Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Extremely Belated Notes from my Final Review

I just realized that in the whirlwind, I completely forgot to post the notes from my final critique, which a friend and classmate of mine took for me...Here they are, about a month late...

Me: I’m playing around with different textures, space. To access something beyond illustrating what I like or what I am attracted to. Figure out what works and what the best way is to go about what I’m trying to do – experimenting with different media and different ways of making what it is I want to make

JL: too much! [I brought a lot of work, because I'd made a lot of work]

SD: how many things do you make a day?

Me: Some days I crank out 50 mono-prints

SD: You have an incredible amount of energy and urgency. It’s a great time to put up certain parameters to get more of a sense of where things are going. Take energy that you make 50 thing in one week and make one thing (smaller). You know that you are going to keep making and making and making, begin to implement structures

Me: Had to stop (come closer) because I was going to go crazy if I kept working on it, this one (come around) was more specific – about space

SD: Definition for ambition changes [when you have this much work] if you did something 10x more ambitious, what would that be?

JL: Your work, more and more has a style. You work towards a signature style, crazy production in the service of creating a very distinctive style

SD: Some of these resist that style, force you to think on your feet a little

SL: (come closer) I like this because it is so inconsistent, has so many styles and layers, find some of the other things too consistent and fast. I think having something bigger than you so you are out of control of is good

KM: Wish I had your energy, always had so much to show me. Not sure if this [9 panels] goes much beyond shreddedness. Think about pushing it, where can you take it? Think about putting something crazy next to something that is less crazy, most successful when it’s crazy next to something more peaceful that I can rest my eyes.

TF: (sculpture) you didn’t feel impulse to put paper on top of this?

SD: Such an urgency about your ideas that you just have to get out ideas and move on. See that really intimidating way, (compare to Picasso show) try so many different ways of attacking the same subject. I think you have to keep nurturing the things that create these things, the feelings, and intuition

SL: doesn’t look like you undo and redo – you don’t stay with one thing and question it enough. How the metamorphosis of one thing can take you different places

JL: waiting for diagonal gesture that cuts across the whole process. Maybe the thing about this work is how much of it there is. I think it would be interesting to consider -- I’m sure you don’t like the idea that the most interesting part of the work is the quantity, but maybe recognizing something like that it might help the work to move forward. All of a sudden there is tons of work, and then the most noticeable part of the work is that there is tons of it – its all about finding some sort of act that can cut across the whole process, to redefine the field.

GC: Here we have a senior undergrad, in a way you can begin to see that there is a system, a belief in a certain sort of language, I think this is a pretty stunning development, changes that are made of it. Within liberal arts context, having the amount of time to make this much stuff is very impressive. I’d like to have it stated that this has been a tremendously important year in terms of opening up the systems of belief in your own structures of working. It is important to make sure you are challenging yourself so you aren’t repeating yourself. Language has opened up a world, this semester this world has been more embracing of different stimuli. How does anyone get into this language when they decide this is what they want to do? This doesn’t seem over productive. But there are things here that need to be picked up on about what they propose.

SD: If I was to think about what are the most important pieces, never seen a senior that has this much quantity to choose from. Take advantage of ability to dive in and give yourself a bunch of evidence – idea of choosing which are best, or is how they are arranged, do they need to exist as a single unit? Do they require a sense of quantity?

PK: I find it frustrating that I can’t figure out [looking at work on ground] if there is a “whole” or entirety. I find this one exciting (come closer) because it has an entirety? – if quantity isn’t something that is satisfying, then you need to figure out what it is about

SD: Working toward a style, resist idea of working things out to a completion. Robert Smithson “all clear ideas tend to be bad”

GC: I think you flirt with just about everything, and nothing is left out. Real journey from earlier pieces hard to imagine that last 10 x 8 would get itself out of painting that is leaning against that wall, but it did. I would rather that it be an evolution, pushing, I think you do respond well to what is visually there and present. It just looks like a lot but it isn’t a lot. Its not about quantity, but it is recognizable in this situation.

AG: What I recognize here is that you’ve allowed the structure of the drawing class to manifest itself in a way that you continue into the painting class. The one place that has shifted this dynamic is when you made (come closer). The only thing you need to do is move away from the beginning of the structure of the drawing class, build 10 of these (come closer) it will slow you down. You had a wonderful year, one that I could not have predicted. You have reinvented yourself with exuberance and incredible energy.

SL: Last summer you said you were interested in the idea of peeling walls, have you abandoned that? Is it inspiring, metaphoric of the kind of image that you want to make?

BU: I’m always looking at things that have elements of things I’m looking for. (pictures of branches, decay, textures and patterns that exist in the world) don’t want it to be that I’m illustrating these things.

TF: these (small, original cut paper studies) are really monumental to me, they are very different than the (9 panels). Never seen the rug look good until right here (white cut out piece)

GC: there is so much happening in this work that we aren’t recognizing, what is the possibility? What is the potential of a non representational shape? What can it carry? What can that world be? We see it in Islamic art. I don’t think it’s building toward object hood, I think it’s building toward the mystery of the layering, what gets locked into that kind of orientation. What gets subtracted and added? Are you really looking at what is below the clusters? Its very mysterious, How do those paintings feed themselves? The work is very delicate and very demanding in terms of looking.

JL: biomorphism is not form, it is anti-form. That can partially account for whether or not there is a lot or not of work. Biomorphism will endlessly proliferate itself, not a way of producing a sequence of forms. So in that way I think this is a lot of stuff, part of the reason that there is a lot of stuff is because you might be regarding these images as a sequence of forms when I’m not actually so sure that they are.

GC: total misreading. This comes out of shape not form. The shape begins to journey through a narrative by the way that is folded. Looking at Picasso’s folded steel sculptures. It isn’t about looking for form, it’s a shape narrative that becomes form.

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