New Studio:

For the past week I have been rebuilding my studio,

Two weeks before that I was on a plane to Nashville, I was sitting there looking out the window at the scape below and thought about what I was doing in New York. I thought I had to get out of there, move to the country, work on a bigger scale, a landscape scale, away from people, using natural materials, get a quarry or something, move some rocks around like did in college or something, yeah thats the ticket. Then that night I cracked open this Richter book I'd found in my hall for first time in months, and the first line I read, "Contact with like-minded painters - nothing comes from Isolation. We have worked out our ideas largely by talking them through. Shutting myself away in the country, for instance, would do nothing for me. One depends on one's surroundings."

So I thought I would rethink my evacuation. Then this one conversation stuck out in my mind, my 'like-minded painter' friend said something a couple months ago, he said something like, 'I see your work, your working the canvas to its limits, really going at it, going with it, it's unstretched and your whole process is revolved around this specific layout, but it the end, after you consider it finished, you stretch it and then try to sell it." It did seem somewhat antithetical to me as well.

So in rebuilding the studio, the effort is going to gear toward me being true to the work, the work being true to the space, and me using the space to articulate the art of working. The new studio will allow for a 100 foot roll of canvas to be worked on the table, on the ground, hanging vertically, with no defined limits except for the six foot width of the roll itself. I realized that I didn't have to live in the middle of nowhere to work at the scale I wanted to and am intrigued/anxious to see what this new space allows.

Pictures coming soon

and in the words of Sasha Grey: "why do you think great artists of our time have always said youth is wasted on the young? I don’t want to be an old a person in regret and think I should have done this but I was off being lazy. There are enough mistakes we make as human beings anyway, so let the mistakes be real mistakes not chosen mistakes." and thats coming from a 21 year-old. I love it.

Material, Part 2: Adjacencies

Material, Part 1: Assemblage

Assemblage,

I have begun to question paint, as a material it seems so antiquated, too loaded a surface, too much precedent. Even the idea of a painting seems old fashioned, although i completely believe it is possible to make something contemporary/fresh with this material, there are very few example I am aware of. It's discouraging to say the least, defeat before the piece has even begun. I feel like the record companies in the late 90's trying to sew half the american youth over illegal downloading when their cd sales are down, living in the glory days of art.

I overheard someone yesterday say that sensual is the new edge in architecture. Humorous since I dropped architecture because the hand is no longer present. Don't know if I'm one step ahead, or a hundred steps behind but not quite retro.

Anyway, this shift has influenced my perspective on how I use paint, more so in the vein of an assemblage of scraps of paint than the application of it. I think one has to be very careful in choosing ones material, aware of associations. I started painting on raw canvas to make a link between the texture, grain, color of the canvas itself, and the skin of the body. However, this leaves the problem, what is the paint? I means of accentuating the canvas, a matt surface to make the texture more apparent? perhaps this is somewhat optimistic. A friend said, once you remove everything that is kitsch from a piece, what remains is what you are truly looking for. I worry this means I have to remove paint, but in order to skirt this issue for the time being I am simply looking at the material paint as an added obstacle to play with, not to be painted, but smeared, glued, blown, and scraped. As it goes, artists find materials that respond to them, reveal the process, allow transparency. These pieces try (perhaps unsuccessfully) to remove that which is seductive, allow the paint to be paint, canvas to be canvas, and the hand to move between these properties leaving its trace along the way.

best,