From here to there and back
On the afternoon of Saturday, May 11th, I had a couple of talks at the Bridgette Mayer Gallery. I wanted to do it this coming weekend, the last for my show, All Of This Is True, which closes this Saturday, the 18th. I’m not in Philly this weekend (more about that later). Anyway, the talks I gave, at 1 and 3pm went really well. There were about 6 people the first time and about 11 or so at the 3pm slot. I gave an overview of the show with some thoughts about how the title came about and related concepts, and then moved to highlighting specific pieces and series in the show.
I’ve known this for a long time, but it bears repeating: Nothing gets people more invested in what you’re doing as an artist and in you, personally, than when they can experience the work through your own words. Being able to bring people into your creative world ideas by speaking and writing about your work is a powerful tool that needs developing. Yes, the work should be strong enough to tell its own story, but meeting the audience at least half way has been a goal of mine for years. You don’t have to give away all of your secrets and not everything that you experienced while making the work is necessary for people to know. Guiding them to a point and allowing them to fill in the blanks makes for a better artistic experience for the viewer, in my view, especially if you’re making non-objective or abstract work.
Yesterday, 5.16.24, I flew down to Orlando where I’ll be working on a mural project over the weekend. I had a window seat and since I don’t usually have the window seat while traveling (I usually reserved that for my girlfriend, Julia), I spent a lot of time looking out at the skies, when I wasn’t sleeping. At one point, we were out of the cloud cover of the northeast and high enough to be above other clouds. I couldn’t resist taking a shot of this field of clouds that looked like it was laid out in a grid formation, like a cloud farm. I’m sure there’s a sci-fi story around with cloud farming as part of a story arc.
It’s a pretty striking view as is, but inverting the image brings out a whole world of other weirdness and instability. Looking at it this way makes me have an almost uncontrollable feeling of falling from the sky and “falling up” at the same time. It’s a wild mix of dread and freedom at the same time.
Inscribe Haven, part 1
**Note: I’m writing this from home on Tuesday, May 21st, after a four day marathon of mural painting. I returned late last night completely exhausted and a day later than planned. I’m still recovering today. It’s amazing that I’m sitting here still typing coherently**
So, anyway, here I am, trying to get you caught up on what took place over the weekend in Orlando, Florida with my just-completed mural project mentioned above with the cloud pics. For context, this project was for a communal covered poolside patio area in a new apartment development called Inscribe Apartments. First, the wall was big, 11 x 25 feet. I knew the dimensions beforehand and had to make certain calculations based on those numbers, but still when you’re in front of a new wall of this size, it feels enormous. Second, as you can see in the photos, it’s not a flat wall. It’s made of a material known as fiber cement siding, aka, “Hardie Board” in the US that’s applied in an overlapping design, the same as vinyl siding. In other words, not flat. I also knew that going in, but I don’t think it sank in until I was in front of it.
There was no backing out, so I put on my best game face and dove in. Primed the wall in a short time and was able to lay down the base color in the same day. I think I started painting some lines in on Friday, as well. Honestly, it’s all a fog now. It was a fog then, as well, because of the humidity. I left Philly with 60ish degree weather and Orlando was already sporting 90 degree temps with high humidity. I was not ready for that! I had the right clothes, but I wasn’t ready to be working in those conditions all day. Thankfully, the patio was covered because otherwise, I don’t know if I would’ve been able to deal with it. I had plenty of water and snacks, so that helped a lot. There were some breezes and a short rainfall here and there that helped.
Back to the wall. So, the uneven surface posed a serious challenge to how I worked and how the mural would potentially look like when completed. It slowed down the process tremendously because I had to take care to paint the under edges of the slats and try to maintain line integrity at the same time with lines going in multiple directions and making sure the overall image came as close as possible to the mock-up. Honestly, I was cursing the material all the way through the process. I’ll never work on Hardie Board again, if I can help it.
I still feel a little nervous working on scaffolding, even though I’m very glad that I had it for this project. The hardest part was having to climb up and down so much in order to keep up with laying out lines. A projector would have helped, but there wasn’t enough room to set one up and there was a fireplace element across from the wall that would’ve impeded the image projection.
By Saturday, things started taking better shape. There was a planned art event that I was leading with some of the residents and their children. Bridgette had sent out an event invite with 20 people signing up and about 8, including kids, actually showing up. That turned out really well. I led a simple exercise that was the visual art equivalent of “Telephone”, where you start working on a piece and pass it off to the next person to work on until everyone has contributed by the time the original returns to its owner. It’s a small lesson about collaboration and “letting go”. We did about four rounds before we stopped. Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and a couple were genuinely surprised at how they felt afterwards. It made me happy to know that this exercise worked with adults and kids alike.
I’m going to stop here for this post because there’s more to tell. I’ll put up a part two later this week, but for now, I’m going to catch up on some much-needed sleep. Thanks for reading and see you soon!