part II: ‘environs’ and evolution
My expectations going into Picture Berlin were that I would continue taking portraits of makers & creators. But once I found myself there, I realized I didn’t have interest in hounding down people for portrait sessions (It also didn’t help that another student wanted to pursue the exact same project). I was feeling rather introverted and wanting to do something personal to me that was also contemporary.
I felt lost the first week but I had a turning point during my studio visit with Ivan Seal. I wasn’t sure how to introduce him to my work or how to even begin explaining it because it is all over the place. So I just showed him everything and was honest about how I was feeling lost in the whole process. What Ivan was able to do for me was pull images from projects I considered totally unrelated and show how the images actually were very related in their composition, palette, and form. In a sense, my struggle to categorize and place everything into specific genres was preventing me from seeing how the images actually fit together.
Based on this feedback I did a series of exercises pulling and placing unrelated images together in a series of collections. I studied these collections: the colors, the composition, the content, the form, the overall feeling and vibe they gave me. A couple days later I was wandering around a fantastic art supply store called modulor when I had the idea to start constructing sets or environments. It clicked for me because it tied into to the otherworldy landscapes I seek out and it is a way for me to create something new and physical. It’s a baby step in the direction of creating large installations, which I hope to someday do.
I collected materials from the art store including pigments and plastics (based on palettes I discovered in my collections), orbs (inspired but anish kapoor) and architectural model supplies like moss. I also collected rocks and leaves around the studio, liquids such as milk and orange juice, trash, construction foam and lighting equipment, cheap photocopy prints of textures I had in my archives, and anything else I could get my hands on. And then I went to our studio at Kunstquartier Bethanien and basically just made a big mess (sadly I didn’t think to take process photos until after I had cleaned up).
Ice Cave, 2011
You can view the whole project here.
For our closing exhibition I wanted to project the images large as a way to further distort the scale and make it into a more believable environment. I wanted people to feel like they were really entering the scenes. Unfortunately, because of the way the space was, there wasn’t a way to project the image huge without people’s heads casting large shadows into the image, rather than the image projecting onto their bodies.
Here’s a shot of the install at WestGermany:
photo by dian mcleod
It’s still very much a work in progress but I think I’m getting closer to something worthwhile. I’d appreciate any thoughts or comments, so please feel free to say hi and let me know what you think.
