Saturday, November 28, 2009

A Great Horror of Buttons

dirtyfeet

This fellow is the second in a series of five. Two are made, but a group of two is a couple, three is a family, and four is two couples, hence why I'm going to make five in total. Five is a crowd. Five can be unrelated to each other but still occupy the same space.

dirtyfeet

They are made of the scraps and remainders from other prints--random pieces sewn together to make new cloth and then made into this ungulate sort of guy. Covered in a great horror of buttons and haunted by the reminder of when I was actually successful and people liked buying my work.

buttons (close up of dirty feet)

Sunday, November 15, 2009

Globules of Ice

The painters I know have more blue eyes than any other group of people I can quantify and label. I'm taking a class intended for painters. Their eyeballs float around the room, suspended in their faces, little globules of cocktail ice. Clink clink.

studio mirror

The miniature is defined by its physicality. The only ways to describe the miniature is through ratio and relationship to other objects: the story of Tom Thumb, the fictional tiny hero, who had a walnut shell as a cradle. We are given the intimate knowledge of Tom’s size through a gluttony of vivid physical description, but only of the size of Tom.

dirtyfeet

In the painting class, one of the students showed his recent work which included a miniaturized copy of a Franz Kline painting. The discussion of the piece was largely a discussion of ratio—the size of Kline’s brush compared to the size of the brush Jordan used, the difference in studio size, canvas used, etc. Everyone found the painting funny because it was small, a joke that one only “gets” if one already possesses knowledge of the large painting that was copied. The miniature is not only defined by its physicality, but also by its familiarity. You cannot see a miniature something if you have never see a normal sized something before. Without foreknowledge of the miniaturized item the miniaturization is undetectable. I am in on the joke of the miniature Kline painting, but my own experience with Kline’s work, I realize long after my “in crowd” chuckling, are of photographic reproductions, images that are even smaller than Jordan’s reduced painting.

buttons (close up of dirty feet)

The miniature is of the antique and the timeless, a tiny piece signifying timelessness, whereas the giant is most often involved only when his, and the giant is usually a male, death or defeat is predetermined. Cyclops was blinded by Odysseus, King Arthur and his cronies battled and killed numerous unnamed giants, and even London’s Og and Magog are defeated and chained, forced into servitude. In Gulliver’s Travels, Gulliver, when in the land of Brobdingnag, home of the giant people, was perpetually confronted with the repulsive nature of humanity. The breasts of the giant women are mentioned at numerous intervals, the breast being the most idealized part of the female anatomy they are the perfect example of the horridness of the large. The color, the odor, and the sheer size of the breasts of the aristocratic giants are described in lavish disgusting detail, and just in case that were inadequate, Gulliver also throws in the tail of seeing a beggar beset with breast cancer. The breasts of the giants are so large that Gulliver can only see one at a time and only a small part of it--the nipple surrounded by downy hair a hideous furry hillock--this all encompassing experience is grotesque.

Tuesday, November 10, 2009

New Carrot

I finally finished a new large scale print. Sadly, it's been rather poorly received in crits and by friends, so I'm considered other ways to learn from it or to improve upon this piece.

skinnies

Here it is stuffed, in front of the older carrot people:

crowd

I think the form of the older carrot people is more what I'm after, with smaller heads, taller, and with narrower bodies. I'm going to try one more like this, but changing the form somewhat and shrinking the head. I also learned that the eyes looked fine on the painted form, but mysteriously look too close together when printed, though the ratio has not changed. I think that in the end, I was attempted to cover the whole form and flesh out the entire piece (knees, hands, buttocks, etc.) when one of the stronger points of the old pieces was that not all of the questions were answered.

Thursday, November 05, 2009

LAPS 20th National Opening and Panel

LAPS 20th National Exhibition

People actually looked at my print! Extraordinary!

LAPS 20th National Exhibition

I'll be part of the panel discussion on the 21st at 2pm, 4800 Hollywood Blvd, LA. Come prepared with uncomfortable questions to ask me.

LAPS 20th National Opening and Panel

LAPS 20th National Exhibition

People actually looked at my print! Extraordinary!

LAPS 20th National Exhibition

I'll be part of the panel discussion on the 21st at 2pm, 4800 Hollywood Blvd, LA. Come prepared with uncomfortable questions to ask me.