cloudmine

image for catalogue

2011-03-24T15:27:00.001-07:00

meeting with Jill - March 5, 2011

2011-03-06T10:34:00.001-08:00

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.

new stuff

2011-02-28T14:51:00.000-08:00

Simple, Unaffected. Just happened to land there.
Ordered from China, traditional Japanese dyeing method, French Sennelier dyes, steam fixed, ironed, sewn, burned, draped, cut,
hung … just so.
just so.

Discovered: dyeing for love of color, ripping (v. cutting) for integrity of cloth, burning for introduction of chance, hanging to get a glimpse possibility

First meeting with Jill

2011-02-19T10:45:00.000-08:00

I just had the most amazing meeting with Jill. She was very positive and pointed me in the direction of Tuttle - that my work is very intuitive and it is strongest when I am really "with" the work - as soon as I get mechanical she could read that and it made the work less present for her. She said not to worry about presentation at this point but to make a couple of pieces between now and maybe 2 weeks from now - quickly - and then have her come back with the questions fresh. She thought I might want to set up "quicktime" to show the gorgeous light coming through my work during the day, but the flashlights at night idea: not so great ( in terms of light, no question she is right with that). She was here for a long time and kept falling in love with all the "incidental" pieces I have around - my color charts, where/how I had draped material on a structure I was not seeing as a piece - which, when she pointed it out - I loved it that way, too. Really, what she was loving is exactly what I love. I told her I had just written my paper 90% about the light and space artists and now am realizing I don't work like them; she said, write another paper: that my work is about light and color, specifically color in nature - and the strength is in my TOUCH, and that that is what makes it beautiful - when I am present, fully, for the touch. I said I was concerned that I needed to be able to verbalize what I'm trying to do - and she said, let the work do that. She told me the story of when Tuttle came to Mass Art and she had all her students go : that it was the worst presentation. Tuttle just stood there - there were these long silences and he was very inarticulate. She said it was a terrible presentation. Afterwards, Jill said she totally rethought about words and verbalizing her work - it somehow gave her more freedom. Interesting, I thought. Anyway, she said not to worry, I had enough material that I could already present, just from what is in my space... but for me, it's not about the show, but being present and true to myself... and daring to show what I love, not fussing over it to make some conception of a "finished" piece.

Meeting with Isabel - December 17, 2010

2010-12-17T13:58:00.000-08:00

I had a productive final meeting of the semester with Isabel.
We looked at a range of pieces that I had created in the last few months and decided which were the strongest to show in my space at AIB in January:

1) The latest piece
a) Isabel liked that the piece included the florescent light by the fact that yellow material was situated below and above it. Unfortunately, at night and in the photos, the overhead part can't be seen. The optimal condition for my pieces is with both natural and florescent light.
b) I need to attach the piece (loosely) in areas so that it still looks fresh, but so it can be transported

2) The horizon piece
a) needs some tweeking - with the scrim and with the poles
b) needs to be mounted in its own space - not crowded by its adjacency to new piece

3) The 2 light boxes
a) need to crop and hang the layers of fabric - on dowels

The other work I've done needs to be presented with large photos.

sun on mount and semester summary

2010-12-10T12:42:00.000-08:00

This is my last large piece. I wanted to see how freely I could use the silk - how unfettered it could be- how much like a child's drawing it could express the idea of dawn, which I am equating to a child's drawing already with it's accent on the horizon line and silhouetted shapes.

Salley Knight
Professor Deb Todd Wheeler
Summary – Semester 3
December, 2010

Summary

This has been a particularly rich semester for me. Not only do I feel that I have found some truly inspirational artists, but I am feeling more on target in my own work. I started off with two ideas in mind: to see how to allow the silk itself to express more in my work, and to find armature that helped support the silk. The pieces that I began with were pure play – with the material and colors. I used old frames to build awkward boxes and used flagpoles to support hanging material. I was working loosely with the idea of dawn and the idea of falling/happenstance. I constructed several more pieces that played on the flat v. 3D theme that came up in this first piece. I experimented with light boxes. I explored adding different kinds of lighting and ended up using fluorescents with my larger pieces. In November, I ended up deconstructing one of my larger works and reassembling the parts into a piece that was inspired by the Ann Hamilton talk and the book on Spencer Finch. Thanks to them, I began asking what it was that really intrigued me about dawn. I realized that it was not just the light, or the invisible becoming visible, but it was the simplicity of it: it was the one time of day when the horizon line was so highlighted. The lack of sun made everything appear 2D. Like a children’s drawing, my art dealing with dawn became the chance to play with the “first” ideas: line as horizon, sun as round, and flat color, a world that momentarily is split between light and dark.

traditional dyed piece

2010-12-02T15:32:00.000-08:00

In the last while I had done some more traditional dyeing - still working with the idea of how light penetrates or doesn't at dawn. I worked on some translucent material and not. I'm not sure what I think of what I've gotten so far -

horizon line

2010-12-01T15:58:00.001-08:00

thinking about how I/we/ children's drawings/ dawn organize around that horizon line...

Sunrise

2010-12-01T13:00:00.000-08:00

I am enjoying this piece because all the color is in the stick/line v. in the round shape (the expected shape of the sun). The lighting does add some color and dimension to the background, too. The ideas that are floating in my head are around: expected/ ideas v. actual, and children's drawings as a baseline for how we still think visually...

responding to Ann Hamilton

2010-11-22T16:35:00.000-08:00

Last night I had the pleasure of hearing Ann Hamilton talk at Lesley.

It was inspirational in the way that looking at Spencer Finch was for me. Prior to hearing Ann or reading the book on Finch, I now would say that perhaps one of my primary responses to any piece of art was a judgment of its “beauty” – similar to what I gather Dave Hickey or Peter Schjeldahl describe. But what I got from the talk and from the Finch book was the delight in the question. The question was the lure and lived on in the work itself .

When I came back to look at my work, I thought about the question(s) that live in my work, that I constantly strive to answer, and then find more to question. I have always known that my questions center around how something becomes visible. This morning when I took my camera out to photo the light at dawn, what struck me was the there is no 3D at dawn. It is like a children’s drawing- the “horizon line” defined by the coming light, and then the flat shapes against it. A little pink in the sky brought out green in the grass.

When I returned to my studio where I had disassembled my installation piece, I put it back together in a completely different way. What is it that I first see at any dawn? The children's drawing assembling itself begins with the horizon line. Even all fuzzy – blurred by undifferentiated houses and trees – but a dark distinction between air and matter.

talk with Deb- Nov. 7

2010-11-07T18:49:00.000-08:00

We talked about my work
1. To take detailed photos of the finished piece for purposes of reassembly
2. To look up Spencer Finch and Christo
3. My next piece - fences (?) - to look up Julie Levesque

And my thesis outline due soon:
Work on 2 forms
A. the personal review/testimonial
B. theoretical
- what am I doing?
- basis for it : process, color, intention
(set up for interesting discoveries)
- look back at mentors/advisors - what they were pointing at

research paper- November 2010

2010-11-06T19:06:00.000-07:00

Salley Knight
Professor Deb Todd Wheeler
Group 3 – Research Paper
November 2010

Dawn

Seeing –what it is to see- has been intriguing to me since birth. I was born with no muscular control over my eyes, a condition that was corrected by medical intervention at age three. Therefore, for the first years of my life I could not see 3D, and then suddenly I could. My heightened awareness of sight was reinforced later because of the timing of a daily ritual. As an older child, starting at age 8, for years I would go horseback riding with my father at 6 AM. In the winter this meant I started riding in the pitch black of country night. I could feel the horse and the reins, but, aside from the sparks of the horseshoes hitting an occasional stone, the gravel road would only gradually become visible. As darkness slowly faded, I could see silhouettes and then slowly the light of day brought color and dimension. Perhaps it is no surprise that my work is about feeling first, then the shift from 2D to 3D with light and color.
I work with fabric and I create work that plays with dimensionality. The three elements that are key to my work are: fabric, light, and color. For this paper, I sought artists who work in these three areas. Robert Irwin, Do Ho Suh and Ernesto Neto all use fabric in their work. James Turrell and Dan Flavin work with light. In both Turrell’s work and Flavin’s work, color is also prominent. Pippilotti Rist works in video, but concepts of light are also considered in her work.
As an artist, I choose to work with silk organza: it is both material and translucent. The organza is physically present, but, depending on conditions of light and color, more or less visually obvious. I use the cloth as a means to examine perception.
This interest in perception is the driving force in Robert Irwin’s work. Lawrence Wexsler describes Irwin’s 2004 exhibit at the Guggenheim in the Spring 2008 edition of the Virginia Quarterly Review; for the exhibit, Irwin painted the room white and then spread a “pearlescent” scrim from floor to ceiling along the opposite wall to the viewer’s entrance. When the viewers arrived, at first it appeared that there was nothing in the room to see…
But if one lingered a few moments, the far wall would suddenly seem to dematerialize before one’s very eyes: something was there, but what? A sheer fogbank?... Or nothing ?… How, suddenly, was one managing to tell anything at all? And (why was that) such a delicious experience?” (Web)
Irwin uses translucency to create a situation that causes the viewer to question what they see.
Another artist who is well known for his use of fabric is Do Ho Suh. His work focuses on his personal history. Certainly my personal history influences my work, although I do not literally interpret it in the manner that Do So Suh does. Do Ho Suh uses turquoise organza to create a precise replica of his childhood home in Korea in his piece, “Seoul Home”. He chooses organza for its translucent qualities; the cloth reminds him of the rice paper used in Korean architecture. In the exhibition catalogue for his 2002 show at the London Serpentine Gallery, Lisa Corrin quotes Do Ho Suh:
I remember seeing through the rice paper; screen windows on our house in Korea, with the shadows of the bamboo leaves blowing in the wind and lit by the reflection of a full moon… I want my work to blend with the environment it finds itself in (34).
While Do Ho Suh builds life size architectural replicas, the Brazilian artist, Ernesto Neto, constructs even more immense biomorphic fabric installations of fabric. Both artists focus on building structures, which I also do on a smaller scale. Whereas I am playing with the intersection of 2 and 3D in my work, Do Ho Suh is interested in history, while Neto creates an environment that feels different than any other – as if one is entering the inside of a huge being. The cloth softens the work and creates a joyous atmosphere. I relate to Ernesto Neto for the sense of exuberance in his work. In his interview with Louisa Buck in the 2010 issue of ArtNewspaper entitled “I am interested in art, science, and underwear”, Neto describes his work as a celebration of how different each person is on the outside and yet fundamentally the same on the inside – and the importance of embracing the joy in that: “We have to celebrate life- it is a jewel, it is a very magical thing to be alive.”
I identify with Neto's quality of light and joy. My work is sourced very much in a place of discovery –of seeing, of dawn, of light increasing. A sense of positivity is also found in the recent work of Pipilotti Rist. Rist is a Swiss-born artist who, in her 2010 show at the Augustine Luhring gallery, uses layers of filmed images combined with abstract designs of light. In the September 27, 2010 issue of New Yorker magazine, Peter Schjendahl describes the good feelings that he came away with after seeing her show: “(Rist) resolves no critical problems of contemporary art. She just makes you forget there are any.” (Web)
Although Rist works in video, not fabric, she thinks of her art as letting her audience into a box of light – a box within a box. The way that Rist describes her work sounds similar to my sense of dawn creating the world each morning. In her interview with Hans Ulrich Obrist in Phaidon’s Pipilotti Rist, she describes the experience of video: “At first you look at the box, at the (light), but when you concentrate on the sequences you feel as if you are inside the box, behind the glass, within the wall…” (15) Through movement , the viewer is swept into the 3D world of her art: in her work, light defines the space for the art to happen.
Light creates space; the world shifts from the shadows of dawn to 3D. Certain artists have made the study of light and how we perceive it the sole focus of their art. Perhaps the most well known is James Turrell. In his essay entitled “The Phenomenology of Light” in the Geometry of Light, Gernot Buhme’s describes James Turrell’s work as light creating space: “(T) he first experience of light is that it opens up a space. In a sense, that space is even created by light…The primary experience of light is one of … freedom” (73) The light creates the space and in the space we are free to move, both with our eyes and consequently our bodies.
In his art, James Turrell uses constantly changing natural light and plays it against artificial light to emphasize and blur boundaries. In his Sky Works, the glass opening in the ceiling of a room focuses on the shifting outside light while the interior lights come on as the daylight diminishes at dusk; the changing colors of the sky play against the interior lit walls to produce a contrast of the warm interior, which looks yellower as the evening sky turns bluer and darker. These same Sky Works also capture the contrast as it reverses the sequence during the increasing light at dawn.
Dawn is a gradual occurrence– that shift from grey to color is so seamless that it seems imperceptible. Yet that is what fascinates me. I identified with Turrell’s story of coming to a realization of what his work was really about as told to Markus Bruderlin in his essay, “The Innerworld of the Outerworld of the Innerworld” in James Turrell’s book on his Wolfsburg exhibition. In the 1960’s, Turrell had just spent years working with American scientists on the Art and Technology program. At the time, the moon rocks arrived for display to a largely disinterested American public. Afterwards, Turrell travelled to Japan, where those same rocks were shown. In Japan, people poured out to see them. Turrell was struck. He saw that the Japanese could “…sense the existence of the whole universe in the stones…(that) the quiet contemplation of the stones brought one much closer to the secrets of the cosmos than billions of dollars spent…in science” (125-6). Turrell realized that the seeing that interested him was not through scientific understanding, but rather slower “decelerated” vision.
My interest in light naturally merges with a love of color, especially in its subtle shifts, something that Turrell excels in creating. Perhaps because of much time spent in Japan where low light is favored in architecture, Turrell tends to work with nuances of light rather than the bright white of the western white box. Because of this, his work is rich in expanses of color that make it difficult for the viewer to distinguish whether one is having an internal or external experience. This zen-like space has been described as spiritual. Turrell responds to this: “ I believe in the need and thought of dimensions beyond us but it (is) vital for me to take them away from the vocabulary of religion.” (Bruderlin 143). .” I am close to Turrell on this matter; I believe that art is able to touch on issues of the mind and its intersection with what one sees.
I was curious to note that Dan Flavin, another artist famous for his work in light, resisted any implication of light being about consciousness. J. Fiona Raghels in her essay, “On Situations and Lights”, in Dan Flavin’s The Architecture of Light , quotes Flavin: “Art is shedding its vaunted mystery for a sense of keenly realized decoration” (14). On the same topic, Brydon Smith in his essay, “An Artificial Barrier of Blue, Red and Blue Flourescent Light”, quotes Flavin: “My fluorescent tubes never burn out desiring a god.” (70) Flavin chose to use fluorescent lighting as the means to create an extensive repertoire of light works. Prior to Flavin, in a typical museum visit a viewer would travel from room to room (void to void) looking at art on the walls. Flavin inverted all that- using light along baseboards, corners, and stairwells: areas that had not been considered (Raghel 14).
Of all the artists mentioned in this paper, I am most attracted to Flavin’s use of color – his washes of salmon and pink, and even his more acidic colors are familiar to me from my experiences of the light at break of day. It is in his color, too, that another side of him emerges. Although this softer side can be detected in the titles of his works, which are dedicated to friends and other artists, his real warmth shows in his use of color. Not only are his colors beautiful in themselves, but also his soft peach or brilliant pink, etc., emanate from the work and wash over the viewer, bringing them together in the light. This joining of art and viewer was not lost on Flavin, as evidenced in his conversation with Maiten Bousisset for the May 1991 issue of Beaux Arts Magazine: “By making the space and the on-looker visible, light, in a way, creates them.” (133) Color creating and joining art and viewer – that idea is quite wonderful to me.
In this paper, I have focused on artists whose works mirror concepts that are at the core of the work I am exploring: the materializing of the world each day at dawn, the movement from feeling in the dark to seeing in the light. In Robert Irwin, I find an artist who explores the edges of perception. Do Ho Suh uses fabric for historical reasons; Ernesto Neto uses cloth to create art that celebrates life; the recent work of Pipilotti Rist is also uplifting; James Turrell actually captures the light of dawn in his art, while Flavin uses only artificial light to create the sumptuous light I associate with dawn. It is to these artists that I look while I explore the concepts of visibility and the sometimes-unclear dimensionality of what one sees.

Works cited:

Bohme, Gernot, et al. James Turrell: Geometry of Light. Ostfilern, Germany: Hatje Cantz. 2009. Print.

Buck, Louisa. “I am interested in art, science and underwear”. The Art Newspaper. July/August 2010, n.pag. Web. 27 Sept. 2010.

Bruderlin, Markus, et al. James Turrell: The Wolfsburg Project. Ostfildern, Germany: Hatje Cantz. 2010. Print.

Corrin, Lisa G. and Miwon Kwon. Do Ho Suh. London: Serpentine Gallery. 2002. Print.

Neto, Ernesto. Ernesto Neto, The Edges of the World. London: Hayward Gallery. 2010. Print.

Flavin, Dan, The Architecture of Light, Berlin: Deutsche Guggenheim. 1997. Print.

Sollins, Susan. Art:21: Art in the 21st Century (Art 21 PBS) (Pt.2). New York: Harry Abrams. 2003. Print.

Turrell, James, James Turrell: Spirit and Light. Houston: Contemporary Arts Museum. 1998. Print.

Wexsler, Lawrence. “Embeddedness: Robert Irwin in His Seventies”. The Virginia Quarterly Review. N. pag. 2008. Spring. Web.

meeting with Isabel - Nov. 5, 2010

2010-11-05T10:14:00.001-07:00

Another great meeting with Isabel.
A. She liked my 2 new pieces, especially the new dark piece.
B. She wanted me to finish them:
-get rid of all the pins,
-paint the top support areas so they disappear.
-cut the poles that extend too far out
-figure out how to hang and display the light box pieces.One needs to be re-made to fit the larger light box.
C. She liked the florescent lighting, but I need to get smaller size fixtures. Also, the deeper color (more gels) is richer. I can explore getting just the right depth of color with more or less gel covering.
D. When I finish the work - all the last details - will make a difference in how the work comes together - the delicate thread work can spark the whole piece.
E. Create one more - freestanding(?) - piece.

Talk with Deb 9-26-10

2010-09-26T15:10:00.000-07:00

In my discussion with Deb Todd Wheeler, we covered a number of subjects:
1. She recommended I check out Damien Ortega at the ICA to notice how, in his display of camera parts, he guides the viewers' eyes to the parts he wants them to see
2. For my use of flag poles to support my work, all the connotations I can make use of:
a. the flag is how we suspend fabric
b. flags are ceremonial
c. flags communicate beyond cultural
d. reference to jasper johns' flag
3. Lights: that I need to consider them as I do the work, rather than after the fact.
Possible light sources to research: dc neon tubes or fiber optic
Also, to finish the burn pieces I have and consider constructing larger light box(es)
4. Writing:Talk to librarian to get more info on Ernesto Neto and Do Ho Suh. Consider how to write paper on how I am using light and weightlessness- and how the work of Turrell, Flavin and Pippolati Rist contribute understanding (perhaps bringing in Hesse again?)

meeting with Isabel

2010-09-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

I had a wonderful meeting with Isabel today.
We mostly talked about my yellow tower piece. Her response was very positive.
1. She thought it worked as sculpture - held interest from all 3 angles
2. She enjoyed the free form aspects of it and yet thought there were areas that needed finishing : sanding and paint; sewing. At the same time, pinning to the wall is fine - the question is how much to hold in place and how much to allow to shift for each showing
3. Attention to the planes: the back and floor need to be considered. I will get another piece of homasote to paint white to consider part of the piece for the back. The floor? A stand? Flooring?
4.Lighting. At present I am using an external source to highlight the lower part. Do I want to include a light within the piece?

As for my more landscape-like piece, Isabel felt
1. it was less finished
2. it might benefit from being hung lower
3. move my studio around (get rid of the bookshelves) to give myself more space to work larger on both pieces

The light box pieces:
1. She loved
2. The lightbox itself- old and wooden, is great - can I find more?
3. How to attach the cloth (velcro?) so that the boxes can be mounted on the wall

Also look up Pippolotti Rist

And keep going!

Sourcing Art (crit theory paper)

2010-08-29T08:42:00.000-07:00

Salley Knight
Professor Deb Todd Wheeler
Critical Theory 3
August and September 2010

Sourcing Art

When I proposed to my advisor, Deb Todd Wheeler that I write a paper on Eva Hesse, Richard Tuttle and Jessica Stockholder, I knew I wanted to focus on these three artists because I come back to them again and again. I thought they attracted me because of their unorthodox structures, perhaps the movement from two to three dimensional work. What I came to realize after pursuing that line of research was that it was not the FORM of the work that was compelling to me, but rather, how they sourced their work.
In his essay, “Hesse’s Endgame: Facing the Diagram”. Benjamin Buchloh writes, “Hesse … makes drawing the mere grain of the hand.” (De Zegher150)
Marcia Tucker’s description of Tuttle in the 1975 Whitney catalogue (177 – Tuttle) reads:
Tuttle readies himself as a dancer…That so much of Tuttle’s work is a result of body activity is partly caused by the fact that physical activity is the most direct and common means of translating interior states into external expression. This is Marcia Tucker’s description of Tuttle in the 1975 Whitney catalogue (Grynsztejn - 177)
Jessica Stockholder in conversation with Nancy Doll and Terry Sultan says: “I
value pleasure and appetite in art, and I find that the body is fully engaged. (Kissing the Wall -19)
The hand, movement, the body- these are key to the work of each of these artists. I hypothesize that these artists are creating art coming from a body source that is similar to the way certain dancers use a form of movement known as “authentic movement”. Within the art form of dance, which is completely based on the body, authentic movement is a field that some dancers use as a tool to source material for their art. Authentic movement came out of an exploration by a dancer and Jungian therapist, Mary Starks Whitehouse, in the 1950’s. It was her conviction that any person who was given the opportunity to allow his/her body to move with eyes closed and from a place of listening to the body would create expression equal any dance done by a trained dancer: that the “authentic” birth of the movement gave it power, made it compelling. Authentic movement involves getting quiet enough to “listen” to the body; the movement arises out of that space – rather than the mind or a preconceived idea. The experience of authentic movement is one of feeling, of feeling moved to move. Often, the movement arises from a place in the body that has stored feelings, and consequently the same movement may recur and evolve over time. It is this understanding of the body as the origin of material for art that I see in the works of the three artists I mentioned.
The early years of each artist, Hesse, Tuttle, and Stockholder, reveal the evolution of the body based intuitive style of each artist. By examining each of them in turn, I will investigate how their approaches were formative to their art. Hesse and Tuttle became known in the 1960’s, while Stockholder came to prominence at the end of the century.
Eva Hesse graduated from graduate school at Yale at the end of the 1950s. In Catherine de Zeghner’s essay in her book, Eva Hesse Drawing, she reports that in 1960 Hesse took employment as a designer at a textile factory creating designs for tapestry and drapery (65). Fabric, the woof and weft, the grid were an inherent part of her first work in design. Zegher mentions the suggestion made by Joan Simon in 1992 that perhaps Hesse’s later explorations using string and the grid could be better understood as offshoots of this early background in textiles rather than as a product of Minimalism (69). Simon proposes it was Hesse’s hands on experience that was most influential to her art.
Hesse’s first works were figurative, but, according to Renate Pezinger in her essay “Thoughts on Hesse’s Early works: 1959-1965” in Eva Hesse, even in the early Hesse, “ … we can see that the artist was beginning to anticipate the haptic-tactile quality of her later (art). Matters of color and surface, of form and composition – to which to American Abstract Impressionists had devoted so much of their energy in the 1950’s – were of secondary importance to her.”
In 1964, Hesse travelled with her husband, Tom Doyle, to Germany to the small town of Kettwig an der Weig at the invitation of a textile manufacturer, Arnhard Scheidt. There they took up residency above an abandoned textile factory. According to de Zegher, “Hesse’s breakthrough in finding her own language was bound to happen in her motherland.” (72) It was in Germany that Hesse began to employ signature aspects of her art.
During Hesse’s stay Germany, there was available ample material for experimentation: cords, string, old machine parts, as well as textile remnants left in the dismantled building. Hesse did many drawings of machines and with string, playing with what was at hand. She was able to …”not only trace the past but also trace the present in a way that was her own, with ‘tactile textile’…materials that were hers…” (Zegher, 74)
In her essay,“Child Drawing” in Eva Hesse Drawing, Mignon Nixon addresses another influence on Hesse at this time: the experience of drawing with the Scheidt children. Hesse and the children spent time together and created drawings that included art from the children and Hesse. Nixon points out that Hesse’s interest in children’s art even preceded this experience: “long before her arrival at Kettwig Hesse was accustomed to ‘child drawing’ as an extension of her artistic practice” (48). That she continued drawing with children indicates the value she placed on the art that children make and that play produced. The drawings that Hesse did with the children are included in drawings that she kept and brought back to the United States. In these drawings appear letters and numbers as well as seriality.
Seriality is a feature of child play: Nixon refers to Juliet Mitchell’s research: a child uses seriality to understand his/her place in the world, how someone fits in and is part of something larger. It has to do with the emerging sense of self, and is understood through play; “Through play…the subject of seriality learns to turn another’s existence into something useful to itself.” (Zegher 56)
But Hesse herself may have been looking for something else, something free of the prescribed art world. Hesse wrote in he diary: “Making art. ‘painting a painting.’ The art, the history, the tradition is too much there. I want to be surprised, to find something new. I don’t want to know the answer before(hand)…” (Zegher 90).
Among the works Hesse brought back to this country were drawings of machines and low reliefs using string. In Germany, her work had developed a strong signature style, unmistakably Hesse; the artist Dorothee von Windheim described Hesse as an artist who could “feel through the eye.” (Pezinger 54) However, it was that very personal attribute of Hesse’s work that would handicap it in the art world of New York when she returned in the mid 1960s. Minimalism was in full power and any sign of authorship was considered undesirable. Hesse’s work always “had a hand”, as Tom Doyle put it (Pezinger 54).
It was a few years later when Lucy Lippard curated her show “ Eccentric Abstraction” that she recognized the value of Hesse’s offerings. In his essay, “The Work of Salvage, Eva Hesse’s Latex Works”, Briony Fer describes the exhibition:
Lippard welcomed the bodily, the sensual, the tactile like a kind of triumphant return of the repressed- the doubly repressed in actuality by both the Minimalist rhetoric (industrial registers and hard, shiny materials) and the modernist optical paradigm of disembodied and disinterested aesthetic experience…(Sussman 87)
By then, Hesse’s direction was set: she felt her way to her art which was deeply imprinted with her personal touch: in her layering, in her puncturing, in her grids, all of it showed her bodily sensitivity.
What I see in Hesse’s formative years is an artist who finds her material through movement: her hands on the material. It was her sensitivity to what she was working with and how her body responded that became the key to the formation of her work. In her tactile response to textiles, in her child art, in her serial pieces, her hand and her touch were leading her. At a time when her approach was not popular, she produced the work that would later be recognized for the very reason it was rejected.
Richard Tuttle was entering the art scene during the 1960’s at a similar time as Eva Hesse. According to Madeleine Grynsztejn in her essay, “ A Universe of Small Truths”, she describes the beginning of Richard Tuttle’s career. While he was a student at Trinity College (1959-1963), he made frequent trips to New York City where he witnessed the beginning of what would become known as Minimalism: works by Donald Judd, Dan Flavin, and Sol LeWitt. What these artists were seeking, in reaction to Abstract Expressionism, was reality as material rather than in interpretation. According to Grynsztejn, “(t)he emerging avant-garde asserted the actual, the immediate, and the firsthand as extensions of the desire for a concrete and irreducible experience freed from history, through which one could access a bedrock of identity and certainty”(22). Although Tuttle would take his own path, that search for “the immediate” became his search. His unique way of pursuing it set him apart.
Ideas from the current art scene combined with ideas that seemed to arise from his background. Tuttle’s family was religious. Grynsztejn credits his Protestant upbringing for the reason Tuttle deeply valued all materials, including what is usually discarded. Furthermore, his Protestant and later, Eastern philosophy, were cited as reason for Tuttle’s stated desire to “get out of the way of his work (20)”, to not let his ego interfere.
With that stance, among Tuttle’s first artworks were a group of perforated boxes, small enough to hold in one’s hand. Right away, Tuttle produced art that favored touch. According to Grynsztejn, “While the paper cubes actually exercise touch, Tuttle’s work would henceforth also actively recall touch – primarily by employing tactically familiar materials drawn from everyday life. This is the prime motivating factor driving his use of fabric and textiles… as a material that speaks directly to our bodies, allowing us to grasp the materials in terms of touch…(24)”
However, it was Richard Tuttle’s drawings that were perhaps most indicative of Tuttle’s approach. In his essay, “Sum in Parts” in the Poetry of Form, a catalogue for Tuttle’s 1992 Amsterdam ICA exhibition, John Cowart discusses how Tuttle elevated the art form of drawing by treating it as an art form in itself. For the 1968 Betty Parsons Gallery show, he contributed octagonal pieces that were made of dyed cloth mounted on eight sided frames and called them paintings, even though they were dyed. Later he took octagonal shapes, cut them and pasted them on the wall; these were identified as drawings. As Holliday T. Day points out in his essay, “Drawing a New Role for Drawing”, Tuttle ignores time honored assumptions of art form definition; for him, paint was not necessary for a painting and marks were not needed in a drawing (Grynsztejn 34). Instead it was his actions: applying dye like paint made it a painting, or drawing the edges with scissors made a work a drawing.
Action is the focus of Cornelia Butler’s essay, “Kinesthetic Drawing”. She observes that Tuttle’s hands are always in motion during conversations (176). She witnesses him during his installation of his wire pieces:
One of the more intriguing aspects of the Wire Pieces is the way in which the artist incorporates his body into their making…This is only worth bringing up to suggest the critical involvement of the artist as a physical, integral, active participant in his work…When he installs the Wire Pieces, by his own account, he conjures a meditative sate, planting his feet firmly on the floor and turning to face the wall before beginning to move his arm to initiate the first mark. He describes the creation of these deceptively simple works as emerging from the memory in his muscles (Grynsztejn 176-7).
Not only does Tuttle aptly describe the experience of authentic movement in those words, but also he lives that experience in his continued involvement with drawing. In Richard Schiff’s essay, “It Shows”, he remarks on his willingness to let his drawing lead him, and admits that his understanding of his own artwork comes later (258-259). Schiff equates Tuttle’s process to dreaming, where it happens from an unknown place in a way that is coherent as it happens, but may not be understood to the conscious mind until later. Tuttle is willing to trust and to follow. This leads to remarkable places, according to Tuttle: “‘Suddenly you get into a whole new world, which is like when you fall in love with someone and even love what you don’t like. ‘ Unreserved, love is beyond prediction and projection” (Grynsztejn 259).
According to Tuttle, his work is ahead of him; he is constantly catching up to what he has created. Like the dancer who is moved to move and then can later assess the dance, Tuttle is moved to create works. The creation of the work is the beginning of the understanding. “Having been created, a work of art just begins.”(Schiff 263)
Even when Tuttle hangs his work to show it, he describes the experience as if the work leads him: “’One remarkable phenomenon of my work is its love of being hung at a height of fifty-four inches from the floor.’” This height, that is lower than the height art is normally hung, activates the body and makes the work more accessible to the hand. The experience of viewing the work changes and engages the viewer more fully, which seems to somehow “…expand a person’s contact with the totality of human existence.” (Schiff 271)
Richard Tuttle’s work started small scale; much of his work continues to be
intimate. By comparison, Jessica Stockholder began large. Her first noteworthy piece was mounted on the side of her father’s garage in Vancouver in 1983 and consisted of a queen size mattress and paint that coated areas of the building and it’s roof as well as the adjacent grass.
Growing up in the landscape of Vancouver was formative to Stockholder; she felt small next to the largeness of the land – the high mountains and vast ocean. Her sense of scale, of being surrounded by a landscape that went wider than one could see, bigger than could be defined is important to her work, as she mentions in her dialogue with Lynne Tillman in Phaidon’s Jessica Stockholder: “…landscape changes us… it is the experience of things too close or too large…” (41)
Furthermore, the way the water met the land; how lines of fog might obscure the horizon line so that the usual way of understanding earth and sky was unclear manifests in her work as well. The colors move beyond borders and flow past boundaries of the objects to which they might have been attached. (Phaidon 40)
But how did Jessica Stockholder get started? At 14 years old, she studied with the sculptor Mowry Baden; she later attended university in Canada and moved to NYC in the 1980s. But I suggest that she got started with a key decision. She had just moved to New York and was living in a small apartment with no storage space and did not want to do installations in her living room. In her conversation with Gerhard Mack for the Kuntsmuseum St. Gallen, she talks about that moment:
After a year I decided not to be an artist because it was too painful having a shitty job and trying to figure out how to earn money for this art that who knew what would happen with. As soon as I decided not to be an artist I was able to work again. (31)
Stockholder had freed herself from the outside definition of “artist”. Released from expectations, she could follow her impulses. Stockholder began to use furniture and light and paint to make art that related to the room as well as the wall. Her pieces read as painting and sculpture. At first relatively small, her work soon grew to include large-scale installation, sourced from her childhood response to the landscape of Vancouver.
Stockholder begins her work from the physical: “ I begin in a very physical place, without a lot of words…When I’m asked what my plans are…I look inside and find a mute feeling.”(Tillman 14) Her work is about her experience in the world and her subjective response to materials and objects. She sees the act of placing objects as equivalent to a stroke of paint.
Stockholder claims not to be concerned about the specific materials she uses when she is working as long as she “…make(s) sure that in the end the experience is right.” (Tillman 28) In fact, she feels strongly about her work not being heightened, but rather open to the viewer - no shades on the windows or special effects - and constructed in a manner that looks as if anyone could do it, according to her in her interview with Klaus Ottman for the Phaidon book (133). She is looking for immediacy. In fact, one of the reasons that she claims to be attracted to painting is because paint can cover the material like a skin and make whatever it covers insignificant: “I like there to be places where the material is forgotten…colour is very good at this, always ready to assert itself as independent of material.”(Tillman 14)
Perhaps Stockholder pinpoints her artmaking process most exactly in this description: “If you can actually be aware of a moment and aware of yourself existing immediately…then there’s room for choice…it’s an ancient struggle, actually to be present …and what that means. “(Tillman 29) Stockholder does not say that creating art is easy – she says she can be in a lousy mood when constructing her work- but that is part of the process that “keeps her moving”. (Ottman 139)
Whereas Hesse and Tuttle were working during the time of the Minimalist movement, Stockholder claims its influence by pointing out that Minimalism introduced the participation of the viewer in the art. With Minimalism, the viewer was aware of himself looking at the work as well as the space around the work as well as the work – all of these. Minimalism included the viewer. Like Hesse and Tuttle, Stockholder leaves her work inconclusive, promoting active participation of the viewer. (Ottman114)
In Stockholder’s description of her process, I resonate with the way in which she sources her art – from a physical relationship to her materials without an attachment to a preconceived outcome. I see the same ingredients in the Eva Hesse’s process and Richard Tuttle. These three artists have produced what I consider to be profound works of art; for those accomplishments, I cite the commitment to their personal process of listening to their intuitive, tactile responses to their materials. I find their process similar to authentic movement, where the willingness to be present without knowing the outcome can lead to some of the most compelling material. I’d like to end with a quote from Jessica Stockholder:
I have faith that all actions have significance. It is impossible to act without reason. Consequently, it is always possible to discover something of interest through action, through making…It is not possible for our conscious minds to be in control of all the meanings generated by what we make. Having faith that that is the case, artmaking is an opportunity to explore the nature of the mind. If you come at it from the other direction, insisting that it all makes sense, you miss an opportunity to really take advantage of the bigness of what we are. (Doll and Sultan 20)

Works Cited

Brockhaus, Christoph. et al, Jessica Stockholder, Dusseldorf :Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum.2002. Print.
De Zegher, Katherine, ed. Eva Hesse Drawing. New York: The Drawing Center. 2006. Print.
Doll, Nancy and Terrie Sultan. Jessica Stockholder Kissing the Wall: Works, 1988-2003. Houston: Blaffer Gallery. 2004. Print.
Editors of Phaidon Press. Jessica Stockholder. New York: Abrams. 1995. Print.
Grynsztejn, Madeleine, ed. The Art of Richard Tuttle, San Francisco: San Fransisco Museum of Art, 2005. Print.
Johnson, Ellen H. Eva Hesse: A Retrospective of the Drawings. Oberlin, Ohio: Oberlin College. 1982. Print.
Sussman, Elisabeth, ed. Eva Hesse. San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art. 2002
Tuttle, Richard. The Poetry of Form. Amsterdam: Institute of Contemporary Art. 1992. Print.
Waspe, Roland, Gerhard Mack and Konrad Bitterli. Jessica Stockholder. St. Gallen: St. Gallen Kunstmuseum. 2005. Print.

burning

2010-08-27T16:05:00.000-07:00

I thought I would experiment with burning my organza again. I had done some burning in my pre-AIB work, but thought of going back to it as a way to expose layers of color. I also wanted the method that lacked control - happenstance, the incidental, the accident - I wanted that in my work, just as it is in nature. I also wanted fragility: for the cloth and the light to do the work, with the barely controlled burns sharpening those 2 elements.
Another reason that burning came to mind was that I wanted the burns to create negative space so that the dyed color was describing the surrounding space. In this way the burns/negative space/nothing was the object. The light itself shining through became the object - which intrigued me.

2010-08-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

talk with Deb 8-15-10

2010-08-15T14:14:00.001-07:00

1.Scale: When working tiny, how to find materials that translate when shift to larger scale.
a) I’ve been making cubes out of matchsticks as maquettes for larger pieces and I love the globs of woodglue. Perhaps expandable foam would do the same for larger work?
b) For larger “matchsticks” – check out Jacobson’s by flower market (flower supports)

2. Writing:
a) Hesse/ Tuttle/ Stockholder : paper makes good argument for trusting intuition and “psychic weightlessness” (Deb’s term)
Need to tie in to how applies to own work, including ethereal quality of my work, and elements of movement or rigidity
b) Next papers: 2 areas to cover:
1. color and weight – look at James Turrell
2. textiles : What is structure for Do Ho Suh and Ernesto Neto,etc. : structure – what becomes structure and innovative v. predictable structure

3. Influences: theatre? Scrims go check out in theatres.
(school next door – kindergarten)

4. Materials:
How choice informs art – bamboo = tropical. How to find right support – look to influences/sourcing. There is bendable /shapeable bamboo

first meeting with Isabel

2010-07-21T11:29:00.000-07:00

In our first meeting, Isabel and I talked about:
1. work I had done for my last residency and why it didn't work for me - mainly, about how the silk and its color had not been most effectively shown
2. noticing areas in my past work and in the inadverant fallen and hanging silk in the studio: noticing the ways that the silk and color can be compelling
3. discussing ways that I might look for armature: in found furniture, as a clothesline, in print/paper storage hanging devices, with mylar, incorporating sewing
4. artists: Sheila Hicks, Annette Messager, Polly Apfelbaum
5. message: to be simple and to allow the silk itself to speak

summary of June 2010 residency

2010-07-21T11:06:00.000-07:00

Salley Knight
Professor Deb Todd Wheeler
AIB Group 3
July, 2010

Summary – Residency June 2010

Color/ light:
John Kramer: Color not working in blue area. Most effective use is in mirroring through the scrim.
Deb Todd Wheeler: Look at artists trying to capture the uncapturable
Check out Mag lights ( the big strong ones)
Laurel: Let the color go viral. Use mirrors and lights.
Jan: Intensify the color with layers. Use layers to play with color possibilities
Annette: Use gouache for flat color as contrast

Materials/ construction:
Hannah: Use video to capture color on silk in ideal conditions
Laurel: Don’t let armature be obvious. Use mirrors, lights.
Jan: Explore ways to hang the scrim so that a person can walk through.
Deb: Look for some kind of thin wire or filament support for overhead hanging

Approach/context:
Cesare: What is the action word (looking at “theatre piece”)?
Deb: Look for the accident/unknown consequences. Explore entropy/absorption. Look for the relationship of silk and air. Phenomenology.
Laurel: Become beastly. Structure, then interrupt. Pay attention to Tuttle – the language used in describing his work. Let that inform you.
Regan: Treat material as content.
Edie: Play with it in as many ways as possible. Be a child in your explorations.

Connections:
Deb Todd Wheeler: Spencer Finch, Bill Viola, Olafur Eliasson. R. Krauss – (Users Guide to Entropy) The Writings of Robert Smithson
Cesare: Nathalie Djurberg
Edie: Yves Klein
Laurel: J. Stockholder, Tuttle, Petah Coyne, Sheila Pepe, Eileen Quinlan
Jan: O’Keefe, Rothko, Shazia Sikander (installation work), Alexander McQueen, Claes Oldenberg
Annette : Alan Saret

Possible directions:
1. Explore the vertical hanging using layers of color on scrim – noticing color and how it can intensify or dull with layering choices – and then the possibilities for spacing to allow light and movement through the piece itself.

2. Explore color as surface and and as translucent – how it connects to what surrounds it, or is altered. So, creating obvious areas or structures of color and then letting them loose – that interplay. As well as how the colors themselves interact as color.

3. Playing around in order to find armature that supports the work.

4. Lights and mirrors: with the work/alone/as reflectors of color

June 2 Mentor Meeting with RPW

2010-06-02T09:41:00.000-07:00

I met with RPW for our final critique of this spring term. I showed my large installation work that now was glued and mounted on dyed canvas. I had added significantly to its size with larger whorls at the forefront. I also had added text -I had “painted” around each letter – on pieces of silk. I placed them on the floor as the front of the piece. In addition, I had made a small color chart (which I forgot to bring in) and the first 6 pieces of a larger one, which I disliked because of its strict uniformity. I also brought in my “add water” piece and the boxes that were used for gluing the silk, that make a piece when arranged like a grid (but they had been stored for too long and needed ironing for the sides to stand up again). Finally, I had the beginnings of a miniature piece I’d begun. The critique touched on the following areas:
1) RPW suggested that I explore mounting this newest piece ( as yet unrealized), with its small elements, on the wall with museum wax - a new material for me. I told her I had considered using a hole punch (leather punch?) and mounting them in clear acetate which RPW thought could then traverse through space.
2) We then began to discuss the large piece. I asked her about the text, did she think it worked? She liked the content, said it offered something universal, that it worked to present it in small bits like Twitter or Haiku, and the font felt right. I had put it on the floor to include the words visually with the whole piece. She thought it would be stronger as an adjunct piece on the wall, perhaps mounted as a grid.
3) Next we talked about how I might present the piece in a smaller space. I withdrew one of the sections, which I thought looked strong separately. Althought that might be true, there was another issue on hand: the canvas. Even with it dyed (as opposed to black, as before), it needed better integration with the silk. Although using silk to cover the canvas in intervals could help, RPW felt as if the large piece was crowded – which I had also felt. I had thought to resolve the crowdedness by eliminating some of the whorls. RPW had a much more exciting idea, which was to cut away the path where the bare canvas showed. I had my scissors along and we experimented with one section. Wow! It was exactly what the work needed. Seeing the bare floor and the way the negative and positive spaces started to come alive – it was a very exciting moment. Cutting away the shapes opens up possibilities: with no prescribed path, I can be sensitive to whatever space I install the piece. It also allows me to work with the edges of the space, RPW pointed out. And it makes the piece available to move through, much more so than when it was confined to the canvas.
4) I showed RPW the large pieces of individual colors I had worked on for the color chart. I discontinued them because I was so put off by the emphatic, high contrast exact circles. She encouraged me to complete the set. I forgot to bring the much smaller chart to show her – I emailed a photo to her after the meeting.
5) We talked about my “add water” piece. It reminded her of Frankenthaler. She thought I could pursue more but that the actual frame needed to be much larger – it was too equal to the piece. I had presented it on a stand alone support – which she appreciated because it made it into a piece in itself, allowing the light to come through. She thought there was potential for the “add water” pieces to work with my larger piece somehow.
6) This brought the discussion to the use of the scrim. I had understood my piece to be like a Jessica Stockholder’s that attached to the wall and came forward. But now with the path a non-fixed variable, the scrim was a question. RPW suggested that I perhaps do a piece with just scrims – such as Bill Irwin’s work. I think there is possibility there for me.
7) I intended to show RPW my piece that is made from the small boxes I had used to support the whorls while gluing them together. She could see enough to comment that they had a Chuck Close sense about them. However, I need to iron them so the sides stand tall again- they had been packaged too long.
This last meeting was a rich experience for me. I have much to explore and also feel ready to share this and whatever I can do in the interim with the AIB community at the June residency. Thank you RPW!

Summary – Spring Term 2010

I started this semester with the image of looking down into water from a summer sailboat. This memory led me to the large floor installation of silk whorls that I spent most of my time making: dyeing the lengths of cloth, tearing them into strips that were wound into whorls, then sewn and glued to hold their shape and stand upright. The time consuming process frustrated me since it seemed to take so long to build up a large enough number of whorls to make an expansive piece. In the end, I may have ultimately overdone it for the small showplaces at AIB, but I think that the piece needs size for its impact. At any rate, the piece moved beyond just looking into water to include the path of the boat and then to thoughts/words on what sailing had meant to me, which were painted into an accompanying text piece. I also made 2 pieces making a color chart referencing the numbers of the dyes I used in the large piece. A further work was a byproduct of the process of gluing: the silk boxes I made for gluing the whorls became a piece when grouped as a grid. Finally, I began experimenting with the concept I called “add water”, as in a recipe, whereby I would lay down squares of color, as in a color chart; then, I’d add water and let it run and drip and blend. A final tangent came as a response to Louise’s upset at the size of my piece – I’ve just begun a miniature piece which is mostly conceptual at this point, but deals with multiples, just tiny ones.
In my papers, I wrote about silk, my process, and its history. In my other self-chosen paper, I explored the concept of installation. I found the Japanese aesthetic principles: “ma”, emptiness, a good view, the unfixed gaze all leant themselves to installation art and enriched my understanding of its possibilities.
I would say the strength of this Spring was identifying my focus: water. It is a large subject so I am coming at it from memory of specific memories. I am seeking experiences that highlight distinct sensations – perceiving movement as still, feeling still as movement, or feeling still as very still (heightened awareness). I introduce these ideas as text in simple description.

May 20, 2010

2010-05-20T14:43:00.001-07:00

I have been solely focussed on my installation piece this Spring but I began to really miss the immediacy of 2D work. My idea was to pursue the subject matter of water. The impetus for this piece was the word "add water", so familiar in a cooking recipe but usually ruinous to any controlled work on silk. So, in fact, that is what I set myself up for: I put down controlled colors - in this case squares- and then... added water. I was thinking of the Japanese term wabi-sabi, which I understand to mean worn or imperfect. The water seems to accomplish that effect right away. I enjoy that.

Why Installation?

2010-04-27T08:36:00.000-07:00

Salley Knight
Group 2 – research paper
Professor Hannah Barrett
April, 2010

Why installation?

Why would I ever want to create an installation? After the second meeting with my mentor, she commented on my hesitancy to go forward. The uncertainty came out of my discomfort with the changing form of my work.

I had come to AIB creating twodimensional artwork and now I was starting to make what promised to be an installation. It would take days and months to create this piece I was envisioning. I could understand putting that much labor into something that would be mounted on the wall and viewed over and over. However, how could I come to terms with an installation made of hand-dyed silk that might be in a gallery for perhaps a week? In this era of fast paced media, it just seemed an anachronism to spend so much time making something static that might be viewed briefly. My concerns about relevancy were only heightened by Michiko Kakutani’s March 21, 2010, New York Times article entitled “Text Without Context” in which she commented on the effects of instant messaging, e-mail, Twitter and You Tube which have served to make velocity all important and to make people unwilling to linger long enough to finish reading or looking at a total piece of work (Arts 1).

The first inkling of an answer to the question of the value of installation for me came in Maya Lin’s book Systemic Landscapes. John Beardsley, in his essay, “Hidden in Plain View: the Land Art of Maya Lin”, describes a term, ma, a Japanese concept which includes both space and time. Ma was first introduced to western viewers in Arata Isozaki’s 1978 show at the Paris Musee des Artes Decoratifs (Isozaki 95). He used steppingstones and also chanting as forms which demonstrated ma, which he defined as the “natural pause or interval between two or more phenomena occurring continuously” (Beardsley, 89). In the example of the steppingstones, ma would be the space between the stones as well as the time it took to take the step. Ma included both perception and action.

Suddenly, I could see how my intention to create an installation made sense. In Maya Lin’s piece, Wave Field, she had built a continuous series of waves. In my silk piece, I was creating a seascape out of repeated spirals that I intended to lay out in such a way that there were continuous intervals of open space. The option to walk through the piece, to feel the time it took to travel from one open space to the next would be integral to the work. This installation would include the concept of ma, an experience of human movement time in contrast to the fast pace of media.

Excited by my new understanding, I decided to further investigate traditional Japanese aesthetics. I hoped to find more ideas as support for my installation. Certainly, I had grown up in an environment where nature was revered, which I understood to be a core principle of Japanese aesthetics; my art was based on nature so perhaps the way that the Japanese expressed their respect for nature would give depth to and help shape my ideas.

To my surprise, I learned in Donald Richie’s book, A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics, that there was no word in Japanese for aesthetic until the late 1800’s when Hegel’s asthetik needed to be translated (20). The lack of a distinct word could indicate insignificance or just the opposite, as was true in Japan. Simple elegance was integral to every part of Japanese life. Art was not considered separate and, as in the western view derived from Kant, valuable in itself. Art was subjectively experienced in such ways as placement of stones, arrangement with a single stem, exposure of the grain of the wood, or “the perfect judo throw” (31).

It was this stance of subjectivity that further intrigued me. Just as I understood the brush stroke in painting to show individual artistry, so could the placement of each of my silk spirals form distinct shapes and group together to form distinct spaces. Furthermore, individual viewers could participate in the serenity of the ma experience by the rhythm of the spaces created, similar to Maya Lin’s Wave Field. There was the potential for perception and action, much like in a garden.

In fact gardens and art have a deep connection in traditional Japanese aesthetics.

Teiji Itoh traces that history in Space and Illusion in the Japanese Garden. He notes the16th century introduction to Japan of a Chinese book on painting called the “Mustard Seed Planting Manual” which offered instructions for painting rocks, trees and mountains. Whereas western artists learned by painting the nude, Japanese were challenged to paint rocks. The book listed “sixteen techniques for painting groups of rocks, and these, it is interesting to note, are all surprisingly similar to arranging rocks in Japanese gardens” (48). The book highlights the close connection between painters and gardeners in Japan.

This connection dates from the Heian era (794-1105 AD) in Japan when it was not uncommon for “the painter himself (to be) both a garden designer and a leader in the construction of gardens.” Itoh names several of these painters who established well known gardens: Kose no Kanaoka, his great grandson Hirotaka, and the Buddhist priest, En’en (Itoh 49-50). According to Itoh,

(t)hus in the Heian period, when the fundamental style of the traditional Japanese garden was established, the yamato-e painters played an important role in garden making. This fact in itself is clear evidence of the intimate relationship in Japan between the art of painting and the art of garden design. (50)

The value for me in thinking of my installation metaphorically as a garden stems from my high regard for the art behind the traditional Japanese garden. Several of the concepts that informed their design I found useful for thinking about in my installation: the concept of sky or emptiness, the importance of the good view, and the value of the unfixed gaze.

In Japanese writing, sky and emptiness are the same character. Both sky and open spaces were considered empty and integral to the whole. In the garden and in Japanese painting, the composition of the placement of emptiness was the most important (Itoh 51). I see this concept of emptiness directly addressing installation, which, by nature, is apart from the frame and often the wall, and addresses open space itself. Sky is all around. In fact, this concept helped me see the connection, or rather, interconnection between the piece and the space around it; therefore, including openings internally connects it externally.

The second concept I mentioned is called “to command a good view”. In a traditional Japanese garden, the view from the garden was considered a key element in its design (Itoh 18-21). A good view made a garden exceptional; by contrast it was sad when a “garden depended (only) upon it’s own intrinsic beauty and nothing more” (21). I found this idea of a good view of interest because it takes into consideration what is actually in the space beyond the garden or art piece. In the show at Carroll and Sons with the wife who had sculptural clay pieces on pedestals, the “view” included her husbands painting on the wall. The piece I am creating is set against the wall and I am using the scrim against the wall as a backdrop to indicate a sense of vastness. I am considering still how I much I might want to create for the views from other angles.

A third intriguing aspect of traditional Japanese gardens is “the gaze”. European gardens were designed for one point perspective, or a series of them. By contrast, according to Arata Isozaki in his book Japan-ness in Architecture :”the gaze of the Japanese … garden just as consistently refuses the fixation of any axis in space.” (286) The viewer was assumed to be moving. Similarly, in my installation piece, there is no single point for viewing. It can be viewed from any angle for 270 degrees as well as from within. The endless possibilities encourage the viewer to move around.

I have now committed much time to my installation piece. Although it is not a Japanese garden, the guiding principles of that aesthetic have lifted the resistance I once felt to this new (to me) art form. Traditional Japanese aesthetics not only has given me reason to believe in what I am creating and enriched my appreciation for the possibilities of the form, but inspired me to think even further, to include the space beyond the piece itself in my perception of what I create.

Works Cited

Itoh, Teiji. Space and Illusion in the Japanese Garden. New York: Weatherhill/Tankosha. 1973. Print.

Isozaki, Arata. Japan-ness in Architecture. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. 2006.

Kakutani, Michiko. “Texts Without Context”. New York Times 21 March 2010: Arts 1. Print.

Lin, Maya. Systemic Landscapes. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006.

Richie, Donald. A Tractate on Japanese Aesthetics. Berkeley: StoneBridge Press. 2007. Print.

Melanie's flood

2010-04-15T06:31:00.001-07:00

When Melanie was visiting, she noticed the boxes that I used to support my whorls for glueing. She arranged them into a confuguration which I named "Flood" since the flood of dried glue inside each box is distinct. Photos don't do justice to the subtle ways the light plays with the soft greys of the sides of the boxes versus the reflective dark bottoms. Thanks Melanie!

mentor meeting- April 13, 2010

2010-04-13T16:34:00.000-07:00

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.

why hand-dyed silk

2010-04-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

Salley Knight

Professor Hannah Barrett

Research Paper – Group 2

March 2010

Why Hand-dyed Silk?

Why do I use hand-dyed silk in my art? I am not from Asia where it has been used in art for centuries. Nor am I working in fashion, where silk is seen more often. I myself had not even heard of silk as a surface for art until the 1990s.

I first explored hand dyeing in the 1970s, when I worked on cotton. I returned to dyeing again in the 90s because I was frustrated with watercolor: I loved the vibrancy of the color of the wet watercolor paint, but often felt disappointed that it faded once dry. I was looking for intensity of color and I found it in silk dyeing. The appeal of silk over cotton, which I had used in previous dyeing work, was its superior capacity to absorb color. I found I could create a range of colors from vibrant to extremely subtle, fully saturated color to more translucent for layering; the silk itself came as opaque or translucent, which opened up even more options for color interaction.

The possibilities for color alone attracted me to silk. However, I am now discovering another aspect: its sculptural potential. In their article, “Mechanical Properties of Silk,” Krasnor et al report that “silkworm silk has a tensile strength comparable to that of steel. But, unlike steel it is also extremely stretchable ... possessing a toughness with a fracture energy much larger than that of a high-tensile steel.” (Web)It must be this strength that holds my silk rolls dependably standing upright in my first venture into silk sculpture.

The history of silk’s entrance into the fine arts in this country at the end of the last century was due to influences on both the East and West Coast. On the East Coast, the French imports of gorgeous hand-dyed clothing popular in places like Greenwich Village aroused curiosity about how the art on the fabric was created. The French silk at the time was dyed using a resist called gutta to make fine lines. The formula for gutta, a substance firm enough to contain dye but pliable enough to make fine lines in hand dyed silk, had been a closely guarded secret among the family members of the czar of Russia, a secret that they brought with them to Paris when they fled during the Bolshevik Revolution. Gutta was important and so was the dye itself. In the 1950’s, the Maison Sennelier, famous for its paints and extra-soft pastels, created a line of 104 dyes branded Tinfix which continue to be favored by artists today, in spite of recent competition. The combination of the Sennelier dyes and the gutta technique of hand-dying produced the beautiful art that was seen on French imported clothing. Information about this technique gradually became available in this country. One person who taught the techniques in New York City in the early 1980s was a French woman, Klara Gordon. According to Susan Louise Moyer in Silk Painting, The Artist’s Guide to Gutta and Wax Resist Techniques, “Within a year, (of Klara’s workshop) other surface design studios began using silk painting...Professional schools such as Parsons School of Design, the School of Visual Art...hired silk painters to teach...” (13).

Meanwhile, information on traditional dyeing techniques from Japan were introduced to this country primarily through the teachings and writings of John Marshall in California and Betsy Sterling Benjamin in Massachusetts, both of whom spent years living in Japan. John Marshall’s book Salvation Through Soy, Blissful Dyeing for all Eternity, in spite of its humorous title, contains a wealth of information on traditional Japanese dyeing using gojiru, or soy milk. Betsy Sterling Benjamin not only wrote a book called The World of Rozome, Wax Resist Techniques of Japan, but also organized a world conference in 2005 at Massachusetts College of Art where artists from Europe, Africa, Australia, Canada, Brazil, Indonesia, Japan and this country gathered to share information on dyeing and resist methods. It was at this conference that I was able to witness demonstrations of a wide range of dyeing methods and applications. This included the traditional methods of Japanese kimono makers, as well as the more recent modernization of those techniques by Susan Louise Moyer, whose two books on silk painting; Silk Painting, Gutta and Wax Resist Techniques, and Silk Painting for Fashion and Fine Art are the most comprehensive I have encountered on the subject of silk painting.

So, what is my specific process of dyeing? I use the French Sennelier Tinfix dyes with the traditional Japanese method. In preparation, I soak dried soybeans for 8-24 hours before putting them into a blender with added water and grinding them to a pulp; I then squeeze this slurry through a piece of cotton, to obtain fresh soy milk. I use a traditional Japanese brush, a jizomebake, which is a deer hair brush that is made specifically for the purpose of applying soy milk to silk and is far more effective than other brushes: it carries liquid well and the bristles are shaped so that no matter how you hold the brush, there is maximum contact with the silk (Marshall vi). I then leave the silk to dry before applying the dye. The dye can be applied in any of the ways that watercolor paint is applied to paper; the soy acts as sizing which stiffens the silk and creates a resistance to dye spreading. In my most recent work, I have been working large areas of wet on wet, but, in the past, I have done more detailed work with distinct shapes and shading.

Once I have finished dyeing, I allow the silk time to cure, the longer the better, according to John Marshall:

Curing allows the protein in the soymilk time to shrink, biting into the fiber and becoming a permanent part of it. Some Japanese artists allow the soy to cure only a few days. I prefer to cure up to three months. The longer you allow it to cure the higher the quality of your product. (21)

After curing, I steam the silk to set the dye permanently; this involves rolling the pieces of silk, sandwiched between absorbent layers of cotton duck, around a cylinder which is placed inside a tall steamer and steamed for at least 2 hours. Finally, I iron the silk, which becomes again as soft and sensuous as it started before the soy was applied.

In a January, 2010, telephone conversation with John Marshall, I asked him to explain why soy is so crucial to the dye process. Marshall explained the chemistry of traditional Japanese soy milk dyeing to me. Silk is primarily a protein; soymilk is also a protein that is cellulose based. The protein molecule of the soymilk in contact with the porous silk entangles protein with protein into the fiber itself as it dries. When the liquid dye is then added, the soy becomes gelatinous and holds the dye, encapsulating it in a suspension that gives the dye much longer time to penetrate the fiber. This produces rich color and reduces the run-off, or wasted dye that comes out in the steaming process.

What about the substance silk itself? The precise origins of silk are unknown, although, according to Shelagh Vainker in her book Chinese Silk, a Cultural History, she refers to a 7th century BC legend that mentions a princess who smuggles silkworm to her wedding destination (8). In Rajat Datta and Mahesh Nanvaty’s The Global Silk Industry, the authors point to another legend of the fourteen year old queen Hi’s-Ling- Shi of the W’Hang dynasty ( about 2,500 BC) who saw the tiny silk worms grow big eating leaves on her mulberry tree. She watched them make cocoons, which she took into the palace with her. When the moths hatched, she dropped several cocoons into her bath by mistake, and out of these cocoons came “shimmering” threads, the threads that would become woven into silk (17). According to Shelagh Vainker, “Some of the mystery that prompted (these) stories was felt within China…both at the level of rural religious belief and, in a different way, at the highest level of government” (8-9).

For about 3, 000 years China guarded the secret of silk (Datta and Nanvaty- 17) and became known from the third to the ninth centuries for the 6,400 km Silk Road connecting China to the Mediterranean. Even though other countries have since acquired the means of silk production, the pre-eminent supplier of silk continues to be China, which produces four times as much silk as the next closest competitor, India. (Datta and Nanvaty 33)

Chinese silk comes in many weights and textures, both variables which affect dyeing. In my work I use two kinds: a sand washed charmeuse silk which is opaque with one shiny and one matte side, and has a weight of 19.5 mm (short for mommes, the measure of weight for silk). I also use a translucent organza, 5.5 mm. I purchase them in 50 yard bolts from Dharma Trading, a company based in San Rafael, California, which buys directly from China and sells to artists and industry. I love the silk charmeuse because it is thicker and heavier than most silks but still stretches evenly and takes dyes beautifully. When sized with soymilk it provides a strong surface for many different kinds of dye effects. In turn, the organza is sheer, and I can dye it for scrim or layering. It also is stiffer and is key to holding the shapes in my sculptural work.

Because I am using such large amounts of organza for my sculpture, I have modified my dyeing process. In order to dye lengths of it outdoors on sheets of plastic on my driveway, I skip the soymilk preparation and thus forfeit some dye retention. I am compromising absorption of color per yardage for quantity of material dyed. Later I wrap the silk in rolls for my sculpture, which creates compact forms with layers of color so I can still accomplish the depth of color I seek. I continue to use the soymilk process with the charmeuse so that it receives maximal absorption of dye.

Learning about silk and hand dying has been an unusual journey for me in which I have encountered artists from other countries as well as teachers who have spent years assimilating knowledge from around the world. My first reason for exploring silk hand dying remains the primary reason I continue to make art with it: color. With the Sennelier dyes and the thirsty silk, I am able to engage in my passion for creating work rich in color. The fact that silk is also a strong enough fabric to offer sculptural potential gives me even more territory to explore.

Works Cited

Benjamin, Betsy Sterling, The World of Rozome, Wax Resist Techniques of Japan, New York: Kodansha America. 1996. Print.

Datta, Rajat K. and Mahesh Nanavaty, Global Silk Industry. Florida, Universal Publishing. 2005. Print

Krasnov, Igor, Imke Diddens, Nadine Haupman, Gesa Helms, Mal Ogurreck. Tila Seydel, Sergio Funan, and Martin Muller. “Mechanical Properties of Silk: Interplay of Deformation on Macroscopic and Molecular Length Scales”. Hasylab, Research Center of the Helmholtz Association. Hamburg, Germany. 2008. Web. 14 March 2010.

Marshall, John, Salvation Through Soy, Blissful Dyeing for All Eternity, California: Whimsy. 2002. Print.

Marshall, John. Personal Interview. 21 January 2010.

Moyer, Susan Louise. Silk Painting for Fashion and Fine Art. New York: Watson-Guptill. 1995. Print.

Moyer, Susan Louise, Silk Painting, The Artist’s Guide to Gutta and Wax Resist Techniques, New York: Watson-Guptill. 1991. Print.

Vainker, Shelagh, Chinese Silk, a Cultural History, New Jersy: Rutgers University Press. 2004. Print.

2nd roll of silk

2010-03-23T16:33:00.000-07:00

I am now beginning to dye my second 50 yard roll of organza - that is, I've cut the lengths and am waiting for sunshine. The cloth already dyed is now in the final stages: it's been torn, rolled and glued; it will need a few strategic stitches to make sure the rolls stand upright.
I have been reading Maya Lin lately and was particularly intrigued by her idea of "ma": a theory in Japanese aesthetics (architecture, gardening) that applies to space and time: it is the distance between stepping stones (something continuous) and also the time it takes to make the step. I love that there is the consideration of time in there - and that it is human time. I want my "slow" art to invite reflection, and for the space and the movement through it to somehow bring serenity -to include this idea of "ma".
Ideas about how I might achieve this: to have the the rolls of silk on platforms - suggesting levels of water, even the sense of a rising tide or cresting wave; and along side, various colors of scrim, perhaps hung vertically on dowels (one on top an done on bottom) so a length of scrim would read one way frontally and another as it participates in the line of vision of other translucent scrims.
The viewer would walk through and between these areas of water and light.

crit theory paper - Irwin v. Postmoderns

2010-03-16T15:50:00.000-07:00

Salley Knight

Professor Hannah Barrett

Critical Theory Paper- Group 2

February 2010

Theory for My Preferred Art

In the February 14, issue of 2010 of the New York Times, Roberta Smith complains that New York museums are showing a surfeit of “Conceptual, Process, Performance, installation and language-based art that is most associated with the label Post-Minimalism.” As she puts it, “What’s missing is art that seems made by one person out of intense personal necessity, often by hand”(1). She is looking for exactly the kind of art that I love.

In my alignment with Smith, I lack enthusiasm for the writers such as Michael Newman, Rosalind Krauss and Jacques Derrida, who underpin the work of Post-Minimalist artists. For support of my views, I turn to the philosopher, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and the artist, Robert Irwin. In this paper, I will compare the ideas of Newman and Krauss’s of the historical importance of “the mark” (which has been considered a qualification of art) with the ideas of Merleau-Ponty and Robert Irwin. Secondly, I will look at Derrida and Irwin’s views on concept in art.

I find that the writing of Newman and Krauss are of little interest to me. I am minimally drawn to theories on the history of the mark. In turn, I am intrigued by Robert Irwin’s process: his years of Zen-like contemplation and commitment to his art that produced what I consider to be profound insights.

Both Newman and Krauss are interested in the historical significance of the mark. In his essay, “Traces and Marks of Drawing”, Michael Newman investigates one of the earliest stories of art, Pliny’s saga of the woman who traces the shadow of her lover before he departs in order that she might preserve his presence. This trace around the shadow is a mark; it is art. It is art because it refers to the lover. According to Newman, the “(s)hadow becomes the mark of a presence…” (11).

Newman’s interest in the mark’s history has parallels to Krauss’s case for the index when viewing the art of Gordon Matta-Clark and Marcia Halif at P.S. 1 in the 1970s. She wrote in her essay “Notes on the Index” the following: “ As distinct from symbols, indexes establish their meaning along the axis of a physical relationship to their referents. They are the marks…in this category we put physical traces…cast shadows…” (213). Both Newman and Krauss point to the historical significance of the mark in describing how a work is art.

Personally, I am a great appreciator of marks and mark making. I love the sensuality, the personal touch of the mark. The last way I want to view marks is intellectually to the point that they are reduced to sterile symbols, which is the direction I find that Newman and Krauss are headed.

Unlike Newman and Krauss, Robert Irwin does not consider the history of the mark to be the key to understanding a work of art. He is looking at a bigger picture in an attempt to understand what really is the most significant aspect of art, or what it is that affects him most deeply. He argues that the mark itself has actually become less significant to art over time. Jan Butterfield quotes him in her essay, “The State of the Real” as follows: “…modern art has been a step-by-step disassociation and disempowering of the mark”(142). Robert Irwin elaborated on this idea in his October 15, 2009, lecture at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. He said that: starting with the Renaissance when a work of art (an image, comprised of many marks), most likely a portrait of religious importance, could be recognized as valuable across populations and borders. In the progression of art history, as the images became less literal, as the frame became less important, as the means of creating the art became more personal, the mark became less and less universally important. What remains as the expression of art may not include the mark, in the traditional sense at all. “To be an artist is not a matter of making paintings at all. What we are really dealing with is… the shape of our perception.” (qtd, in Butterfield,141).

Irwin is using the word perception in a specific way gleaned from years of contemplating Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy as laid out is The Primacy of Perception. For Irwin, as for Merleau-Ponty, perception is a deeply felt, embodied experience which suggests that all our senses are involved in seeing. According to Merleau-Ponty, “art radiates from the visible” (182):

There is (a connection in) a human body when, between the seeing and the seen, between the touching and the touched, between one eye and the other, between hand and hand,…the spark is lit between the sensing and the sensible, lighting the fire that will not stop burning. ( Merleau-Ponty 163)

Merleau-Ponty’s theories explain the impact that certain pieces art have on me, a matter that Robert Irwin deals with as well. In Lawrence Wechsler’s book, Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, he describes a certain period in Irwin’s life when he was drifting in and out of galleries, checking what was being shown. Every once in a while a piece of art would “cut through the fog.” In giving a word to what set those pieces apart, Irwin used the term “presence” : It was not the imagery, it was about something indescribable that a person sensed or did not sense. In one such instance, he was deeply affected by a small Philip Guston painting, which was much stronger than a larger work by James Brooks. In Irwin’s own words, “Well, that goddamn Guston just blew the Brooks right off the wall….by every overt measure - size, contrast, color intensity - that shouldn’t have happened… a good painting has a gathering (force)…a pure energy build-up…” (qtd in Wechsler, 64).

It was this kind of experience with art that Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy served to help Irwin to understand. There was more at work that the marks, the color, the other art elements. There was something transmitted through the art work that was felt on a bodily level.

This leads to the notion of concept, what the artist had in mind for a piece of art, and where that fits in to the picture. Irwin questions the notion of concepts for art but in a way very different from Jacques Derrida, whose whole philosophy was based on a challenge to the certainty of any concept. I find the words of David Hopkins apt in summing up Derrida: “Derrida’s deconstructive strategies consisted in revealing how the self’s sufficiency (and authority) of many concepts is illusory.” (856)

Robert Irwin challenges the artists relationship to concepts (Butterfield 147) but, unlike Derrida, argues that that they have a function. For Irwin , no concept is real, but he advocates seeing them as tools that are useful for the artist’s intention. (Butterfield 150) The concept can be an idea or a feeling, a starting point. The concept launches the creation of the art; once the art is created, it has been imbued with the energy of the artist which the viewer perceives with his or her eyes and body and, in an effort to communicate a response, formulates concepts of his or her own. (Irwin lecture, 10-15-2009) Even though concepts are not real, Irwin says they have weight and importance in art and to an artist because ”when we hold a concept, the world appears to have an up and a down …(it’s okay that) this is all an illusion.” (qtd. in Butterfield 150)

I also believe that concepts have a place. I love the concepts put forth by Merleau-Ponty: that art involves all the senses, that we cannot separate ourselves from our whole bodily perception, and Irwin’s idea that art is a means of expanding that perception. I think that Irwin’s reaction to the Guston painting rose out of the intensity and clarity of Guston’s connection to his concept while creating his painting, a phenomenon that Irwin could sense later in his gut response to the piece.

It was refreshing for me to read Roberta Smith’s New York Times piece. It confirmed for me that others also have grown disaffected by excessive concentration on the art that came out of the intellectual writings of theorists such as Newman, Krauss and Derrida. I was already a follower of Merleau-Ponty’s philosophy, and felt fortunate to hear Irwin in person at the MFA articulate theories that further resonated with me. I agree with Irwin’s statement that his, “work has never been about abstraction, it has been about experience” (qtd in Wechsler 66). Experience, deeply felt experience is my goal, as well, and the reason that I enjoy and create art.

Works Cited

Butterfield, Jan. “The State of the Real” and “Re-Shaping the Shape of Things”. Art Theory and Criticism, An Anthology of Formalist, Avant-Garde, Contextualist and Post-Modern Thought, Ed. Sally Everett. London: McFarland and Company, 1991.139-153. Print.

Hopkins, David. After Modern Art, 1945-2000. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2000. Print.
Irwin, Robert. “The Nature of Abstraction”, Boston Museum of Fine Arts, 15 Oct. 2009. Lecture.

Krauss, Rosalind, “Notes on the Index”, Originality of the Avant-Garde and Other Modernist Myths. Cambridge, MA, MIT Press, 1985. Print.
Merleau-Ponty, Maurice. Primacy of Perception: And Other Essays on Phenomenological Psychology, the Philosophy of Art, History and Politics. Chicago: Northwestern University Press, 1964. Print.
Newman, Michael. “The Traces and Marks of Drawing”, The Stage of Drawing: Gesture and Act, London, Tate Publishing, 2003. Print.
Smith, Roberta. “Post-Minimal to the Max”, New York Times, 14 Feb 2010, Arts and Leisure 1 and 23. Print.
Wechsler, Lawrence. Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees, Berkeley, University of California Press, 2008. Print.

March 12, 2010

2010-03-12T12:58:00.000-08:00

I am not sure why I need to have some kind of a structure before I proceed, because I don't necessarily keep that same structure once I create the piece: however, it took me lots of drawing and thinking to understand how to build on my so-called "ocean". If I built forward, the scrims would soon lose translucency through to the backdrop (like water color that gets muddy). Plus, that first piece was the beginning and I wanted the journey to go forward from that, not end there. So, I now have an idea of a 3 piece work, and I am working on the next 2 parts simultaneously. Since so much depends on color, if I can get that to work effectively, then I can expand each area.
I have been dyeing for the 3rd area using the longer process with soy milk since I am using the sueded silk, along with organza, for that area- and the solid silk needs the soy to really hold the color. That dyeing process is much longer and requires quite a bit of set-up. Just today, I also dyed some larger pieces (see photo) for the middle section.

Roni Horn at ICA - 3/11/10

2010-03-11T16:34:00.000-08:00

I was surprised by how much I enjoyed the Roni Horn exhibit. I hadn't expected to be so drawn in to her photos of water - their minimal color made them seem even more sensuous. I am not sure I liked the lengthy writing mounted at the base of each one - the distant views were more compelling. Afterwards, though, I thought the writing did add to the work: that it provided a conversation on top of my own reaction, and the words dropped away as I stepped back, so they were easily ignored. I loved the many levels the work could be appreciated - each piece was strong on its own, and then could be played off against so many similar pieces, especially the photos of the face as weather, and the large photos of water. Each room in itself felt like another body of water with individual works easily flowing into one another. I thought of how I intend to use cumulative effect in my work - and it was inspiring to see it done well.

NYC, March 5-6

2010-03-07T10:07:00.000-08:00

I saw an amazing amount of inspiring art on my trip to NYC. On May 5th , I went to see the Art Dealers Association " the Art Show" at the Park Ave. Armory. The first booth was Marion Goodman showing William Kentridge sculpture. I saw a lot of Kentridge at MOMA on Saturday, but not these gorgeous horses that he does so loosely. I am particular about "the horse" and I've never seen it done so much to my liking. There was a lot to see at the Art Show: so many originals by current and past great artists. I found a small Fairfield Porter - just a closeup of meadow with flowers: yellow green with small swipes of orange and pink - looked like it had been done in one sitting. I loved it. I saw a recent Chuck Close and understood why R. brings his name up when looking at my work. There was a breathtaking Frankenthaler, some odd silk and wax flowers, a great Guston, gorgeous Picabia, so much to take in. It was a luxury to have so many top galleries all gathered under one roof. It also was presented in a way that was more captivating than at MOMA the next day, where many of the same artists have work.
On Saturday, The first museum I visited was MOMA to see the William Kentridge exhibit. By fluke, I entered the room with the music and videos for the Met Opera, the Nose ( his most recent work) first. I was enthralled - by the fun, the captivating ongoing assembling or dissassembling, the simultaneity of videos, the ways in which he made his methods so obvious and yet that only added to the magic, the Soviet (I think) music accompaniment. The next room was his work on the Magic Flute - it was equally amazing, and it all took place on one stage - his range of materials and his use of stage effect was impressive. His earlier video works on apartheid and his voluminous quantity of drawings probably would have satisfied me; next to the rooms with the Magic Flute and The Nose, they were only build-up to those over the top productions.
I also saw Ernesto Neto's work in fabric at MOMA. It was fun. As I wondered through the other rooms, I encountered a VW bus expanded with sewn together recycled fabrics, but I missed the name of the artist (a name I didn't recognize).
My next visit was to the Whitney Biennial. It did nothing for me. I wandered through the show, waiting to find something that I felt positive about - not the large fabric hanging with images of smoke, not the ambulance that needed a wall explanation, not the videos that seemed one-liner, not the flowers. I liked the sumi ink drawings, I also liked the newspaper covered couch and the photos behind it. But I felt lukewarm, not thrilled.
I finished my day with a visit to the Guggenheim. The long wait to get in was worth it. Even though I had read about Tino Sehgal's piece, I was engaged. I thought the slow-motion coupling in a public space was just beautiful sculpture. On the ramp, I was greeted first by a boy, maybe 9 years old, then handed off to a girl maybe 15, then a guy maybe 26, and finally a man in his late 50's, maybe. The boy asked what I thought of "progress", and the sequential conversations as I ascended the ramp were seemingly on the same theme, but introduced more personally with each successive person. It was an intriguing sequence, and I left in a buoyant mood - I think because of the exchange of ideas - so instead of an interaction with a visual object, I was affected instead by individuals.
Finally, I enjoyed Anish Kapoor's "memory" , the huge cor ten steel structure that can be seen whole, in part, or just the inside ( totally black, almost as if painted, it's so dark).
After all was said and done, I will be absorbing this NYC visit for a time. The theatricality of Kentridge's work really caught my fancy, the simplicity of his means and the clarity of his message - all impressed me beyond all expectations. And the fact that it was so enjoyable!

Meeting with RPW

2010-03-03T08:22:00.000-08:00

On Tuesday, March 2, I met with R. in the SMFA atrium.
R. was particularly drawn to the piece above (the 2 photos were taken on her iphone, which captured the color better than my camera has, perhaps thanks to the location lighting). She liked what I had considered a temporary set-up,in particular the frame, since that is the tool I use for dyeing. I had thought I would have another "cleaner" frame made, but she argued that this added to the piece because it was carried the history of the process(my words). She loved the color effects I was able to achieve and encouraged me to continue this piece, being mindful of the "front row" of colors- to finess their support, so they stand on their own v. in boxes. R. was less drawn to the 2 large silk mache 1/2 balls I brought in: she implied that they evoked female vessel which is overdone. I showed the ingredients for a wall piece: many hand-sized 1/2 balls and grey silk and organza strips and boxes. At this point, R. pointed out to me that I seem to love arranging - and to check out Orozco at MOMA while I was there. She inquired about the ideas behind my work and suggested I keep a word list of what occurs to me while I'm working. I told her that I always felt the early morning rides, from darkness to grey early morning light to color informed all my pieces - and she indicated that this was even more reason to focus on this piece that seems to convey that most clearly. She recommended 2 books: Chromophobia (which I need to re-read) and The Poetics of Space, by Bachelard. Finally I told her about the woman I work most closely with in terms of silk dying itself, and how she (Susan) keeps careful records of her work; R. encouraged me to do the same: to make a book specifically about the process - each color I dye (with samples) that can accompany my work ( but done purposefully, not as art). It was an excellent meeting - the input was just what I needed, although I am now intend to focus on the work that is clearly the most labor intensive. But I agree that it is the richest and has potential to go much further.

2010-03-03T08:14:00.001-08:00

refinement

2010-02-23T16:31:00.000-08:00

I added a backdrop of scrim (the black scrim is still in place behind the first row of boxes), dyed a very pale green fading to blue at the base. The piece now looks even more mysterious, which I love. I started out thinking I was making an ocean. Now it looks more armageddon-ish. I want to call it " the huddled masses". It feels somber.

scrim

2010-02-21T17:05:00.001-08:00

This past week I attempted to find a short cut for putting together my ocean - it failed miserably. I also attempted to silk- mache a larger piece, which was also unsuccessful. I did sew more boxes, dye more cloth and expanded the blue whorls further. And then I began to experiment with using a scrim, dyed black. At first I placed it over the "water". In certain light it was gorgeous and shimmered like a wet surface. Just tonight, I stretched the organza in front of most of the ocean - and it looked so mysterious.

progress

2010-02-11T15:13:00.001-08:00

I've spent a good deal of my time lately researching for my crit theory paper. In the studio, I began to make these "silk-mache" half balls (about tennis ball size) - I was thinking about Hannah's idea of using rabbit skin glue to stiffen the silk, but am actually using a Golden product: GAC 400 that is specifically made to stiffen fabric. The stiff silk is kind of translucent still, which I love. When I put a few of the half balls together, they reminded me of poppies. So, today I dyed more shades of red to multiply my numbers of poppies. I also dyed more expanses of blue yesterday to keep expanding my "ocean". It is quite a bit larger than before (compare to photo on previous blog)- on the way to what I hope is much larger. The sewing takes a lot of time, but I have thought of a way to build the support boxes more efficiently. I'll report back on that.

whorls begin to multipy

2010-02-01T17:07:00.000-08:00

As of February 1, 2010

first meeting with R.W.P.

2010-01-31T12:26:00.000-08:00

On Thursday, January 28 I met at Peet's in Lexington with R. for our first mentor meeting.
I brought "samples" of my work from the residency, which I had already begun to pull apart with the idea that I would combine them for a larger piece. I shared with her some of the story behind my art - how I reached the point of working in the way I do now. She gave me the name of 3 artists: Lisa Hoke, Devorah Sperber, and Yayoi Kusama (the last I'd already referenced). The first 2 are intriguing. I realize as I briefly glance at an artist's work on the web, that I may miss a lot. However, there are really just a few artists that I seek out time and again. I could see why these 3 are worth looking at; meantime, in my own reaching, I keep going back to Jessica Stockholder for color and the way she carries the color from surface to surface - which I love . I mentioned that to R. and we talked about how I might accomplish that in my work: I could dip the tops of the rolls of silk in paint ( I may or may not like the effect of the color sitting on the fabric v. absorbed into), I could dip the rolls in dye, or I could use contrasting colored thread.
When I discussed possible "landscapes" the art might take, R. cautioned me against deciding at this point. I will leave it more open and see where the work takes me. The question:
"What would happen if?" is the guide.
This week I already dyed more than 11 yards of cloth. I shared with R. the process of dying and my discussions with John Marshall, who is perhaps the artist most responsible for sharing these Japanese dyeing techniques in the US, and who lives in CA, about how the dye is going to work in these frigid January conditions ( the dyes make unusual patterns as it freezes and sets).
I will meet with R.again on March 2. Meantime, I plan to expand the work much further.

January 2010 residency summary

2010-01-25T09:44:00.000-08:00

Salley Knight

Professor Hannah Barrett

AIB Group 2

January, 2010

Summary – Residency January 2010

The feel of the work:

1. Laurel: try to find ways to transcend the identity of the material

2. Hannah: You are working abstractly, pulling between painting and sculpture. Need to look for ways to get maximal punch for minimal effort.

3. Debb Todd Wheeler: more, make more of the delicious silk with repetition and accumulation.

4. Jan: loved the looseness of the work – what she called “the chaotic dimension”, the fact that pieces were not sewn down “so it can be played with and manipulated.”

5. Anne Baumgartner: she and I discussed how we love the quality she calls “incidental” and I call “not put,” meaning that the work carries the feeling of a leaf landing there – not placed.

Color

1. Konstanze: too decorative, go ugly

2. Laurel: Your color has become much more sophisticated- which is exciting to see. Look at Jessica Stockholder.

3. Hannah: work in unorthodox ways, go too pretty (“cloying”) and then way other way

4. Debb Todd Wheeler: Your work is about the intersection of color, transparency and light. Do much more of it.

Scale

1. Michael Newman : Do animation.

2. Hannah: Scale up= how to show off the work.

3. Laurel : You tend to work small. Find ways to expand – to the wall, etc.

4. Debb Todd Wheeler : Make your work human size or larger.

Technical

1. Michael Newman : Use a light box.

2. Jeff Eberling: Use a tent.

3. Laurel: Use polystyrofoam or chicken wire to put work on wall.

Use salt to show off pieces on the floor.

4. Debb Todd Wheeler : No salt, use the silk shreds as “salt”. Use plexiglass over or as containers – as Do Ho Suh has done.

5. Hannah: Keep it really simple. Use a sketchbook to show how I arrive at a solution ( important). Pay attention to images and emotional aspects as they come to mind.

6. Jan: No plexiglass with silk! Use the silk itself – these boxes – as containers. Silk is strong and soft. Don’t introduce a hard surface.

Connections

1. Konstanze: Roseanne Trockel, Iza Genzken, and Anette Messagere.

All are ardent feminists. Although they do use cloth in their work, I didn’t like the work. Messagere’s was closest, but very dark.

2. Laurel: Jessica Stockholder, P.S. 1 – I love both, both rich.

3. Debb Todd Wheeler: Nava Lubinsky – I don’t care for even though I see the similarity. Lucas Samaras – some of his work is intriguing. Do Ho Suh – very interesting since he is working with silk in ways similar to what I’m doing.

4. Jeff Meeuwsen: showed the work of a Korean artist Bel Lelei (who is not yet on Google) but she burns holes in organza, which I have done in the past and was glad to remember that I liked the effect.

5. Jan Avgikos: Maya Linn and Alan Kaprow (to understand why to leave my work loose).

6. Hannah: Yes to looking at Robert Irwin. Also: the Gail Fitzgerald show at Carroll and Sons Gallery which illuminated how simplicity can be powerful – and that touch and color are enough. (well almost enough – what with the columns she was referencing using the Styrofoam coolers).

7. Anne Baumgartner: Joe Fyfe – a painter who uses dyed cloth in some of his work. I liked his work.

Possible directions:

I care a lot about the feel of the work – the “incidental” nature. I intend to work larger, more expansively, and I will start with using just silk, as Jan suggested. Since I will also be exploring levels, I may need to use plexiglass or wire as support , too. I will be thinking about how to work with the light, transparency and color and to keep trying to understand those aspects in more sophisticated ways. I’ll reference Jessica Stockholder, Robert Irwin, Josef Albers and Joe Fyfe . Mainly I will focus on Maya Linn – her systemic landscapes- and Do Ho Suh- for his use of organza.

snow journey

2010-01-03T15:54:00.000-08:00

It's January, 2010.
We had a big snowstorm last night that left beautiful powdery snow.
I took my tiny haiku of road and fields outside.
Julia had recommended this idea of exploring new settings earlier~

recent pieces

2009-12-08T18:10:00.001-08:00

~ Road, Fields, Mountain

~Mountain at Dawn

~ Fall, Winter Spring or Fall, Sprinter, Wing

~The Dark I Carried with Me

2009-12-08T18:03:00.000-08:00

ARTIST MENTOR FINAL REPORT
Fall 2009: Due December 11, 2009

Student: Salley Knight
Mentor: Heidi Whitman
Faculty Advisor: Julia Scher

Salley Knight finished the semester as a very promising student and artist. Salley continued to explore ideas and materials fearlessly, and found new artists to learn from and emulate. She wrote insightful papers and went to see exhibitions. She is just where she should be as a beginning grad student.

Salley is passionate about color and transparent materials - specifically her hand dyed silk. Salley did some work using Jessica Stockholder materials- plastics etc, but she then veered away from those materials. She is a colorist whose interests are rooted in nature and light. Salley’s most recent work has involved whorls of colored silk. She is working hard on how best to present and format these whorls.

One of Salley’s strongest works is a floor piece that involves circles, rectangles, transparent scrim boxes, and silk. She is deftly using grays as a foil for her reds, yellows, and oranges. She is using some element of chance and spontaneity in this work. Salley is trying to remain as experimental and open as possible.

Embroidery is another aspect of Salley’s work. She has done several embroidered drawings on dyed silk of children in school lines and of cows. They are quite wonderful especially when layered over each other. This work may or may not connect with the other “whorl” work.

Maya Lin’s systems and connection to nature are of interest to Salley. She admires Richard Tuttle’s arrangements and use of materials. Salley responds to Stockholder’s color. As Salley progresses through the AIB program I’m sure she will continue to learn from other artists. Continuing to write about concepts would be especially important for Salley. I hope that Salley can be increasingly specific and clear in her thinking and writing.

I’d like to see Salley continue on with the same degree of involvement she has had this fall. I do have one strong suggestion. I think that clearing out her studio further would be conducive to clarity in the work. I’d like her to put up a couple of homosote walls. Eventually I think Salley should get a studio in an artists’ building. I’d like her to connect with more students and artists to share ideas and give support and encouragement. I hope that the January sessions at AIB might be a way for Salley to meet more artists. I’d also recommend that Salley start making regular trips to New York to see work as well as continuing with her research on the web.

Salley has had a very strong and courageous first semester.

2009-12-08T11:59:00.001-08:00

Summary- Fall 09
Professor Julia Scher
Salley Knight
SUMMARY

If I could put one word on this semester it’s been “exploration”: of materials, of my vision, and of my inspiration. I created works inspired by Jessica Stockholder, Richard Tuttle, and Anna Torma. I explored ideas about my eyesight, line and embroidery, and ways to bring more dimension to my work by creating silk cubes and whorls.
At the beginning of December I felt lost. I had gone so far into my explorations that I had lost my bearings. I related to Bruce Nauman’s experience in art school of feeling like a bouncing ball. Where am I? What questions am I pursuing in this visual medium called art?
After all is said and done, I seem to be still dealing with the question that I came to Lesley with, only now slightly reframed: what is it to love the land? Is it about my memory of the light? Is it about the feeling of the earth beneath my feet (or the horse’s feet) in climbing or descending? Is it the expanse of space, the light, the warmth of the air from on high versus the cool, closed, narrow valley? Is it in contrast to the world of people/schools/order? These are the questions I have just begun to address.
The artist that I found whose work comes closest to addressing some of these ideas is Maya Lin. In Maya Lin’s book Systemic Landscapes, Richard Andrews writes:
Lin’s …works explore how our understanding of landscape is framed by our personal experience with the natural world. Such knowledge is, of necessity, fragmentary, based on relationships to particular landscapes, and leads us to recognize that we can very fully understand nature, in much the same way that we cannot completely comprehend consciousness, because we exist within it (62).
In his book Space and Place: the Perspectives of Experience , the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan suggests that the full range of feeling and thought are included in the experience of land:
Experience (of the outside world) is compounded of feeling and thought. Human feeling is not a succession of discrete sensations: rather memory and anticipation are able to wield sensory impacts into a shifting stream of experience so that we speak of a life of feeling as we do of a life of thought…both are ways of knowing (10).
What particularly intrigues me about Maya Lin is how she has systematized the landscape. In particular, her 2006 work Blue Lake Pass (Lin, 28-32) not only feels familiar to me but offers me a model that I might be able to translate into silk. I had attempted to do just that in a few pieces going into AIB. It was frustrating because I had been dependent on the frame as support for the loose cloth.
However, this fall I found ways for the silk to self-support: with sewn boxes and whorls (spirals). I now have the means to convey sections of landscape by placing the whorls inside the boxes. Furthermore, I have the color of the silk to convey the way the light affects the land. I see a lot of possibilities with this: that I can expand the 3D further with hidden structures under the silk, that I can work in a range of sizes, that I can be as simple or complex as I want, that I can be very structural or lean in the direction of feeling.

Works cited

Lin, Maya, Systemic Landscapes, Seattle: Henry Art Gallery, 2006. Print.

Yi-Fu Tuan, Space and Place: the Perspectives of Experience (Minneapolis University of Minnesota Press), 1977. Print.

wings

2009-11-19T10:39:00.000-08:00

Okay, what an interesting time it's been. A number of ideas relating to vision and art are just coming to the fore for me. They were precipitated by a Tim Crouch theatre event at the Boston ICA. He performed a piece in an art gallery, and the subtext was about what we see- or don't see- and the expectations we have about art and the value we attach to it. What I most enjoyed was that he would describe a visual setting or event not directly related to the piece of art he was standing next to - and he constantly asked you to "look". So I got the image of the art and then the image he was emotionally responding to - and BOTH were real. From there I began to think of images that seem very real to me that are never based on anything seen - such as an angel's wing. This related to a dream I had had about flying. I thought, why not make this dream image concrete? Later, I thought, why not make it less concrete - therefore more real? The photos show incomplete ideas - both pieces are in progress.

whorls

2009-11-12T15:06:00.000-08:00

Over the last weeks I have been dying lots of cloth to make many whorls. I use the very soft sueded silk and roll it with the stiffer organza so it stands more upright.
I was specifically looking for how the grey worked to enhance the other colors - and also the richness of the darks working against the lights.
Unfortunately my camera is quite inaccurate in capturing the subtleness of the colors.
Last night I was really excited by a discussion at the Boston Architectural College on the Meaning of Place. I was particularly impressed by Mikyoung Kim who has done outdoor work using water and stone in "resculpting" a river that runs through Seoul. Afterwards, I began to see my work as landscape - or in a landscape. The last piece, I am using the reflective material both as some form of metal (the vertical shape) and water (the horizontal). I think of the whorls as sculptural pieces that might blow or spin in the wind.

October 28 and paper

2009-10-28T12:03:00.000-07:00

I just had a terrific session with Heidi.
I showed her my work which, sadly, does not translate well to photography (above)

She remarked on how this work felt like I was onto something- that she has that sense because she can look at my oldest work that I have in my studio - watercolors from 15 (more?) years ago - and can see this work is directly related.

It felt very right. I'm working with my silk, with rich colors and it has an element of fun and unpredictability. I'm going to expand all this~

I am also posting here my paper, which was about how I see and how that plays into my art:

Salley Knight

Professor Julia Scher

Personal Essay – Group 1

October 2009

Personal Vision

How did I see the world in the first years of my life? How does that bear on the art I do now? Those questions have been with me for years. I had a story about my eyes: I was born with poor muscular control of my eyes and therefore my sight was blurry. I had a condition called strabismus. My eyes wandered inward and outward. I do not remember what that was like for me. What I do remember is the startling clarity of my first scene after the corrective operation: boats on the Charles River. The sharpness of that image stood out for me, so I assumed that my earlier vision must have been blurry.

When I searched “strabismus” I found a scientific description of the condition. A.D.A.M. defines strabismus as “…a disorder in which the eyes do not line up in the same direction when focusing. Strabismus is caused by a lack of coordination between the eyes. As a result, the eyes look in different directions and do not focus at the same time on a single point…. the cause is unknown…”

I also found a lead to a recent book, Fixing My Gaze, by Susan Barry, a neurobiologist who, like me, had been diagnosed with childhood strabismus. I related to her experience when she discovered at age 20 that she did not have stereovision or stereopsis, the ability to see out of both eyes at once. Similarly, I had no idea that I had only limited ability to see 3D until age 45, when my son was tested and I could see 3D only the first few sets on the test card. I was told then that the ability to see 3D was related to eye-brain development, learned in a child’s first 5 or 7 years, and that after that critical period, the brain was set. I was now fascinated to read that Susan Barry, as a neurobiologist, chose to investigate that idea, and at age 48, after intensive vision therapy, her brain had responded and she was startled by her first experiences of 3D vision.

Through Susan Barry’s explanations of how the eye and brain work together and descriptions of her experience, I came to realize that the story I had told myself about my early years was inaccurate. Instead of seeing blurry images, which is what I see when I cross my eyes now, I then saw flat images. Barry writes about what happens with strabismus:

Since my eyes were not straight and saw different things, the binocular neurons in my brain received conflicting input. This situation set up a competition between my two eyes, and for each neuron, one or the other eye won out. Each neuron in my brain now responded to input from only one eye. This change most likely happened in the first year of my life…(11)

In my early years my world must have appeared flat. It would not have felt strange because I never knew a different way of seeing. However, it did shape my experiences. It was more difficult to be among a group of unpredictably fast moving classmates. So, as a small child, I remember I would separate myself out in the pandemonium of recess. I could not figure out how to join the fast, furious play. It felt more comfortable to watch. I became a witness: they were on one plane while I was on another. I remember as a small child when the teacher asked me why I was not playing; I did not know at the time but now it all makes sense. I was soothed to read that Susan Barry reported the same feeling as a child: that she was in a separate world, watching.

So, did I not experience 3D at all? I did not have stereovision. However, I could judge where something was relative to something else by shadows or obstruction of view; and I could sense distance as I moved through it. As I grew older, recess activity turned to organized games and I could easily join with the help of structure. With the focus on the ball, players moved in relationship to it: I could judge distances and understand the space.

I lacked stereovision – without realizing it, I was only seeing the world as flat. How did I understand a 3D world? I was fascinated to realize that this same dilemma is part of artists’ challenges as well. In her book, Vision and Art, the Biology of Seeing, Margaret Livingstone describes how artists, in particular painters, attempted to achieve 3D effects.

Livingstone points out that perhaps the first person to make note of this issue was Leonardo Da Vinci who she quotes:

It is impossible that a painting, even in which the outlines, shade, light, and color are copied to the highest perfection, can appear with the same relief as a real object in nature, unless this natural object is looked at over a long distance and with a single eye (140).

For a period of time in the18th and 19^th centuries, viewers were asked to look through a small hole in a curtain to view paintings in order to achieve the 3D effect in this way (140).

Livingstone credits the Impressionists with discovering another way to suggest depth: blurriness. By avoiding sharp lines of contrast, the two separate eyes do not have the same clear edges to focus on and to interpret flatness of the painting surface. Due to the fact that the painting itself does not read as flat, the other indicators such as shading and perspective feel stronger (143).

According to Livingstone, the Impressionists and post-Impressionists also found another means of suggesting 3D. By using repetition, such as of leaves for foliage, tiny dots for atmosphere, they could fool the eyes. Repetition over a large area meant that one eye could not settle and choose one image to match with the other eye. Livingstone explains it in this way:

When we view a three-dimensional scene, objects in front or behind the plane of fixation cast images on non-corresponding points of the two retinas. The brain must decide which images in the right retina …(to) match with images in the left. Usually the brain is correct in settling on the most parsimonious explanation. Repeated patterns, however, …confuse the matching process, since the several explanations may be equally valid, and this creates an illusion of depth (146).

What fascinates me about these three artistic means for creating depth that Livingstone mentions is that they all are vividly part of my experience. Long distance viewing – perhaps least important to my art- has always come easily to me. However, my attraction to blurriness has been a strong characteristic of my work. For example, in the body of work I created to submit to AIB, I used layers of translucent silk but I never cut the edges because the shredded edges gave a soft line- a blur. The numerous lines and edges, even the tiniest pieces of color all had to have these blurry edges. The pieces of dried plant were often obscured by the silk that softened their outline, and the application of paint on the frames was loose and blended. Moreover, repetition was apparent throughout this work. I tended to invoke a loose reference to the grid, using many smaller squares. Plant material comes in with lines or spirals one after another. I noticed that the motif of repetition came up, but I wasn’t sure why. It makes sense now – that I was seeking visual dimension that was otherwise missing for me. Recently, I created embroideries of various images of lines of children, which seemed to be an abrupt departure from my previous abstract work. What I loved about the finished images was the information available from the very blurry line, and that there were repeated images, with slight variations. I had wondered about those pieces after they were done. Why was I doing illustration? In fact, I believe, I was exploring the themes that have attracted me over and over again- the blur, the repetition.

Furthermore, I now see why certain other artists intrigue me. I refer to Jessica Stockholder, who claims that she works in 2D that happens to be 3D ( qtd. in Carruthers, et al, 17-18) and to Richard Tuttle, whose 20 Floor Drawings in Amsterdam, 1988 (ICA Amsterdam, 8-48)) look like sculptures. Both of these artists are playing with the interplay between 2D and 3D in a way that I relate to intuitively.

When I set out to write this paper, I expected I would be describing my experience of blurriness in early childhood and how that recurs in my work. I had not realized that I didn’t see blurs as a child, but that I was living in a 2D world. Nor did I realize how that has informed my work ever since – that the shifts in my vision that have affected me so profoundly continue to be a driving force in my understanding the art that attracts me and the art I endeavor to create.

Works Cited

A.D.A.M., Strabismus: Overview, Treatment, Symptoms, Causes. Google Health, Google.com /health, n.d., Web. 15 October 2009.

Barry, Susan, Fixing My Gaze: A Scientists’ Journey into Seeing in Three Dimensions, New York: Perseus: 2009, Print.

Booth, Jenny, Susan Barry, ww.week.com, n.d. Web. 15 October 2009

Carruthers, Elspeth, et al, Jessica Stockholder: Kissing the Wall, Houston: Blaffer Gallery, 2004, Print.

ICA /Amsterdam, Richard Tuttle, The Hague: Sdu Publishers, 1991, Print.

Livingstone, Margaret, Vision and Art: the biology of seeing, New York:

Harry N. Abrams, 2002, Print.

2009-10-23T11:16:00.000-07:00

I heard Bill Irwin speak last Thursday and Janet Echelman this Wednesday. Irwin was brilliant and spoke to the question of what is art? That it is the task of each generation to answer for themselves... and then went on to describe his definition: artist is first in relationship to all that is/the endless possibility. He/she asks his/her question and has the job then of finding the tools, the means to create a response. This then gets shared with others - artists, then general public - then culture - finally, history. But all are present all the time, inseparable: possibility, artist, culture and history. Janet Echelman was less verbal. However her work was impressive: huge sky born sculpture. She began as a textile artist, so it was of particular interest to me - that she has found a way to work so large and outdoors, too.
The photos are of my tiny work. In my mind I am exploring ideas that I might make large. I also am exploring color and ways that the silk self-supports. In the first 2, I am playing the red and yellows against the varying greys.

morphing of the cubes

2009-10-14T13:09:00.000-07:00

Just playing - adding, squishing, grouping.

cubes

2009-10-13T16:52:00.000-07:00

I spent the last while dying silk in shades of gray. I wanted to have the grey as contrast to my saturated colors of previously dyed silks that I have on hand. However, the grey itself attracted me. I wanted to see how I could filter it through the gauze, so I used red embroidery thread to sew cubes with one side solid grey silk and the other sides undyed organza . However, once the cubes were complete, the shades of grey were so muted that they were tough to differentiate. Therefore I decided to remove the "lid", at which point the greys seemed to shine. The silk puffed up in a soft way that seemed to add to its allure, especially as it played off the relatively stiff sides of the boxes.

2009-09-30T13:50:00.001-07:00

Salley Knight
Professor Julia Scher
Comparison of 2 pieces of art – Group 1
October, 2009

Comparing Richard Tuttle’s The Last Light Work”
to Jessica Stockholder’s Untitled, (1993)

I am keenly interested in two artists: Richard Tuttle and Jessica Stockholder. For the purposes of this paper, I chose to compare a work by each artist that was created in the early 90s. Specifically, I am interested in how they address the issue of “frame”. Neither artist uses a frame in these pieces, but the idea is present.
Richard Tuttle’s piece, The Last Light Work (Grynsztejn 308) is actually mounted on the wall, which is not true for all his work. It is also hung at viewing level, which he also plays with in other pieces. In fact the main body of this piece is a rectangular piece of plywood attached to the wall. This 20 x 30 inch piece of red painted wood even has narrow strips of bare plywood along the top and bottom of the rectangular base, as well as another strip attached vertically about 2 inches in along the left border – all echoing the stance of a framed piece.
From there, the nod to tradition ends. On the front of the plywood base is attached another red painted rectangle made of cardboard shaped to form regular sections, then sliced in strips. This other red rectangle is mounted askew – so that its corners protrude to either side of the formally hung base. Furthermore, a wire from the twinkling Christmas lights, loosely draped beneath the top strip of bare plywood, extends down to a socket – into which there are two bright narrow 5 inch white lights mounted side by side. They are parallel, but one is distinctly higher than the other. It feels like Tuttle is echoing the traditional by placing them both upright, and then upsetting it again by their uneven horizontal relationship.
Jessica Stockholder’s unnamed piece, created in 1993 (Carruthers 49), is composed of a simple square white plastic sink basin mounted vertically on aluminum tubing. It’s as if she were displaying a painting – very upright. In fact, she does treat the piece as a painting – adding a yellow square of color onto the left of the sink. The yellow might even be a play on the idea of light that is emitted by a small light fixture sitting on the bottom edge of the sink. The yellow paint adjoins a beautiful fleshy pink that runs along the left rim of the sink, then onto the aluminum pole and outward onto an upright wooden board and a toolbox mounted sideways onto the pole. At the base of the piece is a coil of orange extension cord, mirroring the color of the toolbox. This cord connects to a black wire which rises up to the toolbox where the color black is painted across the left side of the toolbox, meeting the fleshy pink, but leaving the orange to show on the rough edges above and below. To offset the soft pink area, the front aluminum pole is painted a distinct basic blue, echoed in the wooden board behind it.
Both Tuttle and Stockholder use every day materials in their work. Tuttle’s materials could have all come from a hardware store. In this piece, Stockholder’s could have as well. Therefore, “the white cube” of the gallery, the exhibition space, also defines the work as art and “frames” it in the gallery setting by separating the works from structures for which that these materials might otherwise be used.
Jessica Stockholder (qtd. in Carruthers, et al) says,” My work assumes a white cube…” (11), while Madeleine Grynsztejn writes about Tuttle, “ the architectural container…provide(s) a “frame” and pivotal counterpoint to the works themselves.” (43)
However, each artist considers his or her idea of frame from a unique vantage point. In his piece, Tuttle uses geometry to violate the boundaries of the frame. Stockholder uses color to create pieces of pictorial formality that stand complete as if framed.
Tuttle rose to fame in the 1970s when Grynsztejn reports that many artists began to question the use of the frame (43). Among Tuttle’s first pieces were large shaped pieces of cloth that he pinned to the wall? Over the years, he has hung works near the floor, placed them apart from the wall, created them on the wall, and even re-introduced the frame, and then gone on to play with where and how the frame interacts with other parts of the piece. What Tuttle is doing in his work is questioning the dominance of how the audience sees art because of Renaissance easel painting. Grynsztejn describes it thus:
So successful was this vehicle (the Renaissance easel painting) as a form of making the world understandable…that Western culture has adapted the flat picture plane as a visual tool for all manner of…intellectual cognition, from the view out the car window …to the way we structure our inner consciousness…It is Tuttle’s ambition to create works that confound inherited ideas about what constitutes a picture plane… and to undermine its primacy (59).
In his piece, The Last Light Work, I sense that Tuttle does suggest a frame by his use of thin border strips of plywood, but the “painting” (cardboard rectangle) ignores its parameters. The lights, which in the earlier part of the last century would have been mounted to shine on the painting, are in the piece itself as well as wandering far afield, to add their own artistic statement below the attached plywood and cardboard. Tuttle comes close to the traditional picture plane, but I think he does so only in order to play with expectations and then ignore them.
Stockholder comes from a different stance. She began as a painter and continues to consider her work as paintings, which also happen to be sculptures. She says “…the gesture of placing an object in a room is not so far removed from making a gesture with a brush” (13). According to Elspeth Carruthers:
Stockholder’s work-form is strictly speaking- the picture…Her works, which can include the wall, the floor, free space, can be described at painting in the third dimension. Stockholder’s retains and profits from pictorial concepts of the abstract Modern… and is a plea for composition, rhythm, beauty…(26-27).
The lack of a formal frame in Stockholder’s work does not imply that she is refuting the concept of frame. I sense she is actually asking the viewer to find the frame in different materials: the side of the sink, and/or the edge of the aluminum supports. Once the viewer adjusts to seeing the sculpture as a painting, the colors and shapes are beautifully composed. By making the work three dimensional, it also makes me, the viewer, aware of my three dimensionality, as well.
Stockholder also uses light as a color. Like Tuttle, she includes the fixture in the piece. However, again, I think she uses the fixture for one purpose, namely, color: of the fixture, the light it emits, and the concept of the light (as symbolized by the yellow square). She includes the use of light fixture as part of the formal abstract “painting” she creates.
Richard Tuttle and Jessica Stockholder, both in the forefront of the post- Minimalist art scene in the 1990’s, created works that occasionally had similar aspects. In the 2 pieces I chose to compare for this paper, both are working with the concept of frame in untraditional ways. The appearances of the pieces – use of common materials, inclusion of light fixtures, lack of traditional frame – might suggest that they shared ideas about framing. Other than the fact that both relied on the space of the gallery to set their work apart as art, I have concluded that each artist approached their work from a personal orientation, which informed their decisions about the idea of frame: Tuttle was primarily interested in challenging the viewers concepts and expectations of the flat picture plane; Stockholder was blurring boundaries between surface and structure, so that the color defined her work, including the concept of frame.

Works Cited

Carruthers, Elspeth, et al, Jessica Stockholder: Kissing the Wall, Houston: Blaffer Gallery, 2004, Print.

Leinz, Gottleib, et al, Jessica Stockholder, Dusseldorf :Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum, 2002. Print.

Grynsztejn, Madeleine, The Art of Richard Tuttle, San Francisco: San Francisco Museum of Art, 2005.Print.

September 29, 2009

2009-09-29T11:01:00.000-07:00

I just met with Heidi.
At the beginning of September, I had working on the Jessica Stockholder's miniatures. Even though I had made one small embroidery of children all lined up...I was surprised when I did another by how much I was intrigued by this aberrant line that the thread made on the fine silk. I have always been intrigued by the look and the idea of children lining up - that that is the first thing that is taught in school, and all the rest of school really, in some sense is about that (or in reaction to it). It was not that big a leap to cows lining up - which is what I looked at in my young years.
I then placed 3 year old me in the background - behind the cows.
Actually, the idea for hanging the piece so that the image of me seen through the cows came out of my session with Heidi. I had been playing with using common translucent plastic containers as supports for the work. Heidi suggested I put the support concern aside and really just focus on the idea(s) that I'm after. She suggested drawing and journaling to get clear ahead of time about the subject matter, especially because the embroidery is so very time-consuming.
I feel somewhat skeptical, but I'll explore that avenue. In the past, I notice that I tend to find my way by touch rather than by word or idea. It sometimes has felt like my brain can go one way, but my art is going to take me where it does. I haven't done a lot of writing specifically about my art lately though. And when I did "illustrative" art before, I did do a lot of intensive drawing in preparation.
Finally, we discussed my 2 very different directions. Heidi had just seen my show and was looking at art work on my wall and commented that it was really about color (and plants and/or spirals). She suggested that I keep that up - that I pursue both the embroidery and the color, keep both going.

2009-09-07T14:43:00.000-07:00

After meeting with Heidi on Sept. 1, I took her advice and began to create miniature copies of Jessica Stockholder's work. I know that Europeans learn by copying the masters, but it has felt so odd for me to actually attempt to re-make her work, small.
In fact, it has been quite a educational and challenging experience - just realizing the color detail and amount of materials she uses. It also has made me hungry to do my own work. Now that I've done 3 "Stockholders," I think I'll venture into my own materials and color, hoping that I've gained some wisdom from looking so closely at her work. I've posted photos of the miniatures (sideways again. sorry)

realization

2009-08-26T18:17:00.000-07:00

Heidi, in all her wisdom, recommended that I make 20 pieces in a month - to see where I was. She also recommended that I try to copy favorite artists of mine.
I have spent a lot of this month all over the map and feeling profoundly lost. I blamed it on the fact that I was working without a frame and that was a real challenge for me. But I don't think that was it. Rather, I was trying to come up with products - when I realize that what I am really getting at is what matters to me. For example - I began (even in July) to use different materials. I wanted to mimic Jessica Stockholder or Sarah Sze ( just a bit). But I found that I have a very strong reaction to materials - that I am repelled by a lot of what those 2 artists use. Instead, I am magnetized to cloth or soft paper, even canvas. In the last few days I spent hours doing hand embroidery. It matters to me that the line be thread, not pencil or paint.I love how quirky it looks, but also how it feels. I hadn't realized until now how significant that is for me.

crit theory paper - Aug. 2009

2009-08-25T13:15:00.000-07:00

Knight
Salley Knight
Julie Scher
Group I –Crit Theory Response
August 2009

Is Craft Beneath Art?

“You might want to check out what is happening in crafts today,” was Deb Todd Wheeler’s advice to me during her critique of my work. I cringed at the thought of my work being equated with craft. Why did I have such a low opinion of craft when I have enjoyed doing batik, needlework, sewing, knitting, pottery, and other crafts? Where did I get the notion that crafts were subordinate to art? Perhaps it had come out of my experience in art school in the 1980s. I certainly never mentioned how much I had enjoyed my years of creating batiks while I was learning the “fine art” of painting. No one dared stoop so low as to include any mention of craft in that setting. Therefore, it was no surprise to me when I read Judy Chicago’s essay on her experience of making her dinner party piece in the 1970s. Her opinion of craft mirrored my feelings on the subject. Judy Chicago’s wrote, “classically trained as an artist, I felt uneasy with my interest in decorative arts,” (qtd. in Fabrozzi 319) i.e. crafts. She goes on to further decry crafts. “It was an excruciating experience to watch enormously gifted women squander their creative talents in teacups.” (qtd. in Fabrozzi 321)
Despite my initial reaction, I took Deb Todd Wheeler’s advice and began to investigate the current craft scene, and as I read I learned more about the history of craft as well. The more I read, the more I appreciated craft. In this paper I will address how craft became viewed as inferior to art in the Renaissance, and how a wider historical view ( pre-Renaissance and post 1970s) argues against de-valuing craft. I will first explain the Renaissance ideas I am refuting before looking more closely at two historical examples of cultural shifts that resulted from craft, one from China and the other from Greece. Finally, I will look at contemporary art after the 1970s to demonstrate the ways in which the line between art and craft has become increasingly blurred.

As Tanya Herrod notes in referring to the issues between crafts people and artists, the “tension between the maker, battling materials and the cool conceptualist… has a longer history that we might imagine.” (qtd. in Britton Newell 30) However, it was during the Renaissance that artists began to separate themselves by their claim to originality. (Sennett 66) They were elevating themselves above the lowly craftsmen who worked in guilds where handed down skills were valued. (Sennett 66) Artists considered themselves self-sufficient, autonomous, and answering to an inner life compared to the craftsman, who possessed none of these qualities. The work of the artist was meant to spotlight him or herself, whereas the work of a good craftsman “was not even meant to be noticed.”(Adamson 13) Within these generalizations, of course, there were exceptions-no one has been able to duplicate the craft of a Stradivarius violin.

Before the Renaissance artists proliferated the view of craft as beneath art, craft had been held in high value—a view that dates back to earliest people. Broadly defined, craft was a learned ability which came from “…the intimate connection of hand and head” (Sennett 9) which encompassed fields as wide as wide as “bricklaying, cooking, or playing the cello,”(Sennett 9); craft involved the skill of handling a material and took dedication to learn technique. It was an artistry that was passed down through generations and evolved over long periods of time. The contributions made by craft have been profound.

An example of such a contribution rose in China during the Chou Dynasty (between 1045 and 286 BC) when chefs developed the craft of using the cleaver. Chefs learned to use this single knife to prepare food that was to be eaten with chopsticks (no sharp implements at the table). As an understanding of the use of the cleaver developed, the chefs found ways to work with greater and greater efficiency and skill. They perfected a fore arm technique that gave the greatest accuracy with the least effort. They used the least possible effort to make each cut and just as the cleaver was about to slice, the force was withdrawn. “Cleave a grain of rice thus stands for two bodily rules intimately connected: establish a baseline of minimum necessary power and learn to let go.” (Sennett 168)

This understanding of how to use the body for handling the cleaver crossed over to Japan where the same principles were used in teaching archery. The sport of archery became a major component of Zen Buddhism, and the understanding of the body was subsequently translated into tenets of Zen. What originated as an understanding of the craft of using the cleaver in China grew into a foundation of Buddhism in Japan: “…the evocation of the tranquil spirit, which should attend the moment.” (Sennett 168) Zen Buddhism continues to share its wisdom today, worldwide.

Craft also made major contributions to European culture. Circa 600 BCE, Greeks began to venture to great distances overseas and the ships needed to be able to endure long voyages. Tar covered joints proved leaky. Taking the principles from weaving of warp (vertical strands) wrapped around woof (horizontal strands), Greek shipbuilders were able to figure out how to use mortise-and-tenon joints to produce seaworthy boats. The security of a close right-angle joint held the weaver’s cloth tight as well as the ships’ wooden angles. “At first glance…it makes no sense to liken a ship to cloth. But the craftsman’s slow working through forces the logic.”(Sennett 128)

These more durable ships enabled the Greeks to establish numerous colonies. Each colony was ruled by a city and in these earliest cities the streets were laid out on a grid of right angles. The layout of many cities today reflect this ancient Greek design that originated in weaving.

With the Renaissance and the rise of the individual artist, craft was relegated to a secondary position relative to “fine art”. This lasted for centuries. However, since the 1970s, and with the arrival of performance art, sound art, installation art, and the Internet, the whole field of art has shifted. The delineations between areas have become more porous. Artists move easily between one medium and another. “In a world of seamlessly interlinked options the idea of a major artist like Francis Bacon devoting a life, day on day, to one genre, the practice of painting, has come to seem unusual, even exotic.” (Britton-Newell 29)

The traditional ways that an artist defined him or herself was according to the medium: as a painter or sculptor, etc. Because so many artists use unusual media now, all art forms are commonly referred to as work: “Whether an artist makes something from paint and canvas, metal, video tape, whether (large or small) and whether in a gallery, a city park, or on a computer screen…that thing can be called work.” (Adamson 16)

In some arenas, craft can still “carry an air of crabby conservatism…unswervingly devoted to objects.” (Adamson 168) However, in terms of the art scene itself, there are a good number of artists practicing in traditional craft areas: Sheila Pepe and Mi-Yi Sung work in crochet and knitting, Dorothy Caldwell works in cloth dying and sewing, and Anna Torma works in hand embroidery, in addition to many others. Today, the art world does not discriminate against craft as it once did.

Since researching craft, I now stand at the other end of the spectrum from where I started. No longer embarrassed at Deb Todd Wheeler’s recommendation to look into craft, I now greatly value her advice: no longer caught in the narrowness of Judy Chicago’s 1970s perspective, I find my mind has been opened up to a range of possibilities.

Works Cited
Adamson, Glenn, Thinking Through Craft, London: Yale University Press, 2008, Print.
Britton-Newell, Laura, Out of the Ordinary: Spectacular Craft, London: Victoria and Albert Museum, 2007. Print.
Fabozzi, Paul, Artists, Critics, Context, Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall, 2002. Print.
Sennett, Richard, The Craftsman, London: Yale University Press, 2008. Print.

more images

2009-08-06T05:50:00.000-07:00

More images for Aug. 5 post (below)

August 5, 2009

2009-08-05T17:33:00.000-07:00

I'm sending a few images of what I've been doing. Blogspot only allows 5 images per blog, I gather. But these represent an idea of what I've been doing.
The top one is (sideways) from before I met with Heidi - and I'm leaving it alone, even though we decided it was incomplete. Instead, I've been doing a lot of quick pieces, and taking photos, even if I don't hold onto them. I bought material, and was most intrigued by the black and white because when I rip it, it shreds so wonderfully - when I position strips of it, they remind me of the kinds of rough marks on paper that a first grader might make. So I played with 2 letter words. The thicker lines appealed to me more than the thin shreds in this one (also sideways):

I liked this one more.
This one was just a chance jumble. I added color ( couldn't resist)
I want to do more with the wave. I made a number of attempts to figure out how to work this so it might extend across a much bigger space - and it lost something when I sized it up. I still want to play with that idea. I keep seeing it out from the wall, and then it gets into my complications of structural support, which I'm avoiding at this point.

first meeting with Heidi - July 28, 2009

2009-07-28T16:38:00.000-07:00

I had such a great meeting with Heidi this morning.
I think the most exciting aspect of it for me is that it feels as if she"gets me": that the pieces of my work that she most responds to are also the ones that I felt the strongest about. (example - the green wave piece)
I also felt as if her advice to me was right on the mark. I now feel both encouraged and motivated.

After looking at my earlier work, her advice to me was to either go less or go widely more - even to go horribly overboard to the point of ruining the work. Later, she suggested that I take photos of my work as it goes along so that we can review it at many stages. She suggested that I work on value contrast, that I do pieces with black, white and gray to better understand what I'm doing.

She suggested that leave off concerns about structure (where I was getting bogged down)- to look at my work as a painting with 3D aspects but not to get sidetracked by needing to understand sculpture.

We talked about the aspect of works that appeal to me: quirky, unpredictable, fresh.
I mentioned Richard Tuttle and J. Stockholder, and Heidi introduced me to Jean Shin - who I immediately adored- and Leslie Dill, Anne Ryan and Polly Apfelbaum, who I appreciate but am less drawn to from internet images, anyway. I just was checking out Sheila Pepe ( recommended a while ago by Laurel - I was intrigued). But Jean Shin is really a hit for me.
I seem to love the simple idea done exquisitely.

So, I loved Heidi's recommendations for the next month:
1. Clean out the studio - create as many white walls as I am able and get rid of all clutter.
2. Go to a fabric store or used clothing store - find a variety of different kinds of cloth
3. Create 20 different small pieces, using translucent scrim, possibly fishing line for support, lots of overlay
4. Photograph the work as I go; make some ugly, some way too much, some minimal, at least one black and white, use grungy and beautiful cloth, stay with the formal principles of painting but let the materials take me, let myself be influenced - try to be over-influenced by artists I like (make a Richard Tuttle, Jean Shin= hard to do)
5. Keep an art journal - when I started and stopped, what I accomplished each day - set aside set hours to be in the studio so that I am sure to be there even with all the family demands.
6. Don't worry about the paper(s), just get them done and out of the way - that my art is the important part.

Onward!

thoughts on my crit paper

2009-07-22T17:44:00.000-07:00

I had thought I would write my crit paper on craft/art intersection focusing on the Judy Chicago's Womens' Table, but I am having my doubts now. I think I might prefer to write about the why of art - a thesis of Believing is Seeing: that much of what we call ancient art was not created for that purpose. One of my favorite art books is one showing photographs of "Pathway Icons" in India: "art" created for religious purposes by villagers in India that is both meaningful and compelling as abstract art. It reminds me of the NPR book called "What I believe", a collection of essays from across America where people from all walks of life say in less than 500 words what they believe. That question - of why?- whether it is traditionally religious or, perhaps, just a personal belief , that is what I think I'd like to discuss in my crit paper...

Summary of June 2009 residency

2009-07-19T10:06:00.000-07:00

Summary of Residency - June 2009 - AIB
~Salley Knight

To do:

Explore, explore, explore for first month at least.
Push my ideas further
Be expansive and wild - go with artwork, let it take me
Familiarize myself with history and movements in the craft/art world - the intersection.
Create the lineage for the work I do (what/ who am I referencing?)
Situate my work ( with visual language and vocabulary)

Figure out:

How to contain without frame
Possibly go in between painting and sculpture
What excites me

Materials:

Wax as stiffener? Another stiffener?
Freestanding or curtains or wire supports?
Use chunks, strips, lots and lots of stuff, ropes, collect lots of ingredients

Artists to look into:

Klee
Robert Morris (floor sweepings)
Allen Shields in the 70’s
Helen Frankenthaler (color)
Felix Gonzalez-Torres
Gabriel Orozco
Ann Hamilton
Lee Bonticou
Ed Ruscha
Miranda July
Amy Morgana
Amy Rankin
Jessica Stockholder
Rachel Harrison
Susan Sze

Individual Critiques:

Jan Avgikos:

- rummage through the bones of history to see what informs your practice. Everything is legit.
- create lineage to situate work - have list of influences
- “That’s been done before” = bogus comment
- your work looks like painting process but not sculpture. Let go or stretched surface
- feminist discourse dismissed “pretty work” but this work is grounded in sensuality, sensory awareness, tactility
- what if removed hard frame?
- look at Scupture 1965-75 ( Whitney Catalogue) scatter installation - not crafted, an accumulation of stuff
- your color is incredible, painterly without paint - look at Helen Frankenthaler for color
- take frame away - address issue of containment less conventionally
- tree limbs? bird’s nests? Garden Design magazine
- take road trip to Storm King

Deb Todd Wheeler:

- think of David Byrne - just lets his words come out: “Stop Making Sense”
- do away with frame
- would it work to stiffen the cloth with wax? use wax as support? would lose transparency.
- perhaps wire? or curtains? Or Japanese screens?
- or hang and let blow in the wind
- right now are looking at them in the framework of painting. Could go in between painting and sculpture - could be interesting
- book to look at : Spectacular Craft. Push the craft.
- Art 21 Site, Lee Bonticou, Ann Hamilton

Julia Scher:

- Yes, look at Maya Lin and Richard Tuttle
- Anna Marie Travers - rooms of light
- gradient important in your work. Check out Ed Ruscha
- translucent . Check out Silver See
- look up visual pleasure . Laura Mulvy (?)
- try to get huge roll of white photo paper for studio
- color: Richter, studies for Cologne
- Glenn Adamson: Thinking Through Craft
- American Craft mag.
- Richard Sennett - The Craftsmen

group crit:

- size and presentation need to be more unconventional, larger
- lighting would help
- let go of the frame
- hanging installation could enhance tactile nuance and could invite participation
- perhaps include something on the floor
- exterior installation might work
- flower references too literal

Nick:

- take off wall
- push your envelope, this is great place to try and fail. Bigger failure, bigger success.

Stuart Steck:

- check out scientific books that study light
- how about light boxes?
- poems, videos of sunrises, explore thoroughly, including cliches
- get rid of default that I fall back on in my art

Laurel Sparks:

- Sheila Pepe : crochet
- gather lots of materials, garbage bags full of stuff, arrange like stage set with pullies and ropes - create worlds
- make little clusters, lots of ingredients
- steer clear of literal
- notice whatever excites you visually - aerial views...?
- use naivete of child with intelligence/absurdity of adult
- let it all in
- check out: Rachel Harrison, Susan Sze, and Jessica Stockholder

not knowing

2009-07-19T06:14:00.000-07:00

When I named my first piece "the 3 pigs", I thought I was off on a theme for my work: children's nursery rhymes, or such material. I realize that the aspect of "children" as it relates to fun is clearly key in what I do. But by saying it was nursery rhyme related, I now feel I was narrowing my exploration too soon. At this stage I want to explore color and the materials in a wide open mind frame. I need to write this down to remind myself of the importance of "not knowing".

2009-07-15T14:26:00.000-07:00

I seem to be having a tough time uploading my images.

This is the still not completely attached first piece I've done. Title: the Three Little Pigs.

I think I'm onto a theme of nursery rhymes. I'm now beginning my next piece: The Princess and the Pea (I hope).

For a number of years, I wrote and illustrated children's books - all of my own, none published. I went to conferences and was in a wonderful children's writing book club. Perhaps this energy is still in me. But it feels so much freer to be having fun with the abstraction.

The photos show 2 views : straight ahead and above.

I was choosing to stay monochromatic. The plants are dried allium. Aside from my hand-dyed silk, I also used bright vellum envelopes, foam core, and acrylic paint on the wood structure.

Heidi Whitman as mentor

2009-07-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

I'm so excited that Heidi Whitman has agreed to be my mentor. The moment that she mentioned that she had thought of Jessica Stockholder as someone for me to look, I KNEW - she (Heidi) is going to be the person for me to work with. And when she described my process as hands on dealing with color and materials - I knew she understood the how I make my way along my journey with my art. I'm so glad the time-consuming process to find her is over, and glad that I've found someone that feels just right to me.

July 5, 2009

2009-07-05T16:14:00.000-07:00

Okay, It's been more than a week since AIB ended. I have yet to line up a mentor. I e-mailed 3 artists and heard back from only one. I think it may be because of the July 4th holiday, but if I don't hear anything soon, I'll have to search further.
I wrote a draft of my residency summary and am thinking about what my crit. paper might address. I am particularly intrigued by these 2 books that I've been reading about crafts: Out of the Ordinary, Spectacular Craft (by Laurie Britton Newell) who proposes that only recently had craft moved from functional to spectacle; and Thinking Through Craft (by Glenn Adamson) which I've just begun, but I think proposes that craft traditionally was considered second fiddle to fine art, but that all that is being turned on its head now - I'll be clearer about this book as I read further.
In either case, they are really well-written and directly address my issues of the craft/ art intersection.
In addition, I've been particularly excited by the work of 3 artists:
Rachel Harrison, Susan Sze, and most of all Jessica Stockholder. In fact, as I've begun to explore how I'm going to go further with my work, it's Jessica's work that calls out to me - as if I can now see my work stepping out of the frame and bringing the paint and cloth with it.
I am not sure how the cloud theme I proposed will work. It feels like I'm letting it be very loosely in my head - that what I want to see is what my journey will be without the labels too firmly in place.
I dyed some large swaths of cloth - what a messy process. I am experimenting with some stiffeners - but so far, they really detract from the whole sensuality of the silk. So today I bought some wire. I'm looking for ways to support the cloth without the square frame I've over used.
So that is where I am at present...

AIB day #1 on Blogger

2009-06-21T07:06:00.000-07:00

Thank you Rachel Whitman and Erin Shafkind for getting me here - I mean on Blogger. This is the beginning of 2 years of my MFA at AIB/Lesley. I wonder how I will use this blog? Even more, I wonder how my art will morph - where I will be with it in June 2011?