As High As Heaven

AAL & UAL FLIGHTS

2012-01-25T18:25:00.000-08:00

Wow, the back of this canvas, or canvases are going quite rapidly. I didn't take any pictures of the paper mache process because I thought that it would be kind of uninteresting. And now it is more than halfway complete. I knew from the beginning of this piece that I would be drawing a bunch of American Airlines Flight texts. The only surprise for me was that I decided to add United Airlines Flight texts too. I've created many number and letter drawings already (The Best Years, Important Dates) and really enjoy filling a sheet of drawing paper in this fashion. I think that they are about two things: creating an atmosphere of text and suggesting improbable concepts. The second "thing" is a way to play with the psyche on a bunch of levels...large numbers are often impossible to vocalize or read, making them subvert their own purpose (art is hard to understand but numbers are black and white, unless they're too big!), dates can be forced to have a similar impossibility...if they go way to far into the future, for example. Numbers and words, except when used in fiction and poetry, are pretty concrete things...or can be, and I like to push the more concrete combinations of them into the realm of uncertainty. I guess that's where the back of this canvas is going. I view it in a similar vein as Andy Warhol's soup cans, while he saw the industrial/commercial/popular world around him as an unrealized art form, I see the collective psyche of contemporary humans as a form...and I'm trying to pull the viewer into that world to look around and wonder at its strange shapes, patterns and symbolic meanings.

larger image

Front Finished

2011-12-30T15:31:00.000-08:00

Here are a couple of detail views of the front. I showed this piece to some collegiates today and got some nice feedback...they liked the colors and felt that it created a discordant cheerfulness against the political content...also it felt very American, color-wise, real strong with the red, white & blue...though there are a few non American flags too. I'm looking forward to turning this canvas over and getting started on the back. It will be all paper mache and ink drawn text...stay tuned!

These are a few of my favorite things...

2011-12-28T17:39:00.000-08:00

Wow! I think that I messed up a bit designing this painting...adding all of these little things onto the chunks of land is a little tricky...the details are a bit challenging with even my tiniest brush. But I'm starting to like the complexity of the image and am enjoying how the careful placement of the little land items improve the overall composition and movement of the larger image. I'm thinking that this side of the canvas will be complete in the next two days.

Land Development

2011-12-26T14:19:00.000-08:00

Boy, I've been struggling a bit with rendering these chunks of land as 3-D slabs...I'm s used to drawing with ink or gouache on paper, which is so much smoother and faster. Canvas has such an annoying texture and offers a great deal of resistance to my brush, which in turn is all globbed up with paint that never really comes off the brush the way I want it to...it often globs up on the edge of the brush and either leaves a nice fat, wet clump along the edge of a stroke or runs out of paint too soon and leaves a fractured dry brush effect where I want a nice clean line. Alas, it is what it is and I'm finding myself resigned to its properties and trying to allow my design to work with it...let my tolerances slide a bit.

Land Ho!

2011-12-23T04:53:00.000-08:00

I've begun to form the shapes that represent the title of this piece; land forms or chunks of land being held by sleeved arms. I ended up creating some real meandering shapes. I was thinking about shapes of countries or states and how they're often formed or mapped out or their borders are decided according to rivers, mountains or straight lines. I think shapes of countries have a distinct quality that is very odd and not necessarily picturesque. It got me thinking about gerrymandering voting districts and even how the word gerrymandering came to be...bizarre map delineating in order to gather certain populations into preferred voting blocks...to the point where the voting district looked like a salamander deigned by someone named Gerry?! It's got me thinking that I'll rename this painting: "Gerrymandering the G 10". Stay tuned!

All rendered captain

2011-12-16T09:50:00.000-08:00

What a gnarly mess of arms! Next task will be to paint hands at the ends of all those sleeves, each holding a chunk of land...stay tuned!

serious rendering

2011-12-14T11:45:00.000-08:00

Ok...now I've done it...I've got all of these wiry, spindly arms that will need to get rendered with wrinkles and dimension. But I'm liking it so far and I think that it will be just the right touch for this painting and this series. It will remain to be seen as to whether or not I then turn all of these jacketed arms into tweed!...wouldn't that look awesome?!

Break in The Clouds

2011-12-09T15:33:00.001-08:00

Here's what's happening here...I've got this vision of a hole in the clouds where a patch of blue shows through and 11 jacketed arms rain down, each one holding a chunk of land. To be continued.

Red and White

2011-12-08T13:25:00.001-08:00

I really do struggle in terms of painting. I feel that my painting tends to be more illustrative than awesomely cool contemporary painting, but alas I forge ahead and paint. My strengths might be in my ideas or imagery, which grow out of doing a lot of drawing, looking and thinking. I am probably closer to language than I am to painting, which I imagine is about things that are not so literal. I am nonetheless feeling real good about this painting, (should I call something that consists of 11 small two-sided canvases all bound together a painting? More of a painting-like thing!) with its red and white soft blended bands. The other pieces in this series are more colorful, so it feels good to limit my palette a bit here in order to create a contrast with the others.

Stretched and ready for Gesso

2011-12-01T16:15:00.001-08:00

Number "5" (my 5th piece in this series) which is titled as "Chunk" (until further notice) just got finished being stretched and having all of the frayed canvas edges neatly tucked and tacked. Here is a view of the back. I'll flip it over and work on the front first. I think that I have both the front and back subject matter already figured out: hands holding pieces of "land" masses will get rendered in acrylic on the front and text in black ink will grace the back. There are 22 "spaces" formed by the stretcher bars on the back and I plan to write "American Airlines Flight 541, American Airlines Flight 29", etc. in each space. At this point as I create the last canvases in this series I'm really thinking more about the imagery and relationships to the already completed canvases.

Number 5

2011-11-25T12:43:00.001-08:00

Finished stretchers wrapped in junk mail.

I have been extremely intermittent and inconsistent with this blog...but nonetheless, here is my newest piece...still in the bones stage. I sat down last week and paged through some of my sketch/notebooks looking for an inspiration for this piece. I also made some scaled thumbnails sketches of the size relationships between the other four canvases which I've already completed. I came up with this arrangement of canvases: 11 separate canvases that are 12" x 24" each, that will be stacked vertically. I chose an image of a hand holding a chunk of land...as in a 3-D piece of a map, to be repeated on the front. Thus the possible title for this canvas: "Chunk". On the back I've decided to draw mostly text. The back of each canvas will have a vertical stretcher bar dividing each canvas into left and right shallow spaces. In each space will be written: "American Airlines Flight 208, American Airlines Flight 519, etc."

Floe

2011-09-12T17:36:00.000-07:00

Well, I haven't posted for a year!...trying other social networking venues...but I'm back! This is painting/structure #4, which I think I'll title "Floe". It will have a painting on the front of a tarred and feathered penguin standing on an ice floe, with all kinds of stuff raining down on it from above. As you can see this painting will not be rectangular, rather shaped kind of coffin-like. (Though maybe the foreshortening of the photo makes it look rectangular?!) The back will be jammed with molded clear plastic packaging, each covering an individual ink drawing.

"Strike Anywhere"

2011-09-12T17:35:00.001-07:00

I've got these posts a little out of sequence...the above post was created August 8th...but I'm just now getting around to publishing it. Since that time I decided to rename this piece (see above)...and I think that the front is complete...we'll see.

Letter From the Grave

2011-08-14T07:02:00.000-07:00

My completed "Letter From the Grave", front and back view.

100 hammers

2010-09-07T04:17:00.001-07:00

100hammers.com

Mission Module's backside drawing complete!

2010-08-30T14:23:00.000-07:00

Middle panel all numbered up!

2010-08-25T14:33:00.001-07:00

Let the inking begin..

2010-08-17T15:08:00.001-07:00

Gessoed and Plasticized!

2010-08-11T15:20:00.001-07:00

Paper Mache Near Completion

2010-08-05T14:01:00.000-07:00

Let The Paper Mache Begin

2010-08-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

near completion of front

2010-07-28T03:34:00.000-07:00

Milky, yellow glaze..

2010-06-25T14:50:00.000-07:00

adding...

2010-06-25T14:48:00.000-07:00

Side by side..taking form

2010-06-16T15:28:00.000-07:00

Detail views

2010-06-16T15:26:00.000-07:00

Moving along slowly

2010-06-16T15:24:00.000-07:00

Module progress

2010-06-16T15:23:00.000-07:00

Module

2010-06-16T15:21:00.000-07:00

Done!

2010-05-16T06:55:00.000-07:00

It's actually been almost three years since I started this particular blog, with the intention to document my next body of work after my "Prison Papers" show at the Perimeter Gallery in Belfast, Maine. I just kind of reviewed all of my previous posts and was able to see how easily one can get distracted and stymied from following through on an idea. I feel as though I am pretty securely on track now. My goal is to complete enough of these "tall" paintings for another solo show at Perimeter Gallery in 2012. Originally I had hoped to create articulated Jacob's Ladder painting/constructions...but alas the logistics proved too daunting for me. These constructs will not cascade like a Jacob's Ladder, but will at least have an interactive component to them; they will turn like a page in a book, to reveal both sides...and they will be tall! So, I've completed my first one, which I will get professionally photographed next week and submit to the Maine Art Commission's Individual Artist Grant competition...wish me luck! Meanwhile, I shall begin another tall construct...what shall I create? My thoughts are to make the next one wider, but maybe not as tall...and as far as the imagery goes?...not sure! One thought is to create a piece that explores the idea of the Predator Drone high in the sky...with beseeching beings clamoring below...stay tuned

Back + frame

2010-05-12T16:19:00.000-07:00

the back...

2010-05-01T07:32:00.000-07:00

front completed

2010-04-26T17:29:00.001-07:00

Nearing completion of the front

2010-04-21T17:27:00.000-07:00

Australeopithicus..

2010-04-13T17:03:00.000-07:00

Symmetry & arms

2010-04-11T15:38:00.000-07:00

I decided to re-paint some of the clouds to create a left/right symmetry and have just begun adding arms & figures emerging from the clouds.

..progress

2010-04-11T15:36:00.000-07:00

2010-04-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

Pie Charts

2010-04-03T18:38:00.000-07:00

Painting has commenced

2010-03-29T17:07:00.000-07:00

Hell on Earth

2009-12-05T10:31:00.000-08:00

Well it has been quite some time since the last time I sat down and collected my thoughts...and I have sitting before a long list of things to do, one of which is to clean up my studio, which I try to do each Friday, but have not been able to do for the last three Fridays!...and I might just do after writing here?!? This blog is titled High as Heaven primarily because my original intent was to chronicle the development of my Jacob's Ladder paintings, which, if ever completed, will consist of a very tall string of canvases. But all I can ever seem to complete are my small daily drawings. A structure as complex as a string of cascading canvases seems near impossible for me to manage. Last night, however I felt a little reinvigoration after hearing of two local artists who will be having museum shows and preparing large works for them. I myself have a bead on a possible gallery space with an interesting architectural ceiling structure that would serve my hanging Jacob's Ladders perfectly. Maybe 2010 will be the year that this project will come to fruition?

Comments? Questions?

2009-10-12T14:02:00.000-07:00

Well here it goes...today I've begun making drawings for my two-day draw-in at the 2009 Juice Conference (http://www.juiceconference.org). No real overarching theme here...what I plan on doing is to explore my own motifs, some of the language that the Juice people are putting out and any language that comes my way via my thousands upon thousands of internet fans all across the globe! So if anyone is out there...? Feel free to comment below. You can start with this drawing which picked up text from a little dialog on my Facebook wall. For me this text begs a million more questions, opens up hours of ranting and raving and is full of assumptions, mis information and truth. I'm afraid that my little project here will be somewhat ineffective if I am just talking to myself, but, well I suppose that that is one characteristic of what I am exploring here: the artist often works alone, communication and understanding at its best is difficult, discovery isn't discovery if it's easy to find??!! Wish me luck!

Antiquing

2009-09-27T19:02:00.000-07:00

I had fun a couple of weeks ago cruisin the county with my significant other...what beautiful weather we've been having! We stopped in an antiquey place and I bought two shopping bags full of books for $20! I now have new images and text to draw from...most of it politically incorrect and dated. With all of the weekly ranting and raving that seems to pour out on us these days...wait a week and it will change...it's good to go backwards sometimes and re-visit what was the issue of the day back when. This drawing borrows the image of a bandaged head from a three volume set on the Vietnam War...remember that one?!

Through the Years

2009-08-31T03:14:00.000-07:00

My Hellfire drawings are chugging along...I've created about 90 or so since last April. There should be about 125 when all is said and done. Part of what this particular project is about (I should probably create a separate blog for these drawings!) is the idea of chronology and thinking about what was happening in my own life as this missile system development chugged along. My hope is that when this set of drawings is complete and arranged in its exhibition space, where ever that may be, it will work on its audience in the same manner. Where were you in August 1986 when the MICOM commander approved the full release of the MULE?

Looking for Trouble

2009-07-29T02:58:00.000-07:00

I've been working on coming up with a motif/format for creating a series of drawings for the Food for Thought exhibition in October and keep coming around to the same place in my travels: Africa. You see I've got this notion that my take on food sustainability will be to suggest that our present course is to rely on the military to ensure stable food supply. So I'm searching the internet with phrases like: protect food guns, food shortage guns, agriculture guns, etc.... I also have this thing about women in the military...not in a kinky way, but as a point of departure in terms of exploring cultural shifts, so I'm also searching out: women guns, girl guns, etc... So as you might imagine I'm finding weird stuff. I'm trying to sort it all out though and create something new...it remains to be seen if I succeed. Something that I have discovered so far, that has peaked my interest is the Sudan Tribune (http://www.sudantribune.com/spip.php?article31963). This paper seems to have all of the trouble that I'm looking for! In it I find articles about land, vast sums of money, vast accumulations of grain, lots of corruption and the voices of people (mostly men?) commenting to each other in extremely vitriolic language regarding tribalism, independence and the like. In my searches it seems to stand that on this earth we have enough food for everyone. Why then do people starve? Why is there cause for alarm regarding sustainable agriculture? My superficial conclusion...but possibly accurate conclusion is that politics, nation & tribe all contribute to thwart sustainable agriculture and food for all. I'll be reading and copying the vitriol of Sudan to try and gain a deeper understanding of what goes wrong...and see if in fact, as my dime store theorizing goes, this vitriol rules the day underlying our first world civilized logic.

Food for Thought

2009-07-06T15:36:00.001-07:00

I might be in a show in September whose theme will be about food sustainability. I looked through a whole bunch of my small drawings...online...to see if I had created anything remotely close to this theme, which I had, sort of...but not really overtly or consciously. So I sat down and thought about it for a bit, to see if I could come up with something...of course if I did a little research I'm sure that I would obtain facts & knowledge, but sometimes I like to just tap into the old messy intuition muscle just to see what odd misinformed myth is lying dormant in my subconscious. What I came up with was that if there is such an idea that certain practices that we are at present employing are unsustainable then it follows that eventually we will be reduced to hoarding & guarding what little food is left. I had recently created a drawing from a local newspaper image of a young girl hunting with a rifle and searched the web for images of food pyramids...and this drawing came together and feels like some strong imagery to work with.

What Next?

2009-06-16T17:26:00.000-07:00

Well, with IMPROBABILITIES hanging out at the Perimeter Gallery at Chase's Daily all nice and quiet I'm turning my thoughts to the next big thing! Actually this blog started out as an attempt to document my thoughts while I was developing what was an old thing and is now the next thing: high hangin' jacob's ladder construction/paintings. For all of you dedicated "As High as Heaven" readers out there (anybody?!) you'll remember that I had to scrap plans to exhibit them at Perimeter last year because there were issues with attaching them to the antique tin ceiling. Well, now I'm ready for plan B! Which is to exhibit some ladders at Stadler Gallery in Kingfield, Maine. The last time I exhibited there I had created a very long chain of canvases that hung from high in this gallery's framing...the gallery is actually a very large old barn. That show, "Operation 21 Prayer Salute" featured "Cavity Sam" painted onto coffin-like canvases. I got a lot of positive response to that imagery, including a Maine Arts Commission Grant. He is on my mind again! Other possibilities for these ladders might be the "HELLFIRE STORY", an "OH MY GOD" group, a group of canvases with lots of zeros or numbers painted on them, fallen female soldiers and civilians,what else...? Painted horizontal stripes with text...stay tuned!

Hanging High

2009-06-07T05:40:00.000-07:00

Well, the show got hung, the public came and all went well! The response was pretty positive along the lines of: "Great work!...Too much to read, I'll have to come back!...Thank you for bringing humor to such dark subject matter." It was really good to go through the whole process of: deciding to create this particular body of work, enjoying the creative moments, handing it over to the hangers to interpret and re-configure, get feedback. My first reaction after arranging all of the work prior to hanging was that I wished that all of the work was simply black text on white background! That idea was rejected out of hand, as my supportive co-conspirators really liked the color text and color in general. But it got me thinking. I may pursue more work along those lines. Those that had viewed this work on the web prior to the opening were surprised at how big the large drawings were. So I am left with scale and color to consider...two very good elements to refine into my general pursuit of creating work that communicates and inspires. Thanks to everyone who attended the opening and the staff of the Perimeter gallery...you rock!

Copying & thinking...

2009-05-20T17:33:00.000-07:00

I started out creating this new series as pre-election anticipation of the right wing wackos coming down hard on our new era of progressiveness. If there has been any change in how I feel now or how my imagery has changed I would have to say that it went from loud and wacky to not so loud and wacky. I like the drawings that have ended up looking more like knitted texture than the ones with the real big letters. I'm finding myself a little less interested in the implausible and improbable content and caught up with text that is a little denser content wise and thus hard to even understand. I'm enjoying the process of drawing the text because it slows me down and that it turn helps me to think about what I'm writing (copying) a little bit more...and hopefully understand things a little better. Understanding is my goal...though I do not expect to ever fully understand things. Unfortunately for the viewer of my art, the dense boring text probably makes for uninteresting viewing...my Flickr views are down! Sorry viewers! I'm hoping that in the not too distant future, that I break through this uninteresting period and begin to create something that is more dynamic and visually stimulating without compromising my pursuit of a certain truth. That pursuit is tied in with my initial pre-election drawings, which is to say, in general, that I'm trying to understand the other side; wacky & pro-military...a pursuit of truth you ask? Well, yeah...there is a theory that there is a grain of truth in everything, so I'm trying to find it mostly by looking outside of my comfort zone. And right now that means reading the story of how the Hellfire missile came to be, copying it and thinking about it...

Zombies we are...

2009-05-03T10:38:00.000-07:00

I've been trying to tell the Hellfire Story for about a month now...what this means is that I'm simply appropriating text from an Army website that tells the chronology of the development of this missile system into my daily drawings. Why am I doing this? Well, I like drawing text for starters and secondly I really feel strongly that we need to take a collective look at how much time, energy and man power is used toward the creation (and destruction) of weaponry. The army's version of the Hellfire Story is pretty dry, but also kind of interesting...it sort of chronicles the development of other technologies too; laser & millimeter wave, just to name two, and it shows how far back the development goes...to the sixties. Of course we all know that humans have been developing and improving weaponry since Australopithecus...but I've latched on to the Hellfire because of its association with remote guidance and drone technology. What I mean by this is that someone can target and fire a missile from some station on the ground rather than from the seat of a cock pit. I guess that it is this particular new kind of disconnect that has me on alert. It brings up a whole pile of moral issues about the distance between the killer and the killee. I suppose its not really new, but for me it's something that I want to try and understand via this one particular weapon.

What I'd really like to learn about are the people who played a part in developing this weapon. But I suppose that it would quickly get very murky in terms of finger pointing as we all have a part to play in the bigger story, which is America, land of the vastly gargantuan industrial military complex. Despite this I have taken another step in my efforts to tell a story, if not the story, by blending in fictional prose from an interesting writer who found my art work on the web. His name is Reynard Seifert and he publishes an online zine called "Candy & Cigarettes" (http://issuu.com/reynard/docs/c_c_2). It's fun, kind of off color and he has given me permission to appropriate his texts into my drawings. My hope is to give my story a little more color and sense of the daily life, with all its drama and pathos, which hopefully places the scientists, bureaucrats, developers, killers and killees all on common ground.

Coffe, Tea or Me?

2009-04-25T05:38:00.000-07:00

It's getting harder and harder for me to enjoy drawing pictures...I mean, I like to draw...but less and less do I want to create an image, or should I say that I'm less and less inclined to be pictorial. This has been a side effect of drawing text. I went to an opening at the Center for Maine Contemporary Art last night...I was particularly interested in the work of Alex Rheault (alexrheault.com), who's work another friend had recently suggested to me. Though really all visual art is a form of semiotic language, I am growing less patient with "pictures" and more drawn toward purer language; text as symbol. Rheault's work is at the outer limits of tolerability for me...simple line drawing on a non-realized or neutral ground, arranged in narrative or rebus-like fashion...great stuff!
There is a power to language which frightens me. When language is in its normal form; in a book, newspaper, radio, internet, t.v., etc. it can be a poison saturating our minds. (I know that it is also wonderful...but I'm focusing on the negative! Sorry!!) Everything that we are and that we do has come about because we've paid heed to something someone has said. I'm feeling that by drawing language I can pay just a little closer attention to what is being said. I feel that all other artists on the "other side" of imagery beyond the rebus's of Alex Rheault are lost in a world of silly indulgences!! I know that I'm not the first person to use text as art, but I'm hoping to discover something new...I'm very interested in what has been created to date, particularly the work of Ed Ruscha, Jenny Holzer, Mark Lombardi, Hans Haacke, Joe Amrhein...maybe it is the way that my text is hand drawn, the way it fits into the picture plane or its content...I don't know...right now the process is leading the way!

Heaven or Hell?

2009-04-13T14:11:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking for a while of creating a series of drawings that "tell the Hellfire story". The Hellfire that I'm referring to is the said named missile which at present seems to be the missile that gets fired from those Predator drones that are operated by some "pilot" somewhere in the states. Pardon me for sounding like I don't exactly know what I'm talking about...I sort of don't! But I do know enough to be foolishly opinionated. Well, anyway I've got this thing about the Hellfire missile...for starters it has such an apocalyptic name, though in fact the name innocently derived from "fire and forget" missiles launched from Helicopters. Heli-fire...Hellfire! The other thing that keeps bringing me back to wonder about this weapon is its association with that creepy pilot less Predator drone. So I've been wanting to tell its story. I have done some research and discovered that this missile has been in production since the sixties, beginning with the military's first forays into laser technology. I imagine all of the lives and careers that have risen and retired in the pursuit and development of this missile system. Somehow it feels like there is an epic story to be told here..."biblical proportions" feels like a phrase that would be used somewhere in the telling. Well, stay tuned...while I figure out a way to make this story into art.

FOUR ONE GALLON CONTAINERS

2009-03-29T06:38:00.000-07:00

We had an event in our area in December; a woman shot and killed her husband, she had been abused, he was a card carrying Nazi, was not happy about the election of Barack Obama and had ingredients for building a dirty bomb in his basement...oh and was a trust funder with access to lots of money. The part of this story that I find amazing is that there is no story...or seems to be no story. One would think that there would be huge news stories about this: "HOME GROWN TERRORIST PLANS DIRTY BOMB AHEAD OF INAUGURATION" or "FIRST CREDIBLE DIRTY BOMB PLOT ON AMERICAN SOIL"

"The details surrounding this incident beg many many questions and bring up many issues:

WHY DID CUMMINGS COME TO MAINE FROM TEXAS IN 2007 IN THE FIRST PLACE? WAS HE SENT HERE BY OTHERS TO DO A JOB? IS HE PART OF A LARGE NETWORK OF NEO-NAZIS IN OUR COUNTRY RIGHT NOW WHO ARE PLANNING & PLOTTING TERRORIST ATTACKS? OR IS HE A LONE MENTALLY DERANGED WOLF? AND IF HE WAS PART OF A NATIONWIDE NETWORK, WAS HE THE ONE FINANCING IT?" whitenoiseinsanity.com

But the biggest question remains: Why is this event such a non story?

But the Belfast dirty bomber is just one drop from an ocean of truth that is unreported, not repeated, and does not enter into civil discourse, because it is not perceived to be profitable to talk about, regardless of how profitable it may be to hear.

Yet it is from these shared perceptions that we form the structure of civilization itself. Every government, every law, every regulation and every constitution is its product. Hence the quality of civilization is predicated on the degree to which civil discourse is a fair representation of the world we live in.

That is why the revelation of primary source knowledge, from which everything else follows, is so important. Its limits are the limits of civilization itself. wikileaks.org

Aby thoughts?

Poo Poo

2009-03-18T16:47:00.000-07:00

Well last Sunday turned out to be such a beautiful sunny day and I was having so much fun boiling sap in my backyard that I lost track of that movie "Hijacking Catastrophe" that I wanted to go see at my local town hall. Well, there has to be something to be said for preserving your sanity and possibly by not exposing myself to a hard hitting expose I've saved up some of my fortitude for another day of hard hitting art making???!!!

The drawing pictured here is one of two images that I submitted to Studio Visit Magazine a publication out of Boston by the same folks who created New American Paintings. Well, I got in! So, I'm pretty psyched, though, of course Studio Visit Magazine is the one that you have to pay a couple of hundred bucks to be in as opposed to New American Paintings which is both more prestigious and doesn't cost anything! But, they said that they only selected 300 out of 1000 entrants so that's certainly nothing to poo poo...is it? It does feel a bit sleazy though! Any opinions out there???

False Prophecy

2009-03-11T08:31:00.000-07:00

Our little town of 800 souls here in Maine has been showing some interesting films as of late. My guess is that it is not a communal effort, rather the effort of an individual who, as it just so happens, shares my politics. The next film on the docket is "Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & the Selling of American empire". I do not know anything about this film and couldn't even find anything about it on Netflix, so I'm imagining that it is probably "out there" in terms of baiting the conspiracy theory crowd... and I'm hoping to go see it! I guess I should say something here about my take on the conspiracy theory gestalt. Quite frankly I would have to say that, despite my tendency to find the far left political spectrum very appealing in terms of philosophy, hope and change, I am very dubious of most 9/11 conspiracy theories. This being said, I am certainly not adverse to hearing and seeing anything and everything that has to be said and I certainly hope that I will find "truth" in this film.

Unfortunately truth is often elusive, sometimes stranger than fiction, but strangely enough, sometimes less valuable than outright lies. In fact by inventing obviously false declarations as in the drawing pictured here I'm finding that I'm discovering a form of liberation from those who claim to own the truth and a deeper sense for being able to find truth independently. One thing I tried was to take two random elements (or at least I intended them to be random), put them together with the word "conspiracy" and searched the web just to see what came up. What surprised me was that often what I intended to be random drew up items that had relevance! For example I combined Richard Nixon and Robert Mugabe and discovered that Mugabe was considered the Richard Nixon of Africa. I'm also becoming more alert to conspiracy/cover-up topics that come up in general conversation and now look it up on the internet and am finding that the crazy stuff is sometimes plausible stuff!

I guess what I'm concluding here and trying to pursue in terms of my drawings is that, well in short, we do not know everything and this lack of absolute knowledge besides being the realm in which we build myth, form symbols and dream is also a realm that can help us find truth. By embracing farce, false prophecy and confusion like I'm trying to do with my artwork, I think truth starts to develop a certain clarity.

Letter From the Grave

2009-03-01T14:31:00.000-08:00

This drawing is number 6 of what I hope will be many more drawings. In short, what you see here is the text from Lasantha Wickramatunge's letter from the grave mixed in with backwards text from the book of Job. Wickramatunge's letter was written in anticipation of his being assassinated. He was the editor of The Sunday Leader, a newspaper in Sri Lanka. Despite death threats and warnings, offers of protection, safe passage out of his country and offers of high office, this lawyer turned journalist/editor chose none of the above and continued to print critical reports against both sides of the warring factions in Sri Lanka and was gunned down on his way to work.

You can read his letter on my Flickr page, follow links that tell his story and see the other drawings in this series.

I first heard this story on the radio and I guess it resonated with me so deeply because I was creating drawings that were primarily hand drawn text. I felt I couldn't not create drawings that addressed this event. To me the drawing shown here is the best one so far. I like it mostly because the text has an atmosphere and texture to it. I've been agonizing on how to depict Wickramatunge's letter and still am not completely satisfied with anything that I have created thus far. It is very difficult to even think about turning such a tragedy into art. I feel a certain guilt about gaining exposure for myself as an artist through the horrible death and misfortune of another person. I think that that may be why I've chosen to hide and blend his text into code-like word jumble patterns. I feel that most people turn off and shut down when they are bombarded with this kind of news story, so I feel that by burying it in the drawing I'm creating a slow release of its contents. There is a great deal of frustration that I feel in general terms when it comes to seeking to speak of injustice. I know that many people also feel this way and I hope that this work helps all of us to stay strong and continue to have hope.

A very nice studio visit by Jay

2009-02-23T05:09:00.000-08:00

Jay came by my studio on Sunday at my request. I was chatting him up at a party on Saturday and telling him how I've been relying on feedback from my Flickr pages in order to determine which drawings I might eventually choose to exhibit in my show at Chases's Daily this coming June. I was bemoaning the lack of a living set of eyes to look at my art in person, in the flesh to elicit feedback from. What a nice guy!...he acquiesced and came by.
Jay is an artist too and an entrepreneur (metaphorbronze.com) and had some very insightful and valuable insights and reactions to offer me. The image pictured here seemed to end up becoming the one drawing that he kept coming back to in order to define his difficulty "seeing" my work. I'm pointing this out because I think I am most interested in what bugs people more than what they find comfortable or enjoy more. It seems that the successful drawings are often unanimous. I'm convinced that there is a certain power in the bad drawings...but I'm probably way off here!
Anyway the things that Jay liked were the drawings that had more motion, direction, distortion and color variegation in the text and strong images that tied into these visual text characteristics. He did not like so much the more straight forward black text that reminded him of the bible thumping wacko on Time Square wearing a sandwich board. He felt that there was a fine line between annoying my audience and engaging them. Point well taken! I told him that I love those bible thumping wackos and we both had a good laugh!
All in all it was a great visit...and a hearty THANK YOU goes out to you Jay for giving me a piece of your mind and time.

My painting on canvas has been put on hold for some time now

2009-02-21T13:16:00.000-08:00

I have not written in this blog for quite some time because I have put on hold a very large painting piece that I had hoped to create for an exhibition at Perimeter Gallery in Belfast, Maine. There arose some technical problems with regard to attaching my hinged and cascading canvases to the antique tin ceiling so I basically decided to create a whole new body of work instead. The new work will be fairly straight forward in terms of not having a complicated interactive art aspect to it, like my last show at Perimeter had. This new work instead has come around to be about words. I am drawing letters and words, creating imagery almost soley out of hand drawn text. My first drawing (pictured) in this vein was created just before Barack Obama was elected. I'm not exactly sure why I created it. It was kind of impulsive and probably in the spirit of punk rock and to a certain degree the linguistic meanderings of artist Raymond Pettibon, of whom I am a shameless fan. But as I've created many more hand drawn text drawings I've come to see them all as a post election response by me to how things are now or how I think I need to be as an artist now. If I can explain myself in as simple of terms as possible I would say that now that we have an intelligent leader in the White House I feel the need to explore the realm of the loonies, conspiracy theorists and generally far right ranters and ravers. I'm convinced that they are the guys that are going to try and undermine our guy Barack and I want to draw them out of the woodwork, shine the light of day on them and see them for who they are. The funny thing is though, that as I've started to look into some of this crazy text I've found stuff that is almost plausible and I'm beginning to see that all of us are somewhat loony.

Cheap Camera

2008-11-01T07:56:00.000-07:00

Well I still haven't found my connector for my other camera (Which really was my daughter's old camera!) but a new old camera came into our household, so I can get back to visually documenting the canvases that I've been making again. I'm almost done painting/drawing the sixteen canvases that I want to assemble to test out a super long ladder...to see if it functions properly.

I've been going back and forth over what I should create thematically as far as imagery goes. It seems that I keep coming back to the idea that these ladders are in themselves the imagery...that the individual panels are just ongoing explorations of motifs that are present in my larger body of work. Well the front sides, if they have any unifying imagery, would be seen as panels that are bracketed or edged with cloud-like imagery; with things, hands, stuff reaching out, hovering just beyond, from the clouds. I guess that that is enough unification, while giving me lots of freedom/leeway to explore other imagery. The backs as they seem to be turning out, on the other hand are all papered with canceled checks and junk mail and drawn on with black ink as opposed to the acrylic paint on the front. I've begun depicting female fatalities again (see my "Message in a Bottle" piece here and here) and will see how it works to use that imagery on the backs.

Where am I going with all of this? I'm not sure. I see these pieces/structures as a bunch of canvases/units that are linked in a chain...which makes me think of molecules for some reason. I feel that the element of depicting females somehow connects up with this...fertility? Life? Ancestry? Patrimony/Matrimony??? I made a piece in 2005 of canvases linked like a chain that was about flag draped coffins... (click here) and I'm beginning to see this project as being an extension of that to some degree; there is this aspect of the horrors of war in both pieces, but I want this piece to be about more, to pull in more aspects of life as a way of understanding not only war but who we humans are. I know,I'm sounding pretty general right now...I'm sorry, I can't help it...I'd better get back to artmaking and take a break from writing!

Sorry no images!

2008-10-26T17:49:00.000-07:00

I can't find the cable that connects my camera to my computer!! And it's a shame because I painted a bunch today! We had a big party last night to celebrate my new studio, my birthday and bon voyage to my daughter. Lots of our friends got to meet each other. Today I helped a neighbor who is a film student with his assignment to create a bio film. He basically interviewed me on film while I painted. It was great fun and I hope I did not sound like a complete idiot! The best part was that I actually completed four more canvases for this Jacob's Ladder series! When the bio gets done I'll post a link to it...

Thinking about vertcality

2008-10-22T06:34:00.000-07:00

This issue of how to attach these Jacob's Ladder structures to the wall for exhibition purposes has got me thinking big time. On the one hand I'm not sure that it can be attached securely enough to the wall to withstand the tugging and pulling that these devices will inevitably endure. I've thought about making the wall bracket run all the way down to the floor so that it would essentially be "posted", but that would create a certain redundancy, especially if I turned the post into a ladder-like structure. Too complicated. I've even begun to give up on the idea of trying to make Jacob's Ladders for this space...but I think I'll try to resolve this.

The idea of verticality is really at the heart of what I'm working with and the potential for meaning within this format is something that I want to figure out for this next body of work. I recently discovered Alexis Rockman's work and it's made me think about a lot of my past work and some of the ideas and concepts that I found in common with his. His work is steeped in the tradition of nature/botanical illustration, but takes off in a wonderfully disturbed direction. I like his collision of ideas and scientific references. For myself I feel that everything is tied together and my art sometimes tries to diagram or explain the hows and whys, albeit not in a scientific way but rather in an intuitive way. But I like the idea of appearing scientific...it places a false veil of authority over what in reality is a process of myth making.

So far in this Jacob's Ladder project I've created canvases that are squares with fairly arbitrary images on the front and more specific imagery on the back. I'm thinking now that I might create groups of images that explore a theme or issue on the fronts. And somehow it feels like each ladder would symbolize some kind of biological organism or molecular chain. Mix into that the idea of verticality, higher order/lower order and...maybe this rambling passage makes some kind of sense???

Problems...

2008-10-08T16:24:00.000-07:00

Well, I did not make it into Around the Coyote...oh well! Hmmm, what else is new?...I recently had a meeting with Ted about these ladders and how we will exhibit them. Two issues are: 1. we gotta find a time when there are no vegetables in the way and 2. we can't put holes in the antique tin ceiling! To get you up to speed, if you've got no idea what I'm talking about...Ted and his partner Meg coordinate/organize art exhibits in their family run eatery, Chase's Daily. It it a wonderful place not only because of the delicious and wholesome food, but they also have a farm and sell gorgeous produce in the back section, which is a gigantic open space with huge wall spaces for exhibiting art. The ceilings of Chase's are probably about 16 feet high! I had exhibited there in 2006 and was invited back for more. Last time I exhibited my "Prison Papers" series and this time I'd like to try these Jacob's Ladder constructions that will hang way up high and utilize that wonderfully tall space. I plan on making them around 16 feet long or longer so that they reach all the way down to the floor, where there will be a low platform or pedestal. That's where they display their produce.

So...back to the issues. Well, looks like the only time that their back space will be free of produce would be January through May...and I wouldn't be ready in 2009 because I slacked off too much this past year! So it's looking like early 2010 will be when I exhibit this work. I'm also not even sure if the ladders will function properly if I make them too long, so in the next couple of weeks I'm going to test out a 16 foot long ladder. If it works we will move on to the next issue: where to attach the tops of the ladders to if we can't use the ceiling? Ted suggested making a wall mounted bracket...stay tuned.

Around the Coyote

2008-07-24T17:04:00.001-07:00

Well, it's been quite a while since I've blogged about my Jacob's Ladder paintings. I had an exhibit of drawings to get ready for June and just got off track. Anyway I submitted this 12 inch wide ladder to the Around the Coyote arts festival, which takes place in October in Chicago. My sister lives there, so I'm hoping I get in so that I can visit her! Wish me luck.

More fronts...

2008-04-03T15:46:00.000-07:00

"Back" at it...

2008-04-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

Well, I've started on some backs recently and I think that I will pretty much be drawing with ink on them. I've also decided to get back into reading legacy.com tributes to fallen female soldiers. (mostly American I think) I had created a sculpture with Karin Spitfire last summer, where we created small chapbooks which contained these tributes...click here. I'm going to combine these tributes with ink drawing and plastic packaging.

Too many fronts!

2008-03-28T14:34:00.000-07:00

Ok...I've painted a bunch of front sides in this "Ladder #3"...it's time to start working on the backs. I painted these two this morning, well these five...two are more or less finished. I think that there are 16 canvases all together in this ladder, which, strung together would make it about 16 feet high. Depending on where this is exhibited it will mean that the canvases on the bottom of the ladder will be stacked and not visible. I'm hoping that this will create a more interesting piece. I have in the way distant past created drawings where several drawings were glued together, so that the inner drawings were buried. But you could hold them up to the light and see them. I've also made one where things were buried deeper and not visible...or canvases that nestled into the backs of one another like Petrushka dolls. I think at some point art is really about the idea that the object is trying to elicit out of the viewer. And as a maker I sometimes give up on trying to create the perfect object...the non buried or hidden canvases can be enough to suggest what might lie hidden or buried.

Happy Easter!

2008-03-23T05:31:00.000-07:00

In March in our household we celebrate the Feast of St. Vicky all month long! Of course there's Easter too...for the kids. This year they are getting a scaled down candy hoard...at ages 21 & 16 they're certainly not "kiddies" anymore! And we adults are all hitting FIVE OH! this year, all of us! It is like a giant wave that is taking us all down one by one! I've always felt that 50 would be a good thing for me, it would be a great time, a point of maturity and respect. I feel that, but I also feel the getting passed over thing too! It's funny because I like the artwork that I'm making these days much more than anything I created in my twenties. I have a better sense now of what direction I want to go in, compared to earlier in my life when I was less sure and still exploring. It's also funny because much of what I'm creating now has a lot of connection and similarity to my early work. I guess I had no choice as to "who I was", but didn't know that until now!

These "Jacob's Ladder" paintings are becoming more pleasurable to paint. Painting is starting to become like drawing...more fluid and improvisational. I had received a comment a while back from a Flickr contact with regard to a bunch of unrelated drawings that I stacked togther in vertical "Jacob's Ladder" fashion, she thought that they looked good and so that kinda gave me the license to proceed with less of an adherence to an overall theme for each ladder or connecting relationship between each stacked canvas. So I guess my process is as follows: paint some sky and clouds...have fun playing with paint, color, rendering and modeling relationships,let that dry, then paint something reaching, eminating out of the clouds, having fun creating imagery that feeds off that particular cloud/sky configuration and colors, flip it over and well, I haven't done any of the backs yet...but, I think that I want to have hand written text on all of the backs...from two sources: the bible and Legacy.com. I also want to incorporate pieces from my molded plastic collection here. I think I'll put the bible quote under plastic and surround that with mourning and tributes from Legacy.com. Click here to see my "Message in a Bottle" project, where I first used these tributes in a piece last year and I guess hope to re-invent or continue here within this series.

I might add here that I've also collected 20 small chapbooks from the "Message in a Bottle" series and am in the process of sending them off to artist Brian Reeves for his travelling steamer trunk, which houses a minature museum "space", original artwork and a vending machine...which vend art! He and his friend/partner? Adriane Herman are the creators of "Slop Art"...OMG...check that out...I'll just leave it at that for now!

Holding Steady

2008-03-19T05:47:00.000-07:00

I've gotten a bunch more small canvases stretched and primed and ready to paint, so hopefully I will catch up to my self imposed schedule of creating about 100 one foot square paintings by...end of summer? It's been hard to compose within the square shape for me...but I think I'm getting into a groove. I'm really trying to just let the compositions happen without too much preconception. I'm not sure what I would do without my 1966 World Book encyclopedia set to fall back on as a source for imagery? These two images came from the set. I think that by establishing a format, device and process for creating all of the paintings in this series I'm really able to enjoy painting without the burden of having to invent a larger meaning/context each time I set up to paint. I can just paint and quite frankly that's nice and enjoyable.

Good Bye February!

2008-02-29T09:32:00.001-08:00

I played hookie today and tried to take advantage of all the light that gets reflected into my studio from the morning sun off the snowy ground. I'm starting to have fun painting. Trying not to be too critical and just letting the imagery work it's way in. I'm realizing that I really like U.S. map imagery (Aleksandra Mir) and I'm finding more than one example of my encyclopedia set using the U.S. map to illustrate size relationships. The image here for example uses it to measure a pound of honey...funny huh?

Treading Lightly

2008-02-24T18:43:00.000-08:00

I just created and submitted this painting today for the "Treading Lightly; One Foot at a Time" show at Waterfall Arts, Clifford Gallery 256 High Street, Belfast, Maine. Looks like it will be a spectacular exhibit. I helped Dan Beckman for a few hours today prepping the grided wall lines that will define each square foot of wall space given to each artwork submitted. This particular piece was chosen by my son Devon as the best of the three new paintings that fits the idea behind this show, which is about our imprint on nature. I did not create the piece specifically for this show, but I hope it works. Devon thought that it somehow referenced the sun and global warming???

Click on the image to see a larger version if you want to read the text.

Ladder #3

2008-02-23T12:01:00.001-08:00

Still a little sluggish in getting into the painting studio to work on ladder #3. But I think that I am coming around and will have a productive March. I'm trying to plan a little less and just paint...allow stuff to happen. Notice that I decided to turn these 90 degrees?

Ladder #3

2008-02-17T17:16:00.001-08:00

Well, it's been a while since I've worked on these "ladders". I discovered Flickr.com, got totally obsessed, still am and was a little distracted for a good three weeks or so. It was and is good though...I'm really in a nice confident groove in terms of creating my ink and watercolor drawings...getting feedback and responses from my Flickr audience! Anyway, today I started back in with my next ladder. Painting is still awkward and troublesome for me after so many years of drawing exclusively. But I'm into the challenge. I want to make something that has more of a physical presence than drawing, which tends to be more cerebral and conceptual. And then I also want to make that thing more than just painting...I want to create a physio/concepto realm for art...and that means that something's gotta clearly look like a painting, but I just can't help but place that painting into a silly kind of situation...like these ladders!

These two images are the beginnings of Ladder #3

Drawings revisited

2008-01-26T07:06:00.000-08:00

This was an interesting exercise...I collected a bunch of drawings that I had created before I had the idea to make these Jacob's Ladder pieces and stacked them together to see how they would work, imagistically as a Jacob's Ladder. Kind of interesting...it gives me a few ideas just through the chance relationships of some of the drawing elements, like the darker and lighter smoke/cloud relationships, etc. The image is pretty hard to see the details, but if you click on it you'll get a bigger version.

What next?

2008-01-23T12:43:00.000-08:00

Pretty much finished with the painting part on "Ladder #2". Today I will start to assemble it. Then...I'll start another one, hopefully this week. First I'll do some large scale drawing and see what comes of that. So far some ideas are "head in the clouds" "fem fatale" portraits of women/children killed in Iraq/Afghanistan, "radiant" images, stigmata with missiles/bombs...

Mechanics

2008-01-07T03:50:00.001-08:00

Well, here it is...the first trial run of an interactive functioning, gargantuan scale Jacob's Ladder thing! It's pretty hard to pull, so I'll have to gear it down somehow with pulleys. The music/noise in the background is the radio playing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" from the "Annoying Music" series!

Knighthood

2008-01-03T03:08:00.000-08:00

Well, here is a progress report on my next set of paintings. This set is smaller than the last set and actually both sets are really still both works in progress. Neither set has all of its mechanisms that will give them their cascading "action". When they do get their mechanisms they will appear as six paintings stacked vertically and held together with three vertical straps which will be alternately woven behind and in front of each canvas, tying them all together and enabling them to cascade in a clever fashion.

The "theme" of this particular set is, well, two-fold; on the front are (will be) pairs of questions and on the back are images of hands holding medals, which in this case happen to be orders of knighthood. I've already written a bit about the "questions" in my last post, so what's up with "medals"? Well, I like their symmetry for starters and their mandala-like visual appeal. In terms of political content, they represent for me just one of the many ways that we decorate or dress ourselves in order to indentify with and reinforce a kind of nationalism. Knighthood in particular also suggests that nod from above or near holy status, which ties in too well with this series' theme of "God's hands". In the next couple of weeks I hope to start putting these canvases together and trying out the cascading mechanism. I'm hoping that the cascading "action" will create an interesting relationship between the fronts and backs. This knighthood set is different from the previous set in that all of the canvases are similar to one another, so it is more unified visually. I wonder how set one and two will compare?

Questions

2007-12-27T16:15:00.000-08:00

I created this drawing yesterday (the fourth one so far) as part of a process which I'm hoping will help me to design the next bunch of Jacob's Ladder paintings. The process will be to create these large mock ups, at least six or so, before jumping into each set of paintings on canvas. These drawings are quick to create so they give me the freedom to experiment with content, while giving me a sense as to how a particular theme will look in a combination of stacked canvases. This particular drawing is a continuation of an idea begun in my November portfolio, where I just started using the questions found at the end of encyclopedia articles as the central image element.

I might back up here a little bit and mention that I've been drawing from a set of old (1966) encyclopedias since 2002. These encyclopedias have tons of great "high contrast" line art which I've grown to really depend on as a sources of inspiration and appropriation. I've also come to appreciate the "dated", politically incorrect nature of "old" information. Lately I've started to "read" these encyclopedias a little bit more than I have in the past. I suppose this came about because I've gone through some of these encyclopedias many times, appropriating most of the best images and am now starting to "look" for more content within its text. These "questions" at the end of certain articles, intended as study guides for students, began to interest me in terms of creating viable political art. One big struggle aesthetically in terms of creating political art is to tread the line between dogma and impact. I want to have a big impact on the viewer, as do most activists, but the danger is always that the viewer will tune out or be repelled by blunt, overt "in your face" dogma. Somehow, it seemed to me, the simple act of asking a question, as long as the answer was not obvious or already in hand, could have the power to surprise, engage and empower the viewer. Now, keeping this little idea/discovery in hand, by asking questions, out of context from a forty year old source, started to become the perfect way to engage anyone within an art context.

Then, too, yesterday I was looking through the year end Artforum that I got for Christmas and a review Aleksandra Mir's work caught my eye, well, actually it wasn't so much that it caught my eye as it was that I was enjoying myself, relaxing, indulging myself and just trying to kind of really read every review in the back of this artforum. The idea behind this particular show she had at Mary Boone Gallery was that she was collecting old information from New York tabloids and with the help of her assistants creating large drawings (200!) in what Mir apparently labeled "new art and old news". Wow, I thought, that's kind of what I'm trying to do! As the reviewer Suzanne Hudson said, "The prioritization of information managed to astonish, as in a brief about an Arab terrorist driving a bus off an Israeli cliff beneath the trumpet GAYS ALL IN THE FAMILY in 1989, or a miniscule blurb on Nelson Mandela's release from prison beneath an inane larger banner the following year-selective emphases that seem counterintuitive at best and laconically iniquitous at worst."

Old out of date information sure is fun to look at! It really gives us a perspective on how we take ourselves so seriously, while being so off the mark! My hope is that these questions that I'm "drawing" will float in and out of relevancy. Some questions like: "Why do most Irish marry after age 30?" might be out of date and entertaining, while others like "What does Democracy mean?" are timeless and "What is unusual about Israels armed forces?" might bear re-visiting.

Where am I?

2007-12-21T04:16:00.000-08:00

I just re-read yesterday's post and am beginning to realize just how impulsive and fickle my aesthetics can be. Last winter and spring I had started some new work after a very successful fall exhibition of ink drawings that had, in turn, taken a year to complete. This new work was a complete departure from those successful ink drawings; it was acrylic paintings on canvas for starters. Why did I start anew on such a completely different track? I guess just to keep it interesting.

Well, anyway to make a short story long, Here I am back working on acrylic paintings after again going back to ink drawings this past summer. I think that I must have started this blog with last spring's work in mind, since I titled it "God's Hands" and not "Jacob's Ladder". That spring work was/were basically tilted acrylic paintings which were launched off this concept of "fighting the enemy there, not here" read.
Somewhere between re-connecting with this concept and now I moved into the Jacob's Ladder thing. I can't quite remember how that happened! I think that it might have occured as a result of running into Ted LaFage at the Perimeter Gallery, who offered me their really tall huge space again for a one person show, but I'm not sure.

The "there, not here" idea had evolved from a concept titled "While Rome Burns", which in turn was based on a concept that I started shortly after my "Prison Papers" show at Perimeter, where I combined music lyrics from sappy pop music (read) with ink drawings of...can't remember! The idea there being: we're all just going along la dee da listening to elevator music while the world around us is crumbling. Then the music part evaporated and they became actual paintings on canvas, which, I now realize really came about simply because someone had given me a bunch of their old stretcher strips years ago, and I had just created a nice little heated space in my barn, so I thought I might try my hand at "painting" in my nice warm cozy new studio! Oh, there was in fact a tilted aspect to the music lyric stuff too...and a two-sided aspect. In fact, I was also kind of simultaneously creating some two-sided portraits of women killed in Iraq with male killers on the reverse that were also tilted. Those resurfaced this past summer in my "Message in a Bottle" collaboration.

Where am I going with this? It looks to me like I jump around quite a bit, hold on to some ideas and combine others. I think that I let certain aspects of these ideas evaporate because I feel that they are going in a direction that holds less meaning for me. Right now it feels like I can explore a bunch of stuff with this Jacob's Ladder project...the exception being the "tilted" motif. I think that despite the fact that the "tilted" concept was a pretty good and complete idea, it did not work the way it was meant too. Something about it felt too contrived and in order to get my point across I started thinking that it might have to become more "realistic"; that is, in order to create an installation that gave viewers a sense that a bomb had gone off so that they could feel this awful sense of unease, I would have to create a more convincing scene/installation with torn, broken, burnt, dust covered, destroyed paintings. This felt like a direction that I wouldn't be so interested in going. I'd rather steer away from "realism" and work within the manneristic realms of easel painting. (I did create a broken painting that I placed in a garbage can and may yet re-visit that whole concept after this Jacob's Ladder Project.)

So...broken and tilted are on hold for now.(actually the tilted thing first came about in 1999 from a dream-like experience/vision I had...! If I live to be 100 I might be able to bring everything together!) I feel that I can put them on hold, even though I really like their potential as mannerist devices to work into easel painting, because the Jacob's Ladder has some really great "action" aspects to it and interactivity that are dynamic, a little frightening, unease inducing, without being in your face anti-war dogma. Jacob's Ladder painting constructions would have their roots in a folk toy, which softens and deepens the message and manneristically places the easel painting "as object" into that context. I guess the idea is to create something compelling for the viewer, within the context of art, to catch them off guard and really shake them up a bit. I think that that is both easy to do and very hard to do. Contemporary art brings with it the expectation of shock, which makes surprising the viewer hard. On the other hand it's easy to throw bad news into your art, but trying to shock people with bad news is not easy, since trying to convince anyone to even listen, when we are all so over stimulated and bombarded with information through the media, is hard. My plan is start my conversation firmly within a recognizeable art context (easel painting!), throw in an odd participatory element and once engaged try to speak.

New Deal

2007-12-20T03:35:00.000-08:00

I've just expanded my winter studio a bit from 10 x 16 to something like 12 x 26! This has given me room to construct some more stretchers and layout things, large works. I've also started to experiment with the mechanics of this Jacob's Ladder device to see how it will function in an exhibition environment. I have a small plywood version that I hung up with strings that you can pull on to make the panels flip and cascade down. It worked pretty good, but has more of a kind of wild whip-like action that I did not anticipate. I would have liked it to cascade more like the departure and arrival board in Grand Central Station...kind of like a smooth vertical tumbling. Maybe I should try to tie off the bottom of the piece so that it doesn't whip around so much?
Another thought that came to me in thinking about the "action" of this piece was the action of slot machines. That got me to thinking about the imagery of slot machines, cherries, lemons, gold bars etc. That got me to thinking about commodities, which I think I already had started to think about with my early morning "drawings from the 1966 World Book". It's really hard to keep track of how and when ideas come and go unless one is really methodical about taking notes. Often I daydream while driving and come up with new ideas, but then lose those ideas just as easily as I found them. I think that that's the nature of a daydream, it's dreamy, your alert disciplined mind is relaxing and great stuff floats in and out. Sometimes you can snap to and hold on to that stuff and other times it just folds back into the recesses of your subconcious...and I guess it's still there waiting to get reactivated during the next boring car ride.
Anyway this slot machine/commodities thing is an interesting addition to this Jacob's Ladder project. I originally conceived of this piece as exploring the connection (a ladder) between God (religion) and people, or people and myth? Or it's more like; all of the actions we take or activity that we engage in are often not fully informed, there are things that we don't understand, gaps in our knowledge, but we proceed anyway. In fact I think when it comes right down to it, when we ask ourselves "why" we do things or "why" we're here, that's when we start talking about God, and then things get really wierd and freaky and we do really foolish stuff (OK, we do good stuff too!). So this Jacob's Ladder thing is also exploring this relationship with our own shortcomings, our Gods, our myths. We imagine this ladder (exchange) that connects us with our maker or our subconcious, or our alter ego and we can justify just about any activity that we engage in. I envision primarily this hand reaching out of the clouds, making a deal with us, shaking our hand, offering us money and weapons and basically giving us the OK to do whatever we please.
And that's where the slot machine comes in! (Pretty rambling here, no?) Right here in Maine! Every time I drive by Hollywood Slots in Bangor, the parking lot is pretty full. It's what people want...money! And maybe that's how we define ourselves, through the things that we want. So this piece is also about that; how we define ourselves...through our wants, our dress, our uniforms, medals, banners, our nation's, our flags, our nations commodities and what we are willing to do to preserve these identities.

Call for Entries

2007-12-07T03:52:00.000-08:00

I got this call for entries, ReconnectUS.org, from Dan Beckman. Anyone out there who is creating art that confronts the myriad of issues that exist as a result of the war in Iraq will want to submit work for this show. It certainly is an ambitious theme and I give the organizers credit for trying to include Iraqi/western civilians along with military personnel. This is the kind of endeavor that there should be a great deal more of. Now back to Dan Beckman, who, by the way, performed live at Waterfall Arts during the Wednesday Night Out and after the "Branching Out" opening...great music...dreamy melodic stuff punctuated with just the right amount of barking and clucking vocals! Check out this review: www.tinymixtapes.com

Branching Out

2007-12-07T03:01:00.000-08:00

We had our opening for our "Branching Out: Rivers and Streams" project on Wednesday and it was very well attended. Each year (this is year #2) it gets better! This image is from my project with my 12 year old student...we simply found names of rivers, put them into thought bubbles and drew whatever we wanted outside the bubble. We ended up creating a complex nonsense story with meandering, connected panels. Go check out all of the projects at waterfallarts.org, they are quite fantastic and ambitious!

Aaaaarhus is a very, very fine house...with two cats in the yard...

2007-12-01T12:05:00.000-08:00

I went to an opening at Aarhus Gallery last night and ran into Marjorie Strauss for the second time in the last two weeks. The last time we ran into each other was at the Juice Conference in Camden and Rockland...I suppose I need to blog about that sometime? Anyway, we had originally met when I had organized a show for the Union of Maine Visual Artists titled "Culture" (sorry no link or documentation!). I think she works for the Free Press and she was telling me about some kind of guide that she produced this past summer for arts and artists and galleries in Maine or the Mid-Coast or something and how she's just very interested in getting artists to communicate to each other mostly. Somehow this got me going on a little rant about how everybody is so carefull about what they say in this country. I guess I'm of the mind that we all, especially artists, need to communicate more to each other and the world. When I say communicate, I think; argue, disagree and debate! That got a "here, here" from Marjorie and a request to write something and send it to her! well, I thought I'd start here...anyone got anything to say?

Buy a Meter

2007-11-27T03:52:00.000-08:00

I went to John Bielenberg's lecture last night at Waterfall Arts. It was pretty interesting and I found it very inspiring. John in turn found his inspiration through the Rural Studio when he heard a presentation by its founder several years ago. What I found most compelling about John's process and approach to creativity was the idea of a final product that made a concrete difference in people's lives...improved the lives of people in tough circumstances. Check out his project in rural Alabama: Buyameter.org. I myself would like to have some kind of concrete someting come out of my artwork. I like the idea that art or creativity can have a certain functionality to it. Whether it is simply disseminating information within the work or in the case of some of my art, a hands on connection to the work of art, where it is physically flipped, turned or pulled. What John does functions in the realm of graphic design, which already has a built in functionality in it, but he approaches this realm, through his "Project M" in a way that is very creative, extremely open and process oriented and more like a purely creative "high art" maker than many "high art" creators!

Wing

2007-11-25T11:17:00.001-08:00

Reading the Bible

2007-11-25T11:08:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm not impressed! I started this series not really knowing much about Jacob's Ladder other than knowing that it was a folk toy. This week I read more about it in my bible. Those that know me may be surprised to know that I even own a bible, but I got one back in college when I took a course on the bible...yes at art school! Anyway basically what I discovered by reading about Jacob in Genesis is that he lies to his dying father, Isaac, and pretends to be his brother Esau in order to get his father's blessing. Apparently that was a big deal, for it meant that Jacob and all of his decendants...for time immemorial, would be on God's side. Of course Jacob's mom was the one who really egged him on, but the thing that gets me is that basically God goes along with the whole scam and is totally in Jacob's corner! I guess God had no choice because he had to obey Isaac's blessing? Seems bogus to me...

Week 2 Images

2007-11-18T12:47:00.000-08:00

Week 2

2007-11-18T11:33:00.000-08:00

I'm liking this idea of "Jacob's Ladder" for a bunch of reasons...It's simple in some ways and has this clumsy folk/kinetic aspect to it. I found another artist, Tom Knechtel, who happened to have created a work of art titled "Jacob's Ladder" whose work was somewhat interesting, but whose artist's statement I found much more interesting. He lives in the "glittersville" that is L.A. and he talks about loving the kind of theater that is "based on the desire to suspend disbelief, the need to communicate and how temporal and impermanent that transaction is...stylized theater based on the love of the artificial and the spectacular"...only in this kind of theater do you find "allegory, spectacle, artificiality, wonder and narrative"...and thus for Tom Knechtel gratification...all nearly impossible to find in Los Angeles, "rich in artists yet impoverished in this kind of stylized theater."

I like his appreciation for spectacle and artificiality and feel a certain affinity with regard to what I hope to achieve. My discovery with my last large body of work that I created, my "Prison Papers" series, was that providing a certain physicality to the conventional "wall hung" work of art brought out an interesting sensory connection between the viewer and the art. Those pieces, however, weren't always identified as conventional "wall hung art". Some described them as "trays" implying to me that they were objects that were once horizontal, and were now "on display" out of their original context. This new work, I hope will clearly be percieved as conventional easel painting on canvas...albeit, painted on both the front and back and linked together with straps or ribbons.

This week's work...

2007-11-12T03:30:00.001-08:00

"Dead Child"

"Penny"

"Penny" upsidedown

"Florida"

"Gold and Silver"

"United States"

Week One

2007-11-12T02:51:00.000-08:00

Well, I'm pretty sure that I will be creating a "Jacob's Ladder" out of canvases for my next big project. It's the biblical story about angels going up and down a ladder from heaven. I've been wanting to express several things since my "Prison Papers" Series. That series was about trying to get a handle on the size of the military/industrial complex. Now I want to get into the collective brain of our culture and figure out what makes us believe in things...religious and political...myths. These things drive concrete actions back down on earth. I am interested in unlocking or actually further confusing that code which gives us speech; which inspires action to commit huge sums of money towards the military. (I realize that "profit" is the simple reason...but humor me and lets make it more complicated...it's more fun!) So this work will be about lots of things, but the biggest thread which will run through it all will be the idea that we are working with heaven to complete ordained tasks here on earth. I'm not sure if in the actual biblical version the angels that are ascending and descending are accomplishing anything or have specific tasks. I think that their purpose is open for interpretation, at least I'm counting on that! Within this conceptual structure I will format clouds/smoke and stuff, mostly hands and arms protruding from the clouds/smoke vertically with other devices which play off an interchangeability between ascension and descension.

Day One

2007-11-05T03:29:00.000-08:00

How does a war stabilize anything? Well I suppose it stabilizes the economy of those who sell weaponry. This is day one of a new series of paintings and drawings that I hope to create over the next year or so. The idea revolves around depictions of clouds with hands poking out. The idea being that God...or whatever can materialize in such a way that an exchange of resources can happen. Or that war's material manifestations can be justified through your particular heavenly being's blessings. Kind of convoluted, I know but a starting point none the less.