The End

Hey all,

I don't really know if anyone still reads this, but this is the post that says that I won't be blogging for a while. I'll start again once I start making some more art, but right now my studio is disassembled and I'll be moving around for a little bit.

IP is over, but I'd like to continue this blog. Maybe I can rename it. I don't know much about blogger. I'll call it like . . . LP: Life Project. Part one. The reckoning.

How's that sound?

It's been great. Wonderful. Too much fun. And very rewarding. And I'm going to miss everyone and this whole experience a lot.

ta ta for now,
Emerson

Artist Statement

Hi

Sorry I haven't posted in a while.

Here's my artist's statement:

Invisible Things is a project about condensing time and blurring the boundaries between people and the space they occupy. This body of work, including paintings, drawings, and an altered book, seeks to emphasize the power and the fragility of human connection and of life itself. By obscuring the borders between figure and ground and by condensing and freezing segments of time, these works become a visual representation of things that cannot literally be seen: the emotional realm, the human spirit, and our connections to each other.

I think it's okay. Is it okay?

The show opens next week and the work is all done except for my book, but it's really close. I think a few more hours of work and it will be done. Besides that I've been working on my website non-stop. I think it's become an annual tradition for me to completely redo my website. I don't bother with updating, I just completely overhaul the whole thing. I'm hoping that will change now, because this one is going to be pretty effin classy ifidosaysomyself. Should be live by April 11.

Sorry, I only have words this week.

I did lots of things this week.

I cut my frames to size and spray painted the ones that weren't black

(with help) I made by book go from looking way worse than this

to this

and then I remembered that the inside is nowhere near complete.

But instead of working on that I decided to fuck this painting up instead

 (how humiliating)

but I also made this painting which is ok

and also I did half of the mounting on all of my works on paper

blah

timekeeping:

allthosethings:25.5 hours

Charcoal Fog

Can I just update on Sunday from now on?

This week I made good progress on this painting:

This week I only painted with charcoal, black, and white. It's almost done.

And I also made this drawing:

I'm also seeking out the help of my good friend Abby Bennet for her book-doctor skills. We're going to a workshop tomorrow where hopefully some smart book people will have an idea of how to re-bind my disaster of a book. I cut the cover off, but rebinding it is proving to be problematic because of the way I've glued some of the pages together.

I also acquired a huge amount of aluminum frames, which I've almost finished cutting to size. And I've ordered the rest to complete what I need. I've got those, plus mat board coming my way. I'll still need to get glass and spray paint to blacken the frames that are less-than-black. I'm aiming to frame 9 drawings and 2 paintings that are 7"x11". The frames themselves are 15"x20" so they will have a large border that says "look at how effing important this drawing is."

The frame-fairy saved me a ton of $$ so I am very grateful to him.

Things are on track!

Timekeeping:

painting/drawing/booking/framing: 16.5 hours 

sleep schedule is now 1 hour more stupid

Another late post.

First week back to school was not so smooth, but I had a box of oatmeal raisin cookies to help me through it and I think it's looking up, so no worries. Point being, I didn't really work on IP until this weekend. thankfully I don't have anything better to do with my weekend nights than spend them in the studio until it's light outside again.

I worked on those three paintings, but none of them look great as a whole, so I'm only going to show you details.

I started painting with a wax medium, which I really, really like.

I also continued work on my book, which is making some progress. I might have it finished for the show. Since I've glued chunks of the paper together, I discovered that if I sand the pages for long enough, the words from the pages underneath will start to show through. Some will be backwards so it's disorientating but also a cool effect. The only problem is, the book is totally falling apart . . . I think I might need to rebind it, which I know precious little about, so maybe I'll talk to Brianne.

oy vey, I need to rewrite my thesis.

timekeeping;

painting/booking:15 hours

This blue grey situation

Trying to work more here with atmosphere. This bottom one is really close. I swear. The top one looked better before I painted on it tonight, but also pretty close. ugh.

Spent a lot of time working on my book this week, but that's only a teaser because I don't have scans of the new pages yet. It's a lot more about collage than my other ones have been. I really like how it looks, but I also feel hesitant about it because the photographs I'm using aren't mine. Is that okay? Yeah, that's okay. Right? Yeah.

I got my third residency app in the mail today. It would be really awesome if one of them accepted me. Actually, it would be awesome enough if one of them gave me a personalized rejection.

Hey! Its spring break!

Timekeeping:

painting/booking:19 hours

Hi Friends

Sorry for the post delay. I forgot my flashdrive on whenever and blah blah.

So this week, I cleaned my studio, and it's feeling like a much better place to work. I know where stuff is again and I have room to put stuff and almost enough room to move around, so that's good.

I spent a lot of time painting this week, but I don't think I'm going to show any of it because you might be getting sick of seeing the same paintings in different states. I'll let you know when they're done.

But I've been drawing too. The image below is an alteration of a drawing I did last semester. Part of my studio cleaning process was figuring out what I've actually done these past uhhhhfive?six?four?months? and what of it I actually like, and what can be worked on more or destroyed or given away. I added acrylic and watercolor to the image below and cropped it in photoshop. I think I like it that way better, so I may crop the actual drawing too. Oh and I flipped it 90 degrees.

Here's another drawing in the series I am tentatively titling "The Exact Location" (in reference to the human heart, or spirit, or experience, or whatever, because, where is it exactly, if we're always changing and moving around? ) But maybe that title is not good, and if it isn't, please let me know.

I was really excited about this drawing for maaaybee 2 reasons. I really like the emotional shift in the figure on the right. I think it's getting closer to what I want motion to express, because it's a movement, but here it's also an emotional change. It's like, shy affection, to distracted comment . . . Or something. That's not quite it.

But then the figure on the left is concentrated on something else entirely.  He's looking at the the other's wrist, and is maybe captivated by it in a way that also maybe seems insane.

But maybe that's not something else entirely, because it almost looks like the figure on the right is saying "look here, my wrist is broken" and the figure on the left discovered the secret of life in the vision of the broken wrist.

I don't know. haha. But I think there's something there.

I mentioned last week that I started altering a book. Here are a few pages from that. It's a little more lighthearted than the rest of my work, though still in a dark sort of way. Last year, words were a big part of my painting and drawing, but for whatever reason they seem to be absent this year. Maybe working on books again will bring that back.

Also, this face that I painted last semester is going to be on a TEDx poster. Look for it around town I guess. They all turned out really cool. To see the whole collection, go here.

Timekeeping

paintingdrawingcleaningcollaging:19.5

Dead car batteries and misplaced jackets

Hi friends,

This week I worked more on this painting. I think it's going well, but it's still really early on so I don't know that I have much to say about it.

I worked on that other one with the two faces too, and I think I really brought it back to life, so that's good. I have a picture of it, but it's on my camera which is at the studio, and right now my car is dead and I don't want to take the bus because I left my coat at this party and it's life effin subzero out there right now. But honestly, I will probably do that soon anyway because I've got an itch to be a paintin'.

anyway.

I also made this drawing, which I really like:

And I went back over this drawing. I drew it as seen on the left a couple of weeks ago, right when I started drawing again on loose paper, but before I really knew what I wanted these drawings to be. It was okay at the time, but looking at it again the other day I really didn't think it was that awesome. So I went over it again, smudging and erasing and redrawing and then at the end using a little linseed oil.

I still don't really like it that much, haha, but it has more of the atmosphere that I've been looking for. It looks evil now, or something. Am I right? Yeah, kind of an evil drawing.

This one's more like it.

I'd really like for my paintings to become more like this, in that, the background isn't so much abstract as it is an atmosphere.

Someone who does this really well is this painter I went to school with in Ireland. Hannah Hill (http://hannahhill.4ormat.com/the-blizzard) makes these really haunting figurative paintings that exist in a sort of dream space. It's not abstract, but it's also not of this world. They are really great.

Oh! And as a final note, I've started altering a book again. I thought I needed one more thing to work on, because I felt myself getting stuck at times, and really, what a silly thing to do, to be stuck, because there's so much out there waiting to be created. Anyhow, I glued a bunch of pages together, and ripped out others, and soon I'll start painting and drawing on them. Hopefully I will have images by next week.

stay warm.

timekeeping:

painting/drawing/gluing/ripping:15 hours

blahit'slate

Here are some drawings I've been doing. They are coming more naturally now and I can make them pretty quickly. Maybe someday I'll be able to paint like that, ha. They're mostly done with pencil and linseed oil, but some of them have watercolor and ink.

I also started working again on the large figurative painting, but I'll post a photo of that next week. It's really messy right now and I don't love it yet. Those are both good signs. Lookin' good!

Going to 10 Degrees tomorrow!  Woo!

Time keeping:

Drawing: 4

Painting: 6

It's Done

Timekeeping
Painting:5
Drawing:5
Thesis:3

Einstein

Anyone else catch Einstein on the Beach?

. . .

Whoa.

. . .

-

I remembered today that you can paint with other things besides a paintbrush. I started using card stock, x-acto blades, and paper towel.

My first painting teacher told me never to mix paint on the palette. He said all the mixing should happen on the canvas.

My next painting teacher told me that you should only mix paint on the palette and when applying the paint to the canvas it should be done in a single stroke, thus, no mixing should take place on the canvas.

I haven't had a painting instructor whose brought it up since.

It's funny how some teachers instruct in absolutes, because of course, to make a really good painting, you should really be doing both. It's a good way to teach though. Act like your way is the only way and really make your students learn it. They'll figure out that you're wrong eventually, but they'll gain so much before they do.

Timekeeping:

Painting: 14.5

Writing thesis: 2

Zak Smith

Here's an interesting perspective on the art world from painter/drawer/illustrator/writer/pornstar Zak Smith. I'm reading his book, We Did Porn. It's a memoir about his foray into the adult film industry. It's most interesting when he talks about art though, so I think in his next book he should just leave out the porn bits and tell us about art. I'll suggest the title We Did Art. (Not that porn isn't fascinating)

            In obedience to ancient traditions designed to reassure the wealthy, art is, unlike porn, not evaluated solely according to whether you’d want to look at it or not. Critics judge the work according to the messages it communicates to the culture at large and the intelligence of the artist doing the communicating. This involves the critics in two hilarious fictions: that maintaining some arrangement of objects in a remote white room in an upscale neighborhood for a month is a way to communicate a message to the culture at large, and that someone who thinks it is could possibly be intelligent.

            The job requires rare powers of cause-and-effect denial. Give four art people a banana and they will say: It’s wonderfully yellow, it’s too yellow, it’s not yellow enough, I’m so glad it isn’t yellow, and then say it’s wonderfully squishy, it’s too squishy, it’s not squishy . . . And on and on until the banana gets so famous that they start getting paid to agree that the banana is yellow and good.

            My work, they say, is sexy, and not sexy, and too sexy, and fringy and edgy, and neither fringy nor edgy, and too fringy and edgy to be relevant, and colorful and not colorful enough, and on and on.

            So it’s very hard to care or think any of it matters. Every artist’s press release says the artist’s work “raises issues of . . .” as if a visual artist’s work in the zeros ever raised any issue. What people say is not as important for business as the fact that they say things and get paid to say them and the things they say them about get paid for. It is not an environment that incentivizes people to say or make things that make any sense. It is a living though, and one of the better ones.

            

http://www.zaxart.com/

It's been a good week.

I kept drawing. With these about 3/4 through the drawing I painted over parts with linseed oil. Then went back over parts to bring some of the lines forward again. The linseed oil softens the edges, so there's sort of a blur effect. You probably can't see this very well with these scans. (I don't like the scanners in the IP studios. . . The only way I can get it to work is to scan it in as a PDF, but then I have to convert it to a TIFF which I then convert to a JPEG to post here and by that time image quality gets pretty weak . . . Anyway I will start using the scanners upstairs because I now have access to the print studio. Wow, long aside. sorry) Also painted with gesso over parts of these.

I'm not in a position to give advice about painting, but if I were here's what I would say:

!Pay Attention!

It's the same advice I have about life. It's happening all around you, don't forget to pay attention.

Okay I'll shut up now.

Here are my paintings. I think they are getting better.

Time Keeping:

Painting/drawing: 22 hours

Odd Nerdrum Interim

He strikes me as someone who must be completely insane. A fine quality for a painter.

He paints like Rembrandt might have if he had survived and documented the apocalypse.

Also,

I'm having a show with 2 other artists in my hometown Holland, Michigan. It's up right now and will run through Feb 25.

The artists I'm showing with are

Chrstine Towner: http://www.christinetowner.com/

Michele Renee Gort: http://www.designsbymichelerenee.com/