Progress

It's been bleak. Terrifying.
The days are getting longer, I hear.

I finished our chores. Now I get to make a mess of all of this information.

There's still work to do.
Ain't that just the way.

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Now available as 9"x17" full color posters!

Sculpture Collaging

within the continued practice of cannibalizing my own work, i have begun to assemble 

collage-work using manipulated images from details of my sculptures. 

this allows me to retain favoritism of certain"moments" in the materials.

i can isolate certain textures i may have an internal struggle regarding preciousness in the details...

zoom-in, zero-in.

rescale, retrace, relocate

build new landscapes, explosions, textures..

piece them together with images of classical sculpture belonging to "the people"

found online. found in cemeteries and public parks- strangers made of stone . 

now inhabit a new terrain.

(both in process)

carnal-muppet-pile/ soft-sculpture gone-awry

I'm creating a second "piling" of what I'm now considering raw material. 

Using parts and pieces of what have been/ could still be workable sculpture units to rearrange 

a new tangle of textures and associations to materials, color and condition.

There's something unsettlingly satisfying about "destroying" my own labor. I haven't unleashed my full

hurricane on it yet, still a bit timid about ripping my own stitches...but trying to get to a place where I can have the confidence to know that these actions are more about elevation than masochism.

(this shot's all about the feather)

 The abstraction seems to hold more power for me now than any literal narrative that might 

have previously overshadowed any threshold to individual interpretive image tripping.

and it's one way to get over being so darn "precious"...

unnatural dissaster

In the studio ...
dismantling,
reconfiguring,
and otherwise turning much-labored over sculptures into a curated pile of debris.

i'm building a "backdrop"/ environment for some 2-D digital format work I will be doing in a collaboration with Torsten Zenas Burns who has shot video using parts of a installation I composed titled , "Procession" last year.

ironing board with cut-up uniform

seeds, sponges, ruffles

It'll be just like a Katie Perry video, only nothing like that at all.

building the my lair.

slashings and trappings

working on resolving some "display issues"- trying to both hone and open up the narrative- to set a  stage but not tell any particular story.
this time, the chair will be shown facing the wall (on which will be mounted a mourning embroidery from the museum's collection). the wall is to be partially obscured by a slashed window sheer which will hang at a short distance from it - situated across the lap of the chair, the curtain is cut to ribbons - with longer, wider slits framing a vignette toward the center. the view through the curtain would be best accessed if one was to be seated in this (inaccessible) chair- the side views are obsolete because the curtain will hang across the opening to an inset in the gallery wall. .
the same curtain sheers were used to create the little bombs that carry the broken china set. 

i've incorporated some of the window sheer scraps into these weepers

Frank is suspicious of the aura.

working out the details..-
 the (cut to ribbons) window shear will be hung across the top of the opening of
an inset in the wall of the gallery.
the inset is approx. 4'wide x 1.5'deep-
so the curtain would be about a foot closer to the wall behind it
on which will be hung
a mourning embroidery from the museum's collection.
(got that?)

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Also, I started the bear trap "replica":

paper mache victorian snaggletooth
in process...

odious tedious fungus

Expanding on the project "Repeat", I'm creating a new texture that creeps over the walls. 

Like an ivy. Like an illness. 

A joyously weeping wound constructed of pieced together fragments of memory I can't get to.

Because it isn't mine. Because it wouldn't have me anyway.

"repeat" refers to both cyclical nature of history
 and
to the length of the pattern in the fabric
 before it repeats again..

cut-out upholstery fabric pieced back together
in a less-constrained manner

working in some fragments of an afghan
my great-grandmother crocheted. we have never met.
it reeks of mothballs. 

with a touch of trademarked red felt viscera 

 much work to do in the cutting and pasting world...much productive stillness in the studio in weeks to come. i welcome the company of story-tellers and nimble-fingered friends... and netflix.

                                                         (and frank)................

thanks, little dude. you are truly the best studio-mate.

 And- here's some other curiosities from my workbench:

broken dishes 

Diagram A collage under waxed paper

that's my sentiment, exactly.

                                             (* I'M ALWAYS REPEATING MYSELF*)

I'm preparing for a show at Historic Northampton in September. 

I'll be reworking some older pieces 

and making some new images and objects. 

The piece, titled "Legacy Strike" 

will interface articles from the museum's permanent collection 

with items which I have inherited from relatives. 

I'll be creating new narratives that exploit 

and explore my complicated relationship 

with my family, and by extension- 

these objects.

here come the bombs!

escape ladder made from dresses my mother and maternal aunt wore as infants

missiles/sinkers

containing shards of a broken china set i receieved in the mail from my mother

working things out in the studio

phantom....

rocketeer cranks out the goods