art is a word: 2010

Sunday, November 14, 2010

installation of small works

I recently assembled a selection of small works into "show" mock-up. Some pieces were object-based while others were text-based, but all were related in the underlying theme of language. Once installed, it became clear that most of these pieces, though conceptual in nature, had more of a spatial presence than I had initially realized. This was a very significant revelation for me and I have since begun to consider my body of work from a new perspective. I had always thought of my diagram work, for example, as a way of conflating "intellectual" space with "real" space. And certainly several of my site-specific projects such as Misc., MINE/MEIN, and Anagram Haiku have derived their conceptual content from their physical locations. But it is now clear to me that all provide examples of language functioning in a variety of spatial ways.

The above piece was originally created as part of a series called Poems for the Number Six, but was also included in this installation as it seemed to be the most successful of those works. Although I like this piece, in retrospect I do not feel like it is out of place in the context of "spatial language."

The piece shown below, however, does fit into this theme, but in a very abstract way. I wanted to create a set of "instructions" for a specific mental activity - in this case the forming of a mental connection between a circular dot and a hole of the exact same size. The same "mental activity" can be applied to the material of the piece, as the wood grain is continuous from plaque to shelf. I saw this work as a way of illustrating the mental process that allows language to connect abstract thought to the material world.

Irony was placed on a pedestal towards the corner of the room for the installation documented here. In a revised iteration of the installation, the piece was placed on the floor in the center of the room, which I think greatly enhanced its spatial potential.

While a number of the pieces in this installation address language and space in abstract terms, this piece does so using metaphor. I was thinking about how a simple shape, in a particular material (felt), in a variety of colors could suggest a relationship to geographical places.

This small piece was originally conceived of as an installation maquette, but I am now convinced it functions best as a finished work at this scale. The text on the wall reads, "I often think/I think too much/I rarely think/I think enough." An appropriately scaled chair (not visible in this image, but seen through the "doorway" in the image above), sits in the center of the room facing the text, "I think too much."

animal diagrams

I considered for a brief period of time the use of diagrams as an Art from. This large-scale diagram created in the fall of 2010 entitled Language, Reason & Logic sought to bring authority to the diagram form through scale (in this case, approx. 6 ft. by 6ft.). Returning to a long-held interest in animal symbology, I replaced expected reagents - words or venn-diagram-like circles - with representative animal characters.

diagrams

For a period of time in the summer of 2010, I created a number of diagrams that sought to illustrate (perhaps for my own sake more than anything) some of my ideas about language...

"Anagram Haiku"

The Rodger Mack Exhibiton Space is a space that has attracted my attention for some period of time. Located in the lobby of the Schaffer Art Building on the Syracuse University campus, the exhibition space (or more appropriately, wall) is clearly dominated by the large vinyl text that provides its label. As an often text-based artist, I felt it was my duty to use the label as a starting point for an art work.

After gaining permission to present work on the wall, I had letters laser-cut from MDF to match the existing label. I then, on a weekly basis for a period of five weeks, rearranged the 58 letters into different anagram haiku poems. Each poem used all 58 of the available characters and followed the established 5-7-5 syllable format of the haiku (the ampersand was counted or ignored as a syllable, depending on the situation). And like most haiku, these poems were appropriately obscure and meditative...

animal instincts

I am interested in how animals, especially those given anthropomorphic qulities, have long acted as stand-ins for human attributes and archetypes. Inspired by a combination of Carl Jung and Aesop's Fables, these maquettes were conceived of as part of a series of distinct characters that, at human scale, could ultimately constitute a large installation within an interior space.

Although I have not yet had an opportunity to create and display these sculptures at a large scale, I have begun to consider options for display at their current size.

"Savant"

In the fall of 2009, I created a sound piece based on the numbers of pi. I assigned a color to each of the numerical digits (0-9), recorded myself reciting the name of each color, and assembled the sound bites into the appropriate sequence. The resulting six-minute recording consists of several-hundred digits-worth of information. The repetition of the words and the rhythm of their delivery shift the way the message is perceived. At first the words are descriptive - "pink, white, blue, white, green, brown..." - and then their meaning begins to break down. As the voice drones on, the words "orange, yellow, green, pink, green..." eventually dissolve into pure sound.

Several weeks after completing the sound piece, I had an opportunity to build a temporary site for its dispersal. With help, I constructed a room twelve feet wide and eighteen feet long. In the upper corner of the peripheral walls, and above the ceiling in the center of the space, speakers were mounted to deliver the sound. The colors of the sequence emanated from the left, right, or center speaker depending on whether the represented number was odd, even, or neither (zero). The six minute sound piece was run on a ten-minute loop, allowing for a four-minute period of rest between each cycle.

The interior of the room was painted purple - the only basic color not included in the sound recording - and upon the exterior walls, a circular pattern hinted at the origin of the sequence.

miscellaneous...

In the summer of 2009, I was awarded a commission by the Information School at Syracuse University to install a sculpture in a window-well of their newly renovated building.

When the iSchool first sent out their call for project proposals, I had just finished reading Everything is Miscellaneous by David Weinberger. In the book, Weinberger discusses humanity's shift from physically-based organization systems to those that are digitally based. The idea is that information, in the digital realm, can simultaneously occupy multiple categories. This sort of multiplicity of location is, of course, impossible in the physical world. He argues that with this shift in organizing information comes a shift in thinking in general.

This idea of "miscellaneous" information seemed like a completely appropriate conversation to have in the context of the iSchool. It also seemed like the window-well itself was a miscellaneous space for a sculpture. The project that I proposed and ultimately completed was the abbreviated form of the word "miscellaneous" (misc.), fabricated from steel and chrome-plated. The mirror-like finish of the piece was intended to literally reflect the innovations in thought and technology taking place within the building.

experiments in cataloging

While I have always been interested in language, it wasn't until graduate school that I really began investigating the ways in which language can function beyond explicit communication. language, in a more abstract sense, functions to organize our perceptions and our understanding of the world. This project was an exploration of the place of overlap between physical space, categorization, and language.

(above: exhibition poster featuring color-coded indexing stickers)

In the spring of 2009, I began a project in which I tried to catalogue all of my possessions. I devised an indexing system in which each of my objects received a color-coded sticker based on its general location - my studio, my apartment, in storage at my mother's house, or in one of my "transient spaces" (car, purse, book bag, etc.). The colored stickers were sequentially numbered utilizing a dewey-decimal-like system which also referred each object back to its specific location within a corresponding inventory log. After cataloging nearly 2200 individual objects, I created a taxonomy. The taxonomic system was somewhat nonsensical and, through ridiculous categories like "non-squishable clothing," sought to disrupt the natural order consequent of my subconscious, entropic design.

The project culminated in an exhibition of the inventory catalogue, taxonomic flow-chart, and taxonomic diagrams for a selection of individual items. (In future iterations of this or similar work, I would present the labeled objects, or photographs of the objects, to provide further visual interest.)

an untitled installation (canonizing)

I have long been interested in visual symbolic languages, especially those whose scope of comprehension is both geographically and temporally far-reaching. Although I would not condescend to describe the "vocabularies" featured in this piece as anywhere near universal, I do believe that they resonate at some level, whether their referents are fully recognized or not. My goal in this piece was to force the disparate vocabularies of color, alchemy, and catholic symbology into a dialogue - an indecipherable code that refers to the quest for understanding (and controlling knowledge) that underlies religious and alchemic practices alike.

This installation was first displayed in the spring of 2009. It featured three components, each on its own wall of the exhibition space. The wall to the left of the entryway featured found objects on shelves positioned in a scatter plot/flow chart formation. The adjacent wall was covered in symbols arranged in a grid-pattern reminiscent of the periodic table, and a painting, functioning as a sort of color code occupied the wall on the right.