Sadly, the limited time left at the end of school has meant that I won't be able to finish my oil painting. However, that is not to say that I haven't learned a lot from the project. After doing a quick brunaille I started on the grisaille, which I found extremely difficult, but also satisfying. While I'm not happy with the grisaille as it is (especially the flat grey unfinished bottle), I can tell that I'm moving in the right direction, and the level of value and detail is building up and coming along. I wish we had more time to complete this, but I might be able to find time over the summer to work a little more on it.
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I am finally "done" with this project that has taken an excessively long amount of time. I am actually really proud of it, considering all the different elements that were involved: a ceramic tree that needed to be assembled, a frame with eyehooks, and then the entire assembly suspended by wire. While I don't have all the suspending wires in place, and they may never be in place, I think the piece as it is does have a nice level of polish and finish. While I began this project unsure of where I was going, I am satisfied that I was able to pull together a cohesive idea that directly related to and represented my content. Over the past two weeks I've continued to work on my sculpture. After the various pieces were fired, they ended up in sizes that didn't match up quite how I'd originally made them, so it took quite a lot of sanding and scraping to get them to fit together nicely. Then I glued them together with some toxic E6000 and they seem to have held well. Unfortunately, there were a couple gaps and crevices that diminished the overall effect, however, I added caulk to those seams and am now in the process of cleaning that up to make it look nice and intentional. I also have took the canvas off the frame from one of my practice AbEx paintings, and have drilled holes and added eye-hooks around the inside perimeter. Unfortunately, I didn't quite think the process through, and had to remove all the hooks in order to spray paint the frame. The frame and the tree will be painted the same white, while the wires along with the eye-hooks will remain silver. This week I finalized the branches of the tree and left them out to dry completely. I had left a couple to dry on Wednesday, so on Friday I was able to go in with some sandpaper to refine the edges and corners and make sure the geometry of the branches really stood out. Unfortunately, the smaller branches that I formed around the high-temp wire cracked when they shrunk around the wire. However, I will fire them anyway to see how they turn out, and if they don't work, it won't be any great loss. My plan for the foliage is to make it out of a wire - hopefully a thin-ish and shiny wire that I can manipulate to create a kind of canopy effect. Next I have to choose whether to construct a frame from which to suspend the tree, or just rip the canvas off the frame for my abstract expressionist practice painting. This week I continued to work on the tree that will form the center of my sculpture. I finished the main central branches, and made a couple smaller off-shoots that I formed around pieces of the high-temp wire to give them a little more stability. I also had to make a decision about the texture of the tree, as the clay has been slowly hardening. My initial thought was to make the tree as realistic as possible, so I thought about how to represent bark. I tried taking a bit of clay and scribing lines into it, however that looked nothing like bark. I also tried taking some of the wood I had experimented with earlier in the process and pressed it into the clay to try to get the same look. Unfortunately, that just made it look messy and incomplete. I came up with another idea, somewhat based off of Raina's work, to make the tree geometric. I liked this idea somewhat better because the result would look much cleaner and more finished, whereas the "bark" texture would just look sloppy and unfinished. I decided that that really was the way to go, and that it wouldn't really harm or change the content of the work. With the geometric shape, it merely further emphasizes the role of humans in the shaping of the natural world. Next I have to work on the frame - which should be relatively simple. I just need to make a solid plan so the construction of it goes smoothly. I'm really excited for how this project is going. This week our class visited the Try-Me gallery and saw a variety of extremely impressive two and three dimensional work. One of the sculpture pieces that really impressed and inspired me (below right) was what appears to be a ceramic dress suspended in what is almost a matrix of thread. This sculpture really resonated with me, and because of my frustrations with the material that had caused me to be pretty much unable to realize my vision, I decided that I should take my inspiration from that piece and embark in a different direction. I still really wanted to focus on the interplay of nature and industry or the modern world, but I wanted to reverse the situation - so the man-made material (the wire) was no longer inside the element of the natural world and holding it together, but was instead outside the natural element and essentially holding up. With this in mind, I decided I wanted to create a frame, almost like the stretcher of a canvas, and in the middle of the frame create a miniature tree that would be suspended by radiating wires that were tied and stretched to eyehooks screwed into the inside of the frame. So this week I began constructing the ceramic tree out of stoneware. The tree will be made in segments in order to retain structural integrity, and then will be assembled either right before or after firing.
I'm very excited for this new approach and I think it holds real promise and possibility. This week I began work on my sculpture. Throughout the planning process, I knew I wanted to work with natural materials, and to really focus my content on the intersection of Humanity and Nature. I am especially interested in the question of how nature benefits humans, and what humans are doing to both destroy and conserve nature. As such, I really wanted to use a mixture of man-made or industrial materials and natural materials. My first idea was to essentially remake part of a tree branch out of wire, and to replace that section so it looked like one contiguous piece. I also thought about using multiple materials in multiple places on the same branch, maybe integrating epoxy resin casting or ceramic in addition to the wire. While I haven't quite yet made up my mind, I do intend to use the wire system that I had thought about in some element of the piece, so I spent some time this week figuring out how that could work. Initially, I used a very hard wire, which I liked because it provided the entire piece a greater stability and rigidity, however it quickly became clear that it was too difficult to work with. The next class, I tried out the same process (drilling diagonal holes through each end of the branch) and threading much more flexible wire back and forth between the pieces. This worked better, but looked quite shoddy - and really didn't give the effect I was looking for. However, then I twisted the two pieces of wood, causing the wire to twist itself into a much stronger and more rigid, and also much more visually appealing connection. I also tried wrapping a piece of wood with wire to get almost a spring, which I could use to bridge the gap between to sections. This worked pretty well, but just didn't give the structural integrity. I think the wire loops and eventually twisting the connection is going to work and look best in the long term. Of course, this example shown below is only my first try, and I plant to make the twisted connection much more uniform looking - demonstrating greater craftsmanship. In the end, I have to admit, I am unsatisfied with the outcome of my piece. I think in certain areas I achieved the effect that I was looking for - with kind of murky edges and infinite variations in color - but unfortunately, there were too many areas where I wasn't able to get that effect. I think the materials were certainly a part - using acrylic on a prepared canvas is very different than using acrylic stains on raw canvas, and I do think that had a pretty large effect on the final product.
I'm also not sure I'm completely happy with the composition. Honestly, it feels to similar to a Rothko, and I think I should have chosen a more experimental composition - maybe even turning the canvas sideways. In all, I wouldn't say that I'm unhappy with the outcome, However, I would definitely say that there are some areas that could really use some fixing. Finally, I am considering going over the entire painting with a matte medium. Right now, theres a lot of glare coming off the painting, especially with the fluorescent lighting, which makes it very difficult to see the variations in color. I think I'll go over the entire painting with a layer of matte medium next class, and it should make the piece more interesting, and the important parts too visible. My work on the practice paintings certainly inspired my work on the final painting. While the technique I experimented in my second painting was much closer to that which I used in the final, I think there are some important comparisons to be made with my first practice as well. The translucent brown and swirled glaze that I laid over most of the surface really inspired me to pay attention to color. I knew before the first painting that I was interested in color, but that experience made me realize the ability to control and manipulate color that was possible with acrylic paints. The second practice painting was largely an experimentation with materials. I was really trying to replicate the layered washes and glazes that color-field AbEx artists used, and in order to do that, I reversed the canvas. Unfortunately, the canvas didn't work too well, and the acrylic layers weren't dark or saturated enough to get the effect I was looking for. However, it did give me good practice with the color palette and composition that I was looking for. This week I struggled with composition. While I had some idea of what I wanted - I had really liked the black or dark red vertical bar on the side, which I copied from my practice painting, but I wasn't sure what I wanted to do for the middle section. I also knew I wanted a big, black, rectangular block in the middle with some hole cut out from the middle of it, but I wasn't sure of the orientation of the rectangle or the hole. I drew a bunch of sketches and thumbnails, and I even played around with turning the canvas sideways for a little while. I almost convinced myself that I wanted to turn the canvas, before I realized that I liked it the original way better. So, without knowing exactly where I was going, I started to paint the black bar on the left side. I was pretty happy with how that went, and the edges I got on that, so I decided to push forward on the design that seemed to make the most sense to me, and just felt right.
So I went on with the painting, and then realized I was unsatisfied with it. I was no longer bothered by the darkness - I think that merely complements the subtlety - but now the shape in the front was too far removed from that ground. I really want those shapes and colors to blend together, almost as if the shapes in front are sinking into a sea of the reds. So at that point, I began to go back in, sometimes into the still wet black paint to bring in some red colors, but more with a pretty bright red over the bottom right hand corner. As I worked back and forth with the colors - pushing and pulling edges, I began to get the effect I was really looking for. I think the secret is really to not stress the work too much. Because the paint is opaque, it layers well, and nothing is completely permanent. I can just keep working at it until I reach the effect and result that I envision. Firstly, my apologies for the extremely washed out picture - the room has some bright fluorescent bulbs that create a ton of glare.I made some progress this painting session, however, in some ways I think I regressed more than progressed. I started off by going back in over almost everything with a much darker "stain" (if I can call it that, as it doesn't really stain the canvas like it would on raw canvas). Unfortunately, I didn't watch this as closely as I should have, and it ended up dripping a bit and streaking in a way that I didn't like. To try to cover up the streaks, I went back again with more dark paint, which made the painting as a whole too dark in my opinion. While it may not align exactly with what I had in mind, I still really like the subtlety that I have created, and I think I can make it work quite well as I continue to work.
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June 2019
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