Hello Crit Group B!
I hope you all have had a productively good week. I have been enjoying the chance to explore, think, and write about your work-project-blogs. Now here is the link to my blog:
http://www.robynthomas-explorations.com/monthly-blog-update-mcp501/
The website opens to my most recent written blog post. If you scroll to the bottom of that page you will find my first post-Berlin posting from which you can scroll up to my most recent posting. The posts themselves are written documentation of what has been happening in my studio and my head, conversations with my studio advisor, etc. these past couple of months.
At the top of the page in the menu bar you will find MCP501 Proposal Year 1. This is my updated project proposal as of August 13.
http://www.robynthomas-explorations.com/mcp501-proposal-year-1/
Images of my recent work, the process and the preparation/process photos for two of the three installations I am working on can be found under the heading MCP501 Gallery in the menu bar. There is a limited amount of text included with the images in each gallery.
http://www.robynthomas-explorations.com/studio-work-galleries/
Specific questions and areas for feedback:
I would like to ask you if you could focus your feedback on the three presentation formats of the journal pages [Wanderland, Look In Glass, and Just Between Me and You] in relation to the ideas I am working with in my project proposal, as well as to the journal pages as a whole, rather than commenting on individual journal or sketchbook pages and any formal issues raised within a particular page.
I am looking forward to reading your feedback!
-Robyn
Feedback from Critique Group Members
HI Robyn,
Your project seems poised to contribute knowledge through the application of your practice, offering others a means to access the veiled internal experience of epilepsy as a woman. As a viewer of your art, I am genuinely intrigued and hungry to learn of the internal experience of epilepsy as it is outside my personal experience and I am dependent upon your generosity to gain insight as to the manifestations and implications of the condition.
I appreciate your reflections on identity and definitions concerning painting and drawing. Your assessment that drawing is "creepy" seems uncannily accurate and led me to these thoughts:
To prove your point, creatures with exoskeletons are frequently described as "creepy."
It is considered a violation of naturalism to reveal the line in a painting. Van Gogh's and Rouault's outlines are disconcerting. The viewer knows something other than physical verisimilitude is being depicted - and it is a challenge. What is this world where abstraction declares equal standing to representation? How can it be verified - and what would constitute verification, anyway?
As you note skeletons are creepy and considered not as alluring as flesh, yet we owe our expansive brains to our ancestors' investigation of the structure of bones. The discovery and subsequent consumption of bone marrow yielded the high-protein food that fueled the expansion of the brain and, thus, created humanity - and art. Is there marrow inside a line?
De Kooning, one of the great draftsman of our age, famously stated that "flesh was the reason oil paint was invented." When he finally stripped away the flesh and let the line rise to the fore in his paintings, people were confused, creeped-out in way by their simplicity and nakedness.
De Kooning's work of the mid to late 1980s is often dismissed as a product impaired by his illness, but this is a particularly ungenerous reading, to me they are missives from a world/a body/a mind few have access to, and hence are treasures sent back from an explorer. I see a similar generosity and inherent value in your project, a mixture of education, empathy opportunity and beauty.
The Times' Thursday obituary for Galway Kinnell concludes with this paragraph: "Through it all, he held that it was the job of poets to bear witness. "To me," he said, "poetry is somebody standing up, so to speak, and saying, with as little concealment as possible, what it is for him or her to be on earth at this moment."
I appreciate your investigation of the utility and legitimacy of boundaries as pertains media and self-definition. It seems like law is the only thing that can't cross a border. As Dylan sings, "To live outside the law, you must be honest."
With the test Wanderland installation, some of the images seem yearning to break free of the sheets of paper. Can the distance between the installation as an architectural space and the images within it be bridged or interpenetrated? (see perhaps, Sandy Skoglund). Would that be accurate to your experience?
Also, I am very aware of the delicacy of the paper and other supports. It registers as an act of generosity and trust/risk that you would allow your work to be in direct physical contact with the viewer as opposed to under glass as with most work on paper. (This also is true of the journal pages). One of the still pretty much intact boundaries for painting is that it is not to be touched. As a viewer I think I would know that my interaction is hastening the works perishability. Perhaps this is appropriate given the evanescent or elusive nature of your subject.
I find myself very interested in the spaces you've circumscribed by the boxes and hallway. The spaces are entities independent of the work they house and support. What does this space represent and can I inhabit it? Should I? Is this seemingly empty space the sleeper subject of the piece?
The potential reordering of your journal by viewers makes me think of card shuffling and divination. I appreciate the idea that outside entities are impacting the narrative and altering the sense-making capacity of the next viewer. Will the viewer have any sense that the order of the journal pages may have been altered - some maybe even disappearing - or is the point that every encounter is a primary experience?
In the conventional boundary describing a journal, it comes pre-bound and is subsequently filled up. You have created an open-ended journal bound only by the viewer's attention and consequent willingness to follow your directives. In re-bundling the journal, the reader is re-enacting the artist's journal making act. Does a reader change the text for each subsequent reader?
I am thrilled with the prospect of the visual dynamism of Look In Glass. I wonder if the timed-slide show you imagine is accurate to your experience. Could your paintings be animated in the box, so that they shift organically, or chaotically from one to the other - similar to how iTunes visualizer generates morphing images. (Again, if that would be an accurate depiction). Also, what about the possibility of running some of your images through the Photoshop spherize filter so that the box would appear to describe a sphere from the inside. What if the viewer, instead of looking at the box from outside, could stick their head through a hole in the bottom and be immersed in the experience - offering a sort of DIY virtual reality experience?
I know you did not ask us to focus on the formal nature of your images, but I have to say it was a great pleasure to explore your pictorial inventiveness. Also, on the off-chance you're not already well familiar with them, you might enjoy Donald Baechler and Jonathan Lasker.
Congratulations on all the excellent work. I'm excited to see more!
Mark
Hi Robyn - Claire here.
Our time in Berlin only allowed me to see the “tip of the iceberg” of your work. Now I am getting a much bigger picture & seeing so much more of the context in which you place the work for the experience of the viewer. Also I am seeing your multi-talented diversity … you say you are a painter, however you are also an architect & a writer!
Do you ever sleep?
Not only do you produce prolifically, but it is all such detailed & time-consuming work!
As a performer & installation artist my interest is piqued by the temporal experience you give your viewer. All of the projects described here have a presentation format that requires time-based interaction with an individual viewer on an intimate level.
To get the most complete understanding of how this works in reality, short of actually being present, I would like to see documentation of human interaction with each piece.
I want to see someone lost in Wanderland, how parts of their body disappear behind & re-emerge from the suspended pieces. I want to see the process of discovery as someone delves into “Just Between Me and You” - & then carefully wraps it all back up again. I want to see a face buried into “Look In Glass”. I want to see the experiencer having the experience.
I want to BE the experiencer.
It is note-worthy to me that each of these works is designed for an individual viewer to have a private experience. You give each person time alone inside your world - it is not a shared experience. There may be opportunity for post-experience discussion & comparing notes etc, but the experience itself at that moment in time cannot be shared. There may even be on-lookers present - but that is still not the same as sharing the same experience at the same time.
In relation to the subject of epilepsy, I imagine that this could perhaps be relevant - that you guide each individual into your world, which can only be experienced alone.
Each entity (painting) is so intricate in itself, then they as a collection make up a whole piece (installation) then all of the pieces connect together in a larger body of work that, exhibited together, becomes a journey.
CEB
Hello Robyn!!!
I am thrilled to see where the the last few months have brought you! The evolution of the materials, ideas and concept see to be continuing at a rapid pace. The mixed media piece from Somos in Berlin, was that the “trigger” piece if you will? You were mostly painting before, and I am curious to know what was the moment you felt it necessary to switch to mixed media on a smaller scale? From your presentation in Berlin I almost a gather a feeling of being able to fit into the body better. As a more logical size reflection of yourself. I am really enjoying where this is all leading as individual pieces and as a whole installment.
Answering the question for the group this week, about presentation formats for the journal pages. I guess I need some more information in how you perceive them to fit together. I feel as if Wanderlust and Just in the Glass could possibly be one. The two presentation formats you have are extremely different and I feel as if the Look in the Glass format really resonates with your subject matter and the message of your proposal that you are trying to convey. I think it would be extremely interesting to see these in a room of mirrors (ie. yoga studio, dance studio etc. and either project them onto the mirrors to create that infinity of image or hang them from the ceiling and project on top of the hanging images.
I do feel as if the detail and size of the work, will automatically draw in the viewer, even if they were hung in a gallery etc. The sequence was something that I did want to ask about, is it crucial to the format of your journals and presentation. Is there a significance to today’s ‘entry’ versus last months? I believe with all 100 of these presented together it will be amazing!!!!!! It will bring forth the whole, and you do such a great job at keeping, a thread, in this case literally, through all of your work. As far as references go, I have a photographer friend that collage journals as well. www.mattmallams.com check out his collages, he is an amazing photographer but his view comes from the juxtaposition he creates in his journals. Its not same subject,but more for technique, maybe it bring some fresh new ideas!
I am thrilled to see all this work and I know we both had a light bulb moment the past few months and I am excited for you and that experience and what will come in the next few weeks!!!!!!
-L
Hi Robyn,
Wow - a productive couple months!
The variance of forms that your work takes is surprising to me, who saw little of your work in Berlin. The scope and breadth of your thought process is staggering, and very clear in your written work.
I would encourage you to delve into the nature of symbolism in art in continued pursuit of organic symbolism in your work. “The Nature and Aim of Fiction.” by Flannery O’Connor (the same I recommended to Mark - it’s very much on my mind these days) is a good start, as are Van Gogh’s letters to Gaugin. Carl Jung also has interesting things to say in the introduction to his book “Man and his Symbols.” Thinking about some of the issues these great thinkers were talking about has helped me in the past to begin to learn how to develop symbols organically through working and throughout a piece or a body of work in such a way that the symbol is inherently tied up to both the content of the piece and the form it takes - something I feel you are in pursuit of (as are we all) in your work.
I’m eager to see what comes next? Will you be encorporating more sensory experiences into your work? The visual, of course, is already very much at play - as is the kinetic or tactile - but what about sound? smell? taste? The work seems to invite a multi-sensory direction both in its presentation and its subject matter.
Keep working! I can’t wait to see what else you come up with!
O’Neill
Wow. I’m really impressed by the depth of your work and by how deeply you are inviting the viewers to experience this work. I think the chronology moving from Just Between Me and You, to Look In Glass to Wanderland offers a rare and completely unique opportunity for viewers to experience, re-experience and enter the world of your artwork. I think the recognition of these images by the viewer is important. The fact that they will have seen and held in their hands the images that they will then re-experience in a fragmented/kaleidoscopic way- watching themselves watch and becoming part of the image, and then to enter a world where they are enveloped by them. Pretty intense Robyn! The chronology as I understand it has a snag (I may be misunderstanding this)- if the viewer begins with Just Between Me and You and later enters Wanderland- will you have duplicated these images or will this take place at a later time. It seems ideal that people could experience these one after another.
Format considerations for Wanderland:
Laundry line or pulley system could introduce alternate directions of movement- vertical, diagonal, horizontal
-possibly these could be controlled by visitors waiting for their turn, thus having a hand in others experience without actually experiencing the effect themselves. . or controlled by others ‘off stage’
Look In Glass
I feel a bit constrained by the tension between the organic images and the sliding puzzle format of the moving images- is that the intention- to create a tension there? I feel like I want them to move more fluidly- this could very easily be a formalistic issue that I am encountering as an ‘other’ looking in. Obviously I can not speak to the truth of this experience, I can only feel and experience what is offered.
A couple of specific works that this brings to mind- On Megumi Akiyoshi’s ‘Cyber Womb’ and ‘Coffin for the Living’ http://www.onmeg.com/skills/perticipatory/ are very much parallel in their demand to be experienced one at a time. I have participated in her work and to experience a window into someone else’s imagination/world –alone- is very intimate. Like you have suggested it is a self portrait which becomes a portrait of the viewer/experiencer, but it is also an opportunity for introspection and self recognition/discovery through another’s perspective/vision.
The other artist is Sebastian Errazuriz and his Kaleidoscope Cabinet. It is a beauty and may give you some structural ideas for further developments http://www.onmeg.com/skills/perticipatory/
Thank you for sharing!
G
Hi Robyn,
I understand your request for feedback has to do with the installation formats and the journal. Your focus is clear in the work, that the self portrait of a female with epilepsy is a complex mosaic. First of all, I am amazed at the quantity of work and variety therein, all while being so accessibly linked. The journal works are rich with elaborative details that become their own rabbit hole. I particularly enjoyed the process documentation. Seeing the works in process is like a concise version of the project a as a whole: a layered pictured. The Inflexible Route to Salvation sticks out. The layering and the final stipple technique is so rich.
The concept for Wanderland absolutely works. In your descriptive language about it, I got a very tactile sense of what you were going for. Your preparation is impressive. I have two concerns: first, the placement in your home. Of course, I’m sure that is part logistical. I guess my concern is that it may not present as finished as you would hope because of this locale. On the flip side of that argument, having it at home also layers additional meaning and insight into the portrait. My other concern, is just that is feels kinda...I don’t really know how to say it. I sort of reminds me of making play forts when I was a kid. I think if that were the effect for the viewer, and it were not intentional, that would be a shame because the drawings are incredible. More on this later….
The Look In Glass offers an interesting contrast to the Wanderland, being a slick digital techno format. While I know the business end of the project is the inside, I find myself wanting to know how the outside will be finished. I know that these two pieces are presented together in this case, but will that always be the case? As distinct pieces, I like the Look In Glass more, and I think you have more room to run with that format. I don’t feel that the potential of the concept is exhausted with the iPad either. You could keep developing the mirror as a tool and create a space for the viewer to inhabit, like Wanderland. Have you thought about projections too?
The journal projects are beautiful and complex, like the “portrait.” I absolutely think they should be displayed in a traditional format as well. Of course the double sided construction complicates that presentation. How important is it that they be loose leaf to you? There is part of me the wishes to see them encapsulated into a frame (not totally unlike the Look In Glass.)
Great work Robyn. You have a stunning amount of work to keep developing.
-KJ
To view my response to this feedback please visit the posting on my Monthly Blog dated November 6, 2014.