Of what to make. As a kid I had an obsessed with making things, but mostly making things that "work." Taking empty 2 liter soda bottles and cutting them up, taping them together, and rigging them to allow water to trickle from one to the next and swirl around and fill up pools to then get drained and make things "happen." There was this huge gratification in making something out of garbage and having it "look nice" and "work" as if it were some important functioning instrument like a car or something. But it didn't have to do anything.
It could also have been a marble rolling down crevices in my mom's comforter. That was another big one. Or using oaktag to make rollercoasters for my uncles little tiny matchbox cars (not real aluminum matchbox cars, but like super tiny ones.)
Yesterday Tara noticed that our oscillating fan was moving a box that was next to it each time it turned, and we all loved watching it. This is what reminded me of the sort of mouse trap contraptions I used to make. And I'm wondering if I should start this up again.
Wednesday, July 6, 2011
Wednesday, June 29, 2011
And now go be a professional painter
I'm selling one of my favorite paintings to Franco Marinai tonight. I'm trading another piece that is dear to me for work of his. He has these fantastic photogravures and mezzotints, and I cannot wait to see them in person and to own one. He bid on one of my pieces at my auction, and I contacted him saying I wasn't willing to let it go at such a low price, and he offered to pay a good amount for it so I agreed. I'm extremely excited to meet him. His work can be seen here - http://www.marinai.com/
This is the piece I'm selling. "Drink in Massachusetts" 12"X12" oil on canvas. It was done from a drawing which was drawn while at a small party with whiskey and Trivial Pursuit involved, in my roommates log cabin in MA. This piece was also mentioned in my senior thesis. I think it was one of the most deliberate and kinesthetically pleasing pieces I've done. I'm sad to see it go.
So I've been dealing with the concept of being a "professional painter", since I've sold many pieces at this point and have 7 paintings currently on sale at s.h.e. gallery in Boonton, NJ. In college I painted because I had to paint and because I love the act of painting. I did it entirely for myself and for critiques and to understand who I am. I did not do it to sell the end results. Now, I am running low on artwork that I have of my own, it feels. Which is incredibly sad. But at the same time, I adore the idea that others have pieces of my making, pieces that SO directly portray my perception of existence. That, I do like. What I don't like is now, when I continue to paint, I will be painting with this idea in the back of my head that I should be making something I will LIKE to sell, and not want to hold on to. How can I do what I have been doing, with paintings of photographs from my childhood and of my father, with the intent to sell them to another? To someone who has not felt those experiences that I've painted about? That won't work. So the question is, do I continue to do this and just sell them, do I do this and not sell them, or do I change my subject matter to not feel so guilty by letting them go for monetary value?
It feels quite awkward.
So I've been dealing with the concept of being a "professional painter", since I've sold many pieces at this point and have 7 paintings currently on sale at s.h.e. gallery in Boonton, NJ. In college I painted because I had to paint and because I love the act of painting. I did it entirely for myself and for critiques and to understand who I am. I did not do it to sell the end results. Now, I am running low on artwork that I have of my own, it feels. Which is incredibly sad. But at the same time, I adore the idea that others have pieces of my making, pieces that SO directly portray my perception of existence. That, I do like. What I don't like is now, when I continue to paint, I will be painting with this idea in the back of my head that I should be making something I will LIKE to sell, and not want to hold on to. How can I do what I have been doing, with paintings of photographs from my childhood and of my father, with the intent to sell them to another? To someone who has not felt those experiences that I've painted about? That won't work. So the question is, do I continue to do this and just sell them, do I do this and not sell them, or do I change my subject matter to not feel so guilty by letting them go for monetary value?
It feels quite awkward.
Tuesday, March 22, 2011
What Makes a Good Work of Art...
Matthew Higgs, director of White Columns in New York, on what makes a good work of art: "It's not about innovation for innovation's sake or the ambition to be novel or unique. All good art gives us an opportunity for a different relationship to time... It's usually about an individual's radically idiosyncratic interpretation of the world. We're inherently fascinated by work like that because we're inherently fascinated by other people."
And Now
I am reading Seven Days in the Art World by Sarah Thornton, and I'm on the Turner Prize chapter. She's interviewing 2006 Turner Prize nominee Tomma Abts, and I'm amazed by this artist's mysteriousness. She won't speak about artist influences, she won't disclose her German name book (which she uses to choose the titles of her paintings), she refuses to answer questions such as "were you raised on a commune?" and she believes "Painting is so visual that it is very difficult to say things that won't compromise it." She doesn't believe artists should explain themselves.
Not to mention she makes about 8 paintings a year. She'll spend sometimes 5 years on them and makes sure enough time will pass in between each working-session. Taken from a description of Abts on the Tate Britain website, "Abts describes the finished works as ‘a concentrate of the many paintings underneath’, each functioning as an autonomous object revealing the visible traces of its construction." She also uses no source material, no preconceived notions of what any painting will look like in the end. But here is her interview; it's really quite strange and fascinating how she goes about art-making.
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2006/tommaabts.htm
Not to mention she makes about 8 paintings a year. She'll spend sometimes 5 years on them and makes sure enough time will pass in between each working-session. Taken from a description of Abts on the Tate Britain website, "Abts describes the finished works as ‘a concentrate of the many paintings underneath’, each functioning as an autonomous object revealing the visible traces of its construction." She also uses no source material, no preconceived notions of what any painting will look like in the end. But here is her interview; it's really quite strange and fascinating how she goes about art-making.
http://www.tate.org.uk/britain/turnerprize/2006/tommaabts.htm
Tempermanence: I miss you
...is the title of my senior thesis paper/senior project.
Painting is difficult. I have my senior group show to hang tomorrow, and wrote a mini-statement to go along with it (and am mainly posting it here so I don't lose it in the future)
Painting is difficult. I have my senior group show to hang tomorrow, and wrote a mini-statement to go along with it (and am mainly posting it here so I don't lose it in the future)
The concept of permanence has been one of primary concern in my life and work since I have been dealing with losses of various calibers since I can remember. Half of the pieces on my wall were from a course in which I painted the same image - a photograph from a family vacation of me and family friends - all semester. Within these paintings, I investigated the photograph and the various emotional impacts I could suggest with the use of color and materials.
The other half of the pieces I have shown are based on memories and the idea of the "memorial": a thing that can (or is meant to) somehow embody a person's dedication or achievements. I am interested in how much weight and truth an object or a photograph can hold in terms of expressing the life or death of a person/relationship.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
Susana Heller - Studio Visit
My senior seminar class visited the studio of artist Susana Heller in Greenpoint, NY last week. Her studio was in this old warehouse building right near McCarren Park; it was really beautiful. Susana herself was this energetic, skinny woman who spoke about her work and life with sincerity and deep passion. Her demeanor was very personable and informal - she was eager to expose her process and her thoughts in her work, including the story behind her most recent pieces, which involved her husband's near death hospitalization. I have found that many established artists, mostly those represented by large galleries (such as Judith Linhares) will conceal much of the thought behind their work, in an effort to maintain the mysteriousness that exists, to keep the viewers guessing and inquiring rather than put all of the information out on the table. This is a conflict that I have within my own work as an artist - how much do I tell you, be it with words or with paint?
Aside from her paintings of her husband, she had been in her studio location in 2001 during the 9/11 attack and painted from the chaos and destruction of the city which followed. She also considers herself an avid walker; she walks all over the cities, and is fascinated with the movement, the people, the energy of New York City, so she draws and paints about this affect on her.
Susana doesn't have a website but some of her work from a show is displayed on the Olga Korper Gallery website here: http://olgakorpergallery.com/artists.html
Aside from her paintings of her husband, she had been in her studio location in 2001 during the 9/11 attack and painted from the chaos and destruction of the city which followed. She also considers herself an avid walker; she walks all over the cities, and is fascinated with the movement, the people, the energy of New York City, so she draws and paints about this affect on her.
Susana doesn't have a website but some of her work from a show is displayed on the Olga Korper Gallery website here: http://olgakorpergallery.com/artists.html
Thursday, March 10, 2011
Junior Photo Show Review - SUNY Purchase
After reading a Brooklyn Rail interview, whilst the heat is off in the VA, I decided to descend the 2 flights of stairs into the basement, and review the Junior Photo Show. For those unaware, I'm a painter without much knowledge of the technical aspects of photography; I feel I can critique painting quite thoroughly, after hundreds of critique hours in college, but photography interests me in its own place in the visual arts as well as aesthetically. Many students were in this show, so I chose to thoroughly critique on aspects that I feel most pertinent to what I typically deal with in painting and the visual arts in general.
A few trends were noted throughout the show while writing about each artist individually, the most dominant being the photographing of the American family in the home - the drab, emotionless suburban interior. Artists that I deemed to be partaking in this sort of theme included Trisha Keeler, Rebecca Iasillo, Ashley Gallo, Ellisa Keller, Brittany Colson, and Molly Doherty-Vinicor (though in hers, figures were mainly absent - it seemed that the remnants of the family on their "home" were the focus of the pieces.) Katie Corcoran's pieces seemed to be portraying the family or at least an interaction of friends in their spaces as well, though used outdoor as well as indoor environments to place them in.
The body as landscape was another subject I noted in a few pieces. The pieces of Kellyann Petry evoked this thought, as her close-ups of the figure expressed the liveliness of skin in its most "real" way. The three vertical pieces done by Kate McCormick felt as though they were dealing with this as well - though her figures seemed to be expressing the life that exists inside a body, with a level of uncomfortability present in them.
The presentation of a number of pieces in the show really appealed to me as well. I believe photography has many options as far as presentation goes - maybe more so than painting (or at least more than have already been explored). Peter Zervas had presented two archival pigment prints on foamcore. This allowed the photographs to lean more towards being objects to me rather than "pictures." I saw these also as film stills, snapshots of a moving film which were then printed as photographs. If this is a correct evaluation of the process (or if not), it made me curious as to what photography is when it is OF a video; I compared the two visual mediums, the portrayal of time they each exhibit.
Colleen Logan presented a small piece of glass with 25 tiny "thumbnail" photographs behind it, placed neatly in a grid. The images seemed to catalog a sick woman's hospital stay. The grid and similarity in size of photographs evoked the passage of time and changing states of mind that occurred in the hospital room at that time.
Rita Baunok presented small photographs matted very precisely behind glass. One was of a strange, obscured urban or wasteland scene, and the other a close-up of a dictionary page with the definition of seclusion. The juxtaposition of these two very different subjects together creates an unusual but curious investigation of place and definition of place. Another artist who used glass to her aesthetic advantage was Katelyn Menard - glass as frame, together as object.
Catherin Gaston used a Fuji Film Instant camera - something I have seen a few times recently in my social life - seemingly to document the life of an adolescent. The use of this instant film conjures up thoughts of time-specific events and casual documentation.
Caroline Schub and Michael "Shibby" Lambert exhibited pieces which affected me strictly in terms of their content and aesthetic in the content. Schub's portrayed scenes which had unusual placement of objects - likely constructed by the artist (at least from what I gathered) - which obscured our view and made us unable to fully see what seemed to be the subject of the piece. The center photograph of a stuffed coyote or some sort of dog which had a telescope blocking its face seemed the most quirky, beautiful, and lonely to me. Lambert's pieces displayed 3 scenes which were reminiscent of construction/destruction, but hardly exhibited any real indications of this. About 15% of each piece was the focus of the photograph - light flooding onto mulch, dirt or rocks from within the "crevice" of the hill created by the earth. To me, this read as the destruction of land by the construction of something commercial (maybe a road, building) but did so in such an elegant and beautiful way that the aesthetic still remained most significant. Joseph Maguire also seemed to be talking about the man-made in the landscape, the human affect on existing earth.
Process in art is always a consideration of mine when making or critiquing. The layering that Dave Medina uses in his pieces is one of interest to me - the juxtaposition of a person and a place makes for a direct interaction between them and their environment.
Other artists with pieces in the show included James DiMauro, who seemed to present place as abstraction, Steven Paradise, Serena Shkreli, Alexander Krauss, Hannah Tashkovich, Britney Chiacchiaro, Skylar Blum, Hannah Browning, Christina "Tin Tin" Muller, Blathana Zimmerman, and Jes Walsh.
A few trends were noted throughout the show while writing about each artist individually, the most dominant being the photographing of the American family in the home - the drab, emotionless suburban interior. Artists that I deemed to be partaking in this sort of theme included Trisha Keeler, Rebecca Iasillo, Ashley Gallo, Ellisa Keller, Brittany Colson, and Molly Doherty-Vinicor (though in hers, figures were mainly absent - it seemed that the remnants of the family on their "home" were the focus of the pieces.) Katie Corcoran's pieces seemed to be portraying the family or at least an interaction of friends in their spaces as well, though used outdoor as well as indoor environments to place them in.
The body as landscape was another subject I noted in a few pieces. The pieces of Kellyann Petry evoked this thought, as her close-ups of the figure expressed the liveliness of skin in its most "real" way. The three vertical pieces done by Kate McCormick felt as though they were dealing with this as well - though her figures seemed to be expressing the life that exists inside a body, with a level of uncomfortability present in them.
The presentation of a number of pieces in the show really appealed to me as well. I believe photography has many options as far as presentation goes - maybe more so than painting (or at least more than have already been explored). Peter Zervas had presented two archival pigment prints on foamcore. This allowed the photographs to lean more towards being objects to me rather than "pictures." I saw these also as film stills, snapshots of a moving film which were then printed as photographs. If this is a correct evaluation of the process (or if not), it made me curious as to what photography is when it is OF a video; I compared the two visual mediums, the portrayal of time they each exhibit.
Colleen Logan presented a small piece of glass with 25 tiny "thumbnail" photographs behind it, placed neatly in a grid. The images seemed to catalog a sick woman's hospital stay. The grid and similarity in size of photographs evoked the passage of time and changing states of mind that occurred in the hospital room at that time.
Rita Baunok presented small photographs matted very precisely behind glass. One was of a strange, obscured urban or wasteland scene, and the other a close-up of a dictionary page with the definition of seclusion. The juxtaposition of these two very different subjects together creates an unusual but curious investigation of place and definition of place. Another artist who used glass to her aesthetic advantage was Katelyn Menard - glass as frame, together as object.
Catherin Gaston used a Fuji Film Instant camera - something I have seen a few times recently in my social life - seemingly to document the life of an adolescent. The use of this instant film conjures up thoughts of time-specific events and casual documentation.
Caroline Schub and Michael "Shibby" Lambert exhibited pieces which affected me strictly in terms of their content and aesthetic in the content. Schub's portrayed scenes which had unusual placement of objects - likely constructed by the artist (at least from what I gathered) - which obscured our view and made us unable to fully see what seemed to be the subject of the piece. The center photograph of a stuffed coyote or some sort of dog which had a telescope blocking its face seemed the most quirky, beautiful, and lonely to me. Lambert's pieces displayed 3 scenes which were reminiscent of construction/destruction, but hardly exhibited any real indications of this. About 15% of each piece was the focus of the photograph - light flooding onto mulch, dirt or rocks from within the "crevice" of the hill created by the earth. To me, this read as the destruction of land by the construction of something commercial (maybe a road, building) but did so in such an elegant and beautiful way that the aesthetic still remained most significant. Joseph Maguire also seemed to be talking about the man-made in the landscape, the human affect on existing earth.
Process in art is always a consideration of mine when making or critiquing. The layering that Dave Medina uses in his pieces is one of interest to me - the juxtaposition of a person and a place makes for a direct interaction between them and their environment.
Other artists with pieces in the show included James DiMauro, who seemed to present place as abstraction, Steven Paradise, Serena Shkreli, Alexander Krauss, Hannah Tashkovich, Britney Chiacchiaro, Skylar Blum, Hannah Browning, Christina "Tin Tin" Muller, Blathana Zimmerman, and Jes Walsh.
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