Is anyone else sick of the word THESIS?

One of my goals this week was to push my 2-d thesis work towards a more show-able version, for the senior show which is coming up in a few weeks. The vellum is nice, but it needs to be framed, and I don't want to use frames. Hence, no more vellum...
So, I wandered the aisles of Lowe's, looking for any and all smooth surfaces. Tiles, glass, sheet metal, plexi, plastic... it all seemed to scream out for me to dump some ink on it.

(Dear Lowe's employees: No, I am not remodeling my bathroom. Yes, I want to buy your broken and rejected tiles. Quit looking at me like I'm crazy. I'm an artist.)

This is a stoneware tile. It has a nice texture, which I think complements the way the ink moves and settles as it dries. But one of my classmates pointed out that it exudes permanence, which seems to negate the theme of my thesis. I agree.

This is on a smooth, glossy white ceramic tile. I like the delicacy of detail that seems to be possible. I want to try it on a larger tile. (This one is 6" x 6")

This one is on glass. It was originally really dense and overworked. I was in the process of "erasing" it, and stopped when I realized I liked where it was. I added the drops of gold ink, then forced myself to stop. The glass is layered over a sheet of bristol board which I brushed with graphite powder. I love working on glass!

 If there's one lesson I've learned over the last few weeks, it's that I chose the right theme for my thesis. I can't NOT work on it, I can't NOT think about it, and even when I intentionally try to not work on it, I still do. 

I had a lovely talk this afternoon with a grad student, who suggested that I ought to try and find common ground between my 2-d and 3-d work. I agree! Right now, both are abstract representations of the same concepts, but they don't necessarily relate to each other. Installed in the same gallery, you probably wouldn't guess they were from the same artist. Hmmm. So, this will be my challenge: not only do I want all new work in the senior show (which is ridiculous, it's in about three weeks) but I want it to be cohesive. Which means I mean to make adjustments to my processes in both sculpture and drawing. Hmmmm.

I also experimented with layering glass. Each sheet of glass has two sides. The piece below essentially has 4 layers: The bottom of the top layer of glass, the top and the bottom of the lower piece of glass, and the white paper beneath, which was stained with the ink run-off while I worked on the glass.

It's kind of impossible to see in the scanned image here, but the layers create depth, like a hologram, and the colors sort of glow, as the glass is almost as reflective as a mirror. I'm not especially in love with this particular composition, but I definitely want to try more.

I wasn't sure if I liked the bottom layer, so I scanned it without to see the difference. It doesn't really matter, because it's just an experiment, but if anyone has an opinion on which version is better, let me know.

 I need to stop blogging.

I have a LOT of work to do.

Omphaloskepsis (Look it up!)

Here's a little paper I recently wrote. It's for a foundation-level class (which I am being forced to take so I can fulfill some bureaucratic guidelines), so one of the teachers recommended that I apply the intro-level subject matter to my thesis work, so I can get more out of this class  (i.e. not completely waste my time.)

I Am Still an Artist: A Manifesto

An artist’s search for self can be exhausting, all-consuming, and very often devolves into pathetic navel-gazing which, inevitably, makes it impossible to actually create art. It seems ironic to me that while pursuing a vocation which seems to require connection and communication with other human beings in order to achieve success, so many of us are self-absorbed to the point of paralysis. Of course, this observation occurs to me at a necessarily self-absorbed point in my artistic education. The search for a valid and meaningful thesis, and then for an effective and earth-shattering means of communicating said thesis, has caused me to wallow in a infinitely murky swamp of self-reflection. Long periods of wallowing are occasionally interrupted with a variety of distractions; prominent among these distractions is Facebook.

I identified with many of the same concerns as novelist and professor Zadie Smith, who recently wrote an article, “Generation Why?”  The article is part opinion editorial, part movie review (The Social Network), and part book review (You Are Not a Gadget: A Manifesto, by Jaron Lanier). Smith and I are the same age, and although she is teaching undergrad students while I am studying alongside them, we both find ourselves surrounded by the Facebook generation, and unlike these younger students, we have both experienced a portion of our adult lives without the relentless grind of social media. As Smith puts it, when describing her old-fashioned use of texting technology, “Our relationship with the English language predates our relationships with our phones.”

Our Facebook profiles present a cleaned up, tidy version of our selves. We list what we like and what we don’t like, but not what we love or what we hate. We share what our favorite movies are, but not our favorite memories. We organize our photos into convenient, charmingly titled albums, each becoming surrogates for actual time and experience. We arrange our “friends” into groups, so we can decide who is worthy to witness each parceled nugget of our selves.

So what’s wrong with any of that? Obviously, we all know that a Facebook profile is representative of a person, but does not encompass the entirety of that person. Or do we? If we connect to Facebook daily, and if our chief connection with our friends and family is through their wall feed, then is it not inevitable that that wall feed will gradually replace the idea of their unique personhood?

Being in the privileged position of having artists make up a large portion of my Facebook friends, I sometimes forget the white-washed blandness of the Facebook universe. I have friends that are creative and smart and witty, and I am often entertained by their posts, photos, and videos. But Smith’s article reminded me that even my cleverest friends present a homogenized, carefully rendered version of themselves through Facebook; even their most original posts can seem like they are trying to fit into the stereotypical category of artist. (This observation is from my most cynical self, and I cannot deny guilt of similar crimes.)

Smith’s, and my own, fear of the soul-flattening effects of Facebook triggered thoughts (no surprise) of the afore-mentioned all-consuming thesis work. I am currently obsessing over the concept of memory loss. Our memories are the foundation for our souls. Having experienced memory loss as a result of seizures, I began to be paralyzed by a fear that I will lose memories to an extent that I will lose my self entirely, or even worse, the parts that make me an artist.

Without the specific details that flavor my most precious memories, my history is in danger of eroding into something as bland and arbitrary as my Facebook profile. It occurs to me that by constantly creating new memories, I can keep my self full, and maintain my unique person-ness. Of course, I ought to create memories which reinforce my current self-ness, lest I lose it anyway. But then, am I in danger of becoming stagnant? That can’t be good for an artist; it is a terrifying prospect. So, the alternative is to choose to create memories of times that are challenging, full of intensities and specificities that are the anti-venom of Facebookian, amnesiac blandness. I am very lucky, then, that my thesis work is providing plenty of such challenges.

Smith, Zadie. “Generation Why?” The New York Review of Books. Nov 25 2010. Web.    Jan 17 2012.

Installation Final!

Closeup of the center ball.

We got the space we wanted! We (myself, Daniel, and Steve) installed this in the smaller room of the 840 Gallery last weekend. We spent several hours over the last few weeks making string orbs of various sizes. The largest, shown above, was about eighteen inches in diameter. The smallest, below, was about four inches across.

We used about 12,000 feet of string, about 35 eye hooks, and over a gallon of glue

Check out my post from a few weeks ago, called The PROTO Show, if you want to see how this all got started.

View from the back corner. There was string right in front of the camera.

I loved the shadows cast on the wall

A view from below.

Looking down, at an eye hook in the concrete floor.

We spent about fourteen hours installing this on Sunday, and then two more hours on Monday to finish up and set up the lighting.

So... what does it all mean? My original idea was to create a 3-d abstraction of the inside of the brain, where memories are stored. Each orb represents a specific memory. They are all different sizes, and can be reached easily or with difficulty, depending on their placement within the room. Some are well lit, almost glowing, while others are in shadow. They are all connected to the environment and to each other. Some of the connections are strong, others are tenuous. As we tightened the string in one direction, something else would loosen and sag, so we had to constantly pull and push new connections between the orbs.
The memory theme is important to me, because it's part of my thesis, so I'm glad my collaborators were okay with sticking with my idea. I'm also glad they wanted to work with me, because I never could have drilled into the concrete on my own (thanks Daniel!) or come up with such beautiful lighting (thanks Steve!). Plus, I wouldn't have been able to torture them with my music choices for fourteen hours straight, which was fun. How was I supposed to know they wouldn't like They Might Be Giants?

New Tricks!

A few weeks ago I cracked under stress. I was thinking way too hard. About everything. 
Between thesis, installation, advanced drawing, digital art (technology!), and other miscellaneous challenges, I was overwhelmed with the desire to make something fun. And easy. Requiring no thought. Or complete sentences.

Luckily, I had a whole bunch of lovely vellum, and some alcohol-based ink I had ordered on a whim from Amazon. These were the results of my first experiments:

I think this was my very first one.

This ink is super-brilliant and translucent. The alcohol base means it dries quickly and it resists other colors, so dropping fresh ink into dried colors pushes the original color out, resulting in those dark edges. Wet into wet creates unpredictable variations.
In some sort of experimental frenzy, I tried the ink on several types of papers and surfaces. If you want to try this stuff, don't bother with regular paper, because the ink loses all its unique properties. You have to use good vellum or acetate, because they won't absorb the ink.

I went a little crazy with this one

This one is pretty hideous. I discovered all the weird effects I could get by blowing air through a straw at the wet ink. Then I stopped, because it's just not pretty.

I started with black India ink, blew it around with the straw, and then dropped alcohol ink on later. I liked the effect, but it made the vellum all wrinkly.

Then I started having fun turning the vellum back and forth, so the ink ran in different directions as it dried.

So, I figured out that spraying rubbing alcohol onto the ink made interesting effects, like in the lower left corner. I put the alcohol in a scented body spray bottle, so now my art smells like green tea and citrus.

I went crazy with the alcohol spray on this. SO much fun!

I started using the alcohol and a paper towel to "erase" ink from the page, and then I added more ink, and more alcohol. I think this is my favorite.

I spent so much time playing with this stuff, that I felt guilty I wasn't working on thesis-related projects. (As you may or may not know, my thesis work is currently related to memory loss.) Some recent projects involved physically erasing images, or altering them through unseen forces (more on that stuff soon.) But then, I had an epiphany: with the alcohol, I could erase images, alter them, and distort them. I had been making progress on my thesis and didn't even realize it! Bonus!

The vellum is translucent, like the ink, so I decided to layer two pages in the scanner to see what happened. I love it.

I'm having so much fun with my new trick! I'm working on more elaborate experiments with this stuff, I just don't have photos yet.
I promise to post them soon.

Also coming soon: a digital animation (technology!), my most recent installation (I think I'm calling it Rendezvous), abstract videos, graphite drawings, and a secret project (might be illegal!)...

the PROTO show

Final projects for installation class are due in just a couple weeks (gasp!) and our teacher, Matt Lynch, decided it would be super-fun to squeeze in a gallery show (he has an entertaining knack for this- I assume it's his way of preparing us for last minute opportunities that arise in the "real" world).

Matt found these lovely old flashcards with Proto brand tools on them; this image inspired the name of our show

The class decided that rather than choose a completely new idea, which would take a lot of working time away from our final projects, that we could display prototypes of our final work. These prototypes might vary between miniatures, maquettes, Photoshopped images, and works in progress. Ideally, they would stand as more than just sketches, and have artistic merit of their own.

The flyer I designed for the show. Nice and simple.

I am collaborating on this project with two other students: Daniel Lawson, with whom I've collaborated on several projects, and Steve Shack, a new friend who has brought a unique set of skills from his experience as a set builder and lighting technician at the music/performing arts college (CCM).

The Big Idea:

The idea for our (final) project is to fill a room with miles of lovely white cotton string. The string is a metaphor for memory. Some areas will be tangled and tight, others will be loose and fraying. Connections will vary between random and deliberate. Some areas will be completely obscured by string while others are sparse and open.

We wrapped various canvases in string and secured them to the wall. We see these blank canvases as portals, like the eyes and ears, which allow information into the mind, while the web of string represents the connections made in our minds as memories are formed. I think. It's just a prototype, people.

So, for our Proto project, we had a small corner of the 840 gallery to ourselves. We took advantage of a well-placed spotlight because we liked the shadows the string made on the wall.

Close-up! We made those egg shapes by wrapping Mod-Podge soaked string around balloons, allowing it to dry, then popping and removing the balloons. Thanks mom, for teaching me that technique years ago  :).

I'm not sure what the egg shapes are supposed to represent. We really liked the shadows that they created on the wall.

 It will be interesting to see how we re-use these elements in our final project. The awesomeness of this proto-project is that we worked through a LOT of technical issues and artistic concepts, so our final piece will be a lot stronger.
I love that we used cheap raw materials which will be re-used in future projects. Our budget for our final installation will be less than twenty dollars each. REALLY CHEAP!

I recorded a terrible little video. I said I wasn't good with technology, didn't I? We liked the shadows that were created when we spun one of our little string balloons in front of the spotlight.