Another month has flown by.
My focus this month has been on the RDC1.
This has involved drafting, revising, re-drafting, revising (so on and so forth) the text which will comprise the prospectus: project aims, questions, background, methodology; along with the bibliography, abstract (form) and timetable. As I come closer to completing the draft I am feeling the ground beneath my feet has grown more solid and I am ready to move forward. This became even clearer to me as I recently created the spreadsheet visually depicting the next 3 years of this project and formatted the draft version of my bibliography. Here is a picture of my timetable/spreadsheet, printed at actual size and hung on the only wall in my home/studio long enough (and it isn’t really) to accommodate it. It is just outside my bedroom, the first and last thing I see each day...it may have to go...but for now I am enjoying the rhythms and patterns created by the colored bars as I walk past or while I make my bed...a reminder that I’ll have to lie in it.
In part as a means of archiving out here in the cloudy Never-land of this website, I decided to create a blog-gallery for Diagrams and Figures within the section ‘Other’. Here is the first post: Picture the Process. These diagrams (and one existing figure culled from the web) I created as I wrote the prospectus text to visualize my methods and the relationships within. Some I’m keeping in the prospectus I’ll submit, some I’m saving for later, and they will probably all change as the project progresses.
I have participated in two MPhil/PhD group Skype sessions with my colleagues this past month; had a face to face meeting with another colleague to discuss the current state of our projects and preparations for Winter Residency; received written feedback from external sources on my writing; and communicated with my committee via email and a brief Skype meeting (6. December).
In terms of visual ‘making’ compared to the previous three months I have less to show; not because I have been making less, but because what I am making has not reached a stage that could be seen as a good stopping point, or would make any sense to an outside viewer. When it gets cold between the easel and the wall the flow slows down like molasses in January, but warmer weather will come, eventually.
The painting I’m doing has been mostly a continuation of previous work; including a group of smaller canvases and paintings on board done which I began over-painting in the past six months. This over-painting is about responding to the work, once deemed ‘finished’ and seeing where it goes. It is about playing with the paint and seeing what happens...keeping my chops up, remembering old paths and discovering new one. There is nothing really there to ‘see’, so instead of creating a blog-gallery post with these images I am going to post a few detail images of these paintings. Eye candy.
I continued working on the next phase of Good Witches of the Between begun last month. I am now collaging the pieces of the painted over photo-collage onto the larger sheet of paper, adding acrylic medium for physical texture and as a resistant surface for the oil paint that I am also using. Again, not really far enough along to see or understand what is seen, so I am posting a few detail pics here instead of adding to a separate blog-gallery posting.
Playing with prints of the diagrams I pulled some more older, once finished paintings from the storage shelf and began collaging and over painting in acrylic and oil. Here are some details of the works in progress.
Now, to look ahead.
This week and early next I’ll wrap up that full draft. I have begun thinking more on the presentation I will give at Winter Residency in NYC Friday, January 13, 2017. And there is plenty of smearing to be done!
As to the alt-personas: Melusine disappeared around November 10, but I suspect she might be back...my wallet and credit cards went missing for about half a day yesterday. I finally found them in the guest room, a sure sign of her presence as I never take them into that room. Petra, as usual, does not have much to say. When I tried to talk to her recently she quietly responded by quoting Milton Avery “Why talk when you can paint?” and returned back to her spot in that between-space. Franz has been trying to be helpful and supportive, as is his nature. It is clear he is worried, but then he usually is. He spends a lot of time watching Petra work. I am hoping he will join me in NYC, at least to help install some work of mine in a small show a friend has put together. Franz always has mixed feelings about going to the City… I think he might find it a traumatic place; and today he just found out the state police might have found the remains of his paternal great-uncle, a notorious rum-runner who disappeared in the early 1930s, in a church yard in South Kingstown, RI. Whatever happens, I’m sure all three, Mel, Franz and Petra, will make their presence known in one way or another in the coming weeks.
In the spirit of how I ended last month's post I’ll also end this post with two short, calming videos I made last Friday standing on the strip of beach between the Atlantic Ocean and a salt water pond at Goosewing Beach, Little Compton, Rhode Island.