niki kriese: February 2006

Copy Cats

assignment due today. We've just read about Richard Pettibone and Elaine Sturtevant, who, for their art copied various artists like Duchamp, warhol, Liechtenstein, Johns. I'm not going to go into their whole thing, but our assignment was to choose five artists who share our focus and copy a work of art from each. This was a fantastic exercise for me, first of all because it allowed me to do things i always wanted to but didn't want to, well, copy. It felt really freeing to have certain parameters decided, and other elements variable. Well, i'm not making sense, but here are my images:
from Felix Gonzalez-Torres:

Empty candy wrappers...Everyone thinks they're pessimistic but i think the opposite...I think they speak to absence, the remains, letting go, weightlessness, beautiful gaudiness, happy memories...If you don;t know his work you should click on the link to learn more about him. Or, if you're my mom, just call me and ask.

From Jessica Stockholder:

It's definitely her aesthetic that i relate to. Here i am not copying real piece of hers but more her "style". I feel like this is work that seems "me", (and others who have come into my studio said the same thing) but there's really nothing behind it besides visual reactions. And there's nothing wrong with that, but as i know from when i was making paintings, it's fun for about a week but then i get bored. Well, we'll see what happens.

From Rachel Whiteread:

She makes casts of interior spaces...underneath chairs, rooms, and her most ambitious project was an entire house. I really respond to the solidifying of emptiness, making it physical, and also transforming the space into something that can't be inhabited anymore. Mine is just the inside of a cardboard box, but i really enjoy all the details, and sense of inverted space.

Janine Antoni:

Here is one of my favorite artists, whom i respect so so much, so of course this piece failed like no other. Here i was meditating on her pieces "lick and Lather" and "Gnaw", and i guess to an extent "Slumber". In the first two pieces she uses chocolate as one of the main materials, and i've really been wanting to try it for it's unique texture but also all the connotations, familiarities, and sensory elements, I wanted to tie in the face prints that i was doing in December. Also, i really respond to her use of process, how she uses performance but not necessarily in front of an audience...Anyway, i made a slab of chocolate and used it as my pillow. Last night. It was definitely a new experience. Okay, here is the picture:

And it looks even grosser in real life. This was taken right after i "woke up". It's already starting to change texture. Maybe I'll take more photos as it ages. My studio reeks of chocolate (kind of makes me miss Chicago). But making this piece really excited me and made me put a lot of thoughts together about process, and evidence, and markmaking, and materials. It always seems to go this way: the more the idea makes sense, the shittier the art looks. Again, balance!!

For the fifth piece, i'm not really sure who i chose...it kind of splintered off into several different things. I'll post pictures of that stuff later, as well as more talky talk and ideas from class.

skin flaps

For a couple days i was still using the wet paper technique but tearing the edges around the wet marks to make them let rigid, more ephemeral, layering them, pinning them to each other. This veered away from the concept but was getting more interesting formally and visually. And, people come into my studio and are so distracted by it and it seems to affect them emotionally. And it made me think about communicating through evoking emotions rather than intellect and words, something i used to know but i keep forgetting. Once again, the key is to find a balance. Of course!

See, walking to school IS helpful

Here is a note i just sent off to my teacher. I thought it might generate some discussion. Lots of things to think about. I feel like going back to sleep...

******

Hi Sheila, i just came across this article about originality, and i thought it might be a good jumping off point for continuing our conversation.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,585-2050834,00.html It reminds me of a couple things re: newness...

A paraphrased quote, perhaps from Mr Greenberg, that haunted me throughout my undergrad and after: "Everything new is ugly at first." I think this mainly made me suspicious of art that i was attracted to...shouldn't truly "good" art repel me? And then, where is the criteria by which we can critique it?

Another article i read this week, from the New Scientist, talking about the more advanced we are getting with mathematical proofs, the harder (sometimes impossible) they are to actually verify.

And finally, i am reading something in another class by William Greider, talking about the history of the development of currency. I feel like this is relating to my current "dilemma" in my work about Actual vs Stand-in. At one point he is talking about our current paper money (and even beyond, plastic money) and arguing that this is more efficient than past currency (ie, cattle) *because* it has no actual, physical value. I feel like, while typing that, i just made my dilemma more clear for myself and perhaps answered a question...maybe art has meaning because it is not actually physically valuable but because we (whatever that group may be) can agree on at least some pedestal for it. Um, okay, i need to think out this last part more, but this comparison is definitely helping something in my brain.
Thanks for indulging my deluge.
niki

******
What does everyone think?

More Cats

So, for my wintersession class i took "unconventional upholstery". It was six weeks of constant, hand-numbing, five-hours-of-sleep-a-week, work. For my first project i made a sleeping cat. (the orange thing is not part of this piece, but i made it for the second project, below). Unfortunately the black velour doesn't photograph very well, but you can get the general idea.

The "flap" on the back was intended to read like a shadow...The cat is becoming its own shadow. Or something. My main concern was taxidermied pets, that someone will stuff their dead animal (usually in this kind of sleeping pose) and take comfort in this, and not be creeped out. Again, more holding on vs. letting go. Does this empty shell hold any power, or is it like a photograph of a loved one? I don't know. I do know that this is in my studio and i still do a doubletake every single time i see it, like Dada is actually there. (clarification: Dada is not dead, she was just my model for this piece)

For the final piece i wanted to learn a variety of actual upholstery and sewing techniques. I pretty much ran out of time to do everything i wanted, but the concept i think was the strongest part. I wanted to re-create my grampa's stuff. Basically next to His Chair he had this orange vinyl ottoman with various things on it that he needed close by. (crossword book, enormous ashtray, Camel unfiltered cigs, TV remote ca 1980, and coffee cup which i still haven't finished.) I did these things from memory, and the fabric i used was my own clothing.
Look! i made piping! It's a real thing!
And fabric covered buttons!!
And embroidered my life away!!
The weird thing to discover was that it was actually harder to choose to cut up my clothes than to experience my grandfather's death. Maybe that's oversimplifying....He died seven years ago. It was not a surprise at all. It was not MY CHOICE that he died. But, i realized that being attached to your clothing is not just being materialistic and shallow. We have extremely intimate relationships with and powerful memories related to our clothes, so much that they become a part of us. I feel like this is as close as i've come to the balance of Truth and Communication that i've been struggling with. While i was working on this someone came in my studio and and said that he as a viewer didn't care if it really was my clothes or if i "cheated". i had for a long time been wondering about that kind of thing, if honesty really mattered. Like, if art is illusion anyway, as long as it "appeared" that it was my clothes, for example, and the audience believes it, does it really matter? I'm starting to feel like, in my work at least, the truth is everything. But what does everyone else think?

I made a painting

For some reason over winter i started doing a lot of art with cats. Or at least more than usual. In my final studio visit with faculty one thing they said was the (invisible) work wasn't as strong as it could be because it wasn't specific enough. They seemed a little put off that i was making art about death and coping mechanisms because it's interesting, and not because someone close to me died. So trying to be open-minded, and resisting the urge to snidely say "I did that kind of shit in high school," (but i still said it), i embarked on making good art out of emotional baggage. Which i've never really been good at. One of the interesting things that actually happened is this little painting of a cat named Mate', who died. First i painted the cat from a photo, and I used the same technique as when i painted over the snapshots in the Fall. But obviously instead painted out the painted image. Here's the two steps, but only the last one is the actual finished piece.

I think this also brings up my issue with truth, in that, as far as the audience is concerned, i didn't really need to paint the first step. And i don't necessarily care that they believe me, but I know the truth, and that for me is where the power of the piece lies. I'm still sorting through all my thoughts on this issue, so hopefully the chance (or responsibility) to write about it in a semi-public forum will help. Anyway, next i will post photos of my upholstery projects from my winter class, so stay tuned for more cats and ghosts!!

And then i make invisible art

No really. I started painting the urns on paper with water. The water evaporates, leaving an imprint but no actual residue. Kind of hard to photograph but you get the idea.

Then i started making "Face Prints" onto paper with water. A little more intimate, more about the physical body, and maybe a little about the action of doing it (though i try to avoid that in this case). But still, almost no one around me was into it (Kind of the running theme all semester).

I've kind of always had the problem of being a bad communicator. My art and writing always gets called unclear or even cryptic. It's a really big question for me how to remedy that, especially now when i'm realizing my bigger concern, compared to which the whole "death" thing is really just a topic. I'm trying to resolve for myself the issue of Truth in art. Is (my) art a depiction of a particular idea or is it the idea itself? For example, someone suggested that to make my water-on-paper pieces more clear i should use ink instead. But the whole point to me was that there was nothing left behind. So here is where i start to struggle...If my work really is to communicate to people, how crucial is this honesty? Am i becoming a prima donna? Only time will tell.

Post Crit

I got nothin'.

Urns on paper. Containing death? Containing physical remains, memory, holding on or letting go. Decorative furniture.

Crit!!

Then...

Sometime after week 5 i had a revelation...Just do, don't try to justify every action with content. And things started to happen.

Making reliquaries with fabric and thread, two dimensional objects are three-dimensional with stuffing inside...But the reliquaries are still "blank".

At the same time i also started to paint on snapshots and photographs of travel destinations. Both painting people into the scenes and painting people out. The latter quickly became more interesting and i keep coming back to this in my current work.

Weeks 1-5

In which our hero feels inhumanly inadequate. You may have hear me use this tired analogy already, but i did feel like i stepped off a cliff on day 1 and kept falling. Um, maybe i'll let the photos tell the story...