Second Semester Summary

My studio work for this semester began with my black and white paintings which were the pieces that received most of the attention during my last residency critiques. The work was described as lyrical, graphic, and organic. The consensus was that the vivid brush strokes which have an expressive randomness was interesting and held the viewer’s attention. These paintings conveyed an idea of a grid, interconnectedness, and some implied system of counting. I was encouraged to take the next semester to further explore this series and see how my work would develop. My research this semester included artist using nature as the point of departure. I investigated books written from the 1980s to the present on Abstract Expressionism. In addition I looked at the work of several artists: Peter Doig, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Laura Owens, Robert Motherwell, Agnes Martin, Donald Sultan, Jennifer Bartlett, John Walker, Kristin Quinn, John Chamberlin, Cy Twombly and Helen Frankenthaler.


I followed Hannah Barrett’s suggestion of using pieces of paper all the same size with a limited amount of black to explore positive and negative space - using small to large shapes. This technique would push my understanding of possible compositions for future paintings. I also decided to use Google images with aerial perspectives of highways, roads, on-ramps and off-ramps as the point of departure for the work. A surprising coincidence that I discovered in my research was that the first highway to span the U.S. goes through the university town of Davis which is located just 14 miles from my studio. The highway was first conceived in 1912 and originally spanned the continent coast-to-coast from Times Square in New York City to Lincoln Park in San Francisco through 13 states: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Colorado, Wyoming, Utah, Nevada, and California. I find American roadways fascinating from several perspectives - from the impact of urban planners, to car designs, to big oil’s gripping control of the US economy combined with the staggering 14.5 billion dollars spent annually by car manufactures on advertising.(1) All of these elements combined and their direct effect or how they shape the ever changing American landscape is of interest to me.


While I feel the new abstract work is evolving I still have been struggling this semester with trying to bring together the work that I show in the galleries so they have some reference to the abstract paintings and my papers. At this point I feel the only common point of interest is my appreciation for the American landscape, which includes automobiles, 50s, 60s and 70s architecture and the influences that globalization has had on both the urban and rural American landscape. I don’t have any interest in trying to combine the specific techniques that I use in each body of work. The process and materials that I use are completely different with the end result of each successful. While working on the abstract works I realized that my process of trial and error for the work that is shown in the galleries was has been a long and challenging process which has taken at least 12 years. I am realizing with the new abstractions that it will perhaps take the same amount of trial and error in order to develop this into a fully mature idea. I feel the need to resolve this conflict by the end of my third residency so that I can proceed with my direction for the MFA thesis and exhibition. At this point it feels the final resolution would be to drop the abstract paintings and to go in the direction of the work that I show in the galleries, my original work. There has been a benefit to this experimentation. I am actually experimenting more now and enjoying the process and in a way it feels like I am even more open and innovative than ever before.

This past semester my work was accepted into the Caldwell Snyder Gallery and the Campton Gallery. I am scheduled to have my first San Francisco solo exhibition in September and my first New York solo exhibition is scheduled for June 2011. I feel a great amount of excitement about this as it has taken me many years to get to this point. My work will also be going to International fine art fairs for the first time within the coming year. It will be interesting to see how my work will be received in the International venues. In addition to getting into the new gallery I had a piece acquisitioned into the Napa Valley Museum collection. Additionally, the University of California, Davis, has hired me to teach for the second time a class for the Design Department. This summer the class is Design Drawing.

The weekend of May 20th through 23rd the gallery took my work along with several of their other artists to the San Francisco Fine Art Fair. There were galleries from all over the US. It was my first opportunity to see my work juxtaposed with the work of so many artists from all over the world. As I looked at the broad scope of work, which included Donald Sultan, an artist I studied over the past semester, I found it interesting to see how my work fit into the overall scope. I feel stronger about my work, both in terms of imagery and my process and feel it looks well executed and stands somewhat alone in the particular iconography I am attracted to. For years I have looked at my art work as a dialogue between Americana meets Pop Art. I ask, wouldn’t it be best, in order to get the most out of my time in the MFA program, if I let my school investigation reference my gallery work? Visiting artist Rita McBride was a real inspiration for me personally. Her rattan Toyota Celica still really inspires me and I still find myself thinking at some point it would be interesting to think about casting a car as sculpture as an option for my work.

I have continued to work with Tom Holland as my mentor. Tom has continued to offer a critical eye and has encouraged me to bring both bodies of work closer together. I’m not sure how I feel about this idea. I have two mentors lined up for the next two semesters’ work. The first is Boyd Gavin, a painter whose work I admire greatly. For my last semester I have Scott Shields, Senior Curator of the Crocker Art Museum all lined up. He has been watching my work evolve over the years and would at some point like a piece in the museum collection. He has a keen eye and extensive knowledge of contemporary art with an emphasis on landscape. I feel this will be helpful for my last semester as I attempt to coordinate my theses and my final work.

1. Art & Copy, Director Doug Pray. 2009

Unconscious Reality of Seeing: Freeways as Graffiti

Figure 1. Melissa Chandon, Off Ramps in Black and White, 2010
Figure 2. Cy Twombly, Free Wheeler, 1955, house paint, pencil, crayon, and pastel on canvas

My attraction to roadside vernacular began at the age of ten when I became completely and quite consciously smitten with a white Porsche and a shinny aluminum airstream. I was struck by their beauty, their clean modern design and knew instantly that I liked both of them and someday wanted one of each for myself. That summer we were house-sitting for friends on their farm while they traveled across Europe by car and a camper. The idea of exploring Europe this way was so seductive to me it sounded as wonderful as traveling on the Orient Express or going to the South Pole on the Endurance. I guess the adventurer in me was coming out. I’m not completely sure why a child of ten would feel this way. This attraction or curiosity has continued throughout my life and is an issue that I address in the studio. I find it an interesting phenomenon that we can fall for a “car”. What is that, what does the car represent? In Hollywood we have immortalized car culture in many films; Bullet, Vanishing Point and American Graffiti, and all of the family vacation movies with Chevy Chase, just to name a few. I find it interesting how car sizes have swung like a pendulum with a direct correlation to what is happening in the world – the explosion of Hummers post 911. When you look at the history of the automobile and globalization it is very interesting that the car continues to change drastically in size, design, horsepower and so-on and with such extremes. The auto industry has played a significant role in the evolution of the U.S. not only from the stand point of America’s shift from being a leading industrial manufacturing country, to gas companies lobbying for more cars and less mass transit, to the building of more roads and urban sprawl. I wrestle with all of this as we face serious issues with our environment due to global warming. I feel a responsibility to paint this car culture enigma, to document the many cars that are adored so that we might be more able to move towards other methods of transportation that are more environmentally friendly.

My fascination with car culture and roadside vernacular has taken me in two separate yet connected directions; the abstract realism work that I show in the galleries and another body of abstract paintings based on the landscape. I am currently captivated by freeways, on ramps and off ramps, their design, pattern and lines of abstraction. They seem rich and vibrant allowing room for discussion both in my mind and on the canvas. The freeway is interesting from two perspectives, the abstract qualities that the roads have in and of themselves along with the idea of public and private spaces. When one thinks about public spaces it is easy to think about city parks, national parks, camp grounds and the like as having a significant presence and availability for each individual to use and enjoy. The freeway is of interest to me as it is public space but one that we don’t consider public or even see as a place. When one thinks about the huge amount of land that is consumed by our public highway system it is rather daunting, combined with the hours that we spend, most often alone, navigating mostly through heavy traffic with a kind of blurred vision of both seeing and not seeing the surrounding environment. A few months ago I had an interesting revelation while driving to the airport late at night to catch a red eye. While we drove along the lights from the businesses that lined the freeway were a blaze almost like a Christmas tree, red, blue, green, and bright yellow, and sitting on the dash was the GPS unit which was guiding us towards the airport. Both looked so similar - bright lights set against black - and I thought that in the future driving will probably be a totally different experience. Perhaps we’ll be able to personalize our experience and see only what we wish to see, perhaps it will be more like the way I feel while traveling on an airplane. It’s hard to say.

I have been using Google Images along with my own quickly shot digital photographs taken from the car for my point of departure with the new series of abstract paintings. I feel that using these images is a perfect starting place for the work and has given me room to think about how I might translate the information onto the canvas. I find the act of painting one of editing down to the essentials so for me the digital image provides the structure. Roland Barthes discusses in Camera Lucidia, Reflections on Photography, “The photograph by its very nature is believable”(1) where as a painting by its nature is an abstraction or an interpretation. I am more interested in the abstraction of these large architectural structures than in painting them to look exactly like the photo. I also find that taking the pictures while driving has a random unpredictable quality that appeals to me. It feels more like the way we actually experience them, much like a blur in our peripheral vision.

There are a few artists whose work has inspired me, Jackson Pollock, Cy Twombly, Helen Frankenthaler, Robert Smithson and Richard Deibenkorn. Pollock and Twombly, while working with abstraction and during the same period of time, worked philosophically from very different places. Pollock’s action paintings left a trace of his physical process of painting while, “Twombly used Abstract Expressionism as a weapon against the autographic mark and not the strategy of transforming the spontaneous stroke into a “devise” but of recording the mark itself as a form of graffiti, which is to say, the anonymous trace of a kind of criminal violation of the unspoiled surface”.(2) Free Wheeler painted in 1955 gives a good example of this form of graffiti marks on his canvas.

Robert Smithson, specifically with his earth-work the Spiral Jetty, offered a new perspective to sculpture and the gallery when he questioned the traditions of the art being presented within the confines of a formal gallery. During a visit to the Harwood Museum in Taos, New Mexico a few years ago I was able to closely examine Richard Deibenkorn’s New Mexico aerial perspective landscapes paintings. I found them complex and interesting as they not only hold the canvas together but upon close examination reveal many hidden nuances. Helen Frankenthaler, Mountains and Sea, is interesting with the bold gestural movements, use of negative space and the application of the paint as a stain rather than a heavily applied texture of paint.

My goal with the new works about the freeways, overpasses, and on ramps is to really see them as a place, collectively owned architectural structures that are pervasive. They can be thought of as a form of scaring or graffiti consciously placed within our environment. It seems very odd to me that during the Obama stimulus package there has been so much money put into road expansion and repaving rather than the money going towards more high speed trains that would in the long run be much better for “our” environment. TED(3), a small nonprofit, which began in 1984 and is devoted to ideas worth spreading has an annual conference which brings together people from three worlds: technology, entertainment, design. In the documentary, The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED , Al Gore gave a concluding talk and suggested that if we were able to think collectively about “our environment” a real shift towards a more environmentally sound future is possible. I feel this is possible and hopefully will come to fruition. We just need to open our eyes and really see.

1. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucidia Reflections on Photography, Hill and Wang, 1981
2. Foster, Hal, Krauss, Rosalind, Bois, Yve-Alain. Art Since 1900, Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Volume 2, 1945 to the Present. Thames & Hudson, 2007. Page 372
3. The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED, 2007, Director: Daphne Zuniga, Steven Latham

Does Facebook Represent a New Architectural Icon in Today’s Landscape?

A human being is a part of the whole called by us “the universe,” a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separate from the rest – a kind of optical delusion of consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening the circle of understanding and compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty,”1 – Albert Einstein


I intend to address the primary topics of architecture and landscape in this paper and I would like to ask for an open mind with regard to these two structures, with the intent of perhaps seeing the conceptual nature of each. Throughout the history of landscape painting artists have provided the viewer with a full narrative of the environment of both urban and rural settings and in the process have defined a sense of place. The role the artist has in establishing the relationship between art and its reference to the world is something that interests me and drives my own work. I have been thinking about the relationship between the landscape and the idea of a sense of place and the role that virtual platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Yelp will have in creating or redefining a new understanding and definition of the terms landscape and architecture. In an article called The Artiste by art historian Blake Stimson, who writes about a conversation between Jeff Wall and architect Jacques Herzog published under the title ‘Pictures of Architecture – Architecture of Pictures’, Stimson enables us to see other possibilities for the word architecture particularly in this occasion in reference to the works of Jeff Wall.

“Rather what I mean by architecture (and what I take it to mean in the Wall–Herzog conversation) is something more like the concept of housing or factory or pavilion (or, indeed, garret or laboratory), that is, something more in keeping with a non-metaphorical, everyday use of the term even as we consider it in the context of an architecture of pictures (or an architecture of art more generally) rather than as architecture itself.”2

It is the architectural super structures that have traditionally held power and knowledge - corporate headquarters, churches, universities, banks, museums, publishing houses, and more. As these structures take on a new form via the Internet, a form that does not exist within the confines of walls but in a virtual state, one wonders how this will change our understanding of so many things including our personal relationships, our daily habits, as well our ability to encounter one another eye to eye. The tradition of architecture has defined us in many ways by providing us with a structure that represents a specific place where we exist within our community and has provided us with the platform or environment to construct, engage, and build friendships and personal relationships. Author W. J. T. Mitchell in the book, Landscape and Power suggests:

“One might think then of space, place and landscape as a dialectical triad, a conceptual structure that may be activated from several different angles. If a place is a specific location, a space is a “practiced place,” a site activated by movements, actions, narratives, and signs, and landscape is that sight encountered as image or “sight.” Central Park in New York City is thus located in a specific space on earth; it is the site of innumerable activities and practices; and it is consumed (and was designed to be consumed) as series of picturesque tableaus or “landscapes” derived from European landscape painting.”3

Throughout history artists have served as documentarians when painting the landscape and in the process defined a place and in this process created an environment where one can comprehend themselves and their relationship to others. Artists have provided a visual opportunity to understand our individual sense of place within contemporary society and they have been influenced and directed by culture, media and changes in technology and as a result continue to redefine our individual understanding of art, landscape, nature, structure, form and so on. In Jeff Wall’s essay, Dan Graham's Kammerspiel, he addressed the influence of popular culture on conceptual artists, “The critical language developed within conceptualism is constructed from the discourses of publicity, journalism, academicism, and architecture. Artists like Graham, Buren, Weiner or Kosuth understand architecture as the discourse of siting the effects of power generated by publicity, information and bureaucracy in the city.”4

In the late 19th and early 20th century the work of artist and biologist, Ernst Haeckel offered a new definition of the term landscape. He spent his life consumed with his research, painting many thousands of single cell organisms called Protista. The movie, Proteus: A Nineteenth Century Vision encapsulated his work by saying, “the outer world became a window into an inner landscape”.5

Contemporary painter Gerhard Richer whose works take him to the tradition of the landscape is defined as one “who’s roots extend as far back as German Romanticism, and his vision encompasses the process of landscape painting since Corot”. “Richter continually exploring, deepening, and varying the techniques we think of as specifically Richterian – the smeared canvas, the photographic canvas, the vaguely expressionistic canvas. In one case here, he transformed a roomful of paintings into a conceptual installation by including a mirror the size of a canvas: this effectively parodied the idea of “art imitating nature by proposing that art imitates art.”6 Richer is a good example of a contemporary landscape painter who opens the door for a reinterpretation of the traditions of the landscape through his exploration of a nontraditional approach.

Paintings of the landscape have provided us with the visual tools needed to place ourselves within a framework so we can experience our community and our environment. Landscape paintings have served as a kind of archaeological touchstone and have created an environment for thought. Time, technology, and invention allow us the opportunity to redefine or reconstruct our understanding of the world. It seems that we have yet again developed or redefined the conventions of architecture as well as the traditions of the landscape and have created a new social framework that does not exist in a tangible place but a virtual space and in the process given new meaning to both terms – landscape and architecture.

The 1950s and 1960s in America within the confines of an architectural building, perhaps a diner or the donut shop - sometimes while sitting at the counter on a stool - one would visit with old friends and make new ones. Today, in the town where I live and work, it is the gourmet coffee café where we can sit, drink our coffee and work on our computers. It is not uncommon while working in the café to hear no one speak, except those who are just ordering their drink of choice. I have spent many an hour working in this way. If I want to get out of my studio, see other people, work on my projects, it is the café that offers a cheerful environment to do just that. Facebook has now become an alternative structure in which I can connect with long lost friends, new friends and fellow artists. The structure of the Facebook site has an architectural reference in that the main page where one sees posts is referred to as the “wall”. It is interesting if one thinks about the “wall” as a gallery and the images as an ever changing collaborative exhibition in this virtual architectural structure.

My work for the past seven years has been about documenting vanishing mid century architectural icons and roadside vernacular. My goal has been to try and understand what it is that creates a sense of place. As the landscape changes both due to development and environmental issues that we face in the near future one can look at Facebook with an open mind and applaud its communal environment. When one thinks about the individuals that we can find and have a relationship with while never turning the car key in the ignition one can say that Facebook offers a very low carbon footprint and simultaneously a reinvention of the idea of an architectural meeting place.

1. Pema Chödrön, The Places That Scare You, A Gide to Fearlessness in Difficult Times, Shambhala Classics, 2002
2. Blake Stimson. The Ariste. Oxford University Press. OXFORD ART JOURNAL 30.1 2007 101–115 doi:10.1093/oxartj/kcl029
3. W. J. T. Mitchell. Landscape and Power. The University of Chicago Press, second edition
4. Jeff Wall, Dan Graham's Kammerspiel (Toronto: Art Metropole, 1991), pp. 7-83.
5. Proteus: A Nineteenth Century Vision, directed by David Lebrun
6. Alfred Mac Adam, ARTnews, February 2010, page 102
7. Alfred Mac Adam, ARTnews, February 2010, page 103

recent works

Where Does the Love Go When a Relationship Dies?

Figure 1. Jackson Pollock
Figure 2. Melissa Chandon
Figure 3. Robert Avedon, William Casby, Born A Slave, 1963
Figure 4. Melissa Chandon
Figure 5, Robert Frank, The Americans, Trolley, New Orleans, 1955

“Jackson Pollock raised questions about making art."
- Kirk Varnedoe 1

Recently for lack of a better word my “man-friend” announced to me that he needs to date other people. It seems ridiculous to write about anything else right now as my life has just been turned upside down. One can wonder in the aftermath of a seven year relationship where does the love go? Is it possible that after the lust and infatuation is gone, all that is left is some trace or remembrance of a love gone by? Is a relationship with a partner similar to the relationship that an artist has with their work? We pour ourselves into many things - a daily life with a partner, the action of painting a painting, the act of creating a film if you are a film maker and so on. When we are left just looking at the painting, film or the photographs of our life as a couple and we stand back and look, one can ask themselves what are we actually seeing? What’s actually there when all that remains is the painting, film or photograph?


The act of creating a work of art is a very generous process. When you look at Jackson Pollock his work not only ricocheted art in a new direction and forever changed our understanding of the term painting, he also “got people to look at art.”2 Additionally he literally poured his entire being into each painting. In the documentary, Jackson Pollock: Love and Death on Long Island, Kirk Varnedoe, Senior Curator at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, said of Pollock, “the nature of the medium took over.”3 Pollock’s paintings seem very real to me. When you look at the painting you can see every movement of his body and his exploration with the physicality of the painting materials through dripping, hurling and dabbing. With Pollock’s paintings we are left with the testimony or idea of time forever frozen.


When I am left looking at a photograph of my former partner and I, there is an implied understanding of reality. The photograph is by its very nature believable. Roland Barthes author of Camera Lucidia, speaks to this very idea when he talked about Robert Avedon’s famous photograph of William Casby, Born A Slave, 1963.


“A photograph, not a drawing or engraving; for my horror and my fascination as a child came from this: that there was a certainty that such a thing had existed: not a question of exactitude, but of reality: the historian was no longer the mediator, slavery was given without mediation, and the fact was established without method.”4


I found this a jarring perception that a photograph is taken as a truth, an accurate portrayal of an event, time and place or in other words an accurate accounting of the lives of individuals. Last spring while visiting the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art I was struck by this very thought when looking at Robert Frank’s photography from his Guggenheim Fellowship, The Americans. His perspective portrayed mostly the inequality of race and income discrepancies in the United States, which was one perspective but not the entire story about America of the 50’s. Yet when we look at his work we could convince ourselves that there was only suffering, injustice and mean-spiritness. When I looked back at some of the most recent photographs of my partner we actually looked happy. By looking at the images one could say, wow, what a happy couple, without guessing that in just a few short weeks the relationship would be over. Edward Casey offers an interesting perspective on memory, and the mark of a photograph.


“Let me start with the following paradox, one that arises from the very idea of trace: what seems at first exceedingly limited in scope and secondary in status is capable of drawing together the most divergent realms of human experience and theories about the experience. On the one hand, the ordinary notion of trace is that of a mere mark left by an entry or an event of which it is but the finite and fragile reflection. Its nature seems to consist in a self-serving operation whereby its meaning or value lies elsewhere – namely, in that of which it is the trace, that which the trace signifies by a self-suspension of its own being or happening. On the other hand, despite this apparent disposability, the concept of the trace has proven indispensible in several quite disparate domains: the neurophysiology of memory, the graphematics of writing, and the overcoming of metaphysics.”5


I’m surprised our relationship ended. I just kept thinking that we - I - could work this out. I guess looking back I did have a couple of clues – needless to say, I am disappointed by the outcome. For me it probably makes it easier that we didn’t live together. Why is it that now that I'm single again I'm back going to the gym daily - kick boxing and yoga are my latest loves.
When I was young, frustrated by the loss of a boyfriend, or the end of an era, only left with the unknown future, my mother would try to console me with a little poem: “Life is like a butterfly. The more you chase it the more it eludes you but if you turn your attention to other things it rests peacefully on your shoulder.” For me this is what art is all about. We dive into the process of creating, we are consumed by the act and when it is completed we are left with a testimony of our humanity.

1. Jackson Pollock: Love and Death on Long Island (1999) Director: Teresa Griffiths
2. Jackson Pollock: Love and Death on Long Island (1999) Director: Teresa Griffiths
3. Kirk Varnedoe. Jackson Pollock: Love and Death on Long Island (1999) Director: Teresa Griffiths
4. Roland Barthes, Camera Lucidia Reflections on Photography, Hill and Wang, 1981
5. Edward Casey, Levinas on Memory and the Trace

Using Nature as a Point of Departure – Second Residency Summary

Figure 1. Cy Twombly
Figure 2. Melissa Chandon
Figure 3. Robert Motherwell

"There are no rules. That is how art is born, how breakthroughs happen. Go against the rules or ignore the rules. That is what invention is about." - Helen Frankenthaler 1

During my second residency it was my black and white paintings that were the pieces that received most of the attention during the critiques. The work was described as lyrical, graphic, and organic. The consensus was that the vivid brush strokes and expressive randomness was interesting and held the viewer’s attention. Through imagery these paintings conveyed an idea of a grid, interconnectedness, and some implied system of counting. I have been encouraged to take the next semester to further explore this series and see how it develops.


My research this semester will include the artist using nature as the point of departure. I have been encouraged to investigate Abstract Expressionism with written materials beginning with the 1980s to the present. Hannah Barrett suggested the following idea as a starting place for my paintings: using 10 to 12 pieces of paper all the same size with a limited amount of black in order to explore positive and negative space - using small to large shapes. This would push my understanding of possible compositions for future paintings. By the end of my third residency I will need to decide if this endeavor is working or if I need to come “off the wall” and explore other works that might better address some of the environmental and social concerns that keep coming up as issues in my writing.


This past residency, which included two field trips to the Museum of Fine Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art/Boston, were engaging. We viewed works on paper from the collection at the MFA. The pieces that resonated for me were Richard Serra, Gerhard Richter, and Robert Rauschenberg. At the ICA Krzysztof Wodiczko’s OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project and Damian Ortega’s Do It Yourself were both thought provoking. In particular I found Wodiczko’s piece riveting. It prompted me to questions our practices of commercial advertising in movie theaters. I was wondering what the effect would be on young men and women’s desire to join the military if we showed Wodiczko’s piece as opposed to the propaganda films currently being shown. Should the military have such a huge marketing and advertising budget? I would like at some point to explore the justification for this use of our tax dollars when we don’t have enough to support the National Endowment for the Arts.


The artist talks during the residency were once again fantastic with an element of controversy. Vincent Desiderio’s talk in many ways bothered me - his aloofness and inability to articulate his influences was a disconnect for me. It did appear that he does knows how to paint large paintings, thought I felt like he was painting very large paintings simply to strategically place them in museums to further his career. In direct contrast to Desiderio’s talk, Rita McBride was a real inspiration for me personally. Her presentation helped me realize that I have a choice to work as a painter or perhaps explore other venues. Her rattan Toyota Celica really inspired me and I found myself day dreaming about painting a life size VW bug in hot pink, wow! Tony Apesos’s talk was interesting and probably well calculated. He introduced himself as Apesos the art historian, who was going to talk about Apesos the artist. I personally found comfort and inspiration with this tactic of depersonalizing one from their work in order to talk about their work. I feel his talk gave us an example of a possible mental attitude that could be effective in presenting our own work during our final artist talk. One of the most powerful parts of Tony’s talk was that he openly discussed how very personal his work is, to paraphrase him, “Art is Personal”.


I am going to continue to work with Tom Holland, my previous mentor. I feel this is the wisest thing to do as our semester is shorter. Since Tom knows my work and my process I feel this allows me extra time to work in the studio. The mentor component of the program is an added benefit but one that I feel has or can have a significant influence on one’s studio work. I’m also going to use this semester to think about future mentors and try to get them lined up in advance if I can.


The artists that were recommended for me to investigate during this semester are: Peter Doig, Mark Rothko, Franz Kline, Laura Owens, Robert Motherwell, Agnes Martin, Donald Sultan, Jennifer Bartlett, John Walker, Kristin Quinn, John Chamberlin, Cy Twombly and Helen Frankenthaler.


1. Helen Frankenthaler, Wrong: Rules and Irrevence in the Arts; 1945 - 1975. HTTP://WRONGSHOW.BLOGSPOT.COM/



Semester Bibliography:

Alberro, Alexander, Stimson, Blake. Conceptual Art: A Critical Anthology. The MIT Press, 2000.

Foster, Hal, Krauss, Rosalind, Bois, Yve-Alain. Art Since 1900, Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism, Volume 2, 1945 to the Present. Thames & Hudson, 2007.

Markonish, Denise. Badlands: New Horizons in Landscape. Cambridge. The MIT Press, 2008.
Mitchell, W.J.T., ed. Landscape and Power. Chicago, 1994.

Novak, Barbara. Nature and Culture. New York. Oxford University Press, 1980, 1995. Print

Stiles, Kristine, Selz, Peter. Theories and Documents, Contemporary Art, A Sourcebook of Artists’ Writings. University of California Press, 1996.

Stimson, Blake. Why I am a Humanist. Filed under: POV — dhi @ 4:14 pm January 19, 2010. http://povatdhi.wordpress.com/2010/01/19/why-i-am-a-humanist/

Wamberg, Jacob. Landscape as World Picture. Tracing Cultural Evolution in Images. Aarhus University Press, 2009

Warnke, Martin. Political Landscape. The Art History of Nature. Harvard, 1995.

Documentaries:
Michael Pollan. The Botany of Desire. Director Michael Schwarz, 2009


The Future We Will Create: Inside the World of TED, Director Daphne Zuniga, Steven Latham. 2007

Random Works – Or Not

In a world which continually reduces the discursive and non-discursive complexities of art to the reconciliations of entertainment, fashion and (recently) social theory, this self-criticism is an ethical necessity.-- John Robert(1)

During this first semester I have focused my studio attention on a series of abstract paintings which I now call my organic series. It was suggested during my first residency that I use this time to work in a new direction, experiment with materials as well as visual content. My starting point for the new work and experimentation was inspired when I attended a friend’s exhibitions at the Center for Contemporary Art in Sacramento. Terry Berlier who is an Associate Professor at Stanford University, produced an exhibition that incorporated tree cookies in an interactive series of sculptures. Tree slices or tree cookies provide a full narrative of a tree’s age, health, and environmental conditions. Berlier’s work was inspired in part by her discovery that there are 63 trees per person currently on this planet. It is with this information and Berlier’s exhibition together with a documentary on architect I.M. Pei - The Museum on the Mountain (1997)(2), which presented me with a starting point and dialogue for my new work.

The film in essence is about the process of constructing a museum in Japan, located within a forest where some of the trees are one thousand years old. The movie presented an additional and interesting component as Pei, who was born in China, discusses the challenges that occurred with the fusion of two cultures with different sensibilities or aesthetics. The idea of building a museum within a forest, trying to disrupt the natural environment as little as possible, combined with thinking about these trees living for millennium was a concept that really grabbed my attention and stayed with me. I have found comfort in thinking about this forest being able to sustain itself for such a period of time. It has provided me with a psychological counter balance to the concern that I have about the environmental issues that we face today due to global warming.

Upon the advice of my mentor, Tom Holland, I began experimenting with mixed media works on paper using tempura paints, glue and water as the medium, along with black marker, chalk, charcoal, pencil and ink, working on primed Arches cold press water color paper. The goal was to work quickly and produce a lot of work. The first paintings were rough and a bit clunky, with a few offering some interest because the technique was not apparent. With these by-chance pieces I dove in further with experimentation in materials, process and random elements in nature. My goal was to include a narrative component based on nature like the tree cookies that would in some way date stamp each painting. It was not clear to me just how I was going to achieve this.

Half way thought the semester I moved my studio to a different location. I’m now in a smaller space and since I live in California I decided to take advantage of our mild weather conditions. I started hanging my work out in my garden to dry, along the fences and where ever I could, to give myself as much work space in my studio as possible. I also wanted to be open to chance or accident, rather than just approaching painting in the usual way that I already know so well. Because I was hanging my work in the garden on the fences unexpected creative opportunities were presented by the sprinklers, sun, and wind. I noticed that as the work was hanging in the garden the plants were casting shadows on the paintings. The shadow added an interesting random component and one that was constantly changing. I felt perhaps this could be the window into my date and time stamping idea. I began incorporating the cast shadow into the painting by quickly painting the shadow itself. It is interesting when you think about the seasons affecting the lifecycle of the plants, the shadow being unique at every moment, every season, never to appear exactly the same again.

The mentor component of the Art Institute of Boston’s MFA program from the start particularly appealed to me. I found it very helpful to work with a professional who provided me with an independent view, generous critiques, observations and encouragement. This allowed me to push the limits of my work, take my time, experiment and be open to the unexpected. Writing the research papers also provided me with the opportunity to think about my work in an entirely different way. As a painter I primarily looked to the paintings themselves to provide the narrative content and through research and writing I have been able to contextualize my work more clearly.



1. John Roberts, “After Adorno: Art, Autonomy, and Critique” Roberts delivered this paper at apexart on March 8, 2000 http://www.apexart.org/residency/roberts.htm

2. I.M. Pei - First Person Singular/The Museum on the Mountain, 1997, Directed by Peter Rosen. http://reframecollection.org/films/film?Id=363