juror duty

Been keeping my head down and getting on with it this semester. Teaching takes up quite a chunk of time one way and another but I did manage to go to Boston for the Transcultural Exchange Conference about artist residencies. Very interesting, met people, heard a lot of stories from both applicants and organizers, got a good insight into choosing a residency that fits and how to go about funding it. Now all I have to do is complete some of those things... and when do I get into the studio? Summer time, I hope.

Just juried a student show at a local college, the Blue Ridge Community College. Images here. (Scroll down or search for BRCC). I have to say I was impressed with their art department, a very exciting student art program. As the college is 35 minutes outside Asheville, which is not really at the cutting edge of contemporary art, I wasn't expecting the informed faculty and contemporary ideas that I found there. So that was a nice surprise. Jurying a show however, is a difficult - if not impossible - task to complete entirely rationally. There were entries from all levels of students, a range of disciplines and materials. How to even begin to apply some kind of criteria to that?

There were people's first charcoal studies of a skeleton next to pinhole camera images, alongside ceramics, with conceptual sculpture, beside installation, video, iron pours... painting, digital imaging class projects, sound pieces and a light projection onto a bed. I had to go and sit quietly for a while to mull over the fact that I needed to choose the "winners". In the end, I went for resolution and eloquence over potential. I don't think my choices were expected, and I wish I'd been able to give more prizes for different things but I am fairly solidly behind what I chose. A short speech before the awards were given out helped to clarify things I hope. A lottery, yes, but only in that each juror will determine a different set of "standards". After that it is rational up to a point, except that there are about 10 other artworks that don't get mentioned even though they were hot contenders within your apparently narrowed selection!

It was really instructive to be jurying a show, in regard to sending your own work off in situations where it will be juried. Though I don't apply to juried shows, all selection processes fall under this umbrella, so it was quite fascinating. A new view of how your work may be seen.

Ok, I've got tasks today, getting gift certificates for another student show at the college I teach at, and driving to Boone, NC for the "inmate art show" benefit tonight. I have spent over 8 hours matting all the student work ... for free. Materials refunded, I hope, but the rest is...what? Sent out into the universe generously, as service, with the idea that one never knows where it will lead. Its just not a business plan the bank will consider, unfortunately!

shadows

Objects from a kitchen drawer, 2008, light installation.

This got a great response at the student talks I gave in the gallery. They liked the obvious means of production (the overhead projector was easily visible), the wild enlargement of small objects, and we discussed the idea of pictorial depth within it. Some of the objects were instantly recognizable and others not... the push pin was obvious, said one. The coiled wire, the CD tray, the sink drainer all came up as familiar. Less clear were the pasta server (one of those Better Homes ingeniously forgettable inventions) and the Barbie torsos (keeping the outfits 3D in the blister packs).























A stack of shaped circles, 2008, roofing felt and gravity. 10.75 x 8 x 8 inches

This small sculpture (it is not glued or held together in any way) involves shadow rather obscurely. Being black and dense material, almost flattening itself through lack of visible detail and shading yet suggesting a small lamp introduces several interesting linkages. Alongside that is its creation via individually directed, separately produced shapes, something more common in industry. I still have areas to explore here, which is exciting.

Some great feedback came from the students. One asked me whether it mattered if the artwork was not permanent, which of course led to the idea of value. If something is impermanent it seems irrelevant until one considers charging a high price for it, which suggests that someone's investment would be lost. Another student talked about the roofing felt piece, mentioning that the flat layers of my other installations had here come together to create something physical. It was really interesting to get their impressions. I wish I could have recorded all that was said. I loved seeing the degree students' work in their studios too - could have spent much more time with that than we had.

This last small work was propped up by the guest book, unframed. It didn't get much attention but I like where it might take me. Of course that is still unknown...

Shadows and paint rings, 2008, acrylic, oil and varnish on board, 7.25 x 12 inches

Current Exhibition - influences. Installment 1

The show at the Holden Gallery has come together really well - you can see my first set of images of it at http://heatherlewis.carbonmade.com/projects/2177451#1

My paintings have been bright for a few years now and I have loved the freedom to use color as I wanted to. However, darkness and light have been consistent themes in my work for over 10 years, as a scroll through old blog posts will confirm!

Aspects of my childhood can be seen in the earlier nightscapes as well as in the current light installations. Growing up in Trinidad next a huge oil refinery, there was always an orange light from the flare boom and this turned the landscape into a mysterious place of twilight and shadows - against a backdrop of thousands of lights. The boring everyday details of place were hidden, and relationships became more ambiguous. When I left Trinidad, this interest in lights went with me to the UK where I would be driving between cities at night or looking out from train windows noticing that of course, lights indicated human presence. Although light and dark depend on nature (physics relies on natural properties after all), electric light means that energy is being created and expended intentionally. The use of light and dark in my work can be seen as an engagement between human and nature, an aknowledgment that technology can be controlled to achieve various results. I choose to make art with it.

Next post, I'll look at shadows again in the context of my installations.

Meantime, here is one of those transitional images that's not on my website - it superimposes later ideas on the bones of an earlier realist work. Just realized it has a resemblance to Stapler, which IS on the website...

17 coffee filters, 2007. 28 x 30 inches, oil and spray paint on canvas.

holiday work

I'm here on holiday on Anguilla in the Caribbean, not exactly where I grew up (Trinidad), but similar in some significant ways. The sun shines most of the time in a cloudless sky, meaning the light is rarely diffused as it in the North's flat grey winter weather. And there are more reflective surfaces - on a sunny day in Asheville NC, the trees and greenery seem to absorb the light. Here, visually the environment is high contrast. Shadows, of course, but also shaded areas, and the way dark and light intersect with each other when seen from inside buildings, around natural shapes.

The quality of light and the kind of shadows produced are part of the experienced world, coloring the time of day, the kind of weather, your location. Life is obviously easier to live outside when it is warm.

Here are some images I've collected, not sure how I will end up using them yet. Maybe develop some of the ideas here on the blog....

Quite a contrast to the candlelight ambiance of my last post's image. Contrast is not only visual... Christmas day may involve a casual beer at the beach and evening turkey cooked in the BBQ on a patio looking out towards the sea. The oven maybe went kaput a couple of days ago when snapped power lines draped across our driveway, causing an "outage" in the area. Not an uncommon experience. This last week we have often driven by the first mall on the island - the El Dorado, unfortunately perhaps many malls are now under construction - where DJs have been broadcasting calypso style carols and religious christmas pop so loud that it vibrates within the chest cavity as you pass in the car. We've also seen several inflatable and endearingly snoozing (there's a stiff breeze) santas on the lawns around the bank. Music from bars and nightspots is heard long into the night, and there's always the slight chance of a fatal road accident, or, very occasionally, a robbery at gunpoint at the busy chinese corner store. They have a security guard now, so hopefully not. Never mind, for us visitors there's turquoise water, endless white sand, and maybe the lobster brunch of the dream holiday before we jet off back to ordinary life.

And I'm taking pictures of palm frond shadows!?? I do have other shadows in mind, using car headlights to capture the guys playing dominoes on the corner, and a cement truck's silhouette on a warehouse wall, but it takes a while for things to come to fruit sometimes. I intend to make some gravitygrams using sand and cardboard - slightly more accessible.

coming events

In the grey days of January I will be filling the Holden Gallery with light installations and generally insubstantial or "unskilled" artworks.

The work separates value from saleability.... The pieces are put together as vehicles for ideas rather than as conventionally valuable art products. You don't have to buy it, to get it. The ideas are free.

The first idea is that value often gets equated with elements that make an object desirable, and justify its price (via demonstrations of skill, perfection, expensive materials). Hot on the heels of this is the idea that most of our available technology is harnessed to create products that are for sale, and therefore subject to variations of these same commercial criteria. This has an effect on our perceptions of value, and what is worthy. In the commercial world, if people don't think something is worth paying for, then that item is not worth making. The whole thing revolves around what people believe they need to own, and what they are willing to give up to achieve that. The cost of making the product has to come in under this figure - if not... forget it.

Buying and the evaluation preceding it distill our perceptions of the world into tangible form. But if we can separate it out from this cycle of product manufacture, technology is just a tool, and if we could use it in a different way, by asking what it is we would REALLY like our lives to be like, we might start investigating other ways to consume. Doesn't mean we won't pay for things, but we might perceive that a greater part of our consuming, and ownership means different things. We already understand that with sports, or watching a play - there's no material benefit, but we recognize the experience is worth paying for. We've all seen the bumper sticker saying The best things in life aren't things...

The work in this exhibition has been able to disregard the criteria that keeps work "up to standard" somehow, for the viewer - which relies, of course, on the idea of desirable ownership. In contrast, this work I am showing is made out of cheap or free materials, it has required little or no skill (or rather, it demonstrates "poor craftsmanship"), and it questions the idea of perfection. Just what makes us decide that something is perfect, or flawed? Perfection seems to be a particularly industrial concept, that dictates that the correct product is exactly the same as all the others. Otherwise it is a mistake, and they are conning you into paying for substandard goods. Yet we then pay over the odds for customized items - or versions of customization... limited edition, special collection, hand appliqued, signed by the artist, certificate of authenticity etc. It is interesting.

So, the exhibition provides me with an opportunity to explore some of these ideas, allowing me to discard some of the measures of what might be acceptable. The prevailing - or dominant - assumptions have a powerful hold.

This work grows out of an interest in wider, cultural concerns. My understanding is that examining the way we use technology has a vital role to play in cultural development. This area is not one that we are encouraged to explore but is actually open to all humans with imagination. This makes change, and a change of consciousness within the power (and responsibility) of individuals, not just corporations, scientists and politicians.

As an artist, or individual, it may be enough to allow an idea houseroom - each contribution may work in small ways. The seeds of an idea may bear fruit many years or decades later, filtered through new technology, different philosophies and other, brilliant and focused individuals. Ideas don't have to supply all the answers, just show that something different is possible. The Wright brothers showed flight was possible, but could they have imagined a jumbo jet with 500 passengers in the air for 22 hours, with movies and meals? Or landing on the moon?

deskilled process

Drawing (coca cola crate), 2008
cast iron grindings, acrylic, Fabriano paper, 10 x 13 inches

Well, the wood grain in the last picture is not the real thing, but it looks like it. Here the coca cola crate does look like the real thing, and was actually created by the real thing, but it doesn't look the way we expect it to.

This is one of a series of "drawings" created using various powders, and gravity. We are familiar with photograms, which use light sensitive emulsion to record the effects of an object deflecting light. Here gravity is used, and the object concerned deflects particles - just not photons, but physical particles that accumulate showing the effects of that deflection. The result describes the object quite faithfully via its edges, so can be considered a drawing, but is not created as traditional drawings are, through the mediation of the artist. Its a kind of factory drawing.... more direct than the "Leonardo Drawing" you can buy at the mall...

And very much in tune with my paintings - that use particles of paint set in motion by the compressed air in my spray gun - that record the deflection that occurs to paint particles when a stencil is placed on the canvas, obstructing their path.

faux grain

Faux grain and egg dish, 2006
oil paint on board, 14 x 14 inches

No spray gun used here, I was back to stenciling with a soft bristle brush - over contrasting colors of oil paint squeegeed into wood grain patterns by that clever little tool from Home Depot.

Emulating the appearance of another (usually more expensive) material is a "traditional" decorative technique used on furniture and interiors. Interestingly during the 20th Century this practice has also been used to distress paint and surfaces, furniture, carpets, etc to look older and more traditional than they are - as older has been associated with craftsmanship and rarity in the age of industrial production. The idea of falseness or pretense, and trompe l'oeil also ties into the fine arts with the surrealist movement. The difference is that decorative faux finish is (kinda) meant to pass as real, whereas surreal faux is meant to surprise by obviously being unreal. The use of replicated imagery also links to Picasso's first deliberate collage using printed chair-caning pattern, using industrially produced imagery to play with the notion of real and unreal...of both the pattern and whether a collage, especially using such a lowly material can claim status as art.

It is fascinating to experiment in this area, with so many ideas to play with and new ways of combining and expressing them. All because pigment has been concentrated in particular layouts!

Like my other work, Faux grain and egg dish is unmistakeably created using deskilled techniques - the graining tool and stenciling round a plastic dish - but more so than my other work this one creates a (semi) realistic illusion. There's a luscious gravity to this, and yet a childish delight in the wooden shapes that seem to be lifting off. Flowers, even, where no flowers would be. To be real, as the illusion suggests, the wood and the shapes lifting off from it would have to be crafted by a skilled artisan...or a factory router...referring back to different methods of production.