a Honeybee blog

Finishing the installation of Albeit and Palisade yielded what I call a rubber moment—a triumph that required a slow build-up, physical and emotional exhaustion, and a lifetime of dreaming predating it, so much in fact that it feels synthetic, like rubber.  It takes living now—after the fact—to help me understand how real the accomplishment is.  I have been inviting every important person that I can conceive having helped me as an artist to the opening of the show.  In doing so, I realize I am one of a very few people I know that is living my dream.  I look back at my infantile art experiences in middle school and high school and remember trying to justify art as a career choice as I entered college; the choice was a gut decision, having nothing to do with logic or security and everything to do with possibility.  I never needed “easy”, I just needed “possible”.  Now that I’m here, I couldn’t be prouder of myself for still—continually and eternally—loving what I’ve chosen to do with my life. 

I won’t care this Thursday whether or not I win an award for my project.  I won’t care who shows up.  I won’t even care if people notice my piece, because I am confident in my work and my investigation regardless.  The title Albeit means “even though” or “conceding the fact that”.  The broad application of the term is precisely why I chose it to identify my installation.  Visually, the implication is that something is happening in the midst of other things happening; art need not be isolated or forced.  Conceptually, it references life and my experience as an artist trying to validate her practice.

My final thesis product did, unsurprisingly, deviate from the plans.  I anticipated that the space would dictate the composition of the room and was glad to to be so overwhelmed with inspiration.  I cried and panicked several times through installation, I think because I was overcome with nerves and possibility, but the final result was more than worth it.  Whereas I expected the art would be claustrophobic and intimidating, it would up being airy and, for lack of a better word, beautiful.  The verticality of the atmosphere alluded to skyscrapers; the materials alluded to the stuff of building and directly communicated with the natural components of the room.  Palisade, which started out to be a strong painting, served a sculptural/architectural purpose in the upper corner of the room above the doorway.  Out of reach, the painting balanced the room and served as a sort of playful mystery—work that did not beg for attention or understanding, just a pun against the heightened value of art materials.

The next time I participate in a group exhibition I will expect stress and trouble during installation.  My roommate was more than accommodating, given my irrational mood and nervousness.  My work was not all that I thought it would be, but it in some ways it was better.  Knowing that I persevered through the show—all of the planning, organizing and events— is the best reward and lesson.

    

I think I’ve got it.

PANIC PANIC PANIC.  Following suit with ambitions expressed in my last posting “Addressing innate stigmas”, I am trying to come up with a clever idea for thesis.  I have a week.  No pressure.

Please take a look at the two ridiculous sketches below and tell me if these ideas are corny—too literal?—or clever, following in the wake of Gedi Sibony and others.  Oye.  I can use my hanging structures to allude to window blinds.  Use an old pool tarp to frame one or two side of the window as a “curtain”.  Nothing neat and obvious.  Just loosely placed—looking semi-intentional.  The other side of the room will be left open to display and extra 8 raw insulation panel squares that I have.  I may place them randomly, above eye level as in Martin Barre’s most recent show.  Leading up to them maybe an escape ladder?  Or a stack of cinderblocks assembled like a staircase?

Corny or brilliant.  How can I know?

More playful images from the studio:

 

 

 

    

  

 

Despite my desire to present audiences with a new visual experience void of labels and objected identities, people will certainly identify my material choices.  The new realization of this problem has me excited about my thesis project again.  Insulation panels and rope will be identified as construction materials, related to the building, perhaps associated with a sort of safety, confinement or protection.  It is a meaty material with plenty of room for conceptual interplay.  

Hanneline suggests that I somehow set up my installation in a way that delays the human understanding of it as an aesthetic experience.  ”Wait, is this a part of the room?  Are they putting in new air ducts?  Did I stumble upon a room off limits to viewers— separate from the inarguable world of art in the rest of the gallery?”  Paintings are obviously art.  Sculptures are obviously art.  What exactly separates them from the aesthetic experiences that interrupt our day like a plank of wood leaning against a window, or a red apple misplaced in a pile of green apples?  People have placed some unreasonable heightened importance on materials such as paint and canvas that prepares them when they walk into a gallery or museum.  They know when they see those materials that they are looking at art, or some strong attempt of something to be art.  

How can I challenge these assumptions?  What will happen when viewers walk into my space in the deep dark rear of the gallery and find my assemblage of construction materials?  How can I make this an ironic, yet understood experience? 

Super exhibition with Melissa Torro and Maria Giancola

     This week’s critique focused on the fine details of my project.  Now that the main body of it is almost fully developed, I have begun to think about (or stress about) lighting, background, wall framing, hanging tactics and composition.  My idea has evolved from creating several clusters of my hanging objects, to making one large cluster instead.  I believe that the size of the space that I have been given is not large enough to create an overwhelming atmosphere, or any sort of maze or set of corridors like I had planned, but it will serve as a perfect platform for one titanic unit.  It has the potential to be quite overwhelming ad dynamic.

     I have come to realize that by tightly packing each hanging unit in the final composition, that the alternating layers will play off of each other.  The insulation panels are loosely attached with thin rope at only two points and hung about a foot apart from each other, vertically.  The fragility and lightness of these “stacks” leaves room for layering with neighboring structures and may move subtly with the cross-ventilation of the room, bumping and swaying against each other like towering dominoes.  If I want to work with this kinetic potential more, I can implement fans or some other trigger when I install.

     I have been considering different wall treatments to expand the space or best frame my project.  After thinking about mirrors, black paint or some echoing pattern, the idea that lighting alone may serve the installation well was introduced to me.  During this week when my work is up in the CSB project space (a mock trial for my “stacks”) I may play with flashlights or spotlights on the floor and see how it reacts with the sheen of the metallic silver of the insulation.  If it is as illuminating as I imagine it to be, I may be satisfied.  Fingers crossed.

Robin Hill, Case Discussions: Recent Sculpture, January 13—February 19, 2011.  Hill’s dealing with raw material and presenting it for classical viewing.  By introducing it on the easel or under the magnifying glass, she is inviting viewers to appreciate fabric out of context, giving it the same attention one might to a traditional painting.  So exiting.  Repetition=intentionality.

This is where function meets visual strength.  Passing under the bridge on my commute home from work, the solid piers communicate strength and presence.  I can carry these ideas into my own work, making it a force to be reckoned with.

Martin Barre displayed his paintings above eye level and composed them in the gallery space so that viewers are forced to acknowledge the atmosphere and not just one painting at a time.  Unified color palette and similar studies in pattern/shape pulls the room together.  The space is the art.

My studio— work is underway.  Let’s hope the finished product is worth it.