For the first project, I researched my interest in systems of organization in living spaces for both the organic and the manmade & presented natural structures. This included a look at beehives, anthills, shells, spiderwebs, etc… Essentially analyzing the geometry– shapes and forms found within these occupied spaces. What intrigued me most was as follows:
- intricate beauty
- object of protection, production, tool
- self produced material; act of creation
- found object; act of letting go and then sourcing
- element of community vs. one man household
- aesthetics: sacred geometry, golden spiral
- become relics; eventually destruct
- integrated into something bigger, i.e. the ground or ocean
I Made this preliminary painting of a shell:
I was thinking about purpose in structure...
This awesome BBC video explained why bees use the hexagon!
I thought of Piet Mondrian's neoplastic city grids & underlying form /color.
As I started to paint. It occurred to me that I am not necessarily pictorial painter; I am less interested in the act of representing– as a photograph functions. I am far more interested in the art of painting as a process of creating. Beyond this, the materiality of paint– in all it’s forms– is fascinating to me. I love the reactions of paints with one another.
One theme that my process incorporates is the role that chance can and does play. I was reading some George Brecht.
For my first 3 paintings I devised a system using an online dice roller. With the number 9 (prompted), I rolled 9, 9 sided dice, 9 times. I got 9 random number sequences. I then randomly assigned materials (gauche, enamel, vitrail, acyrlic, oil paint, oil, water, etc) to the numbers 1-9. Based on the sequences I applied the materials in that order. I was very interested in the reactions that were occurring on the canvas, and also balance between my control over composition, color, etc and the lack of control due to the system that I had devised.
I began to consider the action of mark making itself. This immediately conjured up notions of Index. I thought back to Semiotics and again the systems of signs. I am very interested in index in art making– the lack there of the artist's mark in production as in Jeff Koons' works... Accidental index, for example, in some of my photographs in which I have unintentionally manipulated the paper… intentional index as seen is the paintings of Marylin Minter who finishes off her panels with her thumbprints… index as a result of movement, for example Gerhard Richters trowel marks or the work of Gutai painters who swung on ropes above the canvas… Index as a residue, etc...
I thought up my next painting which was a large canvas where I taped off the word INDEX and then used charcoal powder to make handprints around. After removing the tape, the word index is outlined by the indexical marks of my handprints themselves. This was a very literal/over the top/sarcastic iteration of 'Index'.
I further researched Semiotics, the sign, Icon/Index/ Symbol-- They were all about Cause & Effect. An index could be lingering perfume, paw prints or tracks or symptoms– like a fever simultaneously happening with an infection, or smoke coming from a fire… Lastly, index could be designation, something that points to the object, like an arrow or the word “this”.
On the basis of “symptoms”…
I thought about our senses and phenomenological perceptions of an object through index. Pierce bases signs off of the quality of feeling, reactions, and representations.
I thought about Yves Klein’s work:
Using fire or the body to make marks…
In terms of designations, I thought about Jasper Johns leaving evidence of his mark making tool…
In the next painting, I systematically used a trowel to apply gauche and transferred imprints onto duralar, tracing paper and cellophane… This is about the index of the index– and responds to simulacra in the sense of copying something, through various mediations until the original is no where in sight. Similarly, I did not leave the trowel– mark maker– out for viewing.
On the note of impressions, I was considering how this imprints were the residue of one another– And how I was not creating a mark, but appropriating an old one. Outside the painting classroom, the balcony is covered with indexical residue of paintings past. I made a painting that captured the index of these indexes, by painting black acrylic on the ground and laying canvas over. After rubbing, an imprint of the balcony floor was made on the canvas.
From here I was considering ways of mark-making without even touching the canvas Or using an object to create a mark. What would happen if I used physics to move the paint with pressurized air. I placed oil at the center of the canvas and applied black enamel. Then at the very center, using an air pressure gun I spread the paint out in every direction. The oil carried the enamel outwardly in all directions.
What other forces of nature could create marks in paint? I considered the modernist gravity paintings.
How about the Index of heat? What kind of reaction could I commence that would be indexical of oil vs. water under heat conditions? I made this painting…
How about Rain?? What are the indexes of the forces of nature?
My final piece, came together as a culmination of all these notions. I had been working on a canvas for sometime that was simply gesso and water. The painting is a product of many factors, it considers: time, position, and forces of chance and control. Like Jackson Pollock, I applied the paint aerially without any tools.
It has been exposed to the elements, transported, left for days on end, folded on itself in the wind, paint applied indexically, and reflects the index of its treatment over time– containing leaves, hair, dirt, staples and other markers of its existence.
