Paper Chain

(click to enlarge)

This piece feels really goofy to me. It's nothing like I expected. I think it's because this image almost more than any other looks so different than it did during the shoot. During the shoot I could see the sculpture in the context of the entire site- the expanse of the metal, the sky, the gravel parking lot where my car was- and in this shot it becomes so dense with information and much more abstract that I imagined.

We've shown the images to a few dozen people now, and this one gets a really positive response, I find myself listening really intensely to what they have to say about it- I'm hoping they'll help me figure this one out.

I think I like it, it's just not at all how I imagined it would look. I think that's really the best part of collaborating- seeing things in an entirely new way- and making work that you wouldn't make otherwise. Since the sculptural set up on this one is so simple I wouldn't mind taking it to a few new sites.

Presentation Write-Up

Yesterday morning Terry and I presented to the FACA Committee (for those reading who don't work with us that's the committee at our school who helped fund this project). Considering we spoke early in the morning in a remote location on campus we had a good turn out including Nancye's golden retriever!

We spoke about the impact of the project on us as artists and of course a little bit about impacts for our school community. Most importantly it was the first time people who aren't married to us saw the work and even in 30 minutes we got a great amount of feedback- it felt like a little condensed art opening with people sharing their insights and thoughts about the work.

Extra special thanks to Nancye Hesaltine for taking photos during the presentation.

Presentation Preview

Today Terry and I met up to prepare for our presentation to the FACA Committee tomorrow morning. We hung prints of all 6 pieces in the Richman Gallery and talked about how we wanted to structure our talk. Of course this could only be done properly by moving our office chairs into the gallery.

Now that the blog's been sent all around school we'd love to have any Park people there to get a first look at our work! I won't be posting them here until after our presentation!

Christine's Studio-July 14th

I did make some drawings based on the supplies from this project. This drawing is based on that image of the zip lock bag full of crepe paper streamers from yesterday's post.

Christine's Studio-July 13th

At this point all the studio work is happening over at Terry's and I'm getting my studio back in order. I'll be posting drafts of our images later this week to get ready for our big presentation to the funding committee, but right now I'm spending my time tidying up and reflecting on this project while I tackle some other tasks for projects I've been neglecting.

I've left a few things around the studio from this project that seem inspirational for some new drawings.

The stack of post it's above are all the notes I'd used on the flowchart during the project. I like how they don't line up perfectly and look like blocky stripes. As much as I've been putting things away and recycling them I'm keeping this around.

I love the colored circles all squished together from the leftover streamers from the bench shoot. I think this'll show up on paper later this week.

Shoot Report- Tractor Building

After we shot The Green Building/10b (man! do Terry and I ever need to talk titles! I hope he's better than I am) we took a break for lunch and headed back to Woodberry to shoot over at the Tractor Building at Clipper Mill. 

From the beginning this was Terry's favorite location. All during the process I was looking forward to this piece especially the color combination but was always a little nervous that the wall would respond like the rusty metal did during the Paper Chain shoot. Lucky for us the post-its stick like a charm and we had to do very little reinforcing for durability although we did end up using balls of masking tape at the end to get that last flower to go faster.

The flowers in this  pattern were borrowed from a William Morris design in a book my mom had sent me when I was starting on this project.  Working from original needlework patterns ended up working quite well rather than designing my own like I usually do. I was a little worried that I'd feel less connected to the sculpture in this piece since I did a little less of the design, but I like that the piece has a connection to William Morris. He's on my imaginary Top Ten lists of designers and I look at his work a lot but have never Incorporated any of his designs directly into my work. I like that my little shout out to him ended up temporarily stuck to a building in my neighborhood.

Here's Terry taking 1 of about 95 photos he shot of this space. The finished image (which we'll post soon!) is horizontal and has so much more information in it. Also, his camera didn't capture the glare on the paper like mine did so the color is super vivid.  You might notice Terry wears his Nikon baseball cap backwards when he shoots so it doesn't interfere with the camera.

Back when I was still brainstorming about this project I so badly wanted to work more dimensionally. I'm quite comfortable being a "very flat sculptor" in fact the phrase is in the first line of my artist statement. During the brainstorming phase I kept wrestling with the idea of dimensionality and wanted to use this project to push myself in that area since the end piece would be a photograph and therefore flat.  Ironically, now that I've seen the images the I think flattest pieces are probably the strongest. 

 We've made a big effort to not only leave each site perfectly clean as if we had never been there but also to recycle or reuse everything from each shoot. Lucky for us the parking lot next to the Tractor Building had paper recycling. Here's the piles of post-its all mixed in with the office recycling.

A Visit To Terry's Studio

Today I went to Terry's studio to see the images. I'm pretty stoked!

He's still working on them so dear readers will have to wait a bit for a big reveal. Each image is made of over 15 separate images and is taking roughly 20 hours to process since the file size is over 300M!

We'll be able to print them fairly big if we want!





Here's a sneak peak of the Niagara Falls piece. It's the first one to be printed and I'm super happy with it. The composition feels just like a photograph of a waterfall with the bike path acting as a river and the cinder blocks acting as the rocks surrounding the waterfall.

We'll be posting the final images by next week.