Getting set for the show aka everything is going wrong (but can be fixed)!

We're 2 weeks from the show, and 5 days from vacating the studios. The catalog and postcards are here and turned out fabulous. Unfortunately, that's the only thing that's working for me right now. - And yes, we do have a made-up word in our title and unfortunately I transposed the i and o in a word but nobody so far has noticed despite how blatantly misspelled it is.

Because of the remoteness of our school we rely on mail-order for most of our supplies, and nothing that I have ordered has shown up. And so that means that I won't get the stuff until Monday afternoon, which gives me 1.5 days to do what I had given myself 5 days to do. So I am panicking and wasting time while trying to think how to work this all out.

So in the meantime here's the state of the show:

The interiors of my rooms for Everything I Love - I am waiting on more paint so I can't start creating the web out of brass wire for it yet. The mesh ceiling is almost done, but again I can't start installing it until the paint is here. The roof is made of 4 stretchers (that's Chris and Sean's shack by my ceiling panels), but can't be installed until the paint gets here. Boxes of photos that go in the room, I have 4,000 photos of things I love so far - I think I will spend this weekend uploading the other 4,000. So I will do that, build the tables for the photos and make the grill behind which the audio elements are hidden this weekend.

So far I have 5 of the Nets for Shadows finished, I want 7 but the wire didn't show up this week (so much for express mailing in Ireland). I'm fine with 5 but 7 will be better. Those are what I really needed to be working on this weekend. It takes an entire studio wall to make one and about 9 hours per net. I need to be out of my studio with the walls spackled and painted by Wed. morning, so provided the wire shows on Monday I will be pulling a couple of all-nighters to get these done and the studio cleared in time.

My House is done, and just needs to be moved to a different studio. But I can't fix it's wall until the studio is all cleared. So that adds to the insanity for Tuesday.

And then there is the installation for The Cage I Put Myself In - which can't even begin until next Friday. That gives me 5 days to finish a major piece - there is no part of it that can be done until I have access to the studio.

I'm starting to freak-out a bit, but I guess it's to be expected. And my poor poor hands - I scraped off most of my knuckles pulling those canvases and have smashed my fingers so many times with a hammer making my nets that I have massive blisters. It's probably good I can't work on the nets this weekend 'cause my hands are so sore they shake constantly and I can't do the detailed work.

That's my sad story. Hopefully the next post will be about how it all worked out great for the show.

catalog images

The materials I choose for my art all carry associative meanings with memory and emotion. The wire, wood, ink and paint relate to places and periods of my life, I construct objects with them which help me to come to an understanding and resolution of past experience.

I use my art as a way to explore the conflicting psychological states which I associate with the places in which I exist. I show how my perception changes based upon the context in which I am considering it.

I am most interested in the extremes of meaning generated about place as experienced from contrasting emotional situations. I often turn to literature and to creative exchanges with writers as a means to find a different viewpoint in which to observe and evaluate my personal surroundings.

Nets, cages, home and thresholds are the symbolic language I use to express conflicting reactions to the experiences of my life. I hope that these images and structures allow others to recognize something in them that resonates with their own lives.

Very suddenly there came back to my soul motion and sound –the tumultuous motion of the heart, and in my ears the sound of its beating. Then a pause in which all is blank. Then again sound, and motion, and touch, a tingling sensation pervading my frame. Then the mere consciousness of existence, without thought – a condition which lasted long. Then, very suddenly, thought, and shuddering terror, and earnest endeavour to comprehend my true state. Then a strong desire to lapse into insensibility. Then a rushing revival of soul and successful effort to move.

- The Pit and the Pendulum (fragment) Edgar Allan Poe

My home was hiding a secret in the depths of its heart...

"Yes," I said to the little prince. "The house, the stars, the desert-- what gives them their beauty is something that is invisible!"

-The Little Prince (fragment) Antoine de Saint-Exupery

In Ersilia, to establish the relationships that sustain the city’s life, the inhabitants stretch strings from the corners of the houses, white or black or gray or black-and-white according to whether they mark a relationship of blood, of trade, authority, agency. When the strings become so numerous that you can no longer pass among them, the inhabitants leave: the houses are dismantled; only the strings and their supports remain.

From a mountainside, camping with their household goods, Ersilia’s refugees look at the labyrinth of taut strings and poles that rise in the plain. That is the city of Ersilia still, and they are nothing.

They rebuild Ersilia elsewhere. They weave a similar pattern of strings which they would like to be more complex and at the same time more regular than the other. Then they abandon it and take themselves and their houses still farther away.

Thus, when traveling in the territory of Ersilia, you come upon the ruins of the abandoned cities, without the walls which do not last, without the bones of the dead which the wind rolls away: spiderwebs of intricate relationships seeking a form.

- Invisible Cities (fragment) Italo Calvino (1972)

About 1/2 of these are faked because of the nature of what I am making. I will not have access to my installation sites until just before my thesis show. So for now the corners and floor and walls of my studio are turned into detail shots to approximate the finished work.

My Diagrams, some get made some don't

The original idea for My House:

The almost finished version, I have since intensified the glow and restructed the hanging system:

The idea for Doorways started with this:

Which lead to this:

Which then became this:

And now doorways to... spans between the two rooms of Everything I Love -which have also changed considerably.

Nets for Shadows was not working. I could not figure out to make the nets right and the wiggling idea has come and gone and come and gone. Right now it's gone, but may come back.

The higher net to forever to make, but I worked out a more efficient method (on back wall). Now I can crank them out. And to make the shape correct I climb in and some friends pull it as tight and high as they can and I freak out and stuggle until I escape or they let me free. This solves two issues: the constant belief of my tutors that I need to experience physical entrapment (I disagree) and it gives them each a unique organic nature.

This one started like this:

The plan changed to this:

And now it's been dropped from the show. But the idea is echoed a bit in my Birdcage for Humans and the net is to be the ceiling of the rooms Everything I Love. I think I will make this eventually, but for now it's been abandoned.

These two have also been abandoned, I think forever: