Home is Where the ? is

I have two new images to post. Named Sublet 1 and Sublet 2, I created them this summer for Dear Fleisher, a fundraising exhibition held once every two years at the Fleisher Art Memorial. Each fits to the exhibition's required 4x6 inch (postcard-sized) dimensions. They are in a new medium for me--gouache--which I find rather challenging to work with and even more challenging to spell. I have wanted to try it for awhile now, mostly because I like its dusty opaque quality. I've since learned that that dusty opaque quality is the reward for a level of proficiency I have not yet obtained. Instead, I had to settle for a streaky watery quality.

At the end of my spring quarter, I left Columbus for a four month stint back in Philadelphia. I returned in order to work at the City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program while also beginning to collect data for my masters thesis. The 50 lb or else baggage limit forbid me from bringing along my painting supplies, so I was forced to start over with new supplies for the summer. This struck me as the perfect opportunity to experiment with gouache, and so, after stocking up, I turned my attention to my typical subject matter: my space.

Except that it wasn't really my space. I had located a sublet on Craigslist, a big house filled with people in West Philly, the largest room of which served as my bedroom. When I arrived, a single suitcase of clothing in hand, the room was empty of decoration. A few things on the walls and a couple of books indicated that it had been lived in recently, but it was a mostly white, object-free environment. So, where I typically paint the things that clutter up my apartments, here I was challenged to paint exactly the opposite: the absence of things. I hoped, in my work, to capture the awkwardness that characterizes spending prolonged periods of time in a space not your own.

This is not to say that I didn't have a really wonderful summer. The house provided a friendly place full of interesting people and the streets and community organizations and coffee shops of Philadelphia fed my soul. I just never stopped feeling like I was sleeping in somebody else's bed and showering in somebody else's shower. I have rather the opposite problem in Columbus. In Columbus, I live in a beautiful, comfortable apartment that feels very much mine, but the city itself stubbornly refuses to cough up a sense of home.  And so for these two years, I am stuck with a bit of a crack in my identity: my sense of home derived from occupying a living space full of my things cannot co-exist with my sense of home derived from being within a city that I love.

Keeping and Giving

My last post was in February. I am disappointed in myself. My excuse of relentless school and/or travel is also disappointing. In any event, last week, I found myself with two plan-free days on my hands, and, after wiping the dust off of my paint supplies, I got to work.

This is the time of year when I get angsty about my wardrobe. It seems overly large, overly uncoordinated, overly unprofessional, or overly something. So I go through the annual purge, where everything finds itself in a large heap on my bed. I then spend several hours playing dress-up until I end up with a neatly folded pile of clothes that I feel ready to dispose of in one way or another (rags, Goodwill, consignment). I have developed, over the years, strict criteria for this process. 1) Do I own something similar that I will, in every conceivable circumstance, choose over this item? 2) Is it just a little too small or way too small? Is it just a little too big or way too big? 3) Is it stained, misshapen, or in some other way unsalvageable? 4) Even if it's incredibly beautiful/cool/interesting and I enjoy glancing at it in my closet on occasion, have I worn it in the last five years?

I use this system (a set of policies, if you will) because I find this process incredibly painful. At risk of sounding like a flaming materialist, I find that objects, and clothing in particular, take on

identities shaped by the stories of how they came into my possession, and what they have borne witness to over the course of my ownership. Breaking them or giving them away involves reconciling myself not only to the loss of the functional part, but to the loss of the emotional part as well. A few years ago, somebody (accidentally, I hope) walked off with my generic-looking black wool coat at a big New Year's party. I did not feel violated, as some people describe that experience, nor did I worry that I had lost something of monetary value. Instead, I found myself thinking, "I didn't get to say goodbye to it." I guess this is probably what is happening during my annual purge. I'm saying goodbye.

I paint objects because I find them a fascinating study in contrast. They are inanimate but they tell stories. They are inert but they have lives. They are inherently meaningless but inscribed with significance. They have longevity but they are fragile. My paintings usually depict still-lifes, but are also a form of self-portraiture, and they give me the chance to negotiate my relationship to object and to memory as I work. Additionally, they allow me to create a record, so that I still have something by which to remember the things that end up in the give pile.

From a formal stance, I attempt to contrast a painterly representational style used to depict the space/object against a more hyper-realized abstract style used to capture the patterned surface of the object. This duality in style creates, for me, an interesting parallel to my dual experience of objects as both functional and emotional.

Keep/Give, oil on gessoed paper, 8.5 x 11"

Genealogical Comic

In a slightly out-of-the-ordinary post, I am sharing some artwork that I created for my Policy and History Perspectives on Art Education class. I have yet to post images of drawings on this blog, partially because I draw with less frequency then I paint, and partially because my drawings tend to be a bit more aimless than my paintings. That said, I love drawing. I love how it feels, I love the kind of precision it enables, and I love the challenge of translating color imagery into a gray-scale. So I jumped at the opportunity to create a comic for an open-ended class assignment to share my "academic genealogy." The term genealogy is taken from Foucault, and can be understood as the process of troubling textbook versions of history. Conducting a genealogy means going backwards in time, imagining different pathways, and considering the way that supposedly "true" structures are in their own way constructs. This process of troubling is, according to Foucault, the best way to avoid falling utterly under the sway of the powers that be in the present. I apologize; this is an oversimplification of a complicated idea, but I think it gives some sense of the basis of the assignment, which was designed to help us understand the term better by applying it to our own histories.

The below images were accompanied a presentation, so I was able to explain much of the symbolism. I'll give a brief explanation here, so that they are a bit more decipherable. I divided my genealogy into three categories: thought, lived, and imagined. "Thought" includes the philosophical and artistic influences that have guided my academic and career choices, and in many cases, helped me wade through bigger questions about identity. "Lived," encompasses the jobs, actions, and tangible decisions that have directed my life, and "Imagined" includes the discarded possibilities (including college majors in set design and art, plans for immediately after college [boat building or studying textiles], and applying to architecture programs). I chose botanical/natural imagery to symbolize this discard because the process of setting aside possibilities played an important role in my intellectual and emotional growth. And because, as more casual interests, the discarded choices continue to nourish my life. Finally, the tangles on the 2nd and 3rd pages symbolize periods of confusion and hazy direction. I know this all sounds a little hippy-dippy, but this turned out to be an interesting and thought-provoking project, and it was a nice reprieve from the more technical assignments that I have for my Public Finance and Nonprofit Management classes.

Common Carrot, etc.

New images! These are two images that I conceived of together and created one after the other. They derive from the Klimtian pieces I did earlier in the fall, but they are a pretty wild departure from my original inspiration. They go with the image posted in "Blow-Up" (below). They do not look similar, but they are connected, for me, by the process of their creation. Both required obsessive concentration, meticulous attention to detail, and quite a bit of time. They both made my hands hurt. Klimtian Copy/Squares is acrylic on gessoed paper, and Klimtian Copy/Common Carrot is cut paper on gessoed paper. Both are probably about 5" x 5." It is hard to capture white cut paper against white gesso, so I included an image that is back-lit.

Feedback is especially welcome! These more abstract pieces are a new direction for my work.

Klimtian Copy/Squares

Klimtian Copy/Common Carrot (back-lit)