DECEMBER UPDATE

The last month or so has had me finishing a lot of projects, experimenting with a lot of images, failing on many attempts, and generally trying to wind down my semester’s work. I had my last trip to visit William Wegman in NY city, with each successive trip being more rewarding than the one before. He has been very helpful and inspiring, with comments on the entire range of things I worked on. I think one of the most rewarding things was to see all of his paintings in progress and to discuss his work on these. Our final meeting included a little discussion on the arc of my semester, with some encouraging words on continuing to explore my desires to do characters, places and stories, and even some suggestions as to how it might work back around to the gallery world at some point. I could not have chosen a nicer person, and he seemed comfortable in giving feedback on the entire range of my work, from performance animation to sculpture, collage and still image work. All in all, a great experience for me.


• Performance Piece The image below is a snapshot from my performance animation software. I’ve managed to get the system running properly and built an interactive character that can be animated in realtime. It’s a lot of technology to wrangle, but I’m able to carry the system into any venue, set it up and route the video and audio signals through a video projector and PA system. I’ve constructed a short piece for the time-based media presentations at our upcoming residency, and hope to engage the crowd in a lively question and answer session.



• Computer Sculptures I finally got the finished computer-based sculptures back and mounted them on stands. This is an interesting and exciting twist to the 3d still image work I’ve done in the past, as the concept of bring my graphic creations off the screen or off the wall is something that I’ve been yearning to explore. Below are snapshots of the two pieces I had machined from plastic, after creating the files on the computer.



•New Illustrative Technique After reading some of the assignments for our upcoming critical theory course I was motivated to explore the creation of a digital technique for creating images that have a traditional chalk and pencil feel to them. I think this type of imagery has always appealed to me, and it simply took some descriptive readings to motivate me to try some of the experiments below.



I also finished up some miscellaneous things that were on my list, such as a scene with robots at a café and a digital lithograph approach to putting 3d buildings in photos.


It’s time to figure out how to pack all this stuff up and start planning on how I’ll present it in my little space at the upcoming residency. I’m looking forward to feedback, good or bad, and am not sure if I want to continue in all these different directions, but I’m glad for the experimentation and following the directive to try working with new and different media.