Back to School Update: Fall 2019

Fall 2019 was a busy semester with taking three courses covering 12 credits which equates to four normal courses. I am officially in fourth year so there was additional work to prepare for graduation including a panel critique.

Fibre 419 was a very interesting and worthwhile course that focused on gaining a coherent understanding of where our art practice is going. There was a major graduating paper (almost a mini-thesis) plus studio work. For this class and the FINA class I planned to work on a series of hats. Climate change has been a hot topic everywhere and I decided to use this as an opportunity to do research and create work related to what I learned. I wish that the media focus would be more on the sustainability of our society rather than just climate change which seems to result in an emphasis on government and large industry needing to take responsibility for fixing the problem. While this will be necessary for some aspects of change, I think it is going to take all of us thinking about what our lifestyles contribute to the issues. Hence the "Sustainability on My Mind" hat series. I began researching specific issues and created a hat during the process leading to "Forest Fire," "Melting Glacier," and "Svalbard Seed Arc." As a challenge to improve my technique, each of them involved techniques that are new to me and I used locally produced wool when possible and hand dyed fabric.

Fibre 327, a directed studio, was a last opportunity to learn about dyeing from Bill Morton. My objectives were to experiment with natural and synthetic dyes on fabric and wool and to create three and two dimensional objects. I was also experimenting with combining different types of wool and using local wool when possible. I finished a series of vessels entitled "Seasonings."






I created a relief landscape "Felting on the Edge"combining 8 prefelts.
























Then I took my first stab at portraiture in felt. The concept was to paint three faces on silk and then to nuno felt and cut them creating an organic version of Picasso's Cubism. However, the fabric paint did not stand up to the felting process, so there was a lot of pulling it back from the edge. I opted to minimize the cutting. I want to try this concept again but with a different starting point.

I had great expectations for FINA 450. The class I chose was described as helping us to identify where we fit in the contemporary art world. Unfortunately, it felt to me like it focused on a narrow slice of the art community - one in which I don't belong. But, none-the-less, I did learn a lot although it was a pretty challenging experience. I planned to create hats for the "Sustainability on My Mind" series. The first critique of "Melting Polar Ice Cap" went totally in the wrong direction with all of the conversation being about the display of the piece. 

The second hat was to be about consumption in the fashion industry with a hat made out of discarded and recycled garments. Because many of the fabrics I had were too closely woven to nuno felt, I started experimenting with an embellishing machine and created a number of felted objects to include on the hat. However, in talking to the instructor, I explained how these discarded fabrics had become appreciated objects as I worked on them which she found interesting. So the last project became an installation about material culture and the contrast between contemporary fast fashion versus repair and reuse which characterized my ancestors fashion.

One more semester to go. I took the winter off with plans for travel which mostly didn't happen because of the Covid 19 pandemic. Fall 2020 is going to be a very interesting one. All of my remaining classes are studio classes - I'm not sure how that is going to work!

Back to School Update: Painting 213 - Formal and Conceptual Issues

This was my first second-year painting class. I was expecting that it would motivate me to spend more time with a brush in hand - there was some of that if we chose, but again the focus tended to be on concepts and contemporary art practices. We also did presentations on contemporary artists which I found helpful - I was shocked to see very few artists on any of the lists who actually use a brush and paint. I chose to present on Neo Rauch, an East German artist who has seemed to progress in the opposite trajectory of minimalism - an encouraging trend to my mind.
Our first assignment focussed on portraiture in contemporary art and required three portraits of an individual of our choice. Coincidentally, I had picked up a commemorative Scientific American issue on Albert Einstein a few weeks before. I've been interested in him as a enigmatic human being for a long time: a perfect subject for exploring portraiture. The piece on the left was a collaged caricature (using an old paperback biography that I was miraculously able to find in my storeroom). The middle piece was a take on his thought experiment elevator.

 The final piece was an impressionistic portrait on curved paper, intended to reference the implications his theories have had on our understanding of space.

 The next assignment was a collaboration with another student and required an interactive component. My young partner and I came to the realization that we both loved experiencing the outdoors and chose to do an installation which was an homage to the natural environment. I set up a plein air painting station (with pond water for water colour painting). There was a central top-lit hanging of squirrel-assisted art work. I have an area on our property where I hang art pieces and document their change - the squirrels are fascinated by it and contribute their changes - they must have the prettiest nests, but I have yet to find one. Mount St Piran is a fabulous hike to go on if you ever want to experience spontaneous interactive art - there are innumerable cairns on its rounded summit. I created a cairn building opportunity at the end of the exhibit. Interestingly, someone felt the need to destroy it (with apologies) - different than I expected, but made me smile. I also brought in an end of season flower pot - one of the hardest gardening tasks for me is cutting back plants that are trying desperately to survive into the winter despite our harsh climate.
Lucy created a beautiful cup of growing grass, made paper from leaves, and created a video of a forest. There was also an audio track of natural sound effects and leaves to be raked on the floor. Installation is generally not my favorite thing, but this worked well as a group project and the atmosphere was lovely if I do say so myself.





The third assignment was "colour: creating a mind-scape" and we were asked to look at different contemporary artists for inspiration. Damien Hirst's spot paintings got me thinking about how to create a colour "sampler" -  a study of colour that would give me the opportunity to experiment with combining warm and cool versions of the three primary colours. I also wanted to experiment with stretching canvas on plywood. In another life a lot of my work involved statistics, probability, and sampling - it was fun to flip back into that jargon and create a plan that I had to follow that involved a random selection of colour pairs and location on a 6X6 grid. It was  a very liberating experience that I think I may revisit in the future - it was wonderful to be able to play with the colours and not worry about the final product. The biggest challenge was sticking with the rules when the randomness forced me to do something that I didn't want to do.

The final assignment involved using materials of our choice to depict "place". I was bound and determined to actually paint a landscape. We had a list of contemporary artists to choose from for inspiration - once again I was disappointed to find not a single inspiring landscape artist on the list. My instructor later pointed me towards David Schnell who was very inspiring, but by that point I had my mind set on trying to portray this feeling of the "place" of landscape painting being broken in contemporary art. The idea was to paint a landscape breaking apart and the bits being carried away by ravens (in the little picture, a tiny bird is carrying away a fragment) - all in the presence of an absent observer.

In the end, I learned a lot from the course in how contemporary artists are depicting things like place, portraiture and colour etc. I did learn a few techniques which came from the choices I made - e.g. experimenting with colour, stretching canvas, and layering multiple spatial planes on a 2 dimensional surface - all I plan to do more of.

Fibre Fortnight Reception

There was some very interesting student art at the Fibre Fortnight Show at ACAD. This picture of my "Creative Thought" installation confirms that I am in my head too much these days. The panel discussion by graduates working as professional artists provided helpful insights into different avenues that local artists take to make a living in today's society.