Thinking About My Art

I can’t recall if I mentioned this prior to yesterday, but beginning Sunday, January 3, I will be doing a four-week artist residency in sculpture at the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT.  This is my first residency and I am both excited and nervous.  As I often like to do, let’s breakdown both of these feelings.

Excited

• This is the first time that I will have an extended opportunity to pursue my work with complete focus and attention.
• I am going to pursue a new body of work as well as dabble in some of the things that I’ve been posting about lately.  The new work will involve plywood (two types: Maple, Walnut), acrylic paint and lots of polyacrylic clear coating.
• I will be surrounded by many other artists from a wide variety of disciplines.  Living in the suburbs does not afford me this opportunity very often.

Nervous

• Four weeks away from my beautiful wife… what more do I need to say?  I will miss her terribly.
• Will my four weeks in residency be “worth it”?  I feel some self-imposed pressure that my time spent at VSC has to be extremely fruitful.  Not only must I make great work, but lots of it.  Unreasonable, I know, but it’s how I feel.
• Tackling a new body of work.  I think I know how it will work, but what if it doesn’t turn out as expected?  What if something in the process just won’t work?  I’ll have to adjust on the fly and move forward.
• January in Vermont?  Yikes!

Overall I think I am more excited than nervous.  I am prepping up to 40 panels to take with me as well as about 5-8 projects similar to my new work shown here.  It’s probably way more than I will be able to finish, but I want plenty of material to work with.

From what I understand, there is limited internet availability at VSC so I’m not sure how much I will be able to post about my experiences.  I will try to provide periodic updates as I can.

With any luck I hope to find a new place within myself as an artist.  I hope to meet great people and see other interesting work.  I hope to learn more about myself and my work, and I hope to come back with some interesting new pieces.

I’m eager to start this experience.  Vermont, here I come!

I apologize for the long delay in posting something new here.  Between a five-day Disney trip, the Christmas holidays and preparing for my upcoming residency (specific post coming soon), things have just been hectic.  However, I have been able to create some new work in the studio and I am excited to share the images with you.  These four pieces follow in line with previously posted works using 1/16″ veneer on birch plywood and playing with different sheens of polyacrylic clear coating.

Not Yet Titled
Padauk veneer on birch plywood
12″ x 12″ x 1/2″
2009

Not Yet Titled
Padauk veneer on birch plywood
12″ x 12″ x 1/2″
2009

Not Yet Titled
Walnut/Maple veneer on birch plywood
12″ x 12″ x 1/2″
2009

Not Yet Titled
Walnut/Maple veneer on birch plywood
12″ x 12″ x 1/2″
2009

Not Yet Titled
Spalted Maple/Walnut veneer on birch plywood
12″ x 12″ x 1/2″
2009

Not Yet Titled
Spalted Maple/Walnut veneer on birch plywood
12″ x 12″ x 1/2″
2009

Not Yet Titled
Black Ash/Padauk veneer on birch plywood
12″ x 12″ x 1/2″
2009

Not Yet Titled
Black Ash/Padauk veneer on birch plywood
12″ x 12″ x 1/2″
2009

I hope these images provide some insight into what I’m currently working on in the studio.  What doesn’t come through in these jpegs is the increasing complexity of clear coating.  In the top image, it is clear that I have alternated bands of matte and glossy finish.  In the second image, you can get a hint of a subtle vertical bar of clear coating that is the same width as the piece of maple.  In the third image, there are alternating bands of glossy and matte finish that do not show up in the jpeg.  Also, in the last image, the top half (Black Ash) has 1″ wide horizontal bars that alternate between glossy and semi-glossy finish.  The bottom half (Padauk) is completely finished in matte clear coating.

Creating works with such subtly – even sometimes difficult to see in person – has me thinking about subtleties in contemporary art.  Expect a post on this topic in the near future.

As always, I welcome any and all feedback you may have.  Thank you for taking the time to look.

I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce you to my wonderful studio assistant.  Here he is:

He’s quite attractive in his alien space mask, isn’t he?  This man is my dad, Sam Kirkland, and what he lacks in style he more than makes up for in woodworking knowledge.  He’s been helping me realize my work for many years now, either during the few times we’re together each year or via phone consultations.  He’s seen here sanding a walnut frame made while we were home for Thanksgiving.  Notice the tongue sticking out?  This is evidence of extreme concentration and I do it too.  Like father like son, they say.

Our collaboration in the woodshop hasn’t always been so, well, collaborative.  As a young child, he would bring me out to the shop and encourage me to help.  One time, I tried to help.  Given a piece of wood and a sanding block, I began to sand the board.  However, I made the catastrophic mistake of sanding against the grain.  The horror!!!  My dad sternly reprimanded me for my mistake and being one who didn’t take constructive criticism well (I’ve gotten better since, I think), I threw the sanding block down, stormed out of the shop to go play a video game and never returned.

I’m not sure why I became an artist and even less sure why I decided to work with wood.  I’m sure a psychologist could figure it all out, but we’ll save that for another time.  Regardless of the reason, I have become a woodworker.  I don’t make furniture but I have a lot of the same needs as a traditional woodworker.  And my dad provides the necessary guidance and know-how.  He has almost singlehandedly provided every power tool I have.  In fact, for each birthday and Christmas since my interest in wood began, I have received a new tool.  This year it was an 18V cordless drill and sawzall.  Sweet!

Anyway, we got started on a rough note some 20+ years ago.  But I am thrilled that I get to share wood with my dad.  He’s been working in wood for 6 decades now.  I’m still in my first.  I’ve learned a lot and I know I’ve taught him some things too.  I look forward to many more years of collaborative woodworking.

Thanks, Pops, for being a great studio assistant.  I couldn’t ask for a better one.

Approximately two weeks ago Stacey and I made a big decision.  Well, I guess it’s not that big.  We decided to join a gym and we’re now proud members of L.A. Fitness in the Dulles Town Center.  When I was growing up I played baseball and basketball all the time.  I played baseball for my college team and very often played pick up basketball.  I lifted weights most of my senior year.  I was in pretty good shape.

After graduation, I moved to Washington, D.C. and continued being active.  Eventually I took up cycling and even raced for a bit with a local team.  Again, I was in pretty good shape.  Since then, however, I haven’t been nearly as active as I would have liked.  Lately, I have felt quite out of shape.  The time came to look into joining gym.

Since joining the gym two weeks ago I have gone there 8 times (I missed 5 days due to the holidays in Kentucky).  And I am loving it.  Already I feel a bit better physically and mentally.  Unfortunately, this all comes at a cost.  I struggle with knowing that those 15 hours or so could have been spent in the studio.  That’s not including the time to commute to and from the gym, or the exhausted nights recovering on the couch after a challenging workout.  Ultimately I have lost a lot of studio time and I’m not thrilled with that.

I think there are certain times when life pulls an artist away from the studio.  It’s a difficult decision, choosing something over art.  But we make the decisions we feel we need to make when we need to make them.  My belief is that although my time in the studio may be diminished, what time I do spend in the studio is of greater quality.  I will feel better about myself and I’ll be able to work harder and with greater focus.  I already feel a greater clarity about my work and I have some interesting things happening in the studio as we speak.

I recently re-read Anne Truitt’s “Daybook.” In it, she talks about how she had to prioritize many things above her work in the studio.  I think the list included family, friends, employment, house chores and her garden.  All of these came before the studio.  Once her responsibilities were taken care of, she would spend what time and energy that remained in the studio.  I think we can all agree that what came out of her studio was remarkable regardless of the time made available for its creation.

Fitness/health and art are not mutually exclusive.  They are both required to make me the person I am and want to be.  I will pursue both with determined passion and I look forward to seeing what comes from each.  But from time to time, I will struggle with the choice of one over another at a specific point in time.  I will remind myself that life is long and I have time to do it all.

After all, if Anne could do it, so can I.

Not long ago, in an effort to get ready for Halloween, Stacey and I requested Psycho from Netflix.  For anyone unfamiliar with it, Psycho is an American film made in 1960 by Alfred Hitchcock.  It’s a “suspense/horror” movie and ranked by AFI in 2007 as the 14th greatest movie of all time.  I had never seen the movie and was eager for the experience.

It did not take long once watching the movie for me to realize that I had been duped.  This film was not suspenseful and contained no horror.  In fact, I found the movie to be one of the funniest movies I’ve seen in a long time.  It should not be found in the horror section but instead in comedy.  Attempts to build suspense were merely boring.  The acting was weak and forced.  Attempts to scare me were met with giggles instead.  The 14th best movie of all time?  It’s not in my top 14 movies that I watched in 2009.

So why the disconnect?  Well, put simply, times change.  I have no doubt that in 1960 Psycho was a fantastic movie.  It probably deserved its Academy Award nominations.  If we’re building a list of the all time greatest movies in terms of historical significance, perhaps it deserves its place.  And maybe this is what AFI means by “greatest.”

One of my favorite suspense/horror movies is The Ring.  Can you imagine if The Ring was played for 1960 audiences?  How many heart attacks would there be?  If The Ring is watched by an audience in 2050, will they just laugh?  Probably.

I’m not writing about this to discuss whether or not Psycho is a great movie.  I don’t think it is.  The reason I think this is because the context around the movie has changed so profoundly in 50 years that the movie no longer has the same impact.  My least favorite word in relation to this stuff, relevance, seems to apply here.  When Psycho came out, it was probably a huge accomplishment in cinematography.  Had there been a scarier, more suspenseful, movie before it?  It was extremely relevant then.  Now?  Not at all.  We’ve seen and experienced too much since.  We may appreciate the movie as a piece of history, but without qualifications (I like to refer to this as “degree of difficulty” – it was great for 1960!), it no longer measures up.  At least for me, anyway.

Now let’s bring this around to art.  Are “great” works of art impacted by context?  Can a work of art be “great” if it is impacted by context?  The best example that comes to mind for me is most Pop Art.  Perhaps in the 1960s it had impact.  But now it just feels like a joke, and not in a good way.  Undoubtedly Pop Art holds historical significance, but because it so heavily relied on its context, can it really be considered “great” today?  I can think of important examples of Pop Art, but nothing that even remotely comes close to greatness, at least how I define it.

It seems we place a lot of value on relevance in art today and I don’t think I will ever understand it.  To me, making something relevant is simple.  It simply addresses the now.  The now is right there in front of us.  And for the now, that’s wonderful.  But what about the then, the future?  When Warhol made his Brillo boxes, I’m certain that most Americans were very familiar with what Brillo was.  Now?  I barely remember Brillo pads, what about people even younger than me?  What about generations to come?  A re-created Brillo box holds no relevance to me.  Why do I care?  Why do I want to look at it?

I’m left to think that the most relevant work of art is something that actually has no relevance at all.  It should not be easily dated.  Anything in the work that dates it, that narrows its context, that places it in a certain place, inherently limits the piece.  The potential audience for the work is reduced.  For many contemporary artists, this is not a problem.  They seem to create work for a very specific audience… perhaps a small set of collectors and curators who play an inside game.  In this approach, it’s all about getting it.  If you get it, you’re inside.  If you don’t, tough luck.

I have no problem with this approach but it’s not the way for me.  I don’t wish to be relevant in the way that many gallerists, curators and critics talk about today.  I don’t want to create work that is tied closely to a specific time and place.

What I saw in Psycho was a silly and fairly boring movie.  I did not see greatness.  Perhaps it’s actually there and I didn’t recognize it.  Regardless, it helped me think about what I want my art to do.  It made me think about context and the audience.  It made me think about how greatness is created.  It made me think about not knowing what the future will bring for how my work is viewed.  Given all that, it was a well-spent 109 minutes.

And hey, laughing is never a bad thing.

In conjunction with the other new works I recently posted, I’ve been exploring a similar approach using small pieces of hardwood joined together to form wall-mounted sculptures.  Like the previous work, here I mix wood types and finishes (matte and glossy).  Additionally, some pieces have been painted on the ends to help in identification and labeling at the lumber supplier.  I welcome this jolt of color in the work, evidence of a previous life and purpose.

Here are the images (please note that these images did not come out as well as I’d hoped):

Not Yet Titled #1
Birdseye Maple and Wenge Wood, Polyacrylic
3.25″ x 6.75″ x 1.5″
2009

Here the small piece of Wenge (black)has a glossy finish while the Maple (light yellow) is matte.

Not Yet Titled #1 (side view)

Not Yet Titled #2
Bubinga and Wenge Wood, Polyacrylic, Spray Paint
4.25″ x 5.75″ x 1.5″
2009

Here the piece of Wenge (black) has a matte finish while the Bubinga (red/pink) is glossy.

Not Yet Titled #2 (top view)

Not Yet Titled #3 (side view)
Canarywood and Purpleheart Wood, Polyacrylic, Spray Paint
4.5″ x 14.5″ x 1.5″
2009

Here the Purpleheart has a matte finish while the Canarywood is glossy.

Not Yet Titled #4
Purpleheart and Birdseye Maple Wood, Polyacrylic
6.25″ x 10.5″ x 1.5″
2009

Here the Maple has a glossy finish while the Purpleheart is matte.

Not Yet Titled #4 (side view)

Not Yet Titled #5
Bloodwood and Canarywood, Polyacrylic, Spray Paint
3.25″ x 17.25″ x 1.5″
2009

Here the Canarywood has a matte finish while the Bloodwood is glossy.  In reality the Bloodwood is a much richer red color than appears here.

Not Yet Titled #5 (side view)

As always, I welcome feedback on the work.  I’m hopeful that the images and details provided give an adequate experience of the work, at least through this digital medium.

Not that I get called a “wood artist” too often, but in light of some recent comments here about how much I just love wood, Joanne Mattera’s post today – “The ‘Adjective’ Artist.  How Do You Define Yourself?” – seemed perfectly timed.  The idea:

I’ve come to this point of view over time: The more narrowly we define ourselves, the narrower our opportunities will be.

It was once suggested that I give my approach to artmaking a name.  It was bad advice that I followed when I was young and naive.  Who remembers “Organic Minimalism”?  I even titled my first solo show, “Studies in Organic Minimalism.”  Yuck!  I quickly learned, though, that in defining myself and my work, I was simultaneously limiting myself.  Since opportunities are so few and far  between for artists, it makes no sense to limit ourselves.  Others will be more than happy to do it for us, we need not help.

As an aside, when I think of my work and what label I would give it (if I were so inclined), I always lean most to painting.  I’ve told people in the past that I see my work as about 60% painting, 30% sculpture and 10% drawing.  And this is the wood works I’m talking about.  That’s why unless I am absolutely required to do so, I self identify as an artist, one who most often uses wood as medium.

I wanted to quickly bring your attention to the fact that I’ve redesigned my art Web site and drafted a new artist statement.  For the Web site, I removed all works that aren’t focused on wood.  I’ve created three sections of work: Clear Coat, White Paint, and Holes.  I think this will provide a more focused representation of my practice.

I’ve long struggled with artist statements as I think oftentimes they do more harm than good.  I think they should at most be a simple point of access to the work.  In today’s art world, though, they are required.  So with that in mind, I set out to write a one-sentence artist statement.  Here is the result:

Through my work, I strive to embody a clarity and resolution of line, color and form through simple gestures enacted upon the foundation of inherently beautiful wood.

I’m not sure what more I could say or need to say without diving into technical details.  For the time-being, this will suffice.

UPDATE (10/25/09 @ 12:14pm):

After receiving some feedback on the artist statement, I’d like to try out this revision:

Through my work, I strive to find a clarity and resolution of line, color and form through simple gestures enacted upon a foundation of wood.

It’s not too different, but what do you think?

With the new studio finally in working order, I’ve been able to get started on new work.  I’ve discussed before my inclination to work once again in a truly “reductive” mode.  I anticipated that I would pick up where I left off about 3 years ago and start working with wood by process of removal (holes, cuts, etc).  Instead, I found myself wanting to simplify.  I found myself wanting to work directly with wood and, while highlighting (exploiting?) it’s natural beauty, setting up some very subtle juxtapositions in the material.  Perhaps my biggest struggle was allowing myself to be so direct, so simple, so concise.  I asked myself many times, “Is this enough?”  Or, “Shouldn’t I do more?”

Ultimately, after completing the first piece, I was shocked by its beauty.  It seemed successful to me.  And I liked that I was unsure about its validity.  I felt that I was pushing my understanding of my own work.  While this work is not literally reductive (like I’ve talked so much about), it is rooted in a broader sense of reductivism.  Again, from the Minus Space Web site:

Reductive art is generally characterized by its use of plainspoken materials, monochromatic or limited color, geometry and pattern, repetition and seriality, precise craftsmanship, and intellectual rigor. Reductive art is inclusive and pluralistic in its approach, including geographic location, age, gender, medium, artistic strategy, and content of work.

What follows is a series of images of new work from the studio.  They are shown in chronological order.  I’ll also write a bit about the work where it may be helpful in shedding light on some of the nuances of the work.

Not yet titled #1
Walnut wood, Polyacrylic on Birch Plywood
11.75″ x 11.75″ x 0.75″
2009

This was the first piece I attempted in a new mode.  I found a source for thin sheets of wood (3″ x 24″ x 1/16″, a bit thicker than normal veneer) and thought that it would enable to work in larger fields of “solid” wood than before.  The piece above incorporates two sheets of walnut wood, each cut in half.  As you can see, in the top half of the piece I glued down to 1/2″ birch plywood two halves of the same sheet.  At bottom, I glued the two halves from the other sheet.  Although both pieces are walnut, you can see just how different they look.

My next thought was that the darker half at bottom held too much weight for the piece.  In other words, I felt the bottom half dominated the top half in a way.  In order to equalize that difference, I opted to play on another level.  To give more weight to the top half, I decided to apply a coating of glossy polyacrylic clear.  Polyacrylic is known for being one of the most clear mediums available and it does not yellow over time.  The bottom half of the piece was then finished in matte polyacrylic clear.  While the bottom half of the piece remains darker, the top half is significantly shinier.  I was unable to capture the difference in sheen in these images, but in person, it is quite obvious.

This is a side view of the piece above.  Here I want to highlight the composition of the plywood and how it relates to the walnut sheets applied to the surface.  This cabinet-grade plywood is made up of many layers of 1/16″ veneer core (as seen in the alternating light/dark stripes on the side).  The walnut sheets applied to the surface are also 1/16″ thick.  The result is that the walnut surface appears to be part of the plywood itself, as if it had been made that way in the factory.  In reality, the veneer surface of manufactured plywood is paper thin.  While it is a very subtle thing, I believe the interaction of the plywood layers and the hardwood surface serve to activate the piece.  For me, looking straight on at the piece reveals a serene beauty.  From the side, though, the piece comes alive.

The following pieces are similar to the one above in that the lighter colored wood at top is finished in high gloss while the bottom is finished in matte.

Not yet titled #2
Basswood/Walnut wood, Polyacrylic on Birch Plywood
11.75″ x 11.75″ x 0.75″
2009

Not yet titled #3
Basswood/Cherry wood, Polyacrylic on Birch Plywood
11.75″ x 11.75″ x 0.75″
2009

Not yet titled #4
Mahogany/Cherry wood, Polyacrylic on Birch Plywood
11.75″ x 11.75″ x 0.75″
2009

Not yet titled #5
Cherry/Walnut wood, Polyacrylic on Birch Plywood
11.75″ x 11.75″ x 0.75″
2009

Not yet titled #6
Mahogany/Basswood/Walnut wood, Polyacrylic on Birch Plywood
11″ x 11″ x 0.75″
2009

As is no doubt obvious, the piece above gets a bit more complicated.  Here, I’ve mixed three woods and mixed up the composition.  The same general principles found in the pieces above apply here too, but there is a slight change.  In order to equalize the different wood types, to some degree at least, I’ve used three different sheens of clear coat.  The Walnut is matte, the Mahogany is satin, and the Basswood is glossy.  You can’t see it in the image, but trust me, it’s there.

Not yet titled #8
Mahogany/Basswood/Walnut wood, Polyacrylic on Birch Plywood
11.75″ x 11.75″ x 0.75″
2009

The same principles as the found in #7 above apply here.

Finally, a piece that is a bit of an outlier:

Not yet titled #9
Polyacrylic on Birch Plywood
11.75″ x 11.75″ x 0.75″
2009

This piece is a next step in exploring the possibilities of working simply with clear coat on plywood (a previous example can be seen here).  In the work above, I used glossy polyacrylic clear coating to “paint” the area that has slightly different color.  I filled in a ring of grain found naturally in the birch veneered surface of the plywood.  For this work, I was thinking about this holes-in-wood piece from 2005.  I’m honestly not too sure what to think about this piece right now.  I like having “nature” dictate my actions.  I like the subtle discoloration of the surface.  I like the glossy sheen that comes and goes depending on the viewing angle.  I’m not sure where this piece may lead, but I wanted to share it anyway.

As always, I appreciate any feedback you might want to share about this new work.  I’m excited to see where it may lead and I will definitely write about that process here.  Thanks for looking!

Over this past weekend, my wife, Stacey, surprised me with a trip to New York City for my birthday.  She knows how much I enjoy roaming Chelsea and visiting museums, so I was thrilled about the trip.  While hopping from gallery to gallery, something struck me.  The vast majority of the art in Chelsea is in a style we’ve seen before.  I saw Abstract Expressionistic work.  I saw video work.  I saw landscape paintings.  I saw photography.  I saw hodge-podge installation work.  We’ve seen it all before.  Some of it in the past 10 years, some of it the past 100 years.  Obviously I have no problem with showing work that falls into styles already established.  I’m not sure that there can be  truly new art.  And new doesn’t equate, necessarily, with good.

But what I have noticed on my past few trips to Chelsea is that there is very, very little minimal or reductive work being shown.  I use those terms in the broadest sense possible.  I know for a fact there remain many artists working in that vein today.  I consider myself one of them.  We strive to bring something new to the style and make as good of work as we can.  So why doesn’t it seem that anyone wants to show it?  Do gallerists feel that the genre has been finished?  Will the work not sell?  Why is ho-hum AbEx work still thrown up on so many gallery walls?  It has a longer history than Minimalism.  On top of that, Minimalism has not been depleted.  It got a bum rap in some circles due to the coldness of work being made by Judd, Andre (on view now in Chelsea), et al.  But there is so much minimal/reductive work being made with an enormous amount of sensitivity.  In a time of such turmoil/chaos/uncertainty, I’m shocked that at least some gallerists haven’t brought more focus on contemporary minimal/reductive art.  I think that type of art can be such a great escape from the real world.

My guess… minimal/reductive art is seen by many fashionable art world folks as irrelevant.  I think they’re so incredibly wrong about that.  I just wish more galleries were brave enough to find out.

Question to readers: Is there a gallery in Chelsea that focuses on minimal/reductive art?  If not now, when was the last time there was (I know Chelsea has only been the center for a relatively short period so expand the question to SoHo, upper east side, or wherever the center was at the time)?