More Posittives Today

Well, my camera battery died, so no photos.  Pretty unthinkable.  Got three new molds in the dryer, and have three more ready to start the mold making process.  A few more to get ready tomorrow, then Sunday will be a big and crazy day of mold making.  Had some great Mexican food tonight.  Who knew you could find Huaraches in Wisconsin.  

Kohler Day 2

Well, I have finished my second day and finished three molds.  Here are some images from today. These are Sun Koo's large tiles being poured. 

My first positives are ready and my molds complete after a long day.

positives

ready to pour plaster

side one finished

This whole process took 3 times longer than I thought, but that is too be expected.

finally cleaned up

ready to go again

 I finished around 8:30pm, but not before saving one of the molds from a blow out.  I think I'll still with the boards even if it wastes plaster. Nobody likes a blow out!  The mold survived and I even poured the third section before I went home.

Saved from a blow out

Until tomorrow. 

First Day at Kohler

Well today was my first day at Kohler.  As you can see my space is pretty much empty.  I'm working with SunKoo in the studio, that's his piece there, ready to be fired.  It is pretty great just being here.

 

View of my empty studio

Common area

As you can see some big molds are being cast.  I did some drawing and thinking today and made a few things to cast to take me through the process.

First positive!

Pretty cool being in the factory.  I remember my first trip to Kohler when I was an undergraduate at KCAI, so being here is really great.  Check out the factory.

Factory casting floor

I will try to post about my time and progress as the residency progresses

Studio Works!

I've been busy in the studio and getting ready to go to Kohler in a week and a half.  I'm trying to finish my work for an upcoming exhibition before I leave, so it has been a bit crazy.  You can check out the show at ArtStart in Rhinelander, WI starting November 30th.  Here is some of the work in progress.

Many thanks to Reid Schoonover and Pat for the use of the shop and their help in making the forms.  It never would have been level without your help!  The cookies were great too.

This is one of two free standing wooden forms.  The bells will balance from this piece and I should have some working wall pieces put together soon to test out the balance. 

I hope to have about a hundred bells.  They are found bells from the thrift store, their hand made replicas and cast multiples.  Some of these are complete and strung together, but some are yet to be fired.

This image shows bits and pieces of three pieces.  I feel like a frantic making machine and then I have to slow down and focus on drawing for a while.  Most of the drawings are from old family photographs and take a lot of drawing and redrawing over and over.  The images overlap with those of strangers and everyday objects that have some significance to the past of my memory.

I've been thinking about the images a lot and in a way am getting to know them through the process of drawing.  When I was sifting through the photos, my daughter would ask me who they were and then would ask if they were dead.  The images are recreating an untouchable past in some way.

Then the images are drawn on the porcelain forms with pencil and after that with glaze pencil before they are glazed.  I have some finished test pieces and there are three others in the kiln right now, but I haven't seen them. 

The forms make the images permanent and the idea sort of reminds me of the daguerreotypes sometimes affixed to headstones from the past.  More to come as I get them finished.  Hope to complete most of this by the end of next week to allow for some breathing room.

Reading of interest for Sculpture 1

Here is an interesting article about the artist, Swoon "Life of Wonderment".  She talks about the blurring between art and activism and what motivates her in her work. Be sure to check out the short video and slide show about her and her work using this link to the NY Times article; http://nyti.ms/1vc9I4k


















I find the idea of the miniature fascinating and was drawn to this article, about pre-industrial coltoys and miniatures, entitled "Tiny Furniture: A Diaspora of Dollhouses".  You can check out the exhibition, entitled, "Bucket Town: Four Centuries of Toymaking and Coopering in Hingham" at the Old Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts and other links to miniatures in the article. These are objects that were made to be touched and lived with in a different was than art.  http://nyti.ms/1mqoCdU

Armando Ramos Interview- Studio Visit

Armando Ramos is a sculptor who works in a variety of materials.  He is an Assistant Professor of Art at Valley City State University in Valley City, North Dakota.  I had a chance to visit with him over the Thanksgiving weekend.

Armando Ramos in his studio

 You work with 2D images in conjunction with your sculptural work.  How do they work together and influence each other?

I try to approach them in the same way.  Having a small studio forced me to look at all the work as one because I wasn’t able to separate the two into mental compartments or spaces.  I began to look at what material was most appropriate to the idea, rather that beginning with the materials.  When you’re a student, a material is often associated with a department, but it isn’t in the real world.  Stuff is just stuff and you have to find the materials that have the right properties for your idea.  It’s all the same work to me.

Altered paintings

Your work references pop culture and childhood.  How do you find images and objects for your work?

When I started out I would choose images that had meaning to me, like a specific memory.  Latin American pop culture or imagery that I had experienced as a young person was something I gravitated to.  Now I’m more interested in objects and images that aren’t really about me, but have a wider reach.  I went to the historical museum in Minneapolis and saw some images of Americana from the 1920’s.  These were ads and boxes from old toys and I started to think about them as a sort of propaganda that communicates this fake idea about how the ideal world is or should be.  The repeated image reinforces this and gives it strength. This power of images to persuade and train us to think along a certain line is something that I’m interested in.  I want my own work to be a process of revealing how and questioning how images function.

I used to go to the thrift stores or junk stores for inspiration, but I also find things on the street or at junk sales. I also buy postcards and write down words and phrases that are interesting and ambiguous.  The illustrations in old books are something I look at and will sometimes scan to create a template for a piece.

Finished work in the studio

Studio

What do you think about the life these objects and images had before you encountered them or do you? 

The very idea that someone used these things makes them compelling to me.  They were precious to someone.  I have a piece cast from a plastic, Halloween ghost and someone had to keep it in their basement, clean it and plug it in for Halloween year after year.  The history still lives in the object, but by remaking it I can somehow reveal other parts of it that the original owner never saw.  The ghost is a weird, phallic image, but the family that owned it probably had more that one and never saw that in them.

How do you think your background in ceramics has influenced your approach to sculpture?  

When I began working with clay, I really responded to the material and the process of making, but I realize that I approach material in general in a more direct sculptural way.  It is a complex material that demands planning and thinking ahead, but I wish I had begun to work with other materials earlier. 

Ceramic heads, finished and unfired, in the studio

You have a lot of toys and other objects around the studio, do you keep these around as influences?

I see them as objects of interest.  Either the tactile quality or color are things I think about in my own work.  I’m also interested in the relationships between the parts.

What themes run through your work?

The tension and awkwardness in the vulnerability of objects is something I like to explore.  I’m interested in looking at another side of things that we ordinarily don’t look at.  Something soft and comforting might become something ominous, or a sentimental decorative object that has a specific meaning in a holiday or in childhood might be altered to communicate an entirely different meaning.  Visual communication is at the heart of it.  I’m really trying to explore modes of visual communication and how the disruption of that communication can reveal the process itself.

Painting the wood sections of a sculpture

Do you work in series or have you been making individual pieces? 

I think I have been working in individual pieces, but my work is going more towards the direction of series.  This last piece I’ve been working with is a Halloween ghost and I cast them in series in different colors.  Right now they are in groupings of three or four, but I want to make a mass installation of 40 or 50 in a space.  A lot of my work is related even if the pieces are different, but the repetition is definitely something that I’m working with.  It also takes some discipline to work through an idea entirely and not get distracted by something else.  The  series allows me to play out an idea and realize it’s potential.

What questions do you ask yourself when you are making work?

I ask myself what is the most essential part that I want to get across.  How can I communicate this in the most basic way.  I began the ghosts with an interest in a nativity scene from the thrift store, but it was gone when I went back to get it.  So I began to think about what elements of it interested me.  The ghost was sort of a bastardization of something that was sacred.  The outdoor nativity scene that I remembered from my childhood had been coopted into the fake sacred image for a completely secular ‘holiday’.  The image was something that I thought revealed the absurdity of we use images to construct meaning.

Finished ceramic 'Ghosts' in the studio

What are you working on now and what do you have coming up? 

I’ve been finishing a group of work to install at an exhibition at the Red Lodge Clay Center in Montana.  I plan on working with more of the repeated image.  I’m also in an exhibition at the Rosalux gallery in Minneapolis starting in December and going through the first week of January and in a survey exhibition of contemporary ceramics in the Midwest at the Plains Art Museum in Fargo, North Dakota.

Iowa Collaborative Exhibition at Mt Mercy

I have finally prepared the images from the exhibition at Mt Mercy University in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.  Craig and I are back in the studio preparing for exhibitions in November.

Topography, Gallery View

 We wanted to spread the flower and leaf forms throughout the gallery so that they became more of an environment and wanted to use a direct way of presenting them that wasn't too complicated. Craig and Andy set these up in the space leaving room for viewers to walk through them.

Topography, detail,  stoneware, wood, 2013

The wall installation, or Topography 2 includes hand pinched rods or leaves, objects and lattice like forms in porcelain.  When we were doing our residency in Alpena, MI, I was interested in the movement of the grasses and how they seemed to not only be different from moment to moment, but how they both hid and revealed other elements of the landscape.  The wetland was also surrounded by the city and the sounds of traffic or the glimpses of man made forms were ever present in the landscape as well.

Topography 2, porcelain, wood, copper wire, metal brackets, 2013

We toyed with different configurations for the installation and assemblage of this piece, but knew we wanted them to come out into space from the wall so that they could have subtle movement during the exhibition and that the shadows could become a part of the works themselves.

Topography 2, detail

This piece also allowed us to explore the idea of making something that is made from a series of forms anyone can make.  Although I've now gotten carried away with the cage-like forms.

We want to play around with the size and configuration of the piece, but right now there are four sections in the installation.

Marsh, is our series on the second wall.  They are forms containing cast found and natural images and pinched coils.

We are returning to Mt Mercy next week to give a lecture and photograph the work.  The block shapes below are made with the casting of natural forms we collected, mixed in with cast found objects.

 

The pieces are about the intersection of man and nature.

 

They are influenced by the marsh, the movement of the water and organic forms as well as the influence of the people on the land.  This is another piece that we are still playing with and hope to expand in a different configuration. 

We are also giving a talk about our work in the 2013 Wisconsin Triennial at the Madison Museum of Contemporary Art.  The talk is at 4:45pm, Monday, October 7th at Lawrence University, at the Wriston Art Center in the Wriston Auditorium, with a reception to follow.  Lawrence is in Appleton, Wisconsin. You can also check out the Events section of their site.  http://www.mmoca.org/2013-triennial/events

I hope to be able to update some more, but have been busy with school, Plato is up next, so I may be missing for a while.