This Week at GMU

Stephanie Booth is having her thesis show this week (March 25 to 29) in the main gallery of the Art and Design Building at George Mason University. I met Stephanie when I was working on my MFA at George Mason and I am excited to see the culmination of her work.

One of the themes Stephanie's thesis explores is the effect of past information on identity. Stephanie dug deep into family genealogy and history and, as one would expect, uncovered surprising stories about people related to her. Her source material includes family photos and text of family history, but often the work required Stephanie to place herself into other family members' identities, as though she were an actor playing a role. Sometimes the "characters" are endearing or benevolently powerful and other times cruel or inhuman, in other words, the full range of family relations is on display.

Stephanie uses human hair throughout the show, both as a medium (yes, that embroidery is made with real human hair) and a metaphor for identity and lineage. She employs photography, embroidery, and video installation to present her exploration of identity and family history with the detached aesthetic of a forensic scientist, and this cool presentation is the perfect counterpoint to her strategy of including herself in some of the photos and videos.

There is a whisper that accompanies the large video installation and it fills the gallery as I look at the backs of heads in a series of photographs. I almost feel that I am surrounded by ghosts and as I leave the gallery, I remember that family is family, whether I like it or not.

Ideal Lunar Landscapes

"Ideal Lunar Landscapes" is the title of my solo show at Rivermont Studio. The title comes from the caption below one of the plates from the 1874 book "The Moon: Considered as a Planet, a World, and a Satellite" written by James Carpenter and James Nasmyth. I was introduced to the book during graduate school and it has been on my mind ever since. I like how Nasmyth created the images of lunar landscapes by building and photographing plaster models based on his observations of the Moon seen through his telescope.

Some time after making "Walk-in Crater", I realized that I had stumbled into the territory of landscape painting. I began to re-read the history of landscape painting, reacquainting myself with the variety of ways of seeing the relationship between humans and nature. When I was offered an opportunity to show my work at Rivermont Studio, I decided I wanted to make a series of paintings and contraptions using a language of landscape painting to picture the Moon. But which language to choose? How might a landscape painter make images of new worlds and new frontiers?  

My palette for painting lunar landscapes begins to look like a landscape itself.

I soon settled on drawing inspiration from Albert Bierstadt's large-scale paintings of the American western frontier. Part of the appeal of Bierstadt's paintings is the fact that they are fictions. Even though Bierstadt twice accompanied expeditions to the west and saw the geography there first-hand, the finished paintings are composite images based on sketches, embellished with his mastery of portraying light and atmosphere.  

Bierstadt's paintings of the west offer a distinctly American way of looking at land and space. Portraying U.S. westward expansion as a pre-ordained inevitability, Bierstadt's paintings function as trophies for the railroad companies who commissioned Bierstadt to make images of the land conquered by the Transcontinental Railroad ("Donner Lake From the Summit", 1873 is a good example). The paintings also function as advertisements for tourists, showing the view that could be seen from the comfort of a train.  

My new paintings and contraptions combine the approaches of Nasmyth and Bierstadt, two masters of constructing landscapes. The images of the Moon in my exhibition are based on images of Nasmyth's plaster models of the lunar surface rather than images of the Moon from NASA. Elements from Bierstadt's landscape paintings are incorporated into the Nasmyth images to investigate how an American vision of land and space might be applied to new frontier lands such as the Moon.   

"Ideal Lunar Landscapes" is on view at Rivermont Studio, February 1 -- March 10, 2013.  More information about the gallery can be found under "News" on my website.

"Panorama of an Ideal Lunar Landscape" under construction.

Back in Time: Bolivian Shoeshiners

In October I collaborated with Edgar Endress again, creating a set of pen and ink drawings and an acrylic painting on wood panel.

Drawings in progress. Note the book of toile de jouy open for inspiration.

In 2007, Edgar was working as one of the members of the ASCHOY Collective, conducting artistic research and social engagements in La Paz, Bolivia. The collective created a series of pieces exploring the social-political significance of the ski mask worn by the young boys working as shoeshiners on the streets of La Paz. One of the collective's actions was to create a ski mask embroidered with Bolivian religious imagery. The embroidered mask was used in public performances during which local shoeshiners were invited to wear the mask while walking the streets of La Paz followed by a musical band. The project was called "The Mask of the Shoe Shiner" and the photos of the performances are at once funny and poignant (be sure to scroll down the pdf for a look).

Recently, the ASCHOY Collective was invited to participate in a group show entitled "Ripple Effect: Currents of Socially Engaged Art", co-presented by the Art Museum of the Americas and the Washington Project for the Arts.  Edgar invited me to create new artwork to accompany an installation of the photographic documentation and the embroidered ski mask from "The Mask of the Shoe Shiner".

The completed set of drawings ready to be scanned and printed as wallpaper.  

I made pen drawings using the aesthetic language of toile de jouy, substituting shoeshiners wearing ski masks, cholitas, and llamas instead of mythical figures and aristocrats at their leisure.  The drawings were scanned and then arranged into a pattern that was printed as wall paper.

Acrylic painting on found wood to be used as a kind of altar piece.

I also painted a kind of altar piece on found wood.  The figures are inspired by the angelic figures of Michelangelo's "Last Judgement" on the wall of the Sistine Chapel, except, in my painting, the angels are wearing ski masks and carrying the tools of the shoeshiner.  More photos of the work in progress can be seen on my Tumblr page. While researching the kinds of tools and clothing used by the Bolivian shoeshiners, I came across a short documentary entitled "Shoe Shiners in Bolivia" that quickly gave me a sense of the daily life of a shoeshiner.

The completed acrylic painting ready for installation.

"The Mask of the Shoe Shiner" is on view at the Art Museum of the Americas October 25, 2012 to January 13, 2013.

Back in Time: A Dream at the Maier Museum

"The Shrine of the American Dream", 2012, installed at the Maier Museum.

Panorama of "The Shrine of the American Dream" with Brooke, Edgar, and me.

I spent the summer painting images of US patent designs onto panels made from found wood.  I describe the project in more detail in a previous blog post. The project is entitled "The Shrine of the American Dream" and is the brainchild of Edgar Endress who invited Brooke Marcy, Marco Moreno Navarro, and I to contribute to the installation.

"The Shrine of the American Dream" is on view until December 7, 2012 at the Maier Museum of Art, Lynchburg, VA as part of the museum's annual exhibition of contemporary art. The show includes work by artists Sook Jin Jo, Assaf Evron, Muriel Hasbun, Jiha Moon, and Kukuli Velarde.

Me looking as though I did the whole project myself.

 One of my contributions to the installation: US Patent No. 232,233, helmet from a fireman's suit, 1880.

Detail showing one of Marcus Moreno Navarro's exquisite sculptures.  

Back in Time: New Digs

New studio.  Plastic covers the existing carpet.

Since moving out of the studio I used as a graduate student at GMU in August, 2012, I have been using a spare bedroom as a studio. The floor is covered with heavy plastic followed by a layer of cheap carpet on top, hopefully preventing any paint from leaking onto the permanent carpet underneath. Although the footprint of my new studio is smaller than the space I used for the past three years, I am able to fit in all of the essentials: the taboret, the drafting table, a work table, and an easel for large paintings. Of course, as soon as all my supplies were moved in, and the room filled with the smell of linseed oil, I felt right at home in the new space.

New studio.  The taboret appreciates the window view.

Back in Time: The Last Painting

Patching holes, sanding bumps, and painting walls at my old studio, GMU, August 2012.

My last act of painting as a graduate student at GMU was to paint the walls of the studio I occupied. Three years of stray marks from drawings and paintings, splattered gesso and graphite dust covered every surface. The walls were also riddled with holes made by push pins, nails, and screws. All of the marks and punctures captured by the walls revealed a brief history of personal artistic struggle (or maybe just general goofing off).

Watching the marks on the walls disappear as I applied the final coat of paint was like watching a heavy snowfall slowly covering the Fall's debris of brown, skeletal leaves and grass, making the landscape new and fresh, and filling the air with a welcome stillness.   

Lights out.  Final view of the window in the studio I used as a graduate student at GMU.

Opening Reception at Open Space Gallery

Walk-in Crater as seen from the camera's point of view.

One of my contraptions, Walk-in Crater, will be exhibited beside the work of seven other artists at Open Space Gallery in Baltimore, MD. The show is titled Future Daze and an opening reception starting at 8:00 pm will be held Saturday, September 8th at Open Space Gallery.

"Walkin Crater" installed at Open Space Gallery

As the press release states, the work in the show examines contemporary reality by presenting investigations into and experiments with possible alternate realities or imagined future worlds.  

All is quiet in the crater, for now . . . .

Walk-in Crater is part of a series of contraptions that I have been making as an investigation into the nature of reality. For me, each piece in the series is a little reality experiment. I borrow heavily from the techniques developed by special effects artists to create fictional landscapes imagined on alien planets. I use that language of illusion-making to explore the connection between everyday reality and the fundamental structures behind reality as described by the physics of quantum mechanics and relativity.  In July 2012, I did a Q&A with Whitney Dail on her blog Jumpsuits & Teleporters (which, by the way, is an excellent resource for the overlap of science and art) and I talked a bit more about my interest in physics.