Manipulating Media

I was in Boston on Thursday delivering work to Arden Gallery (love saying that) and afterwards stopped in at the ICA to see the Mark Bradford show. I think that there is a resonance between his work and mine, so I was particularly interested to see it in person. The show was organized by Christopher Bedford, curator at the Wexner Center for the Arts in Columbus, Ohio, and is touring to four museums. The Boston ICA is the first stop followed by Chicago, Dallas and San Francisco. Check the Wexner link for dates.

I had seen the videos that the ICA has on line such as Pinocchio Is On Fire and the brief Art 21 clip called "Paper." Bradford says that when he first began making art, he only knew of materials that came from Home Depot. His attitude is that anything and everything can be used in making his work and one of his main sources has been posters found in the Los Angeles neighborhood where his studio is located.

He has developed an unusual method of layering the found posters with caulk or string over the letters, then gluing on layers of paper on top and sanding, tearing or cutting down through the layers until some of the underneath text is exposed.

Here is a closeup image from Joanne Mattera's blog showing letters and numbers exposed after layering

There are some works like this in the ICA show, especially a huge wall of posters with silvery paint advertising PROPANE FOR FEMA TRAILERS. You can guess where those were from; Bradford was in the New Orleans Biennial in 2008 and did several large works for it.

But most of the 45 works in the ICA show are massive map-like works of billboard paper on paper or canvas that really have to be seen in person to be appreciated as the massive undertakings that they are. Apparently they are based on Google maps of particular areas of Los Angeles. (Let me just make a disclaimer that most of the images in this post do not do Bradford's works justice. As readers of this blog may remember, the ICA does not allow photography so I was only able to get images from the Wexner site. But if you watch the videos linked above, you can get a better sense of what the works are like. Also, I was unable to get images online of many of the works in the show, especially my favorite, Black Venus.)

In person the works have a very strong physical presence, not only because of their enormous size but because of the thick layers of paper, the rough surface, their usually tattered bottom edges and the sense of impermanence from the ephemeral nature of their components.

Scorched Earth, 2006, 94 1/2 x 118 inches 

The map works and the massive poster pieces were spectacular, but my favorites were made using two other methods. Strawberry is one of the earlier works in the show and uses the permanent wave end papers that Bradford began making his works with initially. His mother used to run a beauty shop in the building that he eventually bought for his studio. Bradford helped out his mother in the shop and bought the papers for his work because they were so cheap. He would torch the edges of a stack of papers to get a contrasting edge. I really liked the way he made the bright red and orange areas retreat in this work using the delicate-looking white tissues.

Strawberry, 2002, 72 x 84 inches

Smokey, 2003, 60 x 72 inches

Smokey is another work using the end papers that I really loved. The subtle bends in the horizontal lines and the darker colors that come in at the bottom are very beautiful.

Another of Bradford's techniques is to glue down rope on billboard and/or poster paper and then layer over it with more paper. He strips off layers and/or glues down more found paper in contrasting colors.

Potable Water, 2005, 130 x 196 inches 

The works with horizontals are my favorites. I think my absolute favorite work in the show was Grey Gardens, below.

Grey Gardens, 2010, 60 x 72 inches

This piece is actually a soft grey and much paler overall with less contrast than in this image. There is an area of scattered stick pieces on the left side just above the middle that look pink here but actually stand out as the whitest part of the piece in person.

I'm glad that I was able to get in to Boston to see this show (that will be in Boston until March 13th). It was inspiring to see work by someone who has invented ways to manipulate found media and make it his own. What I particularly admire about Bradford's work is the way he has subordinated the found media to his larger intention. By that I mean that he is not timid about destroying or vastly altering the found media. At the same time, while the media has lost its singularity and become part of the greater whole, there are still glimpses of some of the unique, found components. It is a balancing act that I strive for in my own work.

Mix o'Media
I feel a real kinship with Mark Bradford because of his mix of media, and as I was taking a snow day today to catch up on my reading and television watching, I seemed to see reminders everywhere I looked that media is being chewed up and spit out in new configurations - for example:

Ron English
I have a new (to me) cable channel called Ovation that features programming on the arts. Tonight I watched a program on the artist Ron English, apparently made a few years back when he was actively co-opting billboards with posters that slyly mimicked real ads. Most of his subverted billboards targeted advertising aimed at children. His campaign against the Joe Camel figure contributed to its notoriety and downfall, and he has also become well known for his anti-McDonalds supersized figure.

I was out here in the boonies of western Mass. when he pasted up his giant wall of Lincoln/Obamas in Boston's South End in 2008 so I missed the controversy about all the other posters being pasted up in his wake by wanna-bes and wheat paster amateurs.

That's Ron at the right of the picture.

This guy is a really good draftsman and very capable realist painter with an excellent sense of ironic humor. It's too bad he had to stop taking over billboards due to the threat of arrest because he had some very good ones. I can't resist posting a few:

Aural Mix o'Media
The Ron English program came on the heels of two other articles I read this afternoon in the Sunday Times magazine from a couple of weeks ago. Yes, I know - by the time all this stuff gets into the popular culture, it's already old news. And, by the time it gets to me, it's probably ovah already. But just to remind you...

First, Greg Gillis a/k/a Girl Talk who mashes up music samples from "50 years of the revolving trends of pop music."  Here's a MySpace link so you can see what his high-energy sound is like. Then, what should I see on the Ovation channel but a show about copyright violations because of sampling and how music publishers are fighting the mash up trend. This is an old story and a losing battle.

Forever After Mix o'Media 
The second story about media that I noted in the Times was about the lingering virtual presence you will still have after you are long gone. Your email, all those Likes on Facebook, the inane tweets, the Flickr pictures from the summer barbecues, the vacations at the beach, the dogs, the cats, the snowstorms, the garden, your daily iPhone pix, the graduation, the wedding, the new grandchild, the Christmas tree, the blog post about media - all, all, all left behind after you go on to your reward. But, not to worry, the article tells about a new growth industry of people who will take care of it all for you. Just as you may go Up or Down after you die (in theory), you may choose to live on forever with a service such as that provided by VirtualEternity.com or end it all with DeathSwitch.com. The choice is yours but one you must make while you can still surf in real time.

Vicarious Art

I've been on the couch and at the computer but at least reading about other people's art, such as in Joanne Mattera's blog about the Miami art fairs, where she describes the scent of "Vert" permeating the air with the spring freshness of reborn optimism and the color of (hopeful) money.

Then I read online in the NY Times a similar assessment of the same art goings-on in Miami with a slide show that included a photo of a stunning work (above) by my current favorite artist and inspiration, El Anatsui. (This piece is being shown at Jack Shainman's booth - or so the Times says.) I love the irregular shape of this piece that makes it more sculptural. Just great! - and probably better in person.

This is another piece from the slide show called "Tangerine Dream" by Jim Lambie. I liked it and it reminded me of a studio shot that Philadelphia art blogger Tim McFarlane posted a little while ago of some works on paper from his "Condensed Fields" series.

Here is Tim's shot of five of his acrylic on paper works, each 30"x22".

And finally, I was scrolling through Facebook (and what a time waster that is in general) when I came across a post from my niece, Nicole Turner, about her father and my brother, Franklin. He is a musician who has managed to live his life just by playing music, mainly on piano. He has a new MySpace page where you can listen to four tunes from his previous CD. My fave is "Every Time We Meet." When the new CD that he's working on now is finished, some of those tunes will become available. This is a big advance into the virtual realm for him, made possible by his son-in-law, Jeremy Geiger.





So now off the computer and back to the studio to deal with the physical and the real, what a concept.

New Work in Paper

And you thought I was still on the couch reading the Times! But, no, I've been back in the studio dealing with the failed pieces I had put together. I've been making some new work for corporate collectors and have five done so far. (There was a #6, but it hasn't made the cut - yet.) They are untitled for now and I'm just calling them "March Paper 1-5." I'm starting with March because that's when I'm planning this project will be done.

March Paper No. 1 - 34" x 34" - acrylic on ricepaper with collage

March Paper No. 2 - 34" x 34" - acrylic on ricepaper with collage (lower right quadrant needs more color)

March Paper No. 3 - 34" x 34" - acrylic on ricepaper with collage (needs some color adjustment)

March Paper No. 4 - 34" x 34" - acrylic on ricepaper with collage

March Paper No. 5 - 34" x 34" - acrylic on ricepaper with collage

Of course No. 5 is my favorite because of the predominance of blue and the more freestyle lower left quadrant, but yellow and orange seem to work best for the corporate market for some reason.

So you'll note that these pieces all have the same basic format, a limited color pallette (for me) and a limited number of patterns. Most of the patterns started with stamping simple shapes in black. These restrictions are the way I've decided to approach the problem I was having with the work looking too scattered because of too many patterns and colors. I think that six pieces in a group is probably the maximum number I'll want to do, so now I'll have to come up with a different layout for the next six. I'll also change the color pallette a little but probably stick with some version of yellow, orange, green and blue - with black of course.

Photographing the work and seeing it all together in a smaller size is a good way to assess everything - both to see how it all goes together and how each piece stands up. How fortunate we artists are now to have digital photography! I was thinking about how many corporate pieces I have sold without having an image of them because I didn't have time to get them to the photographer. They exist in my memory just as vague shadows. Now I can make an instant record of the work as it happens and even before committing to the final version. It's a great tool to have and a real benefit in the studio. "Don't you just love technology?", she asked a bit sarcastically.

Soul Survivor

Never mind all this crappy economic theorizing about art being a luxury: art is a necessity - especially if you make it. We need art for our souls, not for investment, and when I stay out of the studio for a week, I can feel my soul shriveling.

This past week has been filled with things keeping me out of the studio from work to pet emergency to visiting my elderly mother to laziness, avoidance and postponement - you know, the usual. Every time I stay away like this, there are physical, emotional and spiritual consequences - not to mention my becoming impossible to be around. And now I have another consequence to add to the list - no blog topics. Oh, God, the guilt! Just what I needed - more guilt!

So, the best I can do is to promise to go to the studio tomorrow...OK, run to the studio tomorrow, and meanwhile, post some cheery photos of my world.



That darkish spot center right is the head of Bobby Budha, a statue that sits beside a walkway to the upper part of the yard.


I posted the garden in spring the other day - lush, green and verdant. Now it's a soggy mess of spring snow overlaying a thick crust of ice and underlaid by mud. These photos were from this morning after an overnight wet snow of 3" or so.



Raised beds as they look now - buried beds under a mound. Poor man's fertilizer? We can only hope.


Kirby's pool and forlorn chairs amid the drooping hemlock branches.

Kirby's pool in happier weather with Mr. K in his favorite spot and Mr. H doing the heavy looking on. (He doesn't indulge.)

Da Boyz with Chippie (stuffed, not dead)

So there you have it. Snow, garden and dogs - where the hell's the art?

Hey, Wait a Minute

We swept Barack Obama in on a surge of pride, hope and desire for change. He was inaugurated only 20 days ago and now some members of Congress are making a mockery of the people's desire to turn the ship of state around and head for peaceful blue water. Maybe it's my weakened state that's making me sensitive or perhaps it's the video from President Obama that I received, but believe me I am feeling anxious about the stimulus package that is getting the hell beat out of it but that we need so badly.

Probably you are here because this is supposed to be about ART, but before anything, we are all citizens and need to be engaged in our government's operation. Our apathy led to eight horrible years of Bush/Cheney and unimaginable deviation from the rule of law under which America was founded. We need to pay attention and become engaged citizens. This is our country and we must speak up to claim it.

Remember this?
You could get more of the same.

Out here in western Mass., where incidentally Rachel Maddow got her radio start, there is another very smart political commentator, blogger and radio host named Bill Scher. Bill explains the political process in a clear and direct way and has an in-depth knowledge of the way things operate politically out here in the liberal boonies and inside the Beltway in Washington, D.C. (Liberal Oasis.com and Campaign for America's Future)

Apparently what moves congressional votes in Washington more than anything else is phone calls from constituents - not email and not letters. Who knew? I usually email. Bill says that no one understands and uses this fact better than the Rush Limbaugh army who will move to the phone when summoned and make their views known ad nauseum. These Limbaugh Conservatives have been phoning members of the House and Senate non stop and that is why Obama's stimulus package is getting so beat up. Bill has heard several reports that calls were running 100 to 1 from the Conservatives against either the whole package or various parts of it. (Notice that they picked off the contraceptives before anything else? - why do they always go straight to sex??)

Now that the call has gone out to Obama supporters, the tide is starting to turn, but it's really important that we get on the phone and call our senators and congressmen. If you don't know where to call, take a look at Congress.org. Just type in your zip code and it will pop up all your federal and state reps. If you click on one of them, you'll first get their bio page and you can select "contact" to get phone numbers, address, email, etc. (This is a handy website to know about because you can also look up voting records on particular legislation.)

By the way, since the Washington numbers are getting a lot of call volume, it will probably be better to call the local office. Your rep will still get the message about your support. And, it's not necessary to go into a lot of detail about what you want. For the most part, they are recording PRO or CON stimulus. If you think that it should be a big, bold package with certain things being put back into the package such as aid to the States (so firefighters, police officers and teachers are not laid off), education and school modernization funding, mass transit funding, ARTS funding (the Senate cut $50 million from NEA and banned any aid to museums, art groups and theatres), etc., etc. then just mention a couple of these items.

I was surprised to learn from Bill that even though in Massachusetts our senators and congressmen usually vote the liberal/progressive way, we still need to call because this is how they determine the strength of support they have. Please remember this and make your calls. This is too important not to spend a few minutes on it.







Call your senators and congressmen. Obama can't live on pride, hope and desire for change alone. He needs your help to bring the change. The country needs your help.













P.S. If you are not an Obama supporter and arrived here looking for Art, call in support of the stimulus package anyway. It'll make you feel more Ahrty. It's true.

Reworking Old Paintings

Several years ago I began painting with thin washes of acrylic paint on Okawara ricepaper. The Okawara comes in big sheets 72"H x 38"W, so I would cut pieces off and paint them in an all-over pattern like wallpaper. Then I would assemble a painting composed of geometric elements of the patterned papers I had made.

For example, "Intermediary" above, 24"x24", 2005, or...

"Willow Stripe", 32"x30", 2005

Both of these pieces sold to corporate collections through art consultants, and I did well with this work because it fit the parameters that some corporate collections have: no images of people or animals, no words, colorful, non-controversial. It was easy to ship because I just rolled it into tubes and sent it off (I did not supply the frames), and I enjoyed making it (mostly) because I had the freedom to explore my love of patterning, and I liked the challenge of assembling a final piece from the pattern portfolio I had prepared.

I did get a little tired of doing it and went on to painting in other mediums, but they were harder to sell and harder to ship.

Last year I decided to pursue this work again and placed some pieces I had in my files with a new consultant. That work sold pretty quickly and I had nothing to replace it with. I was totally engaged in painting with encaustic and couldn't drag myself away to work on paper until last week. (Funny how the need for some cold cash can get you busy!) In the meantime, I had taken some work back from a consultant in California and wanted to reuse it. When I took a look at what they had sent me (dating back to 2001), I knew why this work hadn't sold. It was just not fully realized. In fact it was ready to go under the brush again.

So far I have completed two pieces of new work made from the old work I took back. I thought it might be fun to post some images of the old work and see if you can recognize it in the new. Apparently I didn't photo all the old work I received back, so not everything I reused is included here, but a lot of it is. So here are five pieces of the returned work. The squares are 24"x24" and the horizontals are 18"x80".

Now here are the two new pieces:

Temp title: Red-Blue-Gold No. 1, 34"x34"

Temp title: Red-Blue-Gold No. 2, 34"x34"

For the most part, I just gave a new wash of color to certain sections. I did do a little bit of painting to introduce some smaller scale marks. These were fun to assemble, and although they're more decorative than what I usually do, I think they work.

This is what it looks like when I'm making new pieces from old. I cut up some old work, over-paint it and put it on the floor to dry. There's really not enough here to make new pieces so I'll have to paint something fresh that can work off these colors.

Who knows if corporate clients are still buying artwork? Does the bailout cover that? I hope so because I lost one of my at-home, part-time bookkeeping jobs due to that psycho Madoff stealing money from my client and thus stealing my livelihood, too. It's the trickle down effect of greed. You'd think being poor(ish) would protect you from all that, but nooooooo!

Desolation Row

There's something so dispiriting about the studio after all the work that I made for a show is taken out. It looks like Filene's Basement after a big sale - just a few remnants laying around and trash all over the floor. Quite sad.

The only thing I can do to relieve my internal gloom (besides staying away from the studio) is to pick up that broom and start cleaning. Focusing on sweeping the floor lets me avoid that blank wall and lonely feeling.

Then, once I've swept up, bagged the trash and put things away, I find the best thing to do is to switch mediums.

I'm going to be working on paper with acrylic for a while and not fire up the encaustic griddle. The paper (actually ricepaper) is work I usually sell through art consultants to corporate clients. Who knows if anything is selling these days, but if I don't give them any work to sell, I'm guaranteed not to sell anything.

I just received some pieces back from California that hadn't sold and I'm going to be reworking them and sending them out again on consignment. Here are a few of the pieces. I'll show you the "after" shots - if any work gets finished.

This piece is 32x30 inches and is collaged from ricepaper painted with thin washes of acrylic. I called it Yellow Box.


Here's another one - 24x24 inches, called Pongo. Some of the paint is interference so it looks a little funny.

And finally, here's one that's 18x80 inches called Two By Two. This is kind of an exceptional size but a few of them did sell. I didn't have much luck with work that used purple. I guess purple (violet) just doesn't have that corporate cachet.

So what I usually do with this work is start cutting it up and piecing it together with newly-painted patterns, colors and swatches, and/or I overpaint what's there with other colors and then paint patterns on top of that. I do love patterns and especially juxtaposed patterns.

Maybe that will cheer me up.

Seeing Your Own Paintings

I love reading what artists have to say about making their work - especially what they say to themselves in their notebooks, sketchbooks, diaries, etc. In The Art of Richard Diebenkorn, John Elderfield includes in his essay (pp 112-113) a list that Phyllis Diebenkorn found in her husband's papers after his death. The undated list was written some time between 1966 and 1976 and headed, "Notes to myself on beginning a painting." This is what it said:

1) Attempt what is not certain. Certainty may or may not come later. It may be a valuable delusion.

2) The pretty, initial position which falls short of completeness is not to be valued - except as a stimulus for further moves.

3) Do search. But in order to find other than what is searched for.

4) Use and respond to the initial fresh qualities but consider them absolutely expendable.

5) Don't "discover" a subject - of any kind.

6) Somehow don't be bored - but if you must, use it in action. Use its destructive potential.

7) Mistakes can't be erased but they can move you from your present position.

8) Keep thinking about Polyanna.

9) Tolerate chaos.

10) Be careful only in a perverse way.

Elderfield, who knew Diebenkorn for a period of years and visited him in his studio many times, also says that "his argument with himself was continuous." His greatest battle was to attain a "reconciliation" between the initial idea for a painting and finishing it while not relinquishing the inspiration. Elderfield describes the process in a very turgid way, but I think what he means is that RD (as we all do) wanted to retain the excitement and freshness that an idea for a painting arouses and not kill it as he went along. RD said, "I can never accomplish what I want, only what I would have wanted had I thought of it beforehand."

Now, here's the part that reminds me of my favorite teacher at MassArt - Rob Moore* - Elderfield says that RD would "contrive things so that he would see a painting when he was 'completely off guard', forgetful of his participation in its ongoing history in the hope of the surprise that would tell him that he had re-established contact with his spontaneity." What Rob Moore said, and what I also say in my artist's statement is that seeing what is there (in a painting) instead of what you think is there is the hardest part of painting.

What connects these two observations about painting is the difficulty that the artist has in seeing his/her work as it exists and not as a record of its history or as the sum of many parts. Some artists keep mirrors in their studios and look at their work through them. I remember George Nick at MassArt saying that he sometimes put a completed painting behind his TV so that while watching TV, his eye would sometimes stray to the painting and he would be able to get a look at what was really there. I tried this in my early days of painting and it did help. Now that we have digital images of our work and can see it on a monitor, we get another perspective, but jpegs don't have the physicality of the real thing and the screen illumination makes it a different experience.

I guess the only thing that works for me is hanging up a painting in the studio after I think it's finished and then living with it for a while. I have to move on to something else and get to the point that I'm not actively looking at the painting and then maybe I can really see it. Sometimes this leads to futzing with it and other times I let it stay as it is. It's all a question of time - but we've all got plenty of that.



*Rob Moore died in 1992, before the online age so there's nothing to link him to. I have a wonderful review by Christine Temin in the Boston Globe of the retrospective of Rob Moore's work that MassArt mounted in 1993. I'll write up some excerpts from it along with some of my own observations.

Selected Painting(s) of the Day - A Duo

I have two features running in the blog now - Selected Painting of the Day and Inspirations (artists). Rather than do each feature consecutively, I'm going to mix it up a little.

So today I have selected two paintings that I made just recently. These are the two that inspired the threesome I posted last week in the trifecta and a shot of them standing on the floor has already appeared. They are the two largest pieces I have painted to date in encaustic and I enjoyed working at this scale. I named them Lewis and Clark because they were exploring new territory. (I know - kinda dumb. When I told a friend their names, she said that the third piece in the series should be called Sacagawea. What a smart-ass! But coming up with names can be the worst part of making paintings and I don't like numbering - unlike Richard Diebenkorn.)

This is Lewis - the first one. It's a triptych, 66" x 24" x 1.5" on panels. The two end panels with the stripes are not joined but hung close to the central panel. (Please pardon my photographic inexpertise which scrunches the bottom left.) There are various things embedded in the wax such as lace, pieces of plants, felt circles, newspaper, jersey circles, etc. Some areas of the wax are carved or scraped and some worked into with oilstick. There are rough and smooth surfaces.

And this is Clark. It's a diptych, the same overall size as Lewis although this image makes it look bigger. The panel from the left through the orange rectangle is one piece (52"x24") and the second panel (24"x24") goes from the skinny two-toned blue stripe through the right side.

I think these pieces are something new for me. They have the somewhat softened geometric structure that I like, but their structure is not the first thing that you notice about them. The color is varied, a bit different, and the patterning plays with two and three dimensions. I consider them a successful exploration that referenced past work but broke new ground for me. Onward!