Sketch Pages

Peter Owen: Drawing as Mapping

2010-02-11T12:07:00.000-08:00

Peter Owen writes about the link between drawing and mapping the often overlooked details of daily life. For more on Peter's work, check out http://www.peter-owen.com/.

I make drawings and paintings that are based on my daily experience in urban spaces – my walk to work, the skyline seen from my apartment, the errands run throughout the week. I keep a camera on me all the time, and throughout the day, I document where I am. Each photograph is quite ordinary, but holds significance for the part it plays in the mapping of my life. Details that might be overlooked, such as the curve of a lampost or the molding on a windowsill, are captured so that later on they can be incorporated into minutely detailed compositions. In a way, drawing is like retracing my steps. However, rather than trying to piece together a coherent, objective narrative, I work with layers of imagery. Buildings are overlaid atop one another and allowed to tangle together. Over time the layers obliterate parts of what is underneath, and the composition is woven out of hundreds of these daily recordings. I overload certain sections, and then counterbalance those areas with finely articulated, delicate structures - fire escapes, streetlights, the exposed pipes running through alleys. I am attempting to describe the experience of living in places that are constantly being transformed by construction and demolition.

Lili Maya: Drawing with Edges

2009-12-30T13:39:00.000-08:00

Artist Lili Maya writes about her series of three works, i hold this-in my hand, in collaboration with Davy Lauterbach. More can be seen on Maya's work at http://www.lilimaya.net/.

these days i am working with fragments, with the edges of things and what they suggest about systems (psychological or physical / natural or constructed) -edges bring the work closer to gaps where binaries collapse/blur/integrate/oscillate -where ambiguity may reveal truth.

Leah Cooper: Drawing in Space

2009-11-26T09:52:00.000-08:00

Leah Cooper writes about drawing in real space. More can be seen about her work at www.leahcooper.com.

As we move through the physical world we are in an unremitting state of receiving observable facts via the five senses. Yet do these objective facts, recorded by the brain, lead directly to knowledge of our surroundings? Or is knowledge of the physical world a construct of human experience and perception? If all facts are recorded but much of what we ‘see’ goes unnoticed, does this mean we are extremely efficient editing machines? My work asks the question, is what we ‘see’ more a result of how we have edited reality? And if so, how does additional or alternative information alter our perception or knowledge of the world?

I am fascinated by the extraordinary world that exists within the smallest detail of the ordinary. In The Poetics of Space Gaston Bachelard submits that “The man with the magnifying glass-quite simply- bars the everyday world. He is a fresh eye before a new object”. The discovery and subsequent exploration of inherent, often unnoticed properties of the everyday is the source of my investigation.

My work employs drawing as a strategy to investigate the influence of visual information on a viewer’s subjective perception of object and place. I work outside the traditional notion of drawing as a 2-dimensional representation of the 3-dimensional world; using drawing as a means to iterate rather than illustrate a variable framework of information. If drawing is separated from its assumed role of descriptor, illustration is no longer synonymous with drawing, but rather illustration is just one tactic to be employed to make ideas visible. Subscribing to the notion that visual art is a concrete demonstration of idea; drawing in this context becomes a means towards that end. Drawing is a strategy, whose tactics could include illustration, nomination, or notation and whose materials could extend beyond standard mark makers and paper.

In site-responsive drawings, I respond to a space as-is, drawing throughout the space in order to bring attention to the ordinary and the overlooked. Materials which can include, but are not limited to: tape, graphite, string, objects, t-squares, and rulers are brought onto a site much the same way a carpenter brings tools to a site. Once on site these outside materials become no more or less important than the existing elements of the space; walls, ceiling, fixtures, shadows, and cracks are all employed as materials in site-responsive drawings. Drawings are of the space and the space simultaneously. These iterations, both of object and place, are not static, fixed end-products; possible combinations are vast. Elements iterated begin to show the undrawn as clearly as the drawn; offering a fresh eye to the undiscovered extraordinary world of the ordinary.

Images: Thesis show At Maryland Institute College of Art. Baltimore, MD.

Zachory Mory: Drawing as Process

2009-09-05T12:47:00.000-07:00

Sketch Pages gets behind the markmaking of Zachory Mory.

About the Artist

Zach Mory was born in Madison, WI and attended undergraduate and graduate school at the University of Wisconsin- Madison. His focus has been on drawing as long as he can remember, beginning with copying his favorite comic book characters as a kid. He currently teaches a life drawing class at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, draws, and lives with his new wife in Wheaton, IL.

Can you talk about how you use systems to create your drawing.
When I am working on a piece, I try to keep all elements involved very, very simple. I usually use one media, such as pencil or markers, and I usually create very simple marks that I can repeat fairly easily. I also have an idea of where I will begin on a piece and where I will end, though this is certainly not the case for all of my drawings. Maybe a better way of describing this is that I have a vague feeling of what the drawing might be when it's finished. So the word system might be a bit deceiving. Basically, when I begin a drawing I have rules about what mark I am going to use, what media will be employed, and what general direction I want the drawing to develop in. Along the way though, I allow for new decisions and paths to be discovered and followed so that the drawing is not a dogmatic, preconceived sort of thing.

You write that your drawings are like a life. Can you talk about their evolution over time.
That last question is a great segue into this one. The system and rules that I create when I begin a drawing allow me to more easily access the work. It provides for me a tangible starting point. Once I feel comfortable with how a drawing functions and is progressing, everything changes. Unlike someone like Sol LeWitt, whose drawings were really predetermined, visual executions of certain rules and ideas, I want my drawings to take on other qualities that could only be discovered through the process of creation. I want them to grow and change just like a life. Sometimes I feel like a parent who has all of these aspirations for my kid only to see him or her follow their own muse. Cheap metaphors aside, my drawings have a tendency to follow a very different course than I originally intend for them. That is not to say I am a passive observer to this. On the contrary, say I'm working on a drawing for a few months and in the middle of the second month I notice something in the composition that I never anticipated and it's really visually exciting to me. I'll let that change become a part of the work and the drawing then becomes something completely different.

Can you reflect more on the significance of marks in your work.
The marks I use usually don't have that much significance initially, but as I work with a mark more and more it does begin to stand for something larger than its initial intent. Growing up I spent a lot of time doodling in my notebook, as a lot of kids do. I never considered it high art or even good art. They were just little drawings and doodles. I don't think that this mentality has ever really left me. I still doodle and remember old marks I used to make. The difference now is that when I make a small mark or doodle I can sense the possibility of what it could be if I pushed it to an obsessive degree. For instance, I've been using a small cube shape in some of my recent work. This cube is basically the same cube I remember drawing in grade school when I learned how to draw things in a box. Except now when I use that shape, it builds up into this complex sort of architectural structure that reminds me of Atari video games and Star Wars. There is nostalgia in the shape for me and a strange sort of beauty in it as well.
Other times the marks exist as a sort of documentation of time. In another series of mine, I make lines very close to one another and as I make more and more lines, it appears that the drawing is rippling like water. By using a simple nondescript line, I'm able to create a means of conveying time onto paper. You can literally see the drawing progress. All in all, the marks I use exist in a sort of micro/macro duality where they work with one another to create a larger whole.

What role does chance play in your drawings. How do they factor into the life of a drawing.
Chance plays a large role in my drawings. Since I strive for my drawings to develop on their own, I'm constantly on the watch for a mistakeor something out of the ordinary to occur that might enliven the piece. I believe that it is easy to get comfortable with a certain way of working. By this I mean knowing exactly how a drawing will begin and end. This seems very dangerous to me because repeating yourself can be very suffocating. And unfortunately with my tightly controlled means of working, it is something I have to be careful for. So I'm constantly watching out for the slight slip of the hand that makes an interesting mark to help my work along. I've found that by simply paying careful attention to my process and not discounting the unintended as unworthy, that my work constantly changes and evolves. I've often found to that mistakes or slipups in one drawing deserve their own exploration and I'll use that in my next drawing.

Despite using very small marks to build your drawings, your works are large scale. Can you talk about the tension between the micro and macro and their implications.
I really want my drawings to grow, so by working small on a larger scale, the drawing has sufficient time to develop many different paths. I revel in the discoveries and comfort that comes from working on one piece for a long, long time (sometimes upward of 800 hours for one drawing). I believe that there is an excitement in seeing a work that has been worked and labored to obsessive degrees. This tension between micro and macro invites contemplation I believe. It begs the viewer to stay with the drawing for a bit. I hate to admit this, but it is difficult nowadays to get people to really stay and look at a work of art for more than thirty seconds, so maybe somewhere deep down I'm trying to overcome that in some way, but this is getting a bit off-track. Going back to the question of micro and macro, I've noticed a trend in my work. I try to create individuals within larger, complexly organized wholes. The individuals in and of themselves are relatively uninteresting, yet within the whole they become something beyond themselves. Within that whole they become important and even crucial. Beyond that, they become a testament to the time spent in creating the larger picture. You can literally see the time spent in the creation of the drawing. By working on a large scale with tiny marks, that dichotomy becomes very apparent.

What role does patience play as you draw?

Patience is just as important as the pencil or the paper in my work. People seem to talk about patience slightly in the negative or as something to strive for that is difficult to achieve. You have to have patience to endure bad things or you have to show patience with difficult people. I like to think about patience as simply a means to a desired end. You can only get from A to B by actually doing the work, so it is merely a given that if I want to fill a page with 10,000 tiny marks that I'll need to show some patience. So it just is, I guess. There are definitely times when I want to hang up a drawing because I'm sick of making a certain mark or because my hand really hurts. The thought of a drawing in its finished state is quite an inspiration for me. It's what keeps me going actually. Well, not completely. Beer and coffee really help me in this regard too.

Can you talk about what you are working on now.
The big drawing that I've been working on is based on a grid. The grid has become important to me lately as a starting point. I've been filling in the different squares of the grid with different values creating a sort of fuzzy, pixilated, abstract composition. Each square is shaded in a different direction which creates a very strange sort of texture. It's an interesting subplot to the larger story. Beyond that I have about twenty other drawings ready to go in my head that only need time before I can get started on them. The beauty and curse of spending a long time on drawings is that I get a lot of ideas for new drawings, but can't start them for a few years later it seems. Oh well.

Andrea Loefke: Materials mix with Imagination

2009-08-15T11:55:00.000-07:00

Andrea Loefke writes about the link between imagination and materials.

...........once upon a time there was a world: whimsical, humorous, credulous, synthetic, intimate, alien, glittering, soft, innocent, humming and obscure.......... Miniature foam houses, with red staring eyes accumulate on a glittering swathe of land, and communicate to us through a speech balloon on the wall. Fluffy clouds are made of blue styrofoam and are “gasp” raining red string and nearby radiant barrier foil moulds into a mountain range, fenced in with an enormous neon-orange safety mesh and traffic cones.

In my work, fictional narratives, dream worlds with anchors in the real, occupy a space between familiarity and fantasy. The environments are systems – overlapping worlds, groups and subgroups that are juxtaposed and united through scale, color palette, sound, form, space, and material. With the continuous pushing and pulling among the elements of this vocabulary.

I am creating hierarchies of events and narratives, which compete and communicate, while these multiform assemblages often contain a strong sense of quiet foreboding – the primary narrative holds a secondary within. The groupings of objects and their placement within a particular space result in playful, mysterious landscapes, enticing the viewer into visual narrative journeys.

I develop pathways for the viewer to travel. I link micro with macro worlds, encourage a sense of irritation, and implied movement of the objects, and ask the viewer to relate oneself to the objects and the situations they present. I am interested to create a place, with the capacity to crack open a well of associations and allow the viewer to feel, to dream, to fantasize, be irrational, subjective and intuitive. Specific or vague personal memories are awakened. The viewer is asked to weave his or her own story and sensations, to believe and to wonder.

There are no words for what I am going to do. Things come together – one stone goes on top of the next - it feels like building. Materials, found, everyday objects and colorful, decorative supplies overflow the categorized shelves and bins in my studio. In fabricating these fairy-like worlds, I knit, cut, glue, sew, find, draw, construct, select, saw, paint, decorate, carve, combine and mold. Very often I start with a material, a feeling, a color, or a vague image. Obscure, intangible thoughts and sensations collect within my head and my body and step-by-step the work evolves, develops while making. In my work I am going on a journey, seeking to surprise myself.

About the artist

Andrea Loefke was born in Heidelberg, Germany. She currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York and Leipzig, Germany. She has had numerous solo and group exhibitions, including (solo in 2008) “Folding an orange fish out of newspaper”, Downtown Gallery, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN; and “Folding an orange fish out of newspaper”, Kasia Kay Art Projects, Chicago, Illinois.
In 2007, Loefke had solo shows at the Michael Steinberg Gallery, New York, NY, and the Islip Art Museum, East Islip, New York. For more on her work and experience, check out her website at http://www.andrealoefke.com/.

Images from top to bottom:

1-2. The squirrels, hedgehogs, and rabbits are indeed harmless. November 2007

3-4. I hope you don't mind me talking about the best of both? February 2007.

5-6. Deerstand Series. March-Spetember 2007.

7-8. Folding an orange fish out of newspaper. April 2008.

Jacque Liu: Drawing and Place

2009-08-12T09:40:00.000-07:00

Treppanhaus. (Staircase.) Graphite. Berlin, Germany.

Vertical Siding No. 1. Mylar, Paper. 24" x 24" x1".

Zugang. (access). Graphite. Berlin, Germany.

What is a Carriage House. Wood, paint, plastic. Detroit, MI. 2007.

Jacque Liu writes about the relationship between drawing and place.

Travel has played an important role in my life. Much of my work - whether site-specific installation or graphite lines on paper or constructing lines with paper itself - stems from a desire to understand the notion of place. This seems rooted in the ever-evolving condition of having relocated around the globe (born in Taipei, Taiwan; raised in St. Louis; two years of adulthood in Germany; four years in Detroit; now living in Philadelphia, et al).

To understand place, my eye gravitates to a more microcosmic scale, often focusing on architectural elements, such as windows, doors, vents, staircases, chairs and abandoned houses in the vastness of a cityscape. My work, following my eye, becomes an abstraction of details within my encountered landscapes.

The process is personal. I recast the imprints of my history of places, but I also re-contextualize a history (whether real or imagined) of the object or site at hand. The idea is to begin with the mundane and to give some new form of engagement to these objects and sites.

More can be seen on his work at www.jacqueliu.com.

Ismet Jonuzi: Thoughts on Drawing

2009-08-12T09:13:00.000-07:00

My drawing sometimes are part of my sculpture and sometimes are as a sketch of my sculpture projects but not necessary.

I try to express my feeling through line and form.

My artistic way is drawing as a start point.

Through drawing I try to materialize my confrontation in the space where I live and move as person, as artist, as a human.

Drawing, sculpture, line, form, and shapes I try to create my vision and my idea.

About the Artist:

Ismet Jonuzi lives in KOSOVA west Balkan and tries to express the how "we" live and die in this part of Europe.

Travis LeRoy Southworth: Transitory Explorations

2009-07-30T07:20:00.000-07:00

(Above: Images 1a. and 1b.)

Travis LeRoy Southworth writes about the transitory nature of his work and related processes.

Primarily using materials of corporal quality, my work explores the transitory nature of existence. Sculptures slowly disintegrate and require replenishing to “live” on. Videos capture the transformation of individuals into a mob collective. Drawings are collections of fragments and stray marks that are taken from, but show little reference to, the original photographs. Conceptually driven, my work has a minimalist bent to it as I tend to use a limited amount of materials. I want my work to exist in a new geography, one that redefines the distance between ritual and routine, original source and final work. My recent series of work, Detouched, is a collection of abstract portraits. They are created from the physical “flaws” that define us—wrinkles, moles, blemishes, and stray hairs—which are often removed from commercial portraits. The new work shows little reference to the original photographs and instead become minimalist abstract drawings that play with the definition of portraiture. When printed on digital photo paper, the tiny markings retain their photographic quality upon close inspection. This new configuration no longer implies any facial resemblance. Instead it suggests a nebula, revealing connections between our own physical markings and those of the cosmos.

(Above: Images 2, 3a. and 3b.)

About the Artist
Born 1979 in Honolulu, Hawaii; I currently live and work in Brooklyn, New York. I received a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2007 and a BFA from the University of Arizona in 2004. My work has been exhibited at the Artist in the Marketplace 29, the Bronx Museum of the Arts; the Center for Curatorial Studies at the Hessel Museum of Art, NY; the Chicago Cultural Center and the SCOPE Art Fair in Miami. In 2008 my work was accepted into the Drawing Center Viewing Program and I was a participant of the TV show ‘ARTSTAR: Season Two’. Currently I'm working on a video based on the Detouched series through the BRIC Rotunda Gallery Video Program in Brooklyn, NY. In November of 2009 I will be presenting a window installation titled "Where I End and You Begin # 3" at the Mixed Greens Gallery in NYC.

Website http://www.travisleroysouthworth.com
Detouched catalog http://travisleroysouthworth.com/Southworth-Detouched.pdf

Drawing Center portfolio http://www.drawingcenter.org/viewingprogram/share_portfolio.cfm?pf=2800

(Above: Images 4 and 5.)

Descriptions of Works

I Re-touch Myself is a self-portrait where my entire face is digitally erased except for those minor imperfections. Other preexisting images are found through online searches and radically changed through the erasure of data, such as BB Head Shot # 2. This sort of "re-sourcing" was used so I could work with a widespread selection of photographs. In these works all the marks are still in their original location in regards to the original portrait. Other works are combinations of multiple related portraits; Official Portraits is a composite of the four most recent U.S. presidents as of 2007. I took the remnants of each official presidential portrait and then combined them, creating an anti-facial map of the four men who have presided over the country for the last twenty six-years. Where I End and You Begin # 2 is part of a yearly series of all the portraits I “detouch”, this one contains twenty portraits. The markings remain in proportion to the original image but are placed in relation to the others according to the size of the digital file. Study for an Aggregate # 4 is a conglomeration of stray hairs from the portraits of the six artists (including myself) who participated on the TV show ARTSTAR Season Two. In Study for an Aggregate # 9, I start to organize marks by size and shape.

Image 6a.

Image Details

1a. I Re-touch Myself, archival pigment print, 60 x 40 in, 2007

1b. Detail of I Re-touch Myself

2. BB Head Shot # 2 (Homage to Mr. Exploding Head), archival pigment print, 14 x 11 in, 2007

3a. Official Portraits (Last Four Presidents), archival pigment print, 24 x 20 in, 2007

3b. Detail of Official Portraits (Last Four Presidents)

4. Where I End and You Begin # 2, archival pigment print, 40 x 30, 2008

5. Study for an Aggregate # 1, archival pigment print, 14 x 11, 2007

6a. Study for an Aggregate # 4, archival pigment print, 14 x 11, 2007

6b. Detail of Study for an Aggregate # 4

Image 6b.

Ajean Lee Ryan: Drawing with Materials

2009-07-24T13:23:00.000-07:00

Ajean Lee Ryan writes about the dialogue between materials and meanings. More can be seen on her work @ www.ajeanleeryan.com.

My work has always been about the every day epiphanies and challenges of my life. Much of it deals with misconceptions of femininity and the role of the domesticated woman. I use materials found in domestic handicrafts in my drawings simply because I am drawn to them. I love words such as "trims" and "notions"; "bits" and "baubles". There is rich material in the skeins of yarn that is able to be merged within the lines of a drawing pencil. The combination of frilly materials with traditional drawing materials allows for a conversation of sorts on the surface of the paper. This dialogue of materials and meanings is what I love the most about the work. I am currently working on a series of large scale drawings and installations based loosely on botanical books and Godey's Lady's Book from the 1850s.

My most recent body of work involves notions of instability and structure within the framework of a home. Taking into consideration the economic struggles of our current global economy and more specifically the drastic fall of the housing market, I felt compelled to address these issues in my recent body of work. Having built my home in Santa Fe that I am no longer living in and yet am not able to sell, I feel first hand and very poignantly the complexities and dramas associated with the home and what it means to us as individuals as well as its larger collective meaning.

The building of a home, the construction of layers of papers and the meticulousness of the thread-work all inspire me right now.

Heather Boaz: Marking in the Moment

2009-05-10T10:37:00.000-07:00

Sketch Pages unravels Heather Boaz's markmaking.

How and why did drawing become a focus in your work?
My first experiences with drawing were at the University of Kansas, I took a studio drawing course almost every semester, in addition I did some printmaking, esp. lithography. I loved litho because it’s an intensely physical, sensual experience. The heft of the stone, the smell of the mineral spirits, and the viscosity of the gum Arabic activate all of your senses. The visceral nature of this process was almost more important to me than the prints were, which lead me to more performative, process oriented drawing activities. One of my instructors took our class to draw at the Med school where an anatomy class was dissecting cadavers. Exploring the secret interior of the human body in a way similar to early anatomy drawings made during the Renaissance by DaVinci and Antonio Pollaiuolo, was profound for me. Moving out of the studio, into an entirely foreign situation, the smell was astounding and the whole experience was one of revulsion and fascination. I have always been interested in the body, but seeing uncanny lifelessness in it’s gory glory, albeit with wary med students eyeballing me, touched upon some vital part of my work. If there is any consistency throughout all of my various bodies of work- that is it- the body and it’s ephemeral counterpart (or lack thereof). Drawing functions for me as the line or seam between body and spirit.

What is the significance of the mark making activity in your work? What other artists (who focus on marks) have influenced you.
It depends on what I’m working on, For this particular series, sometimes it’s a process of transcribing the body, sometimes it’s related to writing text but it goes in the opposite direction than we are used to, normally communication begins with the body and then transforms into words, instead I’m going from words back into body, but my body as a filter through which information enters and becomes decoded or rearranged and then pours back out. I want to use drawing, the act of transcribing movement as a way of finding hidden meanings, a more direct communication straight from the body, a secret undecipherable primal language. The marks themselves are usually repetitive or drawn out somehow, with some sort of imposed direction in terms of how many marks, or how long to make them. I try to reduce the marks to the most minimal that I can, so that it’s formation is dictated as much by the movement alone as possible. However, depending on what I’m working on, the mark really becomes something different- at times I draw from life or from images and obviously those have a very different intention. I don’t have one preferred style or method of mark-making, from one series of drawings to the next I will use marks that feel appropriate for the ideas that I’m working with.
When I began making these drawings I was more directly influenced by Rebecca Horn: Drawing Mask and Ana Mendieta: Body Tracks, but now I find a lot of connections to artists I wasn’t consciously thinking about or aware of like Dennis Oppenheim, Mel Bochner, and Matthew Barney’s Drawing Restraint works. I have recently become acquainted with the works of William Anastasi, which I love.

In your videos, you write of taking the physical actions of communication and transcribing your body in the act with video. (These actions or gestures become the drawing.) Can you discuss your interest temporality.
I don’t know how conscious I am of dealing with temporality in the language works, I can see how the presentation of performance (past) with the drawing itself in the present might create a schism of sorts, or the way in which a very fast movement or gesture becomes permanent, but I don’t think I’m dealing with it consciously. To me the disappearing ink drawings are dealing much more directly with temporality. You have these ink drawings or stills, moments which are frozen in time, forever suspended, coupled with the hand drawing this living, moving, changing element, contradicting this suspension of time. The disappearing ink itself is so fleeting, constantly in the process of disappearing, much like time, we try to hang onto it, but it’s futile. Using the disappearing ink itself is an exercise in allowing the drawing to move and be more like life, constantly moving into the next moment, there is no erasing because what you just did is already gone, and it all happens in one shot, there are no cuts, and then it is sped up to an inhuman pace. To me these conflicts of time, the artificiality of time as we have devised and organized it is often irrational. I use subject matter like fire and water which are ephemeral, unfixed, and reflective of time’s constant flow, while stopping it simultaneously, the use of the loop also plays with a sort of eternity, forever looping, but never really going forward,

Describe the role that absurdity and humor play in your work.
My work frequently revolves around language, and very often I employ puns or one-liners, to me these are humorous and often reflect the paradoxical nature of reality. I tend to lean toward contradiction or sharp contrast in my work in terms of high vs. low culture, I think this juxtaposition usually equals humor. The use of everyday banal activities in contrast with a somewhat minimal stoic aesthetic creates a fairly absurd situation. There is also a sense of futility in my work, combined a kind of impracticality which I think is funny. I also think that most things in life, when taken out of their context and really looked at, can be interpreted as completely absurd.

Is you idea of (de)coding with Morse code (and your email password) a metaphor for absurdity?
Not intentionally, but it is pretty absurd to decode a code into something even more cryptic.

In many of your videos, I sense a generic person making marks without a face. This person could be living now or in the past. However, when I see your face in others, the marks get assigned a gender, age, etc. What is your take on these two approaches to your videos?
Interesting question, I think the sort of “everyperson” approach references the modern/minimal tactic of eliminating specific references to my identity, trying to create a more universal interpretation of marks being the sum total of their making- which the accompanying text then deflates. And the ones which I can be seen in are more specific to me and my body, many consider talent something you are born with, so I was trying to discover what innate abilities I might have, where does my “specialness” lie, perhaps it is dexterous feet or extra special lung capacity, or maybe my lung capacity is only average.

Can you talk about the importance of video camera’s presence as you work.
While making drawings I almost see the camera as an extra set of my own eyes, I tend to watch myself drawing in the LCD screen. Almost like I am out of my body, objectively watching and in my body going through the experience at the same time. Sometimes I feel like the videos are redundant, that the drawing itself is often the only documentation of the experience that is necessary, however due to the various unusual methods I employ to make the drawings, I felt that wall text describing the process wasn’t enough and many people asked me if I “really” did things the way I said I did- so I started to videotape the process- I keep the footage usually raw and unedited (unless there is a time constraint) . However I do find the frame to be very useful, I feel like the frame is a stage of sorts within which certain things can happen that just couldn’t happen live due to the way in which it’s cropped or zoomed in or sped up. The camera is also at times simply a way to document and loop activities.

How do you see technology pushing the boundaries of your drawing further in the future?
I’m not sure. I do expect to continue using video and projection, but still in a frankly simple manner. In terms of technology itself, I’m interested in what our obsession with technology and the need to be connected, communicating, and in touch at all times through technology, and what that has done to our bodies and our collective memories. It’s almost like we are extending out toward each other like electrical wires all strung together in a tangle, reaching out from one pole or person to the next criss-crossing, sparks and bursts of communication and information flow through one body and into the next like the flow of electricity. If I used any sort of technology it would probably be one of a very pedestrian variety, like texting or something very commonplace and fused in the body. I’m more interested in how adaptable we are to new technologies and how before we even realize it our bodies form these instinctive bonds with our tech. and movements which reflect the absorption of technology into our beings. There is a very specific way in which we hold a mouse, we all curve our hands similarly, move them at a similar speed, if we were to mime or mimic holding a cell phone to our ear we would all do approximately the same gesture, and it would be an intimately familiar gesture. However, depending on various cultural factors there might be some differences. The movement of our bodies in reference to technology is like a vernacular, it’s fascinating to me.

What is in the works?
In terms of new drawing, I’m working on some site-specific drawings using overhead projectors and video. I’m also drawing a lot of ropes, braids, tangles, knots and other twisted things. I am always adding to various bodies of work, I have a couple more disappearing ink works I’m doing and a few more body drawings as well to add to my collection.

Kate Joranson: Drawing with the Everyday

2009-05-10T10:15:00.000-07:00

Above Images: Kate Joranson's Table Top and Column Drawing

Kate Joranson's work acknowledges the residual effects of everyday activities, such as running one's hand along a wall, or sweeping the floor, as a source for mark-making and a record of one's experience. Her work has been exhibited at the Drawing Center, the Mattress Factory, and galleries in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Wisconsin, and Virginia. She works as a reference librarian and adjunct art faculty and lives in Pittsburgh, PA with her husband Steve Stelling.

Sketch Pages talks to Kate about the ideas behind her process.

Can you describe your drawing process.
For one kind of rubbing/drawing, I cover a table (or other object) with paper and then burnish it with a spoon or other burnishing tool, and then take a rubbing of it with graphite. Beginning with burnishing helps the paper form to the surface of the table and creates another layer to the rubbing. I’m transferring the table’s surface in all its irregularities and history to the paper.

Other drawings are made by using a power-sander. I use the sander to take a “rubbing” of the table, removing areas of the paper that are covering the lumps and bumps on the table. I go back and forth between sanding and adding graphite. I used this process to take a rubbing of a column as well.

I also work with various powders, such as powdered concrete or powdered graphite, to make temporary drawings on walls and floors.

Column Drawing

What is the relationship between your art and everyday life? How did you become interested in the intertwining of the two?
There are so many sensations we experience everyday that we might not think to acknowledge, or take time to describe. Many of these have a visual residue or leave a mark that I want to attend to. As mentioned earlier in my bio, examples are running your hand along a wall and sweeping the floor. I want to pause and extend these activities, and find their mark-making potential. I think that doing this will help me to imagine mark-making (and art in general) as something that happens as a result of how I take in the world around me.

I’ve also been thinking about how much I like doing everyday things! Gardening has become really important to me, as well as cooking, walking/hiking, and learning about ecosystems. I’ve been finding that the further I get from the insular MFA-world, the more I’m compelled to enjoy activities like these, without the feeling that I’m neglecting my studio practice. These kinds of things don’t need to be in competition with studio practice, but can function alongside it, or even replace it for periods of time. I’m remembering that there are a lot of ways to be engaged with the world.

I would like the objects I make and the things I do to be companions with:

- well-used tables, especially work-tables
- sloppily-repaired (or sometimes precisely-repaired) cracked sidewalks
- salt stains on the roads
- intricate winter tree shadows interlaced with tar-filled cracks on the road
- snowdrifts
- leaf-dust on a dry fall day
- seeds and dirt and moisture
- sanding wood
- pouring concrete
- sweeping and vacuuming the floor

What do marks signify in your work?
I’ve been trying to find ways to make marks that are as unself-conscious as those that might result from rearranging furniture in a carpeted room. I look to marks that happen when we’re not paying attention, or might result from work or other activities that occupy our attention. I also look to images and objects that occur, or even grow, in response to their surroundings. I document the salt stains that emerge from heavily salted streets after much freezing and melting and re-freezing.

Snowdrifts are a sculptural example. I have been documenting snowdrifts. I love how a delicate, geometric form, such as a snowflake, becomes heavy and laborious, shoveled and plowed in a huge mass into a purely functional form as a snowdrift. It then melts and re-freezes, becomes discolored and gray, gets coated again with layers of snow, suspends gravel and trash, and develops grotesque appendages as it responds to the late winter weather. The forms are joined to the forces that made them, and to their environment.

Related to this is what I’ve been learning about Convergent Evolution. This is when two species (independently of one another, often in different areas of the world) end up with similar traits because they have been evolving in response to similar environmental challenges.

Can you talk about the role that non-permanence and temporality have in your work?
It’s great for solving storage problems! It’s helped me keep my process flexible and transportable. And since most of what anyone makes is temporary anyway, it’s just a matter of degree.

It’s helped me to stay focused on the making part, and staying responsive to my surroundings.

Observation and improvisation (seem to) play significant roles in your process. Can you talk about what you are looking to happen for a piece to evolve?

Improvisation seems to be a really practical way of taking my surroundings into account as I’m working. It’s also a way of cultivating an attitude towards the materials. I want to find ways of using materials and tools that are related more to turning the dirt in my garden, tending to a houseplant, and shoveling snow. I want the marks that emerge to be joined to their surroundings, and to their tool. I look for a certain kind of independence as a piece is evolving, hoping to see it take on the qualities of the room or object to which it is related, yet be able to stand firmly on its own.

Cinder Block Drag Drawing

How far will you allow yourself to intervene when carrying out a piece?
This is a great question I am always working on. It varies. When I am beginning a piece, I make a set of initial decisions, which often come directly from the room or site. I want to have the piece operate in a universe, or ecosystem, that is governed/guided by its immediate surroundings. My response to the particularities of the room or object is what initiates the drawing. Sometimes these are air vents, wall or floor measurements, paint texture on the wall, or architectural elements, such as a column (see column-drawing image). I also decide on a material and set of tools, and once the process is in motion, I allow myself to become absorbed in the actions and make changes as I go. Those initial decisions provide a constant tug, and give me something to push against as I work. Sometimes crossing the initial boundaries is just what I need to finish a piece.

Can you talk to a greater extent about how you work with diverse materials and on different surfaces.
Tabletops are a surface I return to often, as are walls, floors, and architectural elements such as columns. Materials I use include paper, graphite, and various dusts and powders. My tools are pencils, spoons, bone folders, power sanders, and other pressure-providing devices as I come across them. I’m working on a piece now, where my hands and a pair of gloves are the tools and materials. I am touching everything in the piece, Garden (ongoing), by Winifred Lutz which is part of the permanent collection at the Mattress Factory. I’ve spent a lot of time in her piece over the past several years, and I’ve always wanted to find a way to respond to it.

How do you decide to document your works? Are the photos more as documentary or do you see them as works of art, too?
I ask myself this all the time. I take photos to document installations, such as cinder-block-drag. I also take a lot of photos as a part of my process. This is in part to document marks that happen around me, but also to just become aware of how the things I notice is always changing. The photos are a physical reminder of (and even a way to measure) that. I have not exhibited my photos at this point. I tend to see them as an ongoing project, documenting marks that I would like to emulate. But my thoughts on this are changing these days and I’m reconsidering this.

What have you been noticing these days?
- torn scraps of shingles in grass
- how much one of my ferns sheds onto the floor
- long elaborate robin songs
- what a cactus looks like when it turns white and dies
- repairs made to retaining walls (Pittsburgh is full of retaining walls)
- how different humidity levels in the air feel in different light
- how woodpeckers twist their heads to dig into/behind tree bark
- crumbling mortar worn away by rainwater
- how I hold water glasses
- the pads of my feet

In Between Mediums: Karen Doten

2009-03-22T09:20:00.000-07:00

Sketch Pages navigates through the atmospheres of Karen Doten.

Who and what philosophies and/or artists are your influences?

I am influenced by landscape painters such as Caspar David Friedrich, as well as pieces from the Nocturne series by James Whistler. But I'm also influenced by contemporary artists such as the painter Wilhelmina Barns-Graham, video artist Graham Gussin, and site specific artist Robert Irwin. These artists are connected philosophically and visually by an interest in how we change the landscape and how the landscape changes us. Their images make me want to express the landscape in a way that I've never been seen before.

How does your process inform your content? What is revealed to you along the way of making a peice?

For me and like many artists the process is essential. Sometimes this process is interrupted by an artists lifestyle such as constrains on studio space or an artists time. In my case the constrains are on my time. When you are a mother of a young child or toddler as is my case, your "own" time becomes non existent and so that "own" time is fought for. When that time has been won it is used with purpose and necessity. This process has created a sense of necessity in my work that I think would never have been there otherwise. It also has made me think more about a piece before I enter the studio - to plan my process. I am starting to love the idea of lingering, and having ideas and images 'linger' in my mind over a very long period of time. Maybe this will come into play someday in the work also.

Can you talk more about the philosophical implications of the white space that surround your "landscapes"?
The white space is a space that forces constraint and condensing of the visual space. I'm interested in created areas within a piece that read as an interpreted notion of space. In previous works this space was solid black, in these pieces they are white.

Why are you drawing the "landscapes", as opposed to painting or photography.
I work in all mediums, I am currently also working in painting and photography. But at the moment the drawings are the more interesting. To me its also a matter of my process and drawing is the easiest and fastest way at the moment. Although, I have always felt that there is something very democratic about drawing. In drawing you don't need any video equipment, software, expensive printers or a press, anyone can do it with limited means.

How important is the tension between illusionist image and abstraction in your work. Can you expand on this?
Very important, the work I am most interested in is work that plays between being something specific and becoming something visual. The shape of a form or the layering of forms can determine the visual depth within a space. This creates a location for the viewer which impacts everything about how a work is read.

What are your goals from one work to another?
I've been out of graduate school for more than ten years now. Its very hard for me to see or find work that really gets inside of my head and soul. But I do try and find that excitement in my work but its always a struggle.

What is in the works now?
I've been interested in old military camouflage patterns from around the world. I would like to somehow incorporated these patterns into the ridgeline forms that have been in my drawings for the past three years. I've also been invited to go with a group of students from Calvin College to visit The Lightning Fields, a site specific work by Walter De Maria. I'm really looking forward to seeing this piece in the flesh and hearing the students perspective on these kinds of works and their role or influence on contemporary art.

The Spacial Drawings of Renee Vander Stelt

2009-03-08T12:29:00.000-07:00

About the Artist

Renee Van der Stelt lives and works in Baltimore, MD. She is currently an artist in residence at Roswell in New Mexico. More on her work can be on http://www.reneevanderstelt.com/ and the following links: http://www.rair.org/MarshellGallery-Vanderstelt.htm

http://www.drawingcenter.org/viewingprogram/

http://www.wpadc.org/resources/directory.html

Sketch Pages talks to Renee about how spaces influence her drawing.

What is the relationship between creating a drawing and time in your work?
Well, I want to put in the studio time and avoid a life of distraction as much as possible. My practice really changed when my daughter was born because it was necessary to be able to pick up and let go of the work quickly without much mental engagement.

Since quitting a day job and being on the RIAR residency, the problem of finding time has deceased so the drawings have changed.

Going slowly from one piece and idea to the next is important because when the work is made at a different pace, it looks radically different. This is an obvious statement but it is important because new ideas arrive while a drawing is in it’s rather labor-intensive progress of being made. I listen to the radio and podcasts when working, and the news has an insidious way of seeping into the work. Helen Molesworth once asked in a studio visit what is contemporary about my work and her question has stuck with me.

Taking the time to understand what is going on in the practice of making the drawing while also analyzing the ideas inherent in the drawing is important to me. This analytic impulse seems normal after growing up in a Dutch immigrant, Calvinist home. Questioning assumptions is what we were taught to do in all areas of life. We were also taught to be civically engaged, and mindful of community, not only of individual rights. The way I was raised seems evident in the work somehow. There is also evident in this tradition, a very strong work ethic, and I have annoyingly found at times a rather high tolerance for mundane work. This is seen in the rather obsessive, repetitive actions behind the current work of pin pricked drawings. There is a meditative aspect in making these recent drawings. In contrast, some of the drawings made in New Mexico – such as the grass drawings created by grass tips moving in the wind took no longer than ten minutes. The quick drawings are just as interesting as the labor-intensive pieces which take over a month to complete. Both practices are engaging in different ways because in the end it helps to keep a balance.

What is a drawing to you?
Drawing is the exploration of line in space. That space can be a sheet of paper if considered in the traditional sense, but what else can that may mean? How does line move into space? This is the central question to the work. It allows the work to appear radically different at times, and yet I feel the connection of all my pieces through this question. I have a goal to keep this question wide open and to persist in looking anew at the question throughout life. There is a clear desire to take this question apart, and look for new avenues of thought through the work whether they are drawings or sculptures. Perhaps this is why the work is so white at the moment – I see it as a stripping down to the basics of paper and line and light and what these elements can do. Sometimes the work is pictorial but this is only a vehicle for a larger theme, which is the way space, line and light work together.

Can you talk about your interest in drawing and space?
Is space the area around us, or local geography, or global space, or outer space, or microscopic or universal space? All these ways to engage the question of space can seem overwhelming. How does line move into a selected/focused space in a way that will create meaning for us? What kind of line is made, and what is the quality of that line? What and how does it describe, or what does it determine as it sits in that space. How does it affect the way we think about the space we inhabit? These are all very interesting questions, and are only a few and rather generalized in nature. They propel the work in a way – and are the backdrop for the drawings or sculptures.

How does a drawing get shaped by a space (and visa versa)?
This is a complex question because it changes with each work. We’d need to see the piece to start with a vantage point. You can talk about this conceptually, in terms of the inherent ideas within the work, or you can talk about how the drawing (or sculpture) literally sits in the space.

How does working in different spaces change your perceptions of drawing?
This is interesting because new spaces raise new questions about how to draw within that particular space. Understanding how space affects the work comes after several months and sometimes years of being in that place. For example, the space in SW New Mexico this year is vast and spare – it allows for more sky and a larger sense of place. It is much like the landscape in NW Iowa where I grew up. Both NM and IA are radically different from Baltimore’s urban space. Living in New Mexico has caused a greater awareness of how space (and quality of light) directly affects thought and this has allowed me to ask rather obvious questions concerning the size of the drawings and how they interact with area as well as the quality of light they emit. But to counter that rather romantic notion of living in this vast space for those people living in urban centers, I was also equally affected by the university campus space while working eight years at UMBC. The campus is very ordered and more intimate in comparison to NM’s deserts. Watching the science faculty work diligently in their labs, and on their research projects, I altered the practice of thinking about how to research and build the drawings. I began to use the library and other resources such as the NASA images. Important friendships were formed so that conversations with instructors in the sciences were used as resources behind the work. Being around science professors, and in a technology driven environment, I became more aware of the weight of the ideas behind the work.

You mentioned that the process of creating a drawing is more important than the final result. Can you expand upon that?
The final result is important, but what I was trying to say is the process of making something is incredibly satisfying because of the research needed before the pieces are begun and as they are made. Expanding the mind in such a way makes me realize how much there is to learn in life, and it is healthy or humbling. Then there is also the great pleasure of working with my hands, and building things. The pieces start to talk back and then adjustments are made, and further research is made, and the whole process is fascinating – over a lifetime – this is more important in the end than the final result (the drawing) shared with others. The development of the mind and an openess to the world is the greater goal.

Can you discuss you interest in topography, mapping, and NASA and how they relate to your work?
About five years ago I decided to return to some of the same questions I had asked years ago about drawing and space, and the process by which drawings are made. Over the course of the summer, I read a book on Eva Hesse, and another on Richard Serra, then finally a book called “What is Drawing” published by Cambridge Press. That fall, Gary Katchadourian asked some Baltimore artists to make 10 copies of handmade books for a book exchange at the Contemporary Museum. I made a rather abstract book with a set of action drawings that included these verbs: fold, hold rolled, prick, lick stick, smoke, stroke, poke. I decided to examine one action – prick (or poke) - carefully to see what would happen. When pricking a paper, a black hole was created. I started reading about black holes and thinking about vast concepts of space, and then slowly the work moved from thinking about outer space to more global and now local space. And the drawings moved into looking at maps because it seemed like such a logical next step. Since that time, the use of the maps has changed, and transformed. I am a bit wary of using them so literally, because so many other artists are working with this topic recently. I suspect it is because of GoogleEarth and new mapping technologies. Still, since I got myself into this, I must work some way out of it step by visual step.

What are you working on for your residency?
Recently, I have been thinking about the maps that show human interaction with land. They examine particular ways in which we think about space, revealing biases and assumptions. They are inherently fictional, so I take liberties in telling the truth. Since being at RAIR, I have worked on layering maps to encourage different perceptions of space. One of the pieces portrays oil and gas pipelines in SW New Mexico and NE Texas from 1987. When driving through this area, the landscape appears to be a vast desert, but when looking at the drawing of pipelines the area appears to be an urban center revealing a great amount of human activity. It leaves the viewer with the thought that there is no space untouched by humans. This map or drawing is juxtaposed with another of the waterways and rivers in New Mexico. Another drawing shows the major electric lines spread throughout the state. All show natural resources with heavy human demand. The news of rising and falling oil prices prompted consideration of these topics with the goal of understanding how local space related to the larger earth. It seemed important to make works that directly relate to people in Roswell.

A solo show of the work just opened at the Roswell Museum. The work moved in three distinct directions. Several of the map-like drawings focused on resources available in the geographic region as outlines above. The desire to understand complex systems of local and global human interaction with natural resources is what lies behind the abstracted drawings. A second direction for the work included a group of large drawings that explore abstracted forms inherent in global projections developed by cartographers. These drawings suggest the globe and use lights to extend their forms into space. Finally, a group of ink drawings reflect a more intimate response to the immediate landscape by ‘mapping’ the overlooked movement of varied grasses in the wind. The grasses, when dipped into ink create the drawings themselves through idiosyncratic movements.

There is a nature preserve outside of Roswell called Bitter Lake and it is the winter home for Sandhill Cranes. The cranes basically make drawings in the sky soI am working with bird migration patterns from the sky. If time permits, I will work with clouds images and think more about perception – a topic I was thinking about a year ago, and left alone as New Mexico took over in my mind. I hope to take lots of pictures before leaving in the summer of ’09. Space has a way of staying in the mind for a while.

Checklist of works:

1 - Installation View (from left to right):
-Longitude/Latitude & Global Continent Lines, 2008, graphite on paper, 64 x 24 x 13”
-Longitude/Latitude & Northern Continent Lines, 2008, graphite on paper, 51 x 42 x 10”
-Moon Craters with Northern/Southern Sky, 2008, ink on hand cut paper, 25 x 27”

2 - Rolled Globe: North of Equator, 2008, paper & halogen light, 7 x 53 x 7”

3 - Black Hole / Iceberg, 2007, Paper, light, shelf, 52 x 62 x 13”

4 – Installation View (from left to right)
-Untitled, 2008, paper, 62 x 82”
-The New Oil: New Mexico Water, 2008, paper, 59 x 50”
-Desert City: New Mexico/Texas Natural Gas & Liquids Pipelines in 1987, 2008, paper, 52 x 45”

5 – The New Oil: New Mexico Water, 2008, paper, 59 x 50”

6 - Hidden Globe, 2008, paper, vellum and graphite, 49 x 57 x 16”

Drawing and Illusionism: Hsin-Hsi Chen

2009-01-24T14:07:00.000-08:00

Sketch Pages talks to Hsin-Hsi Chen about her many shades of gray:

Explain your interest in illusionism and how/why you use drawing as a tool to allude to it.

My idea of using the most basic tools, pencil on paper, is to see how far one medium can take me to different scales, formats and other possibilities. I am fascinated and experienced by how the broken bits of riddled paths in our lives can link to each other and complete us in some ways. From the reality to the surreal and illusionary world, the untouchable and invisible time and space overlap the unpredictable challenges and growth of us. Illusion annexes and extracts these unspeakable thoughts into the real world. I am devoted to unfold my view of life and seek the balance between the existence and illusion through my artwork.

When did you become interested in creating drawings with tones and shades of gray? How do the shades of gray play into your vision as an artist?

Back in 1993, I wanted to present my philosophy of life in a very basic way without color and brilliant decorations. A certain color will give a specific meaning, but the tone of black and white does not limit imagination and space. In this colorless world, we still can see the color and radiant source of life penetrating through the layers of graphite.

Do you work from sources in reality when shading different tones? Where do the different shades and shapes come from in your work?

No, it comes naturally from my experiences and skills when shading different tones. In order to capture the moment of time in space, I create different shades and shapes to make the abstract vision of light, shadow and space solid by freezing these untouchable and fluid elements. My drawing presents the inner of human when the surreal exterior space transforming into the illusionary interior of architecture. The Shadow within reflects its subject as the soul to the human being.

In your Penumbra Series, has the role of illusionism in your work changed since you started working on three-dimensional surfaces?

Yes. In my earlier 3D work, Limpid and Flowing Pneuma series, I have used illusions to distort the real 3D structures. In addition to the previous concept, I add a new idea to the Penumbra series to create true shadows from designed 3D structures, in combination with illusionary shades to generate real and imaginary shade puzzles.

Do you have any new works in the making?

Yes and always. I am continuing in the progress of a series of pencil drawings on wood in different scales of natural and designed forms. The wood material requires huge amount of time and labor to prepare and refine the rough surfaces before I can really start to apply my drawing onto it. It is a total different aspect comparing to the latest Penumbra and Penumbra II series.

About the Artist
Hsin-Hsi Chen has received her MFA from University of Maryland at College Park in USA and BFA from Tunghai University in Taiwan. Chen was awarded The 2007 Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and selected in The Drawing Center Viewing Program in New York. She was the Art Critic/Judge for George Mason University and the 2007 Regional Scholastic Art Competition in Fairfax, VA. Her work is included in the Permanent Art Collection at National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, MD. Chen was selected in 99’ Critics’ Residency Program, Maryland Art Place and Artsites’ 98, Arlington Art Center, and awarded the 1999 cover of Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society in Chicago/Seattle, etc. Her artworks are collected internationally and reviewed by major newspapers and journals including:

The New York Times
The Boston Globe
The Washington Post
The Baltimore Sun
Philadelphia Weekly
The Washington Times
Washington Review
Art & Antiques
Articulate
Home & Design

Hsin-Hsi Chen's artworks have been exhibited at:

The International Museum of Women, San Francisco, CA
The Octagon Museum, Washington, DC
The Katzen Arts Center Museum, Washington, DC
University of Richmond Museum, Richmond, VA
Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington, DC
The United Nations, New York, NY
White Columns, New York, NY
Chuck Levitan Gallery, Soho, New York, NY
Pelham Art Center, Pelham, NY
Korean Embassy, Washington, DC
Troyer Fitzpatrick Lassman Gallery, Washington, DC
C. Grimaldis Gallery, Baltimore, MD
Peng Gallery, Philadelphia, PA
Osuna Art Gallery, Bethesda, MD
Maryland Art Place, Baltimore, MD
Government House, Annapolis, MD
McLean Project for the Arts, McLean, VA
Arlington Arts Center, Arlington, VA
Flint Institute of Arts, Flint, MI
YWCA Women's Art Gallery, Cincinnati, OH
Bedford Gallery, Dean Lesher Regional Center for the Arts, Walnut Creek, CA
Första Galleriet, Helsingborg

For more detail information about Chen's artwork and new book (2008 edition), please visit www.Hsin-Hsi-Chen.com.

Temporality and Drawing: Alexa Brooks

2009-01-24T13:46:00.000-08:00

About the Artist
A longtime resident of Baltimore, Alexa Brooks received a BA from Salve Regina University in Newport, RI and an MFA from the Mount Royal School of Art at the Maryland Institute College of Art. She explores detailed realism through graphite drawings and is also a graphic designer and college art instructor.

Sketch Pages sifts slowly through Alexa's detailed shadows:

How does the act of drawing a subject help you experience the everyday more fully than taking a photo or video?
It’s a way of being present. Today’s world moves so fast and we are constantly connected to technology by phone, computer, or television. It’s not very often that we look around us and notice the details of our surroundings, how the shifting sunlight hits an object, how getting a little closer reveals something new. Photography and video can never capture the full reality of a true experience, the temperature, the sounds, the energy. Drawing is a meditative vehicle for me to escape technology and enjoy what’s tangible.

By creating representational drawings with a high degree of detail, what are you trying to claim from time that making an image technologically cannot?
I’m trying to take advantage of time’s offer. As the time passes I develop a relationship with the subject matter that is personal and influenced by my surroundings. One of my favorite drawings is of a white painted brick wall. I spent many hours staring at that wall and looking at every bump and crevice. I was fascinated with it. I hope that the relationship I had with the bricks is absorbed into the drawing itself and is manifested in what I chose to focus on, what to edit out, how much tonal contrast I used, and so on. That’s completely different from the objectivity and immediacy of technology. (Bricks, 2005, graphite on paper, 28” x 22”)

The gesture is very prevalent in your drawings of everyday subjects, like the bed and the curtains. It seems you are capturing moments in time when you make a drawing. What role does nonpermanance play in your work?

For good or for bad things are always changing. In some of my drawings I’m recording a long, drawn out moment. There’s some risk that that moment will be interrupted, so sometimes my meditative drawing practice can become very tense. It’s worth it to me, however, because although I could easily take a photo, a drawing seems like a better tribute to something that attracts me. One example is Piso 4 which was my friend’s apartment in Madrid. She no longer lives there and it’s too bad because I really liked it. When I was there I always had the feeling that I couldn’t be sure what year it was because of its timelessness. I was really worried the neighbors would be upset with me staring at their doors every afternoon, so I drew very furtively. Ultimately, my visit ended and thus the drawing was finished. (Piso 4, 2008, graphite on paper, 11.25” x 15”)

Can you discuss the relationship of time with your drawing? How does it function as a tool to assist you in conveying your ideas?

I know that for any drawing to be any good whatsoever, I have to be willing to put the time into it. Realism is demanding and I have to be committed. Mediocrity bothers me much more than tedium and for the pieces I’m most happy with I drew with the idea in mind that I would work on the drawing forever. But then, for one reason or another, the drawing was finished due to personal satisfaction, loss of the subject to work from, or something else unavoidable. Even if I’m not sure that I’m going to like the results, I try not to abandon a drawing before I’ve finished it. Among many other attributes, I admire the work ethic of the Spanish artist Antonio López García who takes years to finish a piece. Compared to him, I’m not tenacious at all.

In regards to your work’s relationship to technology, some of your images are cropped, like snapshots. Others are presented centrally. Without reference to their surroundings, they lose their original context and almost become icons. Can you expand upon this?

There’s no denying that I’m influenced by photography and another of my favorite artists is the digital painter Jeremy Blake whose videos I find mesmerizing. I’m also a graphic designer so I’m sure some of that sensibility enters into my fine art. When I place the subject centrally on the page it’s to recognize its symbol or address its metaphor when it’s out of context, such as the Gate. A gate is useful for division or enclosure, but without something to attach to its sides or any sort of space before or after it’s just a relic or refuse. Other pieces, such as Wood, are cropped so much that what they actually are is lost and the subject is only shown for its material and texture. It forces the viewer to let go of the larger picture and to notice the details, yet retains some mystery. Right there is the contrast with the technological world that shows us everything we want to know and more via Google, Facebook, and zoom features on photos. (Gate, 2005, graphite on paper, 30” x 44” / Wood, 2005, graphite on paper, 8.5” x 8.5”)

What leads you from one work to another? Any words on what you are working on now?

I’ve been obsessed with birdcages for a while. I’m going to draw a beautiful vintage birdcage my brother gave to me. A real bird used to live inside and it’s pretty beaten up. I’ll draw it life size and it will probably be reminiscent of the Gate more than the other birdcage drawing I did, the Jaula. (Jaula, 2008, graphite on paper, 13.5” x 17”)

Multi-D Drawing: Steven Stelling

2009-01-24T13:24:00.000-08:00

Sketch Pages flips through the pages of Steve Stelling's "sketchbooks" and leaves nothing behind.

About the Artist
Steve Stelling attended Northern Illinois University and the Ohio State University. His paintings and drawings have been included in exhibitions in Chicago, Cleveland, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Columbus, Ohio. “Castle Castle” is the name of his collaboration with Jeff Sims. Their works focus on music-based multi-media projects. Their songs and video work have been included on compilation CDs, DVDs and have been screened in San Francisco and Columbus, Ohio. Steve lives with his wife Kate Joranson in Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

His work can be found at the Drawing Center's Viewing Program http://www.drawingcenter.org/viewingprogram/share_portfolio.cfm?pf=2896and White Columns Curated Artist Registryhttp://registry.whitecolumns.org/view_artist.php?artist=427

In your artist statement, you write very creatively about what you mentally and physically experience when making marks. After drawing for some time, how do you see/think/feel about what you see after drawing?

In the works made of cut and folded paper (books or otherwise), I have an intuitive-action part and a meditative deliberation part to the process. In both parts of the process I feel like I am a cloud of attention hanging between my eyes and the thing I’m looking at.

I typically begin work by covering a whole bunch of different sheets of paper with color washes, patterns, and gestural attempts at image-making. This is performed more by impulse than plan. It is kind of fast and messy. I feel like the material is carrying me through its time (speed of water as it carries the pigment, speed of light reflecting color back from the surface, speed of air in the drying time); I might be engaged this way for hours and hours but it feels swift. Like traveling by plane all day long into a western time zone and being astonished that it is only 1:30 in the afternoon when you land.

Then comes a time for looking, evaluating, shuffling, and rearranging. Editorial time. Here time feels slow and chunky until something comes together. I try to find combinations where the materials seem to be presenting themselves as just a little more than what they factually are. This can be some-sort of Rorschach-like image gestalt but can also be a buzz of color, or a fortuitous alignment of unrelated images--exquisite corpse-style. In moments when things do come together I’m frozen within the thing that is in front of me, (or maybe I’m abducted from myself?) by what feels like an encounter with stranger who appears vaguely familiar.

Is creative writing important to your process as an artist?

Yes. I’m mostly an image-maker and I feel like images, as general types of things in the world, slide all over the space between pictures and words.

I try and get into that space a lot of different ways. I am taking “writing” to mean anything verbal, including but not limited to making up songs, constant revision of artist statements, explaining myself to imaginary audiences, introducing and playing records to imaginary listeners, etc. All of this verbal concentration becomes its own body of work that is interwoven with all my visual concerns. I recently seemed to reach an understanding with myself after writing an artist statement that sacrificed all attempts at being curator-friendly. This in turn motivated me to write a brief statement for each song on a CDR I recently made for friends. This kind of reflection is not really meant to explain anything. It is, rather, another way of having my attention held a little bit outside myself so I can have a different consciousness to my view.

Among the things I read that could be classified as theory, I am mostly attracted to criticism that does not set out from an objective, expository point of view--where the writing does not describe and build reasons. No thesis, antithesis, synthesis. There are a lot of ways to be responsive without the usual tropes. I like stuff like Charles Olson’s prose, D.H. Lawrence’s Studies in Classic American Literature, and Richard Meltzer’s Aesthetics’ of Rock, Clark Coolidge’s “Now It’s Jazz.” Gertrude Stein’s essay “Composition.” et al.

What role does a “mistake” play in your drawing process? (Is there such a thing?) :

I don’t really know if I have mistakes for what I’m working on now. Most work that begins with an idea is regularly abandoned before it gets very far. This way I can forget about it and use it for something else later. Maybe everything is a mistake that I correct later?

I see mistakes as instances where intellectual materials (ideas, motives, attitudes) do not get to have their way. In this sense, mistakes are real life savers. You see, my idealistic, brush-loading attitude is: “free jazz! Open mind! Zen painter! Immediacy! Kerouac! It is somewhat embarrassing. There is little I can do about this. I have a very culturally conditioned (sub culturally conditioned?) idea about how “improvised” things should come off. It is fortunate for me that I’m challenged by all the sincere discomforts that don’t really cooperate with what I think spontaneous improv ought to be able to yield.

So then I have to find a way to handle, or at least feel comfortable ignoring, what didn’t come out right. It is at this problem-solving point where the things that have conditioned me feel (at least to me) a lot less emphatic.

In my B.F.A. program we were taught to paint over problems: rub, buff scumble, and so on. That kind of ‘tough surface’ makes me more nervous than excited and it looks, at least when I do it, really mannered.

I get a lot more from getting an exacto knife and literally cutting an entire troubled area out of the picture. This enumerates potentials and makes the belabored mess feel really new. There is the newness of the hole itself, the unending varitiey of “fillings” that can then be laid behind the work so as to show through the hole(s). Then there is the removed-mistake scrap, that since it is not related to anything anymore, seems pretty harmless. The world of the work expands when the surface is literally opened.

Can you talk at greater length of your interest in interior/exterior and its influence on your work? How also it is a frustration as an artist?

It has a direct bearing on the type of imagery I use. A sheet of paper pulls temples and gardens onto its surface the way a magnet collects iron shavings and finishing nails. There is such a strong analog between sheets of paper, landscapes, and buildings. They are all objects and spaces all at once…or are objects made of space? Space as thing. It is hard to say exactly because in these things interior and exterior are interchangeable.

I think that at a very primary level, space is our incessant first image. The first thing we encounter on the other side of our skin is space. We know it without having to think about it. Before we even develop an awareness of other people or objects we have an awareness of space as the thing that is not us and is immediately outside us. I’ve not done any significant research into this kind of stuff but it feels accurate, or at least amplified, every time I take off a stocking cap or sunglasses.

As an artist I don’t find the division of interior/exterior frustrating. Just curious. What is maybe frustrating is that what belongs to our subjective experiences seems to be put at an unfair distance—an internal distance. We say things like “whoa that’s deep,” as though we need special gloves, nets, and work crews to harvest it. Don’t you think imagination, daydream, fantasy, and memory, are all very close by? I am in very intimate proximity to stuff like that and I can’t be the only one who has memories that are undeniably closer than a lot of objectively physical things. I’m sure it is just because our language has developed out of a cultural attitude that does not privilege this stuff, but the products of these faculties feel like they have little choice but to be marginalized to a psychological “elsewhere.” Does this make their credibility suspect or am I just sensitive? It is excellent that art takes all this to task.

When did you begin to create artist books with your unfinished drawings?

It started when I had too many leftover false starts and scraps that I did not want to throw away but also did not want to cement into any single artwork.

I also started to see that what really excites me is the shuffling of layers and the subsequent changing of aspects that occur when layers are veiled, unveiled, and moved around. I’ve exhibited work with variable layers tacked to walls, but the arrangements have had to stay put for the duration of the exhibit. The book format seems like the best way for a viewer to experience the temporal stuff that excites me without having a nervous gallery attendant rearranging the works.

How did these artist books filled with your drawing change your perception of seeing and experiencing a drawing? Of composition?

First, it has given me a license to be really relaxed in how things develop. I used to put a lot of pressure on myself to develop respectably-sized, formally unified “bodies” of work. That kind of thinking was directed by the demands of conventional exhibition contexts. You know: maintain a consistent investigation that makes a good portfolio, and when you get a chance, fill up a room. Perhaps because they open and close, maybe because they can be touched--whatever the reason, books are their own, very small exhibition spaces. Now, for a feeling of accomplishment, I don’t need a room full of conceptually tight works. I need only to find a few things that can be brought together from a pile of rough starts on the floor. I can try out bad ideas, or can start without a plan, things can not turn out, etc. and I can easily ‘move on’ with the confidence that, at least a residual fragment of my activity will probably end up folded into a book. I can do anything I want and there is no anxiety about where or when it will fit with a more congenitally ambitious display. From anyone else’s perspective these might not look as erratic as I’m making it sound but the book context allows me to relax and be much more inclusive.

Another thing that I’ve become excited about is realizing that, even in two-dimensional formats, composition is not dependent on adherence to a surface. There is no law saying you can’t just bring things together into common position. This allows me and viewers to play endlessly. Nothing has to remain fixed.

The most exciting head-scratcher is the need to handle both sides of the paper. Because these works don’t have their backs to the wall, I have to work on both sides (and this is, by the way, technically awkward since I use a lot of wet media). It surprised and frustrated me at first when I’d discover a blankish, dirty backside when paging through a book in progress. Now it is becoming one more place to play. I love how impossible it is to see the front and the back at the same time.

Do you consider a viewer a performer in your work when they turn pages back and forth?
How do you see their different actions affecting how they read your artist books full of drawings?

I don’t know. My first impulse is to say no. But I guess it is only because I think there is a difference between a “performer” and a “participant or agent.” I think of my viewers more as participants.

I associate performance with something a lot more public than these books seem to be. These books function on a so-called ‘intimate scale.’ I think of a performer as someone that “brings the work to life.” My hopes are directed the other way around. I’d rather have people light up. I want people to turn the pages because I see it as a way to hold them in the places I love; the places that make my head tingle.’

If that is what you mean by performer then I want viewers to be performers. But not so they can help the work along but so the work can create a bond with them. I know a viewer is “with me” when they begin layering the pages in an order I had not considered. They see the relationships between the parts I’ve compiled and they understand the potentials of play and find their own ways in and amongst it all.

Is drawing a performance for you as well?

I can’t imagine it that way--even if I’m singing as I work I can’t imagine it that way. In the studio I do not have enough of an objective sense of an external me to really feel like I’m performing. In a sense, I’m barely there. Or I come and go depending on what I’m attending to. Because seeing is our way of getting to overlap with what is just outside us, I feel like I’m pulled out of myself and partially absorbed by the things I see. In the case of the studio, a scrap of color, mess of lines, etc. are like a knock at the door—a call that demands a response. Trick or treat? I suppose I feel less like a performer and more like an anxious party host who has to repeatedly go to the threshold to greet the visitors himself. There’d be no bond with what is on the other side if I don’t attend to it myself.

Maybe indulging in the work of others: Books, records, paintings, etc. is like having a butler.

Any new projects in the works?

If you would like to include Castle Castle, feel free!

My wife and I just bought a house and I’m not sure how quickly I’ll get messy studio space set up for full-on painting and drawing. In the meantime I’m working on smaller, cleaner things.

Illustrating my song lyrics with more or less recognizable imagery in a gestural commix/text manner. Probably take the final form of photocopy zine-like booklet.

Another book project I’m working on is a collection observations and reflections in response to structural/architectural peculiarities of buildings I’ve lived in. This is also executed in an image/text commix-like format.

My friend Jeff and I are nearly finished with a collection of songs for our ongoing recording project known as Castle Castle. The thing we’re working on is a 6-song CDR tentatively titled “Gladstone.”

In Between Drawing and Thinking: Marc Dombrosky

2009-01-24T13:00:00.000-08:00

About the Artist:

Marc Dombrosky lives in Tacoma, WA. His work is represented by Platform Gallery, Seattle. Collaborative projects with Shannon Eakins are (slowly) being archived and described on their blog http://tacomafunmachine.blogspot.com/.

Marc talks about how he threads his thoughts:

In your work, what do your materials (discarded notes, sewing thread, etc.) imply?
Each material in my practice responds to the others, hopefully unfolding and layering the experiences of being with the work. The discarded notes potentially imply an absent or invisible or distanced community, people who are contributing to this project without ever knowing their roles in the experience or outcome. Phantom writers. Simultaneously, the papers also imply (to me) a very visible community, as the process is growing organically; over the past few years, friends and acquaintances have begun frequently and repeatedly giving me notes, drawings, and scraps that they too collect from the street and have, in some cases, coveted for years.

When I go into my files and look at the hundreds of scraps of paper lying in wait, I'm confronted with my own feelings of obligation and responsibility to both people I know and people I've never met. Where are all of these writers and how do they lose all of these things? Because of the nature of my practice--looking and finding things incessantly (in a way that Steve Stelling has described as a "perceptual stutter", which I like for so many reasons)--this community with unknown authors and fastidious collectors (I'm obviously among them, with them now) often dictate how and when I work. Conversation, walking, collecting the mail, all of these spaces in my life, are now deeply charged, with new works arriving constantly, unexpectedly, and unendingly.

Likewise, the thread itself implies many things. Thread becomes an implication or signifier of sewing and the work/time/traits associated with that practice, as well as a means of tracking my own progress, showing me how and where I move through an image. The thread also conceals, amplifies, and repeats the content of the original material, and I spend a good amount of time at

Hancock Fabrics matching thread colors to old notes. While I'm covering the original mark on the paper, I'm very concerned with replicating the color and structure of the lines, as if somehow this validates or secures or accurately projects the intended message.

You do consider your work to be drawing?
I've been reticent to fix the meaning or position of the work in terms of an approach (naming or implicating *drawing* over painting for instance, or writing, sculpture, needlework, or whatever), but yes, for me drawing is a vital starting point and practice that sheds a good amount of light on why, where, and how the works can be navigated and understood. Yes, my work is drawing, among other things. I just can't say how much.

Can you discuss the roles of temporality and permanence in your work? How does it inform your concepts?
My embroidering these scraps of paper, cardboard signs, and torn envelopes are attempts—sad, failing attempts—to preserve these cast-off moments and pieces. In thinking about the longevity of the work, I'm curious now about the action of failure as it is tied to temporality. I rip sheets, spill coffee on notes, and lose things that I myself have salvaged. My process seems both rooted in and destined for failure. Likewise, and like an unmotivated sidekick, slowness is deeply important to me. Looking at the last question (see above), it seems vital to add that the embroidery is a way for me to continue drawing in one of the slowest ways I can imagine. Repeating, redrawing, rewriting, replicating, tracing, reworking, removing. Rewarding repeating?

Although this is a lengthy quote, it seems really nice to add here. In her essay "Notes Towards a History of Scaffolding" Susan Mitchell writes (speaking on/as Canaletto, perhaps?),
Looking at my work, you will think I am in love with solidity and permanence, with space. Well, look again. I am in love with time, with the ephemeral. My paintings are filled with flags and penants, with regalias and parades, with laundry lines strung with wash, with puppet shows that come and go. But mainly, my paintings are hung with scaffolds, my buildings encrusted and scabbed with work in progress. I am in love with everything that comes down—with plinths and stalks, with ropes and rigging, with fragile boats and sails and clouds. If you look long enough at my work, everything becomes a scaffold. Those shadows leaning up against a church, the delicate twigs of a tower and belfry—in an hour or two they will be gone. And that night scene at S. Pietro di Castello—night too is a scaffold, and when it comes down, day goes up. What I'd most love to do is fashion an architecture of impermanence. I'll make a cottage out of a flight of stairs and put in broken fencing, casks, and surplus timbers. I'll turn everything into scaffolding—and sign it Canaletto.

The following is an excerpt from David Antin's "A Sad Story" (from Selected Poems: 1963-1973), which I've cited in the past and can't really put my finger on, but seems to veer really closely to the amount of permanence I'm interested in preserving or releasing from the works.
In this house nothing was ever thrown away. Theyd found a mass of doctors prescriptions pinned together in separate sheafs, some from twenty years before. The familys medical history could have been pieced together with the help of these scraps. There was also in the upstairs bedroom a small white cabinet containing vials of patent medicine, boxes of pills both new and old. They stumbled among old trunks, packing cases, pieces of furniture that had been brought up here because they were no more use. In a corner there was a childs highchair with colored knobs on either side of the tray and a rocking horse without tail or mane.

Art for a cause or just consequential?
I've been fighting with this question for the past few days, and still don't have an answer I can totally get behind. In fact, the question (which is great, by the way) opens significant problems into the nature of the work and for me, the nature of drawing as a social practice. So, here are a few thoughts that in re-reading them seem more fragmentary and questioning that I had originally thought or hoped:
What cause? Is *just consequential* enough of a cause? Is there space for both, or is this situation even oppositional? Just consequential may be the best cause for this type of work, or perhaps the overlooked space I've been searching for all along.
My reading (one version, at least) of this question is that by *just consequential*, the suggestion is that the content of the pieces and of the act of embroidering may be not directly (or immediately) linked, or rather that if they are linked, the consequence of the act of embroidering the piece in turn programs and fixes the meaning of that piece, instead of the piece having a certain intrinsic meaning (or cause) that is then amplified with the embroidery. Is this right?
Embroidery places its own heavy (historical and physical) content onto the pieces; what may be mapped onto the works regardless of what they might say may be different than what they're trying to say on their own. A love letter that's been embroidered by hand means something different than a love letter scrawled in pencil, but maybe one is more flawed, maybe not.
With the newer works (cardboard panhandling signs from Seattle, a city where I also teach a course on cultural landscape studies that looks deeply at everyday practices, the built environment, and homeless communities), the notion of art for a cause has become more pressing, pedagogically and personally; people want to know what is being projected (originating) from me, and what is my stake in the discussion. It's an open question.

How do your decide to display individual works? (On wall/on floor)
This, for me, actually answers the last question better than the answer I wrote for the last question. The display of the works is informed by a number of factors; the content of the pieces involved in the installation display and the environment/context of the work being the most vital (or frontal) concerns. For the exhibition at

Portland Art Museum , I proposed an installation of the cardboard and plastic signs (I want to say there were eleven total) where the signs would be placed directly on the floor underneath vitrines belonging to the museum; vitrines that had other, past lives, that had housed and protected other objects, been a part/apart of something else. In using the vitrines, I wanted to activate receptacles that already had fixed missions in the museum, as institutional critique on one level and security for very delicate work on another level, offered simultaneously. Either/or/and. At the same time, amassing the plexiglass boxes in an arrangement that allowed for people to walk through and around the whole installation was designed to reflect itinerant communities, giving the sense of a city, invisible (sorta) and organic. The placement of the signs on the floor also intended to draw a close connection to the locations that they were found. Most of the pieces came from a few block radius of downtown Seattle, near the Denny Bridge.

Can you talk at greater length about your collaborations and where this is leading your ideas?
Collaboration with my wife, Shannon Eakins, is becoming a central aspect of my current work. In the last few years, our projects have led us both to odd, foreign territory, and the works we've been developing together have aspects of both our individual practices but become a hybrid, something entirely different and more complex, more involved, more difficult than anything we have taken on independently. It's amazing, and I'm really proud and excited by the directions we're heading. We just finished a three-part project for Tacoma Art Museum earlier this month, and this year we have some new projects on deck.
For Fulcrum Gallery in Tacoma, we're developing an exhibition for April 2009 titled Phantasm Chasm that will act as a survey (of sorts) of our production to date. The project will be examining some of the gaps, or unclaimed, tattered histories, of Tacoma and will include new works that respond specifically to our time and perceptions of life in the City of Destiny. I've been reading many of the early essays from Murray Morgan , a historian whose writings mined many of the spaces where we're looking and who spent a good amount of time in Tacoma as the bridge tender on the 11th Street Bridge (now named Murray Morgan Bridge), which we can see from our apartment.

Blurring the Boundaries: Beverly Ress

2009-01-10T13:54:00.000-08:00

About the Artist

Beverly Ress lives and works in Silver Spring, MD.

Sketch Pages talks to Beverly about seeing through drawing.

In your statement, you write, "I believe in the power of representational drawing. To draw is to see." Can you expand on how how drawing clarifies and/or directs seeing?

Well, representational drawing requires that you look at whatever it is that you're drawing, in a sustained way. You have to do that in order to see how it's put together, how it exists as a form. And the longer I look at something, as I'm drawing it, the more I realize how slippery it is: if I shift my position slightly, or if the object falls and is re-placed, or if the light changes in any way, then many of the relationships within the object change. And I'm very slow at drawing, so I end up spending hours and hours looking at whatever object it is that I'm working on. I find that when someone talks to me about a bird, for example, I have a sort of mental visual rolodex - I can refer back to how the wing folds, or how much the legs and feet look like the feet of lizards, or whatever. I know it much more specifically for having looked at and drawn it.For someone like me, who is clearly not a nature girl, these encounters are eye opening. Understanding another being in that way is a way of honoring it.

What does the act of drawing reveal about subjects that are near death for you?

Everything I've drawn, with the exception of one or two flowers, has already died. It's become an object. That's a very mysterious transformation - to go from a being to a thing. And often I encounter them kind of in reverse. I'll have just finished drawing a stick, say, and then find myself looking at some tree branches - at their shape, bark texture, the way they connect into the tree - and think back to all the details I learned through drawing the dead stick. So, to answer the question, the time of transition - near death - is not something I feel like I know anything about, or understand anything about. I'm the before-and-after person.

Can you talk about how, in the process of seeing/drawing you end up creating another object (the act of drawing). How is does the object function as a new subject?

Several times I've had the experience of people confusing my drawing with the actual object - as if I'd laid the object on a piece of paper, and that's what they're looking at. And I've also had the experience of showing the objects with the drawings, and found that some people are unable to look at the objects, but easily able to look at the drawings. So, that got me thinking about what happens when someone makes a kind of trompe l'oeil drawing: what are people seeing when they look at that drawing? They are clearly not looking at an object, yet they may feel they are having the experience of looking at an object. So what's the difference, then, between looking at an object, and looking at the simulation of an object? Is there a difference? Does something different happen in our brains? For me, the place to play with that is to make a drawing that's as representational, as much a simulation of reality, as I possibly can, and then break that trompe l'oeil contract by making it clear, visually, that the drawing is a simulation.

In your drawings, how does introducing actual objects, or a third dimension change how you see and experience?

We separate the study of 2D work from the study of 3D work. We separate art & science, too. This makes logical sense, because the concepts associated with these things are processed in different parts of the brain. But the world isn't really separated, i.e., we live in a world that is both 2D & 3D, and we are constantly interacting with both art and science. There are several pockets of the art world where people are actively working on the intersection between art and science. Just over a year ago, I was invited to speak at a conference entitled "Confronting Mortality with Art and Science", in Antwerp, Belgium. (http://www.aeims.com/congress2007/information/Final%20Programme%20Confronting%20Mortality%202007%20_LV_%20%2030%2008%2007.pdf)

They brought together artists, illustrators, scientists, and museum people to discuss the history and current practice of ways in which artists and scientists interact. And I showed some work in New York, at the Organization of Independent Artists, during a city-wide celebration of the 50th anniversary of the discovery of the structure of DNA. For that project I spent some time talking with scientists at NIH. So, I really like that boundary-crossing, bringing together ideas that we don't normally think about together, at least not consciously.And I like thinking about the boundary between 2D and 3D work. What's real? Is an object more real than a drawing? If I put a drawing on a wall, and there's a 3D object connected to the drawing that is moving into the space of the room, and the drawing has cut-outs in it, so that you can see through to the wall.

What's real in that situation? What's the origination point? Where do we stand?

What happens to the original subject that begins your whole drawing process, after you draw it, cut it, reassemble it? How do you differently.Is it important anymore as a subject/object or is it considered a springboard into a piece?

A couple of times I have used the original objects with the drawings in creating installations. I'm having a little bird cast in bronze right now, and I'll use it - somehow - with drawings later. I save all the objects I've drawn. I preserve them before I draw them, by soaking them in alcohol, and then I save them until they go completely decrepit - and sometimes I even hang onto them after they've disintegrated quite a bit.When I first preserve an animal, I feel pretty emotional about it - it's hard. Most recently, a friend gave me a pileated woodpecker that had hit her glass door and died. She had kept it in her freezer for quite a while before she had a chance to give it to me. Clearly it was dead as a doornail. Yet, when I went to submerge it in the alcohol bath, I felt scared - like I was killing something. It had a certain weight, and I could see the eyes so clearly I had a similarly strong reaction to a dead rat I found. I was afraid to look at it - I had a real gross-out reaction. So, with the rat, I had to wait a few months, and gradually de-sensitize myself, before I could look at it intensively enough to draw it. But once I've spent hours drawing it, it does completely become an object to me.

Can you discuss how working on paper is important to you process?

Well, I majored in sculpture at a liberal arts college - Earlham College - and got an MFA in sculpture at MICA, and during that time didn't do much drawing at all. I wasn't terribly interested in drawing, and I was focused on making stuff from my imagination. But after I'd been out of grad school for quite a while, I occasionally found myself drawing things that I could see - and that just really began to interest me more and more. I have always liked paper as a material - I've made sculptural paper pieces - and I love the meditative quality of drawing on a sheet of paper. It's a real challenge, and also a real pleasure.What is new in the studio these days?Currently I'm working on finishing up a permanent outdoor public installation - my first. I'm excited about it. It's got bronze and stoneware and aluminum, and the work all has a trompe l'oeil quality, so I'm hoping that it will engage people as they walk down the street.I received a Pollock-Krasner grant in 2008, so I'm using some of that money to make a new print. I've got the drawing done. Now I just have to figure out how I want to manipulate it to come up with some kind of double image.And I've been thinking a lot about using laser-cutting with my drawings. So far, I've been cutting everything by hand, but I've just started thinking about the precision I could get with laser cutting, and wondering how far I could push that to make interesting juxtapositions in my work. And, oh yeah, I'm drawing.

Multi-D Drawing: Linda Price-Sneddon

2009-01-10T11:15:00.000-08:00

About the Artist

Linda Price-Sneddon is a 1998 graduate of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts Boston Studio Program. She has received grants in support of her installation work from such institutions as the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Berkshire Taconic A.R.T. Fund, the St. Botolph Club, Boston, MA. and Citibank. Linda has shown widely in the New England area and has been artist–in-residence at schools and institutions including MASS MoCA’s Kidspace and The Fuller Craft Museum in Brockton, MA. She has worked in collaboration with children, teens, adults and the homeless. Her drawings can be seen in The Drawing Center’s Artist Registry NY, NY and in the Boston Drawing Project at Carroll and Sons Gallery in Boston, MA.

Image Info.: (from top to bottom) Influx II (dimensions variable); SOS, Work in Progress, (dimensions variable); Influx I (dimensions variable); humaNature , 2007, (dimensions variable); Mountain (Stance) 2008 (dimensions variable).

Even though your very vibrant work is multi-dimensional, it seems very rooted in drawing. What is your personal reason for this? How did drawing become an important medium for you?

I am so happy that you see the work as rooted in drawing. It is, in fact, what I consider my work to be. Drawing.
I have always been the most interested in this practice of drawing. Through drawing, we explore what it means to be alive, to be human. Drawing’s immediacy reveals the idiosyncrasies… the distinctions between individuals. The self is manifest in drawing. As Joseph Bueys said “Drawing is Thinking…” and as such, it is one of the most personal of acts.

Can you discuss you interest in drawing and creating your work with 2D and 3D materials? How does this carry out your concepts in your work?

I began this journey as an oil painter, but was always left somewhat irritated that a painting had to resolve to a final statement or “answer”. Why should this be when change is the only constant?!
I began to play around with my palette and the dried paints. In fact, much to my chagrin at the time, I often received more compliments and interest in my palette and the associated detritus than in the painting.

I think that my inclination to create wall drawings with 2D and 3D materials goes back, like most things, to the early childhood years, between ages 3-6 or so. As a kid, I spent hours in a backyard sandbox; altering the terrain and using found materials to create drawings and environments in the sand. The mutability and impermanence of the sandbox were powerful influences on my creative will.

I believe that these early experiences caused me to look for materials that would give me flexibility, materials with which I could quickly respond to the given moment and intention. I sought materials that could be re-used and recycled. I was looking for a cast of characters, if you will, that could accompany me from gig to gig. I began to assemble a toolbox of materials, a kind of” table of elements” that could provide line, form, volume and texture to an ever evolving body of work.

The materials that I’ve chosen, tape, pipe cleaners, twine, pompoms, clay, are tactile elements. I think that this tactile quality, along with their immediacy, feeds the act of improvisation and elevates the sense of “present-ness” in the work and as I work.

I also think that these elements allow for chance to enter into the work. I was interested in reading Ann Tarantino’s comments about the importance of chance in her work, and the dance that unfolds between control and chance. This is where the real stuff happens! A game of catch and release, and catch again, with our intention.

The images you create with your materials relate to the landscape, literally and figuratively. Can you speak more specifically how the landscape became a metaphor in your work? How do your materials relate to it on different levels?

I have always been attached to the landscape. Again, as a child, spending countless hours running in the woods and rolling down hills. Dragging my fingers through the dirt and over the scaly backs of trees…lying on my back in the grass and jumping between the clouds in the sky.
Oh, I am getting dangerously close to stepping up on my soapbox and preaching the scripture of “play.” It is absolutely essential that you let your children play outside as often as possible and using force, if necessary, but I will restrain…

I was trained as a plein air landscape painter at the Lyme Academy of Fine Arts in Old Lyme, CT., and it was there that my eyes opened to similarities of form across orders of magnitude… from the landscape to the microscope. The elegance and economy of the landscape, landscape as measure of time and record of this planet’s elemental forces energize the work in the studio. The landscape as home to that which is other than human and where through attention and observation, we can learn to become more fully human.

The materials that I use are just my way of putting a stick in the dirt and scratching out glyphs. I guess also that the vibrancy and graphic quality of my chosen materials convey my feelings of life’s vibrancy and clarity. Their capacity for change mimics the changing landscape. The impermanence of my wall drawing is metaphor for the impermanence of experience… of moments…of life…of our life.

When you create a site-specific installation, what are your goals when you respond to a space with your materials and concepts?

My work is always designed/adapted to the space(s) where it will be shown.
I seek to find ways to exploit the most interesting features of a given site. My best installations have occurred in spaces that I have chosen because of a strong response to the site. I have done several installations that I consider to be “infestations” of the space, that look for opportunistic synergies of materials with the gallery environment.

My other objective is to be very conscious of the “footprint” made on the gallery space. Part of this may just be a kind of pragmatism, but I enjoy working with materials that are easily reversible, that can be recycled and re-employed in new projects and that don’t require the space to conform to me and my needs. It’s part of the overall ethics of my work.

Can you talk about your interest in using modular materials and in creating site-specific installations? How do your materials and arrangements change when they move from one space to another?

I’m pretty sure that I have never shown the same piece twice. My husband sometimes teases me for this, and legitimately so… it’s a lot of work to always feel the need to move forward and on to the next. This is not to say that my themes do not repeat, and yes, I reuse images and constructions from past installations. But the notion of re-doing a piece does not even seem possible to me. Each incarnation is a new iteration, a new evolution of the work. And, again, because I am interested in site-specificity, each site calls out for a new response. The events that occur in the installation process generate a unique outcome.

In what ways do your concepts and ideas of how to “draw” shift and evolve when you work in different gallery spaces?

With each new exhibition opportunity, I spend about an hour or so at the site exploring, crawling over the space, and looking for features that I might utilize or exploit. I then take measurements of all features of the site and begin introducing ideas into scaled drawings of the space. By the time I get into the space, I know it pretty well, and there is usually no need to refer to the drawings again. The actual space now dictates the final response. And, not only the space, but also the interactions that occur with gallery personnel, students, custodians, and visitors impact my response as I work.

These factors coupled with the modularity of my materials lead to a kind of organic improvisation. At it’s best, the experience can be likened to the magic that occurs between a jazz combo and an attentive audience in an intimate club setting. The musicians arrive on the stage with their instruments and a repertoire of jazz standards, but where the music goes from there on any particular night is a product of the moment.

Can you discuss your use of color and why it is important to your work?
Well, first is the visceral response…. I just love color. Always have. My earliest memories, one in particular as early as the age of 1-½ yrs., are of color, pure color.
Second, is the contrarians response. I am compelled to take a stand against western culture’s equation of color with low culture… vulgarity…that somehow a black-white-gray aesthetic is pure and of a higher plane.
I use color in celebration of the colors of life, and of death, for that matter. I also really like to remind people that in other cultures, different colors have very different meanings from those in western culture. For example, in India, white is the color of mourning.

What is happening in your work currently?
I have been integrating video projection into my wall drawing. This comes with some new challenges, but very much satisfies my desire to have a work that evolves in front of the viewer. The biggest challenges are the transition between the moving image and the static wall drawing and managing the content of the projection so that too many images do not pull the viewer in too many different directions. That said I am really psyched to be working this out. It has been an objective of mine for some time.

Also, I have finally found the combination of materials that brings painting and drawing closer together for me so that I achieve the kind of immediacy and control that I have long desired. I am working primarily with Flashe, a heavily pigmented matte vinyl paint, and dip pen and ink. In addition to the lush black of India ink, there is a wide palette of acrylic inks to satisfy my penchant for chroma. There are even seductive pearlescents!

Wish me luck on this journey and thanks for the opportunity to talk about my work!

To contact Linda:

Linda Price-Sneddon
535 Albany St., #3D
Boston, MA 02118
linda@pricesneddon.com

Drawing Systems: Steven Wise's Process Works

2009-01-03T09:42:00.000-08:00

About the Artist

Steven Wise lives and works in Arkansas.

Image Info(from top to bottom): P25-Isabot11, Acrylic and pen on illustration board, 14 x 14 inches, 2005; P51-untitled,ink, acrylic, colored pencil on paper, 14 x 14 inches, 2007; P62-Angry Zeus, Collage with gouache on paper, 11 1/2 x 9 inches, 2008; P63-Cloudy, Gouache, ink on paper, 11 1/2 x 9 inches, 2008

Sketch Pages talks to Steven about his process and keeping it real.

It is very interesting how your prescribed process leads the way in your work. Who and what (philosophies) are your influences?
I choose to avoid theories of meaning because I believe art should not be controlled by ideological concerns. I emphasize process as a strategy of making art in order to channel my artistic energy towards making art (the work) as opposed to critiquing art (theory). The artists and thinkers who have most shaped my way of thinking would be Jasper Johns, Richard Tuttle, Marcel Duchamp, and Gerhard Richter.

Can you describe a work process for a suite of alphabet categorized images that you create.
I have created many works on paper and ten large scale paintings that I have called Isabot. The paintings are a suite of paintings that are named by the letter, I, and a sequential number. I01, I02... The Isabots on paper are labeled P## - Isabot #. P indicates any work on paper, and Isabot indicates its relationship to the painted suite. The process of making an Isabot is related to watching my daughter Isabelle draw when she was a toddler. She seemed to produce drawings like a machine, like a robot. She knew how to create two movements. A dot and a straight line. The simplicity of the designs seemed liberating to me. So , I created my own working method that begins by drawing in a sketch pad. I make many small shapes by connecting dots to lines. The shapes are most often 3 or 5 sided shapes. Each smaller shape is connected to several small shapes that create a new form. In some cases, these forms remind of something in the real world, and I allow the form to look more like this shape through revisions. The sketches are redrawn. Colors are created by making a palette of colors usually 4 or 5 that I premix and harmonize according to value and intensity. When I am satisfied with my color choices and new sketches, I begin the painting. Changes to the design and color often occur during the process of painting.

The images in your work are results of controlled conditions. Does working this way, in which your ideas and biases are eliminated, help you see and experience art making more truthfully?
By eliminating non-pictorial concerns such as narrative or ideological messages, I believe that I am able to respond more skillfully to texture, form, shape, and color.

By being a consequence of your drawing process, your images become arbitrary and in and of themselves, almost meaningless. How important is the physical work to you. Do you see pieces as temporary or permanent work to keep?
The paintings are created to last because photographs do not adequately reveal the process of their creation. Art work is meant to be seen in person. For this reason, I see my works as permanent constructions.

Does one image ever become a favorite. If this happens how do you separate from it and stay true to your systems of working?
All of my images have more meaning when they are seen in groups of related works. The work seems to create a dialogue between pictures. For this reason, I don't believe that one work is better than another. My colleagues, collectors, and friends certainly have favorites. Most often their opinions are very different which confirms my belief that a suite of images is my final product as opposed to individual works.

How do (or can) parameters of control end up changing as you keep creating your works until age 56?
Parameters for the paintings change as I complete individual pictures. In some cases, I will change the rules of my process in midstream as long as the rules are consistent with past and future works. I avoid assigning a final letter until the suite of images is complete.

How does it feel to leave your preconceptions of art and your ego aside and work continuously under a system. Do you ever want to rebel against your own art?
My goal is to avoid making decisions based on desires to create meaning related to my personal politics and feelings.

How has your process driven way of working caused you look at images. Does some art just feel to biased form the artist?
Most of the time, I am completely unaffected by political art. I may appreciate the beauty of works that support ideological messages, but I am not convinced that these artists are making art. The last great political painter was Manet. The last great political work of art was Guernica. I think that Chris Burden makes fascinating work. Even though his work is created to stir political emotions, his art work is very process oriented. His work may be the best example of process art that creates social meaning.

What letter are you working with now?
I am making paintings that create a contrast in scale and pattern. The most often used color is yellow, and the most often used shape is a square. I have not yet determined the final rules. I am probably assigning these works the letter Y for yellow.

Contact Steven Wise by email: stevenfwise@yahoo.com
Personal website: http://www.alphabetaprojects.com

Responsive Drawings: Chris Nau's Relief Works

2008-12-30T08:15:00.001-08:00

Image Info. from top to bottom: Inhabitat XVI, 2008, 96" x 192", graphite and cuts on drywall; Inhabitat XVI (Detail); Inhabitat XVI (Detail); Inhabitat XVI (Detail); Inhabitat XVI Installation Shot

About the Artist
Born 1973, Elgin, Illinois
Chris Nau will be creating drawings at the Drawing Center and Hunter College in 2009. See more on his work at http://www.chrisnau.com

Cutters is at Hunter College
January 29-March 14 2009
Opening reception: Thursday January 29, 5:30-7:30pm
http://www.hunter.cuny.edu/art/galleries/index.htm

Apparently Invisible is at The Drawing Center
February 20-March 28, 2009
Opening Reception: Thursday, February 19, 6-8pm
http://www.drawingcenter.org/exh_upcoming.cfm?exh=553

SketchPages talks to Chris Nau about the challenges and discoveries made when drawing (and cutting) on a wall.

Can you describe the origins and your approach to creating relief drawings on a wall?
My Inhabitat wall-cut drawings are drawn directly onto and cut into a gallery’s wall. At the close of the show the piece is torn down. Each piece is built on site over the course of 4-7 days. I have been working on this series since 2001, beginning with the first piece that was built as a part of my graduate thesis exhibition at Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Working with ideas of paradox and self-destruction, the pieces are graphite drawings with jigsaw-incised lines that ripple and crumble within the wall.

How much of the work is improvised?
In earlier Inhabitat pieces I would make the work entirely on site beginning with a pencil drawing that was reworked directly on the wall. In more recent versions, like Inhabitat XVI I began with some projections of line drawings that were pulled directly from forms in my paintings. Since my paintings are begun with sculptures that I build and then paint from observation, there is a nice full-circle from 3D to 2D and then back to 3D again in these Inhabitat wall-cut drawings.

Can you be more specific about your interest in merging opposites between 2D and 3D?
In this statement I was referring to the well-known opposition between truth and fiction in painting, or reality and illusion. It’s an issue with most 2D work, from photography to printmaking. I was a painting restorer for a time, and physical damage to paintings causes the overall illusion of space and depth to collapse. A painting of a landscape that has a whole punched through it is read more like an object than a window into a fictional space. I was intrigued by this conflict, and this became a major feature of my work. The Inhabitat series sprang from a question of this 2D/3D contradiction, but from this standpoint of damage and destruction, which immediately sets up an intriguing opposition to what is constructed or built. In a way these drawings are like parasites that paradoxically destroy the host that feeds them. My drawings need the wall for support, but the cutting destroys it as it expands, ultimately weakening it to the point that the drawing can never be moved and must be destroyed after the close of the exhibition. In addition, the cut lines and the tilted and shifting pieces of the drawing are sculptural, and they contradict the illusion of the flat, drawn lines.

How are you led from one mark to the other, and how were you led to relief work?
The drawings evolve according to the space on the wall they occupy. My decisions are formal and intuitive. I also work to make an specific, yet ambiguous form that could be either animal or machine and have its “head” at either or both ends. The relief evolved out of the process of removing and replacing the pieces. I was intrigued by the role of light and shadow in the pieces, and some Inhabitat drawings have more emphasis on this and less emphasis on the drawn lines. This is a departure from the original 2D/3D conflict, but I like how this conveys a more tangible sense of emergence.

References to animals, machines and religious icons?
The animals and machines always influence the forms of my drawings (and paintings). Abstraction allows me to make forms that are not burdened by narrow references, but looking at animal forms and mechanical forms as jumping off points for abstraction helps me avoid too much gesture or decorative vagueness that can weaken the punch of abstract imagery. I need to make forms that look like they can participate in something, affect something, move, attack, float, fly, drive or swim. It’s also important in terms of content because, while I have little interest in overtly referencing concepts or issues by direct representation, it is still very important for those things to be part of the work. So while you see something unknown and maybe even unfamiliar, the work is packed with contemporary references to conflict, contradiction and paradox. The analogy about parasite and host was not just off the cuff. Our need for energy is destroying ecosystems. Animals are being raised, processed and killed by machines. Robots function for humans. Cities are taking over the forest. All of this conflict informs my abstractions, and I seek unfamiliar, improbable mergers of the conflicting elements just as we need to some ingenuity to solve our environmental conflicts. As for the icons- that is more an issue of presentation and adoration. Portraits, symbols, narratives and relics are presented in such a way that even the most banal or unknown objects can be embellished to the point that anyone can comprehend the presence of certain significance. This notion is useful to me since my work is about making unknown forms significant. Damage and time are also a factor imbuing icons and relics with a sense of importance.

Do you consider lighting a material as you draw?
Yes, lighting is very important, especially when the pieces of drywall begin to tilt and pop. When I am drawing with pencil I begin thinking about it, but the final decisions come after the lights are set, during the process of physically constructing the piece in the wall.

Plans for Hunter College and Drawing Center?
Installing these Inhabitat pieces is very challenging, not only because of the work and mess involved, but they are very time consuming and usually I am given a very narrow block of time to accomplish the piece. Experimenting with completely new ideas during this short time slot would be extremely stressful, so I plan to continue with the vein of work that I have been producing so far with these wall-cut drawings. However, I am ready for some new directions with this type of work. I need to bring the Inhabitat series to a close since I recently learned of an artist who already used this title for her work in the 70’s. The piece at Hunter will be a continuation of the Inhabitat series. The Drawing Center piece will also follow this, but there is an architectural interruption (a column) that bisects the wall I am to work on. Dealing with this interruption will be challenging, but the interaction of an element that is not the wall may be just the challenge I need to branch out into some new work. We will see.

Drawing as Process: Barry Assed

2008-12-29T10:10:00.000-08:00

Sketch Pages talks to Barry Assed of Pennsylvania about his drawing process and what he discovers about life along the way.

Images from top to bottom: Dance-7 (2007); Dance Collage-7 (2007); Dance-8 (2008); Dance Collage-8 (2008), Demo-1; Demo-2; Demo-3

Artist Statement

It is a funny thing what the brain will do with memories and how it will treasure them and finally bring them into odd juxtapositions with other things, as though it wanted to make a design, or get some meaning out of them, whether you want it to or not, or even see it.
--Loren Eiseley

I am intrigued with making meaning out of the unrelated and chaotic and turning personal experience into a mark, shape or gesture. The shapes and edges I draw are combined with abstract mark making to expand upon the arbitrary. Using pieces of torn paper as stencils I create images that suggest an abstract puzzle whose pieces are overlapped and misplaced. The continuity in these images lays in the repeated shapes which are a metaphor for the mundane or random event and our attempts to instill a kind of meaning to it.

About the Artist
Barry Assed was born in Northampton, Pennsylvania and studied drawing and sculpture at Kutztown University. In addition he studied under Al Erdosy and Howard Greenberg at the Baum School of Art in Allentown. He currently resides in Whitehall, Pennsylvania.

Barry Assed’s work draws from a strong foundation in drawing and sculpture and has been exhibited in solo and group shows in galleries and museums throughout the mid-Atlantic region, including the Allentown Art Museum in Allentown, Pennsylvania and the Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, VA. One of his drawings is in the permanent collection of the Muscarelle Museum. Also, his work is included the slide registry of The Drawing Center in New York.

The Interview:

Can you talk at a greater length about your work process and how you came to use stencils to create an “abstract puzzle?”
I became intrigued by the stenciled hand prints on the walls of the ancient cave paintings. I wanted to elaborate on these simple, personal gestures in an abstract way.

In the early work I tore a sheet of paper into several pieces and then used the pieces to create a structure of overlapping shapes and edges. Later, I put more limits on myself and decided to tear just one shape from a sheet and repeat it four times using non-relational composition which is suggested by symmetry and repetition.

Which comes first for you as you work, your process or ideas. Does your process inadvertently give you ideas?
Well, initially the idea came first, but when I’m working the process and idea seem to take turns or switch places. A series of drawings are created with the same process. Ideas come in the form of trying different mediums or combinations of mediums.

Can you talk about the role of the image/gesture/mark and how it became important to your work.
I make decisions whether or not the mark or image will be more expressive or more subtle, so my technique will adjust accordingly.

It seems that you work within an open system that involves some control and then losing control. Is this important to your discovery process as you work (having and losing control)?
Yes, the control comes from knowing the compositional structure of the drawing or painting. I know I will have one shape repeated four times, but control is somewhat lost in the process of tearing the paper. As I’m tearing the paper it goes in and out of control. It’s important to the extent that I never know what new ideas a torn shape will give me.

In your work, you discuss how repeated shapes, form and continuity in your work are a “metaphor for the chaotic or random event and our attempts to instill a kind of meaning to it.” How does your process reveal these ideas to you at first when you are working. How do you avoid predictability from one work to another?
The continuity I’m thinking of pertains to the same process I use to construct the drawing. I never know quite what the shapes will look like when I begin tearing the paper, so the shapes are randomly formed. Sometimes the shapes suggest a recognizable image similar to the act of staring at the clouds and seeing a “duck” or “face.” (con't. under image)

It’s in our nature to make meaning out of anything; even randomly torn pieces of paper. It is this dichotomy of the inconsequentially torn paper that means nothing per say and our effort to match it to something we know.

What are you working on now?
I am incorporating grids inside and outside of the shapes.

Demonstration 1, 2, and 3 images:

Blurring the Boundaries: Ann Taratino's Works on Paper

2008-12-21T13:30:00.000-08:00

Sketch Pages chats with Ann Tarantino on how she blurs the boundaries between drawing and painting in her process driven works.

About the Artist

Ann Tarantino works on paper and on canvas, using ink and other water-based media. She has an MFA from Pennsylvania State University and a BA from Brown University. Her work has been shown in galleries and institutions across the country. Most recently, she has collaborated with Kate McGraw for an exhibition of works at Curator's Office in Washington, DC. In the spring of 2009, she will partner with McGraw again on a large-scale wall drawing and video installation at Flashpoint, also in Washington.and now for the questions...

Image Info. from top to bottom: Brazil (try again), 2008, ink an gouache on paper, 30 x 22;

Brazil (stripes), 2008, ink an gouache on paper, 18 x 24; Brazil (blue explosion), 2008, ink an gouache on paper, 24 x 18

Can you describe your work process in creating your recent works on paper?
Recently my work has become increasingly process-based. I've been using my breath for the past few years as a mark-making tool, using it to blow ink and other water-based media through straws. I've also recently started working with other gestural and performative techniques in the last couple years or so--throwing ink at the paper or canvas, putting the paper on the floor and allowing ink or paint to drip onto it, and so forth. At first this felt really out of control and I kind of liked that I couldn't determine what the outcome would be. But the more I get into the process I realize that there is a technique to it, and that I have more control than it might seem, although the element of chance is always there. There are certain motions or movements that I can repeat to create certain marks or images; they're different each time, but spring from the same place and bear the same imprint. I used to kind of separate things into parts--the gestural, "out of control" part and then they tighter, more controlled part of working back into the images with paint and more ink--but now I sometimes do both simultaneously, or work back into things, such that there are a lot of layers and different stages of the process.

Your work is full of surprising contradictions. Can you discuss how control and noncontrol have become important in carrying out your concepts.
I tend to be a ruthless editor, at least when my own work is concerned, so the experience of working with chance is humbling for me. I've had to force myself to keep things around, just to stick the "reject" pieces in a drawer of my flat file and promise myself not to look at them and come back to them later. I think that when I work back into the images, I am responding to what was made through a chance-based process (even with the small element of control that I describe above), so in a way I feel the image itself is deciding what it needs to become a finished piece. And the drawing/painting line is a fuzzy one for me. I've been engaged in a continual project of trying to make a drawing on canvas, and I'm realizing now that maybe it doesn't really matter. Sometimes I'm tempted to dispense with canvas altogether and just work on paper.

The subjects on paper exist somewhere between pure gestures and images. This also references both drawing and painting. How do you strike that balance as you work?
I've never had an interest in representation, at least in my own work. I'm most interested in images that hover between representation and abstraction, and this is where I hope my work lies. The gestural act of making the images is important, but I hope it references other things, that exist in the world already or that feel familiar somehow, like something a viewer might remember from a dream.

Can you talk about how Western and Eastern influences on your ideas and drawings/paintings?
I have a longtime interest in how the body experiences and interacts with space and that has led to an interest in landscape and landscape painting, both Eastern and Western. From 2004-2006 I lived in Kyoto, Japan, where I experienced not only a completely different culture but also an entirely different way of thinking about space (social, personal, public, etc.), and this had a real influence on my work. In Kyoto we lived in the northeastern hills of the city near Mount Hiei, known for its "marathon monks" and their endurance running through the mountains near our home. I was really struck by this idea of physical sacrifice, repetition, and the attainment of spirituality through physical exertion, and this is when I started to really explore working with my breath as a mark-making tool.

Along with your personal works, you also do collaborative drawing with Kate McGraw. (This will be discussed more indepthly in another interview.) What are the parallels in your drawing/painting process with your personal work and collaborative?
With Kate I've been forced to give up some of the control I cultivate in my individual work, and that's been great for me. She is a wonderful and fearless maker who never second-guesses herself, and I've learned from her. There are a lot of formal and aesthetic links in my own work and the collaboration--I still tend toward small bits of color used economically for maximum impact, and little surprises for the viewer, like small threads of ink underneath Kate's graphite marks, for example. Process-wise, we respond to one another as we go, so this is another change in working style, as there is a whole other audience/editor/artist involved and we go back and forth and share opinions and we don't always agree. But we keep going, and that's what's made the whole project with Kate so great, is that there is always more to do and we are always excited about doing it.

In regards to your personal work are there any new developments? Do you see chance playing greater role or control?
Right now I'm still wrestling with the drawing/painting bit, when I'm on my own, and working toward the Flashpoint project, when I'm with Kate. And I have a new idea for a drawing-based installation project that I've just started thinking about. I suppose I am starting to think more about installation and projects as opposed to individual pieces, so my work might go toward that direction for awhile. As for the chance vs. control question I am as eager as anyone to find out.

Upcoming: Blurring Boundaries

2008-11-25T16:07:00.000-08:00

In the coming weeks, Sketchpages will feature interviews with artists who blur the boundaries of drawing with other mediums, like painting and sculpture.