Win Win 4 at NIAD

NIAD Art Center has a benefit to support their programs every year, called Win Win. Since they started four years ago, I've donated every year. Not only is it a great cause to support, the chance to do these little experiments each spring always really opens up some ideas that find ways into my current work in progress. This year was no exception.

Actually, I think I like these more than any other year. The pieces are called Distance I-III, with I above and II and III in descending order below. Click on the images for a larger viewing size.

NIAD has some great exhibitions coming up - including a show curated by Robert in March, and a solo show by yours truly in their Annex Gallery in June!

New Print and collaboration about Pluto!

As a usual gap in blogging indicates, a whirlwind of activities happened. I need to sit down and really do a couple of posts about the time at Banff, but because it was just SO MUCH I need to process a bit.

So to get back into the rhythm of blogging, I'm writing today about my recently finished print for the Pluto Print Exchange that Mandy organized. Robert and I ended up collaborating on our piece, and we didn't end up killing each other! (I find it odd that as frequently as I collaborate with others - Marie, Mary, Anne - this was my first time with my husband).

With all the new images of Pluto from New Horizons, I started looking at images of Pluto from mythology, particularly in printed matter. Robert and I both ended up being drawn to this image by Hendrick Goltzius.

Our original intent was to combine the historic and the most recent scientific, perhaps in a sort of like Vitruvian Man. However, the idea developed through our love and respect for papercutting to incorporate that technique. We were also inspired by Allison Smith's Pitcher Collection, and how isolating an image from context makes it both more playful and yet gives it a certain presence.

Using some of the leftover Sekishu from my Small Plates residency (thanks SFCB!) we digitally printed (with archival inks) some images of Pluto's surface. I carved a block based on Goltzius's Pluto (above, inked) which was then printed onto the Sekishu.

The prints were then cut out of the Sekishu.

(I have to confess, the whole time I was cutting these, I kept thinking about this post from The Toast, and the line, GET THIS ARSE.)

Finally, the cut out images were chine colle'd to Rives BFK.

Click on the images for larger views.

The print needs to be properly documented, still. Next spring, the entire portfolio will be exhibited at UArts in the Printmaking Gallery. Artists from Oakland (me), Seattle, Iowa, Minneapolis, Pittsburgh, and Philadelphia participated. I've yet to see the rest of the portfolio, but have heard good things about the other pieces - trying to be patient but very excited!

"Now. Here. This."

March was a busybusybusy month, so much that I'm still in recovery, I think. Now. Here. This. came down the first week of April, here are a few shots of the show and opening reception.

Between the dense and the distilled...

As I've been working on these recent collages, it's come to me that as an artist, my studio practice has frequently swung between highly detailed, dense works, and very minimal, materially sensitive, distilled pieces. With these collages, with their layers of printed imagery and cut paper, things feel like I'm currently in a dense stage.

Click on images for larger view.

It's interesting, because after spending months and months making pieces like this one, or this, or this, which are basically just paper, these collages come together in a matter of hours at most. (Although, if I counted all the time that led to the waste prints and paper that went into assembling the collage, it would be much, much longer). Of course, the paper portfolios are also editions, while the collages are unique works.

I think most artists who have made minimal work that is similar to my linked examples will agree that the precision required to work on something that is so exacting and simple is often as equally challenging to produce as something complex and highly detailed. There's just no wiggle room.

However, I find myself wondering what these divergent methods mean to my overall practice. I keep coming back to the concept of distilling when I think of the paper portfolios - I had clarified my vision and ideas down to a material essence and process. Simultaneously, it's a challenge to myself - how good are my skills? (how much can I show off?) Completing such work honors the medium and its potential.

These collages are more ambiguous - multiple nonlinear narratives colliding, a burgeoning lexicon of imagery.

Right now, after all those months of meticulousness, getting to use all that lovely paper that Jerarde gave me last year, to layer, to delight in my love of pattern, it's a release to embrace complexity. It feels like an indulgence.

More collages

Turning

Interval

Waterbride

Deluge

Auspex

New collages

Infrasound I

It is turning into a spring of collage. For these pieces, I've abandoned any and all "rules," that I usually enforce in my studio practice, and have given myself free rein to just explore any half-formed idea that comes into my head.



Infrasound II

Although I have to say, using handmade paper in collage is pure bliss. Of course, using handmade paper for anything is a joy, but handmade paper really does behave better than commercial paper. Overall, it seems to respond to wet glue better, with less curling and warping, while also contributing its natural luminosity.



Infrasound III

Between two poems

Spent the past week sort of in the middle of these two poems by Wendell Berry.

The Real Work

It may be that when we no longer know what to do
we have come to our real work,
and that when we no longer know which way to go
we have come to our real journey.
The mind that is not baffled is not employed.
The impeded stream is the one that sings.

Wendell Berry

What We Need Is Here

Geese appear high over us,
pass, and the sky closes. Abandon,
as in love or sleep, holds
them to their way, clear
in the ancient faith: what we need
is here. And we pray, not
for new earth or heaven, but to be
quiet in heart, and in eye,
clear. What we need is here.

Wendell Berry

Collage and Play

I had a realization recently about my recent studio practice. I've been fortunate to have so many opportunities of late, but since I have to work, my studio time has been focused solely on projects, and finishing said projects by deadlines. I've been concentrating on accomplishment. It's been a while since I just played as an artist, with no goal in mind.

I used to make a point of every time I came into the studio, to start with what I called "pointless drawings." Pointless because they remained outside of projects, the only goal was to practice drawing and preserve a fresh outlook. Yet, I've gotten away from that in the past year.

My pieces for Win Win! (see post) made me remember how much I love collage. While I was making them, I started playing.



Fulmination

Some of these started because I'd have leftover paint on the palette, and didn't want it to go to waste.



Trinitite I

I really tried to give into the process of just making, and ignore the voice in my head that said I should be Doing Something Important.



Trinitite II


I've also been thinking some of the ideas here, about how life outside of the studio informs the practice. Play helps us retain a sense of wonder, necessary to making.



Trinitite III

So a renewed goal - to remember my pointless drawings. Play is the whole point.

Win Win at NIAD

The NIAD Art Center has a fundraiser coming up called Win Win! For this event, artists were given 6"x 6" canvases to create works of art that attendees will be able to select and take home. For my contribution, I dusted off the ole collage skills and made the following three pieces out of paint, handmade paper and leftover prints.



It was sort of funny to realize, since I'm not a painter and was just using leftover supplies from a LONG time ago, what I actually had left. For instance, no yellow. But I made it work.

The Win Win! preview takes place May 9-10, with a party on May 11 from 4-6 PM, at Cliff Bar and Company, 1451 66th Street in Emeryville, CA. For tickets, or to see some of the artwork in advance, visit here.