rainy day sunday

This is a detail shot of the vertical strips wheat pasted over the tar after sanding.

tape is making its way in.

The piece below is the first version.

I spread a layer of tar across the surface of the canvas and wiped it down.

The red is deeper, bloodier, better

the wheat pasted strip across the top is another piece

I had done on paper but proved more useful as a component to the larger pieces.

pretty sure the skirt was this color.
quite accidentally I realized the backside

of the paper pieces was closer to what I was looking for.

I love the way the white enamel dots bleed through in an uneven manner.

Inside out is outside in.

I guess I'll show this detail twice cause it photographed well up close.

Red is necessary in homage of the red skirt.

I blink my eyes and i am there.

Like in that movie....Don't Look Now.......

He sees his daughter pass around a corner in a red hooded coat and goes in search of her to no avail....

red is powerful in the memory bank.
detail above...looking close, there is a lot to see, secrets everywhere.

whole painting below

Blurry, but necessary to add. I am now loving this piece!

I need to find the other images of the beach runners love that I painted out.
I just had to work on these one more time.

I was unhappy with the result of the tar.

Others did not agree with me, but I have to be pleased, why else would I do this!
Below are a couple of views of work in the studio.

most of what I am showing you are details of the pieces.

These images allow you to see the scale of the paintings in relation to each other.

and with a pencil to show scale.
I used up the remainder of the last batch of wheat paste.

Stinky and moldy it was but I think it was still working perfectly!

That was a good batch.
Yesterday in the studio proved a rigorous workout!

I worked all day until there was no more room to move

around and everything I could proceed on was wet!

moma boys

Cy Twombly on hipstamatic .....lens: John S......film: Kodot Grizzled......Flash off
best side Bruce Nauman ......straight up
one side Frank Stella..... straight up
one whole cy twombly....straight up

one part rauschenberg.....straight up
Went to NY this past weekend with Dana. Intoxicating as usual.

We both met own mentors for the first time in brooklyn.

Apparently they are friends, good friends

and their studios are 10 minutes apart.

My dude is Joe.

He's a critic and a curator and a painter.

He said the thing that interests ME most, IS the most important thing.

I like that.

he thought the large wheat past pieces looked like they could have been done by someone living under the bridge.

. .that they had a sort of primitivist street art quality to them.

and I say Quality because I think he meant it that way, but I'm not sure

He said the pieces held light even though they were dark....

the light doesn't die.

He asked me where I saw this work and I don't think I answered him.

I think he half wanted me to say that I like it right here.

I know what he meant .....do I see it at some point showing in NY or beyond, do I want to bust into the scene,

Answering that affirmatively sets you up as arrogant , or hungry, or competitive or stupid.

or all of the above

like a singer on american idol belting it out way way way off key.

Especially with out knowing what he thinks of the work.

I should have been more bold and just asked him

the locus of memory

All our activities are linked to the idea of journeys.

I like to think our brains have an information system giving us our orders for the road,

here lie the mainsprings of our restlessness.

I need my memories. They are my documents.

I keep watch over them....you must differentiate between memories.

Are you going to them or are they coming to you?

If you are going to them you are wasting your time.

Nostalgia is not productive. If they come to you, they are the seeds.

louise bourgeois

the locus of memory


from mother home and heaven




In all our voluntary thinking there is some topic or subject about which all the members of thought revolve.

Half the time this topic is a problem, a gap we cannot yet fill with a definite picture,

word or phrase, but which influences in an intensely active and determinate psychic way.

What ever may be the images or phrases that pass before us, we feel their relation to this aching gap.

To fill it up is our thought's destiny. Some bring us nearer to the consummation.

Some the gap negates as quite irrelevant. each swims in a felt fringe of relations which the gap is the term.

from william James...The Principles of Psychology
New pile of detritis from the other nights rampage

They know they've been here before
I haven't spent any time with these two pieces as I just devoured them the other night!

With each episode of destruction I find myself closer to what it is I think I am searching for.

For one, it is most definitely process. As I excavate my way through this work what is

revealed in the layers below is my mind as matter. All the piles are significant, every line draw,

Every ragged edge.

It appears that this territory is uncharted, but what if its not?

What if the chart sits right below the surface waiting for me to see it right?
So.....I had a rather difficult time with unpacking this work.

It was more like tearing it apart and again quite a satisfying endeavor!!!!

I am beginning to understand what it is I am doing.

tar baby

These two pieces are 5x5 feet wheat pasted ephemera and photographs

on drop clothes. Family photos and pages from a vintage book I found,

published in the year 1872, I probably shouldn't have torn it up....

but it was so spot on with content. Titled Mother, Home and Heaven,

it housed advice in a literary and poetic form on, how to live a good honest life,

raising a family. the ethics and morals from the 1870's hold some weight today in

poignancy and sarcasm. Not unlike what we strive for today, but can that really be real?

The photo is blurry because my eyes are bad and it is taken with my phone.

The piece below is the same vintage ephemera and photographs wheat pasted and then smeared with tar.

this is a detail, the pages are torn from the bottoms of the pages so no words are visible,

except what I have scratched in. Some images of family members peak out between the vertically pasted strips

running horizontally across the surface with a rhythm mimicking a heartbeat.

A closer look at what is happening. I sat this in the hot sun after burnishing

the surface with graphite. The sun heated the surface to the point where the wax

below became soft and even liquidy. I thought it would crack and move the more rigid material

on the surface, much like the seismic shifts in the plates of the earth or like liquid lava

flowing under rigid rock until the rock itself becomes liquid. However, this piece is large and

the shifts I had hoped for did not occur. So I decided to flip the painting inside out with a spatula,

like flipping flap jacks. The result was a pile of gridded wax flap jacks..

Then I went to lowe's to learn about TAR

Ok back to blogging! This is a piece that I have been working on since first semester.

It has evolved considerably! It has been constructed, deconstructed and reconstructed many

times. the materials are a multitude of layers of paint, wax, resin, graphite, plaster and tar.

the best things in life

two little mermaids I know ventured OUT of the water on that first warm warm day. one, the dark one wore a tiger racerback the other, practically see through in her extremeties wore peach nylon to protect her delicate epedermis from the harsh mother. such a precious site . I was lucky for sure!

yeah, what ever! blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah la

when I was a little girl

when I was a little girl

I sailed upon a warm soft breeze room to breathe.......getting your flesh cut into is a very weird thing. You take for granted the healing swiftness of common cuts and bruises. I think I might have a thousand or so switch stitches between my cheek and my back....counting both layers of inside and out. I thought he said the thread was blue to differentiate between

the dissolving thread which is white and the takeout stitching. but it all looks black and actually quite a bit like frankenstein. oh well, He didn't say he went into the business because he liked sewing.....I think he said it was more the "surgury" he was drawn to ...and I believe that is in the cutting" ......And, just the night before, Alfred and I watched Silence of The Lambs. I don't think that was the right name for that movie. I mention that JUST LAST NIGHT I watched S OF THE L and said" awe.......good movie!" as he was sewing my skin back together. I like it! Now I have one old side and one young.....next time you see me , you guess which one is which.
thinking thinking thinking

agnus and the ocean

Like the ocean, you just go there and sit and look.

This in a nutshell is what eastern philosophy and art can be.

We look at the ocean in a primal way 9Perhaps we originally came from there,

or there is some other reason why we are so drawn to it)

Regardless as to why we are drawn,

we see in the ocean some kind of answer,

an assurance of, if nothing else,

that the universe is unfolding in it's cosmic mystery,

or that "life goes on" --some kind of peace or perspective about life--

--we look without the need for words,

infact

we are counting on the wordlessness to comfort us.
oh little wax panel

your not my friend

paper,mold and neon

bend
Happen to be

sailing on a cardboard sea

in a cardboard boat

toward heaven

ly
scrap heap
Here are some finished pieces. as the semester comes to a close

I am compelled to bring these creatures to a point of closer too.