Spills, Birds, Satellites

(Click here to see these images in a larger-format slideshow.)

Just before departing for my temporary teaching position in Olympia, WA, I put up a selection of my recent works for friends and family at the Clean Space Gallery on OSU's campus. It was a great opportunity to experiment with ways of showing these pieces, which were made over the course of two years.

At eye level
At normal art-viewing height are the most resolved pieces, offering a synthesis of my ideas about spillage, chaos, and order. These works are deeply psychological for me, and reflect the ongoing process to understand my past and the relationships that have shaped who I am today. Many have an aerial or synoptic perspective. The palette is cool, calculated, and sometimes hyper-colorful, just like the countless satellite images I grew up looking at when I went with my mom to work at the EROS Data Center, a partner facility of the US Geological Survey. The satellite is a remote sensing device. Its eye is emotionless. It is clinical and unflinching. There are times in my life when I want this incorruptible perspective—to see my situations, relationships, and artwork with a calm clarity.

In contrast, I invite liquid into my work to act as a mentor, collaborator, and antagonist in my efforts to let go of control. With its susceptibility to gravity, evaporation, and pooling, liquid serves as a counterpoint to the straight lines and geometric shapes present throughout the imagery, and stands in as the great Unexpected to which one must adapt. By welcoming it into my artwork, I attempt to build flexibility and responsiveness into my process and mindset.

Above eye level
Along the top of the room, I displayed a chronological record of my evolution through material and form in my drawings. They are experimentations, and not necessarily complete works unto themselves. I installed them high above in the clerestory level of the space so that they could only be seen in any detail with binoculars. I think of this as the idea space--above one's head and just out of sight. The viewer who wants to see them up close must exercise willpower to do so. Observation is an active task; birders know this all too well. Like birders, the viewers had access to technology (binoculars) to undertake this task, if they so chose.

Below eye level
On the floor of the space, I installed my Water Shadows. Made from tulle, these patterns read more like wet spots on the floor, and many people walked on them. (They even fooled the facilities maintenance supervisor, who thought his crew had some cleanup to do. I showed him the secret of them--boy was he surprised when I picked up a "stain"!) I like the idea of activating the peripheral, and its important role in stimulating curiosity.

Many of these pieces will be on view during January in my solo show at the Ohio Arts League gallery in Columbus. More info on that to come soon!

Embracing Combustion - OCAC workshop

Here's a slideshow of the ceramics workshop I taught at OCAC a few weeks ago. It was such a blast! The students were very experimental and motivated, and it was a lot of fun. (Workshop participants: if you want access to the images, just go to this link.)

Drawing Water from an Empty Well - OCAC Workshop

These photos are just some of the dozens of drawings that the participants made in my experimental drawing workshop at OCAC last month. They were so creative, engaged, and fun to work with! It's great to be inspired by one's students, and that was definitely the case with this wonderful group. (Workshop participants, you can gain access to the photos at this link.)

Showing in Cleveland at The Sculpture Center

I am showing work in the exhibition titled, "After the Pedestal: The 5th Annual of Smaller Sculpture from the Region" at The Sculpture Center in Cleveland, Ohio. It is a real honor! The opening for the show is this Friday, June 5th, from 5:30-8pm, with a talk by the juror, Paola Morziani, who is the Curator of Contemporary Art at The Cleveland Museum of Art. Click here for more information.

My Work in the Group MFA Exhibition

Here are my pieces that were featured in our group MFA graduating exhibition.  Enjoy!

2009 MFA Exhibition: Begged, Borrowed, and Stolen

Here is a link to the online site for our upcoming MFA Show.  It will be open April 22-May 20, with the big party on May 9th.  There are links to each of the artists.  It's officially happening--pretty dang exciting!  

Summer Teaching

I will be teaching workshops this summer for children, teens, and adults both here in Columbus and in Portland, Oregon.  Here's what and where:

Wexner Center for the Arts

Environmental , July 13-17, 1:30-4:30pm, ages 15-18.  Do you prefer to run with the wind, feel the earth under your feet, and see the change of weather up close and personal?  Work outdoors at Ohio State's beautiful Chadwick Arboretum in the workshop taught by sculptor Nicole Gibbs.  Learn how a piece of garbage can be transformed into a piece of art, or how light, shadow, rain, dust, soil, or pollen can be made into an incredible fleeting visual you can capture in a digital photography.  We'll recycle and repurpose found materials and elements to make temporary 2D and 3D sketches outside and then document them before they dissolve back to where they came from, like ghosts.

Natural Home, July 13-17, 9am-12pm, ages 6-7.  Do you feel best surrounded by the natural world of trees, wind, sky, plants, animals, and weather?  Why not make the outdoors your daytime home for a week?  You'll create your own personalized dwelling out of impermanent, nontoxic materials working with sculptor Nicole Gibbs.  Whether you build a human-size ground nest or a wispy, windy string home, each installation will be a metaphorical portrait of who you are when you are not indoors.  This workshop takes place at Ohio State's Chadwick Arboretum.  

Oregon College of Art and Craft

Drawing Water from an Empty Well: An Idea-Generating Workshop, July 18-19, 9am-4pm, adult, p. 12-13.  There are multiple times in an artist's practice where the inspirational well seems dry--whether trying to find confidence at the outset of a new body of work or breathing fresh life into a familiar subject, medium or process.  The visual artist's equivalent to "writer's block" represents a time when any direction is possible, often bringing excitement and stimulation as well as doubt and paralysis.  This workshop is designed to provide an improvisational toolkit to overcome droughts in your art-making practice, or just to add a new burst of inspiration into a practice that is going well.  The workshop starts with associative word exercises, journaling and quick sketching.  Then the real fun begins: using a wide range of traditional and nontraditional materials, students will create quick individual drawings, some of which will use music as inspiration.  The result will be 50-100 drawings that will act as a reference for materials, techniques, gestures and forms from which to draw future artworks.  Prerequisites: basic drawing skills and an inquisitive, open-minded attitude.

Embracing Combustion: Using Fabric in Ceramic Sculpture, July 20-24, 9am-12pm, adults, p. 10.  Have you longed to capture the beautiful folds, pleats, and puckers of fabric in ceramic sculpture?  While it can take years to master the trompe l'oeil techniques of using only clay to replicate fabric's fluid movement, it takes only hours to turn an actual fiber garment or construction into a piece of ceramic art.  In this weeklong series of half-day workshops, students learn the basic techniques for firing fabric.  The instructor will share her specially-developed clay body formula, as well as her techniques for hanging, drying, patching and firing fabric.  Because the fabric burns out of the piece and leaves a fragile clay shell, participants will also learn how to load and handle these uniquely delicate pieces.  Each student will create a set of sample fired and glazed pieces, as well as one simple fired fabric garment or construction.  Prerequisite: beginning ceramics course or equivalent.

Indelible Marks goes to NYC and Massachusetts!

Over spring break, Annie took Indelible Marks to Movement Research in NYC, an important laboratory for the showing of new dance and movement-based art, and to the Green Street Studios, a center for dance in Cambridge, Mass.  Here's a link to an OSU article about the piece and its travels.  Lily and I sent our videos and my paper pieces with them, which gave me a funny sense of separation anxiety knowing that I wouldn't be there to put them up or see how they work.  In the same regard, it's also a really exciting feeling--I can't wait to hear how it went!

Video excerpts from Indelible Marks

Click here for photo stills of the performance

Click here for a video excerpt of "Trace"

Click here for a video excerpt of "Spillage"

Here are a few excerpts from the videos Lily and I made together, and a slideshow of the performative project called "Indelible Marks" that's mentioned elsewhere on the blog.  Hopefully these videos are the first of many that Lily and I make together!

Indelible Marks: Lantern Article (click here)

On Feb. 12-14, the premiere of the collaborative dance project that I worked on with Annie Kloppenberg and Lily Skove took place at OSU. It was great to see all of our hard work come together, and it was really well received. Here's a link to the article in the university paper. Frustratingly, they left out any mention of Lily, who did some of the videos on her own, and some in collaboration with me. I hope to have footage of the performance online soon.

Hand Nest

I've been studying birds, and found this amazing book about eggs and nests.  My hands were cold at the time, so I decided to make one for my hand.  It's on the ladder to the loft in my studio, and it's nice and cozy.

Drawing Stack

Over the summer I was making a lot of little drawings. These drawings were sitting in a plastic ziploc bag for several weeks. I decided to try to find some way to connect all of the drawings together into one piece. I ending up sewing them together, and this is the result. I originally had it hanging at a conventional, eye-level height, but when I brought it into the gallery, I decided to hang it very high. It was hung high enough that the only way to view it was to look at it through binoculars. I had the binoculars just hanging around--not right next to the piece--so the viewers had to want to see it closer and take the initiative to find a way. Looking through the lens becomes a moving frame, meaning that the viewer decides what part specifically he or she wants to see and moves the binoculars to frame that view. (I have to still take a photo of someone looking at it with binoculars...soon!)

Wall Stacks

I noticed earlier in the fall quarter that when people came into my studio, they were often attracted to my storage method for the paper and fragments I use in my drawings. So, I decided to see if it could actually be a piece. A lot of my recent questions have to do with how to present my work without over-utilizing my training in museum art installation. It seems like when I apply these conventions (how high to hang something, how to light it, how to label it, etc.), my work becomes static and less interesting. So, I used a lot of chance operations in hanging these. For instance, I put all the groupings of papers from the wall stacks on the ground, randomly hammered nails into the wall (pin on the donkey style), and then grabbed each group and put it on a nail. Normally I would be more compositional about it--the stacks would go from larger groups in back to smaller in front. Instead, the stacks became more interesting because you have to look from the side to see what might be underneath. I also like that there is so much hidden from our view. It reminds me of archaeology in a way; we can't know all of the treasures that lie in layers under our very feet. The random height also activates them and seems to make them more dimensional.