If you were all thinking all I did was gallery hop last week, well, that ain't the case my friends. My last three posts were all about my Monday Broadway Uptown-Downtown tour, there were a lot of images to edit so it took me a little while to capture the essence of the enormity of what I saw that day, I was sock-less! (because they were blown off). This is what I got up to from Tuesday-Friday, more of the same, but it was different somehow.
This work is not tedious, it is however, very involved and I believe, much like in many of my own processes, the work guides itself and I enter a 'Flow-State', "I am a slave to the work"(Maskull Lasserre), and I wouldn't have it any other way. The ability to access this state is based in the process and a dedicated practice of this process-art/trade/skill (which is the accumulation of many years) in what I'm doing and I think, in the notion that knowing this work has so much merit. It's layered, dynamic, and goes to this beyond place, where " 'things happen', it is 'here', 'now', it happens that...under the aegis of now..., these are the rigors of the avant-garde"(Jean-François Lyotard). There is an intriguing system at play here. To access the here and now one has to be in-tune with the present moment (Walter Benjamin). On the one hand you are extremely focused on what you are doing, not only because of the gravity of the tool (plasma-torch, oxygen-acetylene torch) and safety precautions, but also since the patterns being cut are so intricate and repetitious. Somewhere along the way I find this rhythm, it sets in, and I can truly and authentically 'let-go'. There is a paradox in this I find intriguing, presence in letting-go. Thus the work guides me and I become its serf. Hours pass by in what seems like minutes. Twenty-four doilies later, this is where we are:
Next up on this project will be fabricating accompanying weight lifting bench which will be upholstered in a burgundy fabric adorn with similar knotted and twisting organic patterning much like in Lane's cut-out sculptures.
A sharp hissing of air pressure forcing its way through a 1/64" hole, contact-'tttssshhh', a rainstorm of sparks, clink-thunk, the fallout of the cut-away. Or when you're cutting vertically you get to knock out your cut-away's like this:
I'm approximately 1/5 of the way around the dumpster, so I'd approximate at this point there is another week left on this project.
Other projects on the go are a sweater mould which has now cured and is ready to start casting in rubber. I believe the conception is to cast sequential patterns adhered to one another to construct round objects which will reference tire treads. Lane has been working with tires lately in various ways. Braiding hair around them, 'icing' them with black silicon and stacking them to resemble cakes. I can't help but see some Rauschenberg here, especially after my trip to Jim Kemper Fine Art. Another contemporary artist working with this object is Clint Neufeld. I just saw an Instagram post of his revealing a ceramic cast tire tied to a thick braided rope resembling a tire swing, this work is a little closer to Rauschenberg and is reminiscent of his cast glass tire. Lane seems to distance herself through the manipulation and abstraction of the object. Here we find references to memories of processes related to her grandmother, or previous dead end job endeavours, such as being a hairdresser.
With all this on the go Lane is courteous and allows time for me to continue on a few of my own endeavours too. Yesterday we came to some conceptual conclusions regarding my oil drum which yielded very prosperous results. I had initially intended on cutting out imagery on two barrels which were intended to bookend the corridor to the Little Gallery at the University of Calgary; installed on the patio with fires ablaze in them. Lane pointed out that when we take existing objects and assign antecedent functions to them it changes the whole conceptualization of the work. They simply become adorned or embellished functional objects that have a naive 'cool' factor appended to them. This may be the most surface level descriptive terminology for any art object. The ability for the work to function as art is lost in its associative functionality. So with this, I have moved away from this 'wow' factor and I am working towards further deconstructing the object and looking at how to further personify the process and the shadow production the objects cut outs create.
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