MFA Thesis Exhibition

Here is my thesis piece, With/in/Between at Lesley University's MFA Thesis Exhibition! The piece has changed a lot from the original install in January. I replaced the wooden frame with PVC. What a difference installing it!

The opening of the installation

  
The PVC pipes are like tinker toys to assemble!

Then I sculpted the interior plastic, redesigned the lighting to glow throughout the entire tube, bright enough to cast a shadow on the outside, not so bright to blind, warm on the color scale, and absolutely most important -  cool to the touch even after a week of being on (to not melt the plastic and torch the building).  This required three different lights, many dimmers, and never ending home depot trips. I also installed a super soft, squishy foam floor covering under the plastic. Voila!

The side of the installation viewed from the entrance of the room

  

Catching Up

This is a long overdue blog post! This semester has been a major whirlwind. The first half was dedicated to writing my thesis, and in theory- the second half was to produce new work. In practice about 50% of my time has been put towards new work. With the other half of my time I have been working on my artist talk for the final residency  as well as searching/applying for jobs and exhibition opportunities. I recently was accepted into the Boston Young Contemporaries 2013 exhibition, so things are going in the right direction!



About the work: I started off with making some loose sketches and watercolor paintings inspired by the geometry of With/in/Between (see website: www.ndaviau.weebly.com). These are not intended to be "perfect finished pieces" but rather studies in which I can examine my ideas and see what pops up.  Here are three of about 30, I spared your eyes the more boring ones.

 I have been experimenting with the plastic material as well as some amazing plastic-like blueprint/graph paper that i found dumpster diving in my undergrad days (Westchester has the best "trash").  The plastic graph "paper" reacts differently than the plastic bag material. It bubbles up quite a bit and does not tear or wrinkle. I like the distortion of the neat two dimensional graph into a three dimensional bubble. This continues the tension that i began exploring in the cube pieces and fully examined in my thesis. I am presently making a bunch of these forms out of 2" x 2" squares i cut out along the grid and then heat gun. Despite being the same size and shape they all turn out completely different when heated. These will be displayed in a grid.

2" x 2" grid detail

side view of 2" x 2" grid

2" x2" grid thus far in the process

 4" wide x 6 " tall (view looking down)

 8" x 8"  square

I also explored the plastics ability to withstand the environment. Over the weekend I created a structure out of fallen branches and wrapped it in the plastic. It was really difficult to create it with the wind which made the heat dissipate much quicker and blew the plastic around while i was working on it.  After  a huge thunderstorm and 60 mph winds it came apart on the top a bit and i decided to rethink the project. however that has not stopped my child from moving into it (complete with chair) and enjoying the cocoon like space.  To give scale, the structure is about 8 feet tall, the branches are about 9-10 feet high each of the three branches are at the point of a triangle that spans roughly 5 feet from point to point.
      I am interested in further exploring the uses of the plastic material in combination with the natural setting. To be continued....

plastic fantastic!

This weekend i went to nyc to see some art! After a lot of looking at what was around i decided to spend my time at the brooklyn museum and am very happy i did! the exhibition i was most excited to see was jean-michel othoniel's 50 year retrospective of glass and obsidian extravaganza. The work ranged from his small sulphur and wax sculptures that as the info stated resembled "orifices" to his monumental glass bead installations and fabric peep hole curtains.  Mickalene Thomas had a whole floor of massive paintings encrusted with rhinestones, photos,  a great video piece, and a four room installation. I did not expect to fall so totally in love with her work. the 70's aesthetic never particularly appealed to me and I have no nostalgic associations with it. the Internet images of her work do not do it justice. they are slick, seductive and jarring. and of course i love that they are beyond huge. The first floor also had some great stuff as well as the fourth floor with the dinner party and an unexpected find - a .
My mentor meeting on sunday morning was super helpful. Diana Cooper and I discussed my plastic pieces that I brought with me. The white lights that i brought for the inside of the tube are not the solution to lighting it, a more ambient and diffused white light is what i will be using in the final install. We discussed technical issues with making a 7 foot wooden cube work structurally and executing it in the clean and precise way i envision. so without further ado i am going to start on the frame cube part of the installation. in addition to working on the actual cube i am making a scaled model of the installation in the room to help with planning the space.
I am very happy with the plastic sheeting and will be posting pictures of it soon (my camera battery died mid transfer).

this is the post that never ends, oh no it never ends my friends...

Funny how we always manage to get back to where we started and find it is a compelety different place and wonder if we changed or the place did. Like a favorite childhood spot that seemed immense and transcending but later visited seems tiny and commonplace. In my undergrad senior thesis show i surrounded the installation with a floor to ceiling, thin (almost clear), construction plastic curtain that i hand sewed at the top in a gathering stitch. (for an idea of size the gallery was about 30  by twenty feet and i went around all the walls about a foot in. so that is sewing aprox. 100 feet gathered which is about 200 feet straight).  this membrane had two overlaps where gallery goers could enter and exit, the plastic made a swooshing, floating sound and movement when passed and almost seemed to breathe with the shifting air currents. (for pics of this see www.ndaviau.weebly.com)

detail of plastic layers

plastic sheet two layers about 3 feet by 5 feet

inside plastic bag sculpture

crumpled plastic bag sculpture

on my list of studio things to try this last week was attaching multiple plastic bags together to make a large panel that i could suspend and possibly create a chamber for my mylar something or others (pictures of those below).  I then remembered the plastic sheeting i had left over from six years ago- clearly i never throw anything out. after pinning it to my wall and heat gunning it in two layers i fell in love, and then remembered the membrane (which was not altered except for being gathered). I experimented with sandwiching interfacing (my new favorite material) between the two layers and am interested in the ways it references the interior of a body - bone cells, lung interior, or even mucus-y looking textures that happen when the plastic melts overlaps, tears, and mutates. I also like peeking through the holes and seeing the figure ground reversal of the environment behind it. One of the many benefits of the sheets of plastic as opposed to having to attach together individual bags is that it has no distracting print and there will be no visible seams. skin has no seams (unless you count scars and are frankenstien).  the plastic can be seamlessly 10 feet by 100 feet!

my studio installation. for scale my window is 36 inches wide and 42 inches tall. the top unslanted portion of the ceiling is about 5 feet.

 There is this overwhelming desire i have to wrap myself up in this and dissappear into the spaces. So i did the next best thing and tacked a sheet plastic up in my studio from the ceiling and to three walls then heat gunned it from the inside and outside. the way it responded to heat when it was stretched from  different directions  and not just on a flat wall made it seem alive. it twisted and pulled and of course came untacked from the wall every minute of so resulting in a sculpture that is compelelty different than the one i had originally tacked up. i love the release of control that comes with working with heat and plastic and the suprising outcomes.  this installation was made without the interfacing between the plastic sheet. ( i ran out and will be getting more asap), so it is a little less stiff and and not quite as bone colored, more bright white. i am going to heat gun it again in spots to add more negative space.

small fabric fuse test 6 by 8 inches

larger fabric test about 3 feet by 2 1/2 feet

close up of fabric overlays

On a separate but connected note i have also been fusing fabric together in sheets to create a fabric composite "skin" with multiple layers. i am questioning my "go to" use of white for everything and thinking about the symbolism of white and what jan and fia said at my crit in june about white being a color of suppression and covering up as well as how white is used in ceremonies such as weddings, baptisims, etc. here are some of my fabric fusions. i love touching them and feeling all the different textures. Ben brought up some interesting questions about the interplay between value, culture, tradition, ritual and activity in different types of fabric. i have been reading a lot about lace and thinking about other materials uses connotations, such as muslin, tule, etc.

inside mylar form

fun house mirror mylar bubbles

mylar sculpture about 4 inches across

view inside mylar cave

mylar in a 3d form

flat mylar

the pleasure of melting plastic... (or the least pleasurable way to get cancer)

2 1/2 inches

Ahhh, nothing like a stormy day where you can not open the windows to play with a heat gun and plastic bags... i love the smell of carcinogens in the morning! I especially love the results of this test, they look cellular, membrane-y, and downright skin like. the shrinking action of the plastic isnspired me to pin down parts on a few and see how that affected the melting pattern, it created a "taxidermy pelt" like tension. I then took a ball of wool and wrapped it with a plastic bag and then some interfacing and of course, heat gunned it. the roundness of these compared to the flat wool piece with the interfacing made on an embroidery hoop is much more pleasing to me. i love the little spaces and gaps. Not quite sure where this is leading but i am enjoying the results so far.