#afhstudiobk

Current Studio Work In the studio, I have several ongoing dimensional art series in process. The small paintings in the "Shelves" sequence use wood donated by Liv Mette Larsen from her home/studio in Bushwick, chopped into rough-cut 11" x 14" pieces. The first in the sequence was completed yesterday. I began with washes of strong-pigment, and through layering and improvised response, which is a sculptural approach, begin to "flesh-out" images that approximate narrative. The relations between objects represented in the pictorial rectangle are complex and mysterious. Blurring of 3D and 2D modes of stylization of form are utilized to convince the viewer of impossibility as an acceptable possibility. Scenes are not what they initially appear to be at first glance. The diverse usage of matte, reflective, gloss and other surface finishes create a rich anti-finish of push-and-pull, encouraging the viewer to change Point of View to gather data or map the contents of the image. Andy commissioned me to do a portrait of Roberto Duran, in exchange for panels, four of which served as the substrates for the Dimensional Time paintings. The Duran painting is I think 40" x 24". The root image is derived from a press clipping of the fighter training in Las Vegas nearly three decades ago, an image that impacted profoundly Andy's imagination at age 13. He himself is a fighter, from a family of Irish boxers. Over a period of several months, Andy and I have discussed the meaning of Andy's inspiration by Duran and that clipping, and how it helped drive the young Andy to pursue a dream of migrating to the United States for fulfillment and adventure. I digitized the clipping, and suggested Andy contact the newspaper in Ireland that carried the original, in a search for a better-quality image, a search that proved successful. Archives are important. Then we engaged in a painstaking process of improving details in the composition. For instance, the hands of Duran, his signature ("Hands of Stone") in the original clipping were not contained in the picture. Andy reproduced the rope-jumping image of Duran, playing Duran in the scene, even wearing specific wardrobe for our facsimile. Andy has collected Duran ephemera over the years, and met the fighter personally. Andy brought to the studio photos and posters of Duran that would help flesh-out details in constructing the portrait. Andy also showed me other artists' work depicting Duran, especially by those artists operating in the "Sports" genre or niche, for fans. The collaborative exchange with Andy has been very close and interactive. During digital imaging sessions, Andy sat and watched the picture developing, as our Duran emerged from the cut-paste, enlarging procedures in Photoshop and Painter. We applied photos of Andy's hands to the Duran body, and superimposed the Caesar's Palace/Duran logo on the tee-shirt Duran wears in the original clipping. Throughout the process, Andy has received an education on contemporary analog to digital to analog imaging, but also on contemporary art in general, and the conceptual/envisioning/materialization steps in the dimensional method. He has expressed his wonder at the artist's task, and developed a good initial understanding of my work this way. This represents one fine approach at dimensional art education for 1-1 settings. Andy began the process as a novice, but is now feeling some confidence towards art as a meaningful endeavor. Certainly he feels enriched by the experience. The Duran portrait is now emerging from the pre-production phase, into the execution phase. More images will be forthcoming. I have pulled four Metallum Beta samples from "storage" to begin a collaborative work with Ash. The Met-Beta pieces are 40" x 30" (2) and 48" x 30" (2). The material is pressed metal, resembling roll-paper visually, with the tensile strength and other qualities of metal. These samples, from the Eureka residency at Riverwind in 2004 ("Bar Codes, Rituals + Subliminal Tapes," Morris Graves Foundation, Ink People Center for the Arts, through Americans for the Arts) consist primarily of copper. The artist-intervention consists of gold and silver spray paint applied thick and wet-on-wet to the surface in a circular form near the center of the pictorial rectangle. The dimensional effects, primarily the interplay between paint (reflective) and light, encourage the viewer to shift PoV in the 180 degree area from the suspension wall on which the met-beta piece is hung and the rest of the visual field encompassing it. My collaborator is developing structural metal wall sculptures that will attach to the met-beta wall hanging. We are discussing the means of attachment, with several options available. AWS is on my way to morning coffee in Bushwick, and I routinely stop by the shop to say Hi to Ash and the guys. A few day ago, during one of my visits, I noticed a metal rod thing that Ash was playing with, and apparently trying to get rid of. He explained it was an improvised soccer net, he'd put together in a half-hour. I shot pictures of it (posted to afh2011 blog), and shortly after started imagining that form with the met-beta pieces. Since 2006, after an extensive research process focused on 2D-3D, primarily American artists (Judd, Bontecue, Lewitt, etc.), documented elsewhere on the AFH Blogs, I have developed art emerging from the vertical plane into the cube-space, expanding on this pioneering thread in dimensional art practice. I saw an opportunity and approached Ash with the idea of fabricating four sculptural elements to integrate with the met-beta pieces. He visited the studio a couple of days ago, and we discussed possibilities and parameters, the concept and general, and sketched some notes. The wireframe construct will use h/v lines as guides, not necessarily limits. Rotation is possible; line of sight will be considered; material and finish may or may not vary; color is possible, etc. Inspired by Badiou's EGS presentation, I am going to add an OMEGA element in the composition, either as a metal cutout or stencil-spray. I started an American Flag-/Cross-painting for OWS, using a canvas found on Grand St. between the studio and subway station, a metal grid-shelf from Liv's studio and Golden Seconds Program donated paint (flag), and delicate (expensive) Japanese Sumi calligraphy paper (from the shop at Bergamot Station in LA) and a combination of ink, pigment and Guerra polymers for the structural layers, strengthening the paper/paint surface sufficiently to permit dimensional painting processes. The underpainting on the "flag" piece is noteworthy, a really ugly student-portrait of what might be an historical female drawn from a Master painting (who knows) - God Bless the learning process - executed in acrylic and some sort of glitter with paste for a background. The original is buried as a base or texture layer now. The weight of the metal grid is suspended now in heavy-body acrylics, and precarious, as such. The wall-array is actually a triptych in its initial formulation, incorporating the outline in yellow of a canvas Shane had been working on directly on the wall. The "cross" is the negative shape of the stretcher bars working temporarily as a substrate. The paper rectangle will be cut away from the bars today. Finally, I started some rough sketches at Liberty Plaza/OWS the night before last on a big sketch pad. I may make more today on-site. I'm wondering whether to use media for subjects.