accessibility day 2

I put in a good full day today. so far i have used 7000 stir sticks. I have only twelve more days left I hope i can make it.

goodbye ox-bow hello sumter accessiblity

My first night in sumter
i spent an hour or so getting warmed up saturday night
sunday i got started at noon just after brunch, this picture is from 2oclock, 2 hours down, 130 to go



my last night in my ox-bow studio


well i got really busy in the last couple of days of my ox-bow residency so here are the final farewell shots in my studio there. I am now in Sumter south carolina working on the next project. I am at the accessibility residency as one of the installation artists. Since I only have 13 days to make a piece i am putting all my eggs into one basket and i just going to weave stir sticks. I hope i can build the piece i am picturing, but i won't really know until i get a little further along. i started today around noon and will work all day everyday between now and the 27th, and whatever it ends up like is what it will be. Also in a wonderful bit of luck the host family that i am staying with are a bunch of musicians, and they have a drumset in their living room, and they love to play with people, so i am looking forward to some drumming breaks at some point during my time here.

days 19, 20, 21 at ox-bow

look closely and you can see a giant mosquito/mutant bug on the panelit is hard to photograph but i have made some progress on the wire basket


this is the first panel built, i just need to finish the french cleat on the back and mount the paper to it

I keep wondering how i will be effected by my time here at ox-bow, but since things are so sheletred and disconnected here, I can't really gauge. I started working on framing and finishing a couple of my pieces. I think by the end of today i should be finished with the framing. I want to start packing up the remaining rust prints, but do to the ridiculously unseasonably humid weather here i can't. I had hope to spend my last three days at ox-bow messing with paper bags and working on the large wire basket. I am starting to get anxious about sumter, and have begun to wonder if i ordered enough stir sticks. I think sometime next week, or shortly after i get there, i will order more.

day 17 and 18 at oxbow

the pink paper makes a great backdrop for photographs


got to the studio yesterday morning and the bags had fallen in a really interesting way again



the last couple of days it has been a bit rainy and the extra moisture in the air has prevented my paper from drying fully, which has delayed me from finishing the pieces. With only a week left here i am really determined to at least get one if not all the pieces finished and mounted. I got the 15 foot paper hung up so i could look at it and let it dry a bit, but i think i am not finished with it, i feel like i want a more all over pattern on the piece. I also got back to work on the large woven figure basket, but i think i have temporarily lost interest in that. For entertainment here, we have been watching the hbo series carnivale at night. The series follows a carnival freak show around the country after the depression. The show is mostly a fantasy about universal struggles between good and evil and magic and imagined forces. I am enjoying the distraction, since the closer it gets to the sumter project the more my anxiety rises. I know that when i get anxious it helps me focus, and i will definitely need all the focus i can muster to do what i want to do in sumter.

day 15 and 16 at oxbow

it is funny how i go through a cycle every week where i really question exactly what the hell and why the hell i am doing what i am doing. It seems odd ot be in such an idyllic place where all the food and shelter and cleaning and basic life needs are being taken care of and all i have to do is wake up and go to the studio and make stuff. It feels weird because i feel spoiled and incredibly comfortable so comfortable that it seems wrong to spend so much time in the studio making work. At breakfast this morning i was talking to one of the office staff about this. She is also an artist and said that this was my time to do with as i pleased (she also reminded me that i am 5 months out of grad school and this is a typical sentiment) which was a good reminder, so maybe i will spend more time with my book and finish it so i can get another one. I am reading the paradox of choice which is really appropriate for me. The book explores the possibility that having too many choices is actually harmful and diminishes the quality of life. I find this to be true for me since whenever i make a choice i go round and round with whether or not it is the right one. Oh well i guess i will choose to go work in the studio for a little bit and then choose to read my book for a little bit.

day 14 at ox-bow

so i started making a really large rust print yesterday and will keep working on that for the next couple of days. I think I am starting to get too settled in i am getting anxious about leaving and transitioning back into my regular studio life, and i am especially nervous about the sumter gig after this.Last night there was a dance party here and that was cool, tonight we are having pizza for dinner so that will be nice.

day 13 at ox-bow

when i came into the studio this morning one of the stacks of bags had toppled over and i thought that was interesting
so i stacked it back up and waited for it to fall again and caught it on video this time

So i gave my little talk last night along with two other artists. One was this faux naive painter john parot, and the other was a korean painter named chae eun rhee. The night before was a talk by a self described conceptual artist named artur silva, and another chicago faux naive named rob doran. The longer i stay here the more i am learning about the chicago art scene. There seems to be a real penchant for “expressive work” coming out of chicago. Or more accurately work in the style of expression. Many of the artists make their work as a therapy or way to air the dirty laundry of their personal lives. They feel it necessary to present themselves as outsiders and damaged goods and use their artwork as a vehicle for expressing their perceived flaws. The work presents itself as if it is a uniquely personal work or approach, but in fact the work is highly stylized and composed and borrows form some of the most academic techniques and approaches known to art making. I mention this because for me art making is an activity, I prefer to express my personal anxieties in other arenas. I enjoy discovering new materials, and processes and enjoy making objects and images. I say all this because after i gave my talk and realized that everyone else who gave their talk talked about how their personal lives and a sense of being damaged goods, trying to express their discomfort with the world, that i was just sort of happy go lucky(i mean i ended with a fart joke...which i guess is expressive on some level). I like my job as an artist, but I can honestly see myself moving on in a couple of years. Being here at ox-bow, surrounded by painters who are trying to express themselves, has made me aware that there is a limit to my commitment to the myth and role of the artist. I say all this now, but it may just be because i have work up in three group shows right now and i am about to start a really difficult site piece in sumter in 2 weeks and i just sent off 3 more applications and in november i am going to the vermont studio center so i may just be feeling a bit of justified anxiety. Oh well maybe two more weeks at ox-bow will help me sort this out.

day 11 and 12 at ox bow

so since some of the bags blew off of the big bag stack i started making a vertical stack around the lights i constructedi got this far on the large basket and decided to give it a rest, maybe forever
right before the bags fell down they started to get these interesting cracks and fissures along the seems, and then they fell off

i did laundry today, and was reminded of how difficult it is to get several jeans to dry at the same time in one dryer. I also got back into this really great book i was reading called the paradox of choice. Tonight i have to give my little 30 minute slide talk, I have totally over thought it and made a full blown power point complete with video and text and what not. I am still debating whether or not to include some lip dub videos in the talk, although they are not technically part of my "body of work".

day 9 and 10 at ox-bow

so these are a couple new photoshops i did this morning to make myself more comfortable with what i will potentially do in sumter



although it is hard tio see i am holding up a wire armature that is roughly the shape of the outline of my body
so this seems to be a good solution for the brazed pipe piece, i like that it looks like a contractor's folly for a hotwater line.

so that's two trips worth of sticks from starbucks. it is harder to get stir sticks here since the starbucks is a full 20 minutes away.

i got a phone call yesterday from a very confused woman at the sumter cultural council. She wanted to know why some many boxes of coffee stirrers were just delivered to her office, I explained that they were in fact materials for the accessibility exhibition. I also went to holland yesterday to work on another application, and to exchange a faulty pipe cutter at the home depot. While i was there i swung by the starbucks and relieved them of their excess stir sticks. I started a large basket in the studio using my self as the pattern, we will see where that goes. i also reached a bit of a resolution with the copperbrazing piece, and definitely have some ideas of what to do with it. I am starting to wonder what benefit i am getting out of being here, but i know from past experiences with uncomfortable feelings in tight knit artists communities that the benefits will reveal themselves after the fact.