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.