A suite of South Carolina Creations in 2012

In January I will be  a visiting artist at Coastal Carolina University in Conway South Carolina, and in February I will be one at Columbia College. Each of these university galleries presents unique and exciting settings for the creation of site work. At the Rebecca Randall Bryant Gallery, at Coastal Carolina University, it is a perfect shoe box gallery with wood floors, some mixed natural and artificial light and an exposed ceiling structure. At the Goodall gallery at Columbia College it is a dramatic sweeping gallery with a very high ceiling and large walls, with an elevated catwalk. Each of these installations will play off of the discoveries I made while working in Richmond, as well as providing an opportunity to expand my current visual and structual vocabulary with my chosen pallette of materials.

I am always careful to not plan much more than the final gestalt of an installation. I have found that attempts to overplan the physical form beyond the amount space it will occupy can be stifling for me. I prefer to let the space dictate the particulars of a given work. In the case of each of these installations I have dummied up some photoshop “collages” using clippings of elements from previous installations I hope to expand on for these shows. The two shows have been titled and organized around three elements each. For Coastal Carolina the show is ” Weaving, Stacking, and Staining”. The title in this case describes the three main processes I will apply to the three materials for that show. The three materials will be coffee cup sleeves, coffee grounds, and of course wooden sticks. While working on the Richmond show and the Grand Rapids show I always had in the back of my mind that I wanted to expand and elevate the coffee cup sleeves. In previous installations the sleeves have been floor based or pinned as columns between the floor and ceiling. I finally allowed myself to use them as the great drawing tool that they are. Where the sticks provide my cross hatching, the sleeves provide me a gesture. For Coastal I will be making an elevated sleeve line and then weaving sticks through that form. On the wall I will be attempting a large coffee stained  mandala. After the great success of the small coffee rectangle in Richmond I knew right away that I wanted to devour a wall with this element.

The show at Columbia College is currently titled “Fine Lines, Found Textures and First Impressions” Where the three elements in this show will be a large linear sleeve sculpture, some large and small rust on paper works, and a new series of sleeve and other found material collagraphs printed in the Columbia College printshop. I have left Columbia College’s plan open enough that I can use it to process what I will do at Coastal, but also because the space there really provides the chance to play. I hope to create  a large abstract line drawing in space and pair it with related works on paper. When I first laid eyes on the goodall gallery at Columbia College I was immediately seduced by the large amount of vertical space, and the extremely high walls on one side. I immediately envisioned a simple network of linear sculptures running through the space. After I thought some more about it I also felt it would be challenging and interesting to create a multipanel print sized to fit the wall of the gallery. There is something kind of appealing about a show that will require adjusting one’s vision upwards to digest. As with all my best laid plans though time, energy, and practicality will become the most crucial factor once I am on site.