious and difficult to ignore) and activism on a grand scale to meet the grand scale of the destruction. At the same time, many Angelenos adopt a complicit resignation because of the enormity of the situation and recognize their individual powerlessness to effect change on the scale necessary. The problems are deep and structural and bigger than any one of us.

Below are some quotes from David Maisel that I pulled from this interview where he discusses the Salt Lake images and sublime beauty:

…I think there’s also a twinned process of seduction and betrayal involved- a viewer might be seduced by the colors and forms of these images, and then, in a sense, betrayed once knowledge of the subject becomes clear. It parallels the way we are seduced, and ultimately betrayed, by a certain level of consumerism that exacts such tolls on the environment. Yes, I want my SUV and my wide-screen TV and… oops! There goes the ozone layer! Imagine that!

…I’m motivated by the notion of discovering and revealing sites that might otherwise remain unknown or unseen- be they clear-cut logging sites, strip mines, cyanide leaching fields, etc. My photographs of these sites are intended to be reflective of some sort of internal, psychological state as much as they are documents of a particular site. And, I consider myself a visual artist first and foremost- as opposed, perhaps, to a photojournalist or a documentarian. I'm most interested in making images that have a kind of depth-charge, that have a certain poetic or metaphoric impact visually.

…Beauty has been seen as problematic for the visual arts in general because we no longer trust beauty as a serious means of investigation. But it can be. Beauty wedges into artistic space a structure for continuously imagining what we do not yet know or understand. For an object or an image to possess beauty does not mean that it is empty of meaning or shallow. In fact, beauty can be incendiary. It can be subversive. It can make us cringe.

Aerial painting in progress and more about the aerial project

Random Aerial #1 with no city (detail 1)

Random Aerial #1 with no city (detail 2)

Above are some details and below is the 4 1/2' by 5' foot aerial that I mentioned from First Friday. This was the first painted aerial (after I’d started a couple of city aerials in fiber in 2002 and recently recombined them into this piece). I began the painted piece in 2003 while we were still living in Los Angeles.

Each of the aerials has a psychological and somewhat autobiographical component. The city pieces were a mapping of my immersion in a city the size of Ireland that is traversed almost solely by automobile. While in L.A., I drove all the time, every day and over large areas. On average, I drove about 50 miles each day and in multiple directions on side streets and freeways. After 8 years, I had the streets, the restaurants, the getaway drives, the routes to school and work and their many alternate routes memorized. So working with the labor-intensive fiber processes and with cutting and collage fit the psychological experience, if only to relive it to some extent… delays, dead ends, rerouting… all buried in this frenetic, consuming and inescapable energy.

The paintings however were part wish fulfillment and part unveiling – pulling back the skin of the city to uncover an imaginary expanse of unaltered desert ground and fantasized water. In the painting process, I draped fabric and paper over panel, laid it flat and let the paint and water settle into the hollows. Then I rubbed grease stick and oil pastel over the high points and repainted with acrylic. I repeated this process over several months before I set it aside for a couple of years and picked it up again recently with more applications of the same layering process.

With the painting, I was less interested in building representations or images on a ground or in showing my hand (as with the city fiber aerials) than I was in letting the organic processes of draping, pouring, drying and rubbing create a structure of the ground. As such, the painting became more sculptural while the fiber pieces more painterly.

As I mentioned in the First Friday post, this piece is difficult to light because of its multiple planes and hot spots. The viewer must be in constant motion around the piece to see all of it clearly – an effect I may use to other ends some day.

Random Aerial #1 (water, desert and ocean with no city), 2003-07

Flat Aerials

I've had a flu/cold for the last two weeks and haven't been able to spend much time in the studio. All I've been able to muster the energy for is my work at the museum and a couple of hours here and there before and after the museum work. Mostly, I've been working at home on some smaller pieces and sorting out what's left of my home studio.

Today I moved several things that had been piling up at home to the downtown studio, worked for a few hours there and took the photos below. They're a couple of the painted aerials I moved today. I started these in the fall of 2005 right after we moved to Knoxville from Los Angeles. That these were the first new pieces I started within a couple of months of moving to the new location is personally significant considering their pastoral, even agricultural, quality. At this point, they're still works-in-progress.

Note:I filled the unpainted parts digitally with pale blue to experiment with alternatives to the white of the unpainted gesso.


Random Aerial #3 (vertical pastoral sketch) and Random Aerial #4 (horizontal pastoral sketch)

These paintings explore my relationship to sites of city and country and to a "naturalized" view of the human imprint on the landscape. As most of my other work, these pieces play with ways of knowing a landscape: either through a sequenced / time-based relationship (as in walking, one foot / image in front of the other) or a spatial, holistic and mapped view. These pieces would be the mapped view. All this is nuanced by my personal experience of moving back to Appalachia from Los Angeles and the loss of the imagined relationship to "the country" from afar.

These aren't paintings in the usual sense as I used processes more akin to fiber dyeing than to mark-making or brush-work. First, I allowed the paint to move about on the panel in response to my controlled motions (similar to what I'd discovered earlier with dyeing and staining raw canvases). With this process, images emerge that are simultaneously random and patterned as with other dendritic forms. Upon seeing such forms emerge, the process made it easy for me to imagine I was as much a force of nature governed by physical parameters as a collection of trees, a leaf or a city like Los Angeles. My movements and thoughts constructed the same forms as a branching tree, a forking river, a vine of ivy, a clump of blood vessels, an interstate freeway system or a cancer.

Second in the process, I deliberately filled-in the spaces created between the randomness. This part of the process was very deliberate and opened the work up to choice, patterns and a different form of repetition.

I found the relationship between the precision and the fluidity to be meaningful during that time of transition. In fact, I find this work to be very personal as it reveals my thought processes and struggles at a time when I was trying to re-situate myself in a location that (in nostalgic recollection) I had believed to be familiar and, yet, was so utterly different than the city which I'd become accustomed and whose streets and freeways I knew so intimately.

February First Friday and fiber aerial in progress

Last night was the First Friday art walk. The weather was cold and lousy, but lots of people showed up nonetheless. Met some great new folks and visited with old friends.

I’m still working on the big fiber aerial from last month and an aerial painting I started back in L.A. I also showed a new piece that uses the free-weaving process I’m inventing and hopefully perfecting.

Here’s the fiber aerial:
Los Angeles Aerial #3: Psychogeography of the crazy quilt (in the fashion of Jackson Pollock)

The 3' x 4' piece is a collage of vintage fabrics, men's neckties and painted / dyed fabrics, machine and hand stitching.

again with the aerials

NASA satellite images

Of particular interest is this image of deforestation in Bolivia.

Curiously, and only an intuitive and visual association, the deforestation images remind me of some of the patterns found in Bauhaus textiles. This is probably because my friend Krissa just gave me a book, Bauhaus Textiles: Women artists and the weaving workshop, that I've been looking through. On that topic, here's a great little blog entry about Anni Albers and Bauhaus Textiles.

Revisiting the painted fiber aerials of 2005

Below are details of aerials made of painted and dyed canvas: