Yesterday was as seamless as it gets, from pickup to install, all without a hitch! The sun was shinning and the sky was cloudless, perfect to capture shots like this. This work is
part of the City of Nanaimo's Out-Door Temporary Public Art Initiative, and this sculpture will remain in Maffeo Sutton Park for the duration of one year. Through this installation a system I have been working through comes full circle. My methodology for working is that of Research Creation, and this methodology plays out through an interdisciplinary art practice involving an oscillation of spaces in data collection and inquiry, analysis, and synthesis. In working in this manner I am focusing on the embodiment of the liminality which occurred in the shift from Graffiti to Street-Art; the transitional liminality which opened up the art form to a broader audience. This generates an engaged and connected community which I wish to emulate this through my spacial shits and oscillations of materials and processes to places of making (studio and Graffiti/Street-Art). This begins in the 'field' (streets, train yard, back alley-ways, where graffiti/street-artists paint) moves into the studio, and then come full circle back into the public sphere. Using this work as an example, I began in the train yard, while working on a full-train car. After each painting/drawing intervention I collected dormant railroad spikes and brought them back to the studio. Here, this collection of objects from the site of one work undergoes a stage of analysis. This involves problem solving, trouble shooting, and leads to the construction of a process for the synthesis of a work. This figurative rendering is a direct aesthetic relation to the subversive works I create in the 'field work' of my Street Art initiative. By way of this oscillation the intrinsic cultural codes of my materials is expressed through the collection of 'data' from one art making site to the studio and come full circle when the work goes back out into the public domain. I want to harness the spontaneity and energy from my 'field work' and express it in this public work building a historic narrative that pays homage to the heritage of Graffiti and Street-Art, to access this implicit liminal space; which connects and builds community. The temporary nature of this installation refers to the ephemeral nature of subversive works in the streets. However, there is tenacity to the subversion of Graffiti/Street-Art; how can this process of oscillation retain this quality in a public sanctioned art work? This is what I am left to reconcile and 'Out From Out Where X' brings me back to a place of inquiry on this matter. This is the mobius-loop of Research Creation and I'm happy to be stuck in it!
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