Autonomous Drying Experiments

During my residency at the School of Visual Philosophy, I've been experimenting with paper sculpture. For the past year, I've been examining my personal studio practice, and how I plan and plan and plan and then execute said plan, and then feel a certain exhaustion. And again and again I remember the idea, listen to the process. Which is a bit scary for me; unpredictability and always a struggle for time creates an environment that encourages planning and discourages experimentation and risk taking.

This came to a head for me, privately, when I was mentoring a student who was trying to do the same thing: plan out her project in its entirety from the start, because she's juggling work and school and has very little time. And, while I understand this, I was counseling her to remember to take a step back, to observe and question. Then I realized how little I do that myself.

As a installation, print and book artist, some planning and project management is necessary. Yet I realize that I wasn't doing much experimentation, that I wasn't discovering the unexpected. I was checking things off a list.

So when this opportunity was offered to me, I pushed myself to step outside of my comfort zone, and try things in which results were not guaranteed. I started with small tests like these, and, building on the tests I discussed here, I pulled out some reeds I had left over from this project to build some armature tests.

Again, it was scary, I didn't know what to expect. I'm not sure what these mean in the greater vision of typically narrative-driven work, and if the question of having one's vision adapt and grow is even scarier than the original risk.

As for what I've determined so far: all of these armatures started out relatively flat, the shapes they formed is just from the flax warping as it dried. I'm starting to notice patterns of what causes it to warp a certain way, but nothing reliable yet. I'm also still working on how I can integrate this technique into my greater body of work, and how can differentiate myself from the amazing Peter Gentenaar.

However, if you're interested in trying some of this yourself, and learning a few other things, join me for this workshop in 2017 in San Jose!

Click on the images for larger views.

UNBOUND at SAGE Projects

Infinite Thread, the artist book I collaborated on with Marie Elcin, is part of this exhibition in Sheridan. Making me miss my time at Jentel....

Pictures + Words: The Artist Series, at Bay Area Free Books Exchange

Click on image above for larger version.

Pictures + Words: The Artist Series.

Organized by Philip King @
BAY AREA FREE BOOK EXCHANGE
10520 SAN PABLO AVE.
EL CERRITO, CA 94530

March 26, 2012: On Sunday, April 8, the Bay Area Free Book Exchange launches Pictures + Words: The Artist Series. Curated by Philip King, this will be an exhibition in three parts by local artists taking an opportunity to liberate the words: “book,” “free,” and “exchange,” as a new way to display their work. The series launches with After Wyoming, a response to “Book,” by printmaker and book artist Michelle Wilson. The Bay Area Free Book Exchange is located at 10520 San Pablo Avenue in El Cerrito, and is open every weekend from 9AM-6PM. A reception will be held on April 8, from 4-6 PM, where visitors will be able to enjoy food and drink, see the art, and help themselves to the free books. All activities are free and open to the public.

The quiet materiality of Wilson’s work includes a sense of the time taken making it, making her own paper and carving blocks to print her imagery. Like so much of the best contemporary artwork it brings with it its own lucid conscience, and a sense of story. As a book artist, Wilson has chosen to liberate her visual narratives from their bindings, and instead presents a series of “pages,” in a nonlinear sequence of events. Wilson was recently an Artist-In-Residence at Jentel Arts, an arts residency program in Sheridan, Wyoming. After Wyoming is her response to her time there and experiences since returning.

Pictures + Words: The Artist Series continues in May with paintings by Philip King, followed by the collected images of Timothy Buckwalter. All the artists live and work in the East San Francisco Bay.

The Bay Area Free Book Exchange was established May 17, 2009. It was created and is run cooperatively by local book sellers/book lovers who process thousands of books every month. They thus continually stock the shelves of the Free Book Exchange. All the books on all the shelves are available to the public free of charge. It is an ever-changing treasure hunt among thousands of books. Open Every Weekend Saturday & Sunday 9am-6pm. For information on the artist series please contact: Michelle Wilson at michelle(at)michellewilsonprojects(dot)com.

Two New Prints (with details)!

Finally got a few prints finished and documented! Above is what I will probably end up with the title Wyoming Triptych. Begun and mostly printed by hand at Jentel, with the final layer of sky printed in my home studio. It's a reduction block, though now that I think about it, a bit of an odd twist on the concept. Reduction printing involves printing the most general, background color first, and carving away more and more material from the same block and printing successive, more specific layers. Typically, the first layer is the background, negative space, or sky color. Any paper surface that does become part of the image is usually negative or white space.

However, I wanted my handmade paper to have a presence in the image, particularly since this paper is such a lovely, delicate blue. So the landscape is the paper itself, and the section of sky is reduced.

Today I was loaned a book called How to be Sick, A Buddhist Inspired Guide for the Chronically Ill and Their Caregivers. The loan has interesting timing; last night I watched a PBS documentary on the life of Prince Siddhartha, the man who became the Buddha. I haven't started reading it yet, but I was intrigued by one quote I came across while flipping through, "Let things take their natural course. Then your mind will become still in any surroundings, like a clear forest pool. All kinds of wonderful, rare animals will come to stare at the pool....You will see many strange and wonderful things come and go, but you will be still." (Ajahn Chah) Stillness...at least in mind. I'm trying to hold on to this image. While in Wyoming, I kept feeling that the landscape had restorative capabilities, which is why I placed Robert within it. After I finished this print I found myself thinking about how cows have taken over what was once the land of the buffalo, and how sacred and revered the buffalo were to the Native Americans.

This print is called Cows and Corn, though the corn is the fiber of which the paper is made. The cows were such lovely dark shapes in the blue landscape. My arrival in Wyoming coincided with a re-reading of The Omnivore's Dilemma. I was caught up in Michael Pollan's discussion of corn as the basis for our food system. It's fed to cows, chickens, pigs, even farmed fish, transformed into flakes, syrup, xanthan gum, flour, diapers, dextrose, maltodextrin, MSG, mono-glycerides,di-glycerides, ethanol, plastic substitutes, wallboard, adhesives, batteries, ink, paint, pharmaceuticals...I could go on. So this print is an abbreviated version of that - corn as the basis for our meat-based food system, corn fiber is the substrate for this print of cows.

Whirlwind

As the title of this post suggests, the past few days have have been a bit crazy. It began last Wednesday, when I had the chance to take over the Autonomous Organization's space in Southern Exposure's Working Conditions exhibition.

I used the time to start carving a new block, continuing my exploration of my new caretaker identity, which I'm thinking of calling Waiting Room.

Thursday evening was the reception for Bibliotech at the San Francisco Public Library's Skylight Gallery. My book, Chacaltaya, was included.

The reception was also the opening event of the College Book Art Association Conference here in the Bay Area, so not only was there a great turnout, I was happy to see many people from the East Coast whom I miss terribly at the event.

Bibliotech is on view till March 11, 2012, open during regular library hours.

Friday was the first day of panels for the CBAA conference. My Book Bombs partner, Mary Tasillo, was on a panel about sustainable practices in printmaking and book art with another friend, Lara Durback, as well as the esteemed John Risseeauw, Susan Moore, and Cynthia Thompson. I found it to be one of the most stimulating panels during the entire conference, and plan to write an extended post reflecting on some of the issues, once I've had a chance to rest.

Friday evening was the opening for Get Lucky, the Culture of Chance, at SOMArts. I was surprised and thrilled at how much people interacted with the paper, stepping close to inspect the fibers of each sheet - one child ran up to one with his mouth open ready to rip out a bite with his teeth (his mother got to him just in time). My favorite thing to watch was people stepping in close to sniff the paper - though most did it so quickly I couldn't get a picture.

Dorothy Santos live blogged the event, if you follow that link you can see other works in the exhibition (and she writes a great Bay Area Arts blog, you should check out her posts regularly). And Kenneth Baker wrote this response to the show in the San Francisco Chronicle, focusing mostly on the musical sculptures/performances of the evening.

I owe a debt of thanks to curators Hanna Regev and Justin Hoover, for all their hard work putting the exhibition together.

Get Lucky is open till January 26, when there will be a panel discussion about John Cage and a closing reception from 6-9 PM.

Saturday was the final day of the CBAA conference, and papermaking was featured in not one, but two panels! Unfortunately, they happened simultaneously, grrrh, so I only made it to one. Since then I've gotten some rest and begun a new to-do list for January. Thanks to everyone who came out to either of my exhibitions, and I'm hoping that this week's good fortune is providential for the rest of the year!

New Year and a Jentel Wrap-Up

My friend Steph has a family tradition of doing laundry on New Year's Day. I think the idea is to set a tone of accomplishment rather than procrastination for the year. I've been meaning to write up a conclusion to my Jentel posts, to form some sort of completion to its narrative on this blog. Today is January 2, not the first day of the year, but I'm finally getting to writing something, though I'm not sure I've figured any of it out yet.

While there, I started processing how I've become a caretaker to someone who is ill, and all the implications and changes that this is going to mean for my life. I also spent a great deal of time feeling alternately guilty, angry, or worried (I was so lucky to have good people around me at Jentel who helped me deal with these feelings). At the same time, I kept thinking about the ideas of healing within the landscape, which led me to piece above (detail below), placing me and Robert within it, hoping that by envisioning health it could come to us. (Also why I didn't post images of it before - wanted him to see it first)!

Though I have to admit, so far, no such luck. Last week, after puttering around cleaning up my studio (always puts me back in the groove), I finished the last triptych that I started there. During the last few days I had run out of blue ink, so it had to wait till I was home for the last layer. I'll post the full triptych soon, but here is one of the completed center print hot off the press:

Have to admit, I loved the intimacy of all the hand-printing I did at Jentel, but on a press it goes SO MUCH FASTER.

The suspicious part of my brain wanted to believe something like, if I finish this triptych (which also has Robert in it in another panel) maybe he will get better. And he did seem to be improving for a day or two last week. Still in pain, but more present. And then he took another bad turn and my hopes were dashed again.

In the past two days, I've been repeatedly asked if I'm depressed about my current situation. On the phone this evening with a friend, they said something about how I need to keep my hopes up.  Thing is, I'm finding it more difficult to deal with my hopes being crushed repeatedly as we explore treatments that don't end up working, and I would rather just let them go. A few days ago I read something about making peace with uncertainty in regards to illness, and I think that's a good summery for where I am. I don't know if that's depression or not, but I feel better without the ups and downs.

At Jentel, I slowed down, I was not my constantly-rushing self. Part of my typical acceleration comes from ambition and planing planing planning for the future so much I'm never in the moment. I'm trying to hold on to this new unhurried demeanor, and allowing myself to proceed at a more measured pace through this uncertain time. Concentrating on just being in the now, and taking it day by day. 

Wyoming Dispatch: The Petrified Forest and Reaction

As our days at Jentel are nearing an end, we residents took a spontaneous trip to the Dry Creek Petrified Forest. It's one of numerous petrified forests in the state, but the only one I've gotten a chance to see. It's the remains of swamp trees - the high desert of Wyoming used to be a swamp - and before that, it was under a very large sea. In some ways, as you look across the undulating landscape, you can imagine it.

Most of the forest is underground and un-excavated, and what viewers see are the remains of stumps. Only one large piece of a megasequoia has been unearthed.

I kept thinking about these petrified trees as artifacts of time. Dan at one point joked that petrified trees don't burn, to which Jennifer countered that the exception to that was coal, reminding me of my own artist book on the subject. 

After our visit to Devils Tower, I had been thinking about how, after the exposure to its grandeur (not to mention its cinematic history), I personally, couldn't make work about it. Most of my work involves constructing narratives that are implied onto the landscape, and I just didn't feel right doing that to such a sacred site to so many indigenous people. And it doesn't feel respectful to use their narratives (not really my style anyway, I'd prefer to have total authorship). Besides, anything I'd do would end up being seen as some Close Encounters reference anyway.

But I was drawn to these petrified trees. Jentel has some ornamental petrified wood chunks in the driveway.

I'm not sure where they're from, though I'm certain it's somewhere in Wyoming. Once we were home, I grabbed some of my paper and a box of oil pastels left by a previous artist (thank you whoever!) and went down and made some rubbings of their surfaces.

The paper I selected was some I'd actually had leftover from grad school, when I was still figuring out how to make quality watermarks. These are watermarked with the image of tree, tests for The Ghost Trees that I was never completely satisfied with.

I'm not sure how much of the watermark you can see above - that's the best I could do for backlighting currently. As I was making them, I couldn't help think of Melanie's projects, and hope that this isn't stepping on her toes. I'm not sure what I think of them right now, but I like the idea of the tree hidden in the stone, and interacting with transformed trees. As I was making them, I mentioned to Jennifer that I had to make these here, as I didn't access to large chunks of petrified wood back home, and then I remembered the Sonoma Petrified Forest. Have to make it up there soon. So maybe these are proofs, tests, or maybe they are complete. I have to think about it.

I'm really going to miss my fellow residents. As I write this, my studio door is open, and so is Dan's and I can hear him singing "Your Body is A Wonderland." Earlier he and Jennifer were singing along to Johnny Cash for their karaoke debut this weekend. When we all first got here, our studio doors were shut, we were even not sure about the rules of knocking and interrupting each other. Much has changed.

Wyoming Dispatch: Work in Progress

I've begun my last week at Jentel, and I'm busily working to try and finish things I've started. As I was working, I couldn't help but think how interesting the image above is - it's a shot of the corner of my desk, but it really captures the tools I use - woodcarving tools, thread, electrical cords...all mixed up together. Below, the blocks from this print triptych have been reduced to print another layer of sky.

Below, the beginnings of another triptych. It's got more to come, but I really love the abstraction it creates just as it is.  They remind me of the some pieces I saw by Nadia Myre with Marie a year or so ago at the Museum of the American Indian. I remember something in her statement, about how when a land is special or sacred to you, the horizon line becomes more meaningful than just a marker for where the sky meets the ground, it's a demarcation for where your home is, where your beliefs are, where the entire story of your being and your community is based.

I'm really enjoying working this way - my little sheets of paper aren't long enough to capture the panorama of this landscape, but I also love how working this way is opening me up to some new directions. 

I've spent some time these past two days thinking about this article in the New York Times. On one hand, as an artist working in a craft tradition it's exciting to read of recognition of artists working in similar veins, ideas, and traditions. On the other, I have a lot of problems with it. First of all, the bias is towards Europe, particularly Paris, and as Jennifer pointed out, is completely ignorant of the fact DIY working methods have been thriving here in the States since the 90ies. She added that it makes no mention of its historic ties to the feminist movement, or Riot Grrls, (I would also add Asian traditions like mingei) and while touching on how artist often turn to these working methods as a refusal to participate in consumer-driven mass produced art, adds a simpering mention of how its "cheapter too!"

It is also ignorant of how craft practices have a long tradition of serving as forms of protest and activism, treating it more like some sort of fashion trend.

Beyond these ideas, it does not touch on the philosophy and reasoning that drives artists to a craft-based working methodology. As a hero of mine has said, Paulus Berensohn, has said, working with craft materials, materials made directly from nature, means that its final product directly invokes its origins in the natural world. Though it does mention how Jeanne Briand uses her breath to make her blown glass, it avoids further discussion of how craft processes involve the human body. Most craft techniques evoke the human hand.  Judith Schaechter has commented that this is why craft programs are often being cut or reduced, as this tendency also reminds viewers of the inherent messiness of the body.

I would suggest that artists are drawn to working in craft traditions because they are drawn to using their hands and bodies. Working by hand creates an intimacy with materials, a use of the hands/body as a tool, a relationship with the entire experience that is making. Between this intimacy, relationship to the body, and an affinity with the natural world in my materials, there is a world of craft philosophy that demonstrates that artists who choose to work in craft traditions are doing so with a deep convictions.  

Wyoming Dispatch: Devils Tower

Yesterday, we Jentel residents decided to take a road trip to Devils Tower. It's a two-hour drive from here, perfect for a day trip. As we were leaving, the sun was shining, rays catching the ice that had covered the trees, blinding us with a glittering display.

Devils Tower really is a surreal formation. As shown above, it rises out of nowhere. Jentel, I believe, has a higher elevation, so we passed from its blue-gray landscape into one of straw colored grass and rock formations thickly striated with red.

We arrived at the base, ate a chilly picnic lunch, and started walking the trail that circles the base of the Tower. As we walked, I realized we were going counter-clockwise from east to west, a circumnabulation much like a walking mediation. A repeated theme to our conversations was comparing the Tower to a human body part: a toe, a penis, a nipple (those last two were Dan). Despite our humor at this, I couldn't help but think that that such discussions were reflective of how we could see ourselves in this formation. Maybe it's just some form of egotistical humancentrification, but maybe it was also a reflection of how humans can see reflections in nature, and the potential therein.

The picture above doesn't communicate how many colors were in the rock, yellows, oranges, greens, pinks, all completely unexpected. As we navigated the trail, we came first to its sunny side, which offered a vista through the remains of a previous forest fire.

Proceeding, we made our way to the shady, cooler side of the Tower, where winter seemed much more evident. If this was a walking meditation, I thought, then we had descended from sun/life to a contemplation of winter/death/slumber.

We emerged back at the beginning of the circular trail. I had been continuing my thoughts on finding healing in the landscape, and even noticed a quote in the visitors' center about how certain Native Americans find renewal and rehabilitation in the Black Hills, just east of the Tower. (The Tower is also a sacred site to many of the original inhabitants of this area, and as we walked we saw the remains of offerings tied to trees).

Our good weather ran out as we neared home; we were hit with fog and snow but managed to make it back to Jentel safely. All my thoughts on healing fled that evening as I called Robert and found out he had a pretty painful day, returning me to worry, shame and confusion, and all my conflictions about being here in Wyoming. There is little over a week till I return, and whatever that might bring.

Wyoming Dispatch: By Hand

I've been steadily working on a print that is going to take the form of a triptych - three blocks printed on three separate pieces of paper, one continuous image. Below, Blanche calendars the paper.

Each block has selective inking, so that in one round of printing I am printing two colors. The image is inspired by the wintery landscape and its colors here - a minimal palette, only shades of gray, blue, black.

The block will be reduced for another layer of color. Below are the results of the first round of printing. The paper is a handmade rag paper (made from the leftover pulp from this piece). Normally, (white) paper is the negative space, the empty space of an image. Here I hoped the light blue of the fibers would activate the positive space of the image.

 

I printed it with a wooden spoon. Originally, I started to print them on Blanche, but she seemed inclined to rip the linoleum, and after all the carving I decided spoon prints were the way to go.

While I was spooning the backs of the prints, I found myself thinking of how this piece is the result of my hands in so many ways. With the exception of using Blanche to calendar the paper,  I made the paper by hand from rags I cut up, by hand. I carved the blocks by hand. I inked them by hand. And I printed them with nothing more than a wooden spoon and the pressure applied by my arms, wrists, and hands. I even tried the old trick of rubbing the spoon on my cheek to get a small amount of oil to make rubbing smoother, but everything is so very dry here that I don't think my cheek could contribute.

Hand-printing on your own handmade paper is a rather intimate experience. Don't get me wrong, I love a press. But while hand printing I'm able to feel how the paper becomes burnished, the punch of the relief into the fibers, the suction of the ink, the entire romance of the process. I feel like this piece will have a dual narrative, that which is presented in the image (more on that to come!), and that of its creation with my hands, here in a Wyoming winter.

 As I was working on the center print, we were hit with another snowstorm. The image above is looking from the residence to the studio buildings - the writers are the log cabin on the right, we visual artists are working in the one on the left. 

In other news - today I learned that Book Bombs is part of the exhibition For Decoration and Agitation, An Exhibition of Stencil and Pochoir Books and Art, curated by our kickass friend Jared Ash, at the Newark Public Library! East Coast friends, I hope some of you get a chance to check it out.