Trials and Tribulations

I thoroughly enjoy repetitive acts.  This may be one of the traits that connects me to bees, who spend the majority of their lives preforming the same tasks.  I find my OCD has infiltrated my work.

My art has always been the way I could be chaotic, ignore my self-imposed restrictions, get crazy.  Now I find the two sides of me, my organized daily self, and my creative art self, are at odds.  The two sides of me are resulting in much tension in my work.

However, I have found peace in repetitive acts.  I painted the background in a wash of India ink mixed with water.  In an aboriginal style, I then added dots.  I limited myself to three colors.  The first ones that drew my attention.  The end result is a piece that reminds me that the two sides of me can simultaniously be shown in my work, in turn, showing a cohesive piece.

Plaster Mould

Over this summer I sketched.  At first I did not know what I would create next.  That's the very thing people rarely tell you about successful art pieces.  They are very difficult to follow up.  Eventually I stopped thinking about what I'd do next to "top myself."  I thought about my needs and my life, and more importantly I just felt.  I felt everything I had bottled up for years and I started to sketch.  This is when I decided to ask my friends for help.  I would make moulds of my body.  A series of them. 

I made one of my front.

And one of my back.

The result is fascinating!  

(Laying out to dry)

I left them to dry in the sun.  

I will leave them to dry this weekend.  I will then work on practice moulds of my elbow and hand, in order to work out a process.  I will eventually fill these larger moulds with beeswax.

I am very excited and nervous to see how they turn out!

5/28/14

A few months prior to this I had my work shown at linfield College.  The piece I had been working on the whole year had paid off.

I was just as excited then as I am now about that piece.  This piece has ebbed and flowed and now I can say how officially proud I am.  I have entered it in a few Call for Works, wish me luck!

A Great Artist

A great artist once told me, make a mark, step back, and make another.  [Nils Lou]

I have found in approaching carving that is exactly what I needed to do.  I made my first gesture sketch, with chalk on wood.  I felt alive.  I followed the lines, the curves, the edges, with my gauge.  The great thing about carving is that the more you do it the more exhausted you physically become, but the more invigorated you feel.  You feel alive, and even though you are a sweaty mess, and hours have gone by when you exit the woodshop, you feel awake and alert.

I started my carvings knowing I wanted to create shadow.  I traced a shape with my chalk and then used a bansaw to cut that form out from the rest of the wood.  I carved the whole surface with a big gauge.  I wanted every inch to be touched and worked on.

I then worked my way to the smaller gauges.

I found a motion with a small gauge that I really enjoyed.  I created these scratch marks to cover the surface, every side, of the wood piece.

These scratch marks were very reminiscent of the marks I had made on art in former years.

I am very excited to continue carving.  Though I do not know how I will use these wooden pieces I know, in my gut, that they are very important to my current body of work.

(A Detail)

(A Detail)

Account Book

This book has delicate cut outs of various forms.  The individual geometric shapes mean nothing but together form an image, an ambiguous, more organic form.  I have bound it in the style of an account book.  I use grey and black paper, offset by a red thread for contrast.  I am really excited for this book to be shown!

Book as Sculpture

For an examination of book as sculpture I have taken excerpts from Dante's Inferno, and collaged it into a box.  There are two ways to view what is inside the box.  The first is through a small peephole under the word "hell."  The second is through the "gate" on the side.  This gate is guarded by two copper straps.  The idea being that there is more than one way to get into hell.  There is a tiny lightbulb shaped piece of plastic inside.  It holds silver and is surrounded by copper wire.  This is the temptation that can get us, the viewer into hell.  This is what I have come up with!

End of the Year Gallery Show

We have a gallery opening at the end of every year.  The Thesis students present their work in the main Linfield Gallery, and the Portfolio students present in the Student Gallery.  I have decided to present in the hallway leading up to the student gallery.

I have been working on hanging my installation for a little over 15 hours.  It has been a tough process as the structural supports should not be shown.  I have decided to hide the structural supports, and have some of them not there.

However, to make an effortless hanging piece that is in all actuality heavy and full of effort, is more difficult than I have previously thought.  I am very excited to unveil this installation and even more excited and nervous for my artist talk.

I am working with the lights in the space allotted but I also need to work on making the shadows of the piece itself more intriguing.  I have found that the new shape that is forming has overlapping shadows.  This is interesting in some places, but not in others.  I need to work on creating more dimension with this piece.

I hope this will be a fantastic opening, and wish all of my fellow artists the best of luck with their incredible art!   They are amazing people in this exhibit and I am blessed and grateful to be one of the many showing!