Art & Perception

For some time I have been talking about shaped plaster and a final admission that the material, even though host to a number of effects, has not held up well. I was obliged this last summer to dispose of a large number of pieces that were suffering damage, with the prospect of further degradation.

A likely alternative has been to substitute plastic for plaster – either poured or in the form of sheets that can be deformed through the application of heat. Clear sheet being more available at this time, I have been experimenting with what comes of hot plastic sagging. It’s been a kitchen thing with the oven pressed into service. I arranged some silverware on a cookie sheet and laid a thin sheet of clear Plexiglass over top. A temperature of 400 F. gave me a vacuum-formed quality as the sheet draped itself into every available declivity. I then poured black varnish into the larger depressions, and once that set, poured transparent red into a few on the other side. I sprayed a little gold (Hi Karl) and some forest green on the other. This was then backed up with an application of white.

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In my last post I described an experiment in which I performed a scan of my living room employing a laser range finder. A radial pattern emerged as the range finder, mounted on a swivel, performed a circular sweep of the space.

It would appear that I have become infatuated with radiant things. Last year I was making fan shapes with mason’s lath. That little campaign, extending over the summer and fall, produced a lot of junk, but a few things did emerge that indicated a way forward. This is one that worked out.

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Consider this in essence a technical report.

This cutout is a scan of our living room using a laser distance finder. The laser was attached to a fixture which allowed it to be rotated around a common center. I pointed the laser at a feature of interest, such as an edge or intersection. The pointed direction and distance to the interrupting surface were then recorded by dots on an expanded pvc board. The dots were then connected and the resulting shape cut into what you see.

It doesn’t look like a self-respecting room. The jagged appearance is the product of the permanent features coupled with the disposition of furniture and nick knacks. In some cases the distance into an adjacent room would exceed the limits of the board and would result in a squared-off termination.

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So much of my production starts with a simple mundane geometric proposition: scissor jack shapes, chain links or objects mounted on a common spindle. The proposition in this instance is the pie chart.

I had created informational pie charts during my institutional existence and had liked their sense of completion. More recently I tried merging the pie chart with some experiments in plaster. I made a few examples with the anticipation of doing more. I have since moved away from plaster for its weight and fragility, but the chart theme has stayed with me. Ubiquitous as it is, I have often wondered why I haven’t seen the form elsewhere in an art context.

And then there it was, lurking on a far wall in an Art In America photo, part of an article on a show at the Blanton Museum of Art concerning the Park Place Group. Neither the artist nor the multicolored piece is identified. I had to crop and Photoshop to make the pie chart, situated behind a di Suvero sculpture, stand out a little.

Some unidentified person had actually done a pie chart – and way back in the sixties. I am contacting the museum for whatever specifics they can provide.

Meanwhile, for the sake of this post, I dug out an pie chartish example that had survived last year’s plaster purge. By way of explanation, this object was formed by pouring plaster onto a plastic sheet, stretched over a plywood cutout of the desired shape. This was then sealed with gloss polyurethane varnish.

The question, then, might be: do you seek out work by others that is similar to your own?  Do you do this in a spirit of anticipation or trepidation?

I am in Beatty Nevada, doing an artist’s Workspace Residency at the Goldwell Open Air Museum.

It is currently day 4 of the residency and, frankly, I’m still trying to sort myself — and my environs — out.

Our residential quarters are quite wonderful — a little strange, but all mod cons including high speed internet.

The studio space is 4 miles away, at the Red Barn, donated to the Goldwell Foundation by the Barrick Gold mining company who mined the Barrick Bullfrog Mine, which has stripped the mountain to the east, creating a south-facing pyramidal mountain that I still haven’t gotten my camera around.

Here’s the Red Barn:

The photo was taken from Rhyolite, a ghost town within walking distance to the north of the Red Barn. The setting, as you see, strikes a bit of awe, maybe even fear, into the plein air artist.

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It was ten below when I got up this morning – definitely to be an indoor day.

I recently came upon one of those recession – related phenomena: an entire display of expensive and unsold ornaments, going for pennies on the dollar. The quality of the ornaments was unbelievable and I entered into a feeding frenzy.

This afternoon I began to disassemble the tree and had the new ornaments carefully grouped and ready for packing. There was something about the ornaments as they were caught in the winter sun that had me reaching for the camera.

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Birgit asked if anyone employed a strongly contrasting treatment between the illuminated and the shadowed side of an object as seen in Morandi’s late painting. I’ve been tripping over a painting, that I did a few years ago, that might fill the bill.

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