After researching classic and modern art, as well as classic and modern architecture I began to create a series of 3d architectural renderings that I composit into photos of my city. I cast the net far and wide as regards the style of buildings, with influences from classical art to surrealism and modern art (De Chirico and Calder, for example) And I reference some modern architects as well (Gehry, Frank Lloyd Wright, etc..) I also used cultural iconography, turning some basic, everyday cultural imagery into buildings.
My objective has been to make buildings that, for any number of reasons, would never be built in the real world. As for context, I tried to make sure that they were able to be melded into a background photo with some degree of comfort, and I’ve had some degree of success with this, I think.
The process has been more daunting than I’d imagined, as there are a lot of scale issues to deal with when sticking false buildings into photos of a metropolitan area, so I probably have as many failures as successes, but I still think it’s a good series of work, which I’ll hack into a gallery of work that I can put online as soon as I’m finished.
( I had to break the law for the sake of art with this project, as I needed shots from a certain distance from my city, and the only good vantage point was the highway that goes through town, so I had a friend be my wheel man as we stopped repeated on a five mile stretch of highway, whereby I would jump out of the car, hop up on the guard rail and snap photos, with all the cars honking as they went by. I’m sure they were just trying to say, “hello”.)
[ Pursuant to this area of study, I went to a Lecture at the local art museum called “Three American Architects: Richardson, Sullivan and Wright”. The speaker was an architectural historian named James F. O’Gorman, and it was a fascinating lecture for a number of reasons. He began by explaining, with a little bit of shrouded animosity, that Frank Lloyd Wright wanted the world to believe that he was simply born a full fledged genius and created all his wondrous things with no influence or input from the outside world whatsoever. O’Gorman seemed to have a need to disprove this claim and went on to show that Wright was indeed influenced by architects like Louis Sullivan and Henry Hudson Richardson. He then presented a number of buildings and details that chronicled the progression of modern architecture over the first half of the twentieth century. Of particular interest were the images of Sullivans terra cotta details that were incredibly organic and ornate, and O’Gorman explained that these designs took from nature (flowers, animals, etc…) but were not expressly images of nature. He quoted Sullivan as saying, “in this type of detail we should create imagery from nature but not of nature”. ] Here's a sample of Sullivan's detail work, and I hope to include this type of work in my imagery somehow.
As for my writing assignments, I think I wrote a fairly salient paper on the influence of surrealism on modern architecture, and can certainly say that all my reading and research on modern art and architecture helped me to visualize the series that I’ve been working on.
A link to a pdf file of the paper is here: ******
• NY Trip
I had my first trip to see William Wegman, and I spent a few hours scouring the Chelsea art gallery scene as well. The galleries were both disappointing and inspiring, with samples of bad, roughshod pencil drawings mixed in with stunning paintings that seemed to redefine the skyline of Manhattan in new ways. Twenty foot tall sculptures, $16,000 paintings; a morass of work that was hard to take in whilst lugging forty pounds of luggage and portfolios. (A lot of bad planning to put myself in the spot of lugging all my stuff around Chelsea for the day, so next time I’ll plan it better)
My visit with Wegman could not have gone better. He was welcoming and accommodating, giving me a tour of his studio, introducing me to the dogs and people there, and showing me all the things he’s working on. I was delighted to see a number of paintings that he has in progress and it’s a great contrast to his photo work. We then sat down to look at my work, which included the work I entered the AIB program with as well as some of the work I’m currently doing. He had good and interesting feedback, suggesting I do a childrens book (this was already in my mind as a project for next semester) and he gave a great reference to Walter Wick’s work. As I explained that I’m likely intended to be a storyteller at the end of the day, and that the animation business may be my only true destiny, we discussed the worlds of art and the film and tv business. (He has his own parallel stories to the foibles of trying to develop properties for film and tv, so it was heartening to hear some confirmation on the processes that I’ve been through in this arena) He is a good and varied person for me to bounce my work off, so I’m really happy that he agreed to mentor me for this semester and look forward to his input and feedback in my coming visits.
• Art with power tools
While I know it’s good that I’m trying things outside my realm of comfort (computer graphics tools) I’m a little daunted by some of the 2d image work, sculpture and other things on my list. In particular, working with power tools to make a four foot robot has been… um, not so much fun. I managed to stick my finger into a band saw, which was almost disastrous. I used the yankee barter system to get some help from my neighbor Rick, who has the tools and knowledge to solve some of the stickier problems with fabricating this robot. Two months of gathering materials and two months of building (a night a week was deemed “robot night” for the past two months) and the robot is all but complete at this point, with a few finishing touches to go. I’ll be posting a photo and some rationale on it soon.
• Epiphany
I have broached yet another uncomfortable, but potentially exciting aspect, of my art. I began experimenting with layered printouts (i.e. – printing on vellum and transparency film and layering those images over background printouts) in mid-summer and while I liked the potential of combining the various imagery it wasn’t clear to me how I could do so in an elegant or sensible fashion. I began to construct lightboxes in my head, with fancy clips and binders to allow viewers to peel back the layers, but it was clearly a convoluted and impractical approach. Still, I wanted to combine various looks of line art, landscape imagery, photography, 3d graphics and painted imagery into one piece, so I doggedly pursued the notion, with little hope of resolving it. I discussed it with my advisor (Deborah Davidson) and William Wegman, but there still didn’t seem to be a clear answer. Somehow, through printing the various bits from my computer, playing with different types of imagery and paper, and discussing it with friends and artists, I arrived at what I think is a solution. When a friend dropped off a wooden painting panel, asking me to make something on it for her birthday, I started thinking of the notion of tearing pieces of printouts into various sizes and decoupaging them onto a wooden board. I think this will allow me to achieve the semi-transparent aspect I’m looking for as well as accommodating the variety of imagery (line art, photo, 3d render, etc…) I’d like to use as source material. Wegmans’ paintings that tie different postcards together helped cement the idea, as did Deborah Davidsons bookmaking class, not to mention about five other little things that all combined to lead me to this approach. I now think I can proceed and realize this (still somewhat nebulous) conceptual approach and create a tangible piece that has some meaning to it. It is still driving me crazy, as I’m not sure how the imagery will ultimately fall together, but I will endeavor to put one example together soon. I’d like it be as palatable as a nice casserole, with a comfortable mix of ingredients, but there are still a couple of conceptual hurdles in my path. Is there a god of the arts? If so, now is likely the time when I would be well advised to sacrifice a goat (or something) to this god.
I must hurry along my path, for winter is on the nigh and I have video and animation and music projects yet to embrace.
More to come soon, as well as new pictures.
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