Nicole Crock

an image and a statement

2012-01-16T11:05:00.000-05:00

In the past four years I’ve moved six times, each time packing up my life and transplanting it into a new space. The transition from old landscapes to new have ignited thoughts about dislocation, transition, and the nature of home. A new place, a new home, may replace the old, but remnants remain, creating a layering of time and space like layers of strata in the earth, a record of life. What if we could collapse that record, to pull at time and space and bring all these places closer together, where every moment can live at once and be equal, never having to sacrifice the comfort of home for the challenge of forward movement. My art is an exploration of that physical and psychological journey.

maurice sendak

2012-01-15T23:03:00.001-05:00

You have to take the dive

and also

I'm not a whore

The Homes We Make

2011-11-30T15:18:00.003-05:00

A rough cut of the video created with the help of my mom,

and filmed by my classmate, Crystal Tursich.

Together we sewed all the homes that we shared.

Creating a shadowy imprint of overlapping time and space.

Things to Consider

1. I'm tempted to remove the very last section of the video.

2. Should it be looped

3. How are the transitions?

4. Should there be any text?

5. What about sound? Right now it is silent, does that hurt it or help it?

-----AND----

How to display

1. on a screen

2. on a stretched canvas/fabric

3. overtop the completed embroidery

Did everyone turn in their MYBOOK?

2011-11-26T16:35:00.004-05:00

Saskia Jorda

2011-11-09T22:03:00.002-05:00

Saskia Jorda

House Walk 2005

click to watch video

excerpt from her website

House Walk is an exploration of the space we define around us: our personal bubble of protection. Our perception of space is entirely cultural, it moves and shifts around us as we migrate and explore other cultures. In the performance, a cloth house walks aimlessly and blindly, following an imaginary path constructed only by the performer’s memory of her daily walk. The experience, while seemingly playful and cartoon-like, is disorienting and claustrophobic.

Box Cloud

2011-10-25T23:15:00.003-04:00

We take our stuff, we put it in a box, we move the box,

we unpack it, over and over again. We condense our

lives into a box of manageable size, pick it up and

move it someplace new. Our whole lives fit into card-

board cubes, so much stuff. Such an organized

routine of packing up, moving and out, and unloading

our belongings in an explosion of accumulation. So

much stuff, such a weight of possession, it’s a little bit

sad, a little bit funny. The boxes overtake our space.

They explode outward, and collapse around us. They

were once so heavy, full of our life, maybe now they are

empty, their purpose fulfilled, they begin to float, full

of levity, defying gravity, defying the constraints of stuff.

Chalk Map

2011-10-24T22:58:00.007-04:00

Making, doing, seeing, breathing; recreating a site-specific map in an effort to connect with the place and ground myself in the space, to create it in this tedious and analytical manner, to ingrain the knowledge of location. To make it for myself, for my own selfish benefit, to learn and to see, to commit the time and energy to it’s creation and then release authorship, remove it from conscious thought and allow it to be reclaimed by the surface, to return it to the universe. It is an act of liberation, to need to know a place, to embed it in myself, and then let it go.

day 1

day 2

day 3

day 4

Too Much Stuff

2011-10-23T00:07:00.006-04:00

The futile act of packing and unpacking, moving from one space to another, bridging

the gap between former and current homes with a string of our possessions. The

setting may have changed, but the scene dressing remains constant. The repeated

act of movement, of tension, of learning. To build a bridge with unstable materials,

an unstable foundation, to pile it with stuff and watch it come down. The only

thing to do is start again.

Too Much Stuff from Nicole Crock on Vimeo.

painting reality

2011-10-17T01:23:00.001-04:00

MYBOOK

2011-10-15T13:59:00.003-04:00

If you haven't yet already, please check out the MYBOOK project in Packard Library.

It's free, it's fun, and a great way to connect and share work with the rest of CCAD!

APPROVED!

2011-10-11T20:26:00.000-04:00

A synopsis of the conceptual element driving my officially approved thesis project

Home is a physical and psychological destination that we all have in common. It is a place of comfort, memory, longing, distance and dislocation. For my thesis project I will complete a series of interdisciplinary installations and objects that explore my personal relationship to and understanding of the concept of home. Having relocated many times, I’ve developed a feeling of dislocation. I’ve begun to question, where is home? What qualities make a home possible? What does it mean to settle down? Can a home be a shield between us and the world? Can we hold onto it and carry with us, wherever we go?

In my continued search for home, the places I’ve lived begin to blend together, blurring the boundaries between specific locations and time, until I cannot distinguish one place from another. I need to know a place, to discover its identity and find my identity within it. A new place, a new home, may take over the old, but cannot destroy it, remnants remain, creating a layering of time and space like layers of strata in the earth, a record of life. What if we could collapse that record, to pull at time and space and bring all these places closer together, to create the perfect chaos of home, where every moment can live at once and be equal, never having to sacrifice the comfort of home for the challenge of forward movement.

The Wedding

2011-10-06T19:44:00.012-04:00

This summer my brother Jason and his fiance Kathy were wed in a charming event

that radiated the unique combination of personality that is Jason and Kathy, including

vintage accents, handmade touches, boardgames, and key lime pie.

Every element was carefully chosen to represent the personality of the couple, and

I was honored when Kathy asked if I would create some custom fabric for the train of her wedding dress.

With Kathy's background in Art History and our combined love of intricate design and delicate line work

it was easy to settle on a traditional rose window inspiration.

The dress was designed by Dame Couture,

a custom dress shop in Chicago specializing in retro inspired designs.

They sent me the pattern for the train, into which I fit the rose window design.

Created with layers of wax and many shades of wonderful blue dye,

the piece was created in my studio, then shipped off the the seamstress in Chicago

to be cut and fit into the rest of the dress.

I am so happy that I could lend my skills to help make their day all the more special.

Definitely beats buying them a toaster.

Custom dress design: Dame Couture

Amazing photography: Simply Jessie

when i grow up i want to be the person who paints the lines in the road

2011-09-20T16:28:00.005-04:00

Francis Alys - Painting/Retoque Video

2011-09-19T22:18:00.000-04:00

why not take all of me nyc?

2011-08-26T15:17:00.006-04:00

Zefrey Throwel, what a character, most well known for making art, being ridiculous, and getting naked. But his flashy social practice is not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about his project Why Not Take All Of Me NYC?

While I prepare for my thesis year; writing my proposal, thinking about home, and art and what to make and do, I keep coming back to Why Not Take All Of Me NYC? Zefry's project consists of him living in 12 different sublets for 12 months, a different borough of New York each month. He states on his website,

"I believe that location does matter. Context influences content. Sometimes it outright dictates it, but at the very least it has a heavy hand in skewing the dice. So it stands to reason, that if one was willing to spin the wheel of where one lays their head, then consequently the ideas inside that head would spin as well. And hence, I begin this project."

I admire his willingness to put himself into the work, to experiment, and allow the physical act to stand for itself, as well his conceptual frame work, one that flexes the idea of home and one's comfort zone. Perhaps this year there is room for a "performative" element. Maybe it's time I include myself in the work, to physically DO something, and then call it art.

wye oak fish

2011-08-03T01:21:00.004-04:00

Do you like paper-cutting? I do!

chicago

2011-07-28T23:07:00.020-04:00

In addition to The Bean, my brother's wedding to the wonderful Kathy Zadrozny, and deep dish pizza (which is a joke), while I was in Chicago a few weeks ago, I stopped in at the Art Institute of Chicago for what turned out to be an amazingly productive experience.

There was an awesome Kimono Exhibit, featuring wonderfully dyed

and displayed kimono. They were shown "unwrapped" so that the

full pattern was visible. I loved reading about how each pattern was

created, and on top of that there were several original mulberry

paper stencils used to apply the pattern (exciting!).

I was introduced to the work of Timorous Beasties, a design studio

based in Glasglow that produces traditional textiles and wallpapers

emblazoned with contemporary design images. I like the combination

of traditional fiber art with contemporary studio craft, with a bit of

retail-ability thrown in

I saw Martin Pueryear's Sanctuary, made in 1982. The title of this

piece is what does it for me, without the title, I think it would have

a very different meaning. But for myself at least, after seeing the

title and reading the adjacent info card, I was struck by the simple

little box (aka home) perched atop a spindly set of stalks, ready to

roll away on it's attached wheel.

Also on display was a piece by Lee Bonticou, Unititled. Just the materialness of it

attracted me. The metal substructure with sewn on canvas created this

industrially rustic sculpture. Not to mention the fact that it included an

uncomfortable sense of depth and the unknown lurking in the dark.

Alex Hay's Ground Drawing made in 1968 (of which no good picture exists

on the internet) also caught my eye. On what seems like a bland abstracted

technical drawing, he has faithfully recorded the exact dimensions of a

section of earth no larger than 18x24. He first wet the paper, plastered it

down to the ground, then traced every single bump and divet, recording its

location and angle. After completeling the disection he rewet the paper,

smoothing it out once again and viola, it's art! What an interesting way to

capture a very specific place.

pottermore paper cutting

2011-06-24T09:45:00.002-04:00

I love Harry Potter, but I thing I love about this video is the super cool
combination of video and paper cutting. Check it out.

new additions

2011-06-20T14:55:00.003-04:00

a door frame

more connections

and a ceiling

a detail shot

Having recently relocated, I feel a sense of dislocation between my current and former home; an uncomfortable pull between two locations. This project is an investigation of my dislocation between these two urban locations. I have created a passageway, sided with two vertical walls of embroidery, and filled with a chaotic web of connecting threads. Each wall is carefully embroidered with the road map of a specific urban space that I have occupied. The locations within those cities that I have the most knowledge of are embroidered in black thread, which fades to white as I get farther and farther away from my learned points of reference. The interior of the passageway reflects my physical and psychological back and forth between these two locations. As I struggle to find the connections between these two urban spaces, the entangling threads begin to pull at the two surfaces, forcing an unnatural topography onto the landscape, and forming a space where the two places live closer to each other than they ever could in reality.

The protracted process of rerecording these maps in the careful and delicate medium of embroidery allows me to make analytical observations, to reflect on my experiences in these locations, and act as a cartographer; exploring the landscape on different level. I take great joy in discovering the little pockets of merging lines and hidden formations that are visible only in their delicate retracing. Through the careful inspection of the expansiveness contained within the map, I can know the place a little better and begin to locate myself within the landscape of home.

In-between

2011-05-24T17:32:00.003-04:00

It's done.
for now.

Needle Woman

2011-04-28T22:35:00.004-04:00

Needlewoman, Kimsooja stuck like a pin in a map, documenting the people swarming around her body, creating an obstruction, a comment, and a common thread between locations.

Creating the time lapse documentation of the construction of my passageway is making me very aware of the fact that I've set up this obstruction in the studio. I'm forcing people to pay attention to me and my space, whether they are congregating around me, or being forced to change their habits and walk around me. I've created a hub, and I'm catching it on tape. I'm really curious about everyone's activity in the studio, how I've changed the routine, they move and why, like little busy ants, all disjointed and speed up through the time lapse. There's some art in here somewhere, I'm gonna ruminate a while.

I'm workin

2011-04-26T22:12:00.003-04:00

sometimes I think that shoes are like prisons for feet

progress

2011-04-12T20:18:00.002-04:00

The stage is set, let the awesomeness begin.

REcontextualiztion

2011-04-05T20:17:00.006-04:00

I am creating an impenetrable passageway, sided with two vertical walls of embroidered maps. The interior of the passageway will be filled a dense web of threads that meander back and forth between the two mapped surfaces. This project is an investigation of my dislocation and the ambiguity of space that results from my entanglement between two urban spaces. The suspension between these two cities, Pittsburgh and Columbus, takes the form of physical and psychological back and forth. My physical entanglement correlates with the conceptual entanglement.

The locations I have chosen to map are of areas specific to my experience of the cities, spaces that I have travelled through and are familiar with. The entanglement in the center passage is my attempt to make connects between the two cities. The use of embroidery is a way for me to organize the information contained within the map in a way that is meaningful to me. My mom sews, my grandmother sewed, it’s a skill that is important to me, something that I enjoy doing. It can take a map, which is a nonpersonal representation of a location, and change it into a map of something ordinary, of the home, and the heart, and is personally relatable. Embroidery is a careful delicate process that allows me to make analytical observations, find connections, act as a cartographer and navigate my way through the entanglement. Julie Mehretu with her formalist aesthetic is an artist that I’m researching. I am particularly interested in her systems of organization, how she defines her pieces and her process towards the creation of order in a chaotic image. Mark Bradford as well plays an important role in my contextualization, with his balance between a personal narrative and the broader narrative of LA suburban culture.

On a larger scale, the process of embroidery reflects dedication, repetition, and time, all within the realm of women’s work, the home, and personal labor. In this aspect, I look to Do Ho Suh, for his fiber creations that reference home, and identity. The process of making this piece acts as conceptual lead into the narrative story which is both personal and universal, defining the landscape of home.

Additional Artist Reference

Paula Scher

Robert Walden

Karey Kessler

Simonetta Moro

Leah Evans

and many more. . .

in progress

2011-03-06T23:29:00.003-05:00

it's big

water-soluble pen

all hung up

the strings!

Everyone should be aware THIS IS A MOCK-UP. Don't start putting me down because of the purple lines or the seams or the hanging structure, because in no way shape or form will any of this be used to make the piece. This was to help me figure important things out, like scale, color, structure and so on.

Things I did figure out and things to think about

letting some of the pattern of the city disappear, be a little more subjective
allow mistakes to happen in the interior of the piece
should the interior be a little smaller?
I enjoy the physical-ness of it. I know my piece has nothing to do conceptually with Jackson Pollock, but I was thinking about how his paintings are in a way, a record of his physical movement, and how my large scale piece forces me to work with huge amounts of string that I'm often standing far away from the piece, pulling and maneuvering the thread on a much more physical level than I'm used to, not to mention that when I can get up close, it also a record of the minute and tedious physicality as well.
allowing the silhouette of the interior thread to finish the cartography on the outside surface
It will not be colorful (sorry Crystal). I think I prefer the gray thread to any other color, but I'm open for discussion about it.
I am also increasing the intensity of the scale of the map, I want more information visible on the surface. I want it to be a labyrinth with an all-overness quality.

development

2011-02-15T17:51:00.010-05:00

New development

This is the model I made to illustrate the concept for a potential project. Somehow during the critique process, what was intended to be become a piece roughly 3x3 has now turned into a human-sized passageway approximately 5 feet high, 6 feet wide and 2 feet deep. I'm not sure how this came about, but I am pleased with the new scale. (This is why I love critique. Everyone points out things that I just hadn't thought of, like scale) The thing I respond to most in the new scale is that it promotes more interaction, the audience will hopefully have a more visceral response to the human scale of the piece, interacting on a physical level with a larger piece that forces them to walk around and explore the different spaces created by the layered and separated maps. I like that you could potentially walk through the interior space and explore the spaces in between, although I intend to congest the space in between with my own back and forth meandering.

The ideas

I'm looking to manifest the distance in between these two cities. To explore my relationship to them and to allow the creation of whole new space that relates back to it's home/place, but it separate from them. To embrace the fragility of the surface, allowing the embroidery to pucker and pull the two surfaces together, creating a new sort of topography within the piece. I see the interior of the piece as part of the map, but chaotic and unorganized, and the exploration on the surface is the reorganization of that interior information. I want to use the map as way to locate myself within the space of pittsburgh and columbus and the spaces in between. I want to work in a way that allows me to sit and breathe and be present.

(click to clarify the image)

Things I have yet to figure out

How do you lead the view where you want them to go.
How will i physically fit these materials into my car/the studio.
How do I transfer the image onto silk? projection? where can I get an old school transparency projector?
Color?
white on white
dirt (dye the thread with dirt from pittsburgh and columbus?) on white
grey on white, white on grey
black (I feel like black has such a heavy negative connotion. That's something I want to be careful about. It's not that I don't find this dislocation uncomfortable, but I don't want this piece to be angsty and oppressive. Dislocation is just a state of being, niether postive nor negative, it's a product of the world we live in, but it's not the end world).

motoi yamamoto

2011-02-06T23:51:00.003-05:00

motoi yamamoto
LABYRINTH

Super cool.
The zen quality of it's creation, mandala-like.
I love the maze, but of course I see a cityscape.
I'm pretty sure he does this all free-hand, no predrawn lines or projection.
And I love the fact that he takes the construction material - salt, full circle,
by returning it to the sea once the exhibition is over.

New Thoughts

2011-01-25T23:08:00.000-05:00

After having a meeting with my adviser for this semester, Mariana Smith, here's a list of things that I'm thinking about

my definition of mapping
location/place
ambiguity/specificity
personal
what role does the original play
intersection of maps
overlapping
finding the space in between
why am i worshiping it
tedious
scale
transparency/opaqueness

Potential Ideas

1. oil paintings with overlapping maps of columbus and pittsburgh
2. cut paper collages of overlapping maps
3. cut paper wax sammiches
4. a large floor piece
5. double-sided sewn maps with exposed interior

Spring Project Proposal

2011-01-25T17:14:00.000-05:00

Having relocated several times in the past few years, I’ve come to realize that despite the differences in geographic location, the cities in which I’ve lived, as well as the topography hiding underneath them, are astonishingly and confusingly similar. Whatever the cause of the uniformity of landscape, I’ve developed a sort of spatial dislocation. I find myself in moments of suspended belief, forgetting exactly where I am, without a point of reference and unable to find my center in the disconcerting amount of space around me, and the maps used to navigate these labyrinthine urban spaces are just as disorienting. Maps are spatial embodiments of knowledge used to locate yourself within the world, but the beguiling amount of information found in maps can be both incredibly specific as well as uncomfortably generic, just like the places they depict. Without the distinguishing visual vocabulary of the map, it could depict any number of ubiquitous urban spaces. The ambiguity of place described in countless map forms, transportation or topographic, is what I will be exploring in this project.

The analytical and tedious line work so inherent in cartography inspires me to examine, explore, and recreate, to review familiar landscapes in new ways. The physical act of making something that is so fastidious in this protracted process of re-recording fulfills a compulsion in me to create work that is laborious and analytical and allows me to explore and rediscover the half-remembered landscape. I take great joy in finding the little pockets of merging lines and hidden formations that are visible only their delicate retracing. Through the careful inspection of the expansiveness and overwhelming amount of data contained in a map, I can know a place a little better, and rediscover the landscape of my current and former homes. I can begin to locate myself in the web of human activity.

Artist Reference

Karey Kessler space (without end) 2007

Matthew Cusick Couse of Empire (Mixmaster II) 2006

Leah Evans Untitled 2009

Paula Scher Tsunami 2006

Julie Mehretu

Mark Bradford Kryptonite 2006

Final Project

2011-01-14T13:37:00.000-05:00

pittsburgh

guache and embroidery
against a changing light source.

pittsburgh detail

zelienople
discharged silk with guache

zelienple detail

south hills
silk painting with guache accents

south hills detail

inspiration? maybe.

2010-11-28T20:01:00.001-05:00

Ideas

2010-11-17T21:25:00.000-05:00

So although I don't have a clear direction for next semesters project, I have been brainstorming and if anyone would like to add to, or comment on any of these ideas, please do so, so that I can steal your ideas.

1. a sculpture made of layers of silk, each depicting a specific altitude delineation on topographic map

2. cutting out areas of silk in an organic way, perhaps layered, perhaps with a caterpillars eating habits in mind. Maybe woven, maybe knit or lace.

3. Learn to make lace

4. Layered silk and light in an installation, outside?'

5. Map something

6. Pop-up book

7. some sort of fabric/book installation

8. Shibori stuff

9. Sculptural shibori

10. Minatures

11. Indigo dyeing

12. taking what I'm doing now, and doing it in oil paint

13. abstract oil paintings referencing aerial landscapes, think "Earth from Above"

14. mask making (cause it creeps me out)

15. guerrilla art, i like the idea but I have no content for it.

16. cloths made from what I've already made. what would it mean to wrap yourself in a "place"

I do like the duality between fine art and textile art that's in my project now, so if any of you have comments on that, and how I can work on it in the next project, I'd like to hear about that too.

Topographic Jealousy

2010-11-17T13:45:00.000-05:00

I found this artist on Etsy. I was browsing through batiked material and stumbled upon Margot Myers, aka MargotBianca on Etsy. I was intriqued by her shop statement, "I'm a studio artist, and I enjoy selling my functional work here [on Etsy]," and was immediately curious about what her NONfunctional work looked like. Her flicker revealed an amazing use of topographic imagery. Her beautiful prints intimidate me. Her work shows movement and grace, transparency and captures the abstract quality of topography that first got me involved in this project. I felt a little like, why try something that someone has already done better, but that passed quickly when I realized we are working in very different materials and we're saying very different things with our art, there's room for both of us. I just hope in the end my images will be as beautiful as hers.

Dan Funderburgh

2010-11-17T13:32:00.000-05:00

Dan Funderburgh is a wallpaper designer who's work is a repudiation of
the fabricated schism between art and decoration. And it looks super sweet.

Darjeeling

2008 Census

Grand Cypher

transparent technology, again.

2010-11-17T13:25:00.000-05:00

Bathtub IV from Keith Loutit on Vimeo.

This is super cool. Through a trick of the camera and pacing

these live action videos look like miniatures.

Plus I like the song

Am I still a painter?

2010-11-01T13:53:00.000-04:00

This post is all over the place, cause that's how I roll.

I started this semester painting on silk. Even though I was painting with dye and my medium was silk, I was still holding a paintbrush and applying pigment, I was painting. Now I'm in the studio playing Suzie Homemaker with my iron, apron and rubber gloves, dyeing and sewing the H E double hokey sticks out of some topographic maps. So where does that leave me?

The contemporary craft element in my project was something that interested me (and probably helped me get into school in the first place), but I wasn't as aware of the division between craft and fine art as I am now, and I don't know quite where I belong. Last week in the spirit of community the grad students all looked for grants, fellowships and residencies for each other, and I was curious what people would pick out for me. Would I be lumped in with the painters Alex and Nate, with fine arts and painting grants selected for me, or would I be in my own category, the only grad student with a fibrous angle to pursue?

Is it really even a big deal? You can call it fiber art, textile art, studio craft, contemporary craft, all these things, and the trouble comes in when you decide to either call the practice a sub genre of fine art, or you place it it's own category separate from fine art. Similar to the division between fine art and commercial art.

A lot of the division has to do with utility. Does it have a function other than creating an aesthetic experience? Yeah, that's how it started; people making quilts and dyeing fabric and sewing clothes, but it has moved so far from that realm, and yet remains rooted to it. This present or historical functionality forces craft, along with ceramics and glass, into a second class standing against fine art.

Is contemporary craft also second class because it is predominantly female? For a long time, female creativity was confined to the very specific tasks of the home, and decoration,sewing, quilting, pattern design, embroidery, etc. Now these female traditions are being used to craft art.

Honestly I like that working this way distinguishes myself from other painters. I've always been more interested in women's art, women's history and women's issues than I have in the history of oil painting (which is male-dominated anyway), so the shift into studio craft was a natural one. It's fortuitous to think, the change didn't come from a conscious declaration, it came from a desire to explore new mediums, only later did I realize the context of the shift I had made.

Tonight's conclusion: the lines are all blurred, and I like them that way. Oh, and I just don't know enough. So . . . Some questions to think about

How does content help distinguish between craft and fine art?
What role does the handmade play in artwork?
What is the relationship between art, craft and contemporary culture?
what are crafts contributions to the history of art?
How does craft relate to contemporary art?
Who are the foremost artists practicing contemporary craft?
What is the global context of American craft?

paper cutting is cool

2010-10-27T10:37:00.000-04:00

this is a great idea
I'm jealous

Madrid, 2010
Karen M O'Leary

pretty lamp
artist unknown

peter callensen makes amazing work

this is only one of them

Nature's Maze 2005

a process post

2010-10-20T22:07:00.000-04:00

my studio

a map

some sewing

the gathering: it's magic

a little dye

the reveal!

weird things about ohio

2010-10-13T00:56:00.000-04:00

1. Ohia accent
2. Rita's Water Ice, how does that make sense?
3. A high percentage of rusty POS cars
4. The majority of license plates begin with the letter "E"
5. All the highways through town stay at 65mph
6. I can't make any turns monday through friday 7 am-6pm
7. OSU
8. 90 degrees in October
9. OSU corn fields in the middle of the city
10. Live mannequins in the short north (creep-tastic)

pittsbugh

2010-10-08T21:48:00.000-04:00

I made a decision (gasp!), two actually:

1. I am homesick. When I started this project, the topography I was looking at had no direct correlation with my life. I was inspired by the form and movement of the topography of random, and for the most part, far away places. But now, 5 weeks in, all I want to look at it is Pittsburgh. Yeah, the Galapagos Islands are pretty damn cool looking, but Pittsburgh is my home and it's pretty cool too. I've been finding that as I work, I keep discovering all these things about the landscape. Little pockets of merging lines and hidden formations that make themselves visible only in their delicate retracing and exploration. I want to do that with places I've been and loved, to rediscover the landscape of my home.

2. Because of the aforementioned redirection in narrative, the scale of the work has changed. It's become smaller than originally intended, more intimate. That doesn't mean that I've forgotten about my desire to make large pieces, just that for now, I'm going to work on a scale where I can get a little closer, and hopefully all the work and intensity and tediousness that I enjoy so much will come across a little better.

10 things not to do.

2010-10-08T21:13:00.000-04:00

Found this list floating around on Facebook
It lead me here.
Keri Smith's Website

Which is a pretty cool place.
Her list of popular posts is definitely worth looking at.

Especially the Guerrilla Art Post.
I've seen and heard about Guerrilla Art before,
but never had a name for it.
I'm totally into it.
I love that she takes a playful view,
and not a political one.
Plans for my own ridiculousness to follow soon.

transparent technology

2010-09-28T20:41:00.000-04:00

This is my example of transparent technology ( where concept is the primary focus of the piece and the technology is there to support it). It was created by Sumo Science and Aardman (Wallace and Gromit) using a CellScope, which is a Nokia device with a microscope attachment.

I also started to think that my earlier post some people i've found along the way which included a video of a piece by Makiko Miyamoto would also count as transparent technology.

Plateau

2010-09-27T12:42:00.000-04:00

Between my advisor Carol Griffith and the group critique I has last week, I am flooded with ideas, which is the whole point of being here. I needed to get my mind into a creative place where I could really concentrate on making the best art possible. I had hit a plateau in my art, a level of skill and conceptualization that I couldn't get over just working on my own, and in just a few short weeks I'm already beginning to feel like there's a way off this damn plateau, as long as I keep my mind open to all the possibilites and let the work itself lead me in the right direction.

The problem is now, with of all these wonderful ideas coming at me, am I willing to sacrifice the integrity of my original proposal? Do I really even care if the proposal gets lost in the hustle and bustle of exciting exploration? I think it's too early to tell, I don't even know yet if the proposal is in real danger of changing. I know I only have 2 months left in the semester, but I'm enjoying this experimentation phase so much that I don't see the harm in indulging in it. I think it's necessary, I need to explore all the options and opportunities that come my way, and let the work lead me, and only then can I make informed decisions about my project. It's not a waste of time when it's going to enhance and inform that material that follows.

OSU Geology Library

2010-09-27T12:28:00.000-04:00

So I went to the OSU Geology Library and guess what I found, MAPS! I checked out a large topographic map of Columbus and four quadrangles encompassing Hocking Hills OH (If you like Hocking Hills, you should check out Cosby Lindquist's Project) But even better than that, they had a ton of duplicate topo maps that they just let me take! For real, for free! It was like Christmas. I'm going to wallpaper my studio with them. On top of all the help and free maps I got from OSU, it turns out that the librarian that basically held my hand and walked me through all the map materials, Mary Scott, makes map art herself! She's working on a needlepoint piece based on a map of OSU in the late 1800's. I think it's amazing that I found someone making fiber-based map art right around the corner at OSU.

some informative work i've found along the way

2010-09-22T12:41:00.000-04:00

Robert Walden makes these great ontological maps based completely on his imagination, they're not real cities at all. You can read an interview he did here, it's pretty good, if your interested.

ontological road map 070210
38x38 ink on paper
2010

detail.

I found this art couple, Agus Ismoyo and Nia Fliam, their studio is called Brahma Tirta Sari
They make these beautiful batiks with layered dyes and designs.

Makiko Miyamoto is an installation artist who works in primarily in fabric, light and sound. I had the privilege of doing some sewing for her while she installed several pieces at Pittsburgh Filmmakers last fall. As people (*cough* Virginia *cough*) try to talk me in to sculpture and 3D, Ive been thinking about her use of fabric as 3D elements in her work.

This piece is a waterfall-like flow of fabric, with shifting images of rain and water projected
onto the surface and topped off with the ever present sound of running water.

A video of Makiko's piece Cocoon.

QR codes

2010-09-21T21:31:00.000-04:00

As is often the case, I am confused by and resistant to new technology. I am the person that complains in the Verizon store, "Why can't I just have a plain flip phone? What do you mean I have to pay an extra 10 bucks a month for internet I don't even want?" So when when we started talking about QR codes in our Digital Culture class, I do what I always do when everyone shifts into techno-speak, I tune out. QR codes are just completely off my radar, even if people used them in everyday situations, which isn't the case yet, I don't own a smartphone, so I have no way to connect to their content. If I saw one randomly somewhere, I'd probably even get mad that some elitist jerk decided to make his message known only to the technologically savvy owners of smartphones. What, I am not good enough for your advertising because all I need my phone to do is call and txt? Now the moment I grow up and get a smartphone, I'll probably think they're the bees-knees, but that's just human nature; to reject something new and strange until it becomes relevant to you. But until that moment, I'm gonna fiercely defend my right to dislike something based solely on the fact that I don't get to play along.

But anyway on a completely different, and a lot more interesting note, I actually think that QR codes are, on the visual level, kind of cool. They have this stark graphic, pattern-like quality that I can appreciate. Forget that it's a piece of technology and look at it just as an image, and you can start to see the code function as abstract shape. Throw in the fact that they have an inherent and easy to understand (if you have a smartphone) message, and they become every art students' dream; a piece of art that you can "decode" in seconds. No hemming and hawing about what it means and why the artist did this or that, the meaning is right there, in your face, on your smartphone.

The question is now, how could I possibly use this information to impact the success of my MFA project? I've already stated that I don't particularly approve of QR codes as advertising, but I do appreciate their value as an abstract image. I'm tempted to just paint one. They totally fit into my whole, "I love complicated tedious image-making" aesthetic. I could work off the computer generated QR code and bring it into the real world, make it a tangible piece of art, satisfying my aesthetic and throwing in some self-promotion to boot.

Project Proposal

2010-09-08T11:55:00.000-04:00

PROPSAL

Topographic maps have the ability to depict the smallest deformation of a sweeping three-dimensional environment in two dimensions through a scientific, established and recognizable process. It is this meticulous cartography that I will be appropriating for this project. The actual location that the map surveys is of little interest to me; rather, I am drawn to the line and shape of the maps visual vocabulary. The analytical and tedious line work so inherent in topographic maps inspires me to examine, explore, and recreate. The physical act of making something that is so fastidious in this protracted process of re-recording landforms fulfills a compulsion in me to create work that is laborious and analytical. Chuck Close has said, “I see the delight in what seems laborious.”

My work will take the form of silk paintings approximately 2x4 and 3x5 feet in size. This scale will allow me to examine the complex cartography in detail while the traditional tools of silk painting; beeswax, dye and jaunting tool, allow me to create the precise line work, color saturation and layering that I’m hoping to achieve. The traditional and earthy character of this ancient medium lends itself well to the historical nature of cartography, and the inherent feminine nature of silk and dyeing resonates with topography’s repetitious, pattern-like forms.

Cartographic forms and line work relate strongly to my current work. I am not just a painter, I work in oils and dye, I sew, I bind books, I print and I craft. All of my work has grown and evolved simultaneously, influencing each other; as if each project was trying to resolve some portion of an as yet unrealized whole. I have recreated kaleidoscopes in silk, drawn to the spontaneous and unique forms of pattern and light.

Kaleidoscope 2 2.10
14 in diameter

I have painted rose windows, uninterested in the classical color and figures within the stained glass, but rather the more flowering and repetitious form of the architecture itself.

Rose Window 1 12.09
24x24

I have explored spider webs, fascinated by the meticulous line work of a spun web.

Yellow Web 1.10
20x24

I have abstracted snapshots of nature and architecture, reducing the images to a basic black and white, exploring the context of light and shadow.

Abstraction 5 11.09
9x12

Abstraction 2 9.09
9x12

I have even created a silk-painted alphabet book based solely on pattern-based forms and line, which in part influenced my decision to pursue topographic maps, with their pattern-like landscape and contoured lines, as subject matter for a future project.

W is for Waves 11.09
12x12

Each work has propelled my search for pattern and order in the world around us. I look for pattern, repetition and tedious forms in the largest spaces and the smallest details; tiny ocean organisms, sweeping starfields, swirling galaxies and unfurling plants, tire tracks and fabric swatches, even an organized pantry and sand bars at the beach. Each foray has fed into the work and informed my decisions, growing the database of imagery that fascinates me.

I fully expect that this project will grow and evolve under the supervision of the professors, and with input from my peers at CCAD. With their help I hope it will become bigger and better than I could have achieved on my own. I believe there is no better environment than a learning one; that the atmosphere of academia is the most productive and efficient location for growth. I expect to learn, to become better than I am, as I expect the staff’s invested time and creative energy.

INSPIRATIONS

Vija Celmins has been a strong influence on both my imagery and process driven work. Her art, without foreground middle ground and background, is created with an all-over quality, lacking a center of focus where every portion of her piece becomes as equally stressed as all other parts. Her work has been described as compulsive and obsessive but she has said, “Sometimes I’m convinced that there is nothing else but the physical act of making the art.” I find this is also true in my own work. I think we both enjoy the building of an image; the physical process of creating something time-consuming and tedious and enjoying it every step of the way.

Untitled 2005

Joyce Kozloff has influenced my topographic project with her current map based pieces as well as her background in the Pattern and Decoration Movement. Kozloff uses representations of maps to call attention to global and political issues. I have little interest in pushing that kind of specialization into my project but I find her visual skills in abstracting from cartography, as well as her leap from pattern based work to topography important to my research.

Bodies of Water: Cities of China

Ian Hundley is another artist who is inspired by topographic maps. His work appeals to me because it is fiber-based and also because it is abstracted from aerial photographs and topographic maps. He collages together scraps of clothing into intricate quilt-like artworks. His balance between line and shape make him an excellent visual resource.

Bierburgen Oedelum Black 2006

Michael Slagle’s paintings are directly related to topographic maps which makes his art important for me to be familiar with. He layers topographic imagery to create abstract paintings that are closely linked to the original source material. Though his work plays with scale and proportion and mine will be more straightforward, the fact that he creates work simply to explore topography and perception makes him invaluable to my research.

Hunters Point Ave 2006
48x36

Ingrid Calame’s found gesture paintings, with their all-over quality, intense color and variation of shape and line heavily influenced my plans for the project. Her work is the conglomeration of the visual remains of human activity. Layers of traced spills, skid marks, graffiti and stains are collaged together in a way the echoes my fascination with topography. Calame’s visual sensibility and visceral application of source material is something I’ll try to duplicate throughout the project.

#181 Working Drawing 2005

black and white abstracts

2010-03-22T22:20:00.000-04:00

Abstraction 5 11.09
Oil on panel 9x12

Abstraction 2 9.09
Oil on panel 9x12

Abstraction 9 3.10
Oil on panel 9x12

Abstraction 13 3.10
Oil on panel 9x12

Abstraction 3 10.09
Oil on panel 9x12

Abstraction 4 10.09
Oil on panel 9x12

rose windows

2010-03-22T22:16:00.000-04:00

rose window 1 24x24 december 2009

rose window 2 24x24 december 2009

kaleidoscope

2010-03-22T22:14:00.000-04:00

silk painted kaleidoscopes
14 inch diameter

spiderwebs

2010-03-22T22:09:00.000-04:00

grey web 24x48 march 2010

purple web 24x24 jan 2010

blue web 24x24 december 2009