FORT GRUNT Aquarium

I have an upcoming project for an exibition opportunity in Durham, North Carolina with the people at Fort Grunt (www.fortgrunt.com). The project space is called "the aquarium" an alternative gallery venue. This space is a 24 hour viewable window run by Ben Fisher and Lou Joseph as part of their studio. According to their website... KunstOffice in Berlin, Germany provided the initial idea for being creative with thinking about exhibition spaces and their possibilities. For my proposal I requested photographs of what one would see 360 degrees in front of the window. Lou shot and sent a bunch. These two are sure to appear in the finished work. The space is a large 6'x10' window. Visit www.fgaquarium.com/ to see past projects and for submitting proposals. I am incorporating the photographs and mixed media painting to plaid-ify the full window. The finished piece will be titled "rescindia" and is going to be up March 2008.

Enrique Martinez Celaya

Since I namedropped Celaya in one of my most recent posts I feel obliged to show an image of his work (related to my student's face print from etching) and a link to his website: www.martinezcelaya.com/
The image is titled "Man and Dog (Lonliness)" and features a ghost like silhouette which is there but not yet there. His work has a poetic and ethereal symbolic quality. I enjoy the odd combination of traditional and nontraditional materials and processes in his work that become strengthened when used together (he will often exhibit a juxtoposition of objects like a sculpture in front of a painting). Interestingly, he began his career in Physics before earning an MFA in art. He is currently teaching at the University of Nebraska and is pretty hip. Check out his website for his blog where he posts his thoughts on his work, recent projects, and conversations with other artists. I like the title of a symposium he took part in "Stumbling Towards an Artwork that is not as Terrible at it Could Be". Could have been my mantra had I thought of it first.

"In the Raw" from Etching Class

Two more prints here from Etching class. First Portfolio second Project. I assigned the theme of "in the raw" and here are two examples of food variations. First is Angela Hetherwick's "Raw" (above) a sharp contrasting use of aquatint etching to document her recent trip to a local Toledo Sushi establishment. Angela photographed the entire dining process to integrate them in her various changes/ states of this plate. This has a Wayne Thiebaud feel in the pop sense of arranged food-- the fuzzy rice looks incredibly edible. Below is Julie Cikra's "Dead and Dying" another variation on food-- here is state one from an on going series she is working on to track the progress of rotting fruit through multiple states. Great value structure through succesfully stage biting in aquatint. Click on the image to see up close the combination of textural line and value.

Another etching from etching class

This is an inadvertant, yet dynamic, printing discovery made by Sasha Hulisz for her "untitled" series of abstract images. What happened was the plate was not fully run through the press and as a result the image did not completely print. Sasha extending the print with hand drawing and watercolor beyond the interupted plate mark. This created a new more interesting composition breaking out of the standard rectangular plate impression. This is one section of a larger sheet that has multiple individual plates printed on it. Interesting use of abstract mark-making and decorative motifs in this series. She is continuing this technique now more intentionally. In printmaking you have to be able to take advantage of the potential happenstance. You never know when they will happen and how they might affect the process. Usually it is bad news, but occasionally you can use it to the advantage of your imagery.

Recent prints from my Etching Class First 2 Projects

As I promised to my class... Here are few examples from our first project in Etching. For this assignment students inherited a plate leftover from a former student from a previous etching class. The project requires a conceptual and compositional overhaul of the appropriated plate to the point where students can claim the work as their own. It is a good beginning exercise in getting over the hesitation in investing oneself into scraping and burnishing on the zinc. It is a requirement to have half the image developed through erasure and the other half in new additive techniques. Sara Huger's "Internalized" (above) appropriated the silhouette of a face and she added the subtle lighting and violent scraping to the eyes. It ended up having this poetic resonance similar to Enrique Martinez Celaya's work or an Arnulf Rainer drawing on photograph.

Below is Mike Chorey's "Herman Pt. 2" a nice AR Penck-esque creepy image of a guy who haunts dreams. Printing in color was not an option, but since this ended up monochromatic and hand worked it is a sucessfully acceptable "breaking of the rules".

Jim Lee-- Altamont

Jim Lee dazzles with the use of evocative yet simplistic forms flatly enhancing in an offbeat manner the physicality of detritus materials in his recent work "altamont". The splitting and reconfiguring of space and form is reminiscint of the use of architecture by Gordon Matta-Clark and Lee is redefining how three dimensional painting can be like the methods of Jessica Stockholder. His poetic use of subtle color and refined shapes echoes artists like Victor Pasmore and Miro-- but stretches it out from piece to piece.