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.

October First Friday

I spent a lot of time this First Friday going around to other galleries and watching a show at the new Black Box for Carpetbag Theater, which just opened across from our studio space. Sorry to those visitors I missed this month. Hope to see you next First Friday.

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.

Some thoughts on feminism, fiber, media choice, contemporary art practices and labor

I’ve been pretty busy lately and, though I came to the conversation late, I did have every intention to respond to the Germaine Greer article, Making pictures from strips of cloth isn't art at all - but it mocks art's pretentions to the core, that has so many fiber artists and art quilters in an uproar, but have lost some of my interest in the task.

I will say that the first thing that struck me in reading the article is this: Did Greer miss post-modernism entirely? She’s upholding painting as an ideal even after its so-called “death” and death of any other material-based studio practice. To work with fibers, to work with paint, to work with any medium has not been necessary to constitute art for a very long time. And to claim any sort of permanence or immortality for the art object as criteria for legitimacy is so behind in the critical art discourse.... Surely Greer’s being ironic? Sadly, I don’t think so. Flippant maybe… glib, haphazard, ill-informed.

And there maybe is the irony… in the article’s ill-informed state, it shows itself to be a consequence / product of post-modernity (which seems to have escaped Greer) in that post-modernity has deflated the notion of expertise. Post-modernity affords a space for Greer where she can play the expert in fields where she is not. She or any of us have the freedom to write and pontificate about art (or science or whatever we choose) whether we’ve done our research about the subject or not. We are all equal to have our opinions. But still… some opinions are more informed than others just as some arguments are more valid than others.

Surely I don’t need to go into performance art, etc. or the material facts of all objects (no matter how mighty): they don’t survive forever. No matter how well protected, paint ages, it cracks – such is its history. Museums and conservationists help to preserve, but they do not try to turn back the effects of time on an old object, nor do they want to. Their jobs are to repair damage and prevent further destruction, not to make old paint look un-weathered and fresh. They reweave holes in old tapestries as well.

Regarding permanence and specifically media choice, Greer refers to Tracy Emin, whose sewn tent was “sadly burned.” Again, I’m not sure of Greer’s tone. Is she mourning the loss of a great object that mocks art, sarcastically calling it a loss as so many ignorant others who like to claim “that’s not art,” giving credibility to the patchwork of Edrica Huws by associating her with Emin or smartly showing the futility in hoarding the art object (as Emin’s tent was destroyed in an art storage facility)? Whatever the way, the object is gone as objects often become lost, destroyed, stolen, burned. (How many stories have we heard of “great pieces” being destroyed in studio fires?) That the piece existed in material form, that it was documented, that it fulfilled an idea and contributed to the discourse of art – this is where the meaning lies, not in the object's permanence.

To give privilege to an idea is not to say that this in any way does away with the cultural fact that an artist’s media choice and handling of materials always carry a history – personal, political and aesthetic – and each artist has a different set of histories and reasons for choosing his / her media to work through the ideas. For many, to chose fiber is a feminist statement that references a shared and inherited history of women’s work and, not only its "futility" as Greer recognizes, but its lack of commodifiable value. Historically, some labor is typically paid while other labor is neither paid nor recognized or, for that matter, even acknowledged as work. Certain labor lacks legitimacy and the proper sanctions from mostly male-dominated social institutions.

Might the "self-mocking" Greer writes about be related to art’s inherent uselessness and thus its often feminized role in a society (though the art heroes are, for the most part, male and the profession has historically been male-dominated)?

I’m not suggesting that any treatment of feminized materials (such as fabrics and fibers) is a “self-mocking” gesture though it can be or has been, espcially with so much irony being thrown around in the early 1990’s. Oftentimes a reference to the historically undervalued (i.e. women’s work) becomes a way to question what a society finds valuable. In that qualifying question, is the quantifiable… at some point, any artist who labors or, for that matter, any worker who labors must come to ask him or herself whether his / her work in particular or any labor for that matter (specifically the commodifiable and alienated kind) is futile. And then… embedded in that question of futility is its counter: Is all labor then potentially meaningful either intrinsically (meditative aspects, self-fulfillment, etc.) or extrinsically (financial gain, professional recognition, etc.) or both? That’s not to pretend that all work is equal in fulfillment or financial gain, but that some joy or meaning might be found in a variety of labor whether or not it is paid and “useful.”

And then there are those male artists who use fabric and fiber as their media. I won’t go into them either, though the point should be clear that they reference a history of women’s work as well.

I suppose it could very well be that fabric scraps are materials that are so over-determined and imbued with history that artists who use them are always at risk of “being misunderstood” or mis-categorized as the "wrong kind" of feminine. It is a fine line. And straddling this hybrid position where I'm sort of one thing and then kind of another, I often find I’m consciously shifting my weight from one side to the other of that fine line that divides the serious from the frivolous, the thoughtful from the sentimental and the powerful from the un-empowered.

I have no delusions that we are all able at all times to make equal choices with equal resources. We are not. We do not have the same career opportunities to do “important work” like developing cures for cancer or whatever constitutes “important [masculine] work” these days. The varying histories, privilege or lack of it, and our personal preferences make the difference in what is within our might or interest to pursue. Maybe we develop the compassion to recognize that some laborers / artists have more choices than others and the arrogance to hold ourselves to a higher standard by that recognition. Or maybe we hold to the compassion to let ourselves be where we are with our limitations and histories such that they are.

Ah, well... I ended up rambling on about it anyway.

So, thank you Germaine Greer, for generating conversation on this important topic as it concerns women, artists and those who labor.

Daily Drawings and Water Witches

Here are a few new drawings from last week:
Water Witch Running through Green
pencil, machine stitching and fabric paint on paper

Water Witch Floating
pencil, machine stitching and fabric paint on paper

Water Witch Mirage
pencil, machine stitching and vintage fabric on paper

I’ve been working with this Water Witch motif for a few years now… since these L.A. Mirages from 2003. So long that they’ve taken on a bit of a persona and go about performing actions as any other character might.

Part of the initial reason for the birth of the water witch in my work was because Los Angeles was so dry and I was always craving and wanting to divine water and rain. So, the divining rod, also called the “water witch” seemed the likely trope for such urges.

The other reasons for the motif and my preference for the name “water witch” over "divining rod" were political. There is the more obvious governmental politics behind Los Angeles moving and stealing water from other locations, but I was more interested in acts of divining in terms of gender and art politics.

While I was working on the very clean photographic L.A. Mirages and similar video work (where my hands never got dirty), I began to step-up the other part of my materially-based practice of painting, drawing and fiber (what I’d moved away from in graduate school).

In moving back to materials and studio, I felt like (because I’d been trained to have this response) that I was doing something “witchy” and outside the mainstream of contemporary art practice. In other words, I was doing things that had become feminized within the field of art. I had turned myself into something of an “art witch” as I heretically toyed with ideas and materials and styles that were considered outside acceptable practice for someone of my background and training.

Despite the heaviness of all that… these are fun and playful little pieces for me.

August First Friday: Shoebox Sculpture, Aaron McIntosh and the new studio orientation

We had another excellent First Friday last week with the chance to talk to several people we hadn’t seen in a while and the opportunity to meet more cool new folks. I only looked into a couple of other galleries by recommendation from some of my visitors who referred me next door to the Shoebox Sculpture exhibit at UT’s Downtown Gallery and across the way to see the excellent work of Aaron McIntosh at 1010.

I didn’t have much time or room (the gallery was pretty crowded) to spend with the Shoebox Sculptures at the Downtown Gallery, so I’ll have to go back over the next few days. One of the sculptures really leapt out at me though: Brooklyn artist John Drury’s Shoe Nut… a lovely little piece constructed from the tips of two wingtip shoes.

Continuing with the men’s wear theme...

Across the way at 1010, fiber artist Aaron McIntosh was exhibiting some stitched target / breast-like imagery similar to this work where he’s mentioned in this issue of Fiberarts Magazine as a young talent to watch. Click on his name to see the work. He is definitely a rare and exceptional talent.

I was most taken with an image on one of Aaron’s cards from a previous show. The quilted piece is titled Family Tree 1 and is constructed from men’s pants fabrics, romance novel pages, cotton batting and thread stitching. I couldn’t find a link to the completed piece, but here’s a picture of the artist working on it. You can get a good sense of how the whole thing looks with these paired and singular egg-like textual parts peeking through (with what looks like reverse appliqué) from the somber grey, taupe, black, etc. of men’s woolens.

For more of Aaron McIntosh’s work scroll down to his name and click on images.

Back across the street at my open studio... here’s a pic of the new set-up since I’ve rotated into my new space:
Barely got this pulled together before First Friday. I’m still not completely moved in. The flowers to the right were a gift from fiber artist Judi Gaston in celebration of the new space. Judi wasn’t able to be at First Friday because she was opening another exhibit at Aerial Gallery in Asheville.

Instances of Resistance and Daily Drawings

I haven’t had much time to get around and visit the galleries since teaching has taken up most of my recent days. The teaching has been good because it reminds me of the importance of foundational skills such as drawing and painting. The two are so much a part of my underlying experience that I don’t even think of them as separate skills in their own right. I rarely practice pure drawing or painting, and yet I often take for granted the ability to call upon them at will.

So… teaching has prompted me to uncomplicated my process a bit and do something I’ve wanted to do for several months: daily drawings. I’ve also wanted to combine the daily drawings with the Instances of Resistance project, but wasn’t quite sure where I would take it. Until a few days ago, I only knew that I wanted these isolated pieces of rogue plant-life to have a simple, candy-like preciousness to them. (I guess that would be the nostalgia I tend to play around with.) I also wanted the feral plants pushing their way up through the cracks of human construction to have an almost caricature persona and to leave a graffiti-like imprint on the ruins they inhabit.

Below are some drawings from the last few days (digital photo prints on Bristol Board that I’ve drawn over with an 8B pencil):
Instance graffiti #4: 11 feral plants, 8 twigs and 1 cross-beam in brick ruin

Instance graffiti #3: 9 feral plants in brick ruin

Instance graffiti #2: 3 feral plants above archway

Instance graffiti #1: 12 feral plants among others in brick ruin

July First Friday

First Friday was a couple of days ago and was one of the most enjoyable. I always have fun, but this one in particular was exceptional. Met a lot of cool people and had some great conversations. Thanks to everyone who stopped by.

Unfortunately, I was so busy socializing that I didn’t get time to move around the galleries, look at all the art and talk to the artists. Hopefully, I’ll be able to see some of that work later in the week.

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.

Walking and Remembering

I just uploaded some work from 2004 to the gallery. Here’s the first in the series:


Memory Walk #1, 2004
10” x 12” drawing stitched with hand-dyed cotton yarn on raw canvas

Every evening for years my partner, Frank, and I would take the same walk around the Los Feliz neighborhood in Los Angeles. The walk took about an hour or hour and a half, depending on whether we added an extra loop. We would begin at the edge of the neighborhood where Silverlake and Los Feliz meet at the Rowena reservoir and head straight up the steep end of St. George to the nunnery at the top of the hill, arc back down to Rowena and into Los Feliz where we would wind around until we made our way back to the point where we started.

Most walks included wildlife spotting, usually skunks, but also coyotes and raccoons and the occasional owl. The ritual was playful and heady, a time for us to process our day and figure out problems we might be having with our respective projects.

I miss the walks. I miss the neighborhood. I miss the ritual and the meaning and structuring it gave both of us. But for everything there is an exchange; and now we have bike rides in the morning (as we live right off a shady greenway). And the bike rides have their own delight and meaningfulness and wildlife: blue herons, geese with their goslings and turtles. Still, I miss the walks.

So in thinking on these things, I pulled out these stitched drawings and have been sewing them together to form one large piece.

Here’s the last piece in the initial series and part of the statement posted in the gallery:

Memory Walk #9, 2004

Xs mark the beginning and ending point, which never quite match up because I’m re-walking the route in my mind as I stitch. Each memory is different with stretches of road being a bit longer or shorter and with every twist and turn being at a slightly different angle.

Sometimes the actual walks included an extra loop depending on the evening and my and my walking partner’s energy level. So some memories have the loop and some don’t.

In doing this mapping project, I was drawing a connection between sequential activities (walking, stitching, remembering, narrating) and was bringing a time-based element and the body back into the 2-D map, which is usually static. I was also marking evidence of how repetition or re-telling of a story, even in stitches, engrains a pattern and molds the map to a more ideal (or nostalgic) likeness to the "original" territory.

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.

Instances of Resistance are springing up everywhere

I took these photos outside my studio yesterday. They’re part of my ongoing documentation of instances of feral greenery that grow of their own accord in the cracks, crevices and ruins of human construction.

May First Friday and Shibori

May First Friday was a few days ago. The evening was pretty mellow with less of a turnout than usual, as we had expected it would be… partly due to rainy weather and other events in the city this weekend. I was exhausted from a long month of over-working and didn’t get around to see much of the art in the other galleries, but we had a great evening and talked to some interesting people nonetheless.

Since I set up my first studio in 1990, I’ve maintained a functional line to my practice where I make affordable, custom pieces (mostly clothing) available to a broader audience. I don’t do that much clothing anymore, unless it’s a custom piece, but I am beginning to make fabrics for the home. Right now, I’m using Shibori techniques to bleach dark fabrics – indigos, blacks, reds and greens.

On First Friday, I showed some of the new Shibori pieces (mostly floor-length curtain panel pairs that mirror one another) to a great response from our studio visitors. Unfortunately, I haven’t photographed any of that work yet. Once I get things photographed and a few other things completed, I plan to set up a small on-line shop where I’ll be selling functional items made of Shibori fabrics. I’m really proud of these beautiful pieces and am eager to get them out there. Pictures to follow soon.