Lastly there is a fork.

The past several weeks I've been thinking about my drawings in a way which is I found to be a dead end, but I'm glad that it happened - it's not often I reach a satisfying conclusion in my work (a satisfying dead end?). I was introduced to the concepts of structuralism and semiotics, which I will let wikipedia summarize, but I fluctuate back and forth often as to how focal these concepts should be to my work. The most obvious connections are in how my work is reliant upon bringing in information that isn't objectively available (an understanding of something on an arbitrary level) and how I use a fixed set of actions to create an object. It's actually fairly easy to discuss my work in these terms. However these terms don't strike me as particularly functional, except perhaps to provide some legitimacy through linguistic theory. It's easier to discuss my work in other terms that are less alienating, especially because it's not all that close to being my sole focus. If someone views my work in this manner, I would be comfortable with discussing this and knowing that it is not off base at all. But I also want to keep it from being the sole hangup that people respond to when they view my work.

It's called that for a reason you know.

First on the list is the idea of one's (my) place in the world that is not the self (me). One of the first concepts I wanted to address in the series, I wanted the process of drawing - placement and concentration - to be a reaction to my immediate state and in doing so, each individual object reflects its relationship to those closest to it. The goal is to eliminate any detachment I have from the drawings, a state which I find difficult to achieve but is ultimately rewarding.

I'm no longer as focused making my drawings process-central as is necessary for this reading but it still informs my act of drawing - sitting and repeating the form is a sort of meditative state which I think does translate into my pieces, and awareness of what I am doing becomes key and a fulfilling act in of itself (I'm not drawing split pieces of wood just to end up with a bunch of split pieces of wood). But this is a back burner sort of idea that is important for production but not in explanation. This I can let go for now.

In which Jeremy pares down

This past week a respectable source firmly suggested that I articulate and solidify the concepts in my drawings. I get as far as some tasty ways of phrasing what I'm thinking about but get stuck a few sentences in. It's time to quiet my thoughts, decide which I'm comfortable letting go of. Lists might be helpful.

Awareness of the self and surroundings
Symbols and what they represent / how they relate
Recognizing and organizing patterns
Why I'm resistant to 'repetition' and 'obsessiveness'
The summation of parts into a whole... and beyond
Comfort
Ambiguous forms
How and if 'human' processes all of this differently than 'nature'

All these and maybe more to be sifted through and potentially discarded. The roundabout path in which I currently have to take to reach my point does not sit well with me currently. I'm making drawings of earthworms, sproutlings, split logs and radiators for goodness' sake.

In which Jeremy gets down

I think I made a post once and claimed many times that restricting myself in some ways forces creativity in others. Sometimes I impose this upon myself ('if I can say what I want, I can say it in these frames which I already built'), sometimes they happen to me out of necessity. After visiting the room in which I'm displaying yesterday I had to begin to consider how to display as much as I want in not a very large area. And I think this is good for me because it's making me rearrange things in positive and meaningful ways (as opposed to a sharp-looking row of drawings. Vertical pairings - one airy field of tiny objects above one solid field of tick marks. Feeling good until it needs to be revised, which it will not.

THIS is how you climb a mountain!

Why are symbiotic forces so often at odds? For a while I believed I had to sacrifice making images of things I want in order to fully appreciate the act of creation and the sensation of drawing. Then I thought of the Spanish Romantic Francisco Goya, one of the first artists whom I deeply admired. I was naturally stricken by his painting of a crazed Saturn devouring his headless bloody offspring and the other paintings he created during his downward spiral. And while subject matter is important and fascinating, it’s also clear that Goya had an intimate relationship with the physical paint as well, which is essentially a given at this point in the orbit of whatever heavenly body would best complete the metaphor of visual arts. During the late 18^th and into the early 19^th centuries, however, this was not the norm, so Goya’s series the Black Paintings were even more disturbing.

As a side note which I find necessary at this point - the ideas I’m expressing in this post are also completely relevant to the work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. I spent a lot of time thinking about which of the two I would like to discuss and Goya won due to his seniority in my personal chronology (also thought about writing about them in stereo, but didn't want to anger the art history bitches). The Incredulity of Saint Thomas is one of my absolute favorite paintings for all the reasons here mentioned and those after, and I appreciate how he was much more subtly subversive than that freak Goya. I’m a bit sick of using typically negative descriptors as merits. But I am also much more informed of Goya’s work than that of Caravaggio, so here we are. Side note done.

The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, c. 1601-1602. Thanks, wikipedia.

I think regardless of the subject matter, to devote so much time and energy to painting and thinking about how things are and what they might be shows just as much love of the medium as Hans Hoffman or any of his colleagues. If there’s a moral to this story, it’s that sacrifice shouldn’t be a concern. If I wish to make dragons (why haven’t I done this yet?), but I also want to just draw, that’s not a contradiction unless I make it one. Which I won’t.

He started it: Saturn Devouring His Son, 1819. Thanks, Wikipedia.

Self Portrait in the Studio, 1790-1795. Thanks again, wikipedia.

It's about time, about time.

I hate the idea of living in the past. There must be ideas and people existing and working today that mean something today, and there are, but that’s a lot of looking. Until then there are previously established artists that have done what I am looking for and look to. It’s less of a competition that way. While I was a fetus and prior, there were some (many, actually) musicians working under principles very similar to the Hofmann quote on simplicity and necessity I presented a while ago. The Minutemen declared it “jamming econo,” Fugazi didn’t have a name for it but acted under its principles. They weren’t interested in being loud for loudness’ sake, although they often were, and their lyrics approached preachy and heavy handed often, but because that’s what they wanted to say. Concerts and albums were cheap, as was merchandise (if they had any at all), slept on floors, working in a method that disposed the idea of privilege and cutting excess in all forms. Despite this neither of these bands (I focus on the Minutemen and Fuazi only because they are the most prominent in applying these principles) were traditionalists, and actually quite the opposite. Restriction on some fronts yields creativity and experimentation on others.

Upon further reflection on my unease with the gap of twenty or more years between the bands and me, their principles are no less valid now than they were in the 1980s and 1990s. There is a difference between rehashing what has been done and adopting what finds admirable about what has been done. The latter is honest and in itself admirable; a difficult trial for me is to recognize that many ideas I work with have been dealt with before but nothing has changed so much that they now have no weight.

Trailer for the 2005 documentary made by the Minutemen We Jam Econo: the Story of the Minutemen

"Shut the Door" by Fugazi, from their 1999 documentary Instrument (recorded sometime between 1988 and 1993)

"Ack Ack Ack" by the Minutemen, music video, 1985.

Ripped from a piece of pie

A distinct line divides the work of Monique Prieto. Prior to 2003 she produced great form and color studies, abstracted silhouettes but obviously something. After a two year hiatus her work now tends toward the text-based, lifted from the diary of Samuel Pepys (the true beginning of self-indulgent obsessive performance art?), and equally abstract yet relatable. She pulls a classic abstract artist move and refrains from commenting on the interpretations of her art, as her vague allusions lend themselves to. Prieto works in a lot of areas that I also try to focus on – the ability of color and form to stand alone, opaque meanings, stylized strings of text out of context. I’m unsurprisingly more drawn to her abstract pieces, but as I think more and more about how and if I should be using text in my art, Prieto’s catchy sayings (such as “BELLS RANG EVERYWHERE” or “WALKING BOTH FORWARDS AND BACKWARDS”) rendered in non-uniform sizes and partial legibility are important for me to keep in mind. She is an artist that I can both look to for what I am doing and focusing on now, as well as directions I may want to head.

On the Other Side, 1997. Found on the blog of some MFA student in Ontario.

Last Night's Dream, 2007. From the ACME gallery's website, where a show of her work was recently held.

Opus, 2002. From an essay on artlies.org called "Dumb Art: The End of Representation." I'd recommend reading it, a recap of the debate between conceptual artists and painters. Guess which side I align with.