Archive for the ‘Carnivora’ Category
A New Studio Cometh… Together Slowly
click image to embiggen
After spending the month of August on a small farm in upstate New York as an Artist in Residence with Chashama, a 501(c)(3) organization dedicated to helping artists find the space they need, Chashama has awarded me with a Visual Arts Studio Award: stated simply, this means I’ve been given access to a new subsidized studio in the Brooklyn Army Terminal.
Above you’ll find a photograph of the space with freshly painted floors (ah, satisfying… you know that appealed to my barely restrained OCD) and a few odds and ends.
One of the things I’ve immediately noticed about having a larger space is that it begins to let your thoughts and ideas grow larger, which is both exciting and potentially expensive.
I expect there to be much movement on the creation front; part of the obligation to keeping the studio lay in spending no less than 50 hours a month in the space.
The things we do for our art…
getting the lights right, in all white, on a winter's photo shoot
Ah, the things that we do for our art!
Sometimes, just sometimes, one looks back on an image and thinks… “damn, this had better have been worth it.”
After having recently seen the fruits (coming soon) of the rather humiliating labor that brought this image to life, I can now say, it was definitely worth it.
I’m told that if you can’t laugh at yourself, you really have no right to laugh at others – which is something I’m absolutely not ready to give up.
The Quality of Line
As my August 2009 residency continues I’ve found myself talking quite a bit about “line quality”. And while most of the folks around me hear what I have to say, nod and move on, I’ve come to realize that it really must seem a throw away expression.
Why has no one said, “what the hell are you talking about?” (assuming they listen or care).
As I work, day in and day out with nothing but black and grey lines (ink and pencil respectively) I find that when I close my eyes I continue to see lines of varying width and sharpness, and as I read a book at the close of the day I find myself examining, almost subconsciously, the heft of the line used to connect the two pillars of a capital “H”, or the gentle slope of the letter “c”. One might think this bothersome, but really it feels like a meditation: the more time I spend with the line the closer I feel I come to truly understanding it.
Now, I know that may sound odd, but it really is what I’ve chosen to do with my life. I make images which, by and large, are comprised of a series of lines that when viewed as a whole, form an image greater than the sum of its parts. I believe that getting to know the singular line allows me a superior control of the overall work: that with the flick of the wrist a whole piece can be altered, perhaps imperceptibly to the uninitiated, but changed nonetheless.
Every artist, I would imagine, dreams of a time when their work transcends the boundaries of their mortal life, discussed in a far flung art history course on a campus full of activity long after the artist’s passing. For me, I would like it to be said that Jason Covert understood the line – that the body of his work spoke of an exquisite quality of line.
An Artist’s Dilemma: So Many Choices…
like a kid in a candy store... so... many... pencils
The photo above represents a question I’ve been asking myself a lot lately, “how much is too much?”
For me, though the seemingly infinite choice of pencils above is ponderous, the real question comes only days before departing for my very first artist residency and a proposed work of staggering proportions.
Let me backup a little: an integral part of maintaining one’s balance sheet as an artist comes in the form of grants, or rather, the pursuit of grants, because any artist who has tried can tell you: there are far, far more artists than there are grants to be won. And so we must look beyond the dream grants, those that simply hand the artist funds and say “do whatever you want!”. We must look towards those that offer the artist something less tangible than cold, hard cash: we must look at the residencies. Residencies come in many shapes and sizes, but the one I’m attending offers the artist a room to sleep in and a studio to work in, all whilst surrounded by thankfully few distractions.
The work that I referred to above, and which I hope to start and complete by the time my residency expires is to be a 6ft by 6ft, deeply detailed illustration. I’m nervous: and not because it’s a big drawing, but because I intend to use the same level of detail throughout as I would on a drawing 1ft by 1ft. Forget about needing a new eraser when I’m done: I might need new eyes!
So as I prepare to dive in, I ask myself again, “how much is too much?”
I suspect I’ll be able to tell you in about a month – one way or the other.
VIDEO: Carnivora – Stained Glass Sculpture
Over the last several months, as money has been raised, as objects have been designed and lyrics written, as jewelry has taken shape and residencies secured, the train keeps a rollin’: Carnivora style.
Though the project has often been about management as much as the creation of art, the single greatest pleasure for me has been seeing items come to life: springing from my mind to the page and on into the real world.
Below you will find a short video showing the application of some of the finishing touches as one of many pieces comes to life: in this case, a stained glass sculpture.
Carnivora: Sights and Sounds
2:00pm, on a bitterly cold February afternoon, hours behind schedule, in a photo studio below the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway.
The make-up was finally finished and the set-up was complete, but the studio was cold… far too cold for me, and I was wearing clothes and a hat. I couldn’t help but wince when I looked at our first model and saw her standing barefoot on the hard floor. As we marched heater after heater into the studio in an effort to increase the comfort level I crossed my fingers as the final preparations were made. There would be only one chance: we had to get it right.
shot with an iPhone 3G
Carnivora: Andy had a Dream…
Almost a decade ago I traveled to Portugal and decided that I would paint and write while traveling throughout the country. I stayed for 6 months and it remains, in my mind, one of the most rewarding adventures I’ve ever experienced.
While abroad, I received a letter from my friend, Andrew Johnson, telling me of a dream he had had. It struck a visceral chord within and I was moved to pen an Eliot-esque poem embellishing the contents of his dream.
New York, present day…
As work on my multi-media installation, Carnivora, proceeds I am excited to know that one of my favorite musicians is hard at work crafting a unique album of music based on my writings and poems as they relate to the show’s premise. Of course, as is the case with so many things, there was work done before the work began, and as such Felix (the musician) repayed me a debt by creating a song based on a poem that I’ve never been able to let go of… it’s called The Dream (or I Dreamt as Andrew Johnson).
You can read the poem by clicking here, and you can listen to the resulting track below.
