Personal Mapping...a new update

These collages are becoming larger and more complex. I'm experimenting more with text and hope to soon have the courage to try this technique on my relief forms.

The Unreliablity of Memory

"Time and memory are true artists: they remold reality nearer to the heart's desire."

- John Dewey

Candy Colored Creeks

It's been a while since I last posted. The end of the year brought a whirlwind of activity which culminated with my second residency. I have a lot of finished work to share, thoughts and feedback to process and plans to make for my future studio practice.The Candy Colored Creeks are a good place to start. This series began as an attempt to merge my sculpture and painting practices and also process childhood memories. Over the course of the semester, I used imagery inspired by my grandmother's backyard and experimented with different ways to use color, surface, texture and form to create objects that symbolize my experience in that landscape as an 8 year old. I'm happy with the direction the work is going in and feel that there is a lot left for me to explore here, which I fully intend to do. 

After several conversations during the residency, including those with my previous and current advisors, Laurel and Kamrooz, my plan is to explore the following:

• Think of each work as a time capsule
• Build a specific visual and tactile language to depict memories.
• How can I synthesize sensory experiences to build narrative?

• Can I use tile format to build content?
• A square foot is a very specific unit of measure used to depict space, can I use this format more deliberately to tell a story?
• Is square format necessary? If not, experiment with different formats and scale.

• These works belong on the wall rather than a pedestal or table, but I need to determine why I feel that way.

• Experiment with working in a way where process/material is more transparent.

Painting More Landscapes

I've finished the first piece in the series of object/painting hybrids I've been posting about. Although happy with the result, there are still a lot of things I want to try. In previous weeks, I was concerned about how these pieces connect with my other work. The subject matter, the creek/stream motif, is a reoccurring theme in my paintings and sand work this semester. In these paintings, I've incorporated colors culled from popular culture, toys and memories from my childhood. Both the paintings and sand work also emphasize making, process, repetition and attention to surface texture. 

In reading *Notes on Camp by Susan Sontag, I discovered an affinity between my work and her description of Camp art. I was particularly interested in her observation of Camp having the tendency towards "decorative art, [...] texture, sensuous surface and style at the expense of content" (278). Although I would argue that my work is not quite free of content, I would agree that form outranks content. Sontag goes on to say that, "Camp introduces a new standard: artifice as an ideal, theatricality" (280). This statement perfectly encapsulates my goal of presenting nature as artifice. 

I really like the interplay of light and shadow on the first painting. In fact, I plan to use one of the new objects to further explore monochromatic painting. The bead work on the 2nd painting is moving very slowly but so far I'm happy with its development. I've been building up layers of color on the lollipop trees painting and will eventually pour layers of glaze on top of it. I have two new objects to gesso today and one new object ready for papier-mache. The next step in this series will be to build objects that will be organic in form and not limited to the square format that I've been working with.

*Sontag, Susan. “Notes on ‘Camp.’” Against Interpretation and Other Essays. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966. 274–292. Print.

Painting Landscapes

Leaving the topography of the form white draws attention to the interplay between light and shadow. I think shifting the direction of the texture might create some interesting, unexpected patterns.

So a month ago I was really excited about these object/painting hybrids. A couple of weeks past and I finished the first set of forms and found myself ready to start painting. Then I ran into a problem. I realized that although I brainstormed and sketched the forms, I did not have a clear idea of what the finished, painted work would look like. I knew I wanted to do something with surface texture or pattern, but I wasn't exactly sure what. I was very happy with the forms themselves but once I started working on the underpaintings, not so much anymore.

I think I reached a point where I was overthinking these pieces. Since the concept behind them is rooted in childhood, I figured that I should try to recover a sense of play. I've resolved to work intuitively, which is something I normally reserve for my sculptural work. I immediately started building some new forms so I can try a different approach on each of them, working my way through the problem.

Started building some new forms to play with.

Finished the 3rd form and ready to paint.

Covering the first form with beads.

I like how the bead's iridescence gives the illusion of cloth.

How Does One Record an Ephemeral Experience?

Earlier this semester, I decided to create ornamental patterns based on the documentation of flora and/or natural structures I encounter while spending time in a particular landscape or traveling from one place to another. At the time, I wasn't really sure what form the work would take. I started collecting leaf and pod specimens documenting the time and location of where I found them so that when the time came I would have a lot of source material to choose from. I also started taking pictures of patterns I found in nature, hoping to incorporate them somehow into the work. 

Although sand has been a great medium to depict my memories of landscapes, I do not believe it is an appropriate medium to record impressions of current, day to day experiences.  The idea behind this work is to document ephemera found in the landscape with a medium that has personal significance. Unlike the sand paintings, it is not intended to replicate an actual landscape. I also wanted to employ a medium that gives the impression that the work may or may not be old, but without the permanence of paint. I thought an appropriate medium should imply fragility. It should look like it has been around a long time, but in fact, only a trace of it might remain in the future.

As I spent some time considering what the best medium for this project might be, I thought about coffee grounds. For the past several months, I've been collecting coffee to use in sand paintings.  I occurred to me that coffee grounds might be a more appropriate medium for several reasons:

1. Coffee is personal -- the medium represents a ritual that I engage in daily.
2. Coffee is ephemeral -- it also represents something that I enjoyed for a short time.
3. Coffee comes from a plant that is cultivated by humans and processed for consumption.
4. Textile art references feminine craft traditions.
5. Batik, in particular starch-resist batik techniques, reference African craft traditions. 

My first attempt at this new direction depicts a pattern I created based on observations from the recent Super Blood Moon. I used 3, 12" x 36" cotton panels.

 To my delight, I found this technique to be very process driven. I started with a drawing, transferred it onto a cotton panel with chalk, filled in the pattern with resist, let it dry, rubbed the panel with a paste I made out of coffee grounds and water, let it set for a day, rinse the fabric to remove coffee grounds and resist, let dry. I researched and used 3 different resist techniques: glue gel, soy wax, and rice starch. The glue gel was easy to apply and remove. The final results were nice, but the edges were a little too soft for my taste. The soy wax resist required the additional step of ironing the fabric to remove the wax. This technique yielded a patter with crisp edges that I found appealing but the wax is much more difficult to remove than the other two techniques. I'm currently working on the rice paste resist which takes a bit more effort to create and apply. I had to boil the rice until it started breaking down, blend it, and apply it to the fabric using my fingers instead of a brush. It also has a much longer drying time. I will report the final results as soon as I'm done.

I'm not sure what to make of this new direction. The only thing I'm sure of is that it needs more work, including which resist method to focus on, how to thoroughly remove the soy wax, resolving how to treat its edges (for now I'm attempting to fray the edges a bit and trim them to intensify an aged look) and how to hang it. One thing that I found very intriguing about the process is the fact that it involves the erasure of all of the actual marks/brushstrokes made by my hand on the panel. In a sense it is a negative painting, with my marks being washed or ironed away in the process.

Is the Work About Making/Constructing or Material?

The answer is neither.... The work is about time.

Uncovering the answer to this question surprised me. Six months ago, I would have said that my sand paintings were about the material. When this question came up during the residency, I couldn't articulate why I thought material was so important to me. I love working with sand as a medium. However, as I considered the actual themes behind my work and the ideas I want to address, I realized that sand itself really wasn't that crucial. I believe that sand has been an excellent tool for communicating what I want to say but it isn't the only one available to me. 

As I continue to move forward with the sand work, I do so with the awareness that the crux of my creative exploration includes the ideas of ephemera, time, and change. I want to replicate/document fleeting moments in time and create temporal experiences. Methods that I use to construct work and material are important, but the act of making and the process of unmaking through entropy are pivotal. The ruins of the sand paintings I've been working on, in my mind, are of equal importance to the original creations. They become a metaphor for processing childhood memories and feelings of nostalgia and loss. After creating idealized landscapes, deconstructing them serves as a springboard for a new landscape; one that is a combines idealized patterns with more realistic forms.