Culminating Semester Portfolio

This link takes you to Google docs where you can download my 46 MB MFAIA Portfolio of text + images which tells the story of my creative practice through a degree process:

MFA-IA Final Portfolio


This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

Dynamo Commutator Experiment

The conventional means of presenting the arts in this country provide a limited number of opportunities for practicing artists to connect their work with their public. Refusing to wait to be chosen by a conventional venue, I am making efforts to assume responsibility for the production of my work and exploring an alternative space for my work to be accessible.
Click on the post title to get to the site!

The Dynamo Commutator experiment is a project about the world. Using a Google Site, digital images, poetry and hypertext methodology, it is a paradox of time and space. The web-based art (visual + poetry + audio) site is a condensed micro space: contained by the size of your monitor, HTML (HyperText Markup Language) and dependent on access to a computer and the Internet. Images and text are embedded in the site and the poetry can be read in a typical linear progression or as non-linear, based on where + when you click on the links.

I begin with the claim that all poetry is a performance; even when a poem is fixed on a page it still performs. To move a poem to other media is simply a multidimensional close reading. The Dynamo Commutator project develops the use of media other than the standard printed page for the transmission of poetry + digital imagery. The next stage is to collaborate with others to add their art / poetry / music + hyperlink edits.

This is Not an Exit

VUE Map: Concept mapping (sometimes referred to as ‘mind-mapping’) as a learning tool has been documented in 40+ years of cognitive science research. The Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) is a concept and content mapping application, developed by Tufts University to support teaching, learning and research. Simple tools and a basic visual grammar consisting of nodes and links, maps and/or organizes relationships between concepts, contexts, ideas and digital content in non-linear ways.

Rhizome is a philosophical concept developed by Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari in their Capitalism and Schizophrenia (1972-1980) project. Based on the botanical rhizome, it is what Deleuze calls an "image of thought" that apprehends multiplicities. Rhizome describes theory and research that allows for multiple, non-hierarchical entry and exit points in data representation and interpretation.

Carl Jung used the term rhizome to describe the universal unconscious, the presence in all people of a set of shared images and their significance. The Internet and its rapidly spreading communities is described as a rhizome. It is also gaining rapid momentum in pedagogy, particularly when utilizing Internet and computer-based technologies.

Rhizomes oppose the idea that knowledge must grow in a tree structure (arborescent) from previously accepted ideas. New thinking need not follow established patterns, new conceptual territories result from unpredictable juxtapositions. The root of the rhizomic plant needs to be close to the surface to flower, as does rhizomatic thinking need to be present in daily life to affect thought. It is an open system, most effective as a tool when personally incorporated, accessing the concept of rhizome through experience.

With this motivation, I cast the rhizome as a site of defiance to the arborescence of packet documentation, progress “report” narrative and—thinking forward—to the structure of the Final Portfolio. I believe my process, practice and acquiring knowledge has always dodged linear interpretation. My challenge was to think more originally, through thinking more organically.

How to articulate the complexities of art and art-making, subjects that are conceptually and methodologically both personal and global. Off-shoots ricochet in all directions; classification seems impossible; the task of selecting and following interactions, terms and relations are massive. How to think this?

As artists, we are faced by a need to find alternative ways to analytically respond. Artists recognize the skills necessary in the process: acute observational skills, intermingling experience with theory and practice, 'fieldwork' of an experience, and coming to new realizations, often in manner difficult to detect. To capture the ways in which I understand and see certain associations unfolding in my field of study, I responded to the concept of rhizome as a new way of 'thinking' these connections.

By the end of the semester, I began creating a Visual Understanding Environment (VUE) map as an act of bridging gaps between the conceptual, methodological and experiential. I downloaded the free and open-source software and learned the capabilities of the current version of the program. 'Fieldnotes' of a kind were kept by a semester-long journaling experiment, and it is through reflection on these, the map resulted.

Describing how connections and 'rhizomatic' thought appear in the everyday is a difficult task. The VUE map has a larger purpose than creating a system of interlinked concepts. It has to show what that system does; so I will be continuing forward with this project into G4, along with developing a pedagogy with a rhizomatic perspective.

The Moon + Digital Collage

"Heaven, a Detail or Hell, a Detail"

This is 22" in diameter. Was a concrete encrusted lid when I found it on a jobsite. It's meant to be exhibited on a floor..

Black is a property; a black shape can hold its space and place in relation to other things, and holds itself in a compressed field. It is the densest color material, absorbing and dissipating light to a maximum, changing the artificial and natural light in a room. There are no metaphorical or other misreadings when you cover a surface with black. A substrate covered with black is an extension of drawing, which is an extension of markmaking. Using color, extends coloration as its unavoidable allusions.

Collage is about shifting relationships, willfully dismantling assumptions and rearranging them to suggest what is conceivable. Collage makes use of contradictions. It is the medium of surprise and hopefully startles us out of ambivalence.

I am blatantly using my poetry in these pieces. What you are seeing here is a digital sketch for the painting. I am planning to apply black stick-on vinyl letters for the text. Or maybe white vinyl letters (?) The decision will be made in the doing- I am intentionally disengaging hand writing with chalk on the chalkboard surface- it’s too obvious and less ironic. That said, if the vinyl letters don’t work for this piece, I could chalk over them, remove them, and leave the negative space of their past presence…

Audre Lorde wrote: "It is not those differences between us that are separating us. It is rather our refusal to recognize those differences, and to examine the distortions which result from our misnaming them and their effects upon human behavior and expectation." Sister Outsider (pg 115)

Talking with my students over the past 5 semesters, it is obvious that we are of a time that, particularly for young men and women, is not very cordial to idealism. The early 21st century is characterized by a cynical worldview; the danger is not to have the hope to affect change. Anger is as disjointed as our communications; there is too much to be angry about. There are so many issues, all at once, that sometimes we feel powerless.Most of these young women and men—in group discussion—reject ideological generalizations of the sexes. Young women do not call themselves feminists, they consider it part of who they are. They say they stand up for up for themselves. But the question is, will they stand up for other women?

Re-vision

A Memory I Recognize, As Though We Had Been Children Together

Titled from a line in the poem The Pond by Louise Gluck

“When painters feel the need to make a shift toward self-discovery, they turn to black and white for a time.” An unverifiable quote from Barnett Newman.

It is impossible to justify everything by the logical. Andre Breton wrote about the sublime point (le point sublime) with which some part of the human mind communicates directly. The key to our mental prisons, a device for liberating thought, is the free play of analogies. In the case of automatic writing, it is the word that is "found" and a voice is given to objective chance. The find, whether object or word, represents communication between the mind and the world.

The changes for this painting actually came to me in when I was involved in some routine blah, blah, blah…but I knew I wasn’t satisfied with this piece for months (it was part of G2packet 4). It had been sitting on a shelf in my living room—where I don’t live much these days—passing it by on way in and out of the house. All of the painting antagonized me: ground color, the metallic red wire, the rusted concept…I took the spray paint to it- all matte finishes, no shine, I needed it to be more absorbent of light, physically. I wanted it to be more powerfully graphic.

My first intent was to spray it completely white. I stopped here to live with it and see what happens. There’s a process of listening to the paintings. I know when to stop if I can acknowledge its identity, its “wholeness”, its ability of converging meaning in ways I find interesting.

G3 Packet 3+4

Exquisite Encounters Book Project

Artwork for Mary Ruth’s book. Her theme has to do with clothing and its relationship with identity. My concept is based on split paged books, like the ones that allow you to put different animal body parts together to make strange creatures.So, I collected (12) HD paint samples that have names like “Intellectual” “Indiscreet” “Echo” “Ashes”.

It took awhile to come up with the body I wanted to use. My first efforts were cut from magazines, but I didn’t like the effect. I decided I wanted something to remain the same on each page, even as the colors changed. The idea was that the identity may change, but the person remains the same. So, I found the 2400 BCE goddess figurine- talk about withstanding the test of time! I am using my favorite new drawing implement- the wood burning tool. It burns away the paint, so it’s like making scratchboard drawings. The image embeds in the paper, unlike ink which sits on top. So the colors, the labels and the surrounding environment change, and you can switch tops and bottoms, but the woman remains the same. The colors + names have been chosen specifically for their top or bottom positions. I had considered the effect of having intellectual on the bottom ½, but I opted out of the smart-ass references…

Ellipses...

G3 Packet 2

(note: click on images for larger view)

Reluctantly, They Began to Dream of What They Wanted

This painting is a 25" x 36" diptych. In the last packet, the top ½ was shown with quotes from Peter Doig and Louise Gluck reinforcing the unsaid and the deliberate silence. Silence and the power of the unfinished has been persistent in my work as a concept: violence as a silencer, passive silence, ignorance, shame, death, loss, desire. In this piece, I was also working with the idea of potential and scale.

If you’ve never seen the 1977 film produced by Charles & Ray Eames, The Power of Ten, it’s finally available to anyone without purchase. I came across this film 2 years ago as a resource for my History of Graphic Design students. At the time, the Eames company (run by their children) was holding tight to its availability and only one site managed to escape the copyright distributions. Tirelessly removing it from the public realm was ironic; Charles & Ray Eames’ mission was education and accessibility through the power of design. Fortunately, the Eames site now promotes the film as an educational resource, there are traveling exhibits and nobody is pursuing youtube posts.

This painting has multiple perspectives and scales: physical layering of plywood/luan and assemblage, drawn and physical horizon lines, color fields/lines that refer to aerial views of a topography, mountain scapes, references to the elements of water, earth, air and fire, spiritual and concrete. The larger field of pale green can be experienced as springtime renewal or the stagnant slime of pond algae. There are many ways in and out here, but the larger scale of the quieter field against the shifting activity above it is meant to sustain the present…there, is here.

Exquisite Encounters Book Projects

From Linka Behn: “My offering to the group creation originated as a date book: 2007-2008 calendar (school year) on a spiral binding, 6” x 9” on a horizontal layout, my entries still within the weekly pages. The book was a photography datebook, the opposing pages hold reproductions of old travel photo’s from around the world… My request to each artist was to use phrases from Old English poetry as ‘seeds’ from which to provide a visual/written response. Phrases chosen were particularly visually rich, or emotive, encouraging interpretation. These phrases were cut from a garage sale book of poetry, then put inside a small envelope mounted on the opening page. Each is to select one (or more) from the envelope, using the words as a beginning point for the entry. At completion, I asked that the phrase be attached in some way, to show the origination of the visual/ written thought.”

Eight Years and Five Rolling Moons

Here Tulips Bloom As They Are Told

These are my contributions to Linka’s book project. The phrases were used as intended. The “seed” phrases Linka chose are emotive and visually rich, but also have a sentimentalized language- we don't speak like this any longer:

What happens next is typical for me. I flipped them all over, looking for inadvertent opportunity:

I manipulated the phrases in Photoshop for the resulting poem:

From Tammy Parks: “I bought a used book for fifty cents at the Goddard library because I liked the feel and heft of it in my hands. It is entitled The Architecture of the Old South…The opening page of my book asks the question, how does art shape a place? I added a few images of places shaped or created by artists for inspiration. I added no other suggestions or restrictions for their responses. I am interested in knowing what words or images result from the simple question…The book is a space being transformed into a place by their thoughts, images, words and contributions.”

House of The Early Mary

Shelter Thee

These are my contributions to Tammy’s book project. I played with the idea of making work to fit the environment and making the environment fit for the work. From the outset, I didn’t intend to make art to fit the book, but wanted to make what I truly feel, put it in the book and say, “Here is something of myself,” and let it tell in this environment. Paying forward the collaboration, I installed the poem from Linka’s flipside seeds into Tammy’s book.

...my Practicum project has stalled because of my bronchitis…

Images from an experimental accordion fold book project: So far, it's been just that- experimental. I don’t know where it’s going, and I’ve also lost my way in the present of it. The structure is overwhelming me with its demand of stacked pages because I’ve been trying to work from the end back to the beginning. I’ve let go of this project being anything more than exploratory.

Sand Found at the Bottom of a Bag from Last Summer

G3 Packet 1

In the PriceChopper, I collided with a display of mussels on chipped ice. Clumped together on wave-washed rocks, they had moved slowly, attaching and detaching their byssal threads to attain a better life position. Now stacked and bound in red net bags, I am struck by the glossy blue-black shells, their beard remnants snapped shut on damp prismatic chambers. I look at them until I’m excused out of the way by someone wanting the tilapia. Heat will cook the mollusks open, revealing moist and edible considerations. Open shells caught in a shriek—before they hit the pan—must be discarded.

I scribbled the word “mussels” on my grocery list and tucked it back into my purse. Driving home from the store, I was thinking about seeing the mussels, and my art work; that art at its best is found, starting with the inside of a painting rather than it’s surface, the content of the poem rather than its figures of speech. Looking at my studio or my paintings, this doesn’t appear to make sense; I collect and am inspired by things with surface qualities. My poems are formed with similes, metaphors, textures of imagery. I admire and take pleasure in craftsmanship, rhythm and composition. But—for me—the craft can’t be an end in itself. I would not work so hard if it were only about the well-made object. The art is within the painting, the poem (whatever discipline) at the center, deeper down; it’s what the craft works on. When the “language” combines with the meaning to make us experience what we understand, we find the art.

“Finding” a poem or a painting is finding resonance; subterranean sources that power the subjects and ideas put into the artwork. My sources will be different from someone else’s: maybe it’s family, politics, gender, love and sexuality, fears and secrets. Whatever I am made of, I’ll need to dig it up and feed it to my work.

Of The Ocean

This is an experiment combining my poetry with painting. Most of the poem’s text is literally embedded in the painting- no pun intended (well, maybe); it’s stamped into the painted wood surfaces. Full text of the poem was displayed as the title in my current exhibit. I might need to let go of this literal-ness in the future for this experiment to succeed. Why? I’m not sure beyond a gut level response and convincing psychological self-analysis that I’m holding onto making the poem so obvious because I want my poetry read, instead of what the painting could become. I don’t want my paintings to “illustrate” the poem. If the text is now part of the painting, I am opposed to closing down other sensory experiences because of our immediate response to words. This is a difficult balance for me to find; I am probably banging some experienced viewers over the head in the meanwhile.

Exquisite Encounters Book Project

I spent 2 weeks researching for this project. I found many “altered book” sites with interesting images and techniques on the internet, however I was more interested in making conceptual art rather than a technique-driven pretty/ gritty craft project. Searching “book arts” returned valuable motivation. My favorites are: Women’s Studio Workshop, Minnesota Book Arts Center MCBA prize and Book Arts Web.

After ransacking my bookshelves for a suitable sacrifice, I realized I didn’t want to take that route. I make art not only with found materials, as a musty book would be, I also utilize mundane materials in alternative ways. The most intriguing books in my childhood (still are) were pop-ups. One of my favorite books, read to my daughter, was The Jolly Postman. This book has actual envelopes addressed to fairytale characters with letters you can take out and read! Yes, it is a federal crime to open Red Riding Hood’s mail but this book is oh so tactile and gratifyingly nosey! Memories of this book are with me and I dug it up for my project.

Paper bags are simple and utilitarian, often overlooked until you need to cover a textbook or make a hand puppet. By the way, the manufacturing process was invented by a woman. In the “greening” process, cooler bags and cloth shopping bags are overtaking paper. I still use them on occasion and found the lunch sized sacks scattered about my pantry. I wanted to have open pages in my book and hidden compartments.

The theme concept evolved from the everydayness of the brown paper bag and the seen/unseen of their structure: How power structures everyday life, how art participates in our abilities to make things change and move. We can and do shift power all the time. We are also shifted around ourselves by power in many forms. My book encounter is about investigating where power is located in your everyday life and how an art form can analyze this.

I typed the theme and the origin of the word “matrix” on recycled library catalog cards. Aside from its ubiquitous tie to the movie, we use matrix (like many words) in a variety of disciplines, often without knowledge of its origins. After my discovery, it then became a forceful underpinning for the concept.

The inside front cover was based on the Rorschach inkblot test. We are all familiar with the fun of inkblots; it’s the questions of subjectivity and assessment that are disturbing. Mine somehow and serendipitously can be seen as a musclebound figure with an aggressive display stance- breasts floating away… How about that for analysis?!

Inside the cover bag is the matrix card, a poem by Adrienne Rich and a fortune teller game we play as children. The poem should be obvious. The fortune teller is a game but also about luck, fate and power. As girls, many were designed to predict our romantic futures. The color black was chosen for it’s western symbolic references: solemn, grief, evil. Also elegance, authority, stability, wealth, reverence, respect and slimming. In many eastern cultures black symbolizes wisdom, harmony, and reflection. I plan to refine this element later, having come to better production ideas after my book was sent.

The 1st book I received was from Jennifer, her theme: How do we define use? Jen taped her pages closed in true Dada spirit of the project! My entries (seen in the Picasa album) are about emotional and concrete (ab)use. The response is meant to be experienced in the pages, no need to overstate with post-production details.

PRACTICUM

So far, I’m encouraged by the experience. The Muir House bar cards were done without my presence. And of course, somebody drew a FUCK YOU finger…I thought it would take longer to show up!

I was present for the 3 cards from the restaurant’s music night and was able to facilitate. I only provided black sharpies, scissors and a glue stick, retrieved from my purse like Mary Poppins. Sheila dug through her handbag for materials and used lipstick for color. The other 2 cards were made by people sitting at a nearby table. Their interest evident, I invited them to make a card. They joined the project enthusiastically but shyly. As it turned out, a man I spoke to briefly that evening (but do not remember) expressed his interest in me to Sheila the following week. Art generates romance?

I brought cards (alone) to the bar where my paintings are exhibited, but nobody was interested. It appears to be more inviting when there is more than one person- a group effect.

The collage series were made at a family gathering to celebrate Jessi’s (my daughter) 21st birthday. With insights of family, there are personalized perceptions running through this pack of results! There were six adults and one 7 yr old. I don’t want to analyze the individual cards, too much backstory. There was surprise that I brought art materials and a project. And hesitation. Informed that this is a degree project, created emphasis for participation-it would be cold to say no at this point. Did I facilitate or manipulate? I’m okay with the ethics here.

Most every initial response includes insecurity about creativity and what to make. Here, I offered to suggest topics if they got stuck, but once the magazines/collage materials were out on the table, everyone found a start. Looking through old National Geographics is usually an adventure in itself. We worked at this for a good 2 hours! My sister-in-law, the most self-defining as non-creative/non-artistic, actually made very interesting cards. My brother wanted us to “read” the meaning of his card and see if we “got” his intentions. Their 7 yr old wouldn’t commit to his card- if his idea doesn’t turn out perfectly, he won’t do it. My Mom+Dad made cards with the same topic- not a surprise. Jessi’s first card expressed her current romantic state and the second was more playful and abstract.

I plan on moving onto the park and a farmer’s market in the next weeks. I may do some with a 4H group. I’ll be setting up a blog for these cards in the next 3 weeks so people can view their cards and the project as a whole.

Poetry

What I find frustrating about working in different disciplines is when one discipline crowds out the other(s). Writing and revising poetry has taken over my practice most evenings, and feels like an addiction to doing puzzles. These are the 2 revised with Rick at the residency. You saw them last semester, this is what they look like after his 2 lessons:

The Motive Power of Heat

Everything

in the universe

except the system

is known as

surroundings.

The system is separated

from the remainder

of the universe

by a boundary

between stove, sink

refrigerator.

It's much brighter out here

than I expected. Why do I

remember time more often

as raining with our quiet

evening voices?

Darkness is delivered

to the ground. Someone

passes by.

If love is to be done

at a finite rate free

energy is subject

to irreversible loss.

There's nothing here

I don't already know.

Our molecules

combined. Left alone

they won't separate

again. The curves

of my body press into

the muscle of his, rolled

together like a set of plans.

Opening a Very Tiny Umbrella

Things accumulate:

Brakfast bowls, coffee

mugs, dinner plates, utensils.

I can't keep wishing

all day and undoing

it every night, curled into

my hot portion of space,

In another room,

our daughter is watching

cartoons; thwaps, plunks

zoom whistles, her

giggles, hover in spring

cobwebs.

The faucet fills the sink.

The sponge is heavy with soap.

A papercut stings.

Water always runs

through my fingers drained

of feeling. If I could

scoop it up, screw down a lid,

I'd know where

the tears went.

The lessons on revision: line breaks that worked with the sounds of the words as well as content, too much didactic information and its repetitive droning, overwhelming the poem with what I already know instead of working inside it to find a surprise/alternative as the poem forms. The third poem, Impinging...didn't make it through the revision process, yet! Rick is not convinced I can make the blank spaces work in a vocal reading, but I'm seeing it acted out and on paper- visually. There is much to challenge me here, I have raw material but no second nature craft ((I love painting!!!)) I’ve got 2 poems in process; look for them next packet.

Studio Process- G3 packet 1

Poetry

Impinging Against an Array of Very Thin Tines

If I could just touch her wrist, without

her grabbing my hand. Mama bends backwards,

tweaking the lawn chair, gripping

the arms. She says the stars are twitchy

sequins on a black velvet ballgown.

Mama wishes on a sequin:

“ ........................................”

I don’t ask.

Mama has a name

she won’t use.

The fat man that used to live here,

he really gave it to her.

Made her cook Steak-umms and watch his T.V.

One night, when he flips

through the channels, Mama whispers,

“.......................................... ”

He took the dog, left

with his names still on her.

Mama’s new man

has a red beard,

wears a black hat,

won’t change his underwear. He says: “Shut up,

I don’t get dirty from sitting in a chair all day.”

Mama can’t sleep. She says

stars crumble down at night, leaves

all those twitchy sequins on her.

Mama gives me her old jewelry box

lined in black velvet and lint. It winds up

in the back, the coil releasing

hesitant pings.

Producing and Opening a Very Tiny Umbrella

Things accumulate:

Breakfast bowls, coffee

mugs, dinner plates, utensils.

I can’t keep wishing

all day and undoing

it every night, curled into

my tight hot portion of space.

In another room, our daughter is

watching cartoons; thwaps,

plunks, zoom whistles,

her giggles, hover

in spring cobwebs.

The faucet fills the sink.

The sponge is heavy with soap.

A papercut stings.

Water will always run

through my fingers, until drained

of feeling. If I could

scoop it up, screw down a lid,

I’d know

where the tears went.

The dishes are done

and now you show up

in the kitchen, wavin’ your

deedle-dee at me! My face

is intent on nothing,

not a wish, not a dare,

I just see It dangling—

Someone else has been with me

in a room with a desk,

in a room with a bed, someone

who touched my face

and everything that was not there

was at least felt

with just enough air

to make a sigh.

And now your brutal

knowledge of me collects

in the sounds of your mouth

so fast, your words are spaces

the pain slices through—

and through,

I hear the whistling anvil.

Reflections on the Motive Power of Heat

Everything in the universe, except

the system, is known as

surroundings. Noticed from the street,

is my kitchen window and I’m preparing

a dinner,

for two, maybe

three or four—

The system is separated from

the remainder of the universe

by a boundary. Wedged in

a small triangle

of space, between

stove, sink, refrigerator,

I’m balancing on the most exquisite

clay feet.

For closed systems, boundaries are real.

For open systems, boundaries are often

imaginary. I am waiting

on the porch; it’s much brighter

out here than I expected. Why do I

remember the arrow of time

more often as raining, when it was summer

twilight? With our quiet evening voices

and fireflies, whirling

like particles of lust

in the slanting light.

The possible exchanges of work, heat,

or matter take place across

a boundary. Darkness is delivered

to the ground: it could not be stopped.

Headlights pass my driveway, turn

down the street; someone passing by,

on their way to contentment

or disappointment.

The potential energy of a hairspring

works in any state of oscillation.

Tap/up/tap/down, I’m standing here

long after the view has changed,

attached to a linear spring.

If love is to be done

at a finite rate, free energy is subject

to an irreversible loss. There’s nothing

here that I don’t already

know, like vivid snapshots

waiting to be taken.

As time passes in an isolated

system, internal differences

tend to even out.

One weird little horn blare

happens for half a second—

ice melts, diluting

the water in my glass—

sliding on a rough surface, slowing

down rather than speeding up—

all measures of how far along

this evening-out process has progressed.

A certain amount of light is required

for the demon to "know"

the whereabouts of all the

particles in the system. In the noise

of crickets and a wobbly ceiling fan,

our molecules combined. Left alone,

they won’t separate out again.

The curves of my body press

into the muscle of his, rolled together

like a set of plans.

Quantum, in Latin, means how great?

Or how much? There’s the curve of his back,

bent over to lace up his boots. I think

over time, ignoring the effects

of self-gravity, differences in

temperature, pressure, and density

I’d be forgiven.

* title based on an 1824 book Reflections on the Motive Power of Fire and on Machines Fitted to Develop that Power, by French physicist Sadi Carnot, a preliminary outline of the Second Law of Thermodynamics