Studio clearout and traveling to New England to find a new place

I cleared out my Knoxville studio this week and have been packing things up for my and Frank's move to the Boston area where he'll be starting his new job as a tenure-track professor. This has been a long road for us (8 years in Los Angeles for our respective graduate programs and then a three year appointment in Knoxville), but worth it to be finally headed where we want to be.

Of course, we'll both miss all of our friends, family, fellow artists and colleagues, but we're absolutely thrilled to be settling into a new life in an exciting new location.

I'm writing this from a hotel room in Newark, Delaware making my way up to New England where I'll look for housing. I'm on the road as a pit crew member of an ultra-cycling record attempt. My mother-in-law's husband, Gerry Eddlemon holds the national first place record in state crossings and the world's second place record. On this trip, he'll be attempting two more state crossings in New Jersey and Vermont. In exchange for my help as a crew member, we'll be stopping in Massachusetts between rides so I can look at housing.

Here are Mikki and Gerry together in the Connecticut crossing. And though the article doesn't mention it, Mikki is an extreme athlete as well having won several marathons and long distance runs in her age category and placed first in several races in the Senior Olympic Games... hence the big banner in the first picture welcoming "ULTRA EDDLEMONS."

Frank will be flying into Boston in a few days to meet us there. Exciting stuff!

Open studio: Instances of resistance

This photo montage is another piece in the Instances of Resistance series where I search out and photograph feral plant life growing among human construction / ruins.

I've used some of the same digital photos as the smaller pieces on paper below. The difference is that the photos in the large piece are printed on fabric, montaged onto a raw canvas and over-stitched using the sewing machine.

Instance of Resistance #10: Feral greenery in the underground city
digital photos on fabric over-stitched onto canvas
3' x 4'

Here's a detail of some of the stitching:



Below are a couple of the ones I printed onto Bristol Board then drew over with a soft-lead pencil.

I chose drawing as the medium because I wanted to put my own hand into the photos and make a connection between the role of subjectivity in my art practice and the un-tameable, rogue plant-life. I also thought that drawing would be the best way to animate the plants with playful and caricature-like personas.

I enjoy how these pieces invoke nostalgia (a theme in my work) with their simultaneously shadowy presence and candy-like preciousness.

Instance graffiti #4: 11 feral plants, 8 twigs and 1 cross-beam in brick ruin
digital print and pencil
2008
8" x 10"

Instance graffiti #1: 12 feral plants among others in brick ruin
digital print and pencil
2008
8" x 10"

The stomping grounds / Knoxville in the NY Times

A fellow artist friend who also recently left the area just emailed this link:

music, art, food, green

The article definitely focuses on some of the better aspects of Knoxville.

Sale! studio materials and equipment

I haven't posted in a while because I've been both out of town and working on clearing out home and studio for our upcoming move. I do have some new work as well, but don't have the photos back from the photo shoot yet. Hope to post those soon.

For the last couple of weeks, I've been selling some of the sorted items and studio furniture and plan to sort out more items for First Friday, which is next week. So far, I have for sale:

Consew industrial sewing machine with table
vintage and other fabrics
miter box, saw and other framing tools
35 mm cameras, Pentax and Cannon
Bell and Howell 16mm film camera
slide projector
opaque projector
art tackle boxes
storage boxes and containers
small frames
vintage tables

... and lots more that I can't remember right now. Will update if I think of anything significant.

More conceptual, less material

Here's some playful work from 2001 which I thought was appropriate at this time as I continue to clear out more studio materials... all in preparation for our big move to the Boston area!

These pieces are from the series Found Landscapes in which I chose plywood panels (from the hardware store) with woodgrain patterns suggestive of landscape features. I brought the features out by staining the panels with oil paint.

In the first piece, I collaged a smooth stone in the center of a concentric ripple pattern and then accentuated the pattern by staining with blue paint. In the second, I used yellow paint to stain over a 1/4 circle shape in the upper left corner. Then I outlined the shape and drew sun rays with pencil to suggest a child-like symbol for the sun.




Just as a curious side note, Cathy Malchiodi in her book Understanding Children's Drawings (p. 212-13), suggests and cites research that claims that children who are facing death or loss of a relative will often place a sun in the upper left corner. When I worked with children, I noticed however that most children (even those who are not facing such a loss) tend to put a sun in the upper left corner.

Of course, children from other cultures have different symbolism. For instance, I'm unable to find a reference, but I remember seeing a documentary during my studies about Australian aboriginal children who used semi-circles to represent people in much the same way western children might use the stick figure.

Meditation on the horizon line by way of the map

In the continued effort to pair down materials and use what things I already own, I've been recycling some paper I made several years ago into collages called "Meditations."

I call them meditations because the process is repetitive and structured. Repetition within a structure not only requires a certain amount of patience but allows for the mind to occupy itself... and thus open up to new possibilities. In that respect, I see these pieces as objects in their own right but also as a sort of clearing out which will make way for other work that has yet to be conceived.

Meditation on the horizon line by way of the map, 2008
handmade paper, wax, acrylic and other media

And an image and link to an earlier "Horizon Line" performance:

Performance, Endurance, Monika Weiss and Baptism of Water

I've started another blog, Endurance Studio, to document a long life/art endurance project. Actually, document isn't entirely accurate because the site will become a piece of net art in itself as the narrative unfolds.

The purpose of the project is to organically narrate my shift away from material objects, which has been happening in my work and life for several years. The unburdening process is slow, often uneven and not necessarily a progression.

We shall see where the project goes and how it brings itself into form over time. For now, consider the performance work of Monika Weiss:
baptism of water

And some writing by George Quasha about her work, endurance and the body: conceiving body

March First Friday: Meditations on patchwork, collage and the grid

First Friday has come and gone without much event, which is not to say that the evening wasn't busy or that we didn't have lots of visitors.

In the midst of other projects, I've been working on some hand-made paper collages that I call Meditations (one was hanging for First Friday). I don't have any photos to post yet because the work is being professionally mounted for re-framing (and as prep for a decent photo). The Meditations are grids of inch squares of handmade paper layered on a painted ground. They're a bit like paper quilts but with a mixture of wax and other paint media.

The process and ideas are extensions from the aerials made from paper / cloth covered panels and the stitched aerials. The difference is a more structured and limited format (the grid). But all of these modes are still about the construction of a surface built from a body of coalesced materials that are molded together (almost sculpturally). There's lots of polishing and finishing that draws from ideas in painting though the processes are very different than most painting or drawing in that mark-making, the hand and image are less relevant than the surface and the object itself.

Working with similar ideas, though polishing the surface through photography, Gwenn Thomas arranges fabrics into patchwork patterns and then uses photography as her finishing tool. Here is an untitled piece where the depth of the fabrics and the shadows they cast contrast in relief to the flattening medium of photography. As such, the arrangements become representations of an object that never was constructed.

More Neckties

I've been getting a lot of traffic from two sites who've linked to my Necktie Ballgown. The site pages from Craft Test Dummies and Hobby Schneiderin (in German), have links to other people doing things with neckties as well.

Not too long ago, Erin from Dress a Day also pictured a necktie dress in progress from Cynthia, another of her readers.

Below is a purse I made a few years ago from 70's era ties similar to the ones I used in the Ballgown:




Again, there's something very compelling to me about transforming this masculine trope into femininized forms.

Also, I quite enjoy the sculptural process that I tend to use while working with ties. Maybe because the ties already have finished edges, I feel freed up to treat them as distinct elements that I then can drape and/or weave together over a form (such as a dressform for the Ballgown or a fabric form for the purses). The construction becomes much more intuitive if I allow it to evolve through the materials rather than lock myself into a plan with fussy seams and corners.

February First Friday and attachments to place

This weekend was First Friday and though we didn't have much in the way of new exhibits, I did get a chance to talk to Amanda Sparks, one of the artists in the Crave exhibit, which opened last month at UT's Downtown Gallery. I wrote about Amanda's exquisite pop-up book in the January First Friday post in which I lamented not being able to meet and talk to her about the work. But as the calendar fell, we were fortunate enough to have the show run through two First Fridays and I spoke with her about the piece, which is unlike anything I've ever seen. Here's an image from one of the pages.

Amanda told me that she learned "on the job" how to build each page by studying children's pop-up books and adapting those construction methods to her more complex and multi-faceted designs. Many of her pages included composites of (I'm guessing here) 50 or more images montaged together. It was quite the thing of beauty and delight and eloquently articulated a version of childhood in which place and possessive attachment took precedent.

And by intuitive association I'd like to add (for personal reasons which have to do with detachment from place) a link to Roni Horn's Library of Water in which the artist thoughtfully considers the geography, climate and culture of Iceland.

Alba D'Urbano Collection: Wearable Photography

Many of you may have already seen this work in which the artist photographed her own nude body, digitally printed the images onto fabrics and built them into a playful collection of couture clothing. Once you get to the site, click on The Collection and The Fashionshow links to see more pieces.

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.

First Friday of 2008

First Friday was a bit too close to New Year’s Eve, I think. People were probably too partied out to show up in frigid weather for yet another event. Though what we didn’t have in quantity, was certainly made up for in quality.

Met some interesting and thoughtful people (mostly out-of-town visitors or the newly relocated) and had some engaging conversations. ‘Delight’ best describes what I felt that evening… both toward the people we met, but also upon discovery of a few remarkable pieces of art.

First, the exhibition at the UT Downtown Gallery is exceptional. The show, Crave, includes 6 artists (whose obsessive processes include some form of collage) and is curated by Matthew Garrison of PA. The curator and one of the artists, Joel Carreiro of NY, were present for the opening.

Joel, who teaches at Hunter College, constructs grid-like montages (many in concentric configurations) on large-scale wood panels. His process is quite remarkable in that he builds his pieces from medieval and baroque art imagery printed onto transfer paper and ironed directly onto the panels.

Of remarkable note is Amanda Sparks exquisite autobiographical pop-up book entitled Half a World Away, in which she reprinted and transformed childhood photos and other photographic images to create an idyllic and nostalgic fantasy world of what suburban life was or could have been. Hopefully, Amanda will be present at the February First Friday, as the show will continue through the first of next month.

And then upstairs from us at 3 Flights Up, are the delightful little snow globes of Robmat Butler in which he creates little suburban vignettes from train shop miniatures… things like dogs on diving boards under clear water with bits of snow or parked cars with rust-tinged water that looks like a the worst L.A. haze on the worst day.

My Necktie Ballgown got another try from one of our visitors. Forgive the blurry pictures; they were taken on my cellphone in dim light.

Here is the very lovely Jo-Jo. David is to her left.

And here are Daniel, David and Jo-Jo.

Pondering the new year: Endurance art, enduring life, yogic sadhana, practice, over-work and letting go

I've always cringed a bit at some of the language Linda Montano uses to frame her endurance projects... (for example). The work itself has been so strong and meaningful for me that I've been able to overlook the bothersome language and construct my own critical apparatus around it.

I'm not so much bothered by the meaning or the ideas themselves, but how they've been articulated through mystical language. As with Ana Mendieta's performances being cast in the understandably discredited discourse of earth mothers and goddesses, there's so much more to the work than those narrow and clichéd explanations. For instance in this interview, which includes Tehching Hsieh, Montano talks more about some of the social aspects of her work – specifically the endurance project with Hsieh and a rope.

For some time now, I've wanted to write a bit about Endurance Art and some artists that I most admire – Linda Montano, Tehching Hsieh and On Kawara in particular. I just haven't been sure how to say all that's jumbling around in my head and relate it back to my own practice in a meaningful way. I considered just putting up some links to their work and then talking more about my own endurance processes. Links and process notes don't seem an adequate documentation of where my head has been recently, let alone my own progression through the ideas of endurance – from being a college student looking for art and meaning in the mundane and functional to a theory driven graduate student situating those same ideas within a critical discourse to a studio artist plowing through to deadlines, resting and repeating. And then... there's that pesky psychologizing and mysticizing language that sometimes attempts to explain acts of enduring art or enduring life.

Enduring life. I put those two words together because I'm intrigued by the ambiguous meaning of the phrase, which could mean a life that endures and is ongoing and self-perpetuating... or could also mean a life that must be suffered through. I see the phrase as a mirror to the acts of endurance art in that the acts are simultaneously poetic (even abstract) and drudgingly mundane as they are carried out over time. They endure only in their presence (as they're ongoing) and then finally only in their documentation. The very nature of endurance art is fleeting... non-enduring.

The endurance project may be a metaphoric, allegorical or abstracted representation of some interaction in the world or a demonstration that exposes (through the doing) the limits and parameters of that same material and social world. The acts also have potential to become a psychological "acting out" as in an hysterical manifestation of a personal or social ill, which before Freud would have been called religious or spiritual (in its more socially accepted forms and in the language of Montano) and called insane or "demon-possessed" in its less adaptable and more reviled forms.

But endurance art ultimately is significant because it is not an "acting out" but instead a conscious, willful and focused act. And here the language of spirituality comes back around because I'm reminded of the yogic practice of sadhana where willful and present intention and attention is key. Acts and practices mean something because they do take effort and because the effort hones a level of skill, strength and accomplishment with regular practice. As well, they're meaningful because they have a frame / focused attention / limits around them.

But acts of will can also be acts of letting go... letting go of a compulsion, habit or even a practice. For instance, for the workaholic, it could be a stop to whatever s/he's doing to make room for something other than the usual. The usual might even be that which has previously constituted a practice or an art (as mentioned above) or a project that has come to the end of its cycle.

Within any art practice are cycles of work, completion and letting go, but with endurance art these cycles (set in time) are as much a part of the content as any other element. They begin with the compulsive or repetitive action, the deliberate intention of setting a length of time and the act of enduring it. In this process... time, the spending of time and the passing of time are what become foregrounded. On Kawara demonstrates this most eloquently with his Date Paintings. And so, with his work, I end the pondering.

December First Friday (and Saturday)

Luckily, I recovered from the flu in time to attend First Friday. December is not the month where the Emporium Building events are so much about art as they are about the holiday celebrations and shopping. Nonetheless, we still had quite a few visitors in our studios interested in seeing and talking about art on both Friday and today.

At one point in the evening on Friday, we had no fewer than a half-dozen elves (from the parade on Gay Street, I’m assuming) gathered in our studio. Was quite the surreal moment for us and our other visitors.

And today, I had some interesting conversations with new visitors. Of particular note was Sandra Van Winkle whom I so enjoyed talking to. That’s the great thing about a public space like this, you never know who you might meet or the amazing conversations that might be sparked.

avant-garde films & videos

I'm sick in bed. And what better way to while away the boring hours than with these. Enjoy.

Fig Leaf Loincloth

I just finished this piece yesterday:


Fig Leaf Loincloth
off-loom tapestry woven with bamboo and cotton fibers

It only took a little over a year to finish. See previous post.

Of course, I was working on other projects as well and would set it aside for months at a time. Still… what a labor-intensive process… and what a feeling of accomplishment to finally have it completed.

Here are a couple of process pics from the recent stage of work:


Front view, with second cardboard loom
See first cardboard loom / cartoon for the leaf from previous process post.


Back view

November First Friday

Last Friday was First Friday. Busy. I spent much of it working on the string quilt commission that shipped out early this week. I also spent some time at A-1 LabArts where one of my videos was showing. I won't write more now as I have a busy weekend ahead and another deadline on Monday.

Drawing as in walking as in mapping as in writing as in remembering

Here’s an interesting project by Chinese artist, Mengbo Feng. He uses his PDA and a GPS module to draw Chinese characters on city street maps as he walks.

Though the work is very different, the project reminded me of Wenda Gu’s work with Chinese characters and hair. Gu is a Chinese born conceptual artist living and working in N.Y. Several months ago he exhibited an installation that included curtains of hair with characters at UT’s Ewing Gallery as part of the group show Regeneration: Contemporary Chinese art from China and the US.

Gu also exhibited some of this work at the Hong Kong Museum of Art in 2006 as part of a dialogue with Mee-ping Leung, a friend and colleague of mine who came into CalArts the same year I did. We were both pursuing our MFAs when she began Memorize the Future, which grew in size over the years and went on to be exhibited in several venues. Both links show details of the installation which included hundreds of child-sized shoes molded from human hair.

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.