T 4/6
2-2:45 Miles
2:45-3:30 Michelle L.
3:30-4:15 Ralph
note-taker Nicole
T 4/13
2-2:45 Jillian
2:45-3:30 Lori
3:30-4:15 Motoya
note-taker Robin
T 4/20
no critiques scheduled: party?
T 4/27
2-2:45 Anna & Ryan
2:45-3:30 Derek
3:30-4:15 Nicole
note-taker Jillian
T 5/4
2-2:45 Robin
2:45-3:30
3:30-4:15 Michelle L.
note-taker Lori
T 5/11
2-2:45 Lori
2:45-3:30 Derek
3:30-4:15 Jillian
note-taker Lori
T 5/18
2-2:45 Ralph
2:45-3:30 Robin
3:30-4:15 Michelle L.
note-taker
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Monday, November 2, 2009
Studio Critique 10.27.2009
Studio Critique: 10.27.2009
R: I don’t have any finished work to show, so what I’m looking for is a process based critique. Talk a little about coming to school with one idea and then changing it
mL: so how to start out work and how to go about.
Rc: so that mural inspired me a lot. And I wanted to add 3d elements to my murals, and I wanted to come to psu for access and ideas. So I wanted to do this ginormous mural with fire and water and mixed media. So I had a pet rooster named the hulk, so I took tons of pictures of him and really looked at birds. Cause I painted that phoenix and it looks flat I wanted to get more 3d, so I have been sketching the hulk and still not much depth. So I started to work on this.
Then pat came in last week. When joe was here he showed me some basic painting 101 stuff with atmospheric perspective and lighting. So I feel like in my mural work I have been focusing on design and not drawing/painting skills.
So pat came in last week and said to put the idea of the mural out of my mind and really working on drawing and painting. She suggested using color saturation so I have been working on this painting here. And there is my color scale.
The hulk died last week. I put him in a still life. I have been looking into still life from the baroque. I wanted to emulate the fall harvest, killing a rooster and having squash. Fiery colors for the living hulk and super muted down for the dead one. I am trying to get a sense of light and depth and I am wondering if I have done that. Pretty basic stuff, but since I am going back to the drawing I want some basic input.
Eg: so you worked from life or from the photograph.
Rc: both
Eg: so you eliminated stuff.
Rc: yeah
Eg: so how important is it to you to render stuff, is that important?
Rc: yeah, I think I want to get there and this is a step toward that. Yeah I have worked a great deal in the time I had. So this is a study for another painting.
RP: it does sort of have this feeling that it is an under painting.
Ml: your not using black
RP: you should look at Mark Tansay
eG: he pulls painting off the canvas.
Ml: I would like to talk about the giant bird versus the drawings. It seems like there are a lot of big steps.
Rc: I am getting him back in 6 months. That is the shortest taxidermy.
Eg: it is a long process.
ML: do you think your work is going to go in a 3d direction toward taxidermy?
Eg: you want to use this in a piece
RC: more as a study
MH: why is rendering important to you?
Rc: one thing that has come up for me as a mural artist and there is community collaboration, and it is at the point when I am organizing and hiring artists and rendering and rendering quick is something I can use professionally,
DB: I think it is a good idea taking a step back. This will definitely help you more if you want to get those skills. I think that is a good idea just practicing painting.
EG: is it hard for you sometimes to step back.
Rc: I feel like now I have to have a mural to be painting in the studio. I get really excited about it. I feel like my mural skills are going feral.
Rp: Whey don’t you set up your own mural. I get not wanting to see it. So that you get that energy from doing the murals. Cause when I know it’s going to be seen I am going to keep working harder.
Rc: I am really hungry to do my own work.
EG: if you really want to work, it is much easier to use oils. You could try.
Eg: how it it working for you that scale, cause you are so used to working large.
Rc: I like working large it is harder.
Eg: I am just wondering when you do the mural process how open are they. That ultimately affects the work.
Rc: it is different if I am proposing to a group and they like the idea I am pretty autonomous. But then the last mural it was totally decide by the community I was working with.
Eg: Sometimes murals look like collage. Which suits the medium
Rc: I am so
NP: we have talked about the value to increase your rendering skills but we haven’t talked about how this gets at your ideas. We haven’t talked about how this process will help you
Eg: are you open to identifying with your idea one of our artists who uses taxidermy really successfully is carlee Fernandez.
Rc: yeah there is always the appeal of the macabre.
Jn: have you ever thought of how to do taxidermy or something, a lot of the time they would just find dead animals, it doesn’t require going out and killing things.
Another guy would find dead things and he did an apprenticeship at the natural history museum. Cause they did their own.
Ml: speaking to that it said you wanted to add 3d elements to you could try foam.
Eg: what is your interest in combining different parts of animals.
Rc: that is what I was talking about with my murals.
DB: I think this is probably a good opportunity to develop your style, like what your voice is. Cause a lot of times with public work the group decides what the style is and this is a time to find your voice. I always like public paintings where someone comes at it with their style.
Mh: do you REALLY want to paint photo realistically, cause you have to decide if you want to spend the time really getting good at rendering.
mL: but didn’t you say you want to be quickly able to render, so you can execute it quickly and accurately,
rc: and really take the opportunity to know yourself through I don’t think photorealism is where I want to go, doing studies of a bird
Lori: I am thinking about realism versus hyperrealism. So the things that murals do its not like rendering, it is achieving a different think. in drawing 2 I tell people dramatize it.
Ralph: can you talk more about that project?
RC; yeah I was really interested in looking at how the bird looked coming out at me. So I cut it out and put it on foam core. So I cut it up in all these different pieces
So I sandwiched it all together and I kind of liked it.
Ralph: I like it too.
Eg: I like the chaos of it. I read it as flame, but it is also kind of abstraction
RP: you should look at Damien Gilley, his website is DamienGilley.com
MH: is that a piece
Rc: it is kind of a piece for me.
Mh: I like the way that wall looks. There is so much action in it.
NICOlE:
Working with quilting and maps, using maps to create patterns for quilts. I started sewing with the small shapes, but because they are so tiny it was difficult.
They dimensional. I wanted to create complexity for complexity’s shape. So what you are looking at here is a mock up of what the quilt might look like. So I am experimenting with different arrangements and color schemes. The color scheme for this quilt comes from a satellite image of the place that the quilt is based on. I started to use all the colors. My partner is an accountant and he uses this software to do audits for companies. So we used that to make a randomized sample of what the colors should be. So my work is creating systems, taking an idea and seeing where the idea takes me, more process focused than product focused.
AG: it is interesting that it it looks like an animal.
N: I am working with this playing around with different patterns. Trying out different things to see what might be more interesting pattern. I like what I am getting, but I felt it was kind of stepping away from what the neighborhood means. So I started going door to door collecting fabric samples. And collecting patterns from the neighborhood. So it becomes more of whats in the neighborhoods.
Lori: does this piece map your relationship to the neighborhood.
EG: you said you were going to do everywhere you have lived, so would you go back to the other places. What comes out of it is so unexpected.
AG: it is interesting though because it makes me look back at the process and it is all very abstract. It is not like you are ever working with something concrete. Except maybe the conversations and going door to door.
NP: that is maybe why I started going door to door. Abstracting is a theme that everyone is beginning to understand. Because everything is abstract. So making your process more transparent might be more interesting.
NP: If I were to display this piece I would display all this too. I’ve done other projects where the process is part of the display.
AG: taking these sort of patterns and applying them to the fabric. So the fabric is also derived from place. So you would screen-print the sighting onto the fabric.
NP: I think that is a great idea. I was thinking of embroidering.
DB: you can even print photo imagery. On that.
Lori: I can see this project being Seattle or other places., but when I first walked in, it is almost a crazier idea if it was just Portland.
Db: I almost get a ranger station vibe from your studio, but with more of an art vibe.
EG; you talked about showing all the element of your process.
JN: I feel like you have so many ideas going into one product. I would like to see one idea for one project. I guess it depends on how much you want the audience to get from your piece. And if each system is really important to you as being understood by the audience, then
NP: right I was trying to come up with one system to take multiple places through.
Ralph: just to give you more tools Portlandmaps.com has a great deal of maps and info that might be helpful.
RC: how do you think the overall aesthetic going to change from collecting samples door to door?
NP; I think it is going to change a lot. I don’t really know what kind of patterns/fabrics I’ll be getting.
RC: I think it would be an interesting thing to get fabric from the area that the drawing comes from.
NP: I like that a lot that is a good idea.
EG: you can depict this multiple ways. You don’t feel like you have to choose one method or one process do you.
NP: that is why I keep thinking of new systems.
E: it is an interesting starting point. Interesting way of thinking about how we relate to a physical space.
AG: do you think about thinking ahead do you want to the system to be more streams lined, or do you want it to be more complex. I think you could go simpler so there is access points throughout the system. It is too messy without a guide. Do you want to stream line the system, so the viewer could implent any place into the system.
NP: I like that idea, I was inspired by j morgan pruits algorithm for clothing and she explained it all so anyone could use it.
JN: there are arbitrary systems and strict systems and if you want other people to use it you need to have more strict systems that aren’t as arbitrary.
NP: I guess I am striving toward stricter systems but to make it more interesting I let the abstraction in along the way.
MH: but also all systems have points of abstraction
DB: I like old maps with sea monsters, so they really do change, maps.
EG: what happens if you maps spaces yourself. So it has to do with how you perceive it.
ML: if you were to walk through a city block and
EG: a more abstract way of perceiving the space.
N: I think it would be interesting to find out more about the object. But I am not sure how to go about that process of door to door. Is it intrusive?
Motoya: I think it is all about explaining why you are there. Some people say “no” I just got rejected. He doesn’t want to do it anymore.
Eg: how have your neighbors reacted to it so far.
NP: well I have started in my apartment complexes with mostly young people and they are mostly excited.
Motoa: no matter what information you get I think a list of that information would be interesting.
JN: or you could do it in a couple of rounds. Putting flyers and saying you would come back whenever, so if your worried about being intrusive.
RC: there is an idea about how people are so overloaded with methods of communication. Between email, face to face, letters, phone, texting etc. So, I think face to face simplifies things. The way of having totally at random and making intergenerational. You have no idea and have the system become the gift to you.
Motoya: and I think people love that to get involved.
Lori” there is a photo project called I’ve never been to Houston. Where he asked people who had never been to Houston to take a photo of what they THINK it would look like.
Motoya: I don’t use the word donate, I use the word contribute.
DB: using the word quilt might be good to use too, because there is a common understanding for what a quilt is.
JILLIAN
The work is kind of, I started off working on this series with deer it started off to be about the idea of animals having to adapt to civilization, and this sort of rural sprawl as opposed to urban sprawl animals coming into human habitats, and I am kind of trying to exaggerate the absurdity. So they are starting to get more surreal, where they started out more representational. So the deer camping, so animals having to go camping to get back to nature.
So these smaller drawings here are taken from actual images. The first two I got interested in that awkward overlap where people and nature collide. The idea that this is seen as an entertaing video, but if you start thinking about it it is actually kind of depressing and sad. Bear piece is way to show I am thinking aobut the negative aspect of this thing. Working with real life experiences of clashing on the edges of society and nature.
Motoya: why are the first two jumping?
JN: it seems that people just kind of coming up on this incidence.
Video does just make me laugh but it makes me think about what is happening. I am kind of unsure about my work right now. This is really honest work for me. If I was to stop doing this I don’t know what I would be doing right now. I like to work really sparsely like this and I have this fear of people thinking it is unfinished when I think it is finished. I was looking at naturalist painters. Doing opposite of aesthetic and concept where nature appears small in civilization instead of vice versa. Strangeness of people trying to keep nature in their lives artificially.
Eg: I don’t think you should worry about these looking unfinished. To me these look very finished.
Ralph: did you also, you wrote something in your blog about camouflage.
I was interested in technological edge over nature. But in reading the article, I kind of resigned myself to the fact that I don’t know enough about that yet to tackle it.
Lori: how is it important is it that you know this is from real life?
JN: I don’t know.
DB: the thing I like about the dart is up until that I thought these were post humanity, but the dart kind of brings that back.
EG: subway seems very post apocalyptic.
JN: there was some deer grazing by a crashed car. But they are going from more believable t o more absurd, but I think I like the idea of some of them being from my mind or from reality.
Motoya: have you seen the movie “Lord of Heaven” so basically nature takes over.
NP: did you say you did or you did not want to them to be more apocalyptic?
JN: I Don’t I feel like I am using the animal as a big metaphor. When I have a big idea in my work I find it is better when I break it down into a smaller idea. I think it is kind of absurd when we refer to a species as being “overpopulated” when we have so many unnatural means of survival ourselves. It’s not an animal rights thing necessarily it is more about the absurdity, that people think they have such authority and such control
RC: I was thinking that with you over the weekend. And I remember when I sat down with my crow and asked him not to crow. And it does have this whole idea that we think we can control things.
JN; yes it is about the idea of human control over animals.
Lori: do you look at like scientists or explorers who have lost their legs? Or even the movie about people fucking horses. Like extreme examples.
JN: there are psychological profiles of people who do this.
AG: what part does beauty play in your work, thinking about how your making things.
JN: I am not trying to make things beautiful. I think it comes from thinking when I was a child and thought I would be an illustrator.
EG: how do you feel about the ones on the gray paper vs. the white paper.
The white ones are much more stark versus gray paper is more quiet. You are focusing on whats really essential.
MH: deer in subway looks realized; little jumpy animals look like studies
EG: I don’t think you have to worry about being illustrative.
AG: Using that reference to contrast with what the source actually is.
JN: that is what I have going back and forth on.
AG and RP: I think having the YouTube connection would be interesting, for viewers to possibly go back to.
Lori: I think that it is funny that was an officials had an idea of how to get out of the tree.
AG: have you thought about drawing in sequence?
JN: I have
AG: or even another animal coming down. So even if it is another animal, all four animals complete a movement.
EG: You were looking for source material it wasn’t super important that it was from you tube.?
IS the source important to the content? Are we talking about appropriation?
RC: you might look up a bear swimming, you might find similar movements.
JN: I don’t think of myself as a painter. I just want the color,
ML: Do you want to work with any other media? I am really excited that you are working on paper.
EG: what about the scale of your work.
JN: I’ve thought about working on a more giant piece of paper
EG: I like the more intimate quality. That would be interesting to work on more expansive canvas.
R: I don’t have any finished work to show, so what I’m looking for is a process based critique. Talk a little about coming to school with one idea and then changing it
mL: so how to start out work and how to go about.
Rc: so that mural inspired me a lot. And I wanted to add 3d elements to my murals, and I wanted to come to psu for access and ideas. So I wanted to do this ginormous mural with fire and water and mixed media. So I had a pet rooster named the hulk, so I took tons of pictures of him and really looked at birds. Cause I painted that phoenix and it looks flat I wanted to get more 3d, so I have been sketching the hulk and still not much depth. So I started to work on this.
Then pat came in last week. When joe was here he showed me some basic painting 101 stuff with atmospheric perspective and lighting. So I feel like in my mural work I have been focusing on design and not drawing/painting skills.
So pat came in last week and said to put the idea of the mural out of my mind and really working on drawing and painting. She suggested using color saturation so I have been working on this painting here. And there is my color scale.
The hulk died last week. I put him in a still life. I have been looking into still life from the baroque. I wanted to emulate the fall harvest, killing a rooster and having squash. Fiery colors for the living hulk and super muted down for the dead one. I am trying to get a sense of light and depth and I am wondering if I have done that. Pretty basic stuff, but since I am going back to the drawing I want some basic input.
Eg: so you worked from life or from the photograph.
Rc: both
Eg: so you eliminated stuff.
Rc: yeah
Eg: so how important is it to you to render stuff, is that important?
Rc: yeah, I think I want to get there and this is a step toward that. Yeah I have worked a great deal in the time I had. So this is a study for another painting.
RP: it does sort of have this feeling that it is an under painting.
Ml: your not using black
RP: you should look at Mark Tansay
eG: he pulls painting off the canvas.
Ml: I would like to talk about the giant bird versus the drawings. It seems like there are a lot of big steps.
Rc: I am getting him back in 6 months. That is the shortest taxidermy.
Eg: it is a long process.
ML: do you think your work is going to go in a 3d direction toward taxidermy?
Eg: you want to use this in a piece
RC: more as a study
MH: why is rendering important to you?
Rc: one thing that has come up for me as a mural artist and there is community collaboration, and it is at the point when I am organizing and hiring artists and rendering and rendering quick is something I can use professionally,
DB: I think it is a good idea taking a step back. This will definitely help you more if you want to get those skills. I think that is a good idea just practicing painting.
EG: is it hard for you sometimes to step back.
Rc: I feel like now I have to have a mural to be painting in the studio. I get really excited about it. I feel like my mural skills are going feral.
Rp: Whey don’t you set up your own mural. I get not wanting to see it. So that you get that energy from doing the murals. Cause when I know it’s going to be seen I am going to keep working harder.
Rc: I am really hungry to do my own work.
EG: if you really want to work, it is much easier to use oils. You could try.
Eg: how it it working for you that scale, cause you are so used to working large.
Rc: I like working large it is harder.
Eg: I am just wondering when you do the mural process how open are they. That ultimately affects the work.
Rc: it is different if I am proposing to a group and they like the idea I am pretty autonomous. But then the last mural it was totally decide by the community I was working with.
Eg: Sometimes murals look like collage. Which suits the medium
Rc: I am so
NP: we have talked about the value to increase your rendering skills but we haven’t talked about how this gets at your ideas. We haven’t talked about how this process will help you
Eg: are you open to identifying with your idea one of our artists who uses taxidermy really successfully is carlee Fernandez.
Rc: yeah there is always the appeal of the macabre.
Jn: have you ever thought of how to do taxidermy or something, a lot of the time they would just find dead animals, it doesn’t require going out and killing things.
Another guy would find dead things and he did an apprenticeship at the natural history museum. Cause they did their own.
Ml: speaking to that it said you wanted to add 3d elements to you could try foam.
Eg: what is your interest in combining different parts of animals.
Rc: that is what I was talking about with my murals.
DB: I think this is probably a good opportunity to develop your style, like what your voice is. Cause a lot of times with public work the group decides what the style is and this is a time to find your voice. I always like public paintings where someone comes at it with their style.
Mh: do you REALLY want to paint photo realistically, cause you have to decide if you want to spend the time really getting good at rendering.
mL: but didn’t you say you want to be quickly able to render, so you can execute it quickly and accurately,
rc: and really take the opportunity to know yourself through I don’t think photorealism is where I want to go, doing studies of a bird
Lori: I am thinking about realism versus hyperrealism. So the things that murals do its not like rendering, it is achieving a different think. in drawing 2 I tell people dramatize it.
Ralph: can you talk more about that project?
RC; yeah I was really interested in looking at how the bird looked coming out at me. So I cut it out and put it on foam core. So I cut it up in all these different pieces
So I sandwiched it all together and I kind of liked it.
Ralph: I like it too.
Eg: I like the chaos of it. I read it as flame, but it is also kind of abstraction
RP: you should look at Damien Gilley, his website is DamienGilley.com
MH: is that a piece
Rc: it is kind of a piece for me.
Mh: I like the way that wall looks. There is so much action in it.
NICOlE:
Working with quilting and maps, using maps to create patterns for quilts. I started sewing with the small shapes, but because they are so tiny it was difficult.
They dimensional. I wanted to create complexity for complexity’s shape. So what you are looking at here is a mock up of what the quilt might look like. So I am experimenting with different arrangements and color schemes. The color scheme for this quilt comes from a satellite image of the place that the quilt is based on. I started to use all the colors. My partner is an accountant and he uses this software to do audits for companies. So we used that to make a randomized sample of what the colors should be. So my work is creating systems, taking an idea and seeing where the idea takes me, more process focused than product focused.
AG: it is interesting that it it looks like an animal.
N: I am working with this playing around with different patterns. Trying out different things to see what might be more interesting pattern. I like what I am getting, but I felt it was kind of stepping away from what the neighborhood means. So I started going door to door collecting fabric samples. And collecting patterns from the neighborhood. So it becomes more of whats in the neighborhoods.
Lori: does this piece map your relationship to the neighborhood.
EG: you said you were going to do everywhere you have lived, so would you go back to the other places. What comes out of it is so unexpected.
AG: it is interesting though because it makes me look back at the process and it is all very abstract. It is not like you are ever working with something concrete. Except maybe the conversations and going door to door.
NP: that is maybe why I started going door to door. Abstracting is a theme that everyone is beginning to understand. Because everything is abstract. So making your process more transparent might be more interesting.
NP: If I were to display this piece I would display all this too. I’ve done other projects where the process is part of the display.
AG: taking these sort of patterns and applying them to the fabric. So the fabric is also derived from place. So you would screen-print the sighting onto the fabric.
NP: I think that is a great idea. I was thinking of embroidering.
DB: you can even print photo imagery. On that.
Lori: I can see this project being Seattle or other places., but when I first walked in, it is almost a crazier idea if it was just Portland.
Db: I almost get a ranger station vibe from your studio, but with more of an art vibe.
EG; you talked about showing all the element of your process.
JN: I feel like you have so many ideas going into one product. I would like to see one idea for one project. I guess it depends on how much you want the audience to get from your piece. And if each system is really important to you as being understood by the audience, then
NP: right I was trying to come up with one system to take multiple places through.
Ralph: just to give you more tools Portlandmaps.com has a great deal of maps and info that might be helpful.
RC: how do you think the overall aesthetic going to change from collecting samples door to door?
NP; I think it is going to change a lot. I don’t really know what kind of patterns/fabrics I’ll be getting.
RC: I think it would be an interesting thing to get fabric from the area that the drawing comes from.
NP: I like that a lot that is a good idea.
EG: you can depict this multiple ways. You don’t feel like you have to choose one method or one process do you.
NP: that is why I keep thinking of new systems.
E: it is an interesting starting point. Interesting way of thinking about how we relate to a physical space.
AG: do you think about thinking ahead do you want to the system to be more streams lined, or do you want it to be more complex. I think you could go simpler so there is access points throughout the system. It is too messy without a guide. Do you want to stream line the system, so the viewer could implent any place into the system.
NP: I like that idea, I was inspired by j morgan pruits algorithm for clothing and she explained it all so anyone could use it.
JN: there are arbitrary systems and strict systems and if you want other people to use it you need to have more strict systems that aren’t as arbitrary.
NP: I guess I am striving toward stricter systems but to make it more interesting I let the abstraction in along the way.
MH: but also all systems have points of abstraction
DB: I like old maps with sea monsters, so they really do change, maps.
EG: what happens if you maps spaces yourself. So it has to do with how you perceive it.
ML: if you were to walk through a city block and
EG: a more abstract way of perceiving the space.
N: I think it would be interesting to find out more about the object. But I am not sure how to go about that process of door to door. Is it intrusive?
Motoya: I think it is all about explaining why you are there. Some people say “no” I just got rejected. He doesn’t want to do it anymore.
Eg: how have your neighbors reacted to it so far.
NP: well I have started in my apartment complexes with mostly young people and they are mostly excited.
Motoa: no matter what information you get I think a list of that information would be interesting.
JN: or you could do it in a couple of rounds. Putting flyers and saying you would come back whenever, so if your worried about being intrusive.
RC: there is an idea about how people are so overloaded with methods of communication. Between email, face to face, letters, phone, texting etc. So, I think face to face simplifies things. The way of having totally at random and making intergenerational. You have no idea and have the system become the gift to you.
Motoya: and I think people love that to get involved.
Lori” there is a photo project called I’ve never been to Houston. Where he asked people who had never been to Houston to take a photo of what they THINK it would look like.
Motoya: I don’t use the word donate, I use the word contribute.
DB: using the word quilt might be good to use too, because there is a common understanding for what a quilt is.
JILLIAN
The work is kind of, I started off working on this series with deer it started off to be about the idea of animals having to adapt to civilization, and this sort of rural sprawl as opposed to urban sprawl animals coming into human habitats, and I am kind of trying to exaggerate the absurdity. So they are starting to get more surreal, where they started out more representational. So the deer camping, so animals having to go camping to get back to nature.
So these smaller drawings here are taken from actual images. The first two I got interested in that awkward overlap where people and nature collide. The idea that this is seen as an entertaing video, but if you start thinking about it it is actually kind of depressing and sad. Bear piece is way to show I am thinking aobut the negative aspect of this thing. Working with real life experiences of clashing on the edges of society and nature.
Motoya: why are the first two jumping?
JN: it seems that people just kind of coming up on this incidence.
Video does just make me laugh but it makes me think about what is happening. I am kind of unsure about my work right now. This is really honest work for me. If I was to stop doing this I don’t know what I would be doing right now. I like to work really sparsely like this and I have this fear of people thinking it is unfinished when I think it is finished. I was looking at naturalist painters. Doing opposite of aesthetic and concept where nature appears small in civilization instead of vice versa. Strangeness of people trying to keep nature in their lives artificially.
Eg: I don’t think you should worry about these looking unfinished. To me these look very finished.
Ralph: did you also, you wrote something in your blog about camouflage.
I was interested in technological edge over nature. But in reading the article, I kind of resigned myself to the fact that I don’t know enough about that yet to tackle it.
Lori: how is it important is it that you know this is from real life?
JN: I don’t know.
DB: the thing I like about the dart is up until that I thought these were post humanity, but the dart kind of brings that back.
EG: subway seems very post apocalyptic.
JN: there was some deer grazing by a crashed car. But they are going from more believable t o more absurd, but I think I like the idea of some of them being from my mind or from reality.
Motoya: have you seen the movie “Lord of Heaven” so basically nature takes over.
NP: did you say you did or you did not want to them to be more apocalyptic?
JN: I Don’t I feel like I am using the animal as a big metaphor. When I have a big idea in my work I find it is better when I break it down into a smaller idea. I think it is kind of absurd when we refer to a species as being “overpopulated” when we have so many unnatural means of survival ourselves. It’s not an animal rights thing necessarily it is more about the absurdity, that people think they have such authority and such control
RC: I was thinking that with you over the weekend. And I remember when I sat down with my crow and asked him not to crow. And it does have this whole idea that we think we can control things.
JN; yes it is about the idea of human control over animals.
Lori: do you look at like scientists or explorers who have lost their legs? Or even the movie about people fucking horses. Like extreme examples.
JN: there are psychological profiles of people who do this.
AG: what part does beauty play in your work, thinking about how your making things.
JN: I am not trying to make things beautiful. I think it comes from thinking when I was a child and thought I would be an illustrator.
EG: how do you feel about the ones on the gray paper vs. the white paper.
The white ones are much more stark versus gray paper is more quiet. You are focusing on whats really essential.
MH: deer in subway looks realized; little jumpy animals look like studies
EG: I don’t think you have to worry about being illustrative.
AG: Using that reference to contrast with what the source actually is.
JN: that is what I have going back and forth on.
AG and RP: I think having the YouTube connection would be interesting, for viewers to possibly go back to.
Lori: I think that it is funny that was an officials had an idea of how to get out of the tree.
AG: have you thought about drawing in sequence?
JN: I have
AG: or even another animal coming down. So even if it is another animal, all four animals complete a movement.
EG: You were looking for source material it wasn’t super important that it was from you tube.?
IS the source important to the content? Are we talking about appropriation?
RC: you might look up a bear swimming, you might find similar movements.
JN: I don’t think of myself as a painter. I just want the color,
ML: Do you want to work with any other media? I am really excited that you are working on paper.
EG: what about the scale of your work.
JN: I’ve thought about working on a more giant piece of paper
EG: I like the more intimate quality. That would be interesting to work on more expansive canvas.
Tuesday, October 13, 2009
Notes from Group Critique 10-13-09
Derek
It seems like this (skateboard) is harkening back to a particular time.
Skateboard piece, an idea I have had for awhile, and then I executed it.
Have been doing more process/experimentation oriented work, like the paper sculpture.
What is motivating you to work in these different ways? More experimentally?
D: I have been working more from materials. It worries me that I am going to spend all this time putting work into something and then not get that much out of the outcome, whereas if I...
I think getting started is an anxious process. Like this space is a blank sheet of paper. Don’t worry. I think this is a valid way of working, just getting things made, things that you don’t necessarily see as perhaps a legitimate idea but you just try things out and get them out.
D: I was thinking at first about this being more like a treadmill, but it turned more personal, I think with the walkmans etc.
When you say you are interested in walkmans are you interested in other ways, other kinetic sculptures you could make?
Where do you imagine this being? If this was in a white space it may be more interesting. It does really speak to an era, there are a lot of messages music turning the wheels, etc.
The floor is problematic, where it is now doesn’t work. Do you see it in a gallery, on the floor, on a pedestal?
I like the idea of it being higher up, so you could watch the wheels turn and see the top of the deck.
It has a really nice sound when you get close to it.
It sounds like a treadmill.
Are you mourning your youth?
It is sort of frustrating. There is a stuckness, a reference to recurring memories, replaying.
It is lighthearted but at the same time a bit dark, you could look at it nostalgically, or evoking the customs and commodities of a particular scene or subculture, but it also has more going on. (Thank god.)
I was struck by how kinda ridiculous to me. (In a Jan Dibbetts way). When I was a skateboarder, and Discmans came out we all held on to our walkmans because they didn’t skip when you skateboarders.
Are the wheels going the same direction.
This could be a monument to lost youth. Skateboards could be incredibly arty but I like that this one is generic, well used, Is it your intent to use very generalized objects, I notice there are no stickers, brand names etc.
This thing in the middle? The tape? It actually fits.
It actually doesn’t work for me. I didn’t recognize it and so I am spending too much time wondering what it is, without it there I appreciate the simplicity of the piece.
Can you prop it up more by the wheels?
I am interested in how you think this piece ended up being sad? You could play with that, like a small video projection above the deck, as if it is moving, kinda like a sad joke.
I think that it doesn’t need anything else. It is rich as a composition of objects.
I could see a small projection just above it like the view from a car window that is moving but not moving/getting anywhere, so that that sense of frustration is sustained.
D: I don’t really know how much more I want to add to it. Embed the walkmans in the ground.
I think it is important that you have the whole objects, they are so simple, even the tape.
I also agree with the tape, it is a reference to that time and culture – a form of bricolage, diy, kids making do with...
Without the projection it seems more like a clear monument to skateboard/youth/diy etc.
With the projection it would become a kind of character.
About batteries/the problem of cords/How do you sustain the movement: why can’t it just be a duration piece? Change the batteries at night and sometimes it is alive and sometimes it’s dead or running down.
There’s something about that possibility of the death of the motion that is really nice, and really important. The slow death of the batteries seems to attest to the ideas and the sadness you have been talk about.
I really like that element of chance!
I think that the loss of power, the possibility of the batteries dying is in the viewers’ head.
Anytime you have a kinetic element there is that loss of power.
The tape is what transforms it from lighthearted to sad. It needs support.
Seeing a cord would make it less of interest, it would make it less metaphorical, more like an appliance. But if I walked in and it was dead I wouldn’t be drawn to it at all, it would be totally static.
To me one the ways you could solve that problem, can you include that in the title, address the ephemeral nature of the piece.
Put stipulations on how the piece is displayed, a contract for the piece’s constant replenishment. Like Felix-Gonzalez Torres’ pieces.
I think that it has a lot of strong impact for everybody, despite all these things we are talking about working out.
are you targeting an audience? Are you trying to make something that has resonance for any particular people?
Again, I really love the sound, like the skateboard is moving on concrete.
its kind of interesting because in this very studio we had this very emotional conversation about nostalgia. you talk about an urban audience, but its wider than that, it has obsolescence built into it so it is nostalgic to a lot of people.. Are you interested in nostalgia, do you want that to be a part of your work?
I think there are both non-nostalgic elements, and there are other things. I think that the illusion of motion is satisfying enough on one level, it being a skateboard could be left.
I don’t lean toward nostalgia, because you aren’t keeping the walkmans, you are transforming them.
I think it’s totally nostalgic, very connected to that. Cassettes now have the charm back, like typewriters, etc.
I think that it’s not nostalgic because it’s totally a current to reuse/repurpose technology, for fashion, for nostalgia, or just out of necessity.
I don’t think you can get away from it (the n-word), but it is not the only reading.
(conversation about walkmans and hipsters ensues)
You can’t extract that this would be so different if the wheels were new and shiny etc.
How would it change the meaning if the wheels were going in different directions?
I would think first in an innocent viewing of futility.
that’s what’s so striking. honestly I think its intelligent but at first I was like eeh... but when Michelle made the comment about the era it points to and then it opened up all these other meanings.
I could see this piece dominating a whole space.
About the rolled paper sculpture...
You talked a little bit about tinkering but...
D: I thought about it sort of like ceramics, Its not satisfying in the same way I am just experimenting, I don’t know where its going.
Looks like a baseball bat.
There’s at least one of two artists from OCAC where they do these piece that are from NG magazines and then he turns them on a lathe, solid turned paper. It’s the same kind of thing.
I definitely got the ceramics association, it looks like a trimming wedge, thrown on a wheel.
Like miniature architecture. I could see a grouping of them. They are really beautiful.
I like that they are kinetic as well.
Telescopes, so when they are expanded
what about the colors, it looks like there is a plan, my mind looks for patterns.
Brancusi’s endless column, but you are taking common images and creating something.
Innards of marker pens. Just knowing that is awesome.
Could you use the outer elements too so you would know where it came from.\
D: All of this is more in the realm of craft. Coming at craft from a different angle, I have been looking about ways to...
There is something like Cornelia Parker about this.
All of these pieces are about reuse. I think that’s really interesting.
Lori:
dealing with a situation where the titles are really important and how do we deal with important titles in a gallery setting.
yes, the titles are important for at least the first two. (gingivitis, heartburn etc. All the philosophers)
L: I tend to say less if I can...
These are three very different pieces, do you always work in this many media?
I am particularly curious about the leaves painting. What is the connection.
I wouldn’t have thought that these were three natural remedies for the listed ailments.
Are they rendered like the original images?
Have you abstracted them?
reminded me of a natural food store, its interesting that they are all chemically products, but they are using the natural leaf to sell their product, and then you are playing with that.
I don’t know if you are going for humor but I find it funny.
the titles (or subtitles) would be more effective if they were the actual products,
I recognized the shape I had this weird recognition in the back of my mind.
Not even knowing the titles or associations they are aesthetically pleasing, even without attempting to think about the concepts.
I thought of a field guide.
I think rendering it exactly as on the product is very important, for it to work like a trigger.
When you are talking about them you are using the word refreshing. Can you help the titles by calling them ‘refreshing gingivitis’ and so on.
The position of them is directly appropriated from the packaging. On the packaging it’s almost out of place, and now they are plopped on the wall in a similar way.
Tracing a pattern to make a big deal out of it.
Seeing them I kind of felt like they were a puzzle. I knew you were doing something with them, but I didn’t know what. I think that the title being non-wall is a problem for this. Maybe they could be on an adjacent wall.
I think that they also resemble puzzle pieces.
If you had more, every leaf you were able to record, from packaging, then I think there would be the revelation of an absurdity and a system.
I am on the fence about it being really abstracted and doing it more naturalistically. Have I ever told you to look at Heidi Cody’s work? (colored pencil drawings of Eskimo pie man)
I think that is interesting too something that works as a painting but has a history of being built off of something else.
thinking more about the emotional connotations of all of these ailments, the embarrassment.
It seems like a lot of advertising is about shame, you are remedying your shame and claiming it in a way. How you are talking about feelings and through your own sense of these leaves, how can you convey this “forests/feelings” thing.
The Persuaders, “Emotional Branding” Frontline documentary. Now ads have developed a connection beyond reason to a product. Cult impulses.
I really liked the qualities of the piece, the way it was made and displayed, but I didn’t get any of the connections to ads, or health, maybe you want to think of another way to show those things besides the titles. Something humorous. If it is important that those connections are made.
The other thing that we have talked about before that’s important to your work – its not each individual piece, it is about the attitude that ties together disparate looking things and media and ideas. What happens in this small collection that don’t have so much to do with each other. It seems like you are interested in those intersections and how things/what things rise to the surface in a collection of pieces, rather than it being really important to make the connection to specific products, etc.
Can you talk about how these pieces relate to each other?
its interesting how you use playfulness to determine the seriousness with which we regard things we encounter. Turning that around. Philosophy is not taken as seriously, when mint leaves on medicated shampoo are taken seriously. The titles really clarify this.
All the women philosophers are like Libras.
I couldn’t help but think about Mt. Rushmore when looking at the phil. drawing.
The bracelets are more like other work you have made, referencing manipulation,
the drawing has more punch, you are laying your method bare, when you think of all the things that these guys have done about representation, and categorization and meaning, and then you have turned it around and wiped out a hundred years of serious thought to make this one connection: that they are all the same sign. In that way it is subtly connected to the leaves, like it could be a marketing campaign. This is the way to make philosophy palatable.
What about the choice of pen and crosshatching. A method that allows for easy reproduction, for greater seriousness.
I don’t think that photoshopping it would work, the high rendering of it makes it, because its sort of a hair brained idea to begin with.
I like the photoshop idea, with the piece the humor resides in the title but if you used a different title it would get closer to images of metaphysics and it would twist it.
But then it would be super obvious, part of the reason its funny is because it subverts your expectations.
Are you against like collaging horoscopes onto the work, or putting the title on the piece. I could see if you added/embedded titles to the pieces then it would separate them. Or if it was a solo show and then you create a forest of these things and connections could be made.
There is an inbetweenness to all of this. They don’t function individually, but the connections aren’t strong too.
visually they are very nice, but...
I think the philosophers drawing is so distilled, your attitude, your approach, your humor all is working so much.
Its worth considering the difference between the way you draw and the ideas you try and get across, don’t be constrained by your comfort processes.
What would happen if you added text pieces “Taurus” “Rolaids”
These feel kind of restrained and less obvious than last years work.
I really like that there is more for us to puzzle out.
Ralph:
the desire for absurdity to go beyond the limits of television.
I really like things happening outside of the picture plane, where there is a little bit of the unseen, just a hint. That’s really successful.
I am interested in how you presented them. They are bright and a bit overwhelming, are you getting into the repetitive images of tv? I could see the car for example all alone on the wall.
Are the narratives intersecting? Where you imagining that they would intersect?
Are we supposed to make assumptions about the group? That would be a reason to have them all in one place.
I feel myself wanting to connect them but I cant’ really.
I connect the ones, at least loosely into a category, that seem to be about group dynamics.
Read the “The Function of the Studio” by Daniel Buren.
Looking at hair color in trying to make the same characters appear.
I don’t put them together and I don’t know what I would get as a plus if I did.
The ones that are the strongest are the ones that have some mystery. The one with god and the surveillance cartoons reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon.
look at the backpage of the New Yorker
remind be of Robert Kullscott paintings
Some of these remind me of those Mexican paintings that are made after you survive a traumatic accident.
Last year you commented that you appropriated the style of working from the visuals of an outsider artist but this is really just the way you work, but I see the connection there, you seem to really be embracing that, the natural way you work.
the ones that were strongest, have some kind of intensity, formally.
putting things together so that I wouldn’t be forced but could bounce back and forth to create a narrative. I think if you grouped them differently you could make miniseries.
the prison seems like you were trying but you just didn’t get there. Perhaps its unfinished or it just lacks some of the intensity of the others.
what about if you didn’t display them this way, what is your scale choice about, they aren’t small or large, they aren’t the same size either. from a narrative stance, from an absurdity stance I agree with the comments.
There are some of them that lose something when piled together, if they were to function on their own I would think that they would need to be bigger.
There is some beautiful painterly color in many paintings.
The top of the one with the car for example.
Re: thesis work and posters for show
Making the work the posters, and making the poster ads. before the work.
Free stock images and text. Is this a bullshit idea?
I think you could find even more enticing, problematic, less confusing, extreme, absurd images.
this reminds me of the ads in the back of artforum.
I like the concept that a swimmer image could have more to do with your work than an image of work.
I don’t know how confusing it would be if the same info. is on all of them.
it sounds fun and also it’s a really simple idea.
that guy in the seventies who would advertise in artforum for these hugely conceptual material works and then the work never happened.
I think that in relation to what your paintings are about, having a work that is your message but also speaks to absurdity, an absurd way of advertising. Somehow making a connection through absurdity to advertise.
Can you add a disclaimer, “this does not necessarily speak to the beliefs or work of Ralph Pugay”? This is and/is not related to your work.
I think this kind of other way of speaking outside of painting seems really important at this time. Looking at your painting is only half the story.
You are making wild claims out of excitement, I like that, this excitement and what it elicits could be a piece in the show itself. Some manifestation of your google museum, not that exactly but something to that effect needs to factor in.
regarding artifacts to go along with all this...art factory...obstacle course etc.
you have these bruce conkle aesthetic that you like makes it so that you don’t have to highly craft things.
It seems like this (skateboard) is harkening back to a particular time.
Skateboard piece, an idea I have had for awhile, and then I executed it.
Have been doing more process/experimentation oriented work, like the paper sculpture.
What is motivating you to work in these different ways? More experimentally?
D: I have been working more from materials. It worries me that I am going to spend all this time putting work into something and then not get that much out of the outcome, whereas if I...
I think getting started is an anxious process. Like this space is a blank sheet of paper. Don’t worry. I think this is a valid way of working, just getting things made, things that you don’t necessarily see as perhaps a legitimate idea but you just try things out and get them out.
D: I was thinking at first about this being more like a treadmill, but it turned more personal, I think with the walkmans etc.
When you say you are interested in walkmans are you interested in other ways, other kinetic sculptures you could make?
Where do you imagine this being? If this was in a white space it may be more interesting. It does really speak to an era, there are a lot of messages music turning the wheels, etc.
The floor is problematic, where it is now doesn’t work. Do you see it in a gallery, on the floor, on a pedestal?
I like the idea of it being higher up, so you could watch the wheels turn and see the top of the deck.
It has a really nice sound when you get close to it.
It sounds like a treadmill.
Are you mourning your youth?
It is sort of frustrating. There is a stuckness, a reference to recurring memories, replaying.
It is lighthearted but at the same time a bit dark, you could look at it nostalgically, or evoking the customs and commodities of a particular scene or subculture, but it also has more going on. (Thank god.)
I was struck by how kinda ridiculous to me. (In a Jan Dibbetts way). When I was a skateboarder, and Discmans came out we all held on to our walkmans because they didn’t skip when you skateboarders.
Are the wheels going the same direction.
This could be a monument to lost youth. Skateboards could be incredibly arty but I like that this one is generic, well used, Is it your intent to use very generalized objects, I notice there are no stickers, brand names etc.
This thing in the middle? The tape? It actually fits.
It actually doesn’t work for me. I didn’t recognize it and so I am spending too much time wondering what it is, without it there I appreciate the simplicity of the piece.
Can you prop it up more by the wheels?
I am interested in how you think this piece ended up being sad? You could play with that, like a small video projection above the deck, as if it is moving, kinda like a sad joke.
I think that it doesn’t need anything else. It is rich as a composition of objects.
I could see a small projection just above it like the view from a car window that is moving but not moving/getting anywhere, so that that sense of frustration is sustained.
D: I don’t really know how much more I want to add to it. Embed the walkmans in the ground.
I think it is important that you have the whole objects, they are so simple, even the tape.
I also agree with the tape, it is a reference to that time and culture – a form of bricolage, diy, kids making do with...
Without the projection it seems more like a clear monument to skateboard/youth/diy etc.
With the projection it would become a kind of character.
About batteries/the problem of cords/How do you sustain the movement: why can’t it just be a duration piece? Change the batteries at night and sometimes it is alive and sometimes it’s dead or running down.
There’s something about that possibility of the death of the motion that is really nice, and really important. The slow death of the batteries seems to attest to the ideas and the sadness you have been talk about.
I really like that element of chance!
I think that the loss of power, the possibility of the batteries dying is in the viewers’ head.
Anytime you have a kinetic element there is that loss of power.
The tape is what transforms it from lighthearted to sad. It needs support.
Seeing a cord would make it less of interest, it would make it less metaphorical, more like an appliance. But if I walked in and it was dead I wouldn’t be drawn to it at all, it would be totally static.
To me one the ways you could solve that problem, can you include that in the title, address the ephemeral nature of the piece.
Put stipulations on how the piece is displayed, a contract for the piece’s constant replenishment. Like Felix-Gonzalez Torres’ pieces.
I think that it has a lot of strong impact for everybody, despite all these things we are talking about working out.
are you targeting an audience? Are you trying to make something that has resonance for any particular people?
Again, I really love the sound, like the skateboard is moving on concrete.
its kind of interesting because in this very studio we had this very emotional conversation about nostalgia. you talk about an urban audience, but its wider than that, it has obsolescence built into it so it is nostalgic to a lot of people.. Are you interested in nostalgia, do you want that to be a part of your work?
I think there are both non-nostalgic elements, and there are other things. I think that the illusion of motion is satisfying enough on one level, it being a skateboard could be left.
I don’t lean toward nostalgia, because you aren’t keeping the walkmans, you are transforming them.
I think it’s totally nostalgic, very connected to that. Cassettes now have the charm back, like typewriters, etc.
I think that it’s not nostalgic because it’s totally a current to reuse/repurpose technology, for fashion, for nostalgia, or just out of necessity.
I don’t think you can get away from it (the n-word), but it is not the only reading.
(conversation about walkmans and hipsters ensues)
You can’t extract that this would be so different if the wheels were new and shiny etc.
How would it change the meaning if the wheels were going in different directions?
I would think first in an innocent viewing of futility.
that’s what’s so striking. honestly I think its intelligent but at first I was like eeh... but when Michelle made the comment about the era it points to and then it opened up all these other meanings.
I could see this piece dominating a whole space.
About the rolled paper sculpture...
You talked a little bit about tinkering but...
D: I thought about it sort of like ceramics, Its not satisfying in the same way I am just experimenting, I don’t know where its going.
Looks like a baseball bat.
There’s at least one of two artists from OCAC where they do these piece that are from NG magazines and then he turns them on a lathe, solid turned paper. It’s the same kind of thing.
I definitely got the ceramics association, it looks like a trimming wedge, thrown on a wheel.
Like miniature architecture. I could see a grouping of them. They are really beautiful.
I like that they are kinetic as well.
Telescopes, so when they are expanded
what about the colors, it looks like there is a plan, my mind looks for patterns.
Brancusi’s endless column, but you are taking common images and creating something.
Innards of marker pens. Just knowing that is awesome.
Could you use the outer elements too so you would know where it came from.\
D: All of this is more in the realm of craft. Coming at craft from a different angle, I have been looking about ways to...
There is something like Cornelia Parker about this.
All of these pieces are about reuse. I think that’s really interesting.
Lori:
dealing with a situation where the titles are really important and how do we deal with important titles in a gallery setting.
yes, the titles are important for at least the first two. (gingivitis, heartburn etc. All the philosophers)
L: I tend to say less if I can...
These are three very different pieces, do you always work in this many media?
I am particularly curious about the leaves painting. What is the connection.
I wouldn’t have thought that these were three natural remedies for the listed ailments.
Are they rendered like the original images?
Have you abstracted them?
reminded me of a natural food store, its interesting that they are all chemically products, but they are using the natural leaf to sell their product, and then you are playing with that.
I don’t know if you are going for humor but I find it funny.
the titles (or subtitles) would be more effective if they were the actual products,
I recognized the shape I had this weird recognition in the back of my mind.
Not even knowing the titles or associations they are aesthetically pleasing, even without attempting to think about the concepts.
I thought of a field guide.
I think rendering it exactly as on the product is very important, for it to work like a trigger.
When you are talking about them you are using the word refreshing. Can you help the titles by calling them ‘refreshing gingivitis’ and so on.
The position of them is directly appropriated from the packaging. On the packaging it’s almost out of place, and now they are plopped on the wall in a similar way.
Tracing a pattern to make a big deal out of it.
Seeing them I kind of felt like they were a puzzle. I knew you were doing something with them, but I didn’t know what. I think that the title being non-wall is a problem for this. Maybe they could be on an adjacent wall.
I think that they also resemble puzzle pieces.
If you had more, every leaf you were able to record, from packaging, then I think there would be the revelation of an absurdity and a system.
I am on the fence about it being really abstracted and doing it more naturalistically. Have I ever told you to look at Heidi Cody’s work? (colored pencil drawings of Eskimo pie man)
I think that is interesting too something that works as a painting but has a history of being built off of something else.
thinking more about the emotional connotations of all of these ailments, the embarrassment.
It seems like a lot of advertising is about shame, you are remedying your shame and claiming it in a way. How you are talking about feelings and through your own sense of these leaves, how can you convey this “forests/feelings” thing.
The Persuaders, “Emotional Branding” Frontline documentary. Now ads have developed a connection beyond reason to a product. Cult impulses.
I really liked the qualities of the piece, the way it was made and displayed, but I didn’t get any of the connections to ads, or health, maybe you want to think of another way to show those things besides the titles. Something humorous. If it is important that those connections are made.
The other thing that we have talked about before that’s important to your work – its not each individual piece, it is about the attitude that ties together disparate looking things and media and ideas. What happens in this small collection that don’t have so much to do with each other. It seems like you are interested in those intersections and how things/what things rise to the surface in a collection of pieces, rather than it being really important to make the connection to specific products, etc.
Can you talk about how these pieces relate to each other?
its interesting how you use playfulness to determine the seriousness with which we regard things we encounter. Turning that around. Philosophy is not taken as seriously, when mint leaves on medicated shampoo are taken seriously. The titles really clarify this.
All the women philosophers are like Libras.
I couldn’t help but think about Mt. Rushmore when looking at the phil. drawing.
The bracelets are more like other work you have made, referencing manipulation,
the drawing has more punch, you are laying your method bare, when you think of all the things that these guys have done about representation, and categorization and meaning, and then you have turned it around and wiped out a hundred years of serious thought to make this one connection: that they are all the same sign. In that way it is subtly connected to the leaves, like it could be a marketing campaign. This is the way to make philosophy palatable.
What about the choice of pen and crosshatching. A method that allows for easy reproduction, for greater seriousness.
I don’t think that photoshopping it would work, the high rendering of it makes it, because its sort of a hair brained idea to begin with.
I like the photoshop idea, with the piece the humor resides in the title but if you used a different title it would get closer to images of metaphysics and it would twist it.
But then it would be super obvious, part of the reason its funny is because it subverts your expectations.
Are you against like collaging horoscopes onto the work, or putting the title on the piece. I could see if you added/embedded titles to the pieces then it would separate them. Or if it was a solo show and then you create a forest of these things and connections could be made.
There is an inbetweenness to all of this. They don’t function individually, but the connections aren’t strong too.
visually they are very nice, but...
I think the philosophers drawing is so distilled, your attitude, your approach, your humor all is working so much.
Its worth considering the difference between the way you draw and the ideas you try and get across, don’t be constrained by your comfort processes.
What would happen if you added text pieces “Taurus” “Rolaids”
These feel kind of restrained and less obvious than last years work.
I really like that there is more for us to puzzle out.
Ralph:
the desire for absurdity to go beyond the limits of television.
I really like things happening outside of the picture plane, where there is a little bit of the unseen, just a hint. That’s really successful.
I am interested in how you presented them. They are bright and a bit overwhelming, are you getting into the repetitive images of tv? I could see the car for example all alone on the wall.
Are the narratives intersecting? Where you imagining that they would intersect?
Are we supposed to make assumptions about the group? That would be a reason to have them all in one place.
I feel myself wanting to connect them but I cant’ really.
I connect the ones, at least loosely into a category, that seem to be about group dynamics.
Read the “The Function of the Studio” by Daniel Buren.
Looking at hair color in trying to make the same characters appear.
I don’t put them together and I don’t know what I would get as a plus if I did.
The ones that are the strongest are the ones that have some mystery. The one with god and the surveillance cartoons reminds me of a New Yorker cartoon.
look at the backpage of the New Yorker
remind be of Robert Kullscott paintings
Some of these remind me of those Mexican paintings that are made after you survive a traumatic accident.
Last year you commented that you appropriated the style of working from the visuals of an outsider artist but this is really just the way you work, but I see the connection there, you seem to really be embracing that, the natural way you work.
the ones that were strongest, have some kind of intensity, formally.
putting things together so that I wouldn’t be forced but could bounce back and forth to create a narrative. I think if you grouped them differently you could make miniseries.
the prison seems like you were trying but you just didn’t get there. Perhaps its unfinished or it just lacks some of the intensity of the others.
what about if you didn’t display them this way, what is your scale choice about, they aren’t small or large, they aren’t the same size either. from a narrative stance, from an absurdity stance I agree with the comments.
There are some of them that lose something when piled together, if they were to function on their own I would think that they would need to be bigger.
There is some beautiful painterly color in many paintings.
The top of the one with the car for example.
Re: thesis work and posters for show
Making the work the posters, and making the poster ads. before the work.
Free stock images and text. Is this a bullshit idea?
I think you could find even more enticing, problematic, less confusing, extreme, absurd images.
this reminds me of the ads in the back of artforum.
I like the concept that a swimmer image could have more to do with your work than an image of work.
I don’t know how confusing it would be if the same info. is on all of them.
it sounds fun and also it’s a really simple idea.
that guy in the seventies who would advertise in artforum for these hugely conceptual material works and then the work never happened.
I think that in relation to what your paintings are about, having a work that is your message but also speaks to absurdity, an absurd way of advertising. Somehow making a connection through absurdity to advertise.
Can you add a disclaimer, “this does not necessarily speak to the beliefs or work of Ralph Pugay”? This is and/is not related to your work.
I think this kind of other way of speaking outside of painting seems really important at this time. Looking at your painting is only half the story.
You are making wild claims out of excitement, I like that, this excitement and what it elicits could be a piece in the show itself. Some manifestation of your google museum, not that exactly but something to that effect needs to factor in.
regarding artifacts to go along with all this...art factory...obstacle course etc.
you have these bruce conkle aesthetic that you like makes it so that you don’t have to highly craft things.
Fall Critique Schedule
T 10/13
2-2:45 Derek
2:45 - 3:30 Lori
3:30 - 4:15 Ralph
note taker: Anna
T 10/20
2-2:45 McCalla
2:45 - 3:30 Miles
3:30 - 4:15 Motoya
note taker: Jillian
T 10/27
2-2:45 Robin
2:45 - 3:30 Nicole
3:30 - 4:15 Jillian
note taker: McCalla
T 11/3
2-2:45 Derek
2:45 - 3:30 Anna & Ryan
3:30 - 4:15 ____________
note taker: Nicole
T 11/10
2-2:45 Lori
2:45 - 3:30 Jillian
3:30 - 4:15 Motoya
note taker: Derek
T 11/17
2-2:45 Ralph
2:45 - 3:30 Nicole
3:30 - 4:15 McCalla
note taker: Jillian
T 11/24
2-2:45 Robin
2:45 - 3:30 Miles
3:30 - 4:15 Michelle
note taker: Derek
T 12/1 REVIEWS
note taker: Anna
Monday, April 27, 2009
visiting artist suggestions
how bout these:
Victoria Haven (west coast?)
Diana Cooper (NYC)
Seth Price
Sam Gould (lectured before?)
E Rock (portland)
Kevin Appel (LA)
Bruce Conkle (portland)
Jane South (NYC)
Cory Arcangel (NYC)
Edward Tufte (amazing brain)
Victoria Haven (west coast?)
Diana Cooper (NYC)
Seth Price
Sam Gould (lectured before?)
E Rock (portland)
Kevin Appel (LA)
Bruce Conkle (portland)
Jane South (NYC)
Cory Arcangel (NYC)
Edward Tufte (amazing brain)
Friday, April 17, 2009
my picks, for now
Linda Hutchins
Larry Clarke
Gus Van Sant
Harmony Korine
Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)
John Waters
Gregory Crewdson
Andreas Gursky
Larry Clarke
Gus Van Sant
Harmony Korine
Don Van Vliet (aka Captain Beefheart)
John Waters
Gregory Crewdson
Andreas Gursky
Monday, April 6, 2009
Spring(time) Critique Schedule
Our new critique schedule will begin this Wednesday, April 8th
The schedule is as follows. Sign up and check back for information on people and places.
Wednesday, April 8th 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, April 14th 2-4pm (Bill and Erik)
Wednesday, April 22nd 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, April 28th 2-4pm (Bill and Erik)
Wednesday, May 6th 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, May 12th 2-4pm (Erik)
Wednesday May 20th 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, May 26th 2-4pm (Bill and Erik)
Wednesday, June 3rd 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, June 9th 2-4pm (Bill and Erik)
The schedule is as follows. Sign up and check back for information on people and places.
Wednesday, April 8th 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, April 14th 2-4pm (Bill and Erik)
Wednesday, April 22nd 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, April 28th 2-4pm (Bill and Erik)
Wednesday, May 6th 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, May 12th 2-4pm (Erik)
Wednesday May 20th 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, May 26th 2-4pm (Bill and Erik)
Wednesday, June 3rd 1-3pm (Pat and Horia)
Tuesday, June 9th 2-4pm (Bill and Erik)
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