Hey Raleigh is A-OK!!!!

Yesterday I got to visit Raleigh agian, and again, had a great time. Went to the Contemporary Art Museum, CAM, where I thankfully landed in on the DDDRRRAAAAAWWWWWWIIINNNGGGG exhibition.  As I'm beginning to see my work as more akin to drawing than painting, this show was so very good to see.

"Chaos for me breeds images." - Francis Bacon

My nest

This morning I did some reflecting.  During my critiques it was suggested more than once to introduce more ambiguity in my work, be more suggestive and make the viewer work more. And by incorporating this I need to find a voice that will present the themes I explore but, I suppose, not so in-your-face. Not so literally. I completely appreciated this cog in my wheel. Before the residency I was, and have always felt I needed to 'toe the line', I thought I needed to push that limit to be heard. I thought I didn't know any other way, the emergency I've felt and the 'need' to operate at extremes was my niche, the way I was presented to the world and the answer I gave to the world. My work was loud in undergrad, I was mad at the world and I had to express it. Then upon graduating, and joining the army, September 11, 2001 occurred. From that point on, the extremes have been even more polarized, as my husband and friends have been deployed multiple times in a seemingly unending war. Meanwhile the times at home have been as contentious as times deployed. We have not been able to catch our breath.  And this has been reality for me as I grow and raise a family, and live through my twenties, thirties.
My work as an undergrad, or work at all, seemed naive in those early years when I was in the Army. I couldn't find it, couldn't grab onto something tangible that made sense, and maybe I wasn't ready to search it out. Then the opportunity of tattoo came along and I threw myself at it. That was an art to me that was as aggressive and courageous as the soldiers around me. Someone told me once it took 'balls to tattoo'. That art made sense then. Also, the ability to do memorial tattoos on soldiers, and how the history of tattoo coincides so with military life all helped me find was my station in the life I lived.  However, I was really just building an armor. As well as linking my artistic validity to mastering a craft, that I hid behind.
I knew going into an MFA would be an arduous task for me, but not just because I'm attempting to bridge my work as a tattooer with a finer art discipline, but also because this armor I have built needs to be investigated.  The experience of the first residency shed light on my own folly.  I came with my guards in place, not consciously but only because they have been there for so long.  My assumed resiliency was stripped away to reveal my contradictions.  I am not, in fact, 'tougher than the world', (in reference to the 'suck it up' mentality of military life), the current state of [everything] does piss me off and I do feel that, and it does break my heart.  I felt as if my tattoos had suddenly fallen off and I was there naked, with no assigned prescription to shield my exposure. And I am grateful for that.
Of course now, back in 'my nest' I can digest everything. And I still feel an urgency, but also aware of redirecting my approach in a way that may be heard more so than my work so far.  I was re-listening to Stuart Steck's lecture this morning for critical theory, discussing Baudelaire's 'Painter of Modern Life' , how the job of the modern painter is to paint life.  And I wonder if Manet racked his brain to figure out a way to paint that was so oppositional to academy painting as to express the changing world around him (or for that matter how any artist from Modernity on figured it out).
Stuart nailed it with the statement:
            "Don't worry about these concerns that have preoccupied art, put those away, and go find the concerns that should be important to us today, and find the adequate means of representing those concerns."
So now I have to find my way, my voice, to represent the world as I know it. I believe this semester will be mostly my search for this, and I am sure (and ok with) the many failures that will ensue, as long as I know it will get me closer to some realization, and the ability to address the truth, without armor.

"The artist lives in an atmosphere of perpetual failure." -Harry Crews

fig. 1

fig. 2

fig. 3

fig. 4

fig. 5

So let's talk about guts and art. Art and guts. Artguts. From the first drying attempt of the casings I only yielded that much (fig.1). For the most part the casing dried INTO the canvas, of which I hadn't intended to use in the art piece, but was using to dry the casings on. I had initially wanted to be able to use the casings independently of any other surface. After that fail, I rethought the approach as to actually pasting them on the surface I chose for the art piece. So initiated round two. I readied a panel box with desired watercolor paper and wrapped the front and sides completely with casing. The cool thing about casing is that it thins out as you pull and 'mush' it into place. 

***It's hilarious to me that I am discovering how to manipulate intestine for a desired visual effect, please don't send the paddywagon and the nice men in the white coats just yet!!!***

I was very happy with the end product (fig.2) and quickly showed all my friends on facebook.  Then as the sun started to fade from my windows and I heard the telltale rumble of a southern summer afternoon shitstorm, I realized (as I looked down at the damn WARNING labels on the casings container, something about cooking them correctly to prevent bacterial infection blah blah)......that I couldn't exactly paint on this salmonella box using THE method of painting that I do. The act of  'spit-shading' involves putting the brush that was just on the paper in your mouth. 

Spit-shade: a two brush painting technique used by tattooers to blend the black, greys and color of watercolor or liquid acrylic to produce highly desired smooth transitions. Literally placing one brush in your mouth to absorb saliva and using that spit brush to draw out pigment applied with other brush. 

I'm not a mathematician, but I don't think spit-shading on a potentially health hazardous painting surface adds up.  DUHHH, shit. 

sal·mo·nel·la

ˌsalməˈnelə/

noun

1. a bacterium that occurs mainly in the intestine, especially a serotype causing food poisoning.

.....'occurs mainly in the INTESTINE'..... Tra la la, whatevs.  But in the interest of preserving life, I decided my next issue was eradicating bacteria. So, maybe cooking it would do the trick ? (and this is where reality really

starts to blur) 'I'll just throw it in the oven for 5 mins!' Well I did, and before it burst into flames I grabbed it out, but the casing had already popped and curled off the edges (fig.3, 4). FAIL.

Um so toss the idea all together right? It was DOA, engine seized, a pulled hamstring, the Griswalds Christmas turkey....

Well, no! What fun is that? You gotta be tough when you're stupid, so back to the drawing board....

This time I mixed a solution of bleach and anti-bacterial soap and pre-soaked the casing. then washed. Did this a few times, rewrapped the now cooled board and dried it. The washed casings have a finer texture, and are even easier to meld to form (hell yes). The dried surface pulls a good line as it turns out, shading is different, but interesting. Also the ability to layer casings, as they are translucent, after painting gives really cool effect, as well as the ability to tear into it. Figure 5 is the box after messing around quite a bit with it. I will leave this as the experimental piece probably. There's some interesting things going on and it does very much give off a 'living' vibe. Today I have started another piece. I didn't get sick from that day so I think I'm good. Right?  

"It's not tragic to die doing what you love."    

                                   

         -words of the late great Patrick Swayze in Point Blank

It's surprisingly difficult to figure out how to paint on guts....

In the interest of branching out on what medium I paint on it was suggested I try a more living substance that would mimic the idea of living skin, a la tattooing. Parchment and velum are totally viable and very interesting options. And I am ordering them, but a perhaps more hardcore option was presented....a grosser, smellier, messier, less conventional, kind of crazy option. (Uh, yeah duh I want that one!).  So it has come about that I am attempting to cut, stretch, and dry porcine casings to paint on them.  I bought the casings while still in Florida visiting my parents. I dutifully went to work on their patio, cutting and stretching the casing out on an old canvas. It wasn't so much stretching as it was just smoothing them out on the canvas, and they would just stick there.  And yes it was smooshy, and stunk, Lawddddd!!!

How they come. yummmmm

Cutting

How it adhered to canvas

So that was that, so far. About an hour later my Mom came home to find this masterpiece drying on her patio.  Evidently a pig gut painting is not on my Mom's Christmas list. It was not well received. Something about 'river rats' being attracted to them (she lives between the river and the ocean). Even worse was the explanation I attempted to give, defending the right and relevance to work with pig poop shooters.......giving examples of other artists that used kinda gross non-conventional media, Chris Ofili and elephant dung etc ('and Mom He's awesome!').  Eventually I just apologized, because honestly she has a great point, what the hell am I doing fucking around with pig intestine?  But what the hell was I doing putting permanent marks on skin? And for that matter , what the hell am I doing painting anyway? 

Start...

I used to, for more than half of my life, use these little hardbound handy-sized sketch journals to record, collect, react to, rant about, shit-on, or love life as I lived it. I would take them with me everywhere (still do sometimes). I'd throw in antidotes, sketches or whatever I saw fit that I knew would come in handy to reflect upon when the time for making was nigh. They became an important part of the whole process for me. They are quite beat up and stuffed with a mish mash of the crap I guess was too much to leave in my head, or too important to trust with memory. They have been on road trips, they have been in cafes and bars, always carried with me, even through basic training, being desperately hid from drill sergeants.   I used to think, if there were a fire, I'd grab those first. Now of course its the kids, and the dog, cat.  They would burn I'm sure.

So now I'm using this as my new journal I suppose. I will however miss the smell and feel of the pages and how the ink scratched into the paper, how sometimes friends or acquaintances would scribble something in their margins, how the bindings would sometimes overwhelm and break, how their tattered and worn pages made them beautiful, lived in...