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.