Otterbird

Mostly Painting and a Little Bit of Photography

2011-03-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

When people find out that I consider myself a practicing artist, the inevitable follow-up question goes something to the tune of, "what medium do you work in?" I invariably respond, "mostly painting and a little bit of photography." I realized recently, however, that this blog features only drawings and paintings, and no photography at all. Time to change that.

Aside from the fact that both painting and photography are typically 2-D, I experience them as being pretty different. I find that painting feels more expressive, while photography feels more journalistic. When I begin making art, I usually start with an idea or issue that I wish to probe, and choose my medium based on how I want to conduct my inquiry. When I paint, I combine memory, imagination, and observation to investigate an idea. In most cases, I am very intentional with my imagery, sketching out forms and compositions before articulating them in paint. Photography is more about finding and framing existing scenes that help me share my ideas. It is also about choosing: picking the best image or images out of a selection of many, sometimes hundreds, of options.

Despite these differences, these two mediums have played equally important roles in my creative life, and each practice has taught me something important about the other. Painting has helped me learn how to look, to concentrate, and to see. It has inspired an acute level of visual mindfulness. I bring this to my search for photo-worthy moments and environments. Photography, meanwhile, has taught me how to release rigid control over outcomes, and to embrace serendipitous mistakes as sources of new thinking.

I took the photos posted in this entry with my Holga camera. A Holga is a cheap brand of camera developed many years ago on the premise that all people should have access to making photographs. It feels like a toy camera - light and plastic, with just a few basic settings to choose from (near, medium, far). It leaks light and produces completely unpredictable images, and in doing so, it teaches me tremendous things about letting go. The trick with the Holga is figuring out when to use it. It gives images an ethereal, ghostly effect, full of untold stories and implied nostalgia. This suits some subject matters well and others not at all. I took the images posted below in an abandoned cement factory outside of Allentown during the dead of winter. The decaying buildings, slowly being reclaimed by nature, are eerie and beautiful and powerful all at once. Perfect for a Holga.

Home is Where the ? is

2010-10-12T16:41:00.000-07:00

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. I am left then, with a dual identity, and, for these two years at least, never the twain shall meet: the sense of home derived from occupying a living space full of my things, and the sense of home derived from being within a city that I love.

The truth is, though, that I don't actually think my surreal-feeling dual sense of home is a bad thing. I find that cracks and fissures in identity tend to offer the most fertile spots for personal growth, and I would not choose to give them up, despite the discomfort.

Keeping and Giving

2010-05-27T13:20:00.000-07:00

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

2010-02-16T07:34:00.000-08:00

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.

2010-01-20T18:21:00.001-08:00

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)

Blow-up

2009-12-07T11:36:00.000-08:00

This post is going to be brief because I am in the midst of writing a paper and studying for an exam. This is a larger version of one of the Klimtian Copies posted below (8.5 x 11 rather than 4 x 6). It's in acrylic paint with white and colored paper cut-outs. The two versions look quite different in life, but not so different digitally, which I find somewhat interesting.

Color Tunnels

2009-12-03T12:14:00.000-08:00

In September, a colleague gave me a book of poetry by Wistawa Szymborska because, he said, my artwork brought it to his mind. I'm usually a rather tepid lover of poetry--sometimes it strikes just right, other times I throw it away in frustration--but I do love this collection, and I would like to believe that her literary style can be related to my visual style. So here is an experiment of sorts.

I have recently returned to an aspiration to paint highways. I've skirted around this subject matter for some time now, doing a few, mostly unsuccessful, paintings over the past couple of years. The very first, which was successful, can be found in the initial post on this blog (Northeast Extension). I am drawn to the monochromaticity of highways during winter: gray roads, gray-ish salt- and dirt-encrusted cars, gray trees, gray skies. These dull shades are punctuated by sudden interludes of intense color from construction signage (orange), rest-stop signage (blue), directional signage (green), and finally, the lights from passing cars. At night, too, there is a monochromaticity, but with added dimensions of blue, black, and purple.

I spent a good chunk of time over the Thanksgiving break driving in the wee hours of the morning as well as in the middle of the night, often surrounded by thick fog. I was struck again by how the world takes on a beautiful, indistinct haze; it is a tunnel through grays and blues, and ground and sky become inseparable. This serves to sharpen the moments of color, rendering them fierce and aggressive reminders of a world away from the highway.

When creating the below piece, From Pittsburgh, I also looked to the following poem by Szymborska for inspiration:

Sky

I should have begun with this: the sky.
A window minus sill, frame, and panes.
An aperture, nothing more
but wide open

I don't have to wait for a starry night,
I don't have to crane my neck
to get a look at it.
I've got the sky behind my back, at hand, and on my eyelids.
The sky binds me tight
and sweeps me off my feet.

Even the highest mountains are no closer to the sky
than the deepest valleys.
There's no more of it in one place
than another.
A mole is no less in seventh heaven
than the owl spreading her wings.
The object that falls in an abyss
falls from sky to sky.

Grainy, gritty, liquid,
inflamed, or volatile
patches of sky, specks of sky,
gusts and heaps of sky.
The sky is everywhere,
even in the dark beneath your skin.
I eat the sky, I excrete the sky.
I'm a trap within a trap,
an inhabited inhabitant, an embrace embraced,
a question answering a question.

Division into sky and earth--
it's not the proper way
to contemplate this wholeness.
It simply lets me go on living
at a more exact address
where I can be reached promptly
if I'm sought.
My identifying features
are rapture and despair.

Szymborska, Wistawa. "Sky." Poems New and Collected 1957-1997. New York: Harcourt, Inc., 1998.

There are more of these to come, I think.

Domestic Portraits

2009-11-14T14:48:00.000-08:00

Two posts in one day!

These pieces are from a slightly older series--last spring and summer--but are part of an ongoing project. These are even tinier than I usually work, only 3x2 inches, in oil paint. Each is intended to capture a moment or object of domesticity. I sort of consider them portraits of the mundane. I find them more interesting when they are viewed together, and when considering how I would choose to display them, I've been most drawn to the idea of throwing them all in a cardboard box and letting people rifle through them (that's probably not archivally sound, but I think I'd be okay with that).

I started making these because I find them meditative and relaxing to create. I also like how they force me to be alert to moments of interesting color or shape in my daily routines. I think next up is something involving an espresso cup.

Klimtian Copies

2009-11-14T14:14:00.000-08:00

After a lengthy hunt for a good, functioning scanner on campus, I finally located one in the science and engineering library. So I am able to post the Klimt-inspired images. Here they are:

There was a fifth one, but it failed miserably enough to not even merit posting here. I did these, as I said below, as an exercise to get myself thinking outside of the object, since that is what I usually focus on in my work. When I created them, I intended to duplicate Klimt's backgrounds exactly, to be completely and totally derivative for the sake of the exercise. However, as is usually the case when I try to copy something, the "me" voice creeps in, totally unintentionally, to the point where the source is not always recognizable. As a result, I think that these are perhaps more in conversation with Klimt's work than they are copies. They are all 4x6 inches, but I am considering blowing up either the second or the third of them and trying to use paint, rather than magic markers.

Blog Resurrected

2009-11-03T21:22:00.000-08:00

Okay, I'm back. Maybe. We'll see how my blogging experiment goes the second time around. The first fared pretty poorly, as the date on my last entry proves. But I'm in graduate school now, and have an immense amount of unstructured time on my hands, so perhaps this can be my latest form of procrastination, following reading the New York Times (and all of the reader comments), watching good and bad television on the internet, nurturing a growing infatuation with Netflix, and taking unnecessarily long strolls through my new neighborhood. I moved to Columbus, Ohio about a month and a half ago to pursue a Masters (or PhD?) in Arts Policy and Administration at the Ohio State University. I am technically a student in the Art Education Department, but I also spend a good bit of my time at the School of Public Affairs. So far, so good, though I miss Philly and the people there tremendously.

After a really long art-making hiatus (due in large part to the incredibly time-consuming process of applying to and financing grad school), I am back to painting things...and magic-markering things. I haven't totally decided yet whether to post my latest pieces, since they are simply exercises to get me out of an object-depicting rut. Using Gustav Klimt's paintings as inspiration, I am re-creating their lush backgrounds using magic markers and an over-lay of white cut-outs. I am surprised to discover how difficult magic markers are to control. They force me to think in blocks of color, as blending and tone variance are hard to manipulate. I cannot correct my mistakes "back" to something intended. Instead, I have to let the mistakes dictate a new direction, usually involving a darker color. This is useful for me, because I think I over-rely on the changeable quality of paint. In acrylics, I can and do just paint over it. Oils can be re-worked fairly easily. These are not bad things, but it is nice to remember how mistakes can actually be a good thing for creativity, and a way to let the work evolve on its own terms. I think, after this long description, I must post them (and will do so, once I have a chance to scan them).

In the meantime, I'm just going to throw out some of my old stuff...circa 2006/2007.

I've chosen these three paintings out of homesickness for Philadelphia, and because I think of these paintings as a turning point in my artwork, or rather, the point where my artwork first took on some sort of conceptual theme. The first two, 1536 Pine Street I and II, and the third, Zack's, helped me realize and articulate an interest in space, perception, and memory. Using a "filmstrip" to convey spaces I spent a great deal of time in helped me depict movement and motion as a part of the act of perceiving, and it gave me a flexible framing device. Long narrow hallway views received a long and narrow frame. Wide rooms received a wide frame. I suppose it's not so different than creating a series of paintings in multiple shapes and sizes, but I like how these views are conjoined into a single work in the above strips. I haven't returned to this style since making these three pieces, partially because they were incredibly labor-intensive, and partially because I wasn't sure what else to say with them, but I often reference them when I feel lost or confused in my present practice.

Dear Fleisher

2008-08-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

I have two new images to post. I'm contributing both of these to "Dear Fleisher," a fundraising exhibition that I coordinate at Fleisher. I'm going to take a second for an unabashed plug, because this is a really really cool event and if you will be in or around Philadelphia on October 5 between 4:00 and 7:00 p.m. then you should come. Hundreds of artists contribute 4x6" pieces of art to be displayed anonymously and sold for $50 each. Only after purchasing the piece does the viewer learn the identity (and contact info) of the artist. This may be the original source of my idea for doing work in a small format, and certainly the source of the bazillions of 4x6" pieces of drawing paper that I have lying around my apartment. I love it because it raises money for our programs--over $40,000 last time--but is totally within the scope of our mission to make art accessible to people. At $50, it's possible for a wider range of people to buy and own an original piece of art and establish a relationship with an artist. There are more details at our website: http://www.fleisher.org/.

Okay, unabashed plug is over. These pieces are corners of my new apartment--my closet and my stove. I thought quite a bit about paint stroke in these, especially Snapshot #4 Kitchen Corner. I tend to lose myself to color and getting down the details and I forget about brushstroke, which is really very important because it is unique to the medium. Stroke style can capture the feeling of the object being rendered while reminding the viewer "I am a painting." I don't have much more to say about it at this time, but since I'm very happy with the textural quality of this piece, I'm going to continue experimenting with it.

Thanks for those of you that commented. I agree that it is hard to see the images, so I'm working on that. It's always a little hard to post images because they never look quite like the originals. I should point out that I took these images with a camera because my scanner is down, so where it looks like lines aren't straight, it's more because it's impossible to totally flatten the piece for a camera so things get a little out of perspective. I'll scan them soon and then replace these images with the scans.

First Steps

2008-07-16T10:03:00.000-07:00

I've created this blog because I'm too lazy to figure out a real website for posting my artwork. Well, that and I also want this to be a place for critique. So CRITIQUE AWAY! Ask me questions! Make me explain myself better!

These first three images are from a series "Snapshots" that I have been working on for the past several months. The first is Make A Rising Performance, the second is Long Beach Island, and the third is Northeast Extension. They are all oil on gessoed paper, 4x6" in size. These pieces serve as my investigation into perception, environment, and memory. I am especially interested in how the instantaneous moment of observation, or sensation, translates into a long-term memory of the moment and environment. This has developed into a style that oscillates between painterly and illustrative. I allow the spatial environment (usually interior, but occasionally exterior) to be softer and fuzzier, while sharpening and flattening the decorative and colorful bits that are sharp in my mind. I try to work from memory, exclusively, but occasionally I work from a combination of life and memory. I've chosen the standard photograph size because I want to juxtapose the idea of an instantaneous snapshot, or capture of information, against the lengthy re-hashing of the moment in oil paint. And, when you hold all the pieces together, flipping through as you would flip through a photo album, the information in each piece is diminished. I believe that looking at all the pieces, so similar in size and format, in rapid succession parallels the way we deal with the immense visual experience we undergo every day: incapable of taking it all in, aware of only certain details. I therefore put the viewer through my own process of taking in and storing information. Unfortunately, this newfangled blog thingy doesn't really capture that part of the experiment so well.