Vermont Studio Center

Hello folks,

Things are going well up in Vermont!  In my first week, I have gotten settled into my studio practice and have been experimenting with a few new ideas.  Soon, I will be completing the second prototype for my Techno Pop Paintings and working towards finishing the series:

View out the studio window

The studio

Techno Pop prototype II

"Glitch World"

Xerox transfer, India ink, and transparency film

7.5" X 6.5"

2016

(Inspired by the glitch worlds of Metroid II: https://youtu.be/UAHpx6Iiejo)

"Glitch World" (WIP detail)

Collaboration project with VSC resident, Erin Curry

Shadows...

=== Open Studios, Week II ===

Reflected imagery with symmetry, yet varied density.

Reflected imagery with asymmetry.

Notes from studio visit with Richard Baker:

I approach media, surface, and space from the vantage point of a painter.  My works come from the wall and move into different spaces. 

The translation from-wall-to-off-wall and analog-to-digital (and vice-versa) is a process of layering spaces and media in ways that complicate and contradict my geometric systems.  (Is layering these translations a painting process?)  Current theory: you don’t have to use paint to express painting concepts… not all works made with paint are paintings.

A "responsible system" is a system that responds to the natural world in order to consider change and include adaptability as part of its function.  Through painting, the geometric structure becomes a system with an adaptive aim.

“The ruin” is an organized structure that has degraded from experiencing entropy over a long period of time.  My geometry can become ruins.

Order and entropy are not a mutually exclusive binary; each depends on the presence of the other to function in and of themselves.

As a medium, painting can disrupt systems by creating entropy… it breathes life into the system, creating a “geometric organism”.  (Geometry-as-structure + painting-as-entropy = geometry-as-system = organism)

There are different "types of change" that I am interested in: entropic, topologic, geomorphic, cyber-, and sociologic.  These types of change may take the form of planar ruins, elastic amoebas, growing networks, glitches, or blueprints and employ techniques such as collaging, layering, transparency, photocopying (esp. distorted), or origami…etc.  The "rate of these changes" must also be considered in terms of layers and format.  Timing is everything.

Not being able to see the work in its entirety emphasizes the viewer’s bodily subjectivity and illuminates the epistemological limits of their perspective.  Anamorphic spaces can achieve this.  In the context of painting, breaking the equiangular-equilateral-quadrilateral format and evoking architectural space constructs the dimension required to subvert the “one-off, gotcha!, punchline, spectacle" of anamorphic sidewalk art.

There is a “sweet spot” that occurs between an object’s form and scale that alludes to architecture, yet maintains the limitations of surface characterized by painting.  My work must involve the viewer’s body in the act of engaging with surface, but not overwhelm it so as to become architecture.  The right balance of scale and flatness can activate painterly illusion in sculptural forms.

Is there a “Romanticism” in not being able to see and know everything?  Am I a Romantic painter in the Information Age?

[[Techno Pop Notes]]

The photocopy, the painted planes, and the drawn grid.

What aspects of painting and surface are being addressed in collaging three layers of media?  What am I trying to disambiguate through the layers?  

There's the photocopy, the painted planes, and the drawn grid.  The photocopy is a literal 3D form that has been flattened.  Is it important for this to remain black and white?  Can color be introduced into a xerox transfer?  

The painted planes are an intermediate form, somewhere between illusions of 2D and 3D.  It becomes an abstract polygonal form, suggesting shadow, while ultimately remaining flat.  Do I add highlights and push the illusion of form?  

The drawn grid is illusionistic dimension created by linear perspective.  Can this show a painterly gesture if painted?  Can I create micro-layers and construct a patchwork of multiple colors within the drawn grid?  

The "complex coil" is now no longer just about space... it is also being addressed as an entanglement of media.  Thus, the boundaries of space and media are relative to their specific juxtapositions within surface.  Like color relations within a painting.  Like Joseph Kosuth's chair.  Like collaging layers of signifiers to create a semiotic painting...

===Week 6===

Aluminum prints of "Handkerchief Series"

Acetone transfers + mixed media collage

Acetone transfer + graphite

Collaging acetone transfers and distorted photocopies

Making grids with Molotow paint markers + Golden High Flow Acrylics

Stamping acrylic grids with soft cut and linoleum cut 

Reflection/Contradiction

Acrylic rainbow gradients + collage

Gel transfers on acrylic

Is there an existential space that exists between the juxtapositions of different media? ...A space that suggests a collage could rest at the foreground in relation to a print - or that a sculpture could thrust a painting into the background?  Do figure-ground relations exist between media, just as they exist between color?

Electro-Pop Lady Grids

Currently, I'm meditating on gender and queer theory and beginning to incorporate a more rebellious identity into this work.  I realized that my work is not just about painting/systems, nature/and cyberspace.. it's also about multiple perspectives and spectrums, and I'm acknowledging that power and identity politics are also a major point of contention and contradiction within the arena of painting.

Making grids with Adobe Illustrator + photocopier

1/32" Plexiglass inlays

Successful gel transfers ready for collaging onto three sculptural panels

Composition ideas (with photocopies)

 I have learned how to make high-res blow ups for larger gel transfers by using a website called "The Rasterbator".  These compositions are taken from my "Circuit Topology Series" and they will be painted and collaged onto wood panels.

Rough digital compositions for the gel transfers.