It’s almost like actually making new work and then actually exhibiting it. Except not.
25 June, 2010
19 June, 2010
Strategies of display (2001–2006)
If I was to be honest, I’d say that artmaking for me has been more or less stalled for over a year now. There was the teaching thing, but that’s done for the foreseeable future. Not sure quite what else to do, I’ve spent an eccentric amount of time on the elliptical machine these last few weeks, but now the elliptical machine is broken, so I guess I’ll have to actually figure out what I’m doing.
18 April, 2010
For my own benefit
It’s really hard to keep track of the things one is working on when one is not, you know, working on them. And I can’t keep a paper sketchbook or notebook to save my life, so they’ll just have to go here.
- Untitled (St. Barbara ? St. Peter & St. Paul ? Saint-Bertin at Saint-Omer) stained glass windows (6)
- Untitled (A Medieval Alphabet to Illuminate) drawings (one or more)
- Untitled (2002) two collages — done but for documentation
- Untitled (?erenkov/Chartres) photographs? probably six
- How Will I Know? film
- Untitled (How will I know?) painting/sculptures
- Color Filtration prints (offset?)
- Untitled (Coming out of the dark) painting
- Untitled (Die) sculpture-ish
- Untitled (If that’s a metaphor of you and I, why is it so hard to say goodbye?) I don’t have any clear idea for this beyond the title
There’s also a curatorial/print project that’s in the later stages of being conceptualized, but which I don’t know if I’ll follow through on because thought of approaching the people I’d like to involve is too stressful to even fully consider (these are all people I know in varying capacities, mind). Whatever, I’d be producing it out of pocket, which maybe isn’t so smart anyway.
27 March, 2010
There were things I’d never do again, but then they’d always seemed right
I’ve spent the last week adding tons of old work (in some cases very old work, like, from 1999, when I would have been fourteen years old work) to the “Juvenilia” section of my website. This has meant hours upon hours of Photoshopping, in part because I have a very specific style to my documentation (work is to be shown against a white wall, framed where applicable) and in part because for a lot of things I have only imperfect photos to work from (in the case of 2D work, this usually means at the very least that the photos were cropped, which doesn’t convey a sense of the piece as a physical object—that I’m faking that appearance of “objecthood” through digital manipulation is an irony not lost on me) and works have either been sold or given away or lost or destroyed or are in any case in a storage room in Ohio.
On the whole, it’s been satisfying to be able to really see these pieces again, even when they’re stupid or hackneyed or just not-very-good. And the Photoshopping process has yielded some transitional images (above) that are themselves kind of satisfying. But as things have progressed, it’s become clearer to me that for this to be anything besides a self-indulgent exercise in revisionist (exclusionist) autohagiography, I’d have to include everything (everything, at least, from high school onwards, since before that I didn’t have any real concept of what making art might mean, even though I’d always made things). And this was fine. Until I stumbled upon a usable photo of a piece that was genuinely, ineradicably, irreducibly, and irredeemably awful.
Like this charming thing from Drawing II (Fall 1999). It was Sophomore year; I was fourteen; it could be so much worse (or I need to believe that much anyway). But do I want anyone to know that this thing existed (and I think continues, stubbornly, to exist, albeit in deep storage somewhere)? Absolutely fucking not. But the project would demand that it be included, and so I probably will.
Not by itself though. I think, when I can track down a picture of it, I’ll pair the drawing with my first, intensely regrettable stained glass window (first semester of Freshman year, Fall 1998). I can’t bear the idea of either being considered singly; they need one another’s twin poles of abject suckitude to cancel each other out.
So there’s still revision, and they’re still cheating, but there always is, and it would be silly to pretend otherwise.
7 March, 2010
Untitled (Last Chance To Evacuate Earth Before It’s Recycled) [install]
I’m not very happy with it but I’m not very happy with much.
5 March, 2010
1 March, 2010
28 February, 2010
Untitled (Last Chance To Evacuate Earth Before It’s Recycled)
I’m making a group of 39 drawings about the Heaven’s Gate suicides. They’re going to be 6×9″ oil pictures of their keyhole logo, done in a pastel rainbow spectrum on black.
The piece is going to include a picture of the Hale-Bopp comet made out of fusible beads. For the upcoming faculty show at least, I think the drawings are going to be shown in a pile on the floor, and the bead-picture will be framed on the wall.
26 November, 2009
20 November, 2009
Leading this piece: Day 2
Sorry, but y’all are getting a play-by-play on this window’s construction, whether you like it or not. ‘Cause shit’s simply too riveting to keep to myself, obvs.
I think I’m getting into the swing of things, now: all that’s new since yesterday I did in about four hours. It’s a shame I probably won’t have time to get all of the lead cut before I leave for the States (Thanksgiving, Canadians. The real one). Maybe if I really apply myself, but it seems unlikely.
Also, when I call the process “medieval,” I’m really not joking. The tools I’ve got to work with are like Old-assed Yankee Workshop meets The Craft. That handsome thing there is what I use to cut all the lead came, since dykes (that’s what the special tinsnips are called) mangle the wide lead I’m using past the point of no return.
The real setback I’ve been facing has been the lead itself. I need 3/8″ came (I don’t know why it’s called “came,” but it is) to get the look of the window I’m reproducing (this is quite wide, especially for a piece this size—it’s only two feet square), and the one stained glass supply store in town (that I know of, though it is, conveniently, only about three blocks from our house) only carries a lead/zinc alloy in that width. All that means is that the came is super, super hard compared to 100% lead, and cutting it with that stupid little hand tool is not fun.
Also, I’m not doing a terribly good job, so far (chalk it up to a “learning experience”). That gap there? It shouldn’t be there. If I tried to solder that joint, the solder will pull in on itself in a really unattractive way. Conventional wisdom is that I need to re-cut that piece to fit exactly (I probably will for this particular joint, since it’s an easy, straight cut) or cut a tiny piece of came to fill the gap, but I think I can cheat a bit. (It’s worth noting that, if I’ve learned nothing from both renovating the basement at cam’s house and doing this [and, apparently, I haven't] it’s that the reason nobody else has come up with your own particular, genius quick-fix solution is because they have, and it doesn’t work. Like at all). I think that if I copper-foil the exposed areas, I should be able to solder over the gap. Because the came is so rigid, this window is going to be inde-fucking-structable, anyway, so a few weak joints aren’t going to be an issue.
Now wait for that to not work. Like at all.