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| Christie Blizard, San Antonio, TX |
Saturday, December 21, 2013
Wednesday, December 11, 2013
Saturday, November 23, 2013
Tuesday, October 29, 2013
Tuesday, September 10, 2013
Terrain
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Thursday, August 22, 2013
At Small Craft Advisory Press
Last week I printed the *instruction sheet* that will go into the ViV boxes. At SCAP (Small Craft Advisory Press, Tallahassee, FL)
Wednesday, July 31, 2013
Wednesday, July 24, 2013
Inching Through/Towards Something
I've made a little more progress on Night See. A process shot:
The learning curve is high and I'll be relieved to see this piece working and completed.
Meanwhile, progress has also been slow but steady for the tenure binder, my collab with Joelle Dietrick, and Variance Invariance; and as I watch paint dry and patiently mask new areas for thin stripes of color I've been thinking about Ben Davis' 9.5 Theses. Even though my relationship to production is in some ways independent, I can't deny I've got that working stiff feeling this summer.
Meanwhile, progress has also been slow but steady for the tenure binder, my collab with Joelle Dietrick, and Variance Invariance; and as I watch paint dry and patiently mask new areas for thin stripes of color I've been thinking about Ben Davis' 9.5 Theses. Even though my relationship to production is in some ways independent, I can't deny I've got that working stiff feeling this summer.
Wednesday, July 10, 2013
Variance Invariance Project: 3 sets, one to go
ViV samples: Go to www.varianceinvariance.com to learn more about the project.
Wednesday, July 3, 2013
More ViV
Variance Invariance works on 3 levels: the sets I will be sending out to participants; the mini-versions, which will be produced as book editions (late 2013); and a downloadable paper version available to everyone for free. Here is the paper version in its beginning stages:
Thursday, June 27, 2013
Wednesday, June 19, 2013
Embracing Collaboration and Relinquishing Control
Embracing collaboration: I'm honored to be working with poet, Jay Snodgrass and artist, Denise Bookwalter on the instruction sheet for Variance Invariance.
Embracing collaboration: Joelle Dietrick and I are beginning our work for an exhibition at the Alexander Brest Museum. We interviewed each other for Burnaway, coming soon.
Relinquishing control: I found fabrication help for the metal work on Night See. Bless you Bill Rice for bringing me out of paralysis.
Relinquishing control: I found design help for the Variance Invariance website. Thank you thank you, Jay Corrales.
Embracing collaboration: Joelle Dietrick and I are beginning our work for an exhibition at the Alexander Brest Museum. We interviewed each other for Burnaway, coming soon.
Relinquishing control: I found fabrication help for the metal work on Night See. Bless you Bill Rice for bringing me out of paralysis.
Relinquishing control: I found design help for the Variance Invariance website. Thank you thank you, Jay Corrales.
Wednesday, June 12, 2013
The Ease Of The Familiar
While many of you are traveling to residencies and exotic places this summer, I am working in the studio, growing things, enjoying my family and animals, and feeling the rhythms of home. This inward turn has been a lovely shift after a stressful and busy academic year. With my three projects in midstream, I still don't have a lot to show -- even in process shots. But this pv panel arrived yesterday.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
More Night See
The designs for Night See are slowly coming together. Slowly, because I'm switching back and forth a lot between projects. I spent the morning sourcing materials and designing the light boxes and cradles. Here is an updated version:
I'm getting excited about fabricating this piece. PV panel will arrive early next week, at which point I'll start on the light boxes.
Wednesday, May 29, 2013
at FAR
I'm posting from aFAR (the Facility for Arts Research) at FSU where I'm cutting the frames for Variance Invariance (working title that I'm finding does not roll easily off the tongue). Here are some photos from yesterday and today. Thank you to Noah, Ashley, and Richard for making my experience at FAR easy and fun.
Wednesday, May 22, 2013
Wednesday, April 3, 2013
Wednesday, March 6, 2013
Drawing Class at Spring House Today!
Byrd Lewis in the window reflection
Wednesday, February 27, 2013
Art and Science
This week in Tallahassee as part of Head Shoulders Genes & Toes, my curatorial project with the FSU College of Medicine
Thursday, Feb 28 7PM WJB G40
Joe Davis lecture: MNEMOSYNE'S PARADOX
As mythical mother of the nine classical muses, Mnemosyne was mother of all the
arts and sciences. By inference, she was the founder of all language too, since
she was said to have discovered the uses of the powers of reason and to have
given names or designations to all things. The languages of art and science of
molecular biology are continually reconstructed with names and determinations
for things never before seen or imagined. A paradox of reference is inevitably
encountered because we are constrained to use concepts and vocabularies
invented in the past to describe facts at hand. Obsolete paradigms tend to be
incorporated with the very ideas that have overturned them, leaving many people
automatically confused. Ethical and philosophical problems stemming from
inevitable misinterpretations plague artists and scientists who choose to
represent a universe we cannot now and may never completely understand. An
effort to sequence the genome of Malus sieversii, an apple shown to be
ancestral to all domestic cultivars is presented in this context.
Friday, March 1 7:30PM All Saints Cinema
Heaven+Earth+Joe Davis
Q&A with Joe Davis and director Peter Sasowsky following film
FREE and open to the public
Synopsis: Thirty years ago, a peg-legged motorcycle mechanic walked into the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. They had not returned his calls. The police were summoned. Forty-five minutes later he walked out with an academic appointment. Since then Joe Davis has sent vaginal contractions into space to communicate with aliens, encoded poetry into DNA, and designed a sculpture to save the world. It’s a great life for a man driven by imagination – except when it’s not. No one pays him. He is evicted from apartments and labs. His uncompromising approach to art and life collides with the world’s banal requirements. This is a story of self-discovery, sacrifice and the complexity of human endeavor, of the price of art and the ecstatic joy of discovery.
Thursday, Feb 28 7PM WJB G40
Joe Davis lecture: MNEMOSYNE'S PARADOX
As mythical mother of the nine classical muses, Mnemosyne was mother of all the
arts and sciences. By inference, she was the founder of all language too, since
she was said to have discovered the uses of the powers of reason and to have
given names or designations to all things. The languages of art and science of
molecular biology are continually reconstructed with names and determinations
for things never before seen or imagined. A paradox of reference is inevitably
encountered because we are constrained to use concepts and vocabularies
invented in the past to describe facts at hand. Obsolete paradigms tend to be
incorporated with the very ideas that have overturned them, leaving many people
automatically confused. Ethical and philosophical problems stemming from
inevitable misinterpretations plague artists and scientists who choose to
represent a universe we cannot now and may never completely understand. An
effort to sequence the genome of Malus sieversii, an apple shown to be
ancestral to all domestic cultivars is presented in this context.
Friday, March 1 7:30PM All Saints Cinema
Heaven+Earth+Joe Davis
Q&A with Joe Davis and director Peter Sasowsky following film
FREE and open to the public
Synopsis: Thirty years ago, a peg-legged motorcycle mechanic walked into the Center for Advanced Visual Studies at MIT. They had not returned his calls. The police were summoned. Forty-five minutes later he walked out with an academic appointment. Since then Joe Davis has sent vaginal contractions into space to communicate with aliens, encoded poetry into DNA, and designed a sculpture to save the world. It’s a great life for a man driven by imagination – except when it’s not. No one pays him. He is evicted from apartments and labs. His uncompromising approach to art and life collides with the world’s banal requirements. This is a story of self-discovery, sacrifice and the complexity of human endeavor, of the price of art and the ecstatic joy of discovery.
Wednesday, February 20, 2013
Paragraphs on Conceptual Art
By
Sol Lewitt
The
editor has written me that he is in favor of avoiding “the notion that the artist is a kind of ape that has to
be explained by the civilized
critic”. This should be good news to both artists and apes. With this
assurance I hope to justify his confidence. To use a baseball metaphor (one
artist wanted to hit the ball out of the park, another to stay loose at the
plate and hit the ball where it was pitched), I am grateful for the opportunity to strike out for myself.
I will refer to the kind of art in which
I am involved as conceptual art. In conceptual art the idea or concept is the
most important aspect of the work.
When an artist uses a conceptual form of art, it means that all of the
planning and decisions are made beforehand and the execution is a perfunctory
affair. The idea becomes a machine that makes the art. This kind of art is not
theoretical or illustrative of theories; it is intuitive, it is involved with
all types of mental processes and it is purposeless. It is usually free from
the dependence on the skill of the artist as a craftsman. It is the objective
of the artist who is concerned with conceptual art to make his work mentally
interesting to the spectator, and therefore usually he would want it to become
emotionally dry. There is no reason to suppose, however, that the conceptual
artist is out to bore the viewer. It is only the expectation of an emotional
kick, to which one conditioned to expressionist art is accustomed, that would
deter the viewer from perceiving this art.
Conceptual art is not necessarily
logical. The logic of a piece or series of pieces is a device that is used at
times, only to be ruined. Logic may be used to camouflage the real intent of
the artist, to lull the viewer into the belief that he understands the work, or
to infer a paradoxical situation
(such as logic vs. illogic). Some ideas are logical in conception and illogical perceptually. The ideas need
not be complex. Most ideas that are successful are ludicrously simple.
Successful ideas generally have the appearance of simplicity because they seem
inevitable. In terms of ideas the artist is free even to surprise himself.
Ideas are discovered by intuition.
What the work of art looks like isn’t too important. It has to look like
something if it has physical form. No matter what form it may finally have it
must begin with an idea. It is the process of conception and realization with
which the artist is concerned. Once given physical reality by the artist the
work is open to the perception of al, including the artist. (I use the word
perception to mean the apprehension of the sense data, the objective
understanding of the idea, and simultaneously a subjective interpretation of
both). The work of art can be perceived only after it is completed.
Art that is meant for the sensation of
the eye primarily would be called perceptual rather than conceptual. This would
include most optical, kinetic, light, and color art.
Since the function of conception and
perception are contradictory (one pre-, the other post fact) the artist would
mitigate his idea by applying subjective judgment to it. If the artist wishes
to explore his idea thoroughly, then arbitrary or chance decisions would be
kept to a minimum, while caprice, taste and others whimsies would be eliminated
from the making of the art. The work does not necessarily have to be rejected
if it does not look well. Sometimes what is initially thought to be awkward
will eventually be visually pleasing.
To work with a plan that is preset is
one way of avoiding subjectivity. It also obviates the necessity of designing
each work in turn. The plan would design the work. Some plans would require
millions of variations, and some a limited number, but both are finite. Other
plans imply infinity. In each case, however, the artist would select the basic
form and rules that would govern the solution of the problem. After that the
fewer decisions made in the course of completing the work, the better. This
eliminates the arbitrary, the capricious, and the subjective as much as
possible. This is the reason for using this method.
When an artist uses a multiple modular
method he usually chooses a simple and readily available form. The form itself
is of very limited importance; it becomes the grammar for the total work. In
fact, it is best that the basic unit be deliberately uninteresting so that it
may more easily become an intrinsic part of the entire work. Using complex
basic forms only disrupts the unity of the whole. Using a simple form
repeatedly narrows the field of the work and concentrates the intensity to the
arrangement of the form. This arrangement becomes the end while the form
becomes the means.
Conceptual art doesn’t really have much
to do with mathematics, philosophy, or nay other mental discipline. The
mathematics used by most artists is simple arithmetic or simple number systems.
The philosophy of the work is implicit in the work and it is not an
illustration of any system of philosophy.
It doesn’t really matter if the viewer
understands the concepts of the artist by seeing the art. Once it is out of his
hand the artist has no control over the way a viewer will perceive the work.
Different people will understand the same thing in a different way.
Recently there has been much written
about minimal art, but I have not discovered anyone who admits to doing this
kind of thing. There are other art forms around called primary structures,
reductive, ejective, cool, and mini-art. No artist I know will own up to any of
these either. Therefore I conclude
that it is part of a secret language that art critics use when communicating
with each other through the medium of art magazines. Mini-art is best because
it reminds one of miniskirts and long-legged girls. It must refer to very small works of art. This is a very
good idea. Perhaps “mini-art”
shows could be sent around the country in matchboxes. Or maybe the mini-artist
is a very small person; say less than five feet tall. If so, much good work
will be found in the primary schools
(primary school primary structures).
If the artist carries through his idea
and makes it into visible form, then all the steps in the process are of
importance. The idea itself, even if not made visual, is as much a work of art
as any finished product. All intervening steps –scribbles, sketches,
drawings, failed works, models, studies, thoughts, conversations– are of
interest. Those that show the
thought process of the artist are sometimes more interesting than the final
product.
Determining what size a piece should be
is difficult. If an idea requires three dimensions then it would seem any size
would do. The question would be what size is best. If the thing were made
gigantic then the size alone would be impressive and the idea may be lost
entirely. Again, if it is too small, it may become inconsequential. The height
of the viewer may have some bearing on the work and also the size of the space
into which it will be placed. The artist may wish to place objects higher than
the eye level of the viewer, or lower. I think the piece must be large enough
to give the viewer whatever information he needs to understand the work and
placed in such a way that will facilitate this understanding. (Unless the idea
is of impediment and requires difficulty of vision or access).
Space can be thought of as the cubic
area occupied by a three-dimensional volume. Any volume would occupy space. It
is air and cannot be seen. It is the interval between things that can be
measured. The intervals and measurements can be important to a work of art. If
certain distances are important they will be made obvious in the piece. If
space is relatively unimportant it can be regularized and made equal (things
placed equal distances apart) to mitigate any interest in interval. Regular
space might also become a metric time element, a kind of regular beat or pulse.
When the interval is kept regular whatever is irregular gains more importance.
Architecture and three-dimensional art
are of completely opposite natures.
The former is concerned with making an area with a specific function.
Architecture, whether it is a work of art or not, must be utilitarian or else
fail completely. Art is not utilitarian. When three-dimensional art starts to
take on some of the characteristics, such as forming utilitarian areas, it
weakens its function as art. When the viewer is dwarfed by the larger size of a
piece this domination emphasizes the physical and emotive power of the form at
the expense of losing the idea of the piece.
New materials are one of the great
afflictions of contemporary art. Some artists confuse new materials with new
ideas. There is nothing worse than seeing art that wallows in gaudy baubles. By
and large most artists who are attracted to these materials are the ones who
lack the stringency of mind that would enable them to use the materials well.
It takes a good artist to use new materials and make them into a work of art.
The danger is, I think, in making the physicality of the materials so important
that it becomes the idea of the work (another kind of expressionism).
Three-dimensional art of any kind is a
physical fact. The physicality is its most obvious and expressive content.
Conceptual art is made to engage the mind of the viewer rather than his eye or
emotions. The physicality of a three-dimensional object then becomes a
contradiction to its non-emotive intent. Color, surface, texture, and shape
only emphasize the physical aspects of the work. Anything that calls attention
to and interests the viewer in this physicality is a deterrent to our
understanding of the idea and is used as an expressive device. The conceptual
artist would want o ameliorate this emphasis on materiality as much as possible
or to use it in a paradoxical way (to convert it into an idea). This kind of
art, then, should be stated with the greatest economy of means. Any idea that
is better stated in two dimensions should not be in three dimensions. Ideas may
also be stated with numbers, photographs, or words or any way the artist
chooses, the form being unimportant.
These paragraphs are not intended as
categorical imperatives, but the ideas stated are as close as possible to my
thinking at this time. These ideas are the result of my work as an artist and
are subject to change as my experience changes. I have tried to state them with
as much clarity as possible. If the statements I make are unclear it may mean
the thinking is unclear. Even while writing these ideas there seemed to be
obvious inconsistencies (which I have tried to correct, but others will
probably slip by). I do not advocate a conceptual form of art for all artists.
I have found that it has worked well for me while other ways have not. It is
one way of making art; other ways suit other artists. Nor do I think all conceptual
art merits the viewer’s attention.
Conceptual art is good only when the idea is good.
Wednesday, February 13, 2013
Sentences on Conceptual Art
by Sol Lewitt
- Conceptual artists are mystics rather than rationalists. They leap to conclusions that logic cannot reach.
- Rational judgements repeat rational judgements.
- Irrational judgements lead to new experience.
- Formal art is essentially rational.
- Irrational thoughts should be followed absolutely and logically.
- If the artist changes his mind midway through the execution of the piece he compromises the result and repeats past results.
- The artist's will is secondary to the process he initiates from idea to completion. His wilfulness may only be ego.
- When words such as painting and sculpture are used, they connote a whole tradition and imply a consequent acceptance of this tradition, thus placing limitations on the artist who would be reluctant to make art that goes beyond the limitations.
- The concept and idea are different. The former implies a general direction while the latter is the component. Ideas implement the concept.
- Ideas can be works of art; they are in a chain of development that may eventually find some form. All ideas need not be made physical.
- Ideas do not necessarily proceed in logical order. They may set one off in unexpected directions, but an idea must necessarily be completed in the mind before the next one is formed.
- For each work of art that becomes physical there are many variations that do not.
- A work of art may be understood as a conductor from the artist's mind to the viewer's. But it may never reach the viewer, or it may never leave the artist's mind.
- The words of one artist to another may induce an idea chain, if they share the same concept.
- Since no form is intrinsically superior to another, the artist may use any form, from an expression of words (written or spoken) to physical reality, equally.
- If words are used, and they proceed from ideas about art, then they are art and not literature; numbers are not mathematics.
- All ideas are art if they are concerned with art and fall within the conventions of art.
- One usually understands the art of the past by applying the convention of the present, thus misunderstanding the art of the past.
- The conventions of art are altered by works of art.
- Successful art changes our understanding of the conventions by altering our perceptions.
- Perception of ideas leads to new ideas.
- The artist cannot imagine his art, and cannot perceive it until it is complete.
- The artist may misperceive (understand it differently from the artist) a work of art but still be set off in his own chain of thought by that misconstrual.
- Perception is subjective.
- The artist may not necessarily understand his own art. His perception is neither better nor worse than that of others.
- An artist may perceive the art of others better than his own.
- The concept of a work of art may involve the matter of the piece or the process in which it is made.
- Once the idea of the piece is established in the artist's mind and the final form is decided, the process is carried out blindly. There are many side effects that the artist cannot imagine. These may be used as ideas for new works.
- The process is mechanical and should not be tampered with. It should run its course.
- There are many elements involved in a work of art. The most important are the most obvious.
- If an artist uses the same form in a group of works, and changes the material, one would assume the artist's concept involved the material.
- Banal ideas cannot be rescued by beautiful execution.
- It is difficult to bungle a good idea.
- When an artist learns his craft too well he makes slick art.
- These sentences comment on art, but are not art.
First published in 0-9 (New York), 1969, and Art-Language (England), May 1969
Wednesday, February 6, 2013
Head Shoulders Genes & Toes Genes and Toes
Come see what's happening at the intersection of art, human biology, and medicine!!
Friday, Feb 8, 6:30PM FSU Museum of Fine Art
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