Tuesday, April 13, 2010

mentor meeting- April 13, 2010



On Tuesday, April 13, I met with RPW at the Museum School again because the atrium has such good light for my work. I talked about coming to terms with doing installation, thanks to John Beardsley's article in May Lin's book "Boundaries". He mentioned a Japanese term, "ma", which includes both space and time. I write about it in my next research paper - and it led me to investigate Japanese aesthetics, which gave me a way to frame my understanding of what I was aiming for in this work. I will share this in my upcoming paper.

Meantime, RPW and I had a great discussion about my work:
1. The idea of the path through the water: I now have used over 100 yards of fabric. I had arranged the "whorls" in such a way as to establish a path, as if marking the route a sailboat might take, tacking into the wind. RPW thought that the literal path might be problematic - but that leaving open spaces did work.
2. Color of background cloth: She questioned the choice of black, a non-color, for background when the rest of the piece is full color.
3. That led to a discussion of how I use the loose silk which I had positioned near the edge as "run-off". RPW suggested I pursue a piece with just the loose silk pieces flowing one into another.
4. Images of water: We looked at a book on global water issues that had a aerial photo of an expanse of irrigation fields (post that on your wall for contemplation, she suggested) which gave the idea of possibly investigating Google earth for more images that related to water. As for this current piece, she asked me the title and I suggested, "eddy", the edges of water where it laps forward and then retreats again in trickles. She thought that worked and that that description should be included in the writing about it.
5. Finishing the piece: We also talked about my idea of having the fully saturated colors go into grey as it comes forward so the viewer is brought into the piece by the amping up of the color.
6. We talked about lighting and discussed light boxes. However, when I got home and tried my light box on a small batch, it really did not work - the light does nothing for the color and distracts from all the sublties of the cloth.

RPW suggested I might try cyanotype. I have done some work with dyes that react to the sun and loved the results. I'm not sure how that fits in with the water theme I have going now, but will mull it over.

Finally, RPW asked about my book of color swatches which I realized as I was going along that I was not making- I know the colors so well, that I just didn't want to take the time. However, I had brought along a piece - maybe 40" x 40", and I shared with her how gratifying it was to see the color on that scale, especially in contrast to the small work I was doing. So, I plan to make large wall size swatches, so to speak, of the colors I am using in my "eddy" piece. I plan the incorporate the number that refers to the dye into the piece so that it has reference value built in. That idea sounds exciting to me.

It was a great session. I feel inspired to finish the first piece, experiment with a new one using loose pieces, and have fun making the huge swatches.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention sound. I just had seen a theatre piece that used it so effectively. I brought the idea up but am just leaving it open-ended for now.

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