and just in case anyone was
wondering here is a colorwheel
breakdown of previously
pictured clothing

i agree with mw that responding to other posts is a good idea so...



this photo is a response to jordan's (at least i think it was jordan's) earlier post about where we keep our clothes. i don't usually keep mine in neat, rainbow organized piles under the window but on this particular day i did.

some thoughts

Hey everybody. Is someone going to bring a laptop (if FA4 has internet) or print out our posts to discuss next Tuesday?

It seems like we all missed a great panel discussion at CAA this week on just the kind of stuff that keeps coming up on this blog:

"Mitigating the Obvious Culture and the Search for Broader Humanity: Bridging the Gap Between Us and Them"

http://roski.usc.edu/news/faculty-joshua-decter-and-adju.html

I'm not sure what ended up being talked about there, but I think the summary in the above link is relevant to our discussion of audience.

Today I was thinking about the dichotomies that we set up or are set up by others in the contemporary understanding and discourse of art: public/private, personal/community-based, political/reactionary, status-quo/oppositional, technological/craft-based, skilled/de-skilled, etc. Is there somehow an art practice can navigate the space between these types of categories?

mw

Seeing Face: Is that Kevin?

Notes from the week with a poem

Heroines

Some things to do:

listen to Alma Gluck

get slippers for the studio (painting in boots is heavy)

view Douglas Gordon and Philippe Parrero's portrait of Zidane

Colors:

street walking orange

side stepping blue

back alley green

casino pink

hotel yellow

I find beauty in the most random places, what inspires you when your out and about?  

public art- Thomas Thoune

In further response to MW's blog and a conversation with my stepbrother/mentor.. Thomas Thoune I want to share an image of work of Tom's art practice of large scale public art.  Here is a close-up detail image from a wall installation of his  ..."Where east Meets West" . It's inspired by the industry in this area and the cogs that kept the machinery going. 80 percent of the china was donated by the community.. including china from the 1800's. Its installed along a stop of the cities new light rail system that connects the city.  Currently Tom is attending a residency where he is working with similar materials in collaboration with local high school students. He has expanded his practice from solo work on beautiful paintings to utilizing craft techniques in collaborations with others from the community and assistant's (lucky me.. I was one of them). This sort of practice creates a great energy about it which resulted in media coverage and camaraderie in the community that a solo practice somehow negates in the same way. In what way does this collaboration bring importance to the meaning of the work? What dialogue does this work bring up for other artists who mainly partake in a solo practice? -xtina

institutional spaces

Well I started out with the idea of posting art in the places shown here, but then I either chickened out, or I just found myself more interested in the places themselves, that, if we are to discuss public places, are ever present in our daily lives.

When art is placed in these spaces, I don't necessarily like how it acts. At the same time, such spaces share something with the 'white cube'. What, if anything, would be the appropriate art action or display in these places? Art as resistance? Beautification? Reflection?

I've started to comment on other posts, I think if we started commenting it would liven this blog up. And now that the blog headings are no longer in Chinese (who might have done that?) it's easier to see where the post comment button is :-D... Also, is there a way for us to display comments automatically on the home page with the original posts?

MW

on rules and painting

• Yesterday I worked on a painting with the idea of childhood in mind.  Painting from a place of childhood memory and space.  This is something that I have not done in a while, I have somewhat avoided the subject of childhood entirely...  As I exclusively painted from this place for so long...somehow I just thought the subject was done and over with for me.  Yet in the last few months,  though I have felt confident in the moment of working on my paintings, in the same moment I could feel very distant and unconvinced of the subject matter itself.  So in challenging my growth and attempting to pay attention to the things that I love about the way of painting, I have been scheduling painting time in every day.  I know, well,?? isn't this what we should be doing every day?  Well, yes, and i am guilty of painting in my head more that actualizing it on canvas.  So when someone asks if I am working, well of course I am.  I am always working, always painting, always thinking of my images and of my icons.   This week as I painted, my critical mind kept on going crazy with rules about what I can or should and should not do in my work.  A funny thing happened in this place of awareness.  I realized that in an attempt to capture the feelings of a childhood space,  I  found myself painting in beautiful gelato tones of pinks, yellows, and deep maroons, and just as I began to enjoy it I found myself resisting the tones, my brush movement, my paint.  I became frustrated, and disconnected.  My mind was placing rules on the use of color, it kept on telling me "no, no, these are not your colors, these colors are Christina's,  you don't use these, not like this"    
  

I disregarded my critic voice and thoroughly enjoyed using "Christina's colors".  A lovely palette to work with indeed.  

pocket change

This week I opened my first curatorial exhibition... pocket change. It is a rewarding experience in many ways.. particularly getting an inside look in 6 artists processes. It also brought up questions about what is a great exhibition.... how do you lead a viewer through an exhibition space.. and  how to discuss art with the public. A number of people attended the opening whom have rare contact with the art world... how do we verbally engage the self-conciouse laymen? Should we participate in teaching them that their experience is just as valid as an elite art educated person? How and what else can be discussed about this topic? It seems to connect well with the artist practicing in public. What do you think?

X

Christina

aka. wanderwoman

red dresser

so this isn't hanging in my space but it is in my space. I am referring to the dresser. I painted it red. It was sitting in storage in a garage in Oregon and I decided to bring it with me. It's actually quite nice as far as dressers go, or at least, it has some age, and some history. However I am somewhat averse to furniture, or maybe to static forms of organization. 

 How do we organize our clothing?  

this is hanging in my space

Rolling Rolling Rolling...

So I took Catherine's Challenge with Ball rolling rather literally. I've been noticing a propensity to invest myself in a situation visually, giving value to the rather mundane elements of a specific local through creating visuals of them. Isolation and juxtaposition create new imagery that (in my mind at least) gains value as an object worthy of investigation.

Part 1: Studio practice. Took a tennis ball rolled it in gesso and sent it sliding down my canvas board. Went outside to find an image to paint on top.

Part 2: Stopped on a residential street, rolled the ball down it till it stopped. Turned around until I found an interesting or mundane object, and photographed it. (Telephone Pole) Also noticed the immaculatly trimmed trees overhanging the road. Researched trimming procedures and regulatory heights. Did you know that there must be an 8 ft radius around a telephone pole that is cleared of any tree branches? Also that on a residential street, Trees overhanging a road must be no lower than 12ft, and 8ft over a sidewalk.

I am thinking about borders and required spaces for the objects that I am now creating. Are there rules about how far apart these images need to be? What happens when they break the rules? How does this contribute to either assisting or subverting narrative?

Jogger Art Walk

I often pack my stroller with my child and walk to the local park.

Today I packed my stroller with the craft made letters 

A-R-T- and displayed them on the exterior park fence.

Im interested in the anonymous nature that a stroller adds to me as a person and the assumptions that are made. By affixing the word ART using natural elements i brought together craft and gardening which are typical hobbies of a suburban mom.

 I hope that this also brings a curiosity to the viewer. -Xtina- aka. Wander Woman

Irvine

My ball (see below post) ended up in the mosquito breeding ground behind my apartment in Verano Place, the UC Irvine graduate and family housing complex.

I also took some photos in Irvine today as research. The paintings I'm working on lately are based on photographs of places where I've lived or visited for some time. The work (I think) has to do with both personal experience of these places and the ideology of how these places are represented. The images I've been working with are mostly from before moving out here and I hope Southern CA images will start creeping in...

If today's post is not fully in the spirit of the wandering studio, I'm trying to develop a short project with a more 'interventionist' (this word I'm taking from http://www.massmoca.org/event_details.php?id=38) for later this month.

For an interesting news story from a few years ago based in Irvine (something that could translate into some narrative art?) see http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2002/10/30/60minutes/main527530.shtml.

Enjoy! -MW

lets get the ball rolling...

get a ball,
take it to a hill,
put it down,
make a mark where it stops.
draw or take a picture.
post.