Honors Review

I just had my Honors Review, which means I stood in the gallery in front of the full studio faculty and explained the progression of my work/ where I'd like it to go, in the hopes that they will let me be a candidate for Honors. It was really fruitful--they gave me a lot to think about. In the interest of remembering, I'll post the notes from the review here:

Me: Explained how I'm sort of in two places at once, but with the same concentration--xacto drawings; tactile paintings, both involving shapes, layers, intensity. Goal is to somehow bring those the two together. Told them how I'd made 3 large 8'x5' canvases, how one is designated for the potential touchable painting idea (explained/described)

JL: Thinks it's asking a lot for people to touch a painting--painting especially because it's so ingrained. Painting is tactile with out having to touch it--you don't have to touch it to experience it--it's enough to want to touch them. Not sure if breaking that particular barrier is in the particular concern of painting

TF: Likes that the same relationship to paper can be seen in relationship to paint--useful and informative--feed off of/ into each other. Also likes assemblage woodcut pieces--like the tip of a great explosion. Also liked consideration of install

SD: Asked if I've thought about different scales--4x8 sheets of plywood--see where that goes.

Me: Told about crates of excess woodcut shapes, desire to gesso them, build them in a way that allows them to climb and creep around over the wall

SD: Liked decision to hang pieces at different levels--freedom

AG: Idea of transformation/ touching paint/ audience participation: agrees with Justin, encourages me to be primary participant/ be the one to transform the painting--eliminate restrictions and initial impulses. Just think about transformation as continuation of what you're doing. Book is testament to how, when focused within limitations (the lightness and subtlety that comes out in those compositions), it can succeed. Paint from that. Different premise--don't be distracted by pre-determined thing. Last year--staying with it transformed. Dwell (move the red, move the orange, find the shape)

SD: In the same way as breaking out of the square, think about breaking away from the wall--cutting open, opening up into the space

JL: Suggested book: High Times, Hard Times about work in the 70s that questioned a lot of the same things--forgotten for a while, but feels relevant again. Interrogating painting--interviews about process/ coming off the wall

SL: More tactile, atmospheric than older work--painted plane was more impenetrable. Likes areas around big globs--like landscape, dissolving into shimmering distance. Would be interesting to touch. But what if you focus your interest on touch, and the painting ends up not looking good? Willing to compromise visual aspects? Some paintings you want to eat, but you don't do that. Seductive quality is the tease--look but don't touch--they do incite the desire

GC: Work coming out of the fact of the material? Book is a physical fact--cuts into material generate the object. Dilemma=positive/negative space. Physical fact sustained--enough ordinary/ extraordinary. Making decisions external to the painting, then back

TF: Suggested Mark Bradford at ICA--video: sanding/ peeling back paper

JL: Interested in what Graham was talking about. Forming shapes, creating support, but isolating surface from support--could get too collagey, not sure of the solution. Woodcut pieces end up looking folksy

GC: Decorative almost

JL: Brought up Supports/Surfaces: Parisian group of artists (André-Pierre Arnal, Vincent Bioulés, Louis Cane, Marc Devade, Daniel Dezeuze, Noël Dolla, Toni Grand, Bernard Pagés, Jean-Pierre Pincemin, Patrick Saytour, André Valensi and Claude Viallat). Questioning boundaries.

AG: Cover of book is solution to painting


So tomorrow they have a full departmental meeting (with Art History) to decide who will be eligible for honors. I'll find out on Wednesday (fingers crossed!)