heading in new driections, that are same as the old directions

so i keep shaping and weaving my “test pattern”. I am ultimately trying to make this into a donut sort of shape. after fleshing out the mid section I will weave until the openings meet. I doubt i will get to finish this before i go off to new york, because i am working on a couple other new things.

it is hard to see from this photo but i sort of keep rotating this one around the central cylinder to work on it. I think i can make this it’s own discreet sculpture once i am finished with it, and maybe then i will put it somewhere, like a coffee shop or something. In addition to this piece i have been developing some new patterns for the rust prints based on these striated lines that keep occurring in my drawings. I will post those when i feel more comfortable with the direction they are taking

The more i make work the more work i want to make. This seems like a logical approach, but at times it feels counter intuitive. For me i like the sense that everything i do feeds everything else i do. I like the fact that everything i bring into the studio or gallery space (physical or mental) is part of a big cross pollination process. While working at the museum, certain activities trigger different ideas about what can be done with space. Since the main gallery of the museum has such a tremendous ceiling height, somewhere around the 30 foot mark, the echo is remarkable. This makes me think a great deal about what could be accomplished with simple audio cues used to create an installation. This thought led me to another thought.(sometimes i just think my life is unfolding like the story of jerry and the dog, from edward albee’s two man play the zoo story) I find the life i am leading today to be very poetic. I am not a big fan of poetry per se, mostly because i don’t understand any of it other the works of james thurber, edgar allen poe, and shel silverstein, but i know poetry when i hear it. And to describe the physical and mental path of my life today is a bit like poetry. First, the commute to my job at the gibbes museum takes me by the hospital i was born in. This seems trivial to some but to me i know every time i pass this building it is where i was born. it sort of gives a closed loop to my life if you will, defying the notion that you can never go home again. Second, that job at the gibbes, gives another closed loop moment. When people ask me if there is some art that really resonates with me to the core, that i can point to as truly life changing, I immediately talk about my memory of the Roy lichtenstein sculpture show at the gibbes museum of art in 1986.

an image from the lichtenstein sculpture show in london in 2005 at gagosian

When I saw this show i was young impressionable, and under the belief that museums were dusty boring places with lots of boring paintings and boring experiences. Since I was too young to understand any sort of boundary between art and life, when i saw the Lichtenstein sculptures I just thought someone had brought the comic books to life. I was too young to appreciate the fact that he had filtered art history through the lens of comic books. That show filled me with an absolute sense of awe that I still look for in life today and strive for to a lesser extent in my own installations. With the Dam Stuhltrager installation rapidly approaching, I am hoping I can create an installation which inspires the same sense of awe and wonder I felt with the Lichtenstein. For me as the maker of the work, I experience a genuine sense of surprise as to where the process of weaving the stir sticks takes me. So as i get inside the less than 20 day till go time for the show i will continue to pace myself and focus on the task at hand in preparation for the building of the piece in brooklyn, but that is not to say i won’t get even more nervous and anxious as the start of the installation approaches. I will try my best to just stay focused on the work at hand.