Identity Tapestry to show in Switzerland

From the first iterations of Identity Tapestry I’ve been wanting to create it both in a museum space and in another language.  I’m pleased to announce that this May I’ll be doing both!  Identity Tapestry will be up as part of the upcoming show “Identity” for four months starting this May at the Vögele Cultural Center in Pfäffikon (just outside Zurich).

I will be flying out for the install and I’m incredibly excited.  Any iteration demands a look at which statements to include or leave or if new ones ought to be added, especially in a new area or situation. In this case the language use should be especially interesting because there are essentially two languages at work there: High German and Swiss German.  One is the official language which is used for nearly all text, the other is the language of intimate conversations and the inside of one’s own head.  Apparently it is only recently that the Swiss-German language has appeared in text, and then mostly in text messages, and only to very intimate friends.  How I approach these languages and navigate translations will add new levels of complexity to the piece.  Thankfully the curatorial staff is wonderful and I have a local Zurich-raised person who is willing to consult with me on language as well.

“I am. And You?” (Transparency and Primary Text)

first participant in Transparency

adding to Transparency

adding to Transparency

contribution to Transparency

contribution to Transparency

adding to Primary Text

a story in Primary Text

what an incredible space!

The space and the work were so wonderful together.  I feel so fortunate to have been able to create this new installation for this space.  “I am. And you?” was also a perfect theme for my work generally, so it was a good fit all around.  They have asked if I would keep up the new work “Transparency” for the next show as well (centered around building community and communication), so there will be more chances for the general public (aside from hundreds of theater-goes) to see it.

I always love seeing people interact with my work and discovering what happens when the work comes together with a space and a unique group of people.

Installing for “I am. And you?

Did I mention the space is absolutely amazing?  When I saw that piece of set (a huge factory wall which can be back-lit through the windows), the height of the ceilings, the space generally I knew I had to do a piece in that space.

So over the last couple days we put up Primary Text and my new work Transparency, created especially for the space and the “I am.  And you?” show at Zspace.  Primary Text is hung in this image (left), but not yet anchored.  I’m excited to see that one in action Participation-wise.

Yesterday I finished creating a warp for Transparency (the up and down part of a weaving on the loom) over 15 feet long.  It’s right in front of the windows, and the material you will be weaving into it is the colored gels theaters use over lights.  You can just see the 3 cables I used to hang it.

Each person will answer a question and write it on the gels and weave it into the warp.  They can also respond to someone else’s answer as if that person asked “and you?”. The physical result should be a kid of stained-glass window lit from behind.

I’ve been thinking a lot about ideas and experiences of introversion and extroversion, backstage/onstage/audience, the parts of ourselves we show differently in different company.  Filtered selves, not fake, but you don’t let the same parts of yourself through to your coworkers as you do to your lover or your child or vice versa.  One odd discovery is how many theatre performers are actually introverts offstage.  Given the environment of the theatre and the way lights and windows an that set-piece were working I had to explore transparency and filters while using the visual materials of the theatre-space (sand-bags, lighting gels, a “set” of flat black).  I’m excited to see how it all comes out when it’s been interacted with!

Please join us Monday night from 6-10 at ZSpace in San Francisco.

Directions

Gala Night

The Gala fundraiser opening for SFAI’s graduate thesis show. 

This photo is right when things were closing down.  I liked the stillness and being  able to clearly see all three pieces without the crowd.  It was a really great night.  I love  seeing people interact with the work!

My work for this show included Identity Tapestry (iteration#9),  Write Me for Art/Do you read me? (Disintermediation), and Write Me for Art/ Do you read me? (digital mediation)

I poked my head out a little, but I haven’t seen the whole show yet.  I’m looking forward to a quiet viewing tomorrow.

only red and blue yarn there so far

also still empty

still empty at the end of the night

me in front of my work in the dress I designed.

I’m loving the way people have left stones on the shelf, the way it drapes

Mary Ma’s installation

Patricia Singer’s installation

Heather Jones’ work- I love the way this works with the wall and the space!

art cake!

another art cake!

Principal (SFAI’s MFA thesis exhibition)

 

For those of you who joined me for Open Studios it  was wonderful, and an extra thank you to those of you who contributed to the beginning of a new participatory piece.  I hope you can all join me for my thesis show!

PRINCIPAL: MFA Exhibition

Thursday, May 15 – Sunday, May 18, 2014

The Old Mint

88 5th Street at Mission

San Francisco, CA,

PUBLIC VIEWING HOURSThursday, May 15–Sunday, May 18 11 am–6 pm Visitors are invited to meander through clandestine bank vaults and decadent ballrooms to uncover site-specific and multi-dimensional displays of work.

PUBLIC OPENING RECEPTIONFriday, May 16 7–9 pm

Here is your map to my work!  There will be two stories full of incredible art.  I will be showing Write Me for Art (for those of you who have been following that piece) and a new iteration of Identity Tapestry.  If you are in the Bay Area and have wanted to try that piece out, now is  your  chance!

Write me for Art has become two integrated pieces which I will install together.  It came from the many people who sent me replies in the mail to personal questions, all of which I have embroidered and included.

Spring Shows and Events!

     April 19^th:         Open Studios 12-5PM   2565 Third Street (between 22nd and 23rd), SF, CA
                                   
May 2-4^th:             Print Show at Mullowney Printing   933 Treat Street, SF, CA 94110

                                    * Opening on Friday the 2nd.

     May 14^th-18^th:      PRINCIPAL:  SFAI’s Graduate Thesis Exhibition

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SFAI Graduate Open Studios: http://www.sfai.edu/openstudios

This is your chance to get a peek into the process.

Navigational Tip:   There is an entrance at 22^nd street.  Go to the second floor.  Every Orange door on the floor is an SFAI facility. 

I am in Bay C (just to the right of the lounge) in a lovely corner spot in #7 in the back right. 

I will send out more information on the second two events as they approach.  I hope to see you at the Open Studios!  I will have an interactive piece running in the studio as well as a Participatory piece you can contribute to.

The Grid and the Weave

In entering a new media I’ve given myself the focus of concentrating on the abstract forms of the Weave and the Grid in an exploration of the digital and the organic, order and disorder, structure and entropy.  I’m also sticking to plates of a 18″ x 24″ (the size of both the largest acid bath and laser bed.

I’m LOVING this project. It’s very freeing to explore ideas in a purely abstract form.  So far I have 3 laser-cut plates I’m happy with (one etch on acrylic, one grid cut out of acrylic and one block out of MDF).  I’ve also hand-carved a weave in wood.

It’s so refreshing to enter a new media without knowing the “rules” of that medium.  Today I experimented with adding ink in gestural marks onto the plate after the nice clean layer was put on with the roller. Once it goes through once and then gets rollered over again you get this gorgeous ghostly watercolor look (in the dark grey layer here).  I’m also loving adding string resist into the work.

So far I have around 30 individual pieces, many of them still getting layered up.  I’m not doing nearly identical “editions” in the convention of printmaking.  I don’t see the point.  Each of these is absolutely original.  I’ll be painting over some of the ones I’ve printed on canvas, sewing through them… there really aren’t limits to this.

The next plate that will enter this mix will be on copper- layers of cloth texture in soft ground, spit-bite and hand etching a delicate weave. 

New Love

I finally tried printmaking and I’m in love.  This semester I have a graduate level class with a master printer and printmaking has me.

I have a lot of mediums under my belt, variously considered art or craft or industry depending on the time period and who you ask and I always want to learn new ones.  For my grad program I decided not to add to that list without good reason.  That said, printmaking makes so much sense to so much of what I am working with that when this class came up in my last semester I had to have it.  It is a technology bridge between handmade and digital.  It is multiplicity with variation,  I can print on fabric.  I can digitally etch or cut a plate at Techshop and then bring it in and print on it, or continue to work it by hand.

I decided to restrict myself to a simple idea- the weave and the grid, the digital/binary and the organic (part of my fascination with weaving is that it is both an ancient craft and the basis for binary computing).  Every plate will be some version of this and I intend to start layering those plates.  Inside that there is so much I can do!  The two plates I have so far are a “Broken Grid” laser-etched (the black and white image here) and a hand-carved woodblock of a loose and dissolving plain-weave. The joyful discovery of today was that after printing on canvas (to paint on/sew through later) I can use the plate again on paper and get the texture of the canvas cloth in the paper print.  I’m loving the layers possible with this.   I also came up with a new idea of how to use sewing in the printing process which I haven’t yet seen.

I’ve got two laser-cutter dates this week and PLANS.

The other thing I love about the printmaking experience?  It’s community based.  Much like a ceramics studio, printmaking takes multiple sets of hands and people pooling resources to have it work.  The atmosphere is relaxed, congenial, supportive, and questioning in a positive way.  It isn’t every artist for themselves, it’s a place where people are helping each other make art.  I really missed that.  It happens in other disciplines through collaborative work, but it’s palpable in both ceramics and printmaking, and getting my hands achy with tools and sticky with ink feels like coming home.

Targeted ads as Portraits

Continuing in the thread of the digitally-mediated person (Binary Portraits, the Write me for Art Project, etc.) this idea came to me the other day.  I think a series is in order, but it requires the person I’m doing the portrait of to let me take all the ads from their computer that I find as they do their regular day’s navigation online

Advertizing companies get a ton of information about us as we browse (Google) or buy (Amazon).  They know what we look at and what we click on, what we are interested in, what movies and shows we watch and what we take home.  They know if you watch porn, or give money to charity.  It’s all there and they give us ads and “suggestions” based on that activity.  The line between “suggestions” and targeted ads is so blurry I think it’s really not there.

So… all this leaves a kind of portrait behind in the ads we get.  When I sign into my art-only Facebook I get ads for “mature and intelligent men” because it thinks I’m single because I can’t list my husband as my husband because he’s already married to my personal Facebook identity.  I assume I get diet stuff because I’m female (since I never diet), but it may be because I’ve ordered “large” in tights (I’m tall with long legs and not super skinny).  I didn’t find any the day I was doing this, but sometimes my husband gets ads targeted at gay men, usually when he’s been looking at a lot of interior design sites.  Who knows what all of this is based on?  Every click goes into the calculations.

Here you have us both as seen by the advertising computers.  This is what they think we are and want.

Playing with text

As we revisit memories they degrade and change and become confused. The time and place one is in now will flavor that memory. This was an exercise of writing “memory” over and over in different handwriting styles which each evoked different times and places for me. Gradually the meaning of the text itself is lost.

I seem to have become a text artist, at least in part.  Today’s offering is me playing.  I need to play more.  A lot of amazing work can come out of it.

I took a fantastic class last semester entitled Tex(tile).  It dealt with Semiotics, fiber art, fashion, symbols as text, text in art and fashion, metaphor in fiber techniques and materials… it was fabulous and right up my alley.

This semester I’ve got a text art class “This is a mirror, you are a written sentence” (after the text art piece by Luis Camniter) exploring text in art both in the studio and in reading.  I am also taking my first proper printmaking class at the graduate level.  It made sense since I’m interested in the reproduced, evolving, reinterpreted image/text and the craft/art/high tech juxtopositions.  Printmaking was high tech and is now almost craft as a medium (in the sense that these things can be automated, but we do them this way for a certain human texture, process, pride in work, quality, etc.).  The results of any process can be art, medium has nothing to do with it.  Printmaking also has a history of text mixing with image.

I’m going to continue on my large scale projects, but I’m going to make a point of playing with smaller scale ones.  Also of doing some painting and drawing more often.  One thin I’m looking forward to about printmaking is that it combines drawing and sculpture so neatly.  If you paint multiple colors/washes onto a plate you even get an element of painting too.