Its been Awhile

Since beginning the MFA program at AIB I’ve created a new internal school blog, recording work and where abouts..

My intentions are to cross reference work to this public blog / web sight .

On that note, here is some of the work I applied with:

All work is from 2012, acrylic, graphite, chalk, oil stick, eye shadow and ink, on canvas and or paper:

1 0f 4 series on paper, acrylic, pencil, [sweat] 14″ x 17″, x 4, 2011-12

drawings, from drawing mind class, graphite on paper

acrylic, chalk, graphite, on paper

“POND” series
acrylic on paper[s]

Critical Archives / presentation @ Tufts Center for Humanities 11/28/12

I attended a brilliant presentation & panel discussion, on “critical archiving”.

Voice was given to concepts and practices that are apparent but not daily registering as a radical democratic “new order”. The discussion began with the event of the earth quake in Japan 3/11 + tsunami + nuclear meltdown and the immediate and ongoing archiving of the experiences of that day until now, in the form of texts, tweets, photos, collecting of objects and a myriad number of devices, into a micro pulse of “new” archiving methods. Distinct from the past, in that is it a democratic user centered production, not an elitist dog guarded library within a bldg., but a universal hierarchy adding contents, it is being preserved outside traditionally linked containers.

Another thought focused on the power of the personal archives of trauma. The impulse to archive traumatic experiences to process, interpret, analyse, and an impulse to hold onto the narration to manage the experience. The presenter spoke of the impulse to archive and collect information to connect a meaningful voice or in an inability to archive and experience unclaiming the experience.

Fascinating.

A final offering was about the archival collapse of human histories. A destructive removal, rewrite, erasure of [actual] history and the physical embodiments such as in buildings, as a  revised remixed interpretation of the human experience. As collective memories are being manipulated by new documents with new devices [ digital, web-based, virtual, ] is the virtual retrieval a transformed productive discovery?

I take no credit for these provocative thoughts but share that you might also as one participant mentioned, see new [all] media as an attempt to heal ourselves..

The take away material fueled and reminded me of how I currently archive, and support upcoming Public Installation projections:

1. I lean on [actual] archives, i.e. scraps from art works & experiences. Such as free “paper instructions” from a Yoko Ono installation @ the [old] ICA in Boston fr 1990′s;

actual size 31/2″ x 3 1/4 “.[excuse the side wise view]

and small paper squares of logo with curators name [Catherine David] “DAVID/DIVA”  from Documenta X [10] in Kassel, Germany: these were strewn everywhere over the grounds ! I scoffed up handfuls for my archives. actual [1 1/2 " x 1 1/2 " each]

The “old guard”[ my term] for paper as an artifact & archival medium is still relevant to me.

2 Can chalkboard  be an archive?

3. More -?’s

Are Google earth photos, anchored in reality? [You will be photographed 3o0 times a day in London! ] How does on look at information fr the perspective of a device? What is pvt space, now? Is the digital model unhinged from real time ? Are the new symbolic forms emerging creating an internalization our non- privacy?

 

personal archives research: 11/25/12

Have begun to collate my research, to confirm and support my proposed installation ideas going forward in January at AIB. Today I tore thru miles of the archives on paper I’ve saved thru the years. Adding a little on-line deeper research into a few artists, exhibitions  and influences I feel akin to:

Here are a few:

Wolfgang Laib, German; “die Reismahlzeiten”, brass plates w/ rice & pollen . He has worked in rice, milk, pollen, marble, wood, amongst other organic materials.. Seeking purity and simplicity, grasping the fleeting, intangible essence of life itself.[found]

Mimo Paladino, Italian; specifically “Testomoni & Zenith” 1999 an installation of standing white stone sculptures and a collection of paintings [similar to votive/Milagros] on aluminum set into a recess, like a church nave.

Gregory Colbert, “Ashes and Snow”, 50 + umber and sepia photographs, 12 ft x 7 ft  on Japanese paper, of animals in their natural habitat w/ humans in reverence beside them. This installation was set in huge shipping containers, and traveled the world specific reference Pier 54 – NYC.  It also included a film and 365 letters read from an imaginary journey of a man to his wife.

Shaker traditions: specifically the hanging of the dining chairs upside down up on the walls. Cleanliness, purity, simplicity as a spiritual aid.

Rothko Chapel in Houston: fourteen monumental  PLUM [!] & black canvases

The Paper Sculpture Show and Book, a strange gallery “pop up”,  in Central Sq. Cambridge off Prospect Street in 2003. I’ve got dozens of “printed matter” pieces given freely to viewers.  Many of which are instructions and cut out forms to assemble your self.{Plan to research this show for more info}

*additional materials forth coming

AIB – acceptance into the Low Residency Program 11/23/12

OMG.

I have been accepted to the Low Residency program @ AIB – the Art Institute of Boston. To pursue an MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts. I’ve had an image tacked to my refrigerator for over a yr, for focus-direction-intention, a faint grey street map of Kenmore Sq. with a star where AIB resides superimposed over a darker grey Charles River.

Never give up on your dreams!

I have been meaning to post since July… but now within this program I must keep an online journal and images of progress and more, so here is the first.

I completed the initial wave of BLUE paintings, for the application to AIB and simultaneously the show at ARTEFACT.  I exhausted the first impulse of the blue reference, Klein “Blue” and now I will get down to the dirt. Is there more BLUE work on the horizon, yes I believe so, where ever I look I see blue, it may be the most common color of all.  Taking in the sky and the sea, what is left ? the earth. I am still fixated on this color, I just may see the world in blue, through my blue eyes.

The work of the first semester is upon me, literally, today I am searching for a mentor. I get to choose, with approval. I have looked through  1/2 ++ dozen web sites and am not there yet, I am searching for a mentor to aid my expansion. You want someone who knows things you do not, who has been where you have not been and can be a direct, gracious, helpful ally. A mentor what luck ! it is just what I have need of, counsel & support for the work..

I am searching the sculptors today, for a mentor who could support a flow chart in my intrinsic need for tactile engagements, as it grounds my empirical nature.  Having a bit of installation in my past, the AIB first semester objective includes materials beyond paint on a surface. Some of my favorite tools, implements and findings to use are: paint, glue, scissors, paper, tape, food, water, fabric, myriad natural ephemera: flowers, leaves, feathers, sticks, plus a pitch fork, books, magazines, the dictionary…The cultivation of installation experience in different venues has been: visual merchandising, window dressing, Feng Shui, and then actual installation pieces. [on site earth work, minimal projects in gallery settings] I’d like the new work @ AIB to go forth into new materials and multiply into a space. [ more on the installation projections coming soon]

Even as I say, “I am a painter” being self-taught in original impulse and swearing by it for liberty, being a mixed blood metaphysical worker, I have always eluded just that definition.

7/10/12

New Work!

Currently, in extreme focus completing work to hang @ ARTEFACT next week, soft opening with additional work due by September. [!] An ongoing love of  the series format is  coming forth , nature & abstraction inspired, yesterday explained to self: it was Indian miniatures meets Richard Serra, or G. Klimt meets  R.Motherwell, or F. Clemente meets me.. On one  narrow tight path is not how I produce, more like a crop duster covering three wide fields at once.

In addition, candidate review @ AIB this Saturday for portfolio,  also due in September for MFA .

Sadly, don’t think I can fit in a swim at Walden Pond, any time soon..

1 0f 4 series on paper, acrylic, pencil, [sweat] 14″ x 17″, x 4, 2011-12

May 2012

The Drawing Mind, a class I recently took to loosen mark making:

Todd Hido

Harvard Sackler Art Museum

4/10/12

Todd Hido : photographer / a conversation

Todd Hido takes photographs [primarily] at night, of houses, lit from within and usually inhabited. They are captured in fog, snow, rain or in a starry dusk. Street lamps light the way as he sits either inside his car or he sets up on the pavement w/ a tripod. His work was chosen for this conversation, as they relate to Feiningers’ atmospheric night photos. They do. As well as Brassai, Atget and Lartigue, or any one of the European artists who shot in the early part of the century. The difference is they are modern American suburban landscapes, with elusive withholding houses.The seperation and quiet distance of photographer to house, reveals a longing, a disconnect with the residents, uninvited.

But is the work of Todd Hido an answer to his questions, his cathartic voyage home? In person he is open-hearted and fun, eager to relate and explain, self-effacing and sweet. I enjoyed his conversation immensely and was drawn deeper into his work as he gave us more and yet more images. He is a valuable resource and an inspired artist, on fire and gracious.