Studio video

Two UNCG graduate students made this video of me this past year--finally found where it was posted on youtube.

Notes from Artist Statements: 2001

2001

•In painting, I am interested in the body’s immobility.  But I look to a bodily stasis whose cause is rooted in reverie or fascination.

•The whole body apparently turns toward the place of fascination, or what I call the longed-for object, and then remains there, transfixed and longing.

The perceived vastness justifies the longing but never explicates it, and so longing continues. 

I am human, and I want something palpable, and I want to make images, so first I image the body’s stillness. 

Secondly I imagine what is seen.  A sort of explosion.  A clearing space.  A never ending area.  Maybe the place at the top of a great height.  That which should not go together goes together.

My paintings move alongside these experiences.

Notes from Artist Statements: 2000

•“Escaping the imaginary totalizations produced by the eye, the everyday has a certain strangeness that does not surface, or whose surface is only its upper limit, outlining itself against the visible.”   Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life

•The world is stranger than we know.

•A kind of landscape appears, an odd order.  The paintings are a personal grace, moments when all the flickering observings deign to coalesce, before scattering and mutating once again.

•“The human imagination is spatial and it is constantly constructing an architectonic whole from landscapes remembered or imagined; it progresses from what is closest to what is farther away, winding layers or strands around a single axis, which begins where the feet touch the ground.” Czeslaw Milosz, Where I Am

Notes from Artist Statements: 1999

February 1999

•“These fragments are the disjecta membra (scattered parts) of an elusive, coveted and vaguely scented knowledge.”  Guido Ceronetti, The Science of the Body

•My work habits suggest nailing down, when really I am more interested in what is left elusive.

•“strange speech”

•I realize I am attracted to the notion of strange speech because so often what arrives as the material for my making is garbled and clipped.  A bit of.  A nuance.  A moment.  The forms are usually made before they are known—almost always in fact.  And so in effect, I work in the dark.  The struggle comes in the fight between wanting to name them and letting them be long enough so that I may eventually observe a glimpse of what these things really ARE. 

Today I tracked down all the artist statements of mine I could find.  My gathering is in response to the fact that I begin writing for tenure this semester...a long, long process of combing through and compiling ALL I have done as an artist and teacher over the last five years.  For now I am focused on writing my "creative" activities statement--the statement all about what I make and why.  A useful way to begin seemed to be a stab at reading through everything I've written about my work since graduate school, and I must say the activity was gratifying.  I realize that despite the change in appearance, my work has consistently grappled with the same themes and ideas, over and over and in different ways, for the last eleven years at least.  

Above I post sections pulled from a first year graduate statement.  The "struggle" remains the same; the quest for "strange speech" is constant. 

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.

Notes on painting (from a current studio notebook)

I don't really want to discover painting as predictable.  I also don't want painting to reflect some facet of real life or real culture or contemporary reality--suggesting of course that painting is not real in comparison.  Of course painting will grapple with reality but I don't want painting--my paintings--to be a shadow, a facsimile or a tame approximation of lived life.  Instead I want painting to rear up on its hind legs and BE what it is.  My painting is most interesting to me when it stands fully alone and strongly alone.  The paintings are best when, knowing I made them, I am nonetheless still incredulous about how they came to exist in the world.  They are very separate and real and upright and full and I cannot take my eyes off of them--what I just describe is not a common occurrence but an ideal and rare one.  Most often I am faced with the unavoidable evidence that yes, I made this.

So painting is like a river running parallel to my living.  It never stops, is constantly moving along, and I periodically step in and fumble along for awhile until I get a handle--my bearings.  And then when I am upright and full I can move along with the river--and painting tells me how to see the world anew.

Sketchbook page

"When I painted a chair recently, I noticed that I put the paint on indifferently, smoothly but without particular attention.  The results were satisfactory but not in any sense beautiful.  Does the attention in itself with which paint is applied in art actually change the effect of the paint?  Does the kind of consciousness with which we act determine the quality of our actions?  It would follow, if this were true, that the higher the degree of consciousness, the higher the quality of the art.  I think it likely.  Training in art is, then, a demand that students increase the consciousness with which they employ techniques that are, in themselves, ordinary."

Anne Truitt, p. 130-131 from Daybook

Sketchbook (One page after another)

Still updating my talk, still finding old images.
Above--two consecutive sketchbook pages from an old book....I want to say 2003 or 2004?
Why are sketchbooks soooo satisfying--especially other people's sketchbooks?

Old studio wall

 

I am in the midst of prepping/revising/updating my artists talk--have to give one this coming Tuesday evening in Tennessee.

The process has me searching for some old images and while looking I found these two shots of an old studio wall of mine--I think this is 2006?

(I miss my old, beautiful studio.  Look at all that light!)

More importantly though, I'm happy to see some nice moments in these images--they remind me to get back to making more true collage fragments--bits and pieces made in the studio and meant to stay in the studio.  I've so "formalized" collage in my studio practice over the last couple years that I've somewhat forgotten the delightful informality of the medium.

(Funny...I recall making this wall.  I was pretty confused at the time...didn't quite know what to do in painting.  There was more going on than I knew.)

Squeak

A Simple List/Squeak Carnwath

1. It's simple really,
to paint is to trust.
To believe our instincts; to become.

2. Painting is an investigation of being.

3. It is not the job of art to mirror.  Images reflected in a mirror appear to us in reverse.  An artist's responsibility is to reveal consciousness; to produce a human document.

4. Painting is an act of devotion.  A practiced witnessing of the human spirit.

5. Paintings are about:
paint
observation &
thought.

6. Art is not about facts but about what is; the am-ness of things.

7. All paintings share a connection with all other paintings.

8. Art is evidence.  Evidence of breathing in and breathing out; proof of human majesty.

9. Painting places us.  Painting puts us in real time.  The time in which we inhabit our bodies.

10. Light is the true home of painting.

11. The visible is how we orient ourselves.  It remains our principal source of information about the world.  Painting reminds us of what is absent.  What we don't see anymore.

12. Painting is not only a mnemonic device employed to remember events in our lifetime.  Painting addresses a greater memory.  A memory less topical, one less provincial that the geography of our currently occupied body.  Painting reminds us of what we don't know but what we recognize as familiar.

13. Painting, like water, takes any form.  Paint is a film of pigment on a plane.  It is not real in the way that gravity-bound sculpture is real.  It is, however, real.  Painting comes to reality through illusion.  An illusion that allows us to make a leap of faith; to believe.  To believe in a blue that can be the wing of a bug or a though.  It makes our invisible visible.

I've spoken about my teachers before on this blog--always with reverence and appreciation.  I suppose it is not surprising at all that I would become a teacher myself.  When a teacher meant something to me he or she slid into a vaulted position; they became more than probably they ever were in reality.  I say these things not because I am striving to be that person in my students eyes, but because I believe teaching is a noble profession, and one of great, great importance--especially to students.  A good teacher can radically crack open one's world in my experience, and this is an amazing, amazing ability--and certainly not an ability to be taken lightly or callously; good teaching is equally about generosity and an awful lot of compassion.  Certainly my world was cracked open while I studied painting with Squeak Carnwath in graduate school.
I gave my students an excerpt of some of her writing, and in the process of pulling that assignment together I remembered this list of Squeak's.  I love how she thinks about painting; it has very much influenced my own thoughts about painting.

Studio Notes/one on top of the other

Fragment

1. Definition: break into pieces
2. Synonyms: burst, come apart, crumble, disintegrate, disunite, divide, rend, rive, shatter, shiver, smash, splinter, split, split up
3. Notes: a part is any of the components of a whole; a portion is a part allotted to or regarded as belonging to someone; a piece is a part separated from the whole; a division is a part formed by classifying, cutting, partitioning - and so is a section, though it is generally smaller; a segment is a part separated along natural lines of division; a fragment is a small part, usually broken off

Notes from reading some essays on Richard Tuttle yesterday

1.    Mel Bochner’s Working Drawings and Other Visible Things on Paper Not Necessarily Meant to Be Viewed as Art, 1966: “Bochner’s ‘conceptualism’ thus emerges as a dynamic model, a thought activity occurring in the gaps between language and things.”
2.    “The gap between language and things is precisely where Tuttle’s exploration of drawing unfolds as well.  What Bochner characterizes as the bracketing of an already devalued medium and practice is the zone of qualification from which Tuttle begins.  Institutionally aligned with sculptural “anti-form,” this notion of the indeterminate, the impermanent, the contingent, and the interrogative is the horizontal plane from which Tuttle challenges the vertical, the permanent, and the non-transitive.” Excerpt from Kinesthetic Drawing by Cornelia H. Butler (in the Richard Tuttle retrospective catalog)
3.    “It was not until drawing had transformed itself through its autographic function and was actually absorbed into a new aesthetic of ‘incompleted’ painting, that drawing could cease to function primarily as a step toward painting and become an independent action, and that drawings could be made consistently as finished works—could function as an alternative major mode of expression…The story of drawing from the mid-fifties onwards is the story of…an emotive cooling of the basic mark, the basic line itself.” Excerpt from Bernice Rose’s Drawing Now catalog essay, 1976
4.    p. 176 and 177 of Tuttle retrospective book, reread description of Tuttle installing Wire Pieces, think about the relationship of the body to any given material
5.    Look up the word kinesthetic, define so as to better grasp
6.    “Action is the objectification of subjectivity and the subjectification of objectivity.  It must be a kind of practice.  Practice always is the union of subject and object.  Therefore, human activities always construct culture.  Human activity sees the world of trans-temporal ideas.  The concept of acting as a variety of seeing arises from this.  It means that the self sees itself through negating itself.  The creative activity of the artist is a paradigm of this.” Excerpt from the Japanese philosopher and poet Kitaro Nishida

One Year

As it turns out, this posts marks the one year anniversary of Studio Index.

I've not much fanfare to mark the occasion.

But today I read a lot--here are two notable excerpts from my reading:

The process of looking--especially the process of looking while making a drawing or painting--is far too alive and spasmodic to be rationalized.

and

Eschewing theory and system, protocol and precedent, Cezanne wants to know only what he learns from the practice--his practice--of painting.

Both excerpts are from the essay, Turning the Head in Empirical Space by Rackstraw Downes

Studio, Wednesday Afternoon

Beginning

When I was a beginning undergraduate student, I naturally contended with my share of art assignments.  I was never overly bothered by assignments in art class.  My self-challenge, when given a directed project to complete, was always to figure out how I might interpret the directives in a way I'd find interesting, challenging and absorbing.  Invariably, the task required focus and a willingness to make some circuitous translations of the given assignment's seeming requirements.  I knew an idea or solution was good if I was afraid to begin, nervous to put the idea in motion and/or supremely hesitant to see what would transpire.  If I felt afraid, or restless, or worried (or tempted to come up with a safer idea) then I knew I HAD to carry on with my initial impulse.

I recall these feelings now, because I've cleared the long wall in my studio--readying it for the next painting/collage/installation.  I believe I know the elements of the painting--this last month has been a guide.  I feel restless though.  I'm not going to write any more about it--idea-wise that is...  But I've brewed my second cup of tea,
posted to this blog,
checked email,
emptied the dishwasher and
swept the studio floor. 
I've just got to get going.

Components (or elements)

1. stripes
2. drips
3. letters
4. lines
5. painting on the wall
6. painting on paper pinned to the wall
7. expanse

Endlessness and studio time

Because my employer gave me a leave of absence to work in my studio full time for four months, I've recently been incredibly blessed to enter a wonderful space of thinking and making.

Today while painting, I realized (while painting) that I was just painting. My mind was painting too--what I mean is that I had no monologue-that-sounds-vaguely-like-myself-teaching (or worse, one of my colleagues teaching me!) running through my head the whole time.

I looked at the painting on the desk in front of me--a pretty weird, nonsensical looking thing that quite frankly, may not be so great. In fact, the painting very well may be a terrible painting. I'm not sure.

What interested me, at the moment, was the transparency of the paint, and how long it took for my loaded brush to start leaving trails of transparent paint. Learning how many marks must leave that particular brush before I could make the barest haze of a mark was/is important.

Notes

"Letters"

think about letters you do not know, you have not learned
(Alex learning to write)

making letters

my old vs t-shirt--a favorite-now-decrepit, how could it be a painting

Notes

Raising a tent--
all the lines derived from the space like a hidden matrix, subtext, sub-drawing/under-drawing

lines sinking in and out of the wall, could be added or erased, could come out of wall or go in

how to move across a space?
how to get from one side to another?