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April 19, 2024

ARTWORK : Installations

Conceptualizing a Bigger Picture

Page & Canvas ...

A movment beyond

Installations : Creative Excursions

Thinking & Exploring Life Through the Making of Art

Artful Thinking : A Tool for Creative Explorations

The Ever Bigger Picture

A Look past Canvas & Paper at what lies beyond the Two-Dimensional

I think art is ultimately about problem solving. I believe this is true whether an artist works in a multidisciplinary manner or with a singular focus. Whatever the vision, in order to grow as an artist I think it is important to step beyond comfort zones and explore new forms of expression. I am compelled to look for challenges in techniques and in subject matter. I know I grow best when pushed beyond any creative boundaries I at first, may perceive.

Project Board : (De) Construct < > (Re) Construct

An Exploration of Art, Mind Science & the Elegant Universe

I looked for connections as I began to think about the 10 x 10 x 10 and the list of materials I was to work with. I decided to approach the materials as single elements assembled into a imagined larger body. This thinking in turn led me to science. In essence the materials themselves are composed of elements. This opened the door to the Periodic Table. I began to look for ways to both construct and deconstruct the materials.

My journey as an artist is marked in stages. Etched into a timeline that is my life. I've transitioned from loose and wet oils to acrylic pointillism and back again. My initial black and white pointillist ink drawings evolved to include watercolor, oils, acrylics and more. A wide casted creative net was replaced with a tight single focus and then thrown open again. My artwork is shaped by new knowledge, experience and growth. It is fed through more means than I can know at any one time. Through art, I continue to be transformed as a human being.

A Long View into the Deep

Gazing into the Depths of Space & Time

Assembled Materials & Composites

Installing the Elements after the Making

Perhaps the most exotic happenings between (and among) the galaxies in the vacuum of space and time is the seething ocean of virtual particles - undetectable matter and anti-matter pairs, popping in and out of existence. This peculiar prediction of quantum physics has been dubbed the 'vacuum energy,' which manifests as an outward pressure acting counter to gravity, that thrives in the total absence of matter. The excelerating universe dark energy incarnate, may be driven by the action of this 'vacuum energy.'

Neil deGrasse Tyson

Approaching Space

A Look at what's on the Table & in the Mind

This project began where I exist as an artist. Pointillism is a focus in my work and I always look for branches that may be splitting away from the trunk. A dot is an element in a larger composition. The 10 x 10 x 10 was a piece in a larger puzzle.

Art always has an audience. Most artists have one and often many. An artist is uniquely positioned to be both a maker and audience to their own work. To use the mediums and materials of art to directly explore and reflect on who we are as human beings. I look at finished works as joined into a larger ecosphere and divine for meaning and undiscovered truths in connections. I search for what lies both within and without, beyond the internal and external. I am interested in what my artwork may teach me about the world around us and what I may learn about myself.

gallery-under-the-microscope

Spheres of Influence

Small dots merge into larger dots ... or spheres. Molecules combine, as do atoms and elements. A web stretches amounst the visible and binds creation together.

The (periodic) table inspires art in all its guizes. Gold and silver and platinum are themselves lovely, and other elements, such as cadmium and bismuth, bloom into bright, colorful pigments in minerals or oil paints. Elements play a strong role in design, too, in the making of beautiful everyday objects.

Sam Kean

The Periodic Table

Materials & Composits Assembled : Working with Elements

Independent Works Interconnected

No Single Artwork Exists in a Vacuum Independant of the Others

The 10x10x10 was a remarkable opportunity to embrace the challenge of a project and do so within the context of a creative group of artists. Each artist challenged to address the same problem, using the same set of materials and arrive at unique ends. As a participant, I was able to eventually see the other artist’s solutions to the same challenge and build on my personal art practice. The challenge offered a chance to document and write about the process and experience in detail.

The 10 x 10 x 10 Installation Project

An installation that challenges artists to use a limited number of materials to create a finished presentation.

The elements were prominent in the installation I did for the 10 x 10 x 10 challenge. I used the periodic table as a reference point. The table itself was woven and created from usable materials. Then the chemical and molecular composition of the materials were distilled and detailed on a project board and table.

With this challenge, I wanted to engage and explore intersections on the borders and boundaries of art to science, and science to everything else. Perception was important. What we perceive and how we do it. I’ve been grappling with these in other areas of my work. Investigating how to make them more manifest. I often feel like an explorer mapping out their own interior.

Books became Bound & Unbound

Ideas Presented Shapes : Concepts & Effort formed Objects

Materials Became Tools

Tools made Marks, Art & Artifact

Sawdust from Deconstructed 2 x 4 Lumber

Reconstructed with Connectors, Cardboard & Paper into 3-Dimensional Dots

Seek Out a Challenge

I challenge myself as an artist by using materials and techniques that I am unfamiliar with or that exist outside my comfort zone. In doing that I look for relationships that exist between seemingly disparate bodies of work and how they may inform one another. I often begin or arrive at the dot.

The Elements of the Earth

The Elements of Art, Life & 'Everything, Everywhere, all at Once'

H – Hydrogen

He – Helium

Li – Lithium

Be – Beryllium

B – Boron

C – Carbon

N – Nitrogen

O – Oxygen

F – Fluorine

Ne – Neon

Na – Sodium

Mg – Magnesium

Al – Aluminum

Si – Silicon

P – Phosphorus

S – Sulfur

Cl – Chlorine

Ar – Argon

K – Potassium

Ca – Calcium

Sc – Scandium

Ti – Titanium

V – Vanadium

Cr – Chromium

Mn – Manganese

Fe – Iron

Co – Cobalt

Ni – Nickle

Cu – Copper

Zn – Zinc

Ga – Gallium

Ge – Germanium

As – Arsenic

Se – Selenium

Br – Bromine

Kr – Krypton

Rb – Rubidium

Sr – Strontium

Y – Yttrium

Zr – Zirconium

Nb – Niobium

Mo – Molybdenum

Tc – Technetium

Ru – Ruthenium

Rh – Rhodium

Pd – Palladium

Ag – Silver

Cd – Cadmium

In – Indium

Sn – Tin

Sb – Antimony

Te – Tellurium

I – Iodine

Xe – Xenon

Cs – Cesium

Ba – Barium

La – Lanthanum

Ce – Cerium

Pr – Praseodymium

Nd – Neodymium

Pm – Promethium

Sm – Samarium

Eu – Europium

Gd – Gadolinium

Tb – Terbium

Dy – Dysprosium

Ho – Holmium

Er – Erbium

Tm – Thulium

Yb – Ytterbium

Lu – Lutetium

Hf – Hafnium

Ta – Tantalum

W – Tungsten

Re – Rhenium

Os – Osmium

Ir – Iridium

Pt – Platinum

Au – Gold

Hg – Mercury

Ti – Thallium

Pb – Lead

Bi – Bismuth

Po – Polonium

At – Astatine

Rn – Radon

Fr – Francium

Ra – Radium

Ac – Actium

Th – Thorium

Pa – Protactinium

U – Uranium

Np – Neptunium

Pu – Plutonium

Am – Americium

Cm – Curium

Bk – Berkelium

Cf – Californium

Es – Einsteinium

Fm – Fermium

Elements from which things Degenerate

Have no application but at least a visible amount has been created.

Md – Mendelevium No – Nobelium *Lr – Lawrencium

Db – Dubnium Sg – Seaborgium *Bh – Bohrium

***Hs – Hassium *Mt – Meitnerium**

Known to Exist

All have been discovered, but technically don’t exist … No atoms have been found on Earth

Ds – Darmstadtium Rg – Roentgenium *Cn – Copernicium

Nh – Nihonium Fl – Flerovium *Mc – Moscovium

Lv – Livermorium Ts – Tennessine *Og - Oganesson

Reflection leads us to two questions about the arts. Where they come from, in both history and personal experience, and how their essential qualities of truth and beauty are to be described through ordinary language.

Edward O. Wilson

Ten Artists with Ten Materials

How can I make my voice heard in a unique way using the same materials and set of parameters?

I approached the project as a thought experiment. The problem was partially defined in a list of materials. Those had some dictate in the final outcome, but there remained a great deal of versatility to explore. Incorporating pointillism, in a fashion, was on the list of what this challenge needed to answer for me personally. How to do it and can I elaborate on my previous artworks?

Materials formed Tools to Make Art

My intent was to explore reconstruction and deconstruction using the material elements. I was going to build something ‘(re) construction’ obviously, but I also considered ‘(de) construction’ and how that looked. It assumed the shape of 2 x 4 lumber reduced to sawdust, torn book covers and pages, even paragraphs and sentences were diminished.

The Composition takes the Shape of Things to Come

Working, pointillist dots feel like molecules and elements. Each dot a building block, a cell in a larger construct. A reverberation of life, the universe, and creation. From dots something larger comes into existence. This appreciation opened the door for elements and the periodic table to shoulder their way onto my project table. They are the basic building blocks of everything we know.

Cardboard, Tin Cans, 2 x 4's & Straw as Instrument & Container

If you could imagine looking inside a living cell with eyes that could perceive the molecular world, your senses would be assaulted by a boiling tumult of chemical activities.

Paul Nurse

One Artist with Many Materials

What makes an artist; materials, tools, technique, concepts?

Questions I pose myself are often ones of, ‘What can I take away from any project and then apply to other works, even if in different media? How, here, can I grow and improve?’ Over time, my work has embraced decorative finishing products, coldwax, oil, mixed media, plasters, cardboard, metal leaf, and a range of other interesting materials, both fine art and otherwise. Over the years, I have used all kinds of found objects in creative projects, from doll heads to fabric, bamboo, 2x4 lumber, and construction materials.

I use my work as a tool for self-reflection. Personal understanding is of importance. I use any new, gained realizations as a way to deepen my connection to humanity. I seek to deepen my relationships with the lifeforms with which we all share this unique planet. We are adrift in space on planet earth.

Regardless of where the first organic molecules formed, in ice or ocean, the first crude cells were certainly bubble-like structures that surrounded proteins or RNA or DNA and protected them from being washed way or eroded. Even today, four billion years later, cells still have a basic bubble design.

Sam Keane

Clones & Cells

Acrylic Pointillism : Color Fields : Biological Entities

Existence ...

The Breath of Life

Inspired by the science fiction I loved mow & then ... “Big Bang and Emergence Theories” shape the contours of my work in the project. The sciences influence and shape my work from conception to creation. My thinking, the materials I use, what I find inspiring, all of it ...is science.

I always start with a seed in every project. The seed of an idea, the seed of experience, the seed of a material. The challenge of an installation is a seed. I embrace opportunities to watch a project grow into something that is both a manifestation of who I am as an artist being shaped by the spatial environment and parameters of a project.

Through artmaking, I am able to look at life through the lens of life. Through what is in actuality, a biological filter. I do this cradled in the context of the larger ecosphere and ecological system. I use it as a framework to examine my life and explore its patterns in the light of external stimuli: those objects, events, and subjects with which I come into contact.

journal-entry-image

Theories of Interest

Some Thoughts & Notes have evolved from readings in these Directions

Deconstruction : Deconstruction’s philosophical basis is a questioning of established Western authoritarian concepts. In literary (or other) criticism, analysis of texts is based on a profound skepticism concerning the stability of meaning in language. The deconstructive critic does not seek a central interpretation, but lets the mind play with presuppositions and intertextualities.

Emergence Theories : Theories of the development of some phenomenon (for example life consciousness) where something emerges out of the background from which it could not have been predicted and in terms of which it cannot be fully explained.

Reductionism : The reducing of certain kinds of entities, or of theories, or even whole sciences, to other, more basic ones. Entities that are reduced may be replaced (Water is really H₂O).

Big Bang Theory : A cosmological theory that attempts to explain the origin of matter and radiation in the universe in terms of a cataclysmic explosion supposed to have occurred 10-20 billion years ago. Elementary particles and anti-particles were created within a fraction of a second after the Big Bang, followed by photons of radiation. In the following minutes Deuterium and Helium nuclei formed, followed by neutral Hydrogen atoms where the temperature dropped sufficiently.

Pointillism : In art, a technique closely related to Divisionism, first systematically applied by French painter Georges Seurat (1859-91) in his La Grand Jatte (1886). Following the theories of Charles Blanc and Ogden N. Rood, Seurat developed a technique of applying pigment of complementary color in small dots which are additively mixed by the eye at a certain distance. The method thereby achieved more luminous color and ensured a more controlled handling of tone.

Divisionism : In art, a name first used by artist Paul Signac (1863-1935) for a method of painting with pure color which later developed into scientific Pointillism. Signac proposed that to achieve the brightest and purest color, all those of the spectrum should be used, applied in small daubs or dots of unmixed pigment which vary according to the size of the painting. At a distance, these fuse in the spectator’s eye.

Abstract Art : Art that is synonymous with ‘abstraction,’ this term has been applied since the first decades of the 20^th century to describe non-representational painting; a style which persists today. Although elaborated upon and refined in its precise manifestations, abstract art essentially compromises non-figurative art, as first exemplified by the color abstracts of Russian painter Wassily Kandinsky (1866-1944) around 1911. It then developed into Cubism and later, on an international scale, Abstract Expressionism.

Dark Matter Theory : In Astronomy, Dark Matter is non-baryonic matter (overarching name for subatomic particles such as protons, neutrons, and electrons) which does not interact with radiation and is therefore ‘dark’ for all astronomical purposes. It is thought to comprise 90 percent of the matter of the universe and can only be detected by its gravitational effects.

Metaphor : From the Greek words meta pherein, meaning carry over, transfer. In Western tradition theory of metaphor originates with the Greek philosopher Aristotle (384-322 BC). Traditionally very important in modern theories of language. Reference to one object in terms of another, so that features of the second are transferred to the primary referent.

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