Lilac Wine

My drawings have stagnated... I need distance and time and patience. In the mean time, I've been making the mental switch back to painting.

I think one of the hardest and most important questions I ask myself and agonize over is why anyone should invest their time into looking at one of my pieces. I look to the art world, to communication, to process, and to the internet. I've been really interested in the physicality of paintings: a frame with stretched canvas, a wooden board, a piece of paper, a wall... As I searched through the sculpture and paintings section of MOMA's website, I came across...

Hannah Wilke. I don't quite know how I missed her before this. I have seen several of her works (online, in classes, in real life) but never attached a name and persona to the works as a whole.

 thanks for the photo, MOMA

Ponder-r-rosa 4, White Plains, Yellow Rocks

1973

thanks, HannahWilke.com

from her SOS Starification Series 

1974

I don't always love feminist work but I like her. I like her boldness. I like that she was nearly always topless (including during installations). I like that she made things that were both beautiful and meaningful and she used this beauty as part of the piece. Mostly, I like how much thought is evident in her pieces: I feel like the artist thought through every detail of her pieces far more than we could ever know.

They ain't ready for this one nephew

Heike Weber is a German artist who makes amazing pieces like this:

Mardin Kilim 2007

silicone

680x340 cm

Dorotheum 300

2007

permanent marker on vinyl floor

Utopia

2009

permanent marker on acrylic paint

I like this statement about her work:

" The foundation of her work is the idea of a neutral space whose potential is first realized through the drawing and is what consciously positions Heike Weber within the critically reflected tradition of Minimal Art. Judd's cubes, Andre's metal plates or Morris' serial objects had focused for the first time on the referentiality of art to its neutral environs... The reality of the room is confirmed, classically, stroke for stroke, line by line, only the next minute to be thrown out of sync. The gestural input, the physical working on a picture support that expands in all directions, seems to veer towards a momentum that now on its part appropriates the viewer. It is not the object on view that finds its irreconcilable and multi-angled visibility made manifest, but the ‘specific object' that strikes back. "

I feel it all, I feel it all

Untitled

ink on paper, 2005

Sometimes I do everything backwards. Some people have these great artists who they always admire and look up to and their work contributes to some sort of visual conversation with these great artists. That sounds awful to me. Instead, I make things and when I get down or confused or curious or excited I look around to find other people like me. Other people who use the same visual language, or the same medium, or the same scale, or with the same general concept (i.e. time, memory, classification, etc.).

As I was meandering around the internet, I found Katie Sehr.

I can see it. I can see her thinking about time, translation, and intimacy.
I like it. I like that they took forever to make. I like how purposeful they seem. I like the language she uses which is very similar to my own.

Untitled

ink on paper, 2005

30" x 29"

Turn yourself around

Back to blogging!

Although I can't say I love everything he makes,  Brenden Monroe's pieces are something I consistently use as a measuring stick for my own work. Our imagery is similar but (I assume) our motivations are distinct. I like his work specifically because it challenges me to recognize when (in my opinion) imagery similar to my own fails and when it succeeds and why... I think it's much easier to do with someone else's work first and then look for those things in your own rather than being able to be completely honest with yourself about your own work.

Pieces I like:
they feel organic and natural but of his own creation. These pieces bring me in and encourage me to think about what this is, what's going on, and why.

Pieces I don't:

have some sort of figure in them. Some of them, like "Morgan and Kat" below just seem too fantastical without any reference to anything outside of the painting. It's cute, not moving. His pieces that use the human figure fail to connect the abstracted imagery with the figure in a concrete way. I also find the figures themselves disquieting. He may be changing the figure to try to make it visually look like it belongs in this world he's created but I fail to recognize how, other than sharing the page, these two things interact.

Morgan and Kat

Awakening