the warming colors of autumn are slowly edging in and the energy in the city has ramped up. i’m studio-less for a few months. i’ll attempt to keep a sketchbook going, though keeping a camera going is more likely. the posts here may be sparse and focused on activities other than art making, which do impact the days in studio. i have ideas for print projects that need reference material and i’ll be taking a workshop later in the fall to clear out the cobwebs that will inevitably grow. visits to museums and get togethers with other artists will provide the much needed engagement of the creative grey matter. below is a snap … enjoy
My experiments with masking tape have taken on a life of their own. While these started as a way to avoid wasting paint while making paintings to sew together, these have gradually become something of a focus in their own right.I’ve been posting them daily at my Tumblr site, and currently still have 47 queued up to post, with many more likely to added.
These have become exercises in color for me. There are obvious elements of form in the dots, checker boxes or occasional letters, but most of the composition remains linear. The main differences between different sheets come from the color schemes.
While I control these to an extent in deciding what to paint when, there’s also a lot of chance involved. I may be working on 3 different quilts requiring 3 completely different types of color and pattern, but the tape used for each of them winds up together. The results may be a fairly tight scheme (top) or something more unexpectedly diverse (2nd piece down).
Sometimes pieces take a week or two to fill out, leading to unexpected combinations, like the above, which has pieces of 21 different paintings in it, I think. It’s a very useful tool for trying out these new color combinations quickly, without much risk, and will help me plan more detailed works in the future.
This last week I’ve been collaborating with co-Darteboardist Toni to combine some of my collage methods with her collage forms. Here’s a couple results. These are still very early in the process, but I think they have promise.
A similar, second version of this couldn’t be finished on time. We decided this is good enough, but the color choices obscure the form. Fortunately, you can see the form better in this smaller experiment with collaged fabric:
Here is the initial design (shifted into stark black on white):
These are all made of masking tape made to get patterns on canvas. They’ll be used in future quilts. Clearly it’s time to switch up the straight lines I’ve been using with some curves, dots and such.
In the past weeks when I mentioned I was making collages as materials to use in other collages, these are those other collages. Ironically, of the 5 collages used in these, only 2 have been shown on d’Arteboard. All of these are 8.5″ x 11″, mixed media.
Along with the collages, there are also quilts and sewn paintings among the materials that went into these. Those that contain no representation but the formula “A ≠ A” are presented in landscape, while any piece set into a collage with portrait alignment was kept that way so that the intrusion would be more apparent. If it’s still not apparent, though, I’m fine with that.
Now would be a good time to post an artist’s statement for these, but I’m afraid I haven’t written it yet. I may try to write it once I’m better caffeinated, though. I’ll post an update at the top if I do. After the jump, 7 more.
This may be the biggest and most substantial single project I’ve ever taken on for myself.
“16 Dualities” 40″ x 40″ acrylic and multi-media on canvas with safety pins.
Each of the component pieces of this work are miniature versions of this work, which itself was one of the most challenging pieces I’d taken on.
The challenge is, if you look at each piece’s 2 colors one at a time, you hopefully notice that they each have their own hole in them, and that the 2 holes link with each other. This is accomplished by weaving 2 entirely autonomous pieces that cross over each other.
Unfortunately, this was the piece where I learned the benefits of using lighter wood for the frames if I’m going to attach them all. The entire piece weighs so much I’ve never even attempted to hang it and may choose to display them separately, if the occasion arises.
After the jump I’ll post a close up of one of the pieces and some of the alternative patterns I was thinking of aranging these in. It turns out that exercise is similar to some of the considerations you have in regular quilting.
Various sizes. Each is around 14-16″ wide. Acrylic and Watercolor on Canvas with Safety Pins.
I started making these a few years ago to use up some material and maybe showcase some of the techniques I’d been developing in very simplified form. Each one isn’t much on its own, but the hope was that in concert they’d become more than the sum of their parts. Here’s some details:
36″ x 72″ Acrylic and Watercolor on canvas with Safety Pins
This piece was a dropcloth I used years ago, but when I used it I had part of it folded over on itself. The result was the 2 blu sections were part of 1 larger section. I later unfolded it, cut off the end part and safety pinned the parts back together.
Originally I lent this to my friends Scott and Amanda, but it’s been at their house for so long now I consider it theirs.
I’m still teaching myself how to sew with paintings. This is my first attempt to use a standard pattern, using the canvases I had available. I think it’s alright. A good frame would benefit the final presentation. Not my greatest work either, but lessons were learned and I don’t feel the need to dismantle it. Ultimately, that’s a success.
“Triangle Stripes” 28.5″ x 28.5″ (20″ x 20″ hung square), Acrylic on canvas
This girl is around 3 or 4 years old now. This was a gift for my friend Sarah Eltantawi and was made by painting other canvases atop it, with various stencils to control the pattern.
I think its about 60 inches long. Because of its orienatation its hard to fit it on here so its easy to see, I’ll post a larger, vertical version after the jump. Read more »
“Nested Squares” 33″ x 33″ Acrylic on canvas w/ safety pins
Each square consists of its own frame with wood lining the outside and inside of each layer. And because I was learning how to best do it as I was making it, some of the wood is heavier than need be. In the future I’ll be able to handle this better, but for now I’m not planning on rebuilding whole sections from the ground up.
I’ve held onto this for a few months now without photographing it because I wasn’t sure about the color scheme. The usual scheme I’ve been using for years now has been very nature based, with greens and oranges (colors of living and decaying leaves) playing out around some measure of blues (sky/water). When I’ve used purple I’ve usually made itself play alone (or with some oranges, mimicking the color of certain tide pools).
Detail shot, music and more blabber after the jump. Read more »
I had a piece ready to go for today. It wasn’t the best thing I’ve ever done, but I worked late Sunday to get it ready. Then last night decided it needed just 1 more thing that would require drying, hence no posting today.
So back to the archives again. This time to 2002 or 2003. When my friend Darya, who now runs the successful food blog Summer Tomato (I recommend it if you like eating well and healthy without dealing with the BS of the diet industry) had just returned from a year in Italy and asked for some art.
“Darya 1″ 16″ x 16″, 14″ x 14″
Acrylic on canvas w/ Safety Pins
At the time I made this had a lot of ideas but had real issues making anything that appeared finished. I’m pretty sure the top portion of this piece was the first time I used safety pins. I managed to keep the colors in this one pretty well in control though, which helped the end result a lot, though its still pretty rough (yes I stapled the bottom weave on the front. No, I don’t know why I thought that was a good idea either).
This isn’t the best drawing I’ve ever done, or the best scan, but it doesn’t necessarily matter.
Once I found the need to photograph paint amusing, I decided to go a step further and draw the photograph.
As I covered in the last post, a lot of people draw and paint from photographs these days. What amused me in doing this was 1- the extra distance between the drawing of the photograph of the oroginal paint and 2- the statement on “representation” v. “abstraction” that the public is so obssessed with (though the artworld got over it 100+ years ago).
The joke in this one is that it is a representative drawing. It is far from the level of skill seen in photorealism, but in its clumsy way it is accurately and faithfully representing what was in the photograph of the puddle of paint. It just so happens to be a representation of a non-representational subject.
And yes, this is meant to be funny. My favorite art to work on is that which amuses me, even moreso when the joke is not immediately apparent to the audience.
But that’s a total digression. The Next post will feature the work I originally wanted to post today, before realizing I needed to bloviate for 3 pages to explain what I was thinking with it.
In order to get to the post I want to make, I feel like I need to lay some background. So please bear with me for a few posts.
Earlier in the decade I used to experiment a lot with what I called “washes,” puddles of paint, ink, and watercolor that I’d photograph to capture the wet effects that only persisted before the puddle dried:
“Photograph of a Wet Painting” 2002
While this was a practical solution to a problem I had getting the image I wanted, it presented new issues of representation that my mind loved.
Paint is a medium of representation. It was used in lieu of photographs for hundreds of years, but here the paint can’t be counted on to represent itself. It requires the photograph to lock in it’s form. At the same time, the photograph couldn’t capture this image without the paint. Both media needed each other to be able to create this form of art.
Anybody who follows me on Twitter may have caught my spiel on Postmodernity on Friday and why this is relevant, but I’ll spare you that.
While this was the first time I delved into the subject, it’s definitely not the first time it’s come up (especially in the postmodernist age).
Whenever you see paintings in books, pamphlets or online, you are seeing photographs of them. Its necessary, but there is distance between the viewer and the piece. A few weeks ago I had problems because the photo of the piece I took gave a very misleading image of the piece in question. That is, the photograph poorly represented the painting. So the relationship in the previous post is actually endemic to our contemporary art experience. Its just that when done well, nobody recognizes it.
In photorealism you have the opposite relationship. The painting requires a photograph. When Robert Bechtle painted a station wagon, he was referencing the type of snapshot a family might take. He turned the throw away image into something more grand by painting the image much larger: his painting required the photo as much as the paint.
So there’s a long history of this relationship, beyond my entrance into the dialogue
For those interested in seeing what a man looking like an 80s male porn star would look like doing cheesy art with similar relationships between media, I give you:
Next I’ll go through the next level of representation.
Many thanks to fellow member, Jason for sending me some photo suggestions this weekend. The settings helped a lot and I have updated the pictures from last week’s quilting project.
This week I’m finally posting something that formed the basis of this post and this post. Those were both sketches to teach me how to make this or to help me visualize a color scheme that is something of a departure for me.
“3 Layer Flower” 24″ x 24″ Acrylic on Canvas with Safety-Pins
What’s new about this is it had the basic form as this piece but manages to nest the shape within itself. Honestly, I wasn’t as happy with the final result as I hoped I’d be, and have still considered adding some purple higlights into the fields of blue, but I did accomplish the basic goal I set out to do. In the future I can now nest several more layers in similar fashion. In theory.
Between working on other things this Sunday I plyed around with photoshop, making designs in designs. These are the fruits of that:
Part of this is idle playing around, but I figure its still more productive than a video game, and allows me to play with some ideas. I’ll post more iterations and the source “drawings” I was using after the jump. Read more »
If you ever think to ask me that, the answer is probably yes.
25 Mock Ups
I apologize to everyone whose heart I broke by the lateness of this post but I was up until midnight creating the images, then had 4 teleconferences in a row at work. Great week so far.
Anyhoo, lately I’ve been at an impasse trying to figure out the best color combination to use on a piece I’m about to make. Every day I visualize something, make a decision, then visualize it differently the next day. Finally last night I decided to create a series of mockups in photoshop so the decision can be more informed than the whim of whichever day I start. The project is too involved for me to try the various possibilities on their own.
Anyhow, I ended up making 24 variations of a 3 layer piece using 4 potential colors. I added the black and white shape of the template I was using to fill in the version above. Below I’ll put up bigger versions of the ones I’m actually considering. Read more »
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