Inspiration- Disneyland Landscaping

I mentioned something about my fascination with pictures made out of flowers like they have at Disneyland. My grandmother spent most of her life in Fullerton California and we would visit often when I was little and always stopped at Disneyland in Anaheim. 

I'm starting to link this experience to my fascination with artifice and whimsy, and want to find a way to work these into the project.

The original architectural model even contains the floral Mickey at the entrance.

Christine's Studio- Calendar

Two summers ago during the Faculty Artists FACA I started keeping  monthly calendars to keep myself organized, and in homage to my advisor in graduate school David Dunlap. I still do this- making one a month and keeping them in my studio. I just made my June calendar this weekend the FACA period is marked in teal (and half cropped out). No worries- I plan on posting process drawings because I continue to work on the calendar drawing all month long.

Graham Engineering Project

spray booth, panorama, 2008

Last year I was a part of a project called Arts and Industry in with York Arts in York, PA. They paired artists with local industries to see what kind of work might get produced.

My interest in plastics led me to be partnered with Graham Engineering. A company who makes industrial blow molders. Needles to say I learned quickly that my work would have to be photographic because they  made million dollar machines had little by products I could work with.

I ended up altering the space with projected light. Making handmade patterns by drawing and collaging with theatrical lighting gels and projecting them into various parts of the factory and office space to create temporary light sculptures that exist only in photographs.

We thought I should post these here since Terry will be contacting a few of our sites for permission, and it'll be good to have all our relevant imagery in one place.

conference room, panorama, 2008

Mr. Tillman shot this photo of me working.

research and development, panorama, 2008

Christine's Studio- Collage Drawer

I keep a big drawer of collage supplies. I was digging through it for another project this evening and came across some things that might be relevant to this project.

1. Alphabets cross stitch book from The Book Thing.

2. Scrap of ski sweater themed wrapping paper

3. Embroidery pattern sent to me from Shannon Rankin.

Christine's Sketchbook- May 28th

My new thing is to sit on the front porch after school watching the birds and the light on the houses across the street with Mr Tillman and working in my sketchbook.  I got some good thinking done on Memorial Day.

Last week I saw these images of a giant patterned rug made from flowers in Belgium. Ever since my childhood trips to Disneyland I've always been fascinated by people making pictures from flowers just like cross stitch or pixels.

I've also scanned updated versions of how I'm working with the location images. It might not look like much but the notes on the bottom represent lots of that dreamy kind of brainstorming that Kirk was talking about in yesterday's faculty meeting.

This last image is my current list of materials I think I might be working with. I made the ridiculous alchemist drawing after a conversation I had with Peter King about my new ceramic bows.

Things I'm Thinking About- Making Something That Doesn't Last and Photography

Last weekend I found myself attending the MICA BFA shows so we could send off some of my husband's students in style. This piece was outside of the station building and was hands down my favorite in the show. Sadly, my efforts to track down the artist have been unsuccessful.

Clever pun on our relationship to the natural world aside, there were two things I really loved about this piece. I've always been drawn to the marks that lawnmowers make. When I got to baseball games I don't care about the game, for me it's all about the hot dogs, lights, and argyle pattern drawn into the grass by the lawn mowers. Also, I love that this piece won't last. If my backyard is any indication I'm sure it's gone by now. Each day the grass will grow higher and the contrast between the letters and negative space will get slightly closer in tone and the edges will get less crisp.

Before I went to Memphis in March for my show at Material and lecture at Rhodes I gave a practice talk for Carolyn, Ann, and Susan A. here at Park. Afterwards Carolyn asked why I hadn't talked about how ephemeral my work is. That's why I love having another set of eyes o my work, it's one of the things I miss most about being in school. Mr Tillman and I have matching studios across the hall from one and other but it's not the same. Sometimes you just have to have someone spell stuff out for you.

That's one of the things I like about photography. It can capture things that don't last, a smile on the beach with the light just so, the basketball player almost flying in mid dunk, or the rainbow hovering just so over the city. In the classroom Terry is a big proponent of Henri Cartier-Bresson's decisive moment, and while I certainly see that I also think about photography's documentary potential. Photography can bring the viewer something that the viewer couldn't otherwise ever see, Abe Lincoln sitting with his family, my grandmother when she was my age, or what stars look like light years away. I like to think of this project as a little in between the two, the images will capture something ephemeral, but also make it portable and permanent.

Inspiration From School

It's late May, that means the maypoles are up for the Lower School's May Day celebration. I'm thinking about working with more linear elements in space especially between trees and the benches.
I've always been inspired by the aesthetic of our Lower School, with it's wonky rows of rain boots and the colors and materials of the Lower School Art room. The maypoles are no exception.

things are getting greener

My Baltimore neighborhood is a mix of tiny yards carefully landscaped and all- out invasive weed wonderlands. Our back yard is one of the latter. This dreamy hazy shot was my attempt to photograph the back yard from our third story window. We haven't had the time to mow/weedwhack when the yard is dry so far this season so the growth and leaves are really on my mind.

In the meantime Terry and I have narrowed down our locations from 7 to about 4.5. I think we're still on the fence with this one so I decided to take a picture of what it's looking like with leaves since the trees were bare 3 weeks ago when we were location scouting.

This is the same space as "hill with tree" in the post from Druid Hill Park. I took this photo quickly from my car so as not to disturb a disc golf game. I'm still interested but the leaves (and the overcast light) make the space radically different. I'm much more interested in the three trees on the right and their relationship to the hill and disc golf net.

I'm becoming much more interested in color and how it will impact the sculpture in such a green space.

Artists I'm Thinking About-Polly Apfelbaum

I studied painting and drawing in school but I primarily consider myself a "very flat sculptor." I'm interested in sculpture for its materiality and objectness but most of my sculpture barely enters the third dimension. The piece below is a good example of that. It consists of three felt circles that lie flat on the floor acting like pools of wonky handmade stars that you could jump into.

As I tell my drawing and painting students, as soon as you photograph something you flatten the space. As I was thinking about working with Terry Ibegan looking at how I could work both flat and three dimensionally, allowing the photographic process to flatten the piece for me.

Christine Buckton Tillman - Constellations hand embroidery on wool felt 2007

I also wanted to share some of Polly Apfelbaum's work. I think her work jumps between painting and sculpture too she's been a big inspiration for me over the years. She works formally with shape and simple forms while the color just knocks you out. After seeing her work in grad school I felt like I had the permission to work flat and on the floor- although I didn't until I moved to Baltimore and started making contact paper pieces on the floor.

Polly Apfelbaum Pink Crush 2007

I adore that glow that the pink casts on the wall.

Polly Apfelbaum Today I Love Everybody 2007

Really big things made out of smaller things and held together by gravity.

Polly Apfelbaum Las Vegas Room 2009

The color in this piece is so strong. It's made from sequined fabric on the floor. I love the bright color against the neutral concrete and white walls.

Land's End

When Christine and I began scouting locations we looked at some places that were industrial and others that were in Druid Hill Park (not rural but certainly not industrial). My usual working practice would be to select one type of location but in this case Christine felt that we should utilize both environments. After thinking about it I decided to go along with this idea. I have had experience making both kinds of landscapes and I am not really sure which is better for this type of collaborative project. It seems to me that a reasonable approach is to try both and then decide which works better.

These are some of my industrial landscapes. They were made a long time ago in the stone ages before there was such a thing as digital photography. In spite of their age I think the imagery holds up quite well.

The following images are from a series of photographs that I made in the summers of 2004 to 2008. They were shot in northern coastal environments on both the east and west coasts of the United States.

Christine's Sketchbook-May 5, 2009

Yesterday Terry and I narrowed our location choices down to 7 "finalists" so to speak: three from behind Clipper Mill and four from Druid Hill Park. Now I need to think about each of them for a little while and think about materials and how I could build a form within the space. While that was something that was on my mind as we scouted for locations I was more interested in the possibilities each space had to offer rather than what I might ACTUALLY do in the space.

What's my next logical step? Start working in my sketchbook.

I take my sketchbook practice seriously. I fill about 4 each year with sketches plans and lists. A little bird told me today that to really do the sketchbook thing right you probably have to be pretty compulsive. I like to think of it as making my thought process another piece of art. I do a lot of my thinking in my sketchbook. In my studio I work in so many media and have lots of different projects going on at once- it's not unusual for me to draw for an hour then switch to weaving Mylar, or bending wood veneer, then go back to another drawing, or plans and research for something big.

My sketchbook keeps me organized and helps me keep track of the wide variety of ideas I have going on at any one time. In addition to writing down ideas and sketching out what I want something to look like, I also make lists and collect source imagery.

So after we narrowed it down to 7 locations the first thing I did was print out 3x 5's of each place so I could tape them into my sketchbook leaving enough space at the bottom to jot down ideas about the strengths and weaknesses of each space. My plan is to visit these pages a few times over the next week or so and start to think about how I could work sculpturally in each space. I want to work large and with color but I'd like the piece to have more depth and three dimensionality than the Dandelion piece- right now I'm thinking about depth in the image and how the sculpture could play with that. We'll see.