Re-emerging from MFA Program

Just a quick post, to anyone who might be still checking this blog.

It's odd to have not made any posts for the last six months while I worked on my thesis and finished up my MFA degree at AIB. What an experience it was, and well worth all the hard work, and sometimes pain in the process.

The title of this blog has been "Where the process creates its own answers" and the AIB MFA program was indeed a process. An experience that I allowed to be wide open for anything to happen, and a lot did. It created some answers and spawned many new questions. The process provided me with a solid studio practice that will easily continue moving forward. The challenge I find is in motivating myself to continue the academic practices. The process of reading and writing critically informed my work and therefore is a process that I'd somehow like to continue without the inherent deadline pressures of an MFA program.

So it is through the continuation of this blog that I intend to have this dialogue with myself. I don't know yet what parameters I will set in the frequency or content of my posts (I do want it to be interesting after all), but whatever I choose (both success and failures) will become visible and is perhaps one way I can be accountable to myself.

So, more to come...

Cristi Rinklin at FP3 Boston

My previous mentor Cristi Rinklin has a wonderful show up at FP3 in Boston. I went to the opening this past Saturday. It's up until August 15th, so if you live or are visiting Boston you should go see her work. It's outstanding.

Here are some details:
Cristi Rinklin (www.cristirinklin.com)
"Boundless"
FP3 Gallery, Fort Point, Boston MA
May 8th - August 15th 2009
Curated by James Hull
Press Release (PDF)

Artist Statement

Here is my most current artist statement. It is a continual work in progress. This still isn't "it" yet, but it's getting closer...

The space between you and me, is it really empty? Consider all the unseen bits of data: radio, television, cell phones, wireless routers, email, instant messaging, the Internet. Our air is filled with waves of electrical currents, digital impulses, and magnetic forces. Also consider that everything we think and do as humans is enabled by electrical signals running through our bodies. How does our invisible energy field mix and flow with the energy field swirling around us? What might space look like if all that energy collapsed into one plane of reality?

My paintings use sources from computer animation; a technological process of fragmentation; and the language of abstract painting to depict a non-verbal, non-physical environment that characterizes a relationship between form and formlessness. Objects emerge and dissipate. Layers of data collapse into one another constructing collaborative spaces of interlacing dimensions. Everything in the picture plane is in total flux.

In these paintings line and geometry is woven together constructed of thousands of tiny brushstrokes of opaque, saturated colors. As individual marks assert themselves they are instantaneously absorbed back into the collective representing a never-ending cycle, where energy vibrates into form and form breaks down into indiscernible particles of energy; where the sum of all its parts creates an ineffable whole.

Coming out of hiding...

Well, the past few months have been pretty intense. Writing my thesis was no small task. And I only made matters worse for myself--I had a complete draft written and decided it was the wrong story, and started over with only a few weeks left before it was due. I'm now just waiting for the final review with my advisor and hopefully will spend this weekend putting the finishing touches on it and sending it on its way.

With all of my energy focused on writing the thesis, I just did not have the time to keep this blog up to date at the same time. Perhaps now I can begin to post on a slightly more regular basis.

While I spent the last few months writing, I certainly did not stop my work in the studio. I think I would wither away and die if I couldn't paint. So below are a few shots of the work I've been completing.

Below is the finished piece "Matrix IV" that I had at the last residency. I did quite a bit more work to it. I concentrated on "weaving" the layers and colors together. I feel it was successful in meeting my intentions for the piece.


Matrix IV, acrylic on paper, 55 x 110", 2009.

Below is a piece that I am currently working on titled "Matrix V". It is my intention to have this finished for the thesis exhibition in June. Although, I'm currently working through some obstacles that I have inherently set up for myself. Color being the biggest issue. It's amazing what these paintings teach me about visual perception, and the mechanics of perceptual abstraction - especially when it comes to color. I will carefully mix a color, make test swatches and be confident it's the correct choice. However, when it actually goes down on the paper, mixed in with the field of other colors it's properties change entirely. The last color I put on is a medium pink but reads as a cream color, almost white (seen threaded in the right hand side of the painting). As always, I will be interested to see where this one lands.


Matrix V (unfinished), acrylic on paper, 55 x 110", 2009.

Hulu. An evil plot to destroy the world. Enjoy.

A premise for my thesis, on the infusion of technoconsciousness in our everyday existence...

Laugh (it IS hysterical). Then think.

(it might take a few moments to load...)

Almost there...

Here's what will most likely be my last post on this painting. I think I'm almost done with it. Or at least I'm going to stop working on it (sans a few final touches).

It's been a learning experience, and in the end I'm not sure it has achieved fully what I want, but it is a big step along the way. It has at least made me more clear about what I want to work on further in order to fulfill my intention.

I'm looking forward to the residency to help distill my ideas and approach even further.



And a series of detail shots...

Thesis Outline

Here's the first stab at my thesis outline:

Consciousness: The Space Between Thought and Form
I. Introduction
II. Decoding the Phenomenology of Perception
      a. Philosophical Narratives
      b. Scientific Testimony
III. Consciousness in Contemporary Art
IV. Abstraction of Form and Representation of the Non-Physical
      a. The Role of Photography
      b. The Role of Technology
      c. The Language of Painting
V. Conclusion

December Trip to NYC

I went to NYC this past Thursday with AIB buddy Rebecca Moran Brine. We had a great time. Funny, we did the art thing and skipped all of the holiday festivities, lights or attractions that make NYC even more spectacular this time of year.

We went to the Vincent Van Gogh and the Colors of the Night exhibit at the MoMA. Well worth the trip. The show had many pieces from his early work and then some absolutely stellar pieces of his more well known work. What a master of color. I learned a lot looking at his work and hope to apply some of the ideas I gleaned towards future paintings.

There also was an interesting immersive mutli-media installation Pipilotti Rist: Pour Your Body Out where you were encouraged to take your shoes off and lounge on the floor, or a large circular couch that was in the center of the room, and watch the video that filled three walls that were probably four or five stories high.

There was also a special artist focus exhibit on a series of Jasper Johns prints.

After we went through the Van Gogh exhibit we went upstairs to see the Joan Miró: Painting and Anti-Painting 1927-1937, it was interesting to see how the artist really explored materials, and in one room in particular that showed a series of paintings that were interepreted from collages of illustrations clipped from books and magazines.

We toured the main painting and sculpture galleries and it was great to see Monet's Reflection of Clouds on the Water-Lily Pond. I think I was most interested in looking at this painting from the painters view of about two to three feet away. What an immersive experience that was. And I was able to experience the same in Pollock's One: Number 31, 1950. I intend to come back to the MoMA in January to spend some serious time with these pieces along with some others.

After the MoMA we headed over to Chelsea to see a few show in particular:

• Tomma Abts at David Zwirner.
• Terry Winters at Matthew Marks (522 W22nd)
• Andreas Gursky at Matthew Marks (523 W24th)
• Joan Mitchell at Cheim & Read
• Then stumbled into an exhibit of Thaddeaus Beal at Robert Steele. I had seen this work somewhere before. I found out he is a Lawyer turned artist from Somerville! I must have seen his work on Harrison Ave sometime last year. The work looks like encaustic but it's mixed media on Sintra, Luan and other odd (synthetic) ground materials.

Update on Studio Work

Here are updated images of my studio work. It's going slow. I had a great meeting with my mentor on Monday and I loved the analogy she gave me about painting:

"Paintings are like a relationship. There is the attraction phase, the courtship, and then issues begin to arise and things start to crumble. The good thing is they are finite, and you can move on to the next one. It's like a serial monogamy."

She got that right. And the relationship with this painting has been crumbling. But we've had a long conversation, (me and the painting that is), and we are committed to working things through. What's left is "work" and I've resolved myself to this fact, to see the relationship through to its logical conclusion, and we're getting there, albeit slowly.

Artist Statement

Here's the working draft of my artist statement for this semester...I'm still working on the end. Let me know your thoughts.

Do individual thoughts contribute to a universal consciousness? Is there such a thing as a global brain? Can a collective mind change the corporeal world we live in?

My abstract paintings explore the relationship between thought and form. Wall-sized works on paper, constructed of thousands of tiny brushstrokes of opaque, saturated color, endeavor to depict a never-ending cycle, where thoughts vibrate into form and where form breaks down into indiscernible particles of energy. Swirling dashes and meandering configurations of small circles layered over amorphic and ambiguous shapes attempt to construct an immersive world that is both organic and synthetic, that seems both real and yet imagined. Where the sum of an endless amount of minuscule forms compulsively creates and manipulates the ineffable whole.

To contemplate the validity of any one mark amid the sea of marks calls to mind how different the course of one’s life might be with any one thought, any pivotal moment or one single person struck out of it.