Go Time

I've decided that I am going to try to post something on this blog at least once a week. Probably on sudays or mondays. I'm starting the first push of hard work that is in preparation for a solo show. Hopefully this obligation to myself and to my readers (or imagined readers) will figure into the "discipline mix." I might not always have newest work, or find posting drawing after drawing to be boring, so some of the posts (many of the posts) could wind up being about stupid little details about my process and work habits. Enjoy.

Also...spell chech seems to be not working for the last few posts, so...

Reign of Dirt

If you look at the image above, you can see the rectangular outline of where one of my drawings was laying. Last week was the Reign of Dirt. (and the Rain of Dirt) On those two particularly windy days, every time the wind blew dirt would fall from between the planks of wood that make up our ceiling. I'm not sure what that means for the building. The dirt rain seemed to fall primarily over our drawing tables. I just happened to have all of my drawings spread out and Nicole just happened to have started a melt, which was still wet, of course.

Could be worse though. It put a kink in our artmaking for a day or two, but hasn't happened since. The dirt didn't leave any permanent marks on our work and we were able to just brush it off. Well, Nicole's piece actually became a colab with the ceiling and the wind.

This morning, however, I woke to find that the entire loft was exteremely humid due to the sudden temperature rise outside. All of my books, notebooks, paper, and drawings are warped and wavy. One of my magazines looked as if I had dropped it in a puddle.

Sneak Peak

Here's the current version of one of the installations that I'm working on. This image was taken a few weeks ago, so the piece looks a bit different now. Originally, I was going to light a large arched area above the brown part. I was playing with the foil as a tool for shaping the light and came upon this. I like this look. Something about this works. I'm going to try to make it hard to tell what is painted and what is light.

HDR

A neighbor of mine turned me onto this software for making "High Dynamic Range" images. This process seemed like exactly what I've been needing to do to the images of my installations. You basically take 2 or more (up to 6 or 7) bracketed pictures using a tripod and keeping the camera in the exact same spot. You cover the range from way overexposed to way underexposed. You get a program that makes HDR images or the plug in for photoshop. I got a very simple freeware called Qtpfsgui. This program makes HDR images for you. There's not much to it at all. With the more complex programs I'm sure you can get even better images and you have more control over the specifics of the process. Above is the HDR image I made of my last installation. It is made of the two images that I put on my post from September. If I had more than two images and more experience with the software, I could do better. As it is however, I was able to do in 10 min or less what used to take hours in photoshop. Below are some HDR images I found on Google.

Sneak Peak

I've finally found the paper that I've been looking for. It is called Permadur .010. It is just like the paper in the hardcover Moleskines. I have been wanting to make some pencil drawings that exist out of the books for a while now. Much of the time, I wind up liking the pencil versions of the drawings more than the gouache or pastel versions. They are my initial impressions and tend to have more energy, more of the quality I'm looking for. The following are some poor quality images of the first drawings that I've done on this paper. I'm getting ready to start a large one possibly.

My process of working on my installations has evolved yet again... I have begun to implement my strategy of working on the wall pieces in the same manner that I work on the drawings, but it hasn't gone quite as I've envisioned it. I'm not working as fast as I want yet and because of a lack of time (due to a 50 hr work week) some interesting things have developed as far as my process goes. My original idea was to bust out a wall piece in a one to two days, document it, and move on. Having to work for an hour here, two hours there, and a half hour here and there has forced me to adapt and change my strategy a bit. The original plan was meant to force me to work from my instincts. As I've been slowed down, and had to sit on pieces for days, having pauses in between working on them, I've seen that maybe concentrated and focused pushes of working might not work as well for this strategy. I've had to make a move, then walk away from the piece and come back later, make a move, and walk away again. Because of this, I avoided making a bad decision on my new installation (below) that I would have made had I just worked straight through without pause. I tend to do this with drawings too now, which is working good. So, I'll have a number of pieces going and I'll float between them, taking breaks to do other things as well, having a fluid way of working. Keeps me on my toes more, keeps me fresh and more "ballsy" to make hard decisions.

Above is the "great hall" piece and the image I'm working from. Originally I was going to make the edges fade more gradually from dark to light brown, but because I had a pause of 5 days or so in between sessions of working on the painted part, I realized that it is better the first way that I painted it. It's good to live with it a bit in between moves, as long as I don't let it sit for too long.

The image below is sideways for some reason. I can't fix it. This is an example of my sitting on a piece because I didn't know what to do. I painted the purple part in a fit of frustration. I just wanted to do something to it. I like what I did. The first thing that I did was the dark blue part. I kind of liked it just that way. I might try an alternate version of this piece as just the dark blue part.

I've been threatening to use images from Travel + Leisure for a while now. The piece above (sideways) it the first. Below is a random studio shot.

wait for it...

Sometimes, I have a hard time focusing when I have something hanging over my head. I've also discovered that I work better when my place is orderly. After my show got postponed, I decided to use the time I would have spent working up to the show to finish up some loft projects that were nagging me. I would try to work on my art and find myself wishing that the loft was finished. I couldn't focus on my work in the way that I want when my space is in disarray and I've got these unfinished things surrounding me. I wanted to be done. So, I haven't posted in a few weeks because my art production has been low. A few drawings here, a few drawings there. I've been busting my ass to get the loft finished already. Here are some images of what I've done. There's still some finishing work to do, but everything's pretty much in order now. Now I can dive full force back into my work!

We needed some tables to work on so we can get started on Nightingale Press. The computer area is also now more organized and clean.

The bedroom was the most nagging project, as we needed to get our bed out of the living room space. It was the longest running project and the one that had to be finished for other things to fall into place. It freed up space to move some things around and organize better.

Curtain closet

old bedroom now Nicole's work space

bookcase

Negativedresspullspace

The new installation is finally finished. Well, pretty much. It could use some polishing, but this is pretty much the final image. It looks quite better in person. The above photos are pre-photoshoped. The final documentation will be a mixture of the two so it looks more like it really does. It is incredibly hard to document the way that the installations look. Digital images are never quite right. I'm going to start trying to get it with film, until then, it's more drudgery in photoshop for me. There is some detail in the lighted part that can't quite be picked up.


I'm really happy with this installation. It's the first that I've done that is based on a fashion image rather than a space/architecture/artifice. Hopefully as I move on, more of these will happen and they will help me make the pieces based on spaces/architecture/artifice more loose, gestural, and poetical. This one has a quality of strangeness and "otherness" that I think is better than past installations. This is also the first installation in which I've used two lights. One light with the whole armature and the other I use foil only to shape the light. I've got some ideas for beefing up the lights and adding some elements to make them more obviously seem connected conceptually with the wall pieces.

I've finally made a successful stereoscope! The images need to be polished and printed on nicer paper with a nicer printer. It does work though. In addition to being a new area of exploration for my ideas, this may solve some of my documentation issues and issues with showing in group shows. It's also a good way to explore the ideas of space within space and illusion. I also like how this illusion is created entirely in your head.