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.