The four other exhibitions included Hollywoodland by Amanda Church, Prodrome by Taylor Baldwin, A Colder Friday by Jacob Isenhour and Willard Tucker and works by Kamrooz Aram, Jimmy Baker, Sheila Pree Bright, Cheryl Dunn, David Ellis, Evan Hecox, Harmony Korine, Barry McGee, Aaron Morse, and Clare E. Rojas all Courtesy of Country Club Projects (more info).

Related:

My installation titled “It Most Certainly Will” was inside an 8x8x20 foot container including a red rubber ball that bounced from a string like Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge or Vice Versa and an inflating and deflating brown paper bag on the back wall.


It Most Certainly Will, 2011
wood, motors, timer, tubing, bag

Opening: September 14 at Ford Gallery
Exhibition Duration: August 31-October 5

Hecho en Casa/ Home Made
Curated by Alberto Aguilar and Jorge Lucero

A program of events that verge on acts of domesticity. Behavior that touches upon ideas of home, the local, hospitality, homemade-ness and the personal, all within an exhibition space. This series of events will be accompanied by a collection of objects and artworks that each invited artists found to be in conversation with the ideas of “home”. These objects can be viewed during the scheduled event hours.

Participating artists:
Alberto Aguilar & Madeleine Aguilar
James Kubie
Jorge Lucero
Gwenn-Aël Lynn & Hermes Santana
Bryan Saner & Teresa Pankratz
Christopher Santiago
Vanessa Smith
Samuel Sotelo-Avila
Hui-min Tsen
Lisa Walcott

>>MORE

The short story — how modest in bearing! How unassuming in manner! It sits there quietly, eyes lowered, almost as if trying not to be noticed. And if it should somehow attract your attention, it says quickly, in a brave little self-deprecating voice alive to all the possibilities of disappointment: “I’m not a novel, you know. Not even a short one. If that’s what you’re looking for, you don’t want me.” Rarely has one form so dominated another. And we understand, we nod our heads knowingly: here in America, size is power. The novel is the Wal-Mart, the Incredible Hulk, the jumbo jet of literature. The novel is insatiable — it wants to devour the world. What’s left for the poor short story to do? It can cultivate its garden, practice meditation, water the geraniums in the window box. It can take a course in creative nonfiction. It can do whatever it likes, so long as it doesn’t forget its place — so long as it keeps quiet and stays out of the way. “Hoo ha!” cries the novel. “Here ah come!” The short story is always ducking for cover. The novel buys up the land, cuts down the trees, puts up the condos. The short story scampers across a lawn, squeezes under a fence.

Of course there are virtues associated with smallness. Even the novel will grant as much. Large things tend to be unwieldy, clumsy, crude; smallness is the realm of elegance and grace. It’s also the realm of perfection. The novel is exhaustive by nature; but the world is inexhaustible; therefore the novel, that Faustian striver, can never attain its desire. The short story by contrast is inherently selective. By excluding almost everything, it can give perfect shape to what remains. And the short story can even lay claim to a kind of completeness that eludes the novel — after the initial act of radical exclusion, it can include all of the little that’s left. The novel, when it remembers the short story at all, is pleased to be generous. “I admire you,” it says, placing its big rough hand over its heart. “No kidding. You’re so — you’re so —” So pretty! So svelte! So high class! And smart, too. The novel can hardly contain itself. After all, what difference does it make? It’s nothing but talk. What the novel cares about is vastness, is power. Deep in its heart, it disdains the short story, which makes do with so little. It has no use for the short story’s austerity, its suppression of appetite, its refusals and renunciations. The novel wants things. It wants territory. It wants the whole world. Perfection is the consolation of those who have nothing else.

So much for the short story. Modest in its pretensions, shyly proud of its petite virtues, a trifle anxious in relation to its brash rival, it contents itself with sitting back and letting the novel take on the big world. And yet, and yet. That modest pose — am I mistaken, or is it a little overdone? Those glancing-away looks — do they contain a touch of slyness? Can it be that the little short story dares to have ambitions of its own? If so, it will never admit them openly, because of a sharp instinct for self-protection, a long habit of secrecy bred by oppression. In a world ruled by swaggering novels, smallness has learned to make its way cautiously. We will have to intuit its secret. I imagine the short story harboring a wish. I imagine the short story saying to the novel: You can have everything — everything — all I ask is a single grain of sand. The novel, with a careless shrug, a shrug both cheerful and contemptuous, grants the wish.

But that grain of sand is the story’s way out. That grain of sand is the story’s salvation. I take my cue from William Blake: “To see a world in a grain of sand.” Think of it: the world in a grain of sand; which is to say, every part of the world, however small, contains the world entirely. Or to put it another way: if you concentrate your attention on some apparently insignificant portion of the world, you will find, deep within it, nothing less than the world itself. In that single grain of sand lies the beach that contains the grain of sand. In that single grain of sand lies the ocean that dashes against the beach, the ship that sails the ocean, the sun that shines down on the ship, the interstellar winds, a teaspoon in Kansas, the structure of the universe. And there you have the ambition of the short story, the terrible ambition that lies behind its fraudulent modesty: to body forth the whole world. The short story believes in transformation. It believes in hidden powers. The novel prefers things in plain view. It has no patience with individual grains of sand, which glitter but are difficult to see. The novel wants to sweep everything into its mighty embrace — shores, mountains, continents. But it can never succeed, because the world is vaster than a novel, the world rushes away at every point. The novel leaps restlessly from place to place, always hungry, always dissatisfied, always fearful of coming to an end — because when it stops, exhausted but never at peace, the world will have escaped it. The short story concentrates on its grain of sand, in the fierce belief that there — right there, in the palm of its hand — lies the universe. It seeks to know that grain of sand the way a lover seeks to know the face of the beloved. It looks for the moment when the grain of sand reveals its true nature. In that moment of mystic expansion, when the macrocosmic flower bursts from the microcosmic seed, the short story feels its power. It becomes bigger than itself. It becomes bigger than the novel. It becomes as big as the universe. Therein lies the immodesty of the short story, its secret aggression. Its method is revelation. Its littleness is the agency of its power. The ponderous mass of the novel strikes it as the laughable image of weakness. The short story apologizes for nothing. It exults in its shortness. It wants to be shorter still. It wants to be a single word. If it could find that word, if it could utter that syllable, the entire universe would blaze up out of it with a roar. That is the outrageous ambition of the short story, that is its deepest faith, that is the greatness of its smallness.

My lecture is at Harold Washington College
30 East Lake Street, rm. 102
Chicago, Illinois

Tuesday, April 26 · 2:00pm – 3:00pm

I will be presenting my work, specifically discussing my process relating drawing and kinetic sculpture.

A detail of my installation “From Whence They Came”.
18×8 feet
wood, water, soap, air, motors

And the rest of the trip:

Water/Vinegar Based Stains from Chisel Me Timbers.

To me, a vinegar-based stain is the closest I’ve ever come to seeing real magic (and the neighborhood kids are as fascinated by it as I am). You put on a clear liquid, and, depending on the wood, from 10 to 20 minutes later, color appears. Color will depend on your formula components and the type of wood used.

Vinegar & Galvanized Nails is known as “Pickling,” and was popular in Colonial days for aging and graying-up wood. Simply, get a jar, pour in some distilled white vinegar, and wait a few days for the nails to dissolve. This does not produce a dark stain, but a light-to-deep gray on most woods. Stretch out your stain by diluting it with water up to 5-1 water/stain without loss of tint. Color can be tweaked with Universal Colorant or Acrylic craft paints.

Vinegar & Steel Wool or Iron Nails produces a darker stain, from a brown and reddish-brown on pine/fir trees, to a deep black on oak. Toss a hunk of steel wool or nails into a jar, cover with distilled white vinegar,cap the jar, and in about 24 hours your ‘stain’ will be ready. Leave the jar uncapped, and after about 24 hours, add some water to encourage oxidation (rust) for a more reddish hue. This type of stain can be diluted up to 20-1 with water, without loss of effect, or with tea or coffee to add a touch of reddish color. Colors can be tweaked with Universal Colorants or Acrylic craft paints.

Art 21
@Lisson Gallery

My contribution to the exhibition…

Every Good Boy Deserves Fudge of Vice Versa, 2011
rubber ball, string, motor

Currently, I feel so sorry for you in those hot pants, 2011
bistro table, table linen, wood, fan, brass vent

Bless You, 2010
feather, pepper, thread, motor, wood

In a Shaft of Sunlight, 2011
mug, drywall, laminante, drain, water, heat element

Will not stay in place, will not stay still, 2009
ink jet photograph

My installation for Art Prize 2010 in Grand Rapids was at West Michigan Center for Arts and Technology (WMCAT). It consisted of two separate, but related parts–thirty pullstrings extending down through removed drop ceiling tiles and a dripping sprinkler. The space above a drop ceiling is called the plenum space. It is where all of the energy for the building is routed. Due to my interest in potential energy, overlooked objects and spaces, and site specificity, dealing with the top third of the space I was given was a natural progression.

Through the gesture of the pullstrings which extended from within the plenum space and the tromp l’oeil industrial sprinkler which bridged the two spaces, the piece alludes to things happening overhead–activating the plenum space. “Plenum” also addresses history as the removal of the ceiling tiles revealed the original plaster ceiling with layers of pealing paint and an old drop ceiling grid above the currently used one. I was also interested in the way the removal of the ceiling tiles broke the convenient drop ceiling grid.

Repetition is a common theme in my work. Repetitive motion as a vehicle toward a meditative way of viewing something. Even though the same thing is happening over and over, ideas can compound with each repetition. The last time I had a drip in my work it was immediately evaporated away by heat below a metal bucket (No Vacancy). This time, I decided to allow the drips to accumulate in a series of plastic buckets. Accumulation is a connection to history, pushing the idea of time further into the work. Time is in the history of the building revealed by the removal of some ceiling tiles, time is in the accumulation of water in the cluster of buckets and time is referenced by the rhythmic ticking of the drips into the bucket.

Video detail from an installation created during my residency at Ox-Bow in September 2010.

Almost NothingFalling ScrewRotating Mirror Circle Let Me Show You The World

RELATED POSTS: displacement at the uica

On and On, 2010
strings, motors, pullstring tips

DUSK

STRAIGHT

FULL

The Displacement Show at the UICA is up through early August! Check out my deflated installation!

TS Eliot At the Still Point of the Turning World
At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;
Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,
But neither arrest nor movement. And do not call it fixity,
Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,
Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,
There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.
I can only say, there we have been: but I cannot say where.
And I cannot say, how long, for that is to place it in time.
The inner freedom from the practical desire,
The release from action and suffering, release from the inner
And the outer compulsion, yet surrounded
By a grace of sense, a white light still and moving,
Erhebung without motion, concentration
Without elimination, both a new world
And the old made explicit, understood
In the completion of its partial ecstasy,
The resolution of its partial horror.
Yet the enchainment of past and future
Woven in the weakness of the changing body,
Protects mankind from heaven and damnation
Which flesh cannot endure.
Time past and time future
Allow but a little consciousness.
To be conscious is not to be in time
But only in time can the moment in the rose-garden,
The moment in the arbour where the rain beat,
The moment in the draughty church at smokefall
Be remembered; involved with past and future.
Only through time time is conquered.

Running to Stand Still

standstill: a state characterized by absence of motion or of progress : stop

1 Kings 19:11-13
11The LORD said, “Go out and stand on the mountain in the presence of the LORD, for the LORD is about to pass by.”
Then a great and powerful wind tore the mountains apart and shattered the rocks before the LORD, but the LORD was not in the wind. After the wind there was an earthquake, but the LORD was not in the earthquake. 12 After the earthquake came a fire, but the LORD was not in the fire. And after the fire came a gentle whisper. 13 When Elijah heard it, he pulled his cloak over his face and went out and stood at the mouth of the cave.
Then a voice said to him, “What are you doing here, Elijah?”

Specific Antonyms: general, indefinite, uncertain, vague

I really enjoy subject writing and with my thesis on it’s way, I thought I would engage in an exercise of defining modern mythologies. Whether or not they go directly into the thesis writing, I imagine this will be a helpful in the creation of my work as well as understanding what it means. Much like Barthes writing (I’m not equating myself to him, I swear) my work deals with the mythology of an object, idea or trope of culture which I present physically and highlight what it is and what it means. I was thinking about why the banal subjects in “Mythologies” become so interesting. I mean, he’s discussing plastic and soap and Einstein’s brain….shouldn’t these things be interesting on their own? All he’s doing in his writing is putting into language what these things are–defining them. I suppose this is the entire scope of semiotics-the relationship between the signified and the signifier.

In some ways, this is what I am trying to do in my work only the signifiers are summoned; they exist in the mind of the viewer and are therefore open to whatever he/she brings to the piece. For example, the floor boards I have been using have deep dark cracks in them. The constant bubbling coming up from below highlight a whole world of “underneaths” from experience or imagination. It could be the crayons that used to fall into the depths beneath the deck. It could be the way the rabbit hole is imagined. It could be swimming under the dock. It could be the lyrics from The Drifters “Under the Boardwalk”. I am summoning any and all of these ideas. By isolating what is happening and placing this object in an art context where we demarcate signifiers more than we naturally would I am engaging in a sort of physical semiotics (if that’s even possible).

A To-Demystify List

Play
Chain Link
Dust
Home
House Fly
Tickle
A Pork Chop with a Butcher Knife in it on a Cutting Board
Blinds
Dangling Carrot
Microwave
Picnic Table
A crack in the floor or sidewalk
Conveyor

Swing-like rope in my studio

Rope swing images from Google

RELATED POSTS: Dusty & Musty

Gober creates uncanniness through moods of aloneness, voyeurism and lack of sense place and time.

Primal Fantasies: the fantasy is not the object of desire, but it’s setting
Gober creates the setting putting the viewer into a space like a Magritte painting or a Kafka novel.

Delay and suspension are fundamental to desire.

Connecting childhood memories with new experiences or information changes the meaning of the memory.

The branches were literally bent to the ground and bound there by ice. It has been interesting how the ice has destroyed and supported the “structures” at the same time. Today I needed to rescue the tree. I had visions of the branches being set free and bouncing back to their original state. No such luck. Here is documentation of my attempt.

This project reminds me a lot of creating my fly piece in respect to possible harm to living things. The concepts have prevailed unanimously thus far.

The piece is still in progress. I am currently worried about the tree branches which seem to be really struggling with the weight of the ice. In some places the icicles are getting close enough to the ground that I am hoping they will begin to support the burdened branches. The bush is also quite bent over and it becoming more solid by the minute! I have spent quite a bit of time outside between last night and this morning where I have barely felt the cold because I get so wrapped up in the oscillation of the sprinkler and the forms on the branches. It’s so unnatural, yet it mimics something that is completely natural and common.

I’ve created my own ice storm within the snow storm we’re having.

The sprinkler had been oscillating for about an hour an a half when these pictures were taken. It’s dark now, so I will have to wait until morning to see what has happened in the hour and a half afterward.

Sisyphus’ plight once again visits my work creating a narrative where work is being done unnecessarily and constantly. From this needless watering (where no kids are playing and no grass is being nourished) a ring has begun to form and harden on the ground and the trees have begun to crystalize.

I may want to find a space that you are more able “enter” so that the experience is less escapable. I have also been wrestling with what to freeze in there. Strings could be beautiful, objects could hover and solidify nicely. It’s a time capsule. I will put some more time into solving this! I know it can be done!

There is a piece formulating in my mind using dust. I’m not sure about everything yet, but a finger wiping dust off of something is really interesting to me. The mark left is interesting with the soft dust compared to the clean, shiny surface. It’s a test of “is it clean enough”. Imagine the white glove that removed the dust.

Google image results for dust:

*I accidentally removed this video, but am keeping the post for the sake of record keeping. There was a little bit of urgency at this point before the thesis show! (2/12/11)

I ended up desaturating my entire studio in order to create a sort of sepia tone. In the back of my mind I have been really wanting to create a space from the photographs I was taking last year with the light behind the magazine page.

The themes I was cycling around are cleansing, absence, surrealism and wonder. The lack of color and branding…etc in the studio pushed the nostalgic mood and the idea of absence. There were loose symbols floating around the studio. A rope extending to the ceiling. Screws and holes in the walls where things had been. The floor was even textured by hand as was the chalkboard and some of the windows.

I’m interested in the way the suds come from a dark space beneath the floor. There was actually quite a bit of labor involved in getting them to come through. Once they are through the grow vertically and touch my face. According to Roland Barthes “Mythologies” (in the book refer to p. 36, in the pdf it’s p. 19) suds are luxurious and can be a sign of spirituality as the spirit has the “reputation for being able to make something out of nothing.” Something clicked for me when I realized my drawings were about systems and cycles. Things go in and things come out. Things pile up and get put away. It is exactly what has been ingrained in me from church my entire life. Sin and forgiveness–the ongoing cycle. In some ways it seems like that is what life is about!

It’s not evident in the photo’s or the video, but I entered and exited for the performance in a way that sort of formed a loop (in one side and out the other). It was the most criticized part of the performance. It seemed sort of “default” I guess. There is still room to explore these methods–and luckily doing a video allows me to edit this part out completely!

Documentation during the live performance (not the video piece):

RELATED POSTS:TAKETH AWAY

I ran across this while google image browsing for a piece I want to make:

Great, huh?

I saw this piece installed at Chicago’s MCA over the summer. The piece hits on quite a few things that I really like in art work. The essence of the material informs the content of the piece. Air is used in a powerful and interesting way. There is also a nice balance of simplicity, delicacy and a hint of violence. There are elements of this train of thought in my pieces Fly on a String & Burnt (see below).

February 2009

Anyway, here is what I have come up with so far:

Poetics of Space (Guston Bachelard): Currently reading in order to understand the theory behind space, memory and experience

Part Object, Part Sculpture (Helen Molesworth): This is an exhibition catalog from a show curated by Helen Molesworth at the Wexner Center for the Arts in 2007. The exhibition is based on differentiating DuChamps readymades from the 1960′s from the one’s he debuted with in the 1920′s. From this thesis, she explores the way postwar sculpture challenges the Minimalist/Post-Minimalist sequence maintained in most accounts of the period. As my work teeters between art object and everyday object, this conversation is quite relevant for me. The artists in the show are a cross sections of so many of my favorites: Louise Bourgeois, Eva Hesse, Robert Gober, DuChamp…

The Originality of the Avant Garde and Other Modernist Myths (Rosalind Krauss): I have already read a few of these essays (the grid and surrealist photography) and was quite enlightened as far as understanding the theoretical framework in which my ideas lie.

Mythologies(Roland Barthes):“[Mythologies] illustrates the beautiful generosity of Barthes’s progressive interest in the meaning (his word is signification) of practically everything around him, not only the books and paintings of high art, but also the slogans, trivia, toys, food, and popular rituals (cruises, striptease, eating, wrestling matches) of contemporary life . . . (quoted from a review by Edward W. Said)

This is a mock up for a piece that I have been trying to realize for months. For now the jump ropes are attached to the wall and the mechanism is being turned by a hand held drill. There are a few aesthetic things to figure out here, but I am pretty sure I will make the piece to be free standing (no architectural support) and will mount the motor so that it can run for extended periods of time on it’s own. Without further ado…

This piece has transformed itself many times since it’s conception. It was going to be excerpts from “carefree” songs (such as those by Jack Johnson) with a torso-esque figure attached to the wall doing a shoulder dance. For awhile it was going to be powered by a tape player motor. I tried making an armature out of lego’s and erector set, wood and pully’s. Each of these things hit it’s own road blocked and pushed me into the direction of this final piece. It was critiqued last week Tuesday before we left for Thanksgiving break.

I’ve got a fly on a string in my head. My drawings have repeatedly included this image of lightbulbs with a swarm of flies buzzing around them. I decided to attempt this mental image in three dimensions. It has been quite a process. I ordered fly larva online (aka magets), waited for them to hatch and then attached string to the legs of any fly I possibly could (not easy). The result is much of what I had hoped it would be:

Ceal Floyer at Lisson Gallery
An article from Frieze

“Large things tend to be unwieldy, clumsy, crude;
smallness is the realm of elegance and grace.” -Steven Millhauser

Smallness lends itself to being sweet and modest. It is not clouded by grandeur or overarching themes. It is simply what it is, but by being so poignant it is able to transcend itself.

My work explores the meaning of small gestures. What does it mean to part window blinds or for a railing to point upward? Many of these gestures exist in the peripheral and unconscious part of our lives, therefore our understanding of them is base level, inside you (imagine a hand to chest tap), resistant to language.

I use cyclical motion as a vehicle to a meditative state. The simple gesture of pull strings moving slowly up and down a white gallery wall repeatedly suggest “…on…off…on…off…on…off…” in a chant like manner to the point where the viewer stops thinking about the string and motion but something beyond that tapping into memory and experience. The relatability of the objects I use helps build connections to the work. I have often been struck by the way authors connect with the reader by inserting a very relatable description of an object or gesture. They are both allusive and familiar at the same time drawing the reader more personally into the story line.* No longer are you just following the authors train of thought, you are now running parallel with your own experience.

There are things that are impossible to hold onto. They slip through your fingers, flash before your eyes or hover in the spaces between. It is because you can’t hold them that they are beautiful. Weaving in and out of clarity. Existent, but difficult to get a clear handle on. Fog does this, memory does this, veils do this. It’s more beautiful to leave room for the mind to guess and imagine than to be completely clear.

*References of allusive and familiar gestures in literature that have stuck with me
1. “A biscuit, crushed into the slush of a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot.” J. Robert Lennon “Accursed Items”
2. The color yellow in the Great Gatsby
3. Tan lines in John Updike’s “A&P”
4. Grandmother rolling her eyes in Flannery O’Connor’s “A Good Man is Hard to Find”

I have a lot to think about. That’s good!

“I like to tell stories… children’s stories are monstrous,’ Annette Messager has said, and much of her work of the last four decades is based on toys and childhood.”

Recently as few pieces have emerged that relate to memories from my childhood. I never imagined that I would be that artist and makes autobiographical work, because I have traditionally thought that this level of self-reference excludes the viewer from experiencing anything but voyeurism. I am rethinking that stance as I ponder whether or not the particulars in life are actually contain more universals.

Here are the pieces about me and my past:

Here is the collection of February 2009-present…

As mentioned in the previously in “Panes”, I am intuitively attracted to the safe interior spaces. I like the outdoors, but I am really really enamored when it crosses boundary of home (light through the window/view to the world outside). It is across from this window with run new records from our housemates-to-be (for now we’re living with their stuff), Skye & Eric that I have been delving into my subconscious thoughts of how things work. The drawings build, grow, follow trains of thought and color. Symbols emerge, but as soon as they seem to be clearly defined, they morph into something else—like dashed lines are stitching, lane dividers and if oriented vertically, they are stacks of plates, air vents or blinds.

It is a comfortable place to draw. No need to dress for the day–the comforts of home at your fingertips.

Eating lemon meringue pie and thinking of Laura Letinsky‘s work. This plate and crumbs might have made an appearance in some of the drawings…

I used to trace the giraffe and elephant on the kid’s menu’s from Bill Knapp’s family restaurant (my family pretty much only went to Bill Knapp’s when we went out as a kid) by putting the paper on the window and drawing through to the other side. It’s difficult to recall if this was part of my thought process when I started taking photo’s of the magazine pages on the window, but I’m pretty sure the first drawing I made in my apartment in the Bronx (summer 2004), with the lamp under a glass table where I traced Jonbenet Ramsey’s face intermingling with some Keebler elves I was thinking about this “practice”.

Speaking of tracing, last night during the Artist in Residence lectures Iris Eichenberg (Metals at Cranbrook) was talking about tracing as re-experiencing the steps you have already taken. I really liked this as I have usually thought about it as copying or plagiarism. Anyway, I’m off topic from the window panes I began writing about. There are images to peer through below.

This is the first image I took of a magazine page on the window in 2007.

There’s as much possibility as the a blank page. Thick.

Several friends and classmates are in the show as well. Sam McCune, Faith Veenstra, Cousin Tim, and many talented designers from Cultivate Studios. It will be fun to see the show fully installed and maybe (hopefully) run into some of these people of my past.

The closing reception for the show is October 3 at 6:30.

(quoted from Wikipedia)

Connects while allowing distance. Dependent. Moves.

My knee is a hinge.

Door, cupboard.

All of the opening and closing is because of the hinge.

Even though I haven’t spent much time making, I have been thinking about what is important to me as an artist and what I like in art I see. Despite a full year of grad school, I seem to be holding on to the same basic idea that I came in with–although I understand it much differently now. Grad school is worth it, I promise!

I am still interested in the moments and space in between. Here is a new manifestation of this idea based on work I’ve been looking at as well as older pieces that still haven’t quite found their place in my mind. They were shot with one of my 85mm 1.4 lens. Look. Focus. Step back. Capture. Kind of a nice mantra, I think.

Here’s to beginning to work & starting to focus!

The show is up through August 8. Check it out!

Styrofoam #6, 2008
styrofoam, thread

Love is this way (don’t write me off for using the words love and beauty—I have a Plato reference—if you want to write me off for that, then okay!). I love how in Plato’s Symposium love is interestingly and insufficiently defined by each attendee of the party until Socrates brings in the reference to another person and beauty. When shared between two people, that’s when love exists. It’s intangible and so delicately dependent. Isn’t that a beautiful concept? I love it, just love it.

I listened to Marion Winik (an NPR contributing writer–or at least she was) often when I was working an office job a couple of years ago. Online radio was my main source of stimulation during 8 hour days in a small, windowless office where I was tethered to a ringing phone. There’s something really beautiful in the way she writes about her mental associations. Listen to “A Girl, a Dog and a Dad: Ghosts in Real Life” by Marion Winik

I saw JoAnn Verburg’s show “Present Tense” at MOMA in 2007. I bought the catalog and have referenced it often since. At first the photographs seemed really simple and elegant, which was appealing; but the more time I spent with them, the more I realized how those simple gestures informed a larger way of viewing the world. Here are a couple of Olive Tree images from the show:

Textures
Textures are amazing both for looking and for touching. I love a well balanced texture.

Balance
Balance reminds me of another thing that is part of my working interests. Balancing like a balancing act; tipping and teetering and barely staying up. Not balanced like a well balanced diet or a symmetrical composition.That is where it becomes the most interesting; just enough, not too much. That’s what making art is for me a balancing act.

Fragments
I’m not sure how I feel about fragments. It feels like an honest way to communicate and make things because of the way we receive information and remember things, but it still feels incomplete (of course).

Pull String or LightWeight (cut paper and sting)

A sketch/piece with paneling fragments from our Holland home

Inspired by my childhood play…a new way of working for me

A bottle of pain reliever, brought along on a business trip, that proves, at the moment it is most needed, to be filled not with pain reliever, but with buttons.

Sneakers hanging from the power line, with one half of a boy’s broken glasses stuffed into each toe.

A Minnie Mouse doll you found by the roadside, and brought home, intending to run it through the washer, and give it to your infant son, but which looked no less forlorn after washing, and was abandoned on a basement shelf, only to be found by your son eight years later, and mistaken for a once-loved toy that he himself had forsaken, leading to his first real experience of guilt and shame.

Love letters, seized by federal agents in an unsuccessful drug raid, tested in a lab for traces of cocaine, exhaustively read for references to drug contacts, sealed in a labeled plastic bag, and packed along with a plush bear holding a plastic red heart, into an unlabeled brown cardboard box, itself, loaded into a truck with hundreds of similar boxes, when the police headquarters was moved, and forever lost.

Nude polaroids of a thirteen-year-old female cousin.

An icicle, preserved in the freezer by a child, which, when discovered months later, is thought to be evidence of a problem with the appliance, leading to a costly and inconclusive diagnostic exam by a repairman.

A gay porno magazine, thrown onto a ball field from a car window, and perused with great interest by the adolescent members of both teams, two of whom meet in the woods some weeks later, to reproduce the tableaus they have seen, leading to a gradual realization that they are in fact gay, an incident, the memory of which causes one of the two, when he is well into a life that is disappointing emotionally, professionally, and sexually, to fling a gay porno magazine out his car window, as he passes an occupied ball field, on his way to what will be an unsuccessful job interview.

A biscuit, crushed into the slush of a Kentucky Fried Chicken parking lot.

The orange tobbaggen, whisking her to her death.

A resume, that portrays its author as utterly unqualified for the position for which she has applied, but which, because it smells good, leads its reader, a desperate, experientially undernourished middle-manager at an internet-based retail corporation, to invite her into the office for an interview, which, although further portrays the applicant’s complete unsuitability for the job, provides the middle-manager with a physical impression to complement the good smell, which impression is intensely exciting, forcing him to hire her as a supplemental secretary, much to the bafflement, chagrin, and eventual disgust of his extant secretary, who, during her employer’s lunch hour, removes the resume in question from his files, and personally delivers it to the CEO, and is with the CEO when he barges into the middle-manager’s office, and finds the unsuitable supplemental secretary standing beside him, crying silently with her dress half-off, while he sits in his reclining office chair, sweating profusely, and holding a plastic letter opener in a threatening manner.

The houseplant that will not die.

Fifty pairs of old blue jeans, found at second-hand clothing stores, and brought at great expense, on a trip to eastern Europe and the former Soviet republics, where rumor had it, old blue jeans could be sold for a lot of money, but where this was no longer true, as so many previous visitors had heard the same rumor, and done the same thing, creating a glut of old blue jeans, which were not even all that stylish there anymore, and causing the entire trip to be ruined by the necessity of hauling around these huge suitcases full of other people’s jeans, which smelled kind of bad, as if those other people were currently wearing them.

The urine sample, produced for the cancelled doctors appointment, and forgotten in the back of the fridge.

My eyeglasses, covered with a thickening layer of dust that I never seem to notice, and simply adjust to, until, at last, I clean them out of habit, and discover a new world, sharp and full of detail, whose novelty and clarity I forget about completely within fifteen minutes.

Your signature, rendered illegible by disease.

((I heard this read on This American Life-Plan B and was really struck by the clarity of some of these moments))

Finding ways to translate the moments between two things has found many outputs for me. I have created a series of photographs that compress the images on the front and backside of a printed page by shining light through and capturing the image at the moment when they are both showing at the same time. In another vein, by coating balloons with various materials while they are blown up I am able to allude to both the state of inflation and deflation as the shell shrivels around the collapsing balloon. They are depictions of something unattainable, yet the result is something new and strange in and of themselves. Each of these illustrated moments about these non-states can translate as anything from uncanny to feelings of loss or gain. I am interested in seeing what happens when each of these representations are combined with each other as they embody a similar idea but exude such different content.

I first consciously connected with this idea of transient beauty in Reineke Dijkstra’s beach series. The subjects of these photographs were neither children nor adults, they were neither clothed nor naked, they stood partly in the water and partly on land. The scenes are completely awkward and beautiful at the same time which was completely riveting for me.

Rineke Dijkstra

I finally own the book that contains these images! What a great Christmas gift…thank you!

[algorithm - lossy - data compression - artifact - stress - tension - buckling]

Yet, 2005

Punch, 1999

Homage to N.S., 1997

In reading, I realized that I am often stuck by a word or a phrase and sometimes the context doesn’t even matter, just the beauty of the words together or the idea they emit alone. I have tons of underlined statements, transcribed sentences and recorded ideas. It seems like the canopy that connects these ideas is over my head, but just out of my minds reach. I’m not sure if I should be satisfied with the longing to make the connection or if I should continue to try to connect. Sometimes the longing is the most interesting point. Here are some glimpses of the snippets I was turned on to tonight:

“I have given my whole life to words-
chewed this dog hunger into a long meal.” -Salvador Espriu

– – —- — —— -

“Clothing houses the house that houses the soul.” -John Leland

Vision vs. Visions

“A Word made flesh” -Emily Dickinson

…Like paragraphs of Wind-” -Emily Dickinson

“…variations of black-and-white: swamp trees silhouetted against the endless snow of Maine; inky black sypte floating on the page of a book; the lakes of the Adirondack Mountains, so dark they mirror the clouds…” -images from Lesley Dill’s conversations

Beauty is poetic not cosmetic. -paraphrased quote from LD book

“My business is circumference.” -Emily Dickinson

“The tops of my dress sculptures are small and flat, but the skirts are voluminous. This kind of compression-versus-expansion is in all of my works.” -Lesley Dill

“the contaminated subjective” -Karen Jacobs

“What do we see in the space of the mind behind the eye?” -Lesley Dill

www.lesleydill.net

The balloons are coming to a point where I really need to figure out some solutions for resolving the forms and the installation. I had hoped that this critique would allow me to get some feedback on relationships between the forms, the coverings…etc.