My friend Lina kindly invited me to join her web providing service (it's free, but you have to be invited?) SO now I have a really snazzy, sleek and professional-looking portfolio website that is way more organized than this thing. I'm still keeping this blog as a space for messy, rambling posts/ thinking out loud kind of jazz, and I do link certain blogposts within the project pages as like an optional context resource...
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Monday, January 7, 2013
Flashback to November/11: Creep Along
Back in November of last year, I took over an additional studio and turned it into a site-specific installation. I'd been making large(ish) paper cutout pieces that came off the wall and had layers, and I wanted to build something that would be like actually standing inside one of those/ that would allow me to be completely surrounded and consumed by that kind of space. I started by painting the walls grey...
Then painted the shapes left over from the roller a lighter shade of grey...
And some in darker shades...
I spent about a month locked up in this room by myself. I was listening to Timber Timbre's "Creep On Creepin On"on repeat, and I reread Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" during the course of its construction, the combination of which reinforced some of the creepier overtones to do with solitude, dread, obsession, madness, etc. I sat with just the walls painted for a little while, not really knowing where to go from that point. I tried making a web out of duct tape, just to bring the physicality of the space out from the walls, but it didn't really work--the duct tape didn't really transcend itself; it was too legible as duct tape.
So, I decided to build out of the walls with chicken wire and layer over that with a bunch of greyscale photo backdrop paper I had lying around from the paper pieces. I incorporated the duct tape as an adhesive, and continued the shapes from the walls with enamel paint.
It was nearing the end of the semester, and I was given a deadline for when I had to clear out of the space because new students would be arriving. I spent a few nights in the space, working to finish it so that I could show it before I had to dismantle it.
It kind of became like a manifestation of the interior space of my mind while I was working on it. The grey was oppressive and the formations were increasingly alien and almost hallucinatory. It was like an interior landscape.
I took so many photos, at different times of day, with the lights on and off. Here are some:
I also recorded video while I de-installed (which I showed during a crit along with the remains of one of the larger paper formations, and pastel prints I made off of the walls). Here's some of that:
Then painted the shapes left over from the roller a lighter shade of grey...
And some in darker shades...
I spent about a month locked up in this room by myself. I was listening to Timber Timbre's "Creep On Creepin On"on repeat, and I reread Charlotte Perkins Gilman's "The Yellow Wallpaper" during the course of its construction, the combination of which reinforced some of the creepier overtones to do with solitude, dread, obsession, madness, etc. I sat with just the walls painted for a little while, not really knowing where to go from that point. I tried making a web out of duct tape, just to bring the physicality of the space out from the walls, but it didn't really work--the duct tape didn't really transcend itself; it was too legible as duct tape.
So, I decided to build out of the walls with chicken wire and layer over that with a bunch of greyscale photo backdrop paper I had lying around from the paper pieces. I incorporated the duct tape as an adhesive, and continued the shapes from the walls with enamel paint.
I obscured the given light sources of the window and the overhead light so that light had to be filtered through the growths.
It kind of became like a manifestation of the interior space of my mind while I was working on it. The grey was oppressive and the formations were increasingly alien and almost hallucinatory. It was like an interior landscape.
I took so many photos, at different times of day, with the lights on and off. Here are some:
I also recorded video while I de-installed (which I showed during a crit along with the remains of one of the larger paper formations, and pastel prints I made off of the walls). Here's some of that:
Kissing the Boundary Images
I pulled a whole bunch of stills from the video I posted recently and I might like the way the stills communicate even more than the action/sound combination in the video...
I like the way the kisses obscure my face and abstract its features via the hyper-realistic gesture of kissing a transparent surface directly in front of my face. The effect is further emphasized by the camera's focus, which is aimed at the surface of the glass so that the marks made by my lips are crisp while my actual face is fuzzy until my lips are hovering over or pressed against the glass. I also feel like these images are a bizarre compliment to the imagery/ process of Putting My Face On-- my face still ends up covered in red lipstick, but here, the lipstick is applied to my mouth and then to a surface, and the accumulated marks slowly build to obscure my face. It also feels pretty directly related to Marked, but I'm recording the physical act of kissing a transparent surface, whereas the Marked images show the result of my kissing an image surface. And the face that ends up obscured by the marks is my own. Anyway, here's a selection:
I like the way the kisses obscure my face and abstract its features via the hyper-realistic gesture of kissing a transparent surface directly in front of my face. The effect is further emphasized by the camera's focus, which is aimed at the surface of the glass so that the marks made by my lips are crisp while my actual face is fuzzy until my lips are hovering over or pressed against the glass. I also feel like these images are a bizarre compliment to the imagery/ process of Putting My Face On-- my face still ends up covered in red lipstick, but here, the lipstick is applied to my mouth and then to a surface, and the accumulated marks slowly build to obscure my face. It also feels pretty directly related to Marked, but I'm recording the physical act of kissing a transparent surface, whereas the Marked images show the result of my kissing an image surface. And the face that ends up obscured by the marks is my own. Anyway, here's a selection:
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