June

I feel like these deadlines and work have snuck up on me. I am actively preparing for when I go on site next week to start building and installing my contribution to the 3 person show Make Ends Meet at The Flanders Gallery along with Crocheted Olek and Mathew Curran.

http://www.flandersartgallery.com/exhibition/make-ends-meet

July

After I get down from the Genie Lift at Flanders Gallery I will be starting my tenure as The Summer Artist in Residence at Artspace Raleigh. While there I will have a solid month to work in the gallery as opposed to my typical 8-10day ramp ups. I am particularly looking forward to revisiting the wall space and exploring the column in the center of the gallery. I also imagine the difference between the very high ceilinged space of Flanders and the lower ceiling intimate space of Artspace will provide viewers the chance to experience two related but different works using the same materials and process.

http://artspacenc.org/view/artist-studios/artists-in-residence/summer-artists-in-residence/

August

In August I will be exploring the outer limits of what I can do while working upside down at the Cairns Festival in North Queensland Australia. I really wonder if when I assemble the sticks in  they will fall in the opposite direction of how they fall here.

http://www.cairnsfest.com.au/

September

Finally in September I will be in Residence at CSU Fresno, where I imagine the work I make will be formally and visually informed by the work of the preceding months. Or it might just be a lot of fun to build over a balcony in a library space.

http://www.csufresno.edu/cca/about/2012_Theme.shtml

While not nearly as frenetic as 2009-2010’s “World Tour”, my 2012 schedule is none-the-less picking up pace. Between confirmed and tentative installation gigs, confirmed speaking engagements, pick up art handler/preparator work, confirmed and unconfirmed permanent commissions, the support of the Pollock-Krasner Grant,  and invited residencies my dates available have been trimmed back  to around December 2012-january 2013 as next available. While I don’t like to jinx things by talking about the unconfirmed, I did borrow a page from my own script and made a 2012 poster file that i could add and subtract things from as the year moves forward. I couldn’t resist riffing on one of the most iconic canadian prog rock album covers ever. Thanks is of course do to the many people who continue to spread word-of-mouth about me and my work. Many of these opportunties are coming from people who have directly encountered my work at some point and shared with their friends about it. Although I am still regulalry sending out applications and proposals(and being roundly and consistently rejected, a sure sign of doing something right) the most interesting work seems to come from those who simply ask me directly.

A quick breakdown of what is and isn’t confirmed and what has and hasn’t happened;

January- I started the year off keeping my resolution to weave, stack and stain my way around a room. the results were “Weaving, Stacking and Staining” my installation at Coastal Carolina University, Curated by Jim Arendt http://jonathanbrilliant.com/conway

February- I spent about 6 days on the ground, well mostly in the catwalk and on a ladder, at Columbia College.  I also spent about 2 days fouling up their print studio. The resulting work “Fine Lines, Found Textures and First Impressions” curated by Jackie Adams is viewable here http://jonathanbrilliant.com/cc

March- on the 15th I will be returning to Columbia College to give an afternoon artist talk to the students and any memebers of the public who care to join in. That evening we will break out that famous free food that makes art openings so nourishing mentally, physically and spiritually.

March 29- 30 I will be sitting on a panel, giving a talk, and leading a workshop for NC state educators at the Spring Educator Expo. if you are a NC based educator you can register here for that event

TBA- At some point in the 2012-2013 season I will be in residence at the Kohler arts/industry program. I will be working in the foundry making copious amounts of cast iron work. I am pretty excited about this one too. Kohler is one of those legendary rites of passage for an emerging sculpture/installation artist. Plus did I mention they have molten iron available at an artists beck and call.

April-May I will be renting a workshop solely for the fabrication of a new permanent edition to the city of North Charleston’s outdoor contemporary art collection. This particular piece is being designed and commissioned for the new city Hall’s traffic circle. It should be installed by July of this year. We are currently in the design approval phase but once I beging making something physical I will post some updates.

Also in April I am doing a site visit for a potential project for September 2013. is it too early to say something? Probably. But I am honored just to be invited for the site visit. Plus one of the early ideas being tossed around is erecting a structure for the sole purpose of having me work in it…big top tent anyone.

June- I will be back in the cozy embrace of an empty gallery as I take on one-third of the physical space in the Flanders Gallery Raleigh for the 3 person show “Make Ends Meet”. The other artists are Crocheted Olek, and Mathew Curran. I am really looking forward to this one as I am not only a fellow exhibiting artist but I am also a fan of the assembled talents of Curran and Olek.

July-August.  Following my install at Flanders Gallery, I will be in Residence at Artspace Raleigh . This will give me the unique opportunity to present two installations back to back in the same city. While each subsequent installation I’ve been building over the years has reflected aspects of the previous, this will be the first time they have appeared within 4 blocks of each other.

August- I’ve been invited to create an installation at he Cairns Festival in North Queensland Australia. That should be interesting as I am not sure if the rules of gravity are some how different down there.

September- I will be headed out to California. Fresno to be exact. I will be an artist in residence at California State University Fresno where I will be creating a new site-specific installation, maybe pulling some prints, and maybe even making a little catalog to mark the occasion

October-December currently unconfirmed but who knows, I may just watch TV on the Internet and sleep.

Utilizing the scope and size of the Goodall Gallery’s open floor layout, this exhibition was composed of three main elements: a series of Rust Prints, a large site work, and  a new series of prints created while in residence at Columbia College.  The unifying element in all these works is an interest in drawing my way through a space.  Through the exploitation of labor, arrangement, and the physical properties of selected materials, the show ‘s title, Fine Lines, Found Textures, and First Impressions, spells out both the
physical and visual content of the work. This show is the second in a suite of  South Carolina installations along with  “Weaving ,Stacking and Staining” which was on view at  Coastal Carolina University in January of 2012

Works

The CC Piece, 2012
6,000 coffee cup sleeves stacked one inside of another to form a series of endless loops suspended from the catwalk with braided aluminum cable

The Radiating Sleeve Print, 2012
9 unique edition coffee cup sleeve collagraphs on paper, 22”x30” each

Dots and Lines, 2011
38”x50”
Rust on paper

Lines and semi-circle, 2011
38”x50
Rust on Paper

Dark Central Spot, 2009
60”x100”
Rust and Shellac on Paper

ROP.2008.1, 2009
60”x 144”
Rust and shellac on Paper

What Do You think Coffee Just Grows on Trees?, 2009
60”x192”
Rust and Shellac on paper

I have really been enjoying securing and tensioning the sleeve sculpture with the braided cable and ferrules. I remember the first time I used the braided cable in Norman in 2009, and I was so focused on using it that I kind of missed its most beautiful properties. I like that when used to pull and suspend the sleeves the cable takes on a very straight line quality. I look forward to exploiting the cabling and sleeves in future installations. For now I need to focus on having some fun with my remaining days here. I had been really excited to get the first pass of the nine panel sleeve print up and now that it is I want to proceed with printing 3 sections at a time and seeing if I can systematically build up and rearrange the pattern. Today the last of the rust prints were put in place by the gallery elves and their fearless leader. I haven’t ever had the chance or the right venue to bring these two works together, but when I began playing more with the sleeves in Grand Rapids and Richmond last year, I was reminded more of the process and imagery that I liked in the rust prints. Now I can see that better and look forward to people getting a chance to move through this work and this space.

So today was my first adventure in the print studio and I managed to get a good start on the multi panel sleeve print. This week will see some adjustments and changes to the second variations of that. below is an image of the newsprint proofs being arranged on the floor while the actual prints dry on the racks. While I was getting inky and taking a break from the ladder/catwalk push/pull of the cc piece some little elves began hanging a couple of the over sized rust prints for the show. If these magic gallery elves keep spoiling me with their help I may just finish this week with time to spare and sleep deprivation at a minimum.

Today’s to do list included one item; Get this stuff on the floor up in the air. After 12hours, and 500 feet of my beloved braided cable and 50 or so ferrules, we are on our way. Tomorrow we will tackle some of the mounting of the currently rolled up Rust Prints,as well as begin the 8′x8′ 9 panel collagraph. Fingers crossed, eye lids shut, see you tomorrow.

So begins part two of my suite of South Carolina works. “Weaving, Stacking and Staining” is Still up at Coastal Carolina University in Conway SC, and now I am at Columbia College beginning “Fine Lines, Found Textures and First Impressions”. This time I’ve got a week to suspend a new stacked sleeves piece, print a nine panel sleeve print, and maybe test drive the polymer plates that are in this print studio. Tomorrow I will continue with the ground work, and if I am lucky get started with the ladder work.

Since I never know what I am going to run into when working in borrowed print studios, I always love the little discoveries that come with printing on the fly on borrowed equipment. The great discovery at Coastal’s print studio was a huge cache of silver metallic etching ink. I had already been thinking about making these new sleeve prints  in a reddish color, and thus 2012’s first editions became metallic pink java jacket prints. Rather than make fixed collagraph plates like previous sleeve prints, I played a little bit with the patterning and arrangement of these. Although not a big shift, these sleeves are the ones I have been using to build the sleeve sculptures, and not the corrugated ones I have been printing with.  These same sleeves, along with the leftovers from Richmond, will be used again next month when I visit Columbia College. It is nice to be fully on the downhill of this gig, but still energized towards the massive print undertakings ahead in February with the Columbia College crew. In contrast to the tremendous site-work here, Columbia College’s show will focus on an as yet unrealized set of prints, paired with previously un-exhibited works on paper. For the sculptural form running through the gallery’s airspace I will try and make a much bigger sleeve construction than I have yet.  My hope is that with the lessons learned here and the discoveries yet to be had at Columbia College I will be able to develop some new variations for the show in June at Flanders Gallery. Following the Flanders show I hope to use my time as the Summer Artist in Residence at Artspace Raleigh to introduce and combine elements from my different works together in one site/project. Currently I am picturing a summer spent pushing fortunes, sleeves, video, percussion, sticks, metal, rust, vibrating coffee cups, sound and drawings together in the gallery/workspace like a blender, could be a mess but should be fun either way. In my mind I am calling that one the “Kitchen Sink project”, but that could change.

For the Rebecca Randall Bryan Gallery at Coastal Carolina University I created an installation whose title is the instructions for creating the work found within the gallery. The show is a continuation of my explorations of materials found within the contemporary coffee shop merged with the processes of British nature based works of the 70’s and 80’s. Wooden coffee stir sticks woven in place with tension, coffee cup sleeves stacked inside of one another and coffee grounds pressed into the wall combine to create a series of compositional elements designed to activate the entire gallery space. As with all the works in my “Have Sticks Will travel Series” everything is created in situ so that the gallery becomes the studio and exhibition site for the work. In this way the physical work itself is merely a record of  time spent with the materials selected in response to a given space. This show is part of a suite of  South Carolina installations along with “Fine Lines, Found Textures, and First Impressions” at Columbia College in February 2012

Works

The Conway Piece, 2012

50,000 wooden coffee stir sticks woven in place and held by tension

Suspended sleeve structure, 2012

5,200 coffee cup sleeves stacked one inside of another

Grounds for removal, 2012

Espresso dust and water rubbed into the wall

Press

“Local Living” WMBF NBC affiliate

“Brilliant Works of Art” Grand Strand Magazine

“Brilliant Exhibition opens at Coastal Carolina in January” Times and Democrat

“Charleston Installation Artist visits CCU” Digitel Myrtle Beach

I  spent today and Yesterday resolving the stick form physically and laying in the final bits of “mud” on the wall. After a string of 12hour days, the ten hours today almost seemed like a break. I can tell I am on the downhill of this one as my punch list now consists of clean up, stick touch up, lighting and documentation. Assuming I can finish all those between tonight and tomorrow I may just get to make some sort of edition, maybe I’ll even have some fun with the in house vinyl cutter.