summer studio sessions part I

Kerdieekrdaad spent the unbearably hot portion of the past couple weeks in her ethereal air conditioned studio.  I came out with a series of 12 3" square paintings and Bri is going to town on a bunch of source material with her exacto.  Here are the first five:

getting my mind out of the city

I'm on vacation.  Well, my body is still walking down the parkway to school every day, but in the studio I am walking through the woods behind my house in Maine, watching my mother tend her gardens, thinking of the colors of the late afternoon in Umbria two springs ago, and peering at the sky through the cherry blossoms of April.  And I'm wondering if the result of all this pretty and happy will be too precious or trite.  I guess I have every reason to revel in real beauty--this art isn't a brain twister or a solution to the world's problems, but perhaps it's a positive experience for my viewer and that is enough right now?

Final Fellowship Collection

And...we've reached the end.  I'm exhausted, but in the way I am exhausted after having a charged and therapeutic conversation.  I've had many of those throughout this process, not only with the work as I make it, but with Brianna, my studio-mate, when I don't think I'm going to make it to the end.  (Thanks, Bri.)  Well, I'm at the end.  Now I just need to figure out how I'm going to prepare all these panels for hanging (I'm pretty sure the gallery director isn't going to go for thumbtacks).

 

fellowship show, onward!

Can you tell how many panels I've finished now? I'm headed towards 50, and ideally more than that... This process is so intuitive at this point--I've gotten out of my head to an extent that has freed my hand. I have to keep letting habits die so that I continue to manipulate the trash and colors (the same trash and colors I've been working with since January) in fresh, not-boring ways. But it really involves spacing out, not overthinking it. It's as if my concept is just embedded in the materials and alive in my hands, I no longer need my brain to transmit the general idea. If I'm going to get to 50 of these things in the next three weeks, this is what needs to keep happening.

What I Have, What I Dream Of continued

it became clear about halfway through this process that a single layer wasn't going to allow me to express my understanding of the complex relationship between city and nature. Once I cut the original images into strips and situated them on top of one another (see last post of this piece) and then began to work back into the image as a whole (this post) I came to see this piece as a metaphor for the upward motion of the city.

The base layer of this work, upon which all the maps and geometric fields rest, can be interpreted as nature, before any human altered it. The rest of the composition is supported by that layer, and as your eye moves towards the uppermost drawings you may notice how simple, geometric, and sparse they become. In only two or three areas did I allow the eye to perceive clearly the organic that exists beneath all the gridwork, and I imagine these areas to be reminders--what if we were to lift up a stretch of the city and remember again everything wild that lives down there?

This blueprint is representative of how I perceive the city. If one were able to slice it into vertical strata, the lowest layer would be the richest and most organic, and the highest layer would only include empty air and the rectangles of the highest buildings. Everything in between would be defined in terms of the spectrum set up by the lowest and highest layer.

Fellowship Panels, Update

I'm beginning to slow down on these a bit for a lack of focus and a slight loss of interest, but I have to keep plugging. Hopefully continued work on them will get me off the plateau and help me pick up the pace!