YouTube is teaching me to crochet. I love how unstructured it is, much more so then knitting. Knitting is too grid-like. Ugh.. post-minimalism. Crocheting speaks to my aesthetic taste much more. I started a new piece yesterday. I'm working with two large spools of white cotton yarn. I can never find the right pallet with the yarn in the craft stores, so I'm taking matters into my own hands. I started dying yesterday, and I'm really loving the 70's inspired pallet that is coming out of it. From lemon yellow, scarlet red, royal blue, black and taupe dye, I'm developing a more interrelated pallet to work with. So plan is to use the two bolts of yarn in full, while just freestyle crocheting. I'm not sure how I'll display it yet. Usually I start with the support but then the piece is reliant on this structure that is some what unspecific to the piece itself. It limits the creativity of the piece. I think the structure may end up being something related a house-hold object as well as an art object, since the piece itself will be similar to a afghan.

Marc introduced me to this artist yesterday, Nick Cave. I could see my work going in a similar direction in the future, being sort of wearable or a costume piece. His pieces are called sound suits. He has a background in fine arts, specifically textiles, and modern dance, so the work is mostly performative. I wish he elaborated more on the materials he used.

Knitters Occupying!!

I haven't made much work in the past few weeks, well I guess finished would be a better choice word. I stared a lot, and I hated a lot. I did finish the first part of an on-going installation. The T-shirt piece. It hangs about 13 feet long and can lay out flat like a rug. I'm not sure what the final installment will look like. The piece I have now took about 30 t-shirts to make.....my drawers are getting kind of empty.
I've been knitting and crocheting a lot. Mostly random little bits, but I'm trying to learn more techniques. The topic of struggle and tension came up in my critique the other day, and I think the work is beginning to embody those ideas while at the same time it speaks to order and mindless process.
I went to the city yesterday. Saw some work in Chelsea, sadly nothing too relative. After, I went down to check out a Occupy Wall Street cite. It was interesting. It made me want to sew. I don't think I could ever be that passionate about something political. Its all so gray....



Chris Guerra in political mode.



Looking

-Shelia Pepe

-Shelia Hicks

-Judith Scott

-Joe Fief
-Tom Nozkowski
-Duchamp
-Danielle Myselic
-Zylar jane
-Cheney Thompson
-Rosemary Trockle

Tied loose ends.

        
            I finished some of pieces I've been working on for the last couple weeks. Now I’m in the process of cropping, editing, and reducing photos of them to images and sketches. I built six 12 by 12 stretchers the other day, so I can get started on painting from the photos. I'm still debating on the fabric I want to stretch. I have some linen, but my favorite thing about the first painting (the one of the paper painting) is that he's related to the others not just in the image but because of their nontraditional material. However, the pin-striped fabric I used received some critique. The nature of the pin-stripes could be a cheap way of elevating the painting over the original piece. This wasn't my intent, but I'm trying to be more aware of the implications that each type of fabric of design might have on the viewers read. Not using patterned fabric just for the sake of being nontraditional but using it in a specific way to inform the content of the piece. I'm excited about the changes that have been made to the yarn ready-made pieces. I’m thinking the space and composition will be really fun to translate into paint.

            I finished the string painting for the Chance show. I only finished the one. I felt the other wasn't clean enough for a show. To finish this I was focused on the idea of chance in decision making. However, Chance and decision are to opposite ideas. I don't really believe there is such a thing as pure chance in art making. Even the things that attempt an organic happening are usually in some way manipulated by the artist. Still, I tried to let go of all this and let random occurrences come in to play.

             I was working with six spools of yarn and string. They were randomly places around my studio, and this placement would change every time I used one or the other. I would roll a die. Say the die landed on four, I would start counting where ever my gaze landed and count clockwise to four and that would be the color I used. My decisions about direction, composition, or amount time with that particular string were quick. I had to work in a rhythmic motion because I was stretching the yarn from one side of the 3 foot canvas to the other. It was about this intuitive gesture or natural movement of the body. It’s just tension that holds the piece together; another way chance dictated my actions was as I got further along in the process the nails became really loaded with yarn. Often one would slip off and cause that entire piece to pop off. Some of the thinner string would break off randomly and I would leave it when it did so. When anyone came into my studio I let them roll the die and choose the string, again, to limit my decisions. Once I got to a place I was comfortable with, I called in finished and walked away. This piece is probably something I’ll go back into again, but for its purpose now it’s complete.

Pics...

For Chance show

This is the very beginings I've my newest piece. It's on the wall now but will most likely be a hanging installation when its finished. It's about five feet long now and I'm planning on it being fifteen plus by the time its done.

Shelia

These are some amazing installations from Sheila Hicks. I'm working on some similar ideas and shapes, but I want to use found materials like old clothes. I've been  dying some old tee-shirts, cutting them into strips and crocheting them. The piece I have now has about a three foot diameter, but these inspire me to make them epic.

Weeks in

I had a good critique with Marc yesterday. I have been wrestling with the idea of painting each of the random assemblage pieces I've been working on, so we talked about the opportunities and options in that. He thought that the painting of the paper and cheese cloth piece was successful, because it made the viewer reconsider the function of each piece and the relationship between them. I'm still considering the different ways to display the two together to bring futher questions to their relationship. The pin-stripe suit fabric that I chose to stretch it with is its key success. It relates the two with a material interest but in a peculiar way, and by doing so, breaks down the simplicity of the realistic rendering.
We discussed the importance of the act of painting in understanding the assembled pieces. His thoughts were that photography might be a means to see the work differently as well. I think the layer of separation that might bring could be interesting. Using photos to see the work formally, to crop, or alter in some way, and then to paint from the photo rather then the prop. That, I think, will help my issues with the pair being redundant or quick.
More crits this week. I'm excited to get feedback from peers.