Orange/Blue

From Sara's Columbia home of color!

What does an abstract painter draw from life? In little orderly rows?

Dragonflies, of course.

Details from Columbia...

Sunday/morning/last day

Saturday drawing/collage

Sketchbook/Columbia

Interview between Jeffrey Eugenides and Tacita Dean/Bomb Magazine, Spring 2006

Jeffrey Eugenides: My old teacher, Gilbert Sorrentino, used to use these things he called "generative devices," which were ways of writing, taking away any kind of intention of what you were going to write.  I guess it goes back to surrealism, in that he's trying to tap his unconscious.  And write stories, write fiction without having any plan in mind, because he thought that a plan would inevitably end up as something tired.  Does that strike a chord with you?  I mean, I don't write that way at all, I get an idea and I plan it, and then I change the plan.  I let things change all the time, but I never proceed in complete darkness.
Tacita Dean: I have definitely worked in that way.  I tend to think that the work by other artists that I am attracted to works because you seem to imagine that they had no real sense of their destination when they started.  And I think a lot of pre-imagined work can be quite inert.
JE: There's a great poem by Frank O'Hara, of course I don't remember it (laughter) but, he's trying to write about a fish, I think.  And when he's finished, the poem has nothing to do with this fish, except the title remains "The Fish," because that's where his thought process began.  So as O'Hara wrote the poem, it became something else, and finally had nothing to do with is original impulse.  The title is the only sign.  I find that quite true with writing.  I'll have an idea and as I work on it, the idea changes until there's nothing left of the original idea.  Nevertheless, while I'm writing, I'm aware of my basic narrative intentions.  I don't give up my rationality, having so little, really, to spare.  I proceed in a logical manner, but it always takes me to illogical conclusions.  
TD: And I proceed illogically.  (laughter)  But I'm very formal strangely enough.  The final manifestation isn't chaotic, although the process is, I think.

Cutting apart the grids/building/today

Beginning/yesterday morning

Color at the Columbia Drawing Intensive!

I am surrounded by high-keyed color--a perfect environment for my work!

Columbia Drawing Intensive/Day 1 (Morning)

I have the extreme good fortune to be friends with a fantastic artist named Sara Schneckloth; we were serendipitously thrown into a two-person exhibition together several years back--I still remember the fun we had installing our work side by side for two days.  Sara is a joy and a great organizer of like-minded folks.  She is the founder and organizer of the Columbia Drawing Intensive--a four day mini-residency of seven artists, JUST begun.  We are currently ensconced in her lovely home, scattered about at different tables inside and out.

I arrived yesterday and claimed this little loft on the second floor.  As I took a bus down to Columbia, I was given the not unwelcome challenge of packing a portable studio in my suitcase.  In the above photo you can see my loft studio AND my supplies--nearly all of them packed carefully into a box.  I will post highlights over the next couple days.  I am giddy at the possibilities of conversation and work while here!

Yellow shape

This painting no longer exists as viewed here--I left it alone for awhile but then, yesterday, decided to keep going.  So I've lost it's original simplicity now, and indeed the image is necessarily on to another permutation.  I am not sure what it will be yet.

Circles and Lines

Stripes