between anxiety and productivity

I seem to live my life somewhere between anxiety and productivity. This leads to prolonged moments of anxious production. This is one of those moments.

moved, settled, unsettled

here is the studio once i finished moving out, almost 2 years to the day that i moved in. We scheduled our move to begin May 16th, so literally the day after I finished the city gallery piece we began moving the apartment first and then the studio followed shortly after that.

here is the load of studio stuff en route to columbia, there was an identical trailer and truck load of stuff/furniture that traveled up to columbia the week before this.
Moving is one of those processes that can lead to good things. While I don't recommend making a habit of it, I for one have moved on average every two-three years for the last 15 years and see no signs of change on that front. On the positive side it forces me to be incredibly selective about what i keep ,and in recent years what i move from studio to studio. It always feels like an episode of sanford and sons when i move(see above image.) I take great pains to only move what i will immediately need and try whenever possible to get rid of, destroy, or store art that i am not actively working on. This sets up a certain type of thinking that i like; The notion that each time I enter a studio, a gallery, or exhibition space I am starting over. It is true I cannot erase the work I have done before nor can I forget the lessons I learn each time I make a piece, but I try to only imagine the work in the space where I am working is the only work I have. On some level this is just a simple strategy to get over the paralyzing fear that grips me in the beginning moments of any project or piece. the fear that what i make will either A)not get finished or b)be not worth the effort when i reach the other side. To overcome this fear I often utilize systems and strategies of my own devising. To a lesser extent this may be why I try, whenever it is feasible , to make work in or specifically for the space it will be seen in. It is also why i prefer non-alchemical systems of making art .I rather prefer making work where the system of it's creation is self-evident. But this is art and there are no rules other than the ones i continually make for myself. This leads me to the thing I am working on right now.
This is the beginning of my "vibrating coffee cups with mocha tone generator". This installation will consist of several motion activated vibrating coffee cups hooked up to an amplification system. This is the early stages of the wiring and I still have some presentation and display issues to resolve but they will get their first installation July 24th at the Redux Contemporary art center as part of the Past presence show curated by Redux's director Karen Ann Myers. Once I finish with this piece I will begin preparing for two stir stick installations at University galleries and an acrylic installation tentatively scheduled for the fall.

city gallery opens tonight runs through July 26th

Well it is back to applications, deadlines, real life, and other work, including moving the studio and our apartment in less than two weeks...yikes! I know many of my friends live too far to come to the opening(i guess that is the disadvantage of the west coast it is not in the south). I also know many locals cannot make it to the opening, but do not fret it will be on display until July 26th. I have posted an online album and will add to it if i get other shots of the piece. the online album is here.
http://www.jonathanbrilliant.com/citygallery

I am very excited to begin on the next work which will be for a group show at the redux contemporary art center at the end of July. I am planning to create some new objects and works on paper for that one so it should be an interesting project as it will be the first studio work I make in my new situation. I am very curious to see if having more outdoor working space affects what i make the way it did in the summer of 2007, although it probably won't since i tend to be a pretty even line. I almost forgot, the amazing curator erin glaze who over saw the contemporary charleston 2009:revelation of process exhibition also created a nice little full color catalog and dvd of this show(together only $15), they are available in person at the gallery, or you can email me and i will see if i can mail one out to you.

city gallery day 9 and 10...the end

these are some pics that brooke snapped when she was visting the site the other night.



i spent last night and today bringing this side to a satisfying resolution.

i



my faithful lunch sack and the coffee consumed during this project

I have reached the terminous of this one. I will go back tomorrow to do the final lighting and take some more documentary photos. when I was finishing up working today I thought about something Shannon Wright always said about the pattern created from the tensile weaving method i use. No, not the thing about reminding her of hash browns, but the part about my systems of sculpture being studies of inefficient methods of storage. Where as the goal of storage is to make things take up as little space as possible and my methods are designed to expand the materials into as much space as possible with as simple means as possible. None the less I am looking forward to a long nights sleep tonight and a painless lighting session tomorrow.

city gallery day 7 and 8

it has been difficult to really photograph this on the fly as the light in the space changes constantly with the sun and the reflected light from the water outside. I should be setting the lights in the next couple of days.


it has been interesting for me to see this piece develop. in many ways it has become a lot like a torqued basket fed through some sort of photoshop filter. I like to think when i am working that it is a bit like a labor intensive version of the cloning tool inside the photoshop interface
one of the great things about this space is the opportunity to work both high and low.

this ended up being the best way to work on the under side of the piece.

I am feeling better about the prospect of resolving this piece shortly. with each installation like this i reach a point where i have to trust the direction that the work is driving itself in and just follow that. I managed to bring the downstairs to a resolution and now i am teasing out the upper portions but not for too much longer since the show opens on friday and i still need to clean up the space and light it and then rest a little bit myself. I have been finding with this piece that the lessons i learned on the previous installations have been put into play and i hope in the future to use what i learned here. It is really interesting to see the learning curve on these since it has been such a drawn out process. With work that is portable and studio based i can come and go from it and see the changes develop much faster. When doing these site-specific, site-responsive pieces i really only get to learn from them when i do them. So where in a year I might make several objects and works on paper in the last three years I have only seen a handful of these installations realized, but am hopeful that i will get to see more in the future...

city gallery day 6

so yeah this was today's task, tomorrow I will finish off this section and will for sure get back to the upper portions.

city gallery day 5

i have been enjoying how the stereo speakers are just sort of lost in the field of stir sticks.

this is the view from above

I began resolving the form today, and hopefully tomorrow I can finish building in the rest of the lower part before starting on the upper sections. That is all for now, Looking forward to getting back to it tomorrow.

city gallery day 4

here we are at the end of day 4 looking forward to day 5, one week left until the opening



the boxes in the bottom right are the empties for the sticks I have used on site. I really like these new sticks not only for their improved quality over previous sticks, but also for the great packaging that lends itself nicely to spiral stacking.

city gallery day 3

so I continue to make progress on this half, tonight I am going to start the other side of the room and hope they meet in the middle some time before next week. I am beginning to find my way with this one, no major derailments today.

city gallery day 2

so I accomplished two signifcant sections today. First was connecting the lower form to the upper railing and second was hoisting the first span into place.



that is all for now.

city gallery day 1

This is how it starts....

actually it started with me parking the truck inside the studio overnight so the humidity wouldn't mess up the woven panels i made ahead of time

once I got on site I was quite happy to see that the layers of plastic and the plywood sandwich saved the woven stir stick panels from an untimely demise.

I have taken a divide and conquer approach this time. I am working both high and low and hope to make them meet in the middle.

this is the lower section starting to take shape. I was able to use the panels woven in the studio to block in the form.

some progress on woven steel structure+ a construction delay

I started working on the woven steel structure for the new top secret space. I was planning to create some elements of the form in the studio using the column in my space as a guide, but then I was going to set up shop in their space and build out the rest of the form. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately they hit a delay on their end so the actual install is temporarily pushed back another week or so. This is great for me since I have some prep work to do for the city gallery piece and I actually have some applications and proposal deadlines I need to knock out. As well I will be moving out of this studio on June 1st. I have toyed with the idea before of having an open studio/closing studio event back in December when I thought I was losing my space forcibly, but now I will probably have some sort of event/opening/closing reception yard sale. I would like to mark the end of this studio, since the last two years have been a significant period of growth for me artistically and much of it was fueled by time spent both in this studio and in residencies and working on other sites, but always grounded by knowing i would return to this space.

This is how i got started. I began by just seeing if the same tensile weaving i use for the 7" coffee stirrers would work for 5-10 foot strips of 1/8"x3/4" strips of ribbon stock steel. the answer is yes of course.

next i began forming them into a more basket like structure allowing it to form around the column. Ultimately the piece will be more of an organic woven form engaging directly with the space i will install it in.

At this point I intend to keep weaving the structure through the column and into the actual installation space. This would have been the day that I set up my tools on site and began that process but like I said earlier I am on hold with it until next week. I don't mind being patient with this one as I think the pay off will be worth it to see the tensile weaving of the stir sticks translated to a heavier stronger material, I already translated the process to some acrylic strips which has been very satisfying and might be the beginning of some more plastic work. Either way this method of working directly with my materials continues to help me focus and prepare for the city gallery install, if you want to see more about the city gallery show go here
http://www.contemporarycharleston.com
Once the show opens in May there will be a catalog and dvd available for purchase from the gallery.

flourescent bulb+npr+bad reception=strange occurances in the studio

i noticed the static on npr was in time to the flickering light, might be time to change the bulb...

Big Water Bottle Basket now installed at North Charleston River front park

big water bottle basket is on display until March 2010 at the North Charleston river front park as part of their juried national outdoor sculpture show

Today we installed the big water bottle basket at the North Charleston River Front Park.

this is a flash gallery of images from today,if you are reading this blog somewhere other than on blogger and cannot see the image gallery you may need to go to my flickr page to see the images

After I finished I began gathering material for the woven steel installation taking place in a top secret location, which i will reveal once i have permission. below are a couple of images of the space and some projections of what the woven steel piece might look like. I am going to use the same process and approach for installation that i do with the stir sticks but using thin pliable steel stock instead of my beloved birch wood coffee stirrers. As with all these installations I will try to create the piece entirely in situ as a direct response to the space and the materials I have chosen. I will try to keep up blogging the progress of this, but as soon as I finish this one I will immediately begin the city gallery installation so needless to say I will be pretty tied between now and May 15th...

this is actually the interior of the space and it features the facade of a house and the wonderful steel column running through the center. I am really interested in using the column and the corner of the room in a way similar to the Orangeburg piece, as both a support and a guiding element of the installation.

Ready for my close up

As Part of the "Contemporary Charleston 2009: Revelation of the Process" exhibition, each participating artist is being documented in their process on the way to the exhibition. Since I plan to create an entirely site specific/site responsive installation, I won't begin the actual process of making until it gets closer to the exhibition. In the meantime the documentary film maker has met me at a coffee shop to do an interview and get some action shots of me liberating stir sticks from their natural environment. Additionally he came back to the studio to get some actions shots of me working on other things, as well he shot some footage of me taking measurements of the city gallery

you can see the pretty cool light ste up he brought with him.

I thought it might be a cool idea if he got some footage of me playing drums as well. It might be interesting to use some of my own artist generated audio as background for the documentary. To that end he also got some footage of me messing with my feedback loops and other improvised audio devices.

Obviously i set up my own camera and tripod on a timer to capture some of the process as well. All and all it was a fun day and it has me even more anxious/excited about the charleston installation. The Show Opens May 15th, but I should be able to get on site by May 4th to begin weaving.