Light and shade

Teaching classes has occupied most of my spring. In between all that I went to Atlanta to take part in OBSCURA at Eyedrum, with a projection onto their gallery facade. Here I am doing experiments for that in the back yard... how dark does it have to be for a projection to show up?








































It worked out. Projection on Eyedrum facade, March 2010.

Installing at the Hunter College/Times Square Gallery

Drawing (elements), 2010, (in progress) granular rutile. (photo courtesy of Claudia Bueno's husband)

The rich red purple color of granular rutile sort of shows here, in contrast with the blackness of the ilmenite in the last post. Looks good on the grey floor. What struck me as I worked on this was the absolute sense of flatness, of a thin skin held down by gravity. And that's all that holds it... a few repairs have been necessary. Air from the heating vents, a scuff at the edges and a small boy walking into it for several feet. Phi said he'd had to fix it already. Part of the deal, its fragility so letting it go, having it be altered is a given.

At the opening people asked if it was spray paint, and whether it was a mandala. Amongst other things. Some likened it to a view into space because of the sparkles. I started to think of it as the surface of a lily pond that you could also slightly see beneath. The cooktop elements made me think of ripples from falling rain or something, the smaller shapes at the edges flotsam washed to shore. I wish I could make another 12 of them, all different! I'd use other rationales to construct its patterning if I was able to sweep it up and do it again.

New Work

Drawing (metal and plastic from the beach), 2010, granular ilmenite and acrylic medium on Arches paper, 22.5 x 22.5 inches.

New work for the show Smoke + Mirrors/Shadows + Fog at the Hunter College Times Square Gallery, February 18 - April 17, 2010.

(Getting better images at the photographer tomorrow). Its been interesting to make work in a short space of time - the usual frenzy of experiments, high points, dips, despair and determination ... leading to work that holds its own and takes me forward. The way that chance and intention work together is really interesting.

3 new works this size (framed to 36 x 36 inches) and 6 smaller works are heading up to NYC via UPS next week, along with the raw materials for a 10 foot floor drawing. Can't imagine explaining to Airport Security why I have 20 lbs of granular ilmenite along with assorted oven elements and plastic trash is in my hand luggage...!

Show at the Arts Council Gallery

Its been a busy Fall... teaching seemed to take a lot of time for some reason this semester. Mind you, 2 trips to NYC along with continual promotional work like updating artist registries, sending out submissions etc as well as putting on this show took up the slack!

This show at the Asheville Area Arts Council Gallery in downtown Asheville was a fabulous opportunity, as exhibiting at best always is, to move some ideas forward. The gallery has two basement rooms that are not really used for anything. I'd applied like a year ago, and been accepted for the upstairs gallery. Then during the year I happened to see the basement rooms... and knew I had to put my installations in there. Luckily Sarah Meyer at the gallery was keen, and let me have a free hand.

It took a little figuring out, but a couple of weeks saw me placing work, installing lights, building an 8.5 x 17 foot canvas on site and fixing it up as a partition (that was a trip with only two pairs of hands!). The rooms are unfinished, with ducting and all kinds of cabling and pipes exposed in the ceiling, the walls are tidy and white, but just whatever happens to be there - corrugated brick, the tracks of old staircases etc. The coolest feature was the water heater on its little pile of bricks... instead of covering it up it became part of the installation on the suggestion of my artist friend Nava Lubelski. A little shadow drawing all of its own. Nava also helped me with the large canvas, and with painting the ladder shadow - an idea that got its chance at the last minute and was not yet dry as wine began flowing on the opening night!





















So, the work that came together in January at Warren Wilson College looked very different in these more industrial surroundings, and was put in context with both new and older work. For a fuller view of the show, check out http://heatherlewis.carbonmade.com . (There's a link to that from my main website too, on the links page. Updating is an issue when your web designer knows php programming and you don't!)

AND the good news is, the promotional activity paid off! I have been invited to show work at Hunter College Times Square Gallery, CUNY in New York in February!

drawings (from the street) at Pratt Manhattan

A shadow is a drawing created by mechanical means... not involving traditional artistic skills nor photographic mediation.

Using light and other media, I have been exploring mechanical processes in different ways (see some here, or below).

Why? Well, imagination seems vitally important as we move into an era of enormous change. Beyond the dull and restrictive commercial parameters currently keeping our world on what seems like a single-minded path (aka the fossil fuel lobbyist's dream), are astounding new possibilities. I believe that we need to think hard about what criteria we use to direct technology - after all, it is just a tool, and as we know, tools can kill you, or help you. As a society, maybe we have to decide, and make clear, which option we want.

Imagination (available to everyone) may have just as much to contribute at the end of the "oil age" as scientists in expensive research labs. I feel that by reclaiming technology from corporate control even in such small situations as are possible within my art practice, I am able to open a few doors in this area. I want to decide what technology will make for me and why - and this applies on a larger scale also.

A small loop of these shadow drawings is on show at the Pratt Manhattan Gallery, 144 West 14th Street, NYC as part of Design Jazz : Improvisations on the Urban Street - through Nov 7th.

chemigrams

Pierre Cordier, Chemigram 8/2/61

Just discovered chemigrams... they aren't photography because light doesn't play a part in things - they use the chemicals of photography, rather than the process. Similar to my gravitygrams - but there the process and concept of photograms are used but NOT any of the chemicals.

All these things are versions of resisting, printing and stenciling : mechanical processes - a concept developed by early manufacturers to remove craft and creativity from the actual production method. Quite fascinating to see the possible variations... and what altered goals and values allow them to arise. After all, to use these processes in unusual ways requires letting go of a commercial mindset...or does it?

Heather Lewis Two grill pans on a giclee, 2008 (gravitygram of cast iron grindings, granular rutile, acrylic medium and digital image - lots of room for variation there.)

Could a factory make intentionally arbitrary objects or patterns? I'm sure I've heard of some that do. It would be possible within certain parameters. Both physically, and more easily perhaps, digitally. Brian Eno's 70 million paintings spring to mind but I know I've seen something more interesting than that recently. (Nearest I can find right now is Fuzzy ART algorithm used to catch and AVOID minute variations in manufacturing due to flaws. Suppose it was used to create variations in areas that would not be seen as flaws?)


Heather Lewis Two ice trays, 2008, cast iron grindings and acrylic medium. Room for manufacturing variation there too.

Anyway... on a smaller scale, back in the studio...I'd like to see the chemigram used with other kinds of more direct intervention - Cordier drew or printed on the photographic paper to create a resist, in ways which are not within my area of concern. I'm thinking of chemical versions of these gravitygrams.



Heather Lewis Drawing (tape gun), 2008. Cast iron brake grindings and acrylic medium on paper.