Swathes: An ongoing painting project for Research methods class.

Swathes: An ongoing painting project for Research methods class. 

One definition of swathe is to enfold or envelope as wrappings do. I believe my recent paintings exemplify a process of wrapping or layering of acrylic paint on inset wooden frames using a palette knife. The palette knife allows me to layer thick impasto interweaving and overlapping swathes of paint. When I was 17 years old, and a junior in High school, I had enrolled in earth science class. One project from our teacher was to create a volcano three dimensional model. I made mine out of plaster of Paris, coated it with gesso and painted it. I created more of an expressionistic model than a realistic one. I then joined the science club. Another project consisted of creating layers of stratification three dimensionally .I reviewed two dimensional illustrations, the kind with dot patterns, zig zags and crosshatch. Perhaps those experiences were buried only to recently resurface.

This summer I had located a number of small wood frames, the kind you can insert tiles or mosaic. I decided to repurpose these frames. The protrusions caused by raised lip molding allowed me to pile on or swathe if you will, impasto paint layers .I have also used textured paste medium to give my acrylic the consistency of cake icing. One of my undergraduate mentors used to joking say, I don’t paint, I butter in reaction to the great COBRA Dutch artist’s quote: I don’t paint, I hit! The buttering part is a good analogy for me.

My series of paintings, now numbering 20 plus evoke a kind of landscape feel. In fact, I find it more interesting to view these small format works on a tabletop. These works are topographical in scope. In the mid 1960’s my mother had taken me to see Stanley Kubrick’s 2001: A Space Odyssey. I had seen the film in its original Martin Cinerama format in St. Louis, Missouri. The theater boasted of a huge curved screen and three projectors giving the film a believable quality and a strange three dimensional effect. I distinctly remember the end of the famous slit screen technique which ended with aerial views of sea and mountains bathed in live action footage replete with negative image effects using color films and processing. Those eerie landscapes had an expressionistic feel to them, as the effect was to depict the multicolored landscape of Jupiter as the space probe descends to the planet.

Maya Lin’s Disappearing Bodies of Water and her topographical land art forms are also quite inspirational. They remind me of the ancient Mississippian mound builders of the past.

  Swath # 22, acrylic on wood, 11” x 15”

Thus, experiences of viewing and building models have informed these visual efforts cannot help but to associate my palette of intense colors and knife applications whereby, blobs of paint jostle between applications. It takes about three days for each painting to dry. Although beautiful, the color also reminds me of a toxic environment full of polluted land forms and irradiated soil. When the paint fully dries, the paint settles in on its own reminding me of how the earth’s surface appears as it recovers from severe weather or from the impact/impress of humankind in terms of construction, destruction and war.

Davis,Heather and Turpin,Etienne (2015. Art in the Anthropocene

Davis,Heather and Turpin,Etienne (2015. Art in the Anthropocene: Encounters among Aesthetics, Politics, Environments and Epistemologies. Open Humanities Press: London

I was largely unaware of the Anthropocene era in which we have lived since humankind industrialized the world (late 1700’s) and polluted it accordingly (then and now). From acid rain to plastics and smog, the carbon footprint has been felt. Scientist’s may measure these pollutants which may not be readily seen except for aftermath (like war) of environmental damage(s).The most nefarious is that which can be seen, i.e., plastics. These remain for eons of time as a testament of humankind’s progress –regress. It seems that we are all guilty in one way or another of contributing to this blight. This collection of essays has bolstered my awareness of this proposed contemporary era of time, not all believe.

A Summary of final quotes and points

By David E. Harmon

* The Anthropocene indifferently encircles both human affairs and the materiality of the planet, thus constituting a tool of ‘figuration” which makes visible inherited epistemological separations by radically destabilizing them.(p.63)
* The exhibition has been shaped throughout modernity by both the scientific positivity of the musicological institution and by the negativity of modernist aesthetic experience )p.64)
* It has been noted that Paul Crutzen, the Dutch chemist who coined the term Anthropocene, also proposed to link its origins to the invention ,in 1778, of the steam engine-that instrument with which humans began to dig into the earth in search of underground suns and ancestral forests ,seeking to transform their energy via calorific machines(p.64)
* The modern museums birth can be traced to the Reign of terror in Paris in 1793, with the parallel opening of the museum central des arts de la Republic in the louver and the museum nation ale d’histoire naturalle in the jar din des Pantes…As such, the museum performs a withdrawal that regulates and purifies the relation of the Cartesian subject with the contents of a world consequently

Garden of Stones by Andy Goldsworthy

The Garden of Stones

An outdoor installation work by Andy Goldsworthy

A visitation by David Harmon

On 10/15/16, Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York City

The Garden of Stones is an inspirational work and quite well suited for its purpose as a creative permanent installation piece in remembrance to the Jewish Holocaust. I had seen it on an overcast day which allowed for an even contrast of viewing as each stone held its own identity within the community of similar stones. Within the distance one can see the Statue of Liberty standing in the South Ferry, NY Harbor. Fragility and tenacity are key words to describe this work of art. Life is both fragile and tough, bearing the forces of weather and humankind. 18 stones (really boulders) were laid out to form a pathway with very small passages .The garden is 4,150 square feet. The stones chosen were boulders that he had selected from Barre, Vermont. He had chosen only those stones free of flaws. The sizes range from 3-13 tons. Goldsworthy has always become familiar with the processes of selection and familiarity with natural materials he uses with his work. The interior of the stones had returned to a molten state in which they had originally been formed. His technique utilized coring, water jet cutting and flame torching. Granite is a fire-formed stone, so Goldsworthy saw an immediate connection with his Holocaust motif. Dwarf oak trees were chosen as small saplings which will eventually grow to over 12 feet tall.

Thus, the trees will symbolize fragility within the relationship of the permanency of stone .The boulders are not just containers but form a symbolic symbiotic relationship as the expansion of the tree fuses with the permanency of the granite. For Goldsworhty,The initial inspiration for this work was as follows:

One of the most powerful images I have of New York was staying in a hotel on Broadway. My room was high up in the building, I think on the 17^th store. I looked out the window of my room and noticed that a tree had seeded itself, growing out of the side of the building opposite. It was for me a potent image of nature’s ability to grow, even in the most difficult circumstances.

I often think of the prescient painting by Thomas Cole,Desolation,1836.It was inspired by the following:

There is the moral of all human tales;

'Tis but the same rehearsal of the past.
First freedom and then Glory – when that fails,

Wealth, vice, corruption – barbarism at last.

And History, with all her volumes vast,
Hath but one page...

                                                                                        From Lord Byron's Childe Harold's Pilgrimage

 

 Goldsworthy’s proposal was chosen from 60 internationally renowned artists. An installation referred to as the Timekeeper, allows museum guests to view the garden via time lapsed photography. One can see the garden when they are not there to witness growth. Jewish tradition has family members visiting the grave stone and placing stones on the site as a visual symbol of remembrance usually one year to the date of a person’s death. Garden of Stones magnifies this tradition by the growth of the tree within the solidity of the stone which implies the famous saying

Never forget.

Garden of Stones reflects the inherent tension between the ephemeral and the timeless, between young and old, and between the unyielding and the pliable. More importantly, it demonstrates how elements of nature can survive in seemingly impossible places…Goldsworthy brings stone and trees together as a representation of life cycles intertwined. As a living memorial, the garden is a tribute to the hardship, struggle, tenacity, and survival experienced by those who endured the Holocaust. This contemplative space, meant to be revisited and experienced differently over time as the garden matures, is visible from almost every floor of the Museum. The effect of time on humans and nature, a key factor in Goldsworthy's work, is richly present in Garden of Stones, as the sculpture will be viewed, as well as cared for, by future generations.(From a plaque near the art work)

Art in the Anthropocene .Edited by Heather Davis and Etienne Turpin

This is my first book to read. "Encounters Among Aesthetics,Politics,Environments and epistemologies.

Art & Death:Lives Between the Fifth Assessment & the Sixth Extinction

pp.3-22:  

• Shouldn't art address human suffering and struggle?
• What does it mean  for art to enter the Anthropocene?
• Art is a vehicle of aesthesis .
• 1st: Sensorial phenomena:We live in an increasingly diminished and toxic world.
• 2nd:The visually oriented world in which we live contains many modes including data visualization,satellite imagery,climate models of a whole earth.
• 3rd: art provides a polyarchic site of experimentation for living in a damaged world
• 1789:James Watt invents the steam engine exceeding wind and water power
• The end of WW2 ,1945 with the irradiated soil of both Nagasaki and Hiroshima
• The great acceleration is the postwar growth in population,consumption and technological development
• The population of the world is 7 billion people
• Anthropocene invites we as human beings in the question of whether or not we are arriving or leaving
• Environmental justice begs the question what worlds are we creating while living in our diminished present
• The Capitalocene is the alternative to the Anthropocene in that it focuses solely on profit ;colonialism and slavery;industrialization of agriculture,resource extraction,energy production and petrochemicals
• A homolith is created via aesthetic,creative and imaginative acts in contemporary art practice
• Anthropocentric mountains are now so ordinary, we do not notice them.This used to be a sublime experience;The sky I had seen 10/1/16 at approximately 6: 30 pm in Austin,I describe as extraordinarily beautiful -sublime,on par with a Monet ,yet it was fleeting and quickly had become a skyfull of grey clouds, devoid of intense color;I later on made a connection with our earth in imbalance,becoming, albeit slowly, toxic 
• Shock can become familiar.Shock can wear off-Susan Sontag(it is easy to think hear of the Jewish Holocaust,and yet we are having an earth equivalent
• Art and poetry helps us to move beyond our temporal frameworks ,thinking beyond them
• Krzysztof Wodiczko's work with the homeless: urban space ,the product of conflict(today I saw a homeless person in Killeen;he may or not be a veteran although many are);the defying of the social order
•  Reevaluation of the traditional art museum:how can you fit earth art into this space/?you can't.I also think of the numerous instances of world rock art etched into the earth or into rock faces;Painter John Graham wrote in Systems and Dialectics of Art that art museums are the repositories of the past, a bit like mausoleums
• Numeracy becomes important : 400PPM of atmospheric CO2,-the future of earth systems,etc.
• Science: disassociated,abstract,ignorant of the experiential(human smell/taste);perhaps we seewhat we are paying close attention to ;intentional blindness?  
• the intensity of the Anthropocene:  the worlds we we make through our art practice,science and research are not made to measure
• The future takes us more and more away from the concept of home.We are not free but lost-jean Luc Goddrad and Anne-Marie Mieville;I thought of the Moody Blues song Lost in a Lost World: I woke today, I was crying
  Lost in a lost world
  So many people are dying
  Lost in a lost world
  Some of them are living an illusion
  Bounded by the darkness of their minds
  In their eyes, it's nation against nation against nation
  With racial pride
  Sounds...
  Thinking only of themselves
  They shun the light
  (Shun the light)
  They think they're right
  (Think they're right)
  Living in their empty shells
• The world is all.That is the case -Raqs Media Collective

 
 

EARTH INTERFACE:Artists who intersect and create art within the Earth