ART SCHOOL HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO BELIEVE YOU

map for my next plate

mountain WHAT REVIEW WHATTTT

BAHAHAHAHAHAHAaaa

this is a thing:


I am carrying mixed feelings about this repetition non-sense at this point.

maybe I should just let them be? alone? really they have a friend already, with the mirror and all. I just mean they might be overwhelming enough as it is.





I exposed this plate (finally got the exposure time and the solution right) and will be able to print it after the advanced print class finishes up this friday. right now they are busy-bees in the litho-room so I need to give it some space. I don't know if this is even something I will want to include or if I will stick with etching. But I am definitely going to get a few prints out of it, some blood and some sweat went into getting it this nice.

I will also be exposing another drawing for some multi-plate action.

over break I want to work on a drawing to expose to this big silk-screen that was gifted to me. maybe something to work with one of the etchings?
also, I bought a new plate and would like to finish it before the semester starts again.

after we thought about it. does he look like a turtle because he is slow? and what kind?????????????????????????????? of slow

a big plate is done

I made the one on the right appear to be slightly more responsive to its child--turtle child.

Almost-symmetry also relates to how i am dealing with multiplicity with minor changes. part of the viewing experience becomes an attempt to figure out what is different between the two sides.

just kidding. i am not going to make paintings.

just kidding. i am going to make paintings.

these prints are little stories

first is progress:



other stuff:

My variation from print to print in a whole row was going to be tiny oil paintings. but I have changed my mind, I need something more objective.

I thought about using photographs in the windows. something that changes with time or changes to a rhythm. a documentation of uneeded extravagance that becomes vital to bringing interest to the entire composition.

I will do cultural habits related to the seduction of aesthetics or a belief system. different ones.

things like owning inedible pets& eating dessert & and various forms of decoration that have nothing to do with camouflage or intended awareness

I don't know if photographic images will look proper. if they don't, I will alter the photographs so they function well with only positive and negative and make screens with them. then I can screenprint the windows and the techniques will likely fit nicely together.

also my next plate absolutely has to be vertical, I think. I want a totem pole.

IDKLOL LTFMR/ INFINITE PRINT

they look like wallpaper for a bathroom! it is beautiful.

I PROBABLY HAVE SWINE FLU. HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA

oh and i have been working on this huge piece of meat

This week my goal was to spend a little less time making and little more time on why i am making and what it is doing. I am getting there. But I still spend copious amounts of time piddling around in the print studio, so I am technically consciously managing my time differently, but I think I am spending more time everywhere. THIS IS GOOD, though. Just as long as I don't catch that H1N1, you know.


THIS PLATE HAS BEEN A HUGE PROBLEM CHILD:





this was my first plate this semester and I tried putting the environment/textures on the same plate as the image. SILLY GOOSE! I just keep loosing my image. so my goal was to figure out what to do with this little shit. I tried drypoint things, sharpie marker and alcohol painting and stop-out things and aquatint things and then I finally just protected the image and put the whole thing in the acid bath to open-bite it down a bit. then I did a rollover.

I like it right now, this print has a little bit of a rollermark issue, but I like the atmosphere that my frustration with the space built. so I think this is something that is going to continue to happen with this image.




THIS DOG IS VERY INEFFICIENT:

So I have spent the whole last week trying to figure out what I am really going to do with these images. I tried spray paint stencils, tiny mylar plates, some rediculous experiments with iron oxide, prismacolor markers, prismacolor pencils, paper carving and blahhhaujhsjkahsjhajkhjksh

Nothing looked right. UNTIL TODAY. I cut windows into the prints where the halos would be and put tiny paintings in each window. This one used a study on paper that I did last semester and cut into squares to adhere to the back of the print.

So this is round 1 & not colors that I am entirely fond of. But this is definitely something I plan to pursue further.

and this will allow for me to paint as well as make prints--- I can just cut my paintings (on paper) up into little bits and stretch them out onto these prints. each one is little gallery.

I am excited to show this to thylias & & & I need even more concept editing now. hopefully the beast will stop growing soon so I can settle and get a reasonable write-up.

PROJECT BLURB


I intend to make a series of copperplate etchings that expand on the idea of cultural aesthetics and habits as well as the efficient or inefficient use of resources and how this relates to the use of time. I plan to carry this out by collecting imagery from modern primitive, past primitive as well as modern and past developed cultures to create a hybrid culture. The imagery will be rendered using obviously time intensive patterns that will be collected from varied found textiles or other displays of excessive decoration of useful objects. The patterns will build the figures which will be involved in a greater pattern, as I will print a great deal of the same image to utilize repetition as an aesthetic device. I also plan to make several large scale drawings of singular characters from the hybrid culture to make the works as a whole more relatable as the viewer can more easily connect to something life-sized. Additionally, I will be working on a hybrid language heavy with alliteration that will hopefully be largely unspeakable, a composition of readable sounds. These sounds will be printed in colored ink on the same color of paper, so they are both unreadable and mostly invisible.

normally I am a meek peach, but I got sassy rotten.

On monday I spoke to Thylias Moss (the most helpful poet), who has become a really great outside resource to this project. She is also obsessed with conjoined twins and the tension created at the point of conjunction. I am working on an epic dynamic system built of subsystems, the system stabilizes as I work to build the landscape. I won't know what I have until I have it, and if I tell myself what it is before it is complete, I won't be giving it the full right to evolve. Or that's what she said.

Or that's how she works, which is wonderful! She holds the sass-encouragement, also. and the sound part of my project without sound (that is hopefully going to work itself out)- encouragement. But less sass, more running fast.

Conceptually, I am going to square one to rebuild. If I am going to acknowledge that these works are an evolving system, I have to take the whole thing apart periodically.

WHY AM I DOING THIS?
I like it. okay.

WHAT HAPPENED TO ME TO MAKE ME MAKE THINGS LIKE THESE THINGS?
I tried thinking about this in terms of life changing moments. I have eight or nine. Most of them are really awkward and have little to do with this compulsion. But I whittled it down to this:

While in Ghana I spent a lot of time seeding tomatoes. Essentially everything is tomato based. Or everything is made of Ghana-sauce, which is tomato based. But there is a well known ghanian superstition that consuming the seeds of the tomato is bad luck. Already cooking is an extensive and time consuming experience, the family I stayed with had no kitchen. The ghana stove stayed outside and there was a pot with a long beating stick for making gooey rice balls (so we could eat our soup without a spoon. The first time I went to the market, I got smacked in the face with a dead fish. (too skinny)

So what I mean is, just to survive there is an incredible balance of resources. But they are using time and disposing of the juicy innards of the tomato that could be used in the ghana sauce or ground-nut soup because their mother and their mother's mother did. This habit is only slightly debilitating, really. But it is ingrained in a belief system. I LIKE IT.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?

The works are a proof of the use of a resource. Time is a resource and habit is a use of time.
I am making a habit out collecting aesthetic habits that may or may not be an efficient use of resources & creating a (time consuming) pattern with them.


There was also the time I thought I wanted to be a creative writing major or something in LSA. And I was, but then I missed painting. So I transferred to the art school. Now I don't like to paint. Now I draw. And now I am just obsessed with wasting time.

4 vibrations

i have made five of these things so far-----they will connect to form a greater pattern. rhythm 11!!!! tones from color. I just need some sounds.

Most recently I have been just trying to give these creatures hints of something a little more relatable. They are far away.

But I think my obsession with the scale of the creatures--- this need to make them larger and larger which I originally thought was to relate the drawings to paintings in terms of scale-- is part of the process of being able to relate to them.

So really I think I need some life size drawings. I need big paper and loads of tiny pens.

The etchings will still function as a document of the rhythm to their habits & I will make more of them. But I need some really big guys as well.

I JUST BOUGHT A REALLY BIG PIECE OF COPPER

BAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH

Last week's drawings

See. They will layer, the pattern is the key plate & the tone will be the color. It is a litho bit.


My problem right now is not technique or concept related. I have already switched up my concept since midterms so it is a little less muddy, less reliant on the critique of icons, and discusses the use of pattern and absurdity a little more & technically I feel confident.

However, Endi has so kindly reminded me that not everyone is a printmaker and therefore not everyone can understand the nuances of my work as well as exactly how labor intensive it is. +++my work is more reliant on technique than concept so I am supposedly expecting to much from my audience. ANDDDDDD

I have never felt such strong opposition to something that has come out of the mouth of an authority figure. Artists, to become artists, have to make themselves believe that what they are doing is actually important and that somehow they are an expert on a particular process that can mostly be understood by other EXPERTS.

You don't have to be an expert to understand the passage of time. Perceiving the use of time is simple & I am trying to use this to promote this idea that creating and expecting someone to care is selfish. And assuming that the technique I am using is beyond the comprehension of the typical human being is disgusting.

ALL I WANT PEOPLE TO KNOW IS THAT IT TOOK ME A LONG TIME TO RENDER THESE IMAGES. IT CAN BE TREATED LIKE A DRAWING. I AM NOT SPECIAL.

I am working on what exactly I will wind up doing with these "habits." I have cut them to see how they would look repeated as garlands. This is a possibility as it is also marginalizing these art objects into serious party decorations.

I have also thought about writing sounds out phonetically to the rhythm of the repeated images. This would go along the bottom of the print and create a time based idea as the viewer would have to walk along the image to read the work. However, there would be no actual words read in this endeavor, only sounds. Adding to the blasphemy of the necessity to read the image. Also the entire work (or collection of habits) would then have a musical aspect-- just everything but the sound itself.


I think I am excited about the second one---it makes my work more than just prints. So the argument of the neccessity of a knowledge of printmaking isn't valid. anyone can see what I'm seeing. printmaking isn't even terribly complicated & if you want to elevate yourself through the technique, no one cares.

Also, I understand what is happening in the art world. or what has already happened, I mean. I know that maybe two years ago or so, me doing these technical prints would be looked at as being too reliant on technique and empty of concept. I probably will just evolve to documenting my own solid and liquid waste and categorizing it by what I consumed prior to expulsion. But I want to use the print studio. THE TAX PAYERS ARE PAYING FOR ME TO BE HERE SO I AM GOING TO USE THE PRINT STUDIO.


anytime that I am not here making is a waste of time.

real talk

first try

this is a little bit of something I might be looking at. The paper got really silly & I know how my next try will work (I ran out of paper, so it will have to be tomorrow), but this is generally what I am going for.

maybe the sun will move around.

The sun is a round plate! I am exited to work with more shaped plates from here, but this was my first try with the jeweler's saw.
uhhhhh and the trees are a linocut printed over my etching with very transparent ink

NOTHING IS GOOD SO I WILL JUST TRY TO MAKE EVERYTHING

Looking like some camels in the snow

change in thesis proposal: Pattern & Habit ON VACATION

So this is done. Or this part is done. I will make a better picture of it when I fix my camera thing.



BORING

These works are patterns built of patterns. The buildup of habits upon habits. Cultural habits as well as these habits that we, as humans, have developed as a survival mechanism.

I forget when I am entirely enveloped in my daily habits that they are even there. But if I am in my niche and my habits are disrupted, my entire day is usually destroyed. I know this reaction is more extreme than the reaction of a typical human being, but there is always a human desire to maintain a pattern.

When I am outside, I leave most of my habits. This weekend I ran off to buffalo for a second. I got lost and slept in a funny place, but my mind was the clearest it has been since august. I could actually articulate myself verbally, which is impossible when I am home, as I am so weighed down my by habit-schedule.

THESE THINGS I AM MAKING are patterns built out of patterns & imagery relaying cultural habit. They are saturated burdens & too much at once so there is no room for anything else.

THEY ARE HABITS.

So I need to take these habits, these hopefully universal habits, on vacation. These gods and moms would look better on a beach with some tiki lamps.------next is more work with collage & other printmaking techniques to incorporate color and an environment.

This is the beginning!



I can imagine the plate printed on kitikawa these linocut pine trees printed over it in a transparent ink. I will cut out the trees (and dudes) and collage them onto a larger image. a lithograph i haven't sketched out yet.

and it will repeat and repeat and repeat.
these friends will be on vacation in the pacific northwest.

oh and buffalo was wonderful & the meeting went well, I think. The city itself is beautiful, but wholly terrifying. In any case, it was nice to take what I am doing here somewhere else and have someone else look at it.

actually, the demons make me do it.

artism

I am into these obsessive patterns because each mark becomes a very small piece of an eventual sensory overload.
I can just slowly live in fear.

new plate::

ALMOST HOME

This guy is almost done! I need to work out the wiping---this print is totally underwiped.

SKETCH FOR MY NEXT PLATE

CEPHALORACOPAGUS MONOSYMMETRO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

NOT DONE. THIS POST IS DEDICATED TO ERICA FINK, HOWEVER.

BUT CHECK OUT MY DEEP ETCH.
I think I might have to loosen up my patterns a little bit next time, though./////needs some kind of environment yet.

THIS IS NOT FINISHED YET

It has been etched once. I will revisit it a couple more times to work in the environment of the awkward walking daddy's girl. My big one is in its bath of acid right now. Hopefully she comes out etched squeaky clean.

progress update/ the two and some months before this started

These peaches are well on their way. I plan to have them ready for their first etch by monday & I have sketches for my next plate. I just have to acquire more copper. I think I will also work on drawings to be transferred to photolitho plates, as they are cheaper & I can do a few things a little bit bigger and still have the opportunity to incorporate repetition. My initial thought was to just create as many etchings as humanly possible over the course of this academic year, however, I forgot I have to eat too. BUT since I have a love for some nice plate tone, I don't exactly need the most gorgeous pieces of copper. I just need to be resourceful& I am an expert at being broke. it will be okay it will be okay.





I also was feeling minorly nostalgic/ panicking that I forgot how I almost died in at least 30 different cities. So I drew a partially inaccurate (those lines ain't highways) map of my adventure as an epic mooch. I drove (or rode when the boys felt the need to get behind the wheel) a big white van around the country with some dips into canada. Every night, they played a show & fed me & I had floor to sleep on & they put the gas in the van that was taking me everywhere.





I was searched by dogs and was fed cacahuates by a trans lady on the streets of el paso. I chased twelve boys through the jemez reservation in a rain storm and climbed a mountain. I watched the sunrise over lake champlain in vermont and swam in a river full of poisonous snakes in north carolina. OH and I saw the grave of a vampire in a confederate cemetery. oh and I met all the famous people.

all while promoting someone elses' work. We met so many who had propelled themselves around the country in a similar manner. Their art was feeding them (barely) and putting gas in their cars.

People only know what you are doing if you force them to see it. So why can't I do that? For what I am doing. I would have to tack myself onto something musical and the actual adventure would have to be after I am technically finished with my project. But I could begin planning it now. I should get myself into grad school first, though.

A black bug bit a big black bear, made a big black bear bleed blood.

This one is a larger plate I have been working on:


I started a second plate yesterday so my face wouldn't get too sick of this big one.

OH AND I realized a lot of my forms tend to connect to one nice bulbous creature. Also, I had sensed this "LANDSCAPIC" quality of my work before, but thinking about it in terms of the opportunities that printmaking lends me can make nice things. I can have as many of these bulbous creatures as I want, and in numbers, they become this unearthly landscape.--------Also scary as shit if each part of the leviathan earth has empty eyeballs staring at you.

The third thing I am seriously working on right now is to write a language composed entirely of tongue twisters. I can easily gain inspiration by collecting tongue twisters in languages I have had no associations with as well as just following the general rule that typically combinations heavy with alliteration and rhyme will be difficult to say.


This is swahili
Kale kakuku kadogo ka kaka kako wapi kaka?

it means "where are your chickens, brother?"

The bulbous leviathan landscapic creatures speak this unspeakable language that I haven't entirely composed yet.

also this has become important:
Using patterns to develop an image allows me to prove a devotion to the work. The time spent correlates to the intricacy of the patterns themselves, so ideally I am allowing the viewer to perceive this passage of time. Also, I use the patterns as a device to make the subject of the image secondary to the process. The images could be entirely blasphemous, but the seriousness of the patterns tends to contradict this.

devotion= manuscript illuminator= images become worshipped (accidentally) for their beauty instead of content= iconoclasts destroy

Class Blog: Sourcing Inspiration

More inspired by joy or sorrow:
JOY. WHY WOULD I WANT TO BE SAD? I am an anxious person, but a happy one. I think all that anxiety comes from the need to want to preserve my own happiness as well as the happiness of others around me. Much of my work so far has been created to lend a sense of harmony or comfort to the viewer. If the subject is uncomfortable or blasphemous, it is used in a humorous fashion or highly ornate to give the viewer another reason to look at it. IF IT NOT JOYOUS, I WILL MAKE IT JOYOUS, DAMMIT.

I am more inspired by positive energy, as it is not draining. There isn't this underlying need to make everything positive if it is already positive, so I can focus on other things, like flowery neck manes or how I want to cook an eggplant.

More inspired by rest or fatigue:
I am certain that I am more inspired by fatigue. Both as an emotional state and a feeling on a day to day basis. Usually, in that first moment where I realize I feel great, I put half my energy in to worrying about when and whether or not I will become too exhausted to function. But in reality, when I hit that point of exhaustion, I am no longer worried about getting there and have the space in my mind that was previously used for worrying returned to me. It is the same for developing ideas, as I begin to come up with something I immediately become worried that I will loose it or exhaust it. But when I have actually failed at something, I tend to find a better focus shortly after. It is entirely irrational, but worry overrides a rested state.

More inspired by relaxation or pressure:
It seems counter-intuitive. I know the typical human being usually works well when they are being pressured to work well. But again with the anxiety taking over the process, I am less inspired by pressure as more energy goes into worrying than actually creating. I have had the tendency to want so bad to give up if outside pressures are so bad that I may finish, but I will likely be less proud of my result than I would be if it was finished on my own accord.

I know pressure is really something totally unavoidable, so I have just learned to deal with it by maintaining a fairly strict structure in my process. I think that is how printmaking has worked well for me, because there are steps in the process and maintaining a time table is potentially more possible than something ( painting ) that just winds up becoming infinite. I know I am not inspired by pressure, but I don't know if I am inspired by relaxation either. I don't really do that.

More inspired by culture or nature:
I am definitely more inspired by culture, however this is not to say that I am not inspired by nature. I take my fair share of walks and climb my fair share of trees. I am obsessed with mountains. How they look, how they smell, how I feel when I walk to the top of a little one or drive through them after a big breakfast. But I think what people have done with nature and how they have dealt with it is more inspiring to me, like cold weather parkas and big pots to carry water in on your head forever.

I suppose when a culture gets to the point of being able to basically ignore nature because of design improvements, I get bored with it. The struggle for comfort and happiness and how it breeds creativity is what is inspiring to me.

More inspired by anger or pity:
I am more inspired by anger. When I am angry, things happen. I feel like pity is a waste of energy. You can feel bad about something, but if you don't have enough fire in your system to do anything about it, you just become a waste of space.

WHAT AM I DOING

joe wojtowicz----would like to acquire the footage of me hula-hooping and screaming for ice cream.

HELLLO BABYYYYYYYY

NERD ALERT

bro yo

summatime summore

I have been doing things way more important than serious art-- circling our nation. BUT MAKING NOT SERIOUS ART ALONG THE WAY. this is a recent dude, cayden owns it.

THE END OF THE WORLD.

together and the same but different

Another recycling project!
wood block prints on found fabric. houses growing upward to the rainbow pear god.

oh my doggies

this is not the print. just the stone

under-space/ dyin' alone

this lil' baby is 6 feet tall.

How it is

THIS IS A QUILT.
THAT IS WHY IT IS FLAT.

My room is messy

This is not done. I finished etching in the background tonight and will print that tomorrow. JUST YOU WAIT.

I must have been angry. my patterns are more obsessive than usual. there is nothing like pattern meditation, ya'll!

sundae trees

manifest destiny. manifest ice cream.

GET IN MY GRILL

potted crabs

a print that does tricks

This guy. I made 17 of him. He took up the last couple days of my life.



TRICKS HE CAN DO:

some of these mountains more finished

CLIMB THIS!