Lecture Notes: Ann Hamilton @ NGA

Last Friday I was one of Washington's lucky few who got to hear genius/visionary/artist Ann Hamilton speak at the National Gallery of Art. AMAZING. I think the whole audience would have sat there and listened to her til midnight if the museum had allowed her to go on that long (unfortunately for us, they cut her off at 5 because the building was closing. Lame!).

She had a beautiful way of using anecdotes about her life, work, and creation thereof to explain her underlying ideas and philosophies of art making. Here are my notes:

-A studio practice allows you to pay attention to what you pay attention to. A studio cultivates the situation for this to happen.
-Art is a process of finding what you need.
-Conditions for that finding are created and cultivated in the studio.
-A studio is therefore a metaphorical space, and can be wherever an artist deems fit.
-Things she pays attention to: forms of attention, felt qualities, processes of accumulation.
-An empty table is like a blank page.
-Art can satisfy the longing for a presence so acute that you lose self awareness.

I only wish I had written more down!

< complaint > National Gallery, do us artists here in Washington a solid and publicize this stuff more, will ya? Act like it's the big deal that it is? And maybe also invite these major, major figures like Ms. Hamilton to speak at a time when more of us can attend? Because lots of us have day jobs. Also, universities? Why weren't more students in attendance to hear this contemporary master? Because I think it would have been educational for them. < / complaint >

Fleshing It Out

i've been asked a lot recently (both on the radio and by others) about my newer paintings, what they are about, why so many of them contain kitchen scenes, etc. i'm trying to figure this out myself.

these paintings were all made within the last year once i got a studio set up here in washington. when we left LA, i was working in an abstract manner, using memories of my daily experiences driving around town....that meant i was looking at landscape, the outside world around me: neons, car crashes, wildfires, steep hillsides, tropical gardens, smog. once i got to work here in DC, i took that way of working that i had developed (really paying attention to visual experiences on a day-to-day basis and making an effort to file them away in my memory, then working from memory without outside references) and applying them to my daily life and studio work now. so, that's resulted in a greater attention to interiors and working from my memories of other dwellings i have lived in or had important experiences in. my focus has been on working on our house, and that has come out in my work too. i seem to be gravitating towards kitchens, maybe for the reasons i talked about in the audio clip. they are centers of intense work and creativity, just like a studio. they are rooms we associate with good things: nourishment, love, family, social connections. there are also just really complex places to look at, so many nooks, crannies, nobs, bells, whistles, etc.

the bold black lines and messy paint and patterns are a compositional device. i think they are also a way to convey the way memories are incomplete, incorrect, and very hard to get down on paper like they appear in your head.

so, that's me trying to articulate my thoughts as of now. i'm headed back to LA for the weekend and am interested to see how i will perceive that city this time around. ciao!

New Work at Artisphere

I spent last week creating a new installation, titled Dredge, at Artisphere in Arlington, VA. This work is part of a large group exhibition opening next week, May 19. Here it is in stages:

Spring Solos 2011 Now on View at the Arlington Arts Center

I am pleased to be part of the Arlington Arts Center's Spring Solos 2011 exhibition, which opened last Friday. Here are a few images of the new work I created for the exhibition, titled Forest of Correction. Spring Solos 2011 is up through June 5.

Lecture Notes: Peter Doig

A few years ago (really? already?) when I worked in museum education, I spent several mornings a week for a few months plopping kids down in front of this painting. It's Peter Doig's 100 Years Ago, and it was great for getting students' powers of observation, imagination, storytelling, and interpretation going.

I was excited to learn that Peter Doig was giving this spring's Duncan Phillips Lecture at the Phillips Collection. So, last night I ponied up $20 to go to the talk. Throughout the evening, I was impressed with Doig's easy going manner and no-pretense way of talking about his works and studio practices. Here are some notes I jotted down when I got home.

-Work should surprise you, you should do something in your work to catch yourself off guard, do something that you wouldn't do.

-Think about what is outside the painting, not just the little self contained world inside the frame.

-You need time to come to terms with a work (example he gave of this is 100 Years Ago, which sat around in his studio for 6 months without being worked on much before he decided it was complete).

-Memories attach to paintings based on what else is going on in an artist's life.

-A subject worth painting once is usually worth revisiting several times, otherwise you cheat yourself. There aren't that many subjects worth painting.

-You make art about things that you can't explain or talk about (so he didn't really, except to tell us about the experience of making a work or the experiences that lead up to it, visual experiences mostly).

-You can't teach art making.

(image taken from blog Contemporary Art Seminar; painting is in the collection of the Museum of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, but they don't have an image available on their website.)

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, The End

Yesterday I deinstalled Fort Distraction. It was fitting, since yesterday was a beautiful, warm, spring-like day, and this installation was very much inspired by winter. It seems like it is almost time to come out of our caves and enjoy the sunshine. Goodbye pillow forts, hello backyard sheet tents!

Here's one last look at my Coup d'Espace.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 14

Tonight was the reception for Fort Distraction. The WPA's front office was full of people for over two hours, and I was talking to one or more of them almost the whole time, so my crowd photos are not very good. So, check out the website of man-about-town Vincent Gallegos in the next few days; I think he took a few good ones.











Thanks so much to everyone who stopped by. I really appreciate your comments, questions, and felicitations. Cheers!

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 13

Today was a day for details. It was the last real working day of my Coup d'Espace project, so I spent it working on some small areas to create more moments of sharper focus in my installation. Here are a couple of them.





Thanks to Michael, visitor #5, for helping me to think about the above.

The reception for Fort Distraction is tomorrow, February 4, from 6 to 8 pm. It will be in the WPA office space at 2023 Massachusetts Avenue NW, Washington DC, near Dupont Circle. Pencil it in!

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 12

When I got to the WPA office today, I realized that the red wrapping I did at the end of the hall yesterday was distracting. It was too all-over one color, without the subtle gradation in color or wrapping patterns that I had developed in other areas. So, I spent the day reworking this area and expanding it a bit. Here are the results:







My fourth visitor, independent curator and critic Danielle O'Steen, talked to me about this project for quite a while this morning and helped me see some of the problems with the work I did yesterday. Like the conversations I've had with my other visitors, this one helped me reflect on and process the work I have been doing over the past 2.5 weeks. Here are some of my notes from our talk:

-When there are several like things (like office chairs or cardboard accordion benches), viewers automatically want to compare them, noticing how they have been dealt with similarly or differently.
-The scale of this work allows for both passages and focal points. What is the role of a focal point in a work like this?
-The moments of detail are more about where the sheets meet the office furniture rather than being intricate manipulations that I have created.
-The process of creating this work has been more painterly than my previous installations. That is, because of the duration of my work on the piece, I have come back to it over the course of many days as I would a painting, gradually changing, building on, or canceling out things that were done previously in order to move the work forward.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 11

More red, down the hall. I'm almost to the trash can, and I can feel things drawing to a conclusion.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 10

Today's work took me farther down the long wall, almost to the end of the front office area and moving from purple ever so slightly into maroon.





I decided to include the box of auction gala invitations in my installation since that is currently the main focus for the people who work at the WPA.





Sorry for the bad iPhone photos. Regular camera will return tomorrow.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 9

My slow march down the office walkway continues, this time in purple.







I spent a lot of the day moving furniture around and staring into space. I think the work I did today may be more of a sketch to build on next week rather than work that is fixed in place. Time will tell.

Visitor #3 came by today -- thanks, Leigh!

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 8

Today was definitely not a snow day for my project. I thought and worked hard today and feel like i made a big leap in terms of color and size.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 7

Before today's Snoprise set in, I got back to work on Fort Distraction. I am finishing up the entryway area and moving into the office proper, as well as adding color.









Unfortunately, a dark and cold house greeted me and Mr. MJ when we returned home in the afternoon. We sort of camped out in here with candles and lots of layers for five hours or so til electricity was restored.



Today's snow and the events surrounding it (amazing traffic jams, early dismissals, Metrobus stoppage, socially networked snowball fights, etc.) are to me the perfect pairing for my Coup d'Espace project. I was thinking back to the wonder of last year's snowstorms, how they were this amazing break from the post-holiday doldrums that can set in during the hard part of winter. I wanted to conjure up the longing for such an event that I think a lot of DC residents have felt this year every time there is a hint of the white stuff. Here's hoping though that this is just a taste....I don't think we really want to spend a month digging out again.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 6

On the sixth day I rested, since some repair work was going on to a key wall in the space.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 5

Today was a short work day, since some repairs were happening to the office space during the day. So, I continued wrapping the cardboard benches that I had been working with on Friday.







I *think* I'm almost ready to begin with some color.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 4

Today was about continuing to work on the bay window at the front of the office and finding ways to grow vertically.

First, here's a better photo of the table wrapping I did yesterday (without the strong shadows):

This morning I started with some little stacks in the window sills. These stacks are more intricate and precise (at least, in the way they are made, if not in appearance) than the other wraps and stacks I have made so far.

I began to use the pins holding up the holiday lights to get the sheets up the wall. I'm trying to echo the swooping shape from the cardboard bench/box stack wrap on the other side of the bay window.

And so, the piles and bags grow smaller!

That's it for the first week of Fort Distraction. I'll be back Monday with some new work.

WPA Coup d'Espace: Fort Distraction, Day 3

Today was slow. I got caught up in some details. However, I think they are details worth keeping. We'll see what I think about them tomorrow.

The WPA has these amazing corrugated cardboard, modular benches that they can deploy in different configurations around the office as needed. I am using them as a kind of scaffolding for my work. The allow some beautiful, poetic moments to happen.

I also built upon my fortification of the reception desk, this time adding in some black and gray sheets.

Lisa Rosenstein was my second visitor. She talked to me about my work for quite a while and helped me process some of it. Namely, I realized how hard I am thinking the whole time I am working. (That's probably why I feel wiped out after only 4 hours.) Most of the time when I have a show and make an installation, I have a plan that I have tried out ahead of time, so I just work to get the plan realized. This time, I am making the plan up as I go along. It's hard work, but kind of fun too. I can feel my brain stretching.