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.

...

7" long x 3" tall

detail

detail of end

this is bigger, about 16" from top to bottom

I have been playing around with cheesecloth, wool and ways to stiffen fabric. After many different tests (mod podge, rabbit skin glue, wheat paste, gloss and matte medium, bees wax, all sorts of glue) that resulted in a toxic stench in my studio it occurred to me that i could use the heat bonding fabric interfacing applied over the circular wool embroidery hoop piece. I disassembled the previous wool and gauze piece and reassembled it with the interfacing. When heat gunned -voila! - exactly what i wanted! the gauze stiffened/ As a bonus surprise it also shrunk got a funny texture in some places, which i like it because of the texture and spontaneity it adds to the pieces. after setting the entire thing and applying multiple layers in some places and tearing in other places. i enjoyed unraveling the structure  of the gauze, which look like cilia. conversely, i also like the grid that is formed by the threads of the intact fabric.   as i hung them up they reminded me of my tumor series. not sure where they are going and how much i like that. i am going to make some more also some larger ones and see where they take me, and experimenting with the amount of stuffing they have.
For my next paper i have started looking deeper into fabric art and soft sculpture, as i have finally realized that i can not keep fiber and fabric out of  my work no matter how hard i try. I have been looking at the work of Annette Messager, christopher langton, ernesto neto, tim hawkinson and many, many, (many) others. I also have sketched some plans for a larger chamber that i might make. and ooh yes i am still cutting circles whenever i need a nice break from life! i just started the green color series. only blue and violet left!

the last two weeks...

My sneaky photo in Fireflies at the whitney.

After seeing the amazing Kusama explosion all over nyc and meeting with my mentor i was thinking about the possibilities for two dimensional art. These are just some experimental relaxing sketchy paintings. I have not done any painting (with the exception of my tumors) since (gulp) my foundation classes in undergrad, 7 years ago. i was surprised by how relaxing and gratifying it was to just play around with materials and no pressure or final product in mind. Making these paintings helped clarify some of the things that have been interesting me lately- specifically boundaries, and conversely the breaking of boundaries. I read a good book (not for school) titled "where to draw the line"about the importance of healthy boundaries and it got me thinking to the boundaries all around us, state and country lines, cell walls, the atmosphere, skin, acceptable ways of acting around different people, etc. and what happens when these boundaries are broken. I like graph paper and felt most comfortable starting my paintings on 11" x 17" graph paper so that is what these are on. I started painting these the day after i saw kusamas show and putsed around with them for about a week as kind of a relaxing evening ritual. The influence of Kusama's show is definitely visible in many of these.

detail

for some reason this came out much more blue than in real life.

detail

detail

broken square

i realize this looks like a president or something. unintended.

this is smaller than the reset at 7x9 inches

diagonal broken square (the paper is white with blue grid, bad photo color.

cheesecloth covered wool with leak about 4 inches wide and 12 inches long.

i like the way the cheesecloth can be morphed and looks graph like but skin like as well. 

my landscape oil painting, dated 1992 (made under my dad lessons when i was 7). Now under the white grid painting, bye bye bob ross!

close up of white grid encaustic painting

studio view

white grid painting with slice, i am working on material and things that are going to be spilling out of it onto the floor.

close up 

8" diameter embroidery hoop with screening, interfacing, and wool

a felt test with the interfacing materials and yucky felt colors

a little wool leak

these are just some forms i have been playing with

this is wax poured over an ice sphere, I made this my first semester but have been coming back to the idea of preserving something in flux.

thought control

So i was talking to myself about my art this evening (a dangerous way to start a post). I was struggling on not feeling as into a few of my recent ideas as i would like. I am still full tilt into the circle project, which is currently living in about 250 envelopes on my counter and carpel tunnel is setting in from all my late night circle snipping. Still really like it! This has left time for my thoughts to roam to what else am i going to do.

After some suggestions to prune down the rube goldberg machine i was thinking about making a mold of a house sculpture to cast ice houses and letting the melting drip form the catalyst of the concentric circle ripple by suspending the ice house on pantyhose stretched to the walls so the water would drip into my circular pie plate and make simple little circular ripples. I feel really moved to make a model of my house out of ice and watch it melt. toying with ideas like using the dripping water to do other things like water plants or make a cup run over, etc. i also though of doing a water torture piece and have it drip on my head. ha. i also think there is something beautiful in it just sitting on a table melting and not leaving a trace of what it was.

other thing i am trying to work on: suspended thread drawings of my house in ice. I am freezing water in layers and struggling to make a three dimensional thread drawing of my house by suspending the thread in the water one section at a time. not as easy as it sounds.
 I also thought about pouring wax over the ice house so it is preserved as it melts.

and finally the idea that i was so excited about i was talking about it with myself and decided blogging was a better outlet: making a shrine to control. as i was introspecting it occurred to me that my most "successful" pieces are those that are obsessive and that is what i enjoy most about making art. the ability to have (or try to at least) obsessive control over every aspect of something. who know what will come out of this?!
Excuse this late night and exhausted rambling.

i'm going in circles!

I am super excited about this project which i started a few days after coming back home as a way to "relax" in the evening without falling off my art making wagon. I took a somewhat guilty trip to home depot for the pure purpose of helping myself to their entire line of Behr paint chips. i could not take more than the first section without looking like an unabashed thief. I snuck back home where, after a long day of playing with legos and dinosaurs, i turned on my new audio book (thank you library) and cut out my best attempts at perfect circles of each shade of paint chip. The "rules" of cutting are simple, no re-cuts, backups, tracing of any sort, and keep each color series (a section of 7 paint chips in light to dark of one color) sorted in order with the "negative space" paint chip remnants in separate envelopes.

So far i have worked through the red and orange into the yellow. This was all going well until i ran out of envelopes two nights ago (i had about 170 left in my box of 200 when i started this).  i decided to start figuring out the installation thing before going further. i nailed the color series with a 1 1/2" finish nail in the center lightest circle on top darkest on bottom and stuck it on my wall.
 Magic! i am thrilled with the way it almost disappears when viewed from the front and then eclipses like the moon when you move around it. the uneven circles seem to peek out and then disappear.   i have nailed about 15 of them but haven't hung all of them up yet. the results of the first circle on the wall are definitely motivating me to finish the entire project.

looking at paint chip from front

starting to walk to side

side far away

front from about 8 feet away

spacing will be more even when i install

for reference the nail is 1 1/2 inches long and about 1/4-1/2 inch is in wall

more on the concepts of perfection, utopia, and control some other day.

Finished House "Interior"

I brought my needlepoint house installation entitled "Interior" to my third residency period at the end of my second semester. This was my most resolved piece yet in the program and that made a huge difference in the quality and direction of the critiques. I am currently reinstalling this in my studio at home to get better photographs with out the lovely oatmeal boards and flattering florescent lights. For details of the actual house look through my past blog posts. I also want to experiment and explore different ways of installing it perhaps eliminating the stand and finding alternative ways to support it.

Front of "Interior"

Side view

detail, floor 

detail, under table top looking inside of house

yarn tangle

hand dyed yarn in spools and balls