Posts

  Taking course in early Christian and Byzantine art. Some amazing stuff for a Dark Age.

Film about garbage pickers in Rio

Film about pickers and art from garbage. The piece required much planning and groundwork. Surprised at some of the access the artist got and how he was allowed into the pickers’ community. On one hand a wonderful and thoughtful piece that may have made a difference in a few of these peoples’ lives. Despite its good intentions and success, can’t help shaking the notion of how members of the “elite” class decided to briefly step down into the “lower classes” and make themselves feel better by extending a helping hand to a few, while at the same time gaining personal benefit. Also could not help noticing that the artist generally chose photogenic people, especially for the women. Sex sells. And, of course, the film makes me flat out thankful for the luck of the cosmic draw that had me born into my life, and not that of the pickers. Amazing how positive some of them were doing work that was unpleasant and dangerous and offered little renumeration or hope.

An overview: The Wariness of the Single Point of View/ The voice of sculpture

Treat a written sentence like a sculpture, the parts relating to another.

Isolating sculpture from its environment to hear the sculpture’s voice

(“Because reciprocity cannot be paraphrased. . . ” What? Don’t understand this phrase.)

Apograph exists in proximity to their sources. (But the derivation seems to suggest an opposite meaning)

A Tale for Time Being by Ruth Ozeki.

Follows the son and wife of a man suddenly killed in a traffic accident. Objects speak to the boy. A blurring of fantasy and reality. what is menat as really happening in the novel and what is meant as a symptom of the son’s growing schizophrenia.

Objects talking. Gives me some new ideas about an approach for second sculpture.

An Attempt at Exhausting a Place In Paris by Georges Perec

Stays in same place in Paris for 3 days. Watches and records all that happens. Emphasizes the everyday and ordinary as opposed to the sensational that is reported upon by regular news media. Article, not the book, refers to 19 th century flaneur. Notes how the news media penchant for the sensation is magnified today by the internet. Overall, could be a good method for generating art ideas.

Miranda July

I finally read the Miranda July article about Cindy Sherman. I assume Miranda July is a “real person” and not a pseudonym for Cindy Sherman. The name is so melodic, almost artificially so. And with anything Cindy Sherman I am always on the lookout for artifice.
The article is extremely clever in approach (getting the boys to examine the pictures) and format (writing in Hunter-Thompson-style first person). Things that stuck out: The statement each Sherman picture was “How to tell a story in a single frame.” Yes, although I thought it might have been more accurate to say, “how to START a story with a single frame, a story that the viewer constructs. Actually that was something I tried to do with my “Stella” piece.

Traced outline from my drawing.  Cut out silhouette.  Taped to log and spray-painted outline. Outline on log (middle photo) was kind of interesting in itself.  Used chainsaw to cut away “empty space.”  Strange yellow sawdust.  Now chiseling can start.

 

 

Back at it.  My new project suffers from an idea that keeps shifting shapes, and doesn’t seem to work in any form.

So I started writing hoping that would help.  Several drafts later, still needs focus.

Will move to carving.  Here is my “log.”

 

Dimension are 19.5″ high, 15.5″ wide, and 12″ deep.  I hope to carve a head.  I have done a couple scale drawings that

I will hopefully use as a pattern that I can check against with calipers.  Here are the drawings done from photos of a

highly-paid model:

Part of my hope is that as I carve the head, rotted portions of the log that will need to be removed in addition to

that carving need to represent the head will change the carving in an interesting way and represent a decay in the thing carved.