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| Erin Curry. work in progress. a more perfect shade of blue. 7ft x 3ft. acrylic on paper. |
Deep summer arrived a few weeks ago and, without air conditioning in the studio, by mid afternoon it feels like time to escape to water. My mammal mind must be traveling to the springs as this indigo blue has welled to the surface of these new large drawings worked while on the floor. No small amount of time was spent perfecting the color and it still shifts as the layers accrue one by one. Once the pages are dry, it takes standing on tiptoe to tack them to the wall layer by layer.
As with any new work, there's a bit of falling in love involved. I love the way the pale blue washes glow through the paper above and the way this particular paper wrinkles into little dimples when wet. I love that I've managed to convince the colors to separate a little as it dries, so the ink makes little dustings of pigment. Best of all is the sound. With the windows propped open in the attempt to keep cool(er), these drawings blow and crinkle in the current. My brother-studiomate was driven to tether them down while I wasn't there to stop the chatter of the pages, but I like to hear them talk when he's not around.
Part book, part print, part drawing, part installation, part soundscape: it's covering a lot of ground here with room to grow.
During the ever important stare time -sometimes while literally waiting for the paint to dry- I'm dwelling on the mind as a fountain of associations when faced with abstraction and, in terms of process and creation, as a fountain of ideas. It seems commonsense, but sometimes east to forget: Action is Fertile. Tilled ground is where planted seeds grow best. Even my discards become valuable materials for experimentation with new treatments: crushing, waxing, oiling, inking, drawing, slicing, cutting. It's no coincidence Richard Serra's verb list is thrust into the hands of art students. The list is a map. If one gets stuck, just randomly point to the list and DO.
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| Richard Serra. Verb List. 1967–68. Graphite on paper, 2 sheets, each 10 x 8" (25.4 x 20.3 cm). The Museum of Modern Art, New York. Gift of the artist in honor of Wynn Kramarsky. © 2011 Richard Serra/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York |
4 comments:
Love the Serra list, which I'd never seen. As a storyteller, I'm always collecting verbs too: bother, cajole, plot, ingest, etc but never thought to include: roll, crease, etc. I wonder if characters can roll, and crease?
If paper can chatter and eyes crinkle, a character can crease (maybe with embarrassment or perhaps fondness). It'd be neat to see what a variety of people would come up with. A verb list exchange between different kinds of artists could be interesting. How can one knead a drawing or weld a music composition?
that was quite remarkable. just been flicking through lots of terrible blogs and then this cropped up. lovely!
Thank you Matilda, I'm glad you said hello.
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