Everyone needs a little rest now and then, and the schedule of work, travel, and blogging got to be a bit much so I decided to hibernate for winter but now winter is OVER and it’s time for new projects.
A friend of mine has 2 Colombian red skin boas that throw off their skins regularly and it got me wondering about the leftovers as a usable material. They are pliable but tough, kind of cellulosy, and depending on what side you leave exposed they are either mildly iridescent or a white fishnet pattern that can be dyed. With this piece I wanted to use colors that were analogous to the natural snake color, which i backed with a slate blue to bring it’s own pattern forward. From there it was just the usual draw, cut, glue process as usual. After being backed with paper the skin cuts beautifully, supporting the finest cuts without tearing.
This is a painting that has gone through a few variations over the past 8 months. I posted the first stage of it here : http://darteboard.com/2012/05/10/bskip-big-sketch-in-progress/ last May. I had a conversation with our own Toni Tiller about it and she exhibited once again her insight with a suggestion concerning the editing of an unresolved area of this abstracted design. The painting successfully translated form, color, value through rhythm and movement but became confused and clunky in the ‘head’ area. I repainted that territory and pulled it into a more tangible architecture. Its done, finally.
I’ve been busy making a bunch of stuff for Christmas presents, and in the spirit of not blowing it by posting it all over the internet I am going to direct your attention elsewhere.
As discussed last week thread art is a new angle of exploration so I was delighted to find out that my internet friend funkembroidery is a self professed “embroidery nerd”. Her work is engaging for it’s irreverence, the freedom of images choices and stitches, as well as for the way she layers her patterns. She, like JD, isn’t afraid to do that, unlike my chicken shit self that needs to be backed into the layering pattern corner. She was also kind enough to recommend this book, (which might end up being a self secret Santa gift) plus she also has a Dune reference, something we are no stranger to here. Check it out.
So as was posted last week JD and I have started a new project making books based on my dreams. We liked the results but thought we could stream line it all down a little by bringing the size to 8 inches by 8 inches for the new ones, the idea being that if we have an agreed template size that we can work on these remotely more easily. The future ones can be worked out in drawings over email and then the final product assembled either in person or by shipping my finished ones to him.
This is our next one, and I am responsible for the first line. I have my image but can’t decide if the text should go above the image or on the inside page preceding it. If it goes on the image itself it presents some challenges as to how to get the text on there, it’s a pretty narrow space so appliqueing would cut in harshly and might look crowded. Then again if it is on the page facing it that would technically be the inside of the front cover. I don’t know what to do.
Here is the image as it stands now, 8 x 8 and a mix of embroidery and applique.
The last few weeks Toni and I have been working on a quick project to make a book centered around one of her dreams.
We knocked out most of it in a weekend (which is incredible), then detailing took another 2 weeks of intermittent work. Here is the original dream we used
These are the back and front cover (The Front is on the right). The book is 14 x 11 and an inch thick.
Page 1 (hand applique by Toni) and 2, “I don’t care what John Irving has to say”
Page 3 and 4
Page 5, “Bears make terrible pets” and 6, last week’s Bear at a Polka Party.
With this piece, based on an image of Toni Tiller (supine on a trampoline), I approached the treatment a little differently than the recent paintings on paper I’ve been doing over the past year. I struggle with an objective analysis here, but the controlled application of paint , conscious distortion and drawing I see as a reaction to the graphic quality of the photo I worked from.
This is arriving late today, and I am not sure what the next few weeks will bring as far as posts are concerned, but I thought it might be fun to show you everyone what I do to make these.
First I take paper, in this case a map, and I scribble on the back of it.
Next I spend a whole bunch of time cutting around all those lines with a scalpel and when I flip it over there is this.
Repeat as necessary. That was thrilling wasn’t it? Next week we might cover gluing, please try to be patient, this information can only be parsed out in digestible bits.
My friend and fellow artist Matthew Best found this cool program in Connecticut that offered 3 free isolation float tank sessions in exchange for a piece of art that will later be sold and the proceeds donated to charity. It sounded weird and fun, always one of my favorite combinations, and off we went. I thoroughly enjoyed the experience, though I am also hard pressed to describe it, just like I was hard pressed to understand what I was supposed to be getting out of it creatively. Was I supposed to have visions while in the tank? Get my next big idea?
No, it turned out to be more subtle than that. Firstly, three sessions wasn’t enough for me, I have gone back for 3 more because they were generally relaxing and restorative. Those are two things in short supply and the effects started to demonstrate themselves unexpectedly. When the program started it was in the middle of trying to get ready for this show and my focus was fairly limited, I had my materials, I knew what I was doing and just had to do it, but that is over now and for the first time in awhile those things can shift into something else.
My mind was quiet and I remembered there might be some red flocked paper shoved in the back of the closet 10 years ago, so off I went climbing over a mountain of crap and tumbling into the back recesses where not only was the red paper found but also 2 rolls of gold. SCORE. The atlases JD’s mom sent me ages ago started talking to me too, and from there it all started to come together. The materials dictated themselves, gold as the base because it isn’t good paper for cutting, maps in the middle because it is, and flocked paper on top because of the texture. Easy. Next was the design, the experience and the materials called out for a radiating pattern, and thoughts of meditation, focus, and flow were in the back of my mind. Nothing literal, no anxiety over ideas or results, and even when the paper tore here and there (something that usually sends me into swearing fits) I was unruffled.
This is what happened.
I like it, and will probably make a bunch more, but that shiny paper is a total pain in the ass to photograph.
Here is another one of the collaboration pieces we have been working on. I am all into these over lapping and expanding circles right now, so get used to them because I might be working them for a while. Right now I am just happy that most of the work is done and I have enough to dole out slowly for the next few weeks.
This piece also has a sewn black border that didn’t make it int the scanner bed, so just imagine that right on there ok?
Took a monotype I made a few years ago of an homage to Valentin de Boulogne’s Martyrdom of St Bartholomew and painted back into it. It went from an old man being crucified to a young woman who may have just done some crucifying herself. I was inspired by a photograph of Toni.
Tom Bennett
The original monotype I found a little clumsy.
The reworked image.
Dominant at Rest, oil over monotype on paper, 16″ x 20″
I’ve missed a few posts, this summer has been filled with lots of work, lots of travel, and the loss of my main computer. I am also pretty sure I just straight up slept through one day and forgot.
While I was out in California we tackled some pretty large projects, like the redesign of the space JD mentioned, and the creation and completion of two large pieces for the upcoming show that we have been working towards. I’ll be keeping those two pieces more or less under wraps for now (there may have been a tweet with a bad photo but you’ll have to go dig that up yourself) and there are still a number of small ones that need to be made.
JD organized a stack of his painted masking take papers into color groups for me to work with and sent me home with them. I put them in my bag with all the intentions of jumping right on it, but found myself pulling them out, looking at them, feeling stuck and confused, and putting them back down. I like the spiral pattern I work with but I can’t keep doing that.
Usually I would just go take a yoga class or hit the trampoline, because this is where new ideas seem to come most freely, but timing and weather have conspired against that and I was starting to feel a little dejected about the whole thing until last night when I discovered the work of Maurice Binder. If you don’t already know, like myself, he was responsible for the incredible opening sequence graphics for the Bond movies, as well as dozens of others. I found my way to him by way of Charade, also known as, “the best Hitchcock movie that Hitchcock never made.” and my brain popped.
I mean look at this. It’s fabulous.
The colors are so in line with what we have, the combinations of blocky stripes and loose wavy lines, the layering…suddenly I can see these materials in a new way. What a relief! Then I looked at the calender and realized all of this needs to be done before October 4th, plenty of time until I noticed it coincides with Minks to Sinks
I’m out west working on a bunch of projects for a few weeks, one being this ongoing collab with JD for this show in October. We are coming to grips with the enormity of the complications of how to make what we want to make, which means we stand around a lot talking things over and confusing ourselves. At the moment I’m pretty clear on my role, and it can’t happen until he does his part, which means I more or less get to sit around shrugging my shoulders and being slightly smug about not having to make any decisions. This will change by next week when it’s my turn to torture myself over how to make something, and also have it make sense. Right it’s all waiting on painted backgrounds.
Once I have those it will be my turn to make the drawing that will over lay them, but we have discovered that as they get larger they won’t fit in the sewing machine so it looks like I will be drawing something, cutting it out, then cutting it up into smaller pieces, sewing them to the ground, and then re-sewing the grounds together.
Did you follow all that?
Yeah, me either.
Last night I came back to discover Hastings communing with his materials. This is the secret to how everything really happens.
When I was 15 I got my first tattoo, a dragon on my shoulder that I thought was just oh so cool at the time, but which not surprisingly didn’t hold up over time. I also had “hustler” across the back of my neck, which oddly enough I didn’t regret nearly as much, but still felt like I had outgrown it. The idea of having my whole back reworked sounded daunting and it was something that could be put off indefinitely with nothing but nagging ideas of it at the back of my mind. Luckily this year I had the good fortune to meet a local tattoo artist who wasn’t phased by the challenge at all, and it was pleasing to find the process of developing and executing the idea to be so similar to every other collaboration I’ve had with other artists. Ideas get kicked around, things get produced, editing takes place, and 11 hours and many conversations later we have something.
In the end I couldn’t be more pleased with the results so as a token of thanks I made a monotype of one of his favorite subjects. Sadly these never look as good online as they do in person, something about printing them on fabric just gets lost in the translation. So here it is, and thank you Mr. Chapman, you did an outstanding job.
Oh and if anyone is interested this is what he did for me.
The delightful new Javone helped me crank this one out in a little over an hour, which is great because I am hell bent on making them bigger. What would really be fun to do is take a pattern like this and do repeats, then stitch together the repeats. An idea completely stolen from JD, but still hope to bring some of my own style to with the less formal shapes and arrangement of the repeats.
This one also incorporates some contrasting thread choices, but kind of don’t feel like I went far enough in the color choices or tight enough in the stitches for them to really be seen well. Lesson learned.
This thing made me crazy, mostly because of mechanical failure, but now that problem is fixed, I have a bad ass sewing machine that doesn’t get all pissy every time I run something difficult through it. What a joy.
Again, JD chose these colors, and I had to figure out the pattern. I went with one of my spirals because I thought it would have enough body, and softness of line to distinguish itself from the grid background without getting eating up.
Agora Gallery - the proud sponsor of the Chelsea International Fine Art Competition, which offers contemporary artists the opportunity to show their original art at one the most acclaimed juried art shows in Chelsea, New York’s art galleries district.
Tom Bennett
darteboard
galinatodorova
Jason Gray
jdhastings
laelia e. mitchell
probrucer
ssstephg
Toni Tiller
