Plans when returning to school
Upon returning to school I hope to have a chill semester, and not be carried away by fear. If I can keep my head on straight, I think some good might come from it. I will take much more sculpture than painting courses. Painting takes so long to learn, and I have a good head start, and sculptural techniques are specific. Sculpture at PAFA is very strong. I will take a mould making course, and a 3d printing course. I will take a sculpture studio course, and attend an extracurricular sculpture studio. I have oil based clay, and I’ve gifted some out too, so not enough for something larger than two or three feet, but it would probably be best and easier on my hands to work in water based clay mostly, and to work small. Sculptural anatomy is so much more precise, and I’m excited to get more deeply into it by taking an echorche class with John Horn. I’ve already taken an Ecorche class with him over the summer, but I’m not sure to what extent it’s burned in there, especially the lower arm, and muscles of the face, and I hope to dig in and challenge my teacher in this department, and to generally set myself hard tasks throughout. Briefly I’ll outline my sculptural studies forthcoming:
Mondays: 3D printing with Rob Roesch. The head of our sculpture department, well versed in digital and public installation art.
Tuesdays: Extracurricular figure sculpture session with Elizabeth Heller. I should work small (actually, medium, 10-18 inches) and fast in here, and in water based clay. I should make sure my armatures will fire, so I can have fired figurines as product from the sessions. Just a thought. Otherwise, oil-based and use potentially for casting class.
Thursdays: Ecorche class in the morning> Figure open studio class in the afternoon.
Fridays: Mould making in the morning with John Horn.
As for painting, I’m taking a Wednesday landscape class with Doug Martenson. Doug is a jolly madman I think. He’s thoroughly in your corner, no matter who who are as long as you’re respectful, which I think is the perfect figure for an art school. I was weary to take classes with him as I sustained a polemic that his school of painting was inferior, or not rigorous or thorough, but having taken a class with him last semester, I can say that his guidance was invaluable and I made way more interesting work with him than in other classes. I tended to take his advice, and I felt free to riff on it too. He is a reader, and recommended me a few good books and articles most of which I dutifully read if it didn’t bore me to tears. The landscape class will be two sections, both the morning and the afternoon. It will interfere four times throughout the semester with my crit times with Jan Baltzel, but somehow we’ll make it, (maybe I’ll stay in that day, or commute on my own to the spot where the class is, outdoors somewhere). In this class, (of which I think of second most frequently, after the Moving Images MFA class I got accepted into) I hope to live-truly-live out one of my paths. Doug is so accepting of a person, I think he might think it’s cool. Many of my post-school daydreams are centered around painting outdoors, and interacting with curious onlookers or patrons. I’ve done it before, and it’s one of my favorite things to do. In Miami in 2013 at Art Basel I hung out with Willie Rose- the Rose Man, who taught me how to make Palmetto roses, and we hawked them on the street. That experience of busking with him was a rush. He chided me for giving out an inferior product one time, and taught me about the flow of the day; when to give one away, when not to, etc. Since, I’ve set up a shanty store a handful of times; and every time I think I sell something, and these are my fondest memories of art; on the street; making something while waiting like a fishing trip I for someone of a curious mind to come by, and to interact with them. I did it in New York, and Amsterdam, and Berlin by the wall, and in Jacksonville a handful of times, in Sarasota, and yes even in Philly before I went to school there. I sold a drawing in the Rodin Museum. How fondly I think of these times! For Christmas I got a metal tongue drum from my mom. It can fit in a backpack. This is the first true ready-to-go full percussive sounded instrument I have had, that I can bring into a busking situation. I want to, on these trips with Doug Martenson’s class, bring along a tongue drum and a little gopro camera (for the film class, for nature captures), and probably my ipad with it’s pencil. This is the yuppiest pleinair/busking setup but, eh, fuck it. What superstitions are worth getting rid of if not the last one- that of being considered a fucking yuppie. So I hope to make landscape studies in a sketchbook with a pencil, and bring them to solvency, then to photo them into ProCreate and digitally paint them. The digital painting I’ve been doing recently has been fruitful in terms of those things in painting I rarely am able to get to by nature of other problems arising, or shortsightedness. namely, these are edges, edge quality, textures, and color. Truly color is dependent on what you take out there in regards to tubes, and textures (arguably) come from tools you take out there. The French easel weighs in at about 40 pounds fully loaded, and you’ve got your brushes, and your palettes, and your tubes (which,can limit your range if you don’t bring a good combination of pigments) etc etc., and your painting surfaces, and then once you paint the scene out of doors, you’re tasked with bringing the wet painting back somehow to a safe location where it can dry, and also if someone wanted to buy it off you, it would be terribly wet, and you’d in selling it risk someone else’s destroying it with miscarriage. And say, as I do, you work in a series, so you have five paintings each outing- you have to house 5 wet oil surfaces somehow. One solution obviously is to build a carriage, but then you will be shackled to a specific size. Another solution (one which I’m fond of ) is improvisational construction of a carrier from found materials. This method has one diggin through trash cans and looking for boxes behind stores, and making improv sculpture en-Plein-air, yielding a learning and physical experience. Okay, so that’s a plus to this side of the argument, but I digress.
The alternative to all this is to just use the ipad and ProCreate, and the luxury this affords me naturally is to bring along an instrument to relax, which may in turn lure people in where I will have taking points, and business cards, and printed matter to gift and printed matter to sell. I truly hope to learn about life! Life in the Landscape class!
The other painting I will be doing will largely be in studio, and my critics will respond to it. I’ve selected and gotten Clint Jukula, a grad of Yale School of Art and our Dean; Jan Baltzel, an abstract painter; and Sarah Peters, an in-her-stride sculptor. From Clint, I don’t know. I’m taking him for the ‘I don’t know what will come of this factor’. It could go badly. He’s very stern looking; maybe cold like a nihilist. Since he’s so high up in the chain of command, if it goes well, the move might be a politically advantageous one. We’ve spoken a bit. He’s approached me with some foreknowledge somehow of me, and with respect, and I reciprocated. I’m curious how sharing I can be with him. Perhaps he’s wicked and self-aware, to which I would be interested to dig around in ugly polemicisms. His work is potentially wicked. I wonder about his paintings because they’re like monadic and archetypal figures, with patterns and colors- all the boxes are ticked- yet they seem to give a heavy ‘get fucked’ vibe and I’m curious if they’re mean-spirited. What motivates this work? It’s not ugly.
Jan Baltzell I would like to interact with because she’s broad minded it seems. She is interested in keeping a ball rolling I think, and I’m taking her fro that reason, like a cypher; perhaps we can riff and ad lib through the crit process. I didn’t take a class with her that was a field-trip drawing class, (maybe negging) because it sounded so unstructered and schleppy; moving all your stuff hither and yore, and convening periodically for group critiques- kill me. But I think she will make for a perfect critic.
Sarah Peters is a wild card, but I understand she looked at my friend’s work which was a photo of a classmate lying in a forest with sculptures laid over her, and said “you know what people will think, right?- They’ll think this is a dead black body in the woods etc. etc. , so just know that that’s what they’ll think”. This is such a retarded comment, yet, perfect for a critic in a way, so I signed up for her. I don’t mean to speak negatively about Sarah in any way. I imagine she’s speaking from being burned moreso than idle speculation, as her work might tread towards appropriation etc. Just the idea that she’s awake to the entanglements of contemporary multicultural inclusivity and is making strong work makes her a great candidate to me. This in addition that I will be investing heavily in sculpture this semester, and that’s her specialty, and her proximity (in) the New York scene (informed), and that I understand that she’s kind perhaps in a legendary way. I wonder.
I haven’t mentioned a class I’ll be taking with Bruce Samuelson. First, I was skeptical upon seeing his work. Then, I looked up a video of him done by a Jonathan.. something, who was an alum. The video interviewed Bruce at an opening of his in Philadelphia. Bruce mentioned that he stopped working from the figure 30-40 years ago, and blah blah. I was more skeptical, in a tensiony way. He did not die in my imagination, and I wonder if he’s got something. He seems to. He’s ungrasping, it looks like. I’ve heard good things, and that he’s broad thinking in his classroom. A student friend of mine was making relief sculptures in his figure drawing studio class. His poses I’ve seen other student’s paintings of are often of figures lying prostrate; is he masochistic? Or chauvinistic? If it’s anything art school has taught me, it’s that painting is quiet and subversive, and in time might turn any one into a doll-painting, beheading, taboo-delving depicter of what’s most perverse. Perhaps to be misunderstood is the currency. A modernist fiat? Perhaps; and the postmodernists have returned in response to a radically democratized form-aware illustration. To flip unless, as my experiences have thus far proven (I’m usually entering the curve at the lower third- true to my socioeconomic placement), riding it up and cashing out before it’s too hot, might mean to return to a modernist/romantic digression language. Yikes, I’m on the side of modernists. It’s all the same and tops turvy. I was smart to study Illustration and fine art both, both at the foremost schools of their disciplines. I’m a switch. All this to say I don’t know what I’m going to do in that class.
The class I think about the most is a class called Moving Images, taught by David Dempewolf. It’s an MFA class, which is just like its BFA counterpart, but with more theory reading, and potentially I’ll be in a more diverse and older and different pool of people than I’m used to seeing in a room. Okay, so there’s a couple undergrads that get on my nerves. I’ll be kicking myself if the undergrad section fills with brilliant people, which, now that I’m thinking about it, it very well could. Oh well, the section is right after the MFA section, so I could sit in or spy a bit. I’m hoping in this course to incorporate musical recordings into videos. Gosh, there’s so much tech. I’m doing good to write this down. I’ve been thinking about this class all break. Shots are one thing but I don’t think that’s going to be the class time concern, and I have to stay vigilant about wherefrom I source my imagery, so that I don’t bring to the table just shots of school hallways, or other cliches. I’ll have to take my gopro around everywhere, as mentioned before about my landscape class plans. I have some footage of diving in springs in Crystal River that I could use for something. I did that neo-benshi poem assignment a year ago and that’s what I’m thinking about doing in the class over and over basically, little talky-poems over video, or percussion-over-video poems- like playing drums and recording and editing etc. in response to video. Something. I’ve shipped my drum kit from my parent’s house in Florida to Philadelphia and it will arrive a few days after I do at my address in West Philly. It cost $157, already worth it, unless it gets lost or destroyed in the mail. It’s three boxes. I also have footage of me meditating for 20 minutes one morning from last semester sometime. I think I’ve been thinking in video since 2012. I’ve sketched out video art pieces in my sketchbooks in response to some video art I was exposed to long since. I saw Paul McCarthy masturbating with his feces in the Tate Modern in 2008. I saw Carry Upson’s ‘House Hole’ video sometime in 2016, and No Nose Knows. I saw Tameka Norris’s Monkey Banana video sometime in 2014 in New Orleans. In 2013 I made and posted a video piece of me rolling up a giant joint in Amsterdam, but the joint was made from craft paper and filled with studio garbage. This was after being a lover to a filmmaker, and preceding our trip together to Iceland, where we talked film. I made a video performance piece last year, and posted it, and got it critiqued by Didier William, who mentioned I had too much junk cluttering up the composition- that it did not look very intentional. Yet, I don’t think this type of work will be the meat of the course. Dempewolf makes his living between teaching and doing VJ sets (video jockey) to avant-garde jazz music performances. I walked in on his ‘Avant Garde Video’ class last semester (the aforementioned undergraduate section of the ‘moving images’ I’m taking), and I saw a live VJ-type setup, with an overhead projector and a camcorder live-feeding to a screen, and students huddled around an under lit glass plate moving glitter and bullshit around like a trash-ocean fun art divination table. I loathed what I saw in that room, and that again is what accounts for my choice to stick to the MFA group. I intend to be let down if I focus too much on my comrades however. I think Dempewolf will give a talk about possibilities in the softwares employed, and give demos, then let the class work on their projects, and come around to give one-on-one help is needed. I am familiar with the format. I think I will be in between Adobe Flash for animation, Final Cut for compositing/ video making, photoshop for html5 animations and gifs. I want to do some work in a program like c4d, or animate from 3d models somehow; maybe in Sculptris, or in sketch-up via screen record. I want to do some cell animation- recording moving parts like a puppet show. I have some good materials to try out for this, but the scales are incongruent sometimes. So, for this I would like to do digital rotoscoping in flash. I have parts cut out for this. Maybe I could do some talky poem with some all-traditional captures of my sculptures, and rotoscoped animations (both traditional puppetry and digital), with also some percussion improv. I’m thinking a trash-ocean nihilism commentary poem about wading into waters, dreamlike, and a high fidelity shot of my rubber moulded sculpture of Felix panning around, and some overlay of some divination-table-like paint and glitter fuck stuff maybe, and some found rope/cordage in there too. This clip only about ten seconds. In html5. Looping, drum kit no wave. Maybe one kick and one snare/hh flam that loop. Okay, so that’s one piece. I would like to accomplish something of my take on Ringling’s motion design department. They did stop-motion, and parabolic arches, and moving sculpted type. I would like to do some traditional and digital sculpted type. What program was “we minded” done in? I also want to do a specific couple of projects. One is of a beaker, with cut out silhouettes adhered to the outside. A light shines from above and dirt and detritus spins from inside the beaker filled with water by means of a stir bar. This has to do with a dream I had where bodies for rebirth were encapsulated in the sacs of leopard shark eggs, around the perimeter of a large blue above-ground pool. The mood transfers, and that’s what I’m going for. Another is a clear plastic dome (I have) with kokepelli-like silhouettes adhered on the perimeter, in a zoetrope fashion. Underlit by a heat producing element, and its heat dispersement to be captured by a fan, spinning the zoetrope, like a roof turbine. I have the silhouettes mapped out. The turbine part is the stumper but maybe I could use the venting of a building in center city, there’s a few good alleyways. Bad clarinet would be useful to go with this. Another project which is dear to me is the graffiti beef animation. The goal would be to screen capture graffiti handstyles of well known artists through history and overlay spray can sounds and overlay a hip hop beat over top, and periodic ‘shit’ commentary maybe, ‘oh’. Maybe I could put my own name in there, though I just thought of that now. It’s about a pissing contest. This to-do list in conjunction with the reality of the course-to-be and also whatever theory will be introduced. (I asked for reading over the break, but the teacher did not respond over email, so I let it go). I’ve looked over a little William Kentridge last semester. Hopefully I can keep a ‘less is enough’ approach to the whole thing, and make moving images.
