New images are posted in the MCP501 Gallery section of this website; bold titles link to the specific gallery page being referenced. New image galleries have been created for October-November 2014 and Just Between Me and You. New images can also be found in the Sketchbook, Process Photos Journal and Sketchbook, and Process Photos Look In Glass galleries.
Mid-October to mid-November was a month of exploring the act of writing as a vital part of my studio practice. The writing I did has taken numerous forms. I have written feedback for Crit Group presenters; my own Crit Group presentation feedback request and response; response to last months Skype session with my studio advisor, Laura Gonzalez; a description of an alternate, portable presentation format for the journal pages I have produced in the studio this Autumn; and a sketch-essay on the relationship of drawing and painting from my personal viewpoint. In addition to these public writings I have also written a few, personal poems and thoughts which, along with bits and pieces of the other aforementioned writings and the writing of others I have been reading, have been incorporated into the journal pages.
Critique Group
Critique Groups began this month so I have written two feedbacks per week for my colleagues, with the exception of the week I was presenting, when I wrote a presentation and response. I have created a section on my website in which my presentation and the groups’ feedback can be found. My response to their feedback can be found posted in my Monthly Blog under the heading: Response to October 31, 2014 Critique Feedback.
Before beginning the Critique Group I was a bit unsure how I would feel about having to write about each person’s work and the areas they requested feedback for based on the online depiction of their work. I am surprised by how much I am enjoying the process. Taking the Crit Guidelines on the Transart website as the starting point, I decided to focus on the language the presenter uses presenting his or her work on the blog and in the project proposal, and then analyzing it for how it relates to the actual work she or he is presenting. I have avoided focusing on the technical or formal aspects of the work presented because I feel the format of the website/blog is very limited in what it can actually convey of most work [6 of 7 members are ‘painters’ in our crit group], which tends to be very ‘painterly’ in nature or not at a stage in the process where technical and formal feedback would be that helpful, in my opinion. Therefore I am focusing on the language. In my feedback I am trying to use as clear and straightforward language as possible; emphasizing the conceptual questions the language the presenter is using raises [for me] about the work rather than a personal, descriptive response to the formal elements. Approaching my colleagues work in this way has helped me reframe how I think about and use language in relation to my project and the pieces I am producing for it.
Drawing Is Creepy
As a response to questions that came up in the previous Skype session with Laura Gonzalez I wrote out some of my thoughts on the nature of drawing and painting, and how they are connected for me in light of my own work. I then posted the essay to my blog as an example of part of the thought process behind my approach to the art I create. I did this for myself, to clarify in writing my own thoughts and have a more ‘formal’ record of these; but also for my Crit Group, so they could get to know my process and what floats around my head and makes its way into the art I produce. I also sent the essay to numerous people of various backgrounds, some of who have been kind enough to provide feedback of their own. [I did give recipients the option of ignoring or deleting it.] Although I am not a writer, I decided to share this essay to a diverse group of potential readers to see how the language I used in it made the subject comprehensible beyond the world in which I wrote it. I see this as being analogous to gathering the responses of persons outside ‘the art world’ to a piece of art I have created, as a means of gaging how I am or am not achieving communication goals I set for myself within a particular piece.
Just Between Me and You
For my first year project I proposed to create a series of self-portraits exploring my personal response to my diagnosis of Temporal Lobe Epilepsy; taking a nontraditional approach to the traditional materials and techniques of paintings. The first steps in the self-portrait series has been the creation of ‘loose-leaf journal pages’. The reason for choosing these pages as a starting point for me in this process has been that it has allowed me to give myself permission to ‘play’ with various materials and techniques in the studio in a manner I have been less likely to do in recent years. It has provided room to explore not just the materials and techniques, but also the language and the symbolism I am using to relate to my diagnosis. Most importantly, the creation of the pages has provided me a means through which their presentation and incorporation as visual components I can create the series of self-portraits. The pages alone are not “self-portraits”. They are elements, marks, cellular structures, bones, dabs of paint, pixels, and pages which help to form the bigger picture of who I am. Wanderland, Look In Glass, and Just Between Me and You are the self-portraits, the pages are steps in the process of creating these self-portraits, and the self-portraits to follow. I created Just Between Me and You as an alternative, physical-based presentation of the pages to the viewers, into the piece Wanderland, which at this stage is site-bound, because it is my intention to bring both Look In Glass and the physical pages [Just Between Me and You] to the Winter Residency in New York City this January.
The Act of Writing
This past month I have noticed a shift towards the physical act of writing as a means of creating layers of both physical marks and conceptual meaning within the journal pages, and a movement away from creating text through collaged words and letters. While I am still incorporating some collaged text, I am using more the physical act of writing, making the mark, placing the story onto the page while simultaneously obscuring it, making it understandable to myself but incomprehensible to the viewer as part of the creative process. Similar to last month, I thought before I began documenting the recent batch of pages that I hadn’t been very ‘productive’ this month. My mind was again elsewhere. Not focused on the pages I was creating, but the writing that was going into them. Personally it was a very ‘distracted’ four weeks, and there were about ten days where I was unable to get into the studio and paint. Or when I was able to get to the table and easel, I could not paint. Instead I wrote, when and where I could. When I wasn’t writing, I was thinking about writing, or when I wasn’t thinking about writing, I was reading. When I began painting again, I put the words I was writing, thinking and reading into the layers. Unlike the sketch-essay on drawing and painting that I posted and emailed, these words I needed to put outside of myself, but not necessarily share publicly. Because they are a part of the pages of the journal, pages which are intended to be held, touched and looked at intimately, the viewer might gather bits and pieces of the story, but never the whole story. Whatever the viewer takes away from this intimate encounter will be just between myself and the viewer.
Radical Touch
One point of feedback I received not only from within my Crit Group this month, but from others I’ve discussed the three projects with, has been the radical nature of the invitation to touch the journal pages in both Wanderland and Just Between Me and You. As Mark Roth stated in his feedback to me: “One of the still pretty much intact boundaries for painting is that it is not to be touched.” Numerous people have stated that the invitation to touch the pages makes them uneasy, knowing the fragility of the page and how through their touch they are contributing to the destruction of it. Oddly, when I thought of how the pages must be interacted with in such a physically intimate manner, despite knowing the taboos associated with ‘touching’ the art, I did not find it a personally radical notion. I simply thought, this is how it has to be. This came in great part as a juxtaposition to the unphysical nature of the encounter with the pages which the viewer has in Look In Glass. The distance to the page is so great, through glass, mirrors, pixels, and algorithms, the viewer must travel to the experience; holding the page in his or her hand the viewer is as close to the experience as he or she can be. Both pieces are stating a part of the nature of the experience to the viewer in diametrically opposing ways, but it is the same experience.
Going Forward
My goal for the next month is focused on finishing up the three pieces in preparation for the Winter Residency. I plan to present the Wanderland installation along with the Look In Glass on December 6 to a number of invited viewers at my home-studio. This means I will finish the journal pages by the first week of December in order to have them documented and part of the slideshow for Look In Glass, and to be ready to hang as part of Wanderland. I will document the December 6 installation with both photos and videos of viewers interacting with the pieces, post them on my blog, as well as include them in my presentation at the residency. After the December 6 event I will complete the Just Between Me and You box, covering it in fabric, printing the notes, wrapping the pages in tulle, and placing them along with the notes in the box.
On November 23 I will be participating in a one day silkscreen workshop at AS220, a local artist space with print shop here in Providence, Rhode Island. My intention is to expand my knowledge of silkscreen techniques and familiarize myself with their facilities which I might use this winter to create elements for further self-portraits.
As I wrap up the three self-portraits created this Autumn, I have begun to shift my focus to the piece I mentioned last month, which I will exhibit at AS220 as part of a two-person show in their Main Gallery in June 2015. I have acquired the hexagonal mirrors I plan to use in the work, and have begun to think of ways in which I can replicate the canvases in a scaled down way, so that I can work on various configurations. I should have more to report on this if not next month, then in January. In addition to this piece I have begun thinking about the possibilities which are presenting themselves for the direction the self-portrait series might take. I should also have more to report on that in January.
Finally, I intend to continue reading and writing, partially in preparation for the research paper I will formally begin after the Winter Residency, and partially as part of my studio process.