Last Meeting

Cameron and I had our final meeting last week. I have really appreciated working with him, and the meeting was a wonderful end to this semester's work. I certainly would not have predicted my work going in this direction, but I am pleased with how it turned out. During the last month, I have refined my approach to working with the fabric, and focused on two fabrics: a fine mesh fabric, and a basic muslin/utility fabric. I can see working with other fabrics in the future, but at the moment, it makes sense to focus in on the nuances I can achieve with these.

I completed a triptych, which consisted on one image spread across three pieces of muslin, with an alternate image printed separately on an overlaying mesh fabric. The muslin was treated differently for each segment.

Landscape 1
Muslin treated with water while printing

Landscape 2
Muslin treated with thin, uneven coat of gesso

Landscape 3
Raw, untreated muslin with folded corner

Detail of Landscape 1

Detail of Landscape 2

Detail of Landscape 3

During our meeting, I hung these three next to each other as I originally intended. Cameron however, felt they read better if given a larger amount of space. It actually greatly helped to give the images more space. When they are close to each other, they appear more muddy. I hope during the residency I am able to give each piece some space, though in the past this has proven not possible. Another really interesting and exciting discovery during our meeting was that the mesh fabric has a wonderful sheen to it when lit directly. There is a metallic/synthetic quality to it that makes the pieces very interesting to look at from different perspectives. This synthetic quality combined with the landscape/natural colors create a binary I've explored before, but now is much subtler. Cameron pointed out that moments with the top mesh fabric drapes is interesting also, revealing how colors are blending with the two images (seen above in the detail of Landscape 3).

Two other pieces I created over the last month are like the negative prints from the mesh fabric. I put these pieces behind the mesh while printing and they went through the printer at least three times. I find them interesting because the pattern of the mesh makes it look like the mesh is still there. I like how the folds of the mesh are imprinted on the fabric, creating the illusion of depth. 

3 Pass Print

Detail

This print was done as describe above, but on top of a print I made last month involving multiple images. Cameron felt it still needs one more level of abstraction because parts of the first images are still fairly easy to recognize. I think that is something worth exploring.

 This last piece is somewhat incomplete. It's a continuous print done in two pieces, and is also double sided. I plan to adhere the two pieces together, end to end, and perhaps suspend it from the ceiling. I haven't fully developed this idea, but I can see working with the fabric in a more structural way as having potential.

Overall, Cameron seemed very pleased with this work and appreciated the evolution that has taken place this semester. He felt two things that I struggled with at the beginning of the semester have been worked out: the tools (technology) is not seen as the subject; and the tools are not dictating the work. He did observe that I'm achieving scale through length, verses width and wondered if that restricts me at all. The width is dictated by my printer at the moment, but Cameron suggested I follow Wade Guyton's example and fold the fabric while it passes through the printer to achieve greater width. This could be interesting to try. Cameron also warned to avoid tie-dye and hallucinogenic affects. He said this is not happening in these works, but he does not seem that as a useful direction for this work, which I agree with.

After our meeting, I went to the MoMA again to view Mattise's cut-outs. These were excellent to see up close. The cut outs are much rougher than I imagined, and the large scale of some of the pieces was fantastic to see in real life. Reproductions do not do this work justice. I intended to see the contemporary painting show also, but apparently is had just opened and was only available to members only. I hopefully will make it back to New York in the near future to see it, as a few people now have recommended it.

3rd Mentor Meeting

I met with Cameron last week for our third meeting. It was a great meeting, and he was very enthused about my new work. I felt this work was interesting, but was a little nervous about it. Our meeting brought some clarity to me and I am very interested in continuing this direction. I brought all of my fabric work so far, including some new work with digital pinhole images and transfers on windows:

Pinhole print on leopard gauze fabric

Multiple pass print behind two panels of the print above

Print on unprimed, wet fabric

3 passes: Pinhole print on primed canvas with gesso

Print of same pinhole image on stretchy fabric.
The print on the left was on unprimed fabric, and 3-4 passes.
The right print was a single pass on primed fabric.

Print on primed rice paper

Detail of mylar

Print on unprimed mylar (same image as printed on rice paper above)

Pinhole inkjet transfer on window

Pinhole inkjet transfer on window

Pinhole inkjet transfer on window

Cameron suggested I look at Sarah Greenburger Rafferty and Sam Falls for the work on fabric. He felt there was still many things to explore in this work, such as layering sheer fabric with one image with a different image underneath. He also suggested maybe introducing a third element, to add a texture or get further off the wall. The work that most interested Cameron was the less literal, more transformative pieces. The pinholes seemed to lend themselves to this ambiguity. We talked about display, and Cameron felt leaving these unstretch, and able to move was important. The fabric lends to the impression of fleeting moments, and also is less referential to traditional modes of photography.

He felt the windows were too heavy, with the frames, too rectangular and clique. The glass might be an interesting direction, but in a different form. I like the idea of trying some more glass pieces, personally because it ties into work I started the program with and it would interesting to see that technique go full circle. 

Overall, the meeting generated many interesting thoughts for me to consider. I am looking forward to continuing this work. I'm very excited about its potential.

Printed Surfaces

I've spent the last few weeks experimenting on different printing surfaces. I've focused mostly on fabrics because their flexible, thin materiality is ideal for going through the printer. There were some interesting discoveries, and I plan to continue this exploration.

These are some of the results I've gotten so far:

Unprimed* eyelet fabric

Detail of eyelet fabric print

Print on unprimed fabric with rubber dots. 

Detail of rubber dot texture

Simultaneous print on unprimed white muslin and sheer gauze

Detail of simultaneous print of sheer gauze and muslin

Detail of print with sheer gauze pulled back

Simultaneous print on two pieces of fabric: unprimed plain white muslin with white netted fabric 

Detail on simultaneous print with two fabrics

Detail of white muslin without netting layer

Additional detail of white muslin without netting layer

Dry-brush coat of primer on faux silk fabric

*Note: unprimed in this post means I did not coat the fabric with Golden Digital Ground, which I've used in the past. This product helps absorb ink to achieve more accurate colors. Since accuracy is not my primary motive, this step seems unnecessary at the moment.

I will get better photographs of this work once I've accumulated more, perhaps towards the end of the month.

Some of the things I found very exciting was how when printing on multiple pieces of fabric, the fabrics actually move at two different speeds because of how the runners are set up on the printer. The top piece moves much faster.  In the details of the print with the netting, you can see how the pattern of the netting gets more and less distinct on the muslin. This is because the netting continued to move through the printer, but the muslin didn't so the printer head made multiple passes over the same spot. Something else I love, so much, is what happened with the fabric with the rubber dots. In the full length shot, you can see an additional 6 inches or so of fabric above where the images ends. The original digital image size is actually the full length of the fabric (with a small border) but the rubber dots caused the fabric to move through the printer slowly and therefore it didn't print the full length. I actually had to pull on the fabric while it move through the printer to prevent it from jamming and stop printing altogether. The dark bands in the print show where the print moved particularly slow, where my tension was less (I tried to only pull enough to keep the fabric moving, but not to stop the slowing down effect).

I am considering how to present this work, and currently think I'll stretch them like a canvas. I also am considering less traditional forms too, for example hung like a clothes line or pinned to a board.

Additionally, I currently plan moving into less concrete images. During our last conversation, Cameron mention the actual image seems less important to my process, and while I am choosing images that reference time and transitional spaces, I think there is truth to that statement.

I am making some digital pinhole images that might work nicely for this.

Mentor Meeting 2

I had my second meeting with Cameron Martin two weeks ago. At the end of our first meeting, I had decided to continue working with abstract imagery, and begin experimenting with materials. My last post with the sliced flower imagery was an extend of my abstract work. I continued this with another piece as well, but found neither of these pieces resonated with me or expanded my exploration of time and space. I decided to then do multiple pass prints, like I had done previously with the window and the door prints, but this time on fabric and with imagery showing a progression of time (through a series of movements).

This second, horizontal piece is harder to read. It was a time lapse of ice cubes melting and moving across the plate. In hindsight, the light color of the ice cubes makes this image difficult in multiple passes, where the white is not preserved. I also applied strips of tape, adding and removing stripes for each pass through the printer, as a way to the measure analogue time. Some stripes remained on the entire time, some just one pass and some multiple passes. Overall, these pieces are more interesting to me, and are beginning to speak to a collapse of time that happens in the digital world. 

I also created a few time lapse movies, in which I jumbled up the frames so that the evidence of time passing is visible, but the progression is lost. 

Cameron was particularly interested in this time-lapse piece:

The screen door behind the main door created a grid-like pattern that appear to be an almost digital technique that was not created digitally. The stagnant nature of the shot causes the viewer to question what's beyond the edge of the frame, and it can almost seem to be a set-up of just a door. Cameron pointed out with much of my work, the digital sits on the surface, but with this piece, the digital takes a more secondary place. Cameron encouraged me to continue experimenting with materials, without self-censoring and wondering if what I'm doing is "right"--something I've found myself constantly doing as I approach the final semesters of this program.

After our meeting, I went to the MoMA to see the Christopher Williams show. I'm glad Cameron had mentioned to look for the red pamphlet that accompanied the show. It was a great show to see, and also just good to see the rest of the MoMA's collection. I haven't been for a couple years, and it was fun to see work I have now written about.

Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams

Christopher Williams 

Giacomo Bella

Marcel Duchamp

Eadweard Muybridge

Eileen Quinlan

Mariah Robertson

Walead Beshty

John Coplans

Robert Gober