Monday, December 29, 2008

The wave came crashing down

If you read the post below this one you will remember the giant snow wave thaqt was coming off of my studio roof.
Well it came.

All of the 24" deepsnow on the 30x80 foot half of the steep metal roof came down at once. Neighbors say they heard it happen at about 9pm on christmas day. It was 4800 square feet of heavy wet snow.

It obliterated the fence next to my building.

You cant really see the fence well on the photo from the previous blog but it was a 6 foot cedar fence dutifully keeping the border safe.

Here is a photo of the damage.

Wednesday, December 24, 2008

Merry Christmas

Despite the weather things are perking along in my studio. The two large works for the hospital are coming out great so far. I cut the first panel of the insight project yesterday and it looks great. The more time I spend with that piece the more I love it. I love seeing the silhouettes of the students and teachers- they are so real and expressive. This type of thing is the great aspect of a school/artist residency; there is lots of room for the piece to grow on its own. I love it. We'll see how it comes out, but at the moment it might be my favorite piece of art that I have done.

When I see the outlines I recognize alot of the people either from knowing them or from remembering the day I took their photo.

Here is a photo of the piece on my cutting table.





The weather is really really nasty and is expected to stay that way for a while with more storms coming off of the pacific. There has been this cool wave of snow that has slowly been coming off the roof of my studio building. The roof is metal and the snow has been slowly sliding down. I cant believe that it hasn't broken off yet as the lowest part is about 4 feet from the roof edge. here's a photo:






Let there be peace on earth!

Friday, December 19, 2008

Time Reflection

Here is a small project that I have started recently. Not a major sculpture but a fun and creative piece. It is a bathroom mirror with a countdown timer built into it.




According to the CIA the average lifespan for men in this country is 77.5 years or so. (Why does the CIA track that?)

I have just turned 40- so I figure that I should set the clock to countdown for 37.5 years.

Why a bathroom mirror? That is where we come face to face with our mortality and ageing. It is where we notice wrinkles, gray hair, etc. Most often we are alone at the moment when we look into it. It seems like the right place.

For the project I cut many small holes in the mirror and inserted the LEDs.

Soon I hope to mount the mirror in the case and hang it in the shared bathroom of the studio.

I have been noticing that one theme in my work is time. It seems like time wouldn't be a big part of sculpture but it is huge for me. I am very interested in vessels that change the relationship of time and space for us all. I am also very interested in time capsules and also projects like webcams that demonstrate the co-incidence (in the most literal meaning of the word) of time and events at different locations.

Once I came to the conclusion that this was a really important thread for my work I rushed to rewrite my artist statement. I think I overdid it a bit. These things are always a work in progress.

THe updates on my website are coming very soon- lots of new work.

Stay tuned.

Wednesday, December 17, 2008

frightful x 2

Well the weather outside is frightful.
It really is. Highs in the 20s today and lots of snow.

I was to have some collectors come out to look at a piece but they canceled. Apparently my art is not worth risking their lives for. Can you believe that?

Other news of fright:
The providence Hood river hospital gave me the thumbs down on a version of a large sculptural piece for the new lobby. The work is a waterjet cut corian mosaic. Here is a copy of the proof:



(I don't know why it turned from green and brown to green and blue when I uploaded it here. It still looks OK.)

For this piece I Hired Siv Lavell to help with the illustration.

Can you guess what the hospital doesn't like? Yep that's right- the boob and the hip. "Too sensual" was the word from the top. There was also a comment that her right hand looked like it was fondling her breast. I don't agree with that- I think her hand is on her heart- but even if it was on her breast one could argue that she was doing a self breast exam. Wouldn't that something the hospital would condone? See art can save lives.

The figure of the woman loosely comes from "the birth of Venus" by Botticelli. I don't think there is anything overly sensual about it.

This brings up a point that all artist are (or should be) sensitive to- that is censure of the artistic vision. Several artist friends that I have talked too recommended digging in/ drawing a line and making it a big deal. Another strategy would have been to make the piece and let the controversy happen on the walls of the hospital and the reap the press that comes from the dust-up.

Not my style.

In this case I started this piece by working with students from The Dalles High School. This piece was never one of pure artistic expression on my part- That can't really happen with the kind of art program that the hospital is running. They wanted the plan out ahead of everything that included the collaboration of students. More of a design piece than fine art but as a trained designer I am not one to turn my nose up.

So, how to move forward? I will redesign the ribbons along with Siv to wrap around the woman's form and hide the offending parts. I don't think that it will hurt the work except for the cost and time of redesign which the hospital will cover.

The working name of this piece is "Burning Spirit". It is moving along. It is always a bit of a high wire act to work in a new method and material in a high profile piece of work. I have some professional help in the way of Siv and David Adams of Adams Construction in The Dalles.
It is still a bit scary though with such a short timeline.

The other big project I am working on at the moment is another sculpture for the hospital. It is two large panels that will be installed in the new imaging center.

Here is an early concept rendering of one panel:




Here is selected parts of the proposal

I just looked in my steel inventory and I am several sheets low. I guess that I will have to drive to portland over the next week to get more in order to finish the work. Hopefully the weather will be nicer.

Tuesday, December 16, 2008

A sound becomes a Song

The concept and commitment of creativity has been on my mind quite a bit recently. Being an artists seems harder than many "professions" as there is no obvious ladder or path to follow. Sure we all know of very famous artists- but how does one get from the their first work to there? it is not really reproduceable.

There are several paths to follow in art that seem obvious: one is the "make it in the studio and sell it at the craft fair", the other is the "create a body of work and shop it to galleries".

I have been all over the place with my art for the past few years in these different modalities and I feel like I have a better vision now of where I am naturally headed. Not that I know what the destination looks like; I just have a better idea of what the path in front of me should look like.

The idea of creating art for sale is a terrible idea and a disservice to the path of creativity. It seems a dream for an artist like myself to be able to create something and have it leave the studio and disappear into the world and I receive the money for it. After all- the work is not so special to me once it is done as it is the manifestation of a creative process and once that process concludes I am done with it.

The problem lies with the feedback loop of sales. Until an artist reaches a certain point in his career where his reputation overshadows all else, people want to buy the work based on the merits of the work- and rightly so.. I could create work just for the purpose of selling and if I did that my work would be different than it is today. I have had several pieces that are fantastic sellers and of course the temptation is to leave the path of pure creativity to make more of these. Several pieces that I recognized were accessibly beautiful I made into a series and the sales of those works rolls into materials for less accessible works that are on my path.

I am now entering a time of inquiry where I am working with materials that I don't think will be popular sellers but I am very interested in the dialog that the work will explore. I am designing a set of sculptures made of 1/2 inch thick neoprene rubber. This is not a foam or neoprene fabric like wet suit material but a heavy and thick rubber used for making industrial gaskets in power plants and paper mills.

I have been building structures and frames now for a long time and building them in steel and wood creates a rigid and pathway of strength in the work. I am continuing to work with these frameworks forms but instead will use soft and flexible materials that will deform to some point under the weight of the work.

I guess that these pieces are more museum works than gallery and I am assuming that someday there will be a point where I can exhibit them and the will be presented in the context that they were created. The material and process of cutting it is relatively expensive and I am spending the last bit of money I made on the sale of one of the 5 "vessel for Calm water" series. A smart business person would roll that money into the design and materials for more work that would be easy to sell. If I were feeding my family from my art business I would do that. Fortunately our other businesses supplement out income enough that I am free to ride out the path of exploration.

I know artists who have fed their families and work on the sales that have made over long and hard careers. I also know that they recognize that they have lost the ability to really follow the creative flow as their time and energy is spent making money in way that is similar to being creative- using arts materials- but not able to really follow the path. The buyers want a particular type of work from them. It might have been a type that they first created 25 years ago and has been making ever since. The friend I am speaking of recently got a job driving a bus and is happier than he has been in years as he has plenty of time to think, be with people, and now his art is his own again.

One artist that I feel is really on the path for all its ups and downs is Paul Simon. He often mentions the process of listening for the creativity and not knowing when and where it will come.

I find that his sharing of the struggle is really helpful to me. He mentions it in interviews and also in his songs.

"Somewhere in a burst of glory, a sound becomes a song"


I hope to have the rubber parts in my studio by the end of the year. I will post photos of the process.

Also I am looking for my camera. As soon as I find it I will post some small works here.

J

Friday, December 12, 2008

Writing for readers


I have been wondering recently why it is hard for me to keep current on this blog and I think I am getting the reason. Since this is my "studio" blog many people come here from my website I never know who is reading what I am writing. Not know for whom I am writing has made it hard to find my voice.

See, I might write differently for other artists than I do for collectors, curators, friends, and family members. Not having developed the right voice has held me back until now.

It's not as if there is nothing to talk about. I am constantly working on creative projects in my studio of all sizes. I often have little projects that keep the juices flowing, photography projects, film proposals, larger sculptures for sale and even larger public proposals. All this needs to be more front and center on the blog.

As for other artists: I am constantly wrestling with the creative process and learning something every time. I know it is beyond valuable when I hear other artists talk about their challenges and successes when it comes to being truely creative.

So here is the voice- It will just be honest. I have had comments on my site when I posted photos that were less than polished of works in process- I am not going to let that slow me down. If you want polished go to the website. This blog is going to be real and sometimes real is messy. I hope that curators and collectors will understand that real dedication to creativity is not always "on track" or consistent.
Some of the projects that I talk about on the blog will migrate over to the website if they end up fitting in but way more never make it.

So now that I am rededicated to keeping this a thriving blog I am going to look around the studio and put on some recent projects that you havent seen.

My website is being updated as we speak so expect lots of new (polished) photos and text. It has been almost three years since the last update. I will try not to let that happen again...