A Thin Veneer

work in progress

November 2000

I completed my MFA, exhibiting twelve pieces. I included the personal story that led to the work in a small pamphlet modeled after the type given at the local historical society (digest sized, saddle stapled, on heavy cream paper).

Technical Notes:
The photographs were made with a Banner camera using 120mm Kodak Tri-X film. The negatives were then scanned with a Umax Astra 2200 in transmissive mode set for color positives (a few were made from scans of the contact prints). Most of those files ranged in size from 20-40mgs., and were usually at a resolution of 300dpi. All digital manipulations were done in Adobe Photoshop v5.5. The prints were made at Siegan Design in San Diego, on a Hewlett-Packard 2500 CP inkjet printer using PosterShop software for set-up. The canvas is designed for use on large-format inkjet printers, and is gessoed to archival standards. The ink is pigment-based, and on this canvas is rated to last without changes for approximately 100 years under normal indoor light exposure. The prints are adhered to the plywood with encaustic medium.

Thanks to:
Faculty Advisors: Adriene Jenik, Chandra Mukerji, Phel Steinmetz, and David Antin. Gerry DiCarlo of the OASIS Writing Program. Kate Hare for the encaustic. Jamie McCracken for his persistence in printing. Gary Ghirardi for the lighting consult. Sallie Ann Glassman. Haley. Tom and Mary Nee for everything.

March 2000

I made a great move in the work while working with the encaustic - I cut up one of the prints and collaged the pieces. After I finished I discovered that when I set the piece up vertically I had created another chair without knowing it. I wasn't really satisfied with the physical texture of the collaged piece, but I did like the image, so I decided to collage in the computer. I really liked the idea of making multiple chairs, mistaken chairs - reflecting the way we patch together memories, making mistakes as the memories age.

December 1999

Just discovered a great technique that I think will really be important for this project. Encaustic. Got some encaustic medium from fellow grad Katie Hare, and discovered that it doesn't interact with the ink!! I expected it to make the ink soft and cause it to run. Silly me, just because it's liquid doesn't mean it's water - the ink isn't waterproof, but so what - it's wax! Found that it really got me closer to the kind of texture I want with the canvas. I can also use it to adhere the canvas to the plywood. I had hoped to have the canvas seperate for storage and transport purposes, but I really like the effect of the canvas and wood coming together as one.

Critique Documentation - Fall 99

Progress so far:

My questions for crit committee:

• Materials / presentation; ideas for continuity / coalesce with ideas
• Writing: continuity with art in style, in and out of focus, etc.
• Mapping: vague now - communicate through process, collective vs. personal.

My ideas brought to crit:

• The physical evidence of memory
• Communicate through process of mapping
• Edge of recognition / existence / memory - stimulate that edge
• Layers of memory maps / systems - collective / personal
• Collective systems of recognition - mistaken for personal
• Reliquary / signifier for memories - object
• Reconstruction of memory
• Visualize struggle to remember - when that begins to disappear (which it is always), they're always disappearing as we struggle to keep them
• Collectivity of memory obscured by overlay of personal
• Edge not clearly marked, this is where something is always missing, like edge of sight
• Shared recollection
• Nostalgic but slightly uneasy (another edge)
• Demonstrating decay
• Edge where response is strong, but not clearly marked
• Have photographs weakened our memory? Have they taken the place of oral history, or are they acting as a system of mnemotechnics?

Ideas and Suggestions from the crit:

• Use an informal presentation to match the informality of the work - leaning is nice.
• Go farther with materials, surface, think about adding material that may not be seen to enliven / activate - it may come out in other ways. May be metaphorical / ritual.
• What holds your ideas together, what is the center, the framework?
• Tension is created by seductive quality of image juxtaposed with its digitization which is not seductive.
• Resonance, like experienced through music - this is what I'm trying to capture. Comes from upbringing with classical and experimental music, complex music - also from punk - visceral.
• Digital and "natural" are two different terrains to map
• Aboriginal maps - not just about visual terrain
• Memory breaking down before your eyes
• Memory itself is in process
• Book - "Art of Memory" by Yates
• Writing - you can write clearly about tentative understanding.

November 1999

This project has developed into the focus of my MFA show.

I have a series of these images - degraded views of a pair of chairs that are in the woods in New Hampshire (near the unusual abode my mother has built).

I am having them printed on canvas, using a digital inkjet process. This produces a rich matte surface, with none of the delicacy of a photo or paper print. The depth and color of them vary. They will be large, making the chairs almost life size. I'm experimenting right now with different physical degradation processes - I want the physical object to more closely match the image in texture. I've buried two samples in my garden, and will try out other abuses in the coming weeks. They will be attached to plywood again, as the first version were last April. I am looking for a location to show them in that has some the same qualities as the work (rough, worn).

The ideas I've been thinking about center around a main idea that my photographs (and this applies to nrealy all of my work) are showing the physical evidence of memories. In this series the chairs act as a stand-in for the viewer, and also as a reliquery for their memories. While evocative in it's presentation, the openess of the image's significance, the loss of evidence, allows the viewer to put in place their own perspective and their own memories. I believe though, that often personal memories are really collective memories that we've taken as our own in order to have common connections with others on a subconscious level.

May 1999

The project called "a thin veneer," plywood and digitally distressed (as one viewer described it) photos of decrepit furniture, was my intended project for the Landscape Reading Group. The following statement was presented with the work in the gallery in April, 1999:

Plywood left to it's natural course will return to the earth. The furniture in the photos are being left to return to the earth also. The style of images parallels this transformation. The plywood is not a backing for the photos, but the primary focus of the piece. The photos draw the viewer in with their familiar, then the plywood is noticed.

Some of the ideas I'm thinking about:

Decay (of light, substance, structure, control, representation)
Taxonomy
Pelts
Erosion
Strata of earth (as seen on exposed land cuts and cliffs)
Categorization and Classification

Since this exhibit was presented as a work in progress I kept the statements brief, and left cards so viewers could write down their reactions to the work. Some of their thoughts, and my responses:

a few thing that could be investigated further: sublimation, abjection, nostalgia. the material is not dealing so much with erosion, but rather a nostalgia for a particular moment of art history. if you want the photos and the wood to be analogous the images should be printed directly on the wood.

I also was given the idea that the images be separate from the wood to make them equal. I didn't understand the idea of a moment of art history - moment of time make sense, but I don;t know what they're referring to when they say art history - it certainly wasn't what was on my mind.

stations of the cross, transformation, ideal to mortal, sad and worshipful, people identify with the chair (isolation, torture). like flowers (referring to greenhouses), chairs needs are the same.

this was a very interesting conversation. I was kind of fascinated by the stations of the cross idea, it was a completely new one for me. As she talked it became clearer, and I was interested in the idea more and more. It will take more thought to really glean more ideas from it. Many people spoke to me about feeling a certain amount of identification with the chair, or the chair acting as a stand in for a human. That is very interesting, and one that I had been thinking about vaguely, but discussion really opened that idea up for me more.

photos seem to be narrative of torture, compression, grid-like positioning questionable on some, though works well in the one with paint (there are faint vertical stripes to the grain, tight positioning, balanced by hinge marking on opposite side),scale shifts of wood pieces is interesting. There's a poetic sense here that is not being show, there's a toughness, but the sweet is missing.

Others also brought up this kind of view of, again, the chair acting as a stand in f a person, and in a disturbing sort of way. The visual composition of the work is a bit problematic, and I think I should play around with more variations. The comments on the tough/sweet, poetic ideas was very insightful. There are things I have veered away from while at UCSD, there is support for toughness, and poeticism or sweetness is branded negatively as sentimental. This is something that this person has seen in the past in my work, and it is something I should look more closely at to be sure that I'm not taking something out simply to avoid outside pressure or criticism.

ideas of categorization, a thin white line measuring or marking on the wood could help the pieces visually as a whole, an opportunity to activate the materials, composition r.e. the rows of photos.

I don't think I want to emphasis the grid patter so much (though again think of experimentation), I do want to keep in mind the idea of activating the the materials.

wood draws me in first, the notice the photos(the reverse of the statement), interested in how the low definition of the images is actually less than the natural designs of the wood.

Trying to predict the responses is tricky. Interesting observation about the relative quality of image.

by removing the plywood from its context the piece becomes more about the past and less about the present.

Well, this begs the question, what is the context of plywood. There is no answer for that. I think that what this person was really referring to is the idea of showing in a typical white box gallery space. The comment could have applied to anyone.

I'll be checking on those chair again this summer to see how they over-wintered. I'm pleased with the work I produced for this project, but I'll certainly be doing more with it, I haven't lost interest yet, there is a lot that interests me about the wood, and about the images. The style of images is similar to the work I've done over many years, and I'm getting more comfortable with the aesthetic that comes along with using the computer. The ideas I'm exploring in this work is also a natural progression of ideas that have interested me over the years, and I hope to hone these ideas more, and apply it to a wider range of subjects.