Unlike my local weather and the planets in our solar system the past month has not been for me a time of taking two steps forward then one step back. It has been one of those rare periods of forward progression, moving at a measured, steady pace with time to address everything on the agenda. It is a full and exciting agenda, with daily additions, some surprising and some anticipated; balance is maintained.
My primary focus, in addition to the painting, has and will continue to be for the next couple of weeks my MFA Thesis paper. My research advisor, Laura Gonzalez, returned her comments to me within a few days of receiving my first draft so I have had ample time to think about and play with the final version and other iterations of the paper’s contents. March 21 was the first of two Skype crit group sessions, on that day I asked my colleagues for feedback on the first draft of my thesis as I was writing it in a style new to me and I was unsure of how readable the paper was. In addition to my advisor’s and my crit group’s responses I had a few other people less familiar with my work read the paper over and share with me their understanding based on what they read. This has helped me identify the points that I really need to address as well as what works best and why.
Parallel to working on the MFA Thesis paper I posted two new writings on this website directly related to the thesis project. Composing for Decomposition is about my thoughts on how working through the first two movements of Sonata shifted my approach to the role of composition in the work. The second, Colors and Fonts, is a short piece I wrote to help me find the voice, style and look of Me, My Self, and I, the narrators of my thesis paper. I am working on another essay, also related, which I hope to post in the next day or so. Happily that bit of writing has been delayed by some coats of paint, which now need to dry. The natural rhythm of the painting and writing seems to have emerged this spring.
The studio has been very hospitable the past month. I completed work on the panels of the second movement of Sonata: Adagio (an sich), additional photos can be found in Gallery Five. The first movement Sonata: Allegro (Das Ding Ansicht) was in an exhibition at the University of Rhode Island Providence Campus through the end of March. Once I had both movements in my studio I was able to photograph each panel individually; they can be viewed in the gallery Every Single Note. My intention is to include the individually photographed panels as an appendix to my thesis paper [Note: the photos are not scaled to size]. I am not sure the third movement will be ready for the May 1 deadline, but will definitely find its place in the final, final version. After photographing each panel I had a couple of sets of 4 inch x 6 inch glossy prints made. One set I trimmed down and spent a few hours playing with different configurations to get an idea of the potential and possibility contained within the work. Photos can be viewed in the gallery Practice Playing.
After a partial spring cleaning of the greenhouse I began the third movement of Sonata: Allegretto (Das Ding); photos of the work to date can be viewed in Gallery Six. Unlike my experience with composition in the first two movements, this third movement seems to be developing into a hybrid of the first two in terms of approach to the theme, structure, color, mark and material. This is what I was seeking, but unsure of how best to approach. Between the first week and the second week of working on the painting I went to New York City for three days to look at, talk about and think about art. After three days back in the studio, reflecting on the development of the work, I see how this time, like my trip in December, has been helpful to me in terms of seeing the direction the painting is moving. The overarching theme to the weekend was inconclusiveness/unfinished/infinite. The meeting I had with my studio advisor, Andrew Cooks, was helpful in my gaining further clarity in the relationship of these within my painting and writing, and ways to take this further. The sparks have been flying, igniting the writing [forthcoming essay post as well as the final elements I’ve been working on in the thesis paper], in the third movement of the Sonata, and in my sketchbook, which after a pause of a couple months has found its way back to the top strata of my worktable. As part of Andrew’s provocation I began exploring some ideas about edges in mixed media; the works can be viewed in the Sketchbook One gallery (last seven images).
Along with this main work I continue to work on three related pieces, the process documented throughout, however I am not ready to post images here. This is partially due to the need to scale down the images in the first two galleries from the Fall, two of the works do have their beginnings documented there. I have, in spare moments begun this process in anticipation of the transition of the pages to an archive, but it is tedious. I have also not decided how I want to configure the documentation of these three pieces. They are studies, but not. Perhaps they are simply auxiliary works. Or just other pieces floating around in the same space. My goal is to have this figured out and on the website for the final post next month.
While I am very much focused on the here and now, I am also giving the occasional glance up to the coming months. I ordered some test swatches of fabric printed with some work from Twinning for a collaborative piece with Claire Barratt as part of our presentation in dialogue in Berlin. I am also thinking about other elements that will be needed; soon we should know more on date/location at which point plans can become more concrete. Travel and lodging in Berlin have been reserved so my focus now is on transporting work, for the dialogue presentation and for SPACEBODIES II. I have pretty much decided what I will do, now it is just figuring out the logistical details.
I continue to read and realized at 3 AM this morning it is time to set up the annotated bibliography for the next stage of my explorations as the recent readings are transitional from what I have been addressing with my MFA to what I want to address as I finalize my proposal to submit to Plymouth University for the MPhil/PhD program this summer in Berlin. I am excited to continue on; to return to a metaphor from my first year, like Alice I’ve reached the bottom of this rabbit hole [there are many] and now it is time to open another door.
