Stonehouse residency

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 it took three days to settle into the chicken coop studio. i imagined it having really low ceilings, but it was roughly the same dimensions as my space in berkeley.

the coop was really rough around the edges,
so i didn't worry about being messy

the first few days were spent drawing whatever came to mind. though i had just come from working on the little red series, my head was deep in SFTW, a world full of design and space.

rice paper:  surprisingly durable, but does not withstand a sharp tip.
in this drawing there are two figures drawn in white

towards the end of the first week i reviewed these drawings and picked a direction. i dismissed the characters/figures, not wanting to move in a symbolist or iconic direction. i was interested in moving from what i knew into what i didn't know.

i focused on trying to create spaces that the characters would move through. further abstracted, it didn't matter if the character moved through it or not; i just wanted the space to accommodate that action. an observer of this piece would find places he/she wants to 'go' in it.

this loose abstract in my sketchbook followed me back up to the house from the coop.
though it's not the same drawing as the one on rice paper, i thought the space in it was similar.
i'd look to it often for reference when i was in my bedroom.

these figurative cutouts make the academic perspective in the drawing evident.
the textured foreground, pink accented middlegroud, black and gray distant background.

i didn't like the academic order that the cutouts imposed,
so i removed them but kept the white on white.
(note - the yellow in my sketchbook made it into this piece too)

feeling close to overworking the ricepaper drawing, i stopped and went back to drawing/painting larger. while working on the butcher paper i was unable to bring the spatial components together. color also was worrisome. in the end this drawing failed even before it really began, but it was a necessary step in learning how to handle the medium.

(note - i folded over the butcher paper, drew on whatever surface seemed right.
[see the first picture in this post too] later i realized that the folding meant something)

i surprised myself by drawing derivative things - swirls with textured lines, clouds coming out of faces etc. - the kind of stuff i hate seeing in art galleries! i was trying to get my sketchy line drawings to scale up, but this is what resulted. though i could paint bigger lines, they just weren't yielding the same texture as that of my pen sketches.

an example of a pen sketch in progress
though it's in its early stages, there is already a definitive sense of space
(and that the object is also that space)

i saw the reflection of the trees outside, here in my paintbowl.
the experience is similar to looking though a telescope for the first time.

the paints are very simple and straightforward in color and texture,
but the reflection upon a compound curve is complex and intangible. scientific explanation doesn't
satisfy in this case, since the phenomenon seems greater than the sum of its parts.

by the end of the second week i was focused on capturing a space. i was seeing it everywhere - in the foundations of coop, sandwiched in the broken panes at the Hatchery, in the reflection of my paint bowl, etc. etc.

wanting to work at a larger scale but clumsy and limited with the materials at hand, i decided on another route and began folding paper. the units themselves are fairly straightforward, paper painted with curved lines, and folded into points at one end. this was my way of addressing form, though at the time i did not know i was doing it.

there are similarities on how the object left and object right behave.
i think the paperfolding ended up being a good "next generation" experiment.

the third week found me well into the installation, a wall covering roughly 12'x16'. my supplies quickly dwindled. when expanded the unfolded paper covers 3x (plus!) the surface area than that of the existing wall. i did not account for the fact that it would require that much in materials, and ran out of ink, paint and paper. towards the end i could not cover the entire wall and had to improvise with the shape.

about 1.5 days worth of tacking

on average it was three hours a day of painting, three hours of folding
one hour of tacking

this is when i realized my resources were limited.

i didn't want to create the white shape first,
but then chickened out and did it.

because this was a first try, i didn't have a lot of control of the craft. consistency and placement were challenging. shortage of supplies was also a real worry.

while placing the white i fell back on what i knew (the shape 'circle'), rather than have it form continuously with the rest of the wall. i would have liked to form the piece from bottom to top in regular rows regardless of color, but in the end i took the granny shot to make the basket because i pretty much knew the jump shot would be impossible. i've promised myself next time no granny shots!

it doesn't cover the whole wall but still manages to look complete

 other than the circle 'assist', i relied on intuition for depth of the folding, unit placement in relation to one another, arrangement in relation to the wall. spacing would be tighter or looser depending on the day, and towards the end i got pretty good at adjusting for these factors.

in the end i don't think it 'emerges' from the accumulation of basic units as i had hoped it would, but it is close. i think the piece is most effective at night, under controlled light.

this surface seems to bulge and recede,
though it is actually all projecting from the wall at roughly the same angle

space forming (left), image emerges (right)

depending on which way the installation is lit, it can
have a very solid or very ephemeral appearance.

in the end i was obsessing over portals, transparency, and breaching space. for the next rendition of this installation i'd like to try angling walls together and creating 'expansion packs' of space for things to come out of. a baffle comes to mind.

residency work from july15-aug11
miramonte, california

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