Arrows to the Sun

Twelfth Volley

2012-01-15T16:58:00.000-08:00

I'm in another show. Go me. The title is "Spirit, Hand, Vision. A Confluence of Self." But actually the idea for this piece is a response to another work. He was looking at the idea of ritual. We were (if you don't want to click the link) looking at butoh, and Baronness. I decided to tie the two even closer together by blending some Neurosis video into the mix. Or rather a more literal take on ceremony and butoh.

So I liked the idea of a ceremony, of creating something and losing oneself in the process. It's sometimes a painful journey to bear an idea to fruition. And making stuff is always a fight with me. I took a few photos for documentation this time because I always send stuff off in progress to Paul for critique. He's pretty merciless, and that's a great thing. So here's the earliest iteration. A quick pencil drawing on gessoed Arches printmaking paper, and water colored for some basic underpainting.

There's a detail.

I started with oil sticks and a turpentine wash. It became a very structural drawing. I have the build of a bridge troll, but I like drawing leaner folk, because I like bones. So I photographed a few poses of myself clinging to things and extrapolated structure and lighting from them. And then I started going into it with actual oil paints.

Oh look, something Freudian. I actually try really hard to consciously avoid phallic imagery. And by trying really hard to avoid it, means it pops up fucking everywhere, in everything I do. Oh well.

Here's a not so great shot of the submitted version. When it comes off the wall, I promise I'll shoot it better.

Eleventh Volley

2011-11-16T19:34:00.001-08:00

So, here's a drawing I started many months ago when looking at Butoh. I started this drawing with a series in mind. I helped a friend on a job uncrating Plenza's Nomad. I asked if they were keeping the crate as it was quite horrific in its construction. Below is a panel on which I transferred the drawing. I will be oil painting this and probably playing with gilding again (hooray halos!).

Oh look, it's a dirty studio. I should be on a hoarders show. I was in the process of kicking apart this crate, when I got a call from the guy who coordinated the install wanting to know if he could get the crate back. There was a pause, and then an "oh shit..." This panel specifically is the most damaged of the bunch. I want to progress with an idea of dissolution, or decay. Kind of like butoh. I might attack the bottom half with a hammer even more to knock some of the paneling out. I like a splintery mess on the bottom with a tight painting around the face and hands and chest and quickly falling apart.

Here's a detail, or perhaps just a shot of the panel. So, wish me luck. Will post updates.

Fin

2011-11-08T22:06:00.000-08:00

So here's the finished work. A little too regular in the back ground noise, but I'm pleased with the figures. Shittiest board evar. I printed it on French paper that I got from a screen printing buddy. I'm selling them for fifteen dollars a piece and actually sold four at the show opening. Which went very well by the way.

Here's a detail (ish). I used four or five different types of blacks before I found the one I liked. the results run the gamut from brownish, to raven's wing. I do like the finish of the oil based inks better. There's a softness to them that the water based couldn't provide. A richness.

I'm also entering a sketchbook show. You can, too. Other things on my plate include designing and printing a postcard for a memorial dinner for my sister, a new painting (both to be seen here soon), and an art talk I get to give to some senior college kids. We'll see how that goes, but I hope I can give something to them without becoming a curmudgeonly old advice fairy.

Continumoss!

2011-09-12T21:28:00.000-07:00

Holy crap updates! I went out and blew my birthday money from a long time ago on carving tools. The local art supply store went out of business. Is on hiatus. Is...not here. So when I need tools now and can't afford rush shipping, I did the next worst thing. I went to Michael's. It's like going to Walmart after midnight. I think Dante wrote about it. I'm not going to knock the chain too much (please give me money/supplies/craft cred). It's not as bad as Hobby Lobby or Pottery Barn (for you southerners). Your nose is not instantly assailed with potpourri. People are not vacantly masturbating to Thomas Kinkaid prints. I think you can still get model cars and planes there, which is actually pretty sweet (note, I live in a basement and spend most of my time leveling and huffing model cement. Pizza grease has nothing on this guy's face).

Dotdotdot. Anyways. I needed carving tools because some time between here and college all of my worn and cherished set of cheap ass knives have disappeared. I used to use whatever I could scrounge from the print studio. Things with mileage on them, but goddammit, I'd put them on there. Those ink stains were from my fingers, and those blood stains-- from my enemies. All I'm saying is that they had character, and for cheap Niji knives, they actually came with a pretty decent edge.

I bought the Beck's non alcohol beer version of those. Sharpened from the factory by rabid rodentry. Actually that's an insult to rodents everywhere. I'm sure they could have gnawed better edges in to these things themselves. I also bought some actual carving tools. Shorter, sharper, more expensive. Upon unwrapping, I found that the scoundrels couldn't sharpen these for shit either.

Grr. The sad thing is, if I sit down and do it, I'm actually pretty good at sharpening things-- Assuming the steel isn't absolute shit. Give me a good chisel or knife and I can get you to shave with it. Or remove skin. I've tried with these things and jeezuzchrist. I have a diamond stone now, so we'll see if that helps. I hope to get them into fighting shape by the time I attempt the next woodcut, or at least by the middle of the run on this one.

Detail-ish. This is actually pretty small for me. The first cuts on this guy's head were done with a V-shaped gouge. They removed far too much material. This is a pine block so it has alternating hard and soft grain, meaning you have to push harder, meaning more material is removed. In school I learned on basswood, super soft through and through. This board also has plenty of knots in it, so never let it be said that I'd turn away from a challenge. The figures were all carved with an X-acto knife. And many, many blades. Each line you see is at least two cuts. The chair is primarily a small U-shaped gouge.

I had to proof it tonight so I could email the image out for a third poster. I hear rumors that this might also go on a shirt.

I'd wear it.

Tenth Volley

2011-07-26T21:26:00.000-07:00

So, Dan is putting together a show. He's a printer by trade and wants to make the mailers and posters by hand. I offered to contribute to this. I started out with a pen and ink sketch just to get an idea.

When I was doodling, I noticed that the skeletal figure reminds me of the Hermit from the Tarot, but I remember it specifically from an old room mate's Led Zeppelin poster. It's interesting what the hermit implies. Someone who has seen and been through it all, whatever that may be, and withdraws from society, disillusioned, cynical. That's neat, but I didn't want it to be, oh hey, I lifted the hermit image from a poster for the poster. I reversed hands, I dropped the corpse/pieta body and kept the wayfaring nun.

It's faint, I know. I draw delicately with pencils now. And I'm still struggling with hesitancy. This means I need to draw much, much more. It's either that or get so sleep deprived that I just don't care any more, and then draw. I like this image better. I scrounged up some old wood that I had laying around and sanded the layers of old acrylic gesso off of it. Note to the future painters everywhere: Acrylic gesso is not your friend. I own a palm sander and go through a ridiculous amount of sandpaper to get things smooth. This is because in the sanding process the gesso actually melts to the sand paper in sticky clots that then get deposited on another section of the surface you will be doing art on. And they stick. I razored a few off, and then I sanded some more.

After a few sessions of sanding, I had a block ready to put an image on.

Neato, huh?

The legs are too short for the torso and the arms are weird, man. I'm still retouching the arms and I've since redrawn the legs, to be posted at a later date. It's a lot of detail packed into face grain of the pine. I'm curious as to how well I can stick to rendering those soft lines and things. Perhaps the carving will add some aggression that the drawing lacks.

Ninth Volley

2011-07-16T22:25:00.000-07:00

I entered a show. Wish me luck. This piece is about my sister.

A little back story: Two and a half years ago, my younger sister died. She had lupus. Her kidneys went out, and then she was in and out of the hospital for three years. I remember her telling me about how she had really bad headaches. How she was terrified because she didn't know what they were from and why she kept getting them. She was taken to the hospital one night because her blood pressure was 200/190 She was blind in one eye because grease and humors had spilled into it due to her blood pressure being so extreme. She had to go for dialysis three times a week, and she was always sick and tired afterwards. She had a restricted diet. Eating a banana would have made her heart explode.

On Thanksgiving of that year she got an infection in the lining of her heart as her dialysis port ran from the hollow above her clavicle to her heart, or some of the vessels connecting to it. She gained weight from retaining fluids. She got a fancy pouch put in her belly and could do dialysis at home, every night. It was the equivalent of drinking a two liter bottle of soda all at once and carrying it around with you all day, she once told me.

She got married. To a man who was a match for her kidneys and agreed to be a donor. Then he backed out, and from what I've heard second and third hand, was a real shit. They fell out and she lived with my mom. Her stomach pouch kept getting infected. She was in a lot of pain. She had seizures. She had to wear a mask whenever she was in public because her immune system was beyond broken. She was so sick.

The last year and half of her life was spent in the hospital more than at home. She developed vasculits. Her fingers on both hands turned necrotic and started rotting away. She lost her hair. She developed calciphylaxis. Large patches of skin on her legs started rotting away. She was in constant pain. Her arms and legs atrophied and her skin hung off of her like a sack. The doctors gave her dilaudid. This built up in her system.

The last ten days of her life, she did not eat. My mom was in the room with her, watching tv, and thinking that she was going to sleep when in fact her body was shutting down. The staff brought in a crash cart and tried to bring her back, but my mother refused. She made the right choice.

When she was first diagnosed, the doctors and psychologists and whoever else looked at her also diagnosed her with severe clinical depression and PTSD. When I asked her how she was doing, she kept telling me she was ready to pull the plug. We tried to cheer her up. When she was married it was the happiest I'd ever seen her outside of when she was a child. Towards the end she was in so much pain she wanted to die. My mother wanted her to live, and what mother doesn't really?

So this piece is about her choice to end her suffering, and her inability to do so. And other things. A promise never to forget her, and a reaffirming of that promise. I'm doing my best not to get all emo-ey on you. So we'll leave it at that. This is an art blog first and foremost. You've gotten the back story, and I've grieved, and am still grieving. Sigh. It's a pine box, coated in tar, with a hammer, a jar of whiskey with a lock of hair in it, nails, and a candle. It is 51" x 26" x 8". Some details below.

Sometimes I blend my paints with tar. It never ever dries and the second you hit it with anything that has a hint of solvent on it, it softens up and blends it with whatever you are putting on top of it, making a sickly color.

Here's another shot. The candles on my pieces, to the ire of Fire Marshals everywhere, are meant to be burned. The wax creates a history. And over time, the smoke given off will stain and hide things. I like things that have history to them, whether I'm manufacturing it myself, or looking at dirt on other things, I enjoy imagining the use, or how it's been used. I have a bucket of roofing tar patch that I use. I used to use fancy stuff, printer's asphaltum. But this stuff works just as well, and has texture to it. Because it only gets semi hard/dry, everything sticks to it. My studio, which resides in the living room of my apartment, is cat territory. When I took this out from under its covers, there was a grey coating of cat hair and dander. Some of it from me, most of it from him. I spent a good two hours dusting and hand pulling clumps of hair from the tar. I then lit the candle and burned up the stuff that wouldn't come off. It's good to know that I can clean these pieces without having to recoat them in tar.

Meth-heads used to lived below me. Every night, when they weren't fighting like cats, or fucking noisily, they would commence to remodeling their unit. For hours, from around ten at night to seven in the morning they would hammer tin plates to the walls, build false walls, sand, put in doors and listen to shitty top forty music. This is my contribution to noise making. I hammered each one of these nails (with a sheet of ply wood under neath the piece to protect the floor) directly over their bedroom. It is my understanding that in Fetish Art, the nails are driven in by the people of the village to seal a contract. I treated it as a continuing promise to never forget my sister, and while I'm alive, to not forget that fact, because she wouldn't either.

Eighth Volley

2010-10-03T13:25:00.000-07:00

Back in class again. The assignment was to first draw in a skeleton, and then block in the figure with geometric shapes. After that, lay in shadows with sepia ink and then draw in the recessions. The first one still shows all the steps taken, took twenty minutes to do (way too long). The second was eight minutes total. It became much looser, and the drawing has a life to it that the first lacks. The process was slightly different in that we had to start with the shadows.

Drawing with ink is a great way for you to develop confidence in making a mark. When you put it down, it is going to stay, and you have to live with what you've done. Painting with ink is similar, but you can be layered, and get softer effects. I like doing it. But I have a hard time accomplishing the same thing with charcoal.

Both are sepia ink and charcoal on Arches printmaking paper.

Seventh Volley, Updates.

2010-09-09T16:01:00.000-07:00

I'm calling it. I'm a habitual tweaker (of artwork, not meth). And doing much more, if anything would only make it worse. I would like to do a painting of it in the future.

I was pretty nervous dropping it off at the church, but they seemed to like it. It opens on the eighteenth. If you're in the Des Moines metro area, stop by.

Also, I don't recommend gilding around pets. My cat loves to attack anything that moves, and I was cleaning up some brushes when I noticed he had a whole sheet of metal leaf stuck to his nose. I thought this was cute and went for a camera, but had to chase him down as the dumb-ass began to devour the metal leaf. Cats don't like to be gagged. Or fish-hooked. It was the only thing I could remember from Heimlich maneuver class in grade school, and it didn't do much good.

Hobbes is alright, by the way.

Seventh Volley

2010-09-04T08:54:00.000-07:00

"Constancy is defined as: the quality of being faithful and dependable; a state of being constant; the perception of an object or quality as being constant under changing conditions. Artists are invited to share their concepts of faith, spirituality, and beliefs in a culture that rapidly shifts and evolves. How do we define a constant God in a changing world? Is our image of God altered by our faith and system of beliefs? How does the reality of everyday life as we know it alter our perceptions of God?"

I'm in a show (see description above). It's coming up soon. This is a sketch for the drawing that I'm submitting. I'll come right out and say it -- I'm an atheist. Submitting to this should have been fairly easy right? I hang a blank sheet of paper, or there's an empty spot with my name next to it, or just a picture of me giving the finger and going "But you're making this shit up!" Which is unnecessary, and uncalled for. It also feels like cheating. I like to create stuff, I don't like to tell people what to think about that stuff. So I look back to the time when I was struggling with my faith (and then losing it). It was a traumatic experience, and not something I relished going through.

In doing so, I came to the realization that the perception of God (at least in the Christian society I was raised in) is largely made up, and personified. Here we have this all powerful being, all knowing, creator of the heavens and earth, and all the cosmos in between, and we expect it to behave in a human manner? We expect it to bless us by giving us a parking space at the mall, or to help our team win, to cure our sick and suffering? Faulty reasoning, twitching scientists, and broken logic aside, what a way to reduce in power and attempt to humanize an hypothetical being. The problem with said being behaving like a human, is that it is subject to human flaws. While these make us interesting, the idea of a god that is powering the universe, but having an off day and not feeling like getting out of bed has terrifying consequences for those peopling said universe.

In sticking with this idea of making a god, there is a short parable by Jorge Luis Borges titled, The Witness, in which we find a dying Saxon, the last Pagan, and with his passing, all his rituals, his beliefs, his history disappear. Which got me to the thought, if we were to die, does our perception of god, if not the idea of god itself die with us?

In the updates of this, will be experiments with gilding (my first time! woo hoo!).

Sixth Volley

2010-07-23T22:24:00.001-07:00

I lied. For your reading pleasure, a poem transferred from a napkin. Let me know about revisions as I am open to tweaking things.

Ordering Food at a Vietnamese Restaurant

Is
Still awkward.

(yawn)

When the sunlight dances
Through ferns and Lucky
Bamboo.

The menu
Is a gamble
Is unapproachable

You are.
Less spicy than you seem.

I am
Too pungent. Too heavy.

Every thing unneeded.

Fifth Volley, Third Session.

2010-06-30T16:31:00.000-07:00

That's it for class time on this one. It reminds me of Lucian Freud's work. Not with the same amount of skill, mind you, but the mark making is similar.

I've got enough information on here that I can take it home and keep working on it, and actually finish it.

Next up: Drawings.

Round Two

2010-06-24T20:19:00.000-07:00

Second session. We'll see if I can finish it next week. More muddy colors, but the face looks cool and reminds me of some weird theatrical mask.

Fifth Volley

2010-06-23T22:06:00.000-07:00

Back from the dead. And slightly less poverty. And slightly more internet access.

This is one that is a documentation shot for a three session work from a figure painting class. I left my camera at work today so you only get to see one third of it as opposed to two. There's not a whole lot of information there. It's a vine charcoal sketch of the model and some starts at under painting for tone on Bristol paper.

I didn't think I'd like painting on paper as much as I do. It takes medium well, and dries quickly. I don't prime my paper with PVA or gesso. In truth I'm not a big fan of priming things unless it's a house or furniture. The point of priming things is to seal the surface for preservation, and to smooth it out. I want to be reminded of what I'm painting on. Paper, wood, masonite, and steel have unique colors and textures to them allowing for happy accidents that interact with the work in ways that I find interesting.

I tend to paint in a dark brown palette, using raw umber as my base and then a double primary on top of it. I can render okay (better proof of that tomorrow) but my colors get very muddy and and undead looking. I've been painting for almost eight years now and I'm just now learning to add blue to flesh tones. Let's hear it for concept heavy art schools.

Fourth Volley

2009-11-18T13:42:00.000-08:00

Done over three sessions in an open studio figure painting class. The next few will posts will be works coming out of there. Oils on vellum paper. I must apologize for the lousy quality of the photo. At some point I will learn to light things better and make Gimp do what I want.

I have the habit of working too tightly on paintings, which makes me take forever on them. I would like to loosen up a bit and just let some well placed strokes represent the subject. Kinda like Jenny Saville.

(p.s. eat it, photobucket.)

Third Volley

2009-11-03T10:23:00.000-08:00

Oils on board. Graphite. Thirty inches by twenty four inches.

An older one that recently was paired with the wood cut below for a show. I was playing with the idea of creating my own saints. I don't know what they would be saints of, not having ever been Catholic for more than a day. I like the ceremonialism that happens in religion. I also like the iconography, and while I'm not a fan of it, I can appreciate the suffering. So I wanted to play with illusions of halos. Like how in graffiti you see crowns floating above things. I thought, why not a helmet? Who is more saintly than a soldier? And what better way to set up a dichotomy between that which is holy and that which is barbaric, than start playing with the idea of combat. I'd like to do a series of these, soldiers as saints, or saints as soldiers. To bring that which was more than human back down to a human level.

When I look at depictions of saints, or Christ, I don't see blood as holy, I see blood as terrifying. And then I see the humanity of it as something to be admired and holy. And by humanity I mean lack of supernatural, people bleed, feel pain, suffer. I think religious imagery can be used as a metaphor or vessel to convey those feelings of pain, or joy.

Second Volley

2009-10-29T15:36:00.000-07:00

A woodblock print on Japanese paper. Twenty four inches by nineteen inches. The first one I've done in three or four years, which was intimidating to undertake. It also (once I got started) was something I flew through, borrowing a nice chisel from my job to remove the large areas.

I was looking at a book of women artists of the Wiemar Republic, specifically Kathe Kollwitz woodcuts. She has one in there of a solitary figure who looks dead. There is a very minimal atmosphere around the figure made by minimal noise from the block. I wanted to try something like that, and figured what better thing to beat the hell out of than a piece of wood. And who better to beat the hell out of than soldiers? I use them a lot in my work. I like drawing people who are weary, the lines stand out on them more. The archaeology of their faces and bodies is closer to the surface. I like them because I can find more character in people like that, they've been around the block, and have the stories to prove it.

I want my pictures to tell me a story, and hopefully you as well. Or to look like someone who could narrate to you.

First Volley

2009-10-27T12:34:00.000-07:00

First thing. Images made late last year, and hopefully the beginning of a series. They hang as a triptych, and are twenty four inches by forty eight inches, and seven inches deep. Pine, roofing tar, oilsticks, candles, the bible, jars, dirt, urine and rope. Oh the fun of being out of art school and recycling props from old art projects.

I think of myself as the analog photomanipulation, I find objects and make lots of really bad stuff, recycling things that stick with me from them, until they come together in something more concrete. Something I'm happy with.

I'm going to start with older pieces that I am documenting and keep uploading new things along with it. New art, visual. Words. And the fleshing out or discussion of ideas for both. I hope you'll stick around for the undertaking.