More cuts: walks and poetry

 

The installation, mtlaugwalkcuts was inspired by a walk that I took to the summit of Mt. Laugarvatn in Iceland.  I recorded the shapes of the walk with a GPS device and then printed out into 23 sections. The line sections influenced the contours of the constructions. More images of the individual works can be found on my website on the third page of  mixed media/ constructions.

During the exhibition at RiskPress,  I hosted poetry walks in and outside of the gallery and recorded their shapes with a GPS device. We chanted the words, "walking like reading like cutting like..." while looking at the artwork on the walls. Words appeared and found their place on the concrete floor of the gallery.  These words and more may find another place as I continue this work with cuttings.

---

Other words that surfaced but didn't appear on the floors  but may appear elsewhere in the future are:

multiple lines, icey undulations, cold empty, sequential, serial striations, slivers and slices, shafts and shifts, gray-day shuns, uninterrupted, light of rain, shimmering ground, curves, edges, distillation, energy, music, enigmatic void, an architecture of color, meandering texts, gun metal striations, white ice open, the architecture of a cut, cuts squared, grounded sticks and stones, graphite lines go by, waves, piano keys, subtle shifts, tracking, folding, bird perches,....

Cuttings: e-book

I just completed a blurb book of Cuttings that documents my recent exhibit at RiskPress Gallery in Sebastopol.  Take a look at the preview which shows its first 15 pages..

 

A cut: 'the'

Twenty-four 'thes' covered the front display wall at RiskPress during the month of October.  Six additional black textural 'thes' were displayed elsewhere in the gallery.  I loved watching people walk through, look at the work and discover the 'the'.  Many comments and discussions followed about this ubiquitous word in the English language.  And there were many who asked "Why the 'the'?"  Rather than answer the question I preferred to talk about the word. 1) 'The' can be pronounced with a long or short 'e' sound depending on its usage.

2) 'The' is the most commonly used word in the English language.

3) As an adjective or adverb, it is a part of speech; it is also needed to mark a noun.

4) As an article, it is a determiner that makes the indefinite definite.  So 'the' matters a lot!

5) In the English language, it matters a lot.  However, many Asian languages* do not have articles.

*And other languages of the world, not mentioned here.

A Eureka Fellowship Nominee and Applicant

Lots happening this fall:

Recently I received a letter from the Fleishhacker Foundation inviting me to apply for the 2014-2016 Eureka Fellowship for the Visual Arts.  I was one of 118 Bay Area artists nominated from which twelve will be awarded the fellowship, a $25,000 unrestricted grant.  The twelve will be selected in the fall by a panel of noted visual arts experts from outside the Bay Area and awards will be announced in December.   I am honored to have been nominated!

By the time you read this, the exhibit 'Cuttings'  will have closed.  As with most of my shows, I  love  the interesting discussions and interactions I have with those who come and look. I'm  often left with more to ponder.  Thanks to all who attended!  Look for more postings on sections of this exhibit.  And I will be looking for other venues to exhibit this work.  If any of you have any suggestions or leads, please let me know.

And now that the exhibit has closed, I can start work on a project/ collaboration with musician, Jesse Olsen Bay.  In August I met with him about his project, "Makings"; he set music to his grandmother's,  Tillie Olsen's  journals  that she called the 'blueys'.  He has commissioned me to make artwork for the CD cover.

'Cuttings' Opens

I was touched by all of you who came to celebrate the opening of Cuttings.    A festive evening and many thank yous are in order. Special thanks to Lin Max for her support, many hours of help with the installation and opening festivities.  Also thank yous to Eric for his assistance with lighting, Hope, Deborah, Sean, Sally, Laurie, Steph, Satri and Rich for their help with and at the reception. And finally to Charlie and Kevin, proprietors of RiskPress, for offering an alternative gallery space to artists in this county.  We are fortunate for their patronage and generosity.

The work is up. Some have sold and still many days left for viewing, walks and talk.  Here are a few glimpses of what you will see.

You can learn more about this exhibit on Satri Pencak's blog at www.satripecak.com/

And finally come to the first walk this Sunday, Oct 13th  at 1:00.  Note the prompt for this walk:  walking like reading like constructing If you can't come to this walk, there will be others on Sundays,  Oct 20th and 27th.

RiskPress Gallery is located on 7345 Healdsburg Avenue Sebastopol, CA 95472.  Gallery Hours: Wed, Fri, Sat, Sun.  11-6  & by appointment 707 494-8534

'Cutting' as Process, Form & Making

---

'Cutting' is on my mind as I prepare for the 'Cuttings' exhibition.  In an earlier post, I wrote that I have been letterpress printing at Iota Press--printing the matrix for a book that I am calling "Cuts Make You".  As a way to brainstorm for it,  I have been printing synonyms for  'cut'.  The list is getting longer;  here is a selection:  clip, incise, sever, saw, select, dissect, section, fragment, bisect, survey, amputate, behead, miter, dice, chop, hurt, edit, wound, part, blinks, focus, prune slice, die, edged, snippet, excise, shun, snip, trim, crop, divide, piece, mutilate, lop, mince, frame, cleft, segment, slit, split, blaze, truncate, curtail, rift, curt, decapitate, shear, partition, trim.  Post if you should come up with more words!

Iceland Travels:

Back to Iceland,  a land of elemental forces in shape of volcanoes, geysers, glaciers, rivers, waterfalls, ice and wind.   It's a  land that is continually making and unmaking itself.

Rebecca Solnit in her latest book, The Faraway Nearby, wrote that "These are the forces that will flourish no matter what goes extinct, where the poisons migrate, and how the weather changes. The sun will rise, the winds will blow, the waves will lick the shore, the earth will tilt on its axis so that there is more light in summer, less in winter, rains and snows will fall, if not as they used to, and the waters will turn to solid ice and melt again. This is the world that existed before life and will exist after us."

 Back to the studio:

As I explore 'cutting' as process and form, I am interested in how I might apply this process to a material and arrive at a form that refers back to its making. This is a focus at the moment and I was inspired by the basalt formations in Iceland.  More to come.....

"500 Handmade Books" Released

  500 Handmade Books, volume 2 by Julie Chen has been released and can be found in bookstores and on amazon.  Look for my work, Tangled Dreams (a collaborative piece with Elizabeth Sher) on page 386.

Tangled Dreams, 2012 Artist Book with wrap. 8.25 x 8.13 x .33 inches

 

'Cuttings' @ RiskPress Gallery

'CUTTINGS', a solo exhibition of mixed media constructions, artist books and drawings will be on display at RiskPress Gallery in October, running from the 4th through the 27th. The artwork explores "cutting" as process and form and is informed by the changing role of the book as the world moves to primarily digital delivery systems.  Discarded book remnants are the dominant material of the work.

An Opening Reception will be held on Saturday, October 5th from 5-8. Also featured during the exhibition will be a:

Gallery Talk:  Saturday, October 19, 4-6

Walks:  Sundays, October 13, 20, & 27,  1-3

Closing Reception:  October 26, 5-7                                                                                                                                   

RiskPress Gallery       7345 Healdsburg Avenue        Sebastopol, CA 95472

Gallery Hours:  Weds, Fris, Sats & Suns,  11-6 and by appt: (707) 494-8534

Cuts Make You

I have returned yet my thoughts are still traveling as if I was there. They are blowing around in a way that Icelanders might refer to as blasdur. Blowing and windy.  Nothing like a deadline to determine a tack for a way through my mind.

RiskPress Gallery:

Cuttings  October 4th - 27th

 

Winds are here! And more to come.

During the duration of the exhibit, we (I and those who come to view the exhibit) will make a book. I am currently working on its  design and matrix using letterpress at Iota and digital in my studio.  I enjoy this back and forth way of working which seem  to be feeding on each other.

Letterpress (at Iota Press):

Digital (at Holve studio):

"Weather Reports You"

Roni Horn's ongoing project: a collection of stories about the weather in Iceland from Icelandic people. I am interested in how other artists think about weather in their work.  Since my travels to New Zealand in '06 and '07, one of their coldest and windiest springs and summers in 60 years, I began to reflect on wind as a metaphor for conditions of change and also started to collect their weather maps.  Since then I have continued to collect maps  from places I visited (Iceland examples below).   And last  year I also  started a list of Icelandic words that qualify the differing conditions of wind.  This year I added a few to the list.

vindur- wind

stormur - heavy wind

rok - hard wind

moldrok - strong wind with earth

sandrok - strong wind with sand

fárviðri - crazy wind, tempest, typhoon

gola - breeze

gjóla - medium breeze

hvassviðri - strong breeze

logn - no wind

andvari - breath

kaldi - a cold chilly breeze

stinningskaldi - ice cold wind

fellibylur - hurricane

hnúkaÞeyr - warm mountain wind flowing from south to north

norðangarri - cold north to south wind

sunnanblær - southern breeze

gustur - gust of wind

austankaldir - east cold wind

hvasst - medium strong wind

strekkingur - medium wind

blástur - blast  "It is blowing/windy."

hvirfilvindur - tornado

sviptivindur - sudden strong winds, common around steep mountains

staðvindur - trade winds common to a region

skafrenningur - wind that blows loose snow; piles of snow result

snjostormur - wind storm with snow

The weather maps above recorded the changing weather conditions every three hours on July 27th,  the last day of our trip.  I love the simplicity of the design -- the way that the arrows describe the weather patterns and express the tensions of change.  Something to consider.  How might I use arrows to  express changing tensions of shaping, making, unmaking? I've been wanting to make a book on this topic - maybe one with only arrows?

A  Wind Report from Iceland: (From a  conversation taken from facebook  this morning, Aug 5)

22 miles per hour winds. The residency windows are rattling. It is also making a deep base sound on the northern side of the building.

Watch a horror movie.

Fall approaches.

Did you see the auroras?

No.

No way.

I saw them around 2 and called the farm.  Of course they were up and out to look.

But I'm not at the farm anymore!

Can't be everywhere!

But I can watch weather reports from anywhere!