This is the first post for 2015 and covers the two month period from December 12, 2014 to February 12, 2015. Although officially there was a month "break" and a month of independent studio work and study- it was a very busy time. In addition to the break, the new module of study began during the one week Winter Residency in New York City January 12-17, 2015. This module, MCP503, is focused on the research paper which I am writing, and is a transition from an almost exclusive focus on the studio portion of my project to the consolidation of the studio, research , and writing portions of my project. Because of this transition I have made some slight changes and updates to this blog site to incorporate the new module, the completion of a number of pieces I worked on this Fall, and to gain some space for future posts and pages on the website. Therefore this post will be for the most part a summary of these changes, updates and additions with links to guide you to the pertinent pages, but I will also include a brief reflection of the Winter Residency and what I have been looking, thinking and doing around the studio and research despite the exorbitant amount of snow which has made my studio a cold, dark space and cut into my work time in numerous ways.
Website Changes and Updates
Beginning in the navigation bar I have updated and slightly changed the titles of the headers. To Year 1 and Gallery I have added the prefix MCP501/MCP503 in order to differentiate the work and Year 2 modules which will eventually be added. When I reach that point all the work, posts and images from Year 1 will be consolidated into a single, archived header with streamlined pages. Currently under the MCP501/MCP503 Year 1 the header Monthly Blog Update MCP501/MCP503 remains the home page. In addition for the February 15, 2015 dealing I have added under this navigation bar the pages MCP503 Annotated Bibliography and MCP503 Intro Paper & Outline.
Under the MCP501/MCP503 Gallery header I consolidated the separate monthly documentations of the Journal pages into a single gallery MCP501 Journal Pages Gallery . The photos of the two pieces I created in Berlin that were in the August-September gallery have been relocated to the Berlin Summer 2014 gallery located under the Workshops/Residencies header. The gallery containing sketchbook pages has been renamed MCP501/MCP503 Sketchbook and I have added the top nine images to it with this posting. The gallery in which I have been posting general process documentation has been renamed MCP501/MCP503 Process Photos Journal, Sketchbook, etc. to reflect the ongoing addition of processes not necessarily specific to a single project but needing a place to be documented. To this gallery I have added a significant amount of new information, which is added somewhat chronologically. It is necessary to scroll through the gallery, the new information begins with the posting of my presentation notes-binder images. This gallery also includes a video of the first 5 minutes of my presentation at Winter Residency, as well as images of some newer, uncompleted works I have been playing around with since returning from New York City. All of the galleries documenting the process of Self Portraits completed during the MCP501 module have had this added as a prefix to their name. New images and text concerning the completion and presentation of both Look In Glass and Just Between Me and You were added to their respective galleries, MCP501 Process Photos Look In Glass and MCP501 Just Between Me and You . Again, these galleries are arranged chronologically from start to finish, so you must scroll through to get to the most recent image/text postings. The Look in Glass gallery contains 17 new images and two videos. Just Between Me and You contains 4 new images and two videos, of which the Pages video I consider a separate piece/self portrait in the series. Finally, under this header I created a new gallery for the piece Index which was made specifically for the presentation I gave at the Winter Residency 2015 in NYC. MCP501 Process Photos Index contains 49 images and text of this project.
The only other slight changes made to this website were changing removing the year from the Critique Group header to allow for growth, and to retitle the header Workshops/Residencies for the same reason. I did create in addition to the Berlin Summer 2014 a photo gallery New York Winter 2015 which contains a few fun photos, mainly of me in one of Claire Barratt's stripy tubes!
Winter Residency 2015
As expected it was an intense, full and stimulating week. It was very cold outside, but the scheduling meant that not much time was spent outside of the efa Project Space; and fortunately the massive amounts of snow arrived in the Northeastern US after and not during the residency. Despite the moments of chaos leading up to the residency, I would say things worked out in the way in which they needed to. It was a great opportunity not only to present the work, and for myself this is a large part of what I am considering in my first year project, but also to see how the work and ideas of fellow Transart students have developed over the past six months. In contrast to Berlin where the presentations were split up and we did not have the chance to experience everyone's presentation, it was beneficial to have that opportunity in NYC. I also found it enlightening to be present for the PhD candidates presentations as this helped to broaden my thinking at a personal level. What I did find to be unfortunate was that because it is one week and so much is packed into the day, the time to contemplate, respond to, experience and provide really thought out feedback to the work is insufficient. However, because of the nature of the program and the online communication networks we have established I have been able to have very insightful conversations via email and social media messenger/texts with numerous Ti students about their presentations and my own. So, in a way it is good that the time for immediate and direct response is limited, it allows for a more in-depth, distanced discussion. One email conversation I had with fellow student and crit group member Gabriel Deerman regards to the Look in Glass and its shattering during my presentation was very insightful. Gabriel and I have given each other permission to share this conversation, however I have not posted it here- not sure under which header I wish to include it- but I am willing to share via email with anyone who might be interested, send me a request via email.
Looking, Thinking and Seeing
Despite the snow, residency, holidays and deadlines I have had the opportunity to look at a lot of art the past two months. I was finally able to visit the exhibition She at the David Winton Bell Gallery, Brown University on its final day. Although a small exhibit, it was very thought provoking in regards to how women have been portrayed in the visual arts over the past 15 years. Shortly before the new year, while I delivered Look In Glass and Just Between Me and You to NYC, I took my family to see the Matisse: The Cut-Outs exhibit, along with The Forever Now exhibition of contemporary painting at MoMA. My one comment on The Forever Now is that it could have pushed so much farther, but in light of the sponsoring institution it probably took it as far as was comfortable for itself.
In order to get myself settled and ready for the residency I arrived in NYC the Saturday afternoon before it began, and immediately headed over to the Morgan Library to see Cy Twombly: Treatise on the Veil. I admit that I have always found his paintings somewhat inaccessible for me on a personal level, but have been trying to give them a chance more recently as I have begun exploring my own use of text in my paintings. This summer my 'local museum' rehung their contemporary gallery, and brought out an Untitled Twombly blackboard painting from 1968. And they conveniently placed a bench directly in front of it where I have spent a number of hours this Fall sitting and looking. During my years in Germany I did have numerous opportunities to see Treatise on the Veil (1) at the Museum Ludwig, in Cologne; it was a great opportunity to see not only how he revisited this painting in Treatise on the Veil (2), but also the drawings working up to it. After looking closely at the drawings on the three surrounding walls I spent a considerable amount of time moving along the benches set up in front of the 30+foot painting, looking and thinking. And I suddenly began to feel myself led into his language, but in a way I was not expecting. It was much more personal than I had expected, in large part I believe to my personal autobiography. Twombly's re-consideration to Treatise began with the drawings he created in the last days of May 1970, just days before my physical birth. The painting, essentially a record, a timeline, of a life-journey was painted in those first few months of my life. As I moved along the painting I finally felt a connection to the language, similar to that moment of learning another language and you wake up from a dream and realized you dreamt it, and understood what was being said.
While in NYC I also had the chance to visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art to see not only the Twentieth Century collection before it is relocated, but also the Pieter Coecke van Aelst exhibit which included one of my favorite altar pieces, with a great depiction of God, Jonah and the whale, from the collection of the Staatliche Kunsthalle Karlsruhe. It was a good reminder of how artists historically were not defined, categorized or pigeon-holed by the media they worked in and that this is a 'modern' phenomena. On the Saturday after residency I was able to attend both the studio visits at the efa and the Chelsea Gallery Walk Jean Marie organized. I especially found the visit to Katinka Mann's studio and hearing her speak of her process inspiring. A few of my fellow Transart students who were unable to attend asked me if I would take notes and send them an account of the visits, which I did. Again, I am more than happy to share, but not quite sure under which header to place this, so send me an email if you are interested in reading more about that day.
A transition which occurred at the residency, and which lead in turn to a weekend journey to Philadelphia and Beacon, NY was the selection of three artworks different from the ones I had selected to discuss on the final submission of my project proposal in Berlin. The selection process of those three works I found tossed upon me in Berlin. My solution was to randomly choose what I thought might be good for discussion. However time has shown me that really the selection of the works I should be and need to discuss has grown out of the months of reading, reflection and studio work. Therefore in my meeting with my Research Advisor, Michael Bowdidge, in NYC those three works were tossed aside in favor of more pertinent works. In our discussion it was clear that Duchamp was a must in the paper. I had begun taking a new look at his work upon returning from Berlin, reading up on it, and agree that there is a lot I can address here in the paper as he was in my thoughts a lot this Fall. Other artist who came up in our conversation were Ellsworth Kelly, Bridget Riley and Agnes Martin. I responded most to Agnes Martin, as I have spent a number of years looking at and considering her paintings, though in an informal fashion. The Duchamp piece suggested was With Hidden Noise, which I serendipitously ran into the following day at the James Cohan Gallery .
Returning home I did more research and re-encountered an Agnes Martin painting in the collection of Dia:Beacon which I always found intriguing, because it didn't "fit" with the others as readily. This piece I selected is Untitled from 1956-57 and is a transition piece for her as she moved from New Mexico to NYC where her 'mature' work began in 1960. She was also the age I am now when she painted this piece. For the third piece I knew I wanted to choose something more recent, and a work which has or had limited possibility of direct experience. I had recently begun thinking again about the work of Ann Hamilton, and looking through her oeuvre I came across ghost...a border act from 2000. This piece seemed to have the elements I was looking for which could add to the contextualization of my work, relates to the works of Duchamp and Martin, is a work I have not and cannot directly experience. But I still wasn't sure about With Hidden Noise. Having read more, thought more, I began to have my doubts that this was the Duchamp piece I needed to write about, discuss. So I packed up my car and between snow storms took a trip to Philadelphia to visit the museum and all the Duchamps. I knew I needed to see Large Glass and the Green Box in its display case to verify the feelings I had that this is the piece for the discussion. And it is. On my way back to Rhode Island I stopped in Beacon and spent a few hours visiting Dia:Beacon and confirming my choice of work.
This brings me up to date, and the end of a very long and drawn out blog post. It was a very busy time, although last week I thought to myself "what have you done? you haven't done anything!". Writing this out I can see that doing takes many forms, part of which is reflecting on all that has been thought out and experienced. Just like Duchamp's notes on the glass, and Martin's numerical analysis of trying to capture on paper the 'exact' image she saw in her head, writing and creating these blog postings are a part of my process, a portrait of my self which is more for myself than for anyone else.