Third Shift.

I share a large studio–about 3000 square feet–with my wife, installation artist Liz Miller. This great space is in the basement of our local post office, just around the corner from our house in Good Thunder. It is a huge space for the money (about $100 dollars a month plus utilities), but like so many people, the more space you give us, the more stuff we accumulate, and the fuller and messier it gets! We divide the space evenly half-and-half, but often our materials stray across the boundary.

This is a weird result of such an event: a piece of my clear packing tape fused to some of my wife’s faux sheep skin!

Last summer Liz was asked to do an installation in the main gallery space at the University of Minnesota Morris. The space is an amazing two story open room with an adjacent, cantilevered mezzanine gallery. This makes HFA essentially two spaces, so the gallery director Michael Eble asked Liz if she could think of someone who could show in the mezzaline space. Before she could come up with anyone, Michael shot back with this: what if your husband David shows in the other space? I have always loved this gallery, and for a long time Liz and I have wanted to collaborate again , so I gladly accepted.

I suggested we play off the idea of ourselves as a married artist couple, sharing a space and inadvertently ‘contaminating’ each others work.  I thought it would be interesting to make this a conscious effort by exchanging scraps left over from each others pieces–basically the negative shapes that we each cut away from our respective designs–and using these negative shapes to create positive ones–and new works based on them.

Liz suggested we further the theme by working with some of each other’s materials.  So I took some felt shapes and she took some cardboard ones and we got to work. It was fun making more ornate designs. Using Liz’s shapes forced me to become much more elaborate and fanciful with my edges and silhouettes.

I decided to channel some of the beautiful reliquary boxes I saw on our recent trip to Italy, and make a series of reliquaries based on the ‘icons’ I have accumulated of my relationship with Liz.

I always save any interesting shapes that are left over when I am cutting out a box or brick. Liz took a bunch of these and worked her magic on them: mirroring them, sculpting the edges and tweaking the symmetry. It was interesting to see the influence move the other way: a harder, almost clunky geometry came into these that I don’t usually see in Liz’s shapes.

She then projected the resulting stencils onto this killer navy sparkle felt. My little cast-offs have been seriously blinged! The show was starting to take shape. I suggested the somewhat corny title You Complete Me.

Fast-forward to Saturday Oct 13th. We arrive in Morris. We had to caravan our two station wagons to get it all down there, but it was a nice drive. I grew up in Montevideo, not far from Morris (west central Minnesota). In fact, both my brother and sister graduated from Morris, so it was fun to be back in the area. The space was amazing, and Liz got right to work taking advantage of the soaring ceiling.

I set up a table in the back and worked on preparing the reliquaries to be wall mounted.

I was still adding items to the boxes at this point–the plastic bin to the right contains a bunch of Liz’s cast off items, which I had been secretly squirreling away for weeks.

I use the original template to mark the center of each window.

Then I add ephemera I have collected from Liz: used up markers, broken earrings–any left over trace of her daily presence.

There are several reliquaries that are displayed as sets of six, but two larger ones are stand-alone. This is one of them. It features the precis on Immanuel Kant Liz and I wrote together in graduate school, an assignment that resulted in our first ‘date’.

We met at a Denny’s in St.Paul to work on it, but ended up just talking. We always joke that we owe our marriage to Kant. Not many people can say that!

Meanwhile Liz hangs the big pieces of glitter felt based on my shapes. It is thrilling to see my little scraps transformed into these monumental sculptural forms.

OK enough goofing around. I am always trying to get a laugh out of Liz when we are working together. Time to take my stuff upstairs!

Unconscious Reliquary 2. This set of six boxes looks like it might be cool as a vertical arrangement.

Unconscious Reliquary 3. This horizontal configuration will be a nice counterpoint. You can see how the positive shape of 2 is the negative shape of 3, and vice-versa.

Wall mounted works are up and looking good.

At the upper right you can see the original Liz Miller Shape I used to create the silhouette of the boxes.

A closer look. For this show, I favored cardboard from products both of us consumed. Liz is almost as bad of a chip snacker as I am. In her defense she never buys chips, but I do, and it they are around she can’t resist them.

Some positive shapes became the negative shape of a window.

Day two: Time for the wall drawings. I have been fascinated lately with the diagrams of French philosopher Jacques Lacan. I ran across him by pure chance through his fan page on Facebook. I don’t really understand a lot of his theories: they seem to do with the relationship between the id and super ego, particularly the pleasure principle and the reality principle: The immature psyche only understands seeking pleasure and avoiding pain (The Pleasure Principle). The mature psyche understands the deferring of immediate pleasure for a greater reward in the future (The Reality Principle). I thought now was a good time to use these, as they relate closely to the way Liz and I both work. We invest a lot of time making incremental units so they can later be combined into a larger, more impressive whole.

The diagrams are meant to illustrate complex overlapping and interweaving psychological imperatives. I was interested in how their beauty as images is an unintended bi-product of clearly illustrating complicated patterns of behavior and thought. The blue half of the design is overlaid with cut-out strips of Duncan Donuts whole bean coffee bags. The pink half will be replaced with poison-green felt left over from one of Liz’s previous installations.

Since the basis of Lacan’s theories is Freudian psychology, using these now was also a little tongue-and-cheek reference to the battle of the sexes. Good progress. Time for lunch.

All done with the upstairs wall work!

I wanted one thing on the main level to help tie the two shows together. This diagram specifically illustrates The Pleasure Principle.

This one is made from hot-pink felt (from Liz) and Mylar dog food bags (one side silver, one side green).

All done. The original diagram was horizontal and can be seen here.

Getting there. You can see that Liz is starting to incorporate cardboard tubes and sheets. It is time to call it a day and take this lady to dinner (as fate would have it this install falls smack on our anniversary!) Next time: a few shots of the opening and the completed show! See you there and then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

To become something else, one must leave the current state of being.

But in the midst of becoming, being is called into question.

The realization arises that there is no state of being.

There is only a state of becoming.

A state between states, more liquid than solid.

Last summer my very good friend Matt Olson and his art/design group ROLU were asked to do a residency at the Walker Art Center.

There approach was, as always, defuse and innovative: a constellation of artists, objects, writings, situations, emulations and (most of all) opportunities they called When Does Something Become Something Else?  

 I was honored when Matt asked me to contribute to the project. He requested two things: something written for the free event publication, and a related creative activity.

…

Matt and I had been talking about the residency, and about objects (art or not) as  loci of transformation.

So I decided to submit an essay inspired by John Baldessari’s  The Pencil Story.

(image is from The Gradient–blog of the Walker Art Center Design group).

The Walker design staff did a beautiful job on the handout (seen in the photo above–I think my essay is hidden under the yellow supplement).

…

Matt and I have a mutual friend who is blind–the talented musician Matt Gogola–to whom Matt Olson had recently tried to explain ROLU’s  residency at High Desert Test Sites.

Matt G had listened politely, but when Matt Olson asked what he thought, Matt G responded “That sounds really interesting, but I have no idea what you are talking about”.

Photo from the 10 Chances Artist Residency Blog.

This got Olson thinking about the centrality of sight, not only to art in general, but specifically to ROLU’s process, which is frequently if not exclusively driven by the discovery of a single image. He decided to ask Matt Gogolo to write an essay describing sightlessness (among other things, ‘an act of faith’ ) which ROLU printed in Braille and gave away at the residency closing ceremonies.

I had been asked to participate in Walker Drawing Club during the ROLU residency, and I was looking for a way to tie the club, the ROLU residency, and my own thoughts about vision and blindness into one project.

This all came together for me around a Raymond Carver short story I have always loved called Cathedral.

Like most Carver’s stories, Cathedral is very brief,  its narrated is a character you are not sure you like, to whom little seems to happen. And yet, by the end of the story, this character (and by extension, you the reader) have been profoundly transformed. Or perhaps more accurately, the two are, at the very end, in the throes of a transformation.

The central character is a man whose name is never revealed.

He tells the story of a night when he met an old friend of his wife’s.

The friend is blind, and the narrator is not excited about meeting him, but he smokes a joint with the blind man, and they share quite a bit of wine.

Eventually the man’s wife falls asleep. There is a documentary on the television about cathedrals, and the blind man asks the narrator to explain what a cathedral is.

The narrator quickly realizes…

…that it is something that is very difficult to explain in words…

…to someone who has never has never seen anything.

But the blind man has an idea.

“Hey, listen to me. Will you do me a favor? I’ve got an idea.”

“Why don’t you find some heavy paper? And a pen. We’ll do something. We’ll draw one together.”

“Get a pen and some heavy paper. Go on, bub, get the stuff,” he said.

The blind man got down from the sofa and sat next to me on the carpet.

He ran his fingers over the paper. He went up and down the sides of the paper. The edges, even the edges. He fingered the corners.

“All right,” he said. “All right, let’s do her.” He found my hand, the hand and the pen. He closed his hand over my hand. “Go ahead, bub, draw,” he said.

“Draw. You’ll see. I’ll follow along with you.”

“It’ll be okay. Just begin now like I’m telling you. You’ll see. Draw,” the blind man said.

So I began. First I drew a box that looked like a house. It could have been the house I lived in. Then I put a roof on it. At either end of the roof, I drew spires. Crazy.

“Swell,” he said. “Terrific. Your doing fine,” he said. “Never thought anything like this could happen in your lifetime, did you, bub? Well, it’s a strange life, we all know that. Go on now. Keep it up.”

I put in windows and arches. I drew flying buttresses. I hung great doors. I couldn’t stop.

The TV station went off the air.

I put down the pen and closed and opened my fingers.

The blind man felt around on the paper. He moved the tips of his fingers over the paper, all over what I had drawn, and he nodded.

“Doing fine,” the blind man said.

I took up the pen again, and he found my hand. I kept at it. I’m no artist. But I kept drawing just the same.

…“Close your eyes now,” the blind man said to me.

                  I did it. I closed them just like he said.

“Are they closed?” he said. “Don’t fudge.”

“They’re closed,” I said.

“Keep them that way,” he said.  He said “Don’t stop now. Draw.”

So we kept on at it. His fingers rode my fingers as my hand went over the paper. It was like nothing else in my life up to now.

Then he said, “I think that’s it. I think you got it,” he said.  “Take a look. What do you think?”

But I had my eyes closed. I thought I’d keep them that way for a little longer. I thought it was something I ought to do.

“Well?” he said. “Are you looking?”

My eyes were still closed. I was in my house. I knew that. But I didn’t feel like I was inside anything.

“It’s really something,” I said.

–Excerpted are from the Raymond Carver short story Cathedral. 

Next time: The last post on 2012! You Complete Me, a 2 person/one concept show with my wife the incredibly talented Liz Miller.  A fitting end to a year of great collaborations. See you then.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In the Spring of 2012 I was accepted into a group show called Cold Fusion at the University Gallery, Salisbury University, Maryland. I had applied based on the intriguing call description (re-expressed here in the catalog essay):

     ‘Cold fusion often refers to the experimental process of generating a nuclear reaction at room temperature that would provide an inexpensive and abundant source of energy… Building on the theme of Cold Fusion we put out a call for artwork that somehow creates a fusion of ideas, materials, forms, or processes that results in something greater than its parts.’

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to attend the show personally, nor find any images of the installation. The best I can give you is a screen grab of my page in the show catalog. I had submitted my work ‘Pulse: Version II’. Which had most recently appeared in Drop City Redux at University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh.

This was my second experience shipping a wall-based Mylar collage (the first was Pulse I for Upcycle).

The color scheme remained consistent: a rainbow pattern with the cool colors forming the wide base and warm colors at the smaller top…

…and a reverse, mirror image on the floor in silver (made up of the pieces cut out from between the colored rings) I was a little worried about sending this piece out. Although it was very similar to Pulse I, it was larger and more complex. The additional rings didn’t make any noticeable difference in the shipping size–the whole thing still fit in one shoe-box size container–the concern was more about what would happen at the other end.

This version is so much more intricate that making a paper template (as I had done for Pulse I at Athica) seemed impractical: even with strips of paper between each row it would be so large and made up of so many strips that I feared it would fall apart when the exhibition crew tried to pin it to the wall.

In the end I decided that if I could eye-ball it–as I had done at Oshkosh–they could probably figure it out. I numbered the strips, made an instruction sheet, packed it up and hoped for the best.  Apparently it went OK! At least I never heard or saw otherwise…

There were 18 other artists in this show–difficult as always to pick just a few, but here goes:

Kim Matthews.

 

Ian Shelly

 

Noelle Gray

See the first 15 pages of the catalog (and buy it if you like!) here. You can find links to all the other artists who have websites on the Salisbury University Gallery website.

On to Cathedral–my contribution to my pals ROLU‘s astounding residency at The Walker Art Center last summer. It was an incredible end to the season. Stave off the winter with me here soon.