It's so unfair when five mean needles gang up on the lonely little one? Not pretty.
Thursday, November 7, 2013
Pine Needles 1
The first drawing focuses on the top part where the needles come together, the basal fascicle. That's right, I figured out what it was called.
This Week - Pine Needles
I asked my wife to pick this week's object, and she certainly picked something I would not have selected myself. Pine needles have little form, are almost totally linear, and utterly neutral in color. It's a good challenge and I'm glad I asked her to pick.
I had to put them in an old cigar box because the cat likes it when we bring the outside inside too...
Outside/Inside
I'm dusting off this old space to start cataloging and sharing a new project that I hope will function as a driver for future works. I've recently had some enforced "down time" away from work due to surgery, and found myself sitting outside and walking in the woods more than I have in years. I used to paint pleine aire landscapes, and at least part of the allure was being outside and thinking about and finding natural objects to examine. Even if I did not end up sketching or painting those objects I enjoyed thinking about how it would be done. There was a sense of exploration and discovery that was satisfying.
Over the years, as I have become busier and my work more concept based, my trips outdoors have become fewer and farther between, and were more about a task and less about discovery. My enforced down time reminded me of the enjoyment in learning the instructor and outs of a natural object, so I have decided to approach my interest in the coexistence of nature and technology from the perspective of the found natural object.
Each week I am going to take a walk, and somewhere on that walk I will find an object that I will sketch several times throughout the week. The sketches will be done on my tablet using the Infinite Painter app, allowing me to easily save images and share them. Some of these images may find their way into my paintings.
These digital paintings will be posted in the same quality as I create them, so feel free to download and save any that you like. Let me know if you print one, as that would feel like somehow spreading my finds digitally back into the world.
Enjoy!
Saturday, February 11, 2012
Thursday, June 30, 2011
The MANaged Landscape
Increasingly, what we call nature is less and less what we mean when we say that word. Nature implies non-human, animals and plants living out their lives away from human civilization. But except for a few corners of the world where we have not yet decided to go, nature is increasingly a creation of man. In some cases our "natural" areas are the result of human intervention in the past, such as the young forests that blanket the east coast where almost all available land was cleared for farmland. The woods and wildlife that have returned seem grand to our eyes, but they are scraggly and ragged shadows of what they once were.
On the other hand we have the great parks of the west, some of them much as they were hundreds of year ago; land that was either too rugged or remote for settlers to clear. But in our efforts to maintain this wilderness we have focused on the goal of maintaining it as it was. Invasive species are removed, water and timber are carefully monitored, and the landscape is carefully preserved, like a huge interactive diorama. They are not quite the living, breathing, wilderness that we want them to be, but instead a museum of flora and fauna, stopped in time at an arbitrary date.
None of this is bad or wrong. Plants and animals continue to live and flourish in all types of landscapes, urban, managed or otherwise. Nature, for lack of a better world, allows for whatever species has the right mix of luck and genetics to thrive in any ecosystem. But we continue to present to ourselves the false narrative of what nature is. We idealize it, glorify it, ignore it, define and redefine it to fit our needs. Once upon a time the conservative rural farmers of the south were the environmentalists, now the hip suburbanite liberals are the environmentalists; the workings of "nature" remain the same, the story we tell ourselves about it changes.
With this in mind I am starting a new project, tentatively called "The MANaged Landscape". I first worked on a version of it with some of my students. Recognizing that nature is a figment, a story, we created our own landscape is a little red wagon. We collected rocks, vegetation and other materials and formed it in a way that was pleasing to us. We then used it to inspire photographs and paintings which in themselves were figments and interpretations. In my studio these landscapes will sprout man made objects as well as natural ones, videos, photographs, digital collages, paintings and who knows what else.
When you start with a fiction, and create more fictions based on it, who is to say where the truth lies?
On the other hand we have the great parks of the west, some of them much as they were hundreds of year ago; land that was either too rugged or remote for settlers to clear. But in our efforts to maintain this wilderness we have focused on the goal of maintaining it as it was. Invasive species are removed, water and timber are carefully monitored, and the landscape is carefully preserved, like a huge interactive diorama. They are not quite the living, breathing, wilderness that we want them to be, but instead a museum of flora and fauna, stopped in time at an arbitrary date.
None of this is bad or wrong. Plants and animals continue to live and flourish in all types of landscapes, urban, managed or otherwise. Nature, for lack of a better world, allows for whatever species has the right mix of luck and genetics to thrive in any ecosystem. But we continue to present to ourselves the false narrative of what nature is. We idealize it, glorify it, ignore it, define and redefine it to fit our needs. Once upon a time the conservative rural farmers of the south were the environmentalists, now the hip suburbanite liberals are the environmentalists; the workings of "nature" remain the same, the story we tell ourselves about it changes.
With this in mind I am starting a new project, tentatively called "The MANaged Landscape". I first worked on a version of it with some of my students. Recognizing that nature is a figment, a story, we created our own landscape is a little red wagon. We collected rocks, vegetation and other materials and formed it in a way that was pleasing to us. We then used it to inspire photographs and paintings which in themselves were figments and interpretations. In my studio these landscapes will sprout man made objects as well as natural ones, videos, photographs, digital collages, paintings and who knows what else.
When you start with a fiction, and create more fictions based on it, who is to say where the truth lies?
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Getting the Economy out of Art
It is very important to be cognizant of the economic impact of art on local and state communities. You can read my post on the ncartblog about Chatham County's efforts to harness that potential. As an art educator I constantly attempt to convince others of the potential economic gain of art so that my subject is still around to teach.
But for myself, I am tired of finding economic justifications for what I do. All too often artists are forced to frame their work within the tastes of their economic surroundings. The process of applying for grants to make large projects happens should be a side job in itself, and with the cuts to state budgets, hustling for the cash to make the dream a reality just became that much harder.
Despite the fact that we live in a capitalist society, lets not forget that the economy is not the end in itself. Our economic system was created to support our cultural life. Werner Herzog's new film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, explores the paintings in Chauvet cave in southern France. The first of these paintings was made 32,000 years ago, and the style continued for thousands of years nearly unchanged. Think about that. How much has the culture of the US changed, and we have only been a nation for a little over 200 years.
Culture predates economics, politics, science, mathematics, and nearly every other human institution. It is because of culture that we have the education system that allows our CEO's to get an education and hire a work force, it is because of culture that we have politicians to decide where our taxes should go, who should get breaks, and who should get cuts.
So if there is to be a new culture war, lets go into it with open eyes. If the money that I need to create my work is to be taken so that the richest citizens of our country can continue to enjoy some of he lowest tax rates in decades, lets not fool ourselves with political slogans. If we want to define our culture based on who tops the Forbes lists of richest Americans versus the cultural impact of our thinkers and artists, we are unlikely to maintain our status in the world. It is not, after all, our dollars that have influenced so many people around the world, it is our culture.
But for myself, I am tired of finding economic justifications for what I do. All too often artists are forced to frame their work within the tastes of their economic surroundings. The process of applying for grants to make large projects happens should be a side job in itself, and with the cuts to state budgets, hustling for the cash to make the dream a reality just became that much harder.
Despite the fact that we live in a capitalist society, lets not forget that the economy is not the end in itself. Our economic system was created to support our cultural life. Werner Herzog's new film, Cave of Forgotten Dreams, explores the paintings in Chauvet cave in southern France. The first of these paintings was made 32,000 years ago, and the style continued for thousands of years nearly unchanged. Think about that. How much has the culture of the US changed, and we have only been a nation for a little over 200 years.
Culture predates economics, politics, science, mathematics, and nearly every other human institution. It is because of culture that we have the education system that allows our CEO's to get an education and hire a work force, it is because of culture that we have politicians to decide where our taxes should go, who should get breaks, and who should get cuts.
So if there is to be a new culture war, lets go into it with open eyes. If the money that I need to create my work is to be taken so that the richest citizens of our country can continue to enjoy some of he lowest tax rates in decades, lets not fool ourselves with political slogans. If we want to define our culture based on who tops the Forbes lists of richest Americans versus the cultural impact of our thinkers and artists, we are unlikely to maintain our status in the world. It is not, after all, our dollars that have influenced so many people around the world, it is our culture.
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