Points on Time

Points on Time
Six pieces / 10x13 each
Grass, minerals, dirt, berries, dandelions

"I like to think of landscape not as a fixed place but as a path that is unwinding before my eyes, under my feet."
– Gretel Ehrlich

A key geographical question throughout the human experience has been, "Where am I?" In classical Greece and China, attempts were made to create logical grid systems of the world to answer this question.  But it wasn't until the middle ages that the latitude and longitude system was developed and implemented. This system is written in degrees, using the symbol °. 

These ten newly completed works represent an attempt to discover my sense of place through landscape. Place is latitudinal and longitudinal within the map of a person's life.  It is temporal, spatial and personal.  A layered location replete with human histories and memories, place has width and well as depth.  Having returned to the U.S. after living in Germany, and having moved several times in the past 5 years, I have become increasingly aware of my desire to connect to a specific location.  Working with raw materials from my local landscape and visually interpreting it represents a starting point for understanding my environment.  The awareness of my immediate physical surroundings marks my current time along a continuing path.

at Lilify, Monterey through April.

PROCESS : Points on Time

Prior to my showing of 6 new works in Monterey on March 2nd, I headed out with my daughter Paloma to work on one of the pieces.  This particular "drawing" took me 2 days using clay, grass, dirt, and berries.  We collected the materials and then I ground them into pigments using a mortar and pestle.  I used a small piece of wood as a quill to finish the drawing on watercolor paper.  Happy with the way this turned out.

Another attempt

Time is running short, so the next day I head out again, this time up a remote trail in the hills of Napa. I find a spot in the long grass overlooking a bluff and decide to make this my studio for the day.  I collect moss from a tree, grass and scrape reddish minerals out of a damp rock.  I've changed paper and gone with a heavy watercolor variety which should help to speed the drying time.

Ground up, I'm pleased with two of the mixtures.  Turns out moss does not translate well to pigment of any kind.  I may use this as a sort of binder for the other pigments.

The first shapes are applied with the grass which picks up the dirt particles and separates in an interesting way on the paper.

Ok, this is going better.  It's much warmer so the pigment is setting faster.  It's a lovely spot with no one around and as time passes, I find myself more aware of the natural sounds and smells around me.

Hours have passed and it's coming along.  I'll search for dandelions to make yellow and small purple berries I spotted on the way up to hopefully mix a shade of blue.  This is will be first piece of the six natural works in the show.

New Works

I have a show coming up the first weekend in March in Monterery at Lilify.  For the past two months, I've been working on new pieces for the show.  Six of them will be new works on paper using only natural elements created on site in varying locations around Napa Valley.  The show is titled Points on Time and the work deals with locational identity, the mapping of time, and my wrestling with my current place and surroundings.  

This is my first attempt at working outside with only natural materials.  I take grass and put it into a small bowl and grind it into a green liquid with a pestle. I try using a paintbrush initially to apply the pigment, but don't like what I am getting.  I decide to use the grass directly as a brush and the results are more natural and accidental.

After applying the first pigment, I pick up some mud and dirt buried under the grass and mix it with the grass.  This mixture is applied directly to the paper and green pigment is added to the composition in spots.

Adding the green pigment back in creates some interesting lines and textures that represent what I'm looking at.  The experience of struggling with the materials – finding them, physically grinding them and then applying them with my hands is very tactile and the process speaks to the struggle of me dealing physically with this place and land.  

It is late in the afternoon and the sun is going down. It's getting dark and I'm getting cold.  My hands are freezing and dirty.  The light is changing rapidly as I wait for the paper to dry.  It's going to be a while and there's an element of patience built in where I can't rush the process.  I have to let the materials function as they are supposed to without my interference.  It occurs to me that I have applied too much liquid pigment to the paper and there is no way it will dry in time.  I realize I am going to have to attempt to carry the work about 3/4 of a mile to the car or I will be out here until 9pm.  

Unfortunately, the transportation of the piece over hills and down trails caused the delicate pigments to shift and blur and now the piece is a muddy wash.  I'm not sure I was going to be able to use this anyway, but it is now officially a study.  Chalk it up to experience.

Points on Time: three new ink works

Points on Time :Point Reyes
Napa
St. Helena

Ink Block Prints on Paper
11”x14” each

“Most of us are separated from organic geographical communities; even fewer can rely on blood ties.  We can only hope to find created communities or communities that are accidentally formed through place, workplace, and other artificial means.  But most of us live such fragmented lives and have so many minicommunities that no one knows us as a whole.  The incomplete self longs for the fragments to be brought together.  This can’t be done without a context, a place.”
      - Lucy Lippard  / Lure of the Local: Sense of Place in a Multicentered Society  

Recently, as I consider my current environment and living situation, I have become interested in the concept of timelines and how we visualize time across a linear scale. Historically, timelines were static images, and generally drawn or printed on paper. They relied heavily on graphic design, and the ability of the artist to visualize the data.  Most timelines are now digital or interactive, but I like the idea of pictures being a marker: not just a point on a line, but representing a more complete experience with a certain time and place.

These three newly completed works represent an attempt to discover my sense of place through landscape.  Having just returned to the U.S. after living in Germany, and having moved several times in the past 5 years, I have become increasingly aware of my longing for a less fragmented life.  Visually interpreting the local landscape represents for me a starting point for understanding my environment and how I fit in to it.  The awareness of my immediate physical surroundings also marks my current time along a continuing path.

Monterey: patterns and environment

Photos and new outdoor works.  Taken with a 35mm Minolta X-700.

New Portrait Store

Most of my work lately has involved exploring shape and pattern and has taken me in some new directions in different disciplines. But prior to this, most of my work was portraits completed for a variety of publications and private commissions.  As a result, I have a large archive of paintings and images.  Some of the originals have sold over the years, but many are collecting dust in storage and the images, once licensed for a one-time use, are going unused and unseen.

I decided to put a portrait store up on Etsy.  The store is called "The Second Face" and contains print editions of many of my favorite portraits over the years.  They are reasonably priced, archival quality and ready to frame.  This is the first time I've shown some of them and none of them have been available for purchase at this price. I will be listing some original paintings in the future.

If you want to check them out, click the below link.  As always, I am humbled and grateful for any sales.

http://www.etsy.com/shop/theSecondFace

Process: The Promise

The Promise 
Oil on canvas
48 panels, 10 x 10 cm each

Completed as a dedication to Haus Betanian, our surrogate home in Germany for the past year and a half.  The 48 individual canvas panels measuring 10cm square were joined together to create the complete composition.  Eventually, a poster will reproduce the painting and the separate panels will be sold individually as part of a fund-raising effort for the Haus.  Each panel will represent a puzzle piece fitted into the larger work and contains enough detail to stand on it's own.  One of the most labor intensive works I've created and all in two weeks.

PROCESS: Equilbrium in Three States: Applied, Frictional, Normal

My most recent video study exploring the seven redemptive names of God. Shot it in an abandoned warehouse in Leipzig, Germany in just two hours - all the movement is improvised using an open score (meaning, I didn't give myself any directives to help guide me).  In fact, in the last shot my head is cut off a bit...but I had to catch my train home.

:Jehovah-Tsidkenu

Process: New Patterns

Process: Return to Auschwitz (4 days)

Monday

I am sitting on decaying red leather seats on a train to Auschwitz.  My mind is full of unresolved thoughts and impressions and I get the sense that they will only intensify.  An idea has brought me back here, this remote town in middle of the Polish landscape, despite the many unvisited destinations still here in Europe which I will not see and possibly never return to. 

Six months ago, I visited the camps at Auschwitz, trying to absorb the immensity of the place in less than two days.  I had found a cord of inspiration in the visual textures on the existing structures at Birkenau, but it had come in my last moments there.  I desperately attempted to capture them with my camera in the fading twilight, scrambling around barracks until the photos were unreadable and distorted by noise. 

I am trying to make sense of my interest in what I saw there. So much of it is undetermined.  My pre-trip attempts to read about Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Holocaust have felt premature, as if they have nothing to offer to me and what I will ultimately discover there in what I am seeing.  I know of course that this is not true, and the unimaginable truths of the place will eventually weave with my own observations, but my sense is that I must get out on the land again and stay there.  Let the place speak to me.  Let my eye be guided in every passing moment. 

I have been interested in the curious passage of time, the fleeting and harsh reality of our existence as individuals.  How life clambers on like an impersonal, hulking machine, consuming all before it and pushing it behind without thought or recognition or trace of remorse. But existing in time are individuals and the mark of each person makes an impression on others during the course of his/her life, even if that life is tragically short. Something about that individual life leaves an indelible mark on it's surroundings, though its traces are almost certainly unknown to the masses.  That mark can be beautiful and valuable or it can be appalling. But the point is that a mark is left, however tiny in the grand scheme, and thus cataloged in this vast impersonal time.   Maybe this is why I'm back at Auschwitz; to explore the marks left there by individuals who made up this massive and incomprehensible  part of history.  

Process: That Leads To and From a Still Place

This is Alicia's fifth in the series exploring the Seven Redemptive Names of God: Jehovah Ra-ah (the Lord my shepherd).  Her process is the same; just her and the camera (and a bit of string).  Her idea is to focus on the content and shot making with little or no editing. It's interesting to watch her attempt to create within the restraints of the camera.  According to her, these video experiments are her interpretation of God's character, but perhaps, in the end, reveal more about her approach to God than God himself.  The videos are beginning to represent a sort of loose self-portrait.

This work is the strongest in the series IMO.  It is beautifully meditative and somehow accurately captures the local landscape and our spiritual / emotional response to our environment in Germany the past year.

Process: Extemporaneous 2 & 3

ex·tem·po·ra·ne·ous: (1) : composed, performed, or uttered on the spur of the moment

In early March I had the opportunity to take a pilgrimage of sorts.  I traveled 8 hours northeast to Herrnhut, Germany.  In 1722, persecuted Bohemian Christians who had fled Poland were given this land and safety by Count Zinzendorf. This first settlement was named Herrnhut, "The Lord's Watchful Care."  They are considered the first protestants and their efforts pre-date Martin Luther by over 100 years. The United Brethren, or who are known as Moravians in the US, have an amazing history of missional and incarnational living.  Their story slowly unfolded itself over several days as I visited many still very active sites, including their meeting hall, a local museum, archives and God's Acre, the Brethren graveyard.  I had a long chat with a local woman whose family has been in Herrnhut for many generations and went to a noon-time local prayer.

This video is an in camera-edit but I made some adjustments to the audio - it was just unwatchable.  What you are seeing is the first Moravian meeting hall, which had to be rebuilt after the war.  They purposely never thought of it as a church - church happened in daily life.  That's why the room is white with no decoration.  Nothing, my guide told me, is sacred in the room, including the green podium at the front of the room, and is meant to be used for all kinds of community activities.  The benches are arranged tightly together to reduce the room between the brothers and sisters and are near to the podium to reduce the space between the congregation and the speaker.  The second half of the video is God's Acre.  Again, no headstones.  Nothing must call attention to oneself.  Zinzendorf was obsessed with the unity and the priesthood of the believers and thought about it and wrote about it and gave his life for it.  

Click below for Extemporaneous video 3 

Process: Wind Chime

This is my second block print corresponding to the track "Wind Chime," part of the Coldfuture project.

The print is roughly ten feet long and six inches high.  What I'm finding interesting is that I'm not particularly convinced of the final piece in composition, but I'm drawn to isolated portions of the work as they are "selected" out. It made me consider how I process information, music or otherwise, and how isolated moments or sounds effect the larger "composition."  It seems that through music, one always comes away with an impression of the complete piece and whether that piece is pleasing or not.  Is a song written with the end result in mind or is it something that takes form in the process of playing a progressive combination of sounds?

More images >

Process: Extemporaneous 1

ex·tem·po·ra·ne·ous: (1) : composed, performed, or uttered on the spur of the moment

Durlach, Germany
February 29, 2012

A week ago my wife began to take our camera with her during her daily activities and shoot footage improvisationally.   Her intent was to capture images on the fly and then piece them together without any editing or post-production.  She describes the process as a way to break out of an artistic malaise and return to some sort of productive groove.

While this is true, I see her shots as an attempt to process her identity as it relates to her location and transient life, something she wrote about previously.  The seemingly random footage could be viewed as a metaphor for the various places, people and fragments of her life, which, when placed next to one another and not after one another, has the potential to create meaning.  Living abroad for the past year, I also feel this footage gives a sense of dislocation - part of an effort to find a home, if this is even possible.

Process: Frozen Over

I am in the course of creating a series of ink block prints based upon minimal techno tracks created for the Coldfuture project.  

This first print corresponds to the track "Frozen Over." My intention is to create a a visual equivalent for each sound I hear in the course of the track and represent it on paper as it enters, drops out or pauses in time.  Aside from the mapping of the time sequence, it is an entirely experimental process and I have very little idea how the shapes will interact or function together in the composition.

Process : Tree Bark

" There are no forms in nature, inthe wild state, as it is our gaze that creates these, by cutting them out of the depth of the visible."

- Relational Aesthetics

I'm not convinced of this.  I feel that my role is to cut out what is present in the visible, but the forms are already in existence, they are created forms and God is very aware of them.  I am bringing my eye into the process, but it is a process of stewardship, to see the forms that are already there. 

 
This recent pattern drawing was completed over five days in the woods of Karlsruhe.  It was cold. Each day involved a two-kilometer walk to the remote site and each day after two hours, I couldn't feel my hands or toes.

Puddles

Karlsruhe, 1/18/12

While walking the sprawling hillsides outside of our home armed with some pastels and paints, I came across this five puddles on a dirt trail.  Their juxtaposition and spacing immediately caught me eye.  I mixed some colors on the spot for each creating a composition of bright colors against an otherwise drab landscape.

The Dove : Complete

The Dove

Wall Painting, Acrylic

72" x 96"

This painting took longer than expected, but the process was an interesting one. Documenting the piece as it progressed allowed me to evaluate the changing effect it had on me and those who viewed it in progress.  Because the subject was my 6-year old daughter, it became a surprisingly personal, almost meditative experience for me.  The finished painting complements the current direction I'm taking with my site-specific and printmaking work and is a step towards producing larger and more comprehensive wall installations.