image for catalogue

meeting with Jill - March 5, 2011

Jill and I had another really essential-for-me meeting. I had kind of gotten caught in a spot of thinking that I'd found a new territory but then not knowing what to do with it. I think when Jill walked in and first looked at the material, that she might have been struggling to see why I found the new work so compelling - we talked about my early eye sight and how this work may be related. But even before she came in I had begun to notice how "frontal" it all was - and was looking at the architect Steve Soll's work- where he wraps openings around the sides of buildings. However, that was not where the discussion really started. It started with 2 ideas and went from there :

1. how to think about my work - that it is an evolution, work that arises out of work that arises out of work - rather than a progression from not-so-good to better to better..... - that it may read differently to me (and others) at different times.

2. The other was the lighting. I was showing her the work with lights that I use - she noticed that it affected the color and that it was unlikely that a studio would have lights that gave me that same effect. We tried turning off all the lights - that was very dull. Jill than mentioned the artist David Ireland, who incorporated his lighting into the art - which I told her that you, Deb, had recommended to me last summer. I had then spent a lot of time chasing lighting and... that was a journey that I guess is still unresolved since I'm continuing to rely on unreliable external sources, or sources that may not be the same from place to place.

3. We talked about how to edit/ think of my work: is it many small pieces, or is it works comprised of small pieces ?

The top is obviously one piece.

But then she had me edit my wall with many of my newer pieces. In the end, the wall looked like the middle image: (sorry that the camera isn't better - it has a very tactile feel to it - the effervescent works juxtaposed with the solid pieces)

4. Which led to a discussion of background: wall/ paper/ or wallpaper
a. the wall, as in the middle piece
b. that the top piece could be beautifully mounted on nice thick hot press paper, and that I could actually use paper from the get-go as a background for new works( which is something I have done in years past and loved it - especially heavy duty hot press)
c. that I could use a large piece of cloth as "wallpaper" and attach smaller pieces. To demonstrate this we rearranged another wall and the larger cloth is serving as the wall paper, which, of course, could cover the whole area if desired - see bottom image
( I am including the floor in the photo so you can have a sense of proportion) (also, the dark works are actually dark purple and blue).

5. That my work is mostly there - what I'm dealing with is details:
a. is sewing better than pins or gluing?
b. do I want any larger gestures? which I added with the overhanging blue organza in the middle piece
c. we never wound back around to lighting, but that is still - and always- a question for me.