Maybe I spoke too soon...

A couple of posts ago I said that the most important aspect of my work is time rather material or labor. Now I'm not so sure. Tonight, as I made countless slow, meditative circular motions with my hand to rub coffee ground paste into a piece of cloth, I revisited that decision in my thoughts. Perhaps the material is of little consequence. It doesn't matter whether its dyeing and drying sand, then sifting it back into its fine texture, pouring identical little piles of sand, or neatly arranging sand into smooth rows. It doesn't matter whether its carefully pressing rice paste into fabric to make a pattern or rubbing coffee into fabric to stain it. Clay, sand, newspaper, cardboard, coffee, cotton, rice, flour are all simply materials. Materials that outside of the context of art are not regarded very highly. Labor (the time, process, and effort I exert) is the agent that turns these humble materials into art.

Progress is Slow but Steady

I've made progress on several fronts this week and look forward to seeing where things end up. I've spent much of the last few weeks feeling a bit lost and frustrated that some projects I'm working on are too different and don't relate to each other much. Today, I came to the realization today that I just need to think and worry less about where I'll end up.

One project that I'm working on is a series of object/painting hybrids. I started by building cardboard forms on a masonite base, then covering those forms with papier-mache. This week, I finished painting several coats of gesso on the first two. The built forms are inspired by imagery from the childhood landscapes I've been exploring in my sand work. The paintings I will use them for will focus on experimental surface treatments and abstracted patterning. It takes a while for them to dry in between layers of papier-mache. While I waited, I started building a third object also based on my grandmother's backyard. Today, I will finish applying the 2nd layer of paper.

I also made some progress on the coffee-batik panels this week. I was concerned about the edges which unravel erratically during the dyeing process. I intended for these panels to portray an immediacy that will be lost if I hem the edges. After some experimentation, I found that fraying the edges can be an appropriate solution. I've also learned that for future panels, I need to pay better attention to how I cut them to help the fraying process move faster and more efficiently. I have a rotary cutter for fabric I used a while back to make fabric collages. I plan on digging that out from its hiding place so that I can use it to make precisely vertical cut. While researching African textiles for this work, I uncovered a possible link between West African textile techniques and African American quilting traditions. I'm trying to get my hands on a book of the subject called Accidentally on Purpose to research it further.

Lastly, I'm working on collection of  slip-cast biomorphic forms used to create a pattern which will be partially submerged in sand. This project is moving more slowly than I anticipated because I'm working with molds that have to dry between castings. The first firings resulted in work with disappointing surface texture. For these newer pieces, I'm using rubber ribs to burnish the work while its leather hard before smoothing it further with a bit of chamois. 

Why Use Sand?

As I mentioned in my last post, I continue to use loose sand as the primary medium for these landscape memory pieces because of its visual resemblance to a natural landscape, references to working directly with earth (soil), and references to time and ephemerality. I will continue to create multiple works inspired by the same landscape to compare their visual elements and what they seem to communicate, to refine this language further.

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.

Where am I? Part 3: The Field

It's been a while since I've posted and I have a lot to catch up on. In the past month, I've been working to find answers to some of the questions that were raised during the residency. In some cases, the answers revealed themselves. In other, they remain elusive.

One thing that I'm continuing to work through is exploring landscape through personal connection. So far this semester the imagery in my work was limited to my grandmother's back yard, but I'm beginning to expand a bit, moving forward in time from early childhood to adolescence and the end of childhood. That brought me to my family's move to rural Georgia when I was in middle school. Although I had a rather introverted childhood, I felt especially isolated during that time. One of the most vivid (and pleasant) memories I have is spending time reading and daydreaming while sitting in the middle of the field at the top of the property. It was an extremely rich, sensory experience. I distinctly remember the smell of the wind, the sound of cicadas, the dust rising up from the occasional car driving down the dirt road and the way the lavender wildflowers swayed in the breeze. The contrasting feelings of near isolation while also being connected with my surroundings remain with me.

Also, with this sand painting I numbered the images using the orthographic projection method I discussed earlier: 1-front, 2-back, 3-left, 4-right, 5-top, 6-alternate. Since I cannot photograph the painting from underneath (yet), I use an alternate view, in this case from the top, as a substitute for the sixth image. The 7th image is a bird's eye view of the entire work, for documentation purposes only, which will only be shared on this blog. I've been thinking a lot about the fact that these works will never been seen by the public except through the images I take of them. I would like to use my role as liaison between art and viewer more to my advantage. The work itself is an exercise in ephemera, its documentation, and sharing a fleeting moment with the viewer through the image. So the viewer, will experience my imaginary landscape much like an actual landscape; from a particular point of view, instead of all at once. It is my hope that will help create a more intimate connection between the viewer and the image and dissolve the separation between the two.

Landscapes & Relics

I've been playing around with the idea of adding permanent sculptural objects to my temporary installations. I would like to create a dialogue between natural material and man-made (or in this case "woman-made" relics. These biomorphic forms are intended to be ambiguous, at the same time referencing bodies, organic structures, land forms, or abandoned artifacts. I have always been attracted to working with multiples, building increasingly complex patterns out of simple shapes. These forms are made of cast porcelain. I love the interplay of light on the surface of unglazed porcelain. Its color and texture bears a resemblance to bone, stone, and fungi. 

I am working with porcelain slip for the first time and figuring out what needs to be addressed as I go along. From this first set of forms, I realized that I need to experiment with different methods of burnishing the clay before I fire it to improve its surface texture. I also found that I shouldn't be afraid to conceal parts of the form under sand. When I built unfired clay structures to submerge in sand, I thought the interplay between what was revealed and concealed was very interesting. I don't feel that this first attempt in using permanent sculptures was as successful. Maybe because I spent so much time in the process of sculpting the form, creating the mold, casting and firing it, I was a little more reluctant to cover it up.