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To Cleanse
More pictures from the performance…
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Burden
I’ve got all of these phrases running through my head about burdens and not being given more than you can handle. I burdened this tree more than it could handle or at least it must be close to the threshold. I was so excited about the formations that I didn’t fully consider the destruction to…
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Still Sprinkling
The piece is still in progress. I am currently worried about the tree branches which seem to be really struggling with the weight of the ice. In some places the icicles are getting close enough to the ground that I am hoping they will begin to support the burdened branches. The bush is also quite…
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Sprinkling, Freezing and Crashing
I could actually see the sprinkler with the lights from my studio and the metal shop behind it! Things are cracking and groaning under the weight of the ice and the sprinkler is still oscillating like it’s totally normal.
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Sprinkling the Snow
I’ve created my own ice storm within the snow storm we’re having. The sprinkler had been oscillating for about an hour an a half when these pictures were taken. It’s dark now, so I will have to wait until morning to see what has happened in the hour and a half afterward. Sisyphus’ plight once…
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Performance
I did a performance piece yesterday for a crit. The props/sculptures were originally created for a video (which I still plan to make), but a critique space opened up and I really wanted to get some of these things worked out. I ended up desaturating my entire studio in order to create a sort of…
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Animated Gif!
Obviously I really like loops/repetition. The animated gif has grabbed my attention. Perhaps there will be a piece or at least a website element that includes one. I ran across this while google image browsing for a piece I want to make: Great, huh?
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Sisyphus
In Greek mythology, Sisyphus was a king punished by being cursed to roll a huge boulder up a hill, only to watch it roll back down. The endless labor of my art work that repeats in a small loop (Bless You, Pull Strings) relates to the Greek myth. I like to think about the work…
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Double Dutch
This is a mock up for a piece that I have been trying to realize for months. For now the jump ropes are attached to the wall and the mechanism is being turned by a hand held drill. There are a few aesthetic things to figure out here, but I am pretty sure I will…
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pink and pretty?
This piece has transformed itself many times since it’s conception. It was going to be excerpts from “carefree” songs (such as those by Jack Johnson) with a torso-esque figure attached to the wall doing a shoulder dance. For awhile it was going to be powered by a tape player motor. I tried making an armature…
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Tickle Torture
That is not the official title of this work, I just needed to call it something so this is the working title. This piece which is 4x12x2.5″ consists of pepper, a feather, a wooden encasement with a motor inside. I was thinking about sensations when I made this piece. Tickling, sneezing, flitting…
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Ludic
: playful in an aimless way
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Ceal Floyer
A new inspiration/favorite artist. Ceal Floyer’s witty & poignant work hits on something I constantly am striving for. Her work is dryly poetic in the way of a John Updike short story, but lingers like a drip on the edge of a spout. (Yeah, I just made that up! Ha!) Anyway, her work is interesting.…
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Gestural Objects
(Artist Statement in progress…as always) “Large things tend to be unwieldy, clumsy, crude; smallness is the realm of elegance and grace.” -Steven Millhauser Smallness lends itself to being sweet and modest. It is not clouded by grandeur or overarching themes. It is simply what it is, but by being so poignant it is able to…
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automatism
I had a great converstation in my studio yesterday with our Critic in Residence, Lane Relyea. He was really good at deducing and understanding my work as a whole (not sculpture vs. drawing vs. photography). He pointed out surrealist tendencies that I have. Almost everything is based on real experience, but it is shifted in…
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Simultaneous Peripheral Observation
In the space between tactility and language the beautiful and unassuming linger. They exist in the peripheral, weaving in and out of clarity, difficult to get a clear handle on, resistant to words. There is room for the mind to guess and imagine. With a skepticism in the ability of language to contain our bodily…
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Plugged
I woke up one morning last week and thought “I need to put ear plugs into holes in the wall”. This rarely happens to me when I am making things. Ideas usually develop over long periods of time with extended trains of thought. It’s a very small, florescent orange piece. Kind of big and small…
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couch
(what’s in there?)
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Picture 1…
There are many ways that I document my thought processes. I have my physical sketchbook, this work journal, sound recording on my phone (mostly while driving), snapshots and screenshots. There is an ongoing digital folder of anything and everything that might trigger an idea from the web. Here is the collection of February 2009-present…
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Panes
As I acclimate to our new living quarters, I impulsively took some pictures of the morning light shining through the windows. As I was uploading them, I noticed a theme. I have done this often in the places where I live as the below history of images shows. The translucent but impenetrable properties of the…
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Back at it.
I’m back in Detroit, Cranbrook has started up. I’m moved into my new living quarters and my new studio. There’s as much possibility as the a blank page. Thick.
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Alum
Trinity is fifty and has an art exhibition to celebrate! Last week I installed “Light Weight” in the new Seerveld Gallery. The space fit the piece really well and electricity was available in inconspicuous ways (thank you!). I will post a new video and photo’s when I go back for the closing. Several friends and…
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The Decisive Moment
“Photography is not like painting,” Cartier-Bresson told the Washington Post in 1957. “There is a creative fraction of a second when you are taking a picture. Your eye must see a composition or an expression that life itself offers you, and you must know with intuition when to click the camera. That is the moment…
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loofah
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decedent meals shared, perhaps, between ballerinas
I’m liking the photography of Laura Letinsky today. One article from New York Magazine described her images as “…elegant undone tables, always suggesting decadent meals shared, perhaps, between ballerinas.” It can be difficult to identify what it is about an image that you really like. You try to dive in based on color and composition…etc,…
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Out of focus
This summer has been a complete blur so far! Rob and I have been living out of our photography studio as we finish our basement apartment. We have been working very hard doing what we love to do: working with people and taking pictures. No complaints there…except that once again, art making has taken a…
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Material Afterlife: UICA
Last Friday, the Material Afterlife exhibition opened at the UICA in Grand Rapids in which my piece, Styrofoam #6 was included. I created and critiqued this piece last semester as 7 small hanging sculptures composed of deconstructed styrofoam beads which I stitched together with black thread. For this exhibition, I combine the seven smaller sculptures…
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Light Weight
This is a new piece made from cut paper, strings and a motor.
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About my work formally, stylistically and linguistically
Intangibility Weaving in and out of clarity. Existent, but difficult to get a clear handle on. Fog does this, memory does this, veils do this. It’s more beautiful to leave room for the mind to guess and imagine than to be completely clear. There is a peak where ambiguity and clarity mingle perfectly. Perception What…