The Caravel With Four Fine Masts and Lateen Sails

Caravel Chalkboard Drawing, October 2009

Click on image for larger view.

For weeks I've been adrift in the fears, follies, and dreams of the European age of exploration (roughly 1400-1600).* After tasking my 7th/8th grade class to develop a sailing vessel that could harness the wind** from multiple directions and carry 2000 grams of cargo on stormy seas I followed up our days of damp tests in a plastic wading pool with this chalkboard illustration. The class hardly needed explanations of the intent behind the keel, rudder, or lateen sail after all of the trial-and-error work that they'd poured into their own boats, but I felt it important to illustrate a caravel as it figured so prominently in many of the biographies I was sharing with them.

* * * * *

It is odd how your mind can drift away, even when you are called upon to be most present: this little song by Joanna Newsom*** has been in my head ever since I spent an hour embedding the above illustration on the 8' expanse of darkness that dominates my room.

Bridges and Balloons (excerpt) by Joanna Newsom

from Milk-Eyed Mender

We sailed away on a winter's day
with fate as malleable as clay;
but ships are fallible, I say,
and the nautical, like all things, fades

And I can recall our caravel:
a little wicker beetle shell
with four fine masts and lateen sails,
its bearings on Cair Paravel

O my love,
O it was a funny little thing
to be the ones to've seen.

*Unless, of course, you start with Marco Polo, as I do when beginning this course of study. In that case you can tack on another 150 years at the outset.

**conveniently produced with a box fan

***who I swore was a former Waldorf student after seeing this video for Sprout and the Bean

And for those of you who are up for a challenge: How many nautical puns are part of this post?

Resistance

Resistance, 2009

acrylic, toner, graphite, and wax on panel

10.5" x 10.5"

Click on image for larger view.

There are a good number of things in life right now that are providing a bit of resistance. I'd like to think that I'm standing as stoic and strong as these evergreens, but the truth is quite different. I have fewer years, less pith, and a great deal more awareness of discomfort; which I suppose are the hallmarks of consciousness, but do not necessarily yield humanity a more enviable path in the natural world.

* * * * *

I remember witnessing this stand in the snow atop Mt. Hood during a snow flurry and feeling very small. These trees had already lost ten feet to an accumulation of wind and moisture that would have consumed me in a matter of hours if I opted to stand still.

Winter has long been portrayed as a season of death, but ultimately this is a great simplification. Winter, like modern life, is merely a catalyst and punisher of inertia.

A Fit of Absolutely Warranted Panic

Pressing Through — before waxing

Earlier this month I promised I'd share a studio disaster with you, so here it goes. Above is a depiction of a naked tree pressing through the fog. Below is the same panel after being varnished with two layers of cold wax medium.

Pressing Through — after waxing

When much of my white pastel disappeared under the first pass of cold wax I wanted to cry. Cry in a most unmanly sort of way. Cry in the way that only a month of ten-hour days in the studio can bring about.

I had counted on the cold wax to seal 3/4 of the works I'd created for the upcoming show, but suddenly I was confronted with the possibility that this technique would irrevocably alter the appearance of all my drawings. And there was no way I could frame everything behind glass in time.

But I didn't cry. Instead, I did what any artist would do in a similar situation. I ran to my former drawing teacher for help.

Luckily her studio is only three doors down from mine. She graciously stopped everything she was doing to come and see the source of my distress. A distress, she informed me, that could have been prevented with a few layers of permanent fixative prior to the application of cold wax.

To be fair, I had used fixative. Workable fixative. One layer.

I thanked her profusely. She just smiled and remarked that she didn't know what all the fuss was about. "It's a lovely image Jeffrey."

After a few hours I came around to seeing things her way.

The Sentinel

The Sentinel, 2009

acrylic, toner, gouache, and graphite on paper

23" x 32"

Click on image for larger view.

Time constraints necessitated that I throw over tea-staining this week in favor of gouache. As you can see, this results in a much higher level of coloration across the entire image. Gouache (which is essentially a more opaque watercolor paint, for those who might not know) has another distinct advantage over tea: it can be reactivated with water and pushed to greater or lesser levels of opacity. This flexibility allowed me to reclaim some of the waterfall highlights in the background and create some selective areas of bare toner throughout the composition.

I almost entitled this Colter's Hell as it is derived from a photograph I found in a junk shop that has the word "Yellowstone" neatly written out on the back of the image. But, in the end, I decided it would be best to emphasize the act of standing rather than a place. This tree seems very stoic in the face of such majesty, and it has undoubtedly been so for many more years than I will ever see on this Earth.

Titling Artwork, Pt. III

Sprightly, 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, ink, and wax on board

6.5" x 6.5"

2. The Obliquely Narrative Title

This second style of titling that I'm inclined towards demands more of me than the simple explanatory title. It demands more in terms of time, as it takes longer to generate a title that must serve as a story, and it demands more in terms of trust, as I must feel comfortable with offering something deeply personal to the audience.

In essence, the obliquely narrative title provides a prompt to the viewer. Just like in English class, the prompt serves as the beginning to the story that you (in this case, you the viewer) must compose. The possibilities for narrative are endless following this first statement, but the first statement provides just enough information to establish some sort of subjective context for each individual. Allow me to present an example:

A heritage of red mist., 2009

acrylic, tea, pastel, toner, and graphite on paper

30.5" x 40"

Click on image for larger view.

Here is a title for a work that in no way seems to reference the actual image on the paper. Where is the red mist? Who's heritage? How can you have a heritage of unnaturally colored natural events?

In titling this work the intention is not to be misleading or obtuse— it is to provide the viewer with an evocative cipher into my personal experience. Will it ever succeed in conveying that the image was taken from a rooftop in Rome on the very same day that I visited the Colosseum and heard a docent discussing written records of a red mist of blood that would wash over the first rows of spectators when elephants were butchered by half-starved lions on the amphitheater floor?

No.

Might the shape of the water tower scaffolding resemble the shape of the Colosseum.

Yes.

Might the presence of two buildings; one modern and the other undoubtedly ancient, hint at a location that is both contemporary and antiquated.

Yes.

Is it possible that by referencing red one might think of something opulent, passionate, fiery, angry, or violent.

Perhaps.

Will anyone immediately assume the picture was taken in Rome, and that after days of traipsing about the hub of two empires (Rome and the Christian Church) I might have been drawing a comparison between the hedonistic tendencies of a waning military empire and a young religious empire.

Not likely. But the success of the obliquely narrative title isn't measured by how closely the viewer can recreate the exact ideas that shape those few words meant to give meaning to a visual product. The obliquely narrative title asks for your narrative as it relates to the image/artwork in front of you. It creates an active, rather than passive, viewing experience, and therein lies its strength. Your life, your dreams, your beliefs become a valuable component to understanding something that you took no part in creating and that makes the artwork a living entity, not just a seemingly overpriced commodity.

In my experience, how to title an artwork is not something that is given a great deal of attention at art school. It is acknowledged as another tool for assisting the viewer, but how to develop a means for titling artwork is left up to each artist. Ultimately, to name something is to value it. Names and labels allow us to organize our loves, our loyalties, and our world. I've committed so much time to bringing these images forth, it would be irresponsible of me to not Christen them and provide them another means for communicating their essence.

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Coming soon: studio disasters, new artwork, and the reported demise of text!

Titling Artwork, Pt. II

Passing Through the Dust, 2009

acrylic, toner, and graphite on panel

10.5" x 10.5"

While I can't speak for any other artist, or for artists in general,* I can share with you my approach to titling artworks. Over the years I've found that my titles can be primarily categorized into two types: the simple explanatory and the obliquely narrative. Today, I will just deal with the first type. . .

1. The Simple Explanatory Title

In many ways, this is the easier of the two types as it requires only a word or two to convey meaning. In essence, this sort of title seems to state what the work seeks to depict: Orchard, Mirror, and Baubles are all titles I've employed before. But with the exception of Orchard, which is actually a drawing of an orchard, the title isn't a strictly literal interpretation of the artwork. Mirror is a drawn self-portrait derived from a photograph I took in the mirror. As such, it serves as a double entendre. Baubles illustrates a strand of globular beads on a necklace. The word 'necklace' would have provided a more literal title, but baubles alludes to something precious, beautiful, and rounded. With English boasting at least half a million words it isn't difficult to conjure up a host of synonyms that might offer a subtler statement than the prosaic declarative word.

Sometimes the simple explanatory title is anything but. There are many drawings I've created where the subject of the work is simply a foil for some sort of emotional or religious resonance. Interlude, which captures the sun setting behind a copse of trees as witnessed through a rain soaked window, doesn't need a title explaining the image, it needs a title explaining a confluence of moments: the fleeting moment of sunset, the wistful moment of staring out the window, the inspired moment of releasing the shutter, etc. The real magic of such a simple title is that it leaves the artwork open to the viewers interpretation while, at the same time, whispering a little something into their subconscious.

I recently finished a small piece called Weep that shows a tree that has been carved into and is oozing sap. If it was hanging on a gallery wall and you asked someone to describe it I doubt you'd get a much more narrative explanation than the one I just provided. But I have a tremendous amount of context that I want to share about that image and the title has to provide part of the means for that communication of context. Admittedly, a title is not going to help the viewer determine that this tree was outside a crypt at the Santa Barbara Mission and that I'd just been contemplating statues of Christ and Mary prior to encountering this desecrated trunk in the mission's garden. But they may understand the idea of violation of the natural world. They may consider how certain attempts for immortality can be destructive and, ultimately, somewhat futile. They may sense suffering, on some level, and the recognition of human suffering is paramount to the mission of the Christian tradition. And this, in turn, creates some small connection between the removed act of considering a drawing on a gallery wall and the spiritual impulse of Christianity.

Ultimately, the simple explanatory title offers the artist a quick way to either explain the image and/or invite the viewer into sharing in a more complex reading of the work. I think that the only one-word-title which fails to do either is the ever popular Untitled.**

Next up, the obliquely narrative title. . .

*Although I did it yesterday— "Most professional artists, when pressed, will state that titling is important."

**And I recognize that this is a contentious statement for any MFA students or philosophy majors, as it could be argued (usually after a few beers) that it is the very fact that it is a non-statement that makes it such a powerful statement. To which I say, "Meh." I see your post-modern drivel and raise you one example of preemptive self-aware retort!

Titling Artwork, Pt. 1

It leaks out., 2009

acrylic, tea, toner, and graphite on panel

12" x 24"

Click on image for larger view.

I imagine there are about as many answers to how you title an artwork as there are artists willing to sound off about it. The process for finding a title is often as personal as the process that shaped the artwork, and there is undoubtedly some correlation between how an artist titles and the intangibles of their creative vision.

Most professional artists, when pressed, will state that titling is important. Those same artists, when pressed further, may be unclear as to why they believe it to be important. At that point some small warning bells might go off about how galleries need to sell artwork to the public. Titles offer an avenue for the layman's entry into the "intangibles" of an artwork, which may explain why there are many creators who are aggressively disinterested in titling, resorting to the trusty Untitled #____ for the duration of their career— they don't want the title to be a Cliff's Notes addendum to their vision. They want the public to work for a connection. They want more than just consumption from the audience.

I'm not going to be so crass as to suggest that titling only serves to sell artwork. Judging by how obtuse some titles for artworks happen to be I also believe that titling offers the artist an opportunity to season their creation with another level of meaning. The title can be a red herring or it can provide contextual support for the image/object depicted (or experienced, as with installation or performance art). The title might also be a process that brings about closure for the artist. It becomes a finalizing statement that releases the artwork from the hand that birthed it and proclaims to the artist, more than anyone else, that their time with this work is done.

* * * * *

More on titling tomorrow. . .

* * * * *

It leaks out. was derived from a tiny little silver gelatin print of a somber field that my wife gave to me for Christmas. While not evident in the drawing above, the source image had quite a bit of underexposed detail in the field that flanked the small stream. When I began to work on it however, three things caught my attention and led me to disregard a great deal of other detail:

1. The rips in the image that occurred during the transfer process were so pronounced that I felt they had to become an integral part of the image.

2. The soft horizon line of bare winter trees and bramble cut an interesting shape against the sky.

3. The stream's appearance out of the center of the field, with no indication that it began elsewhere, had a sinister quality to it. It was like the field was being bled to do away with an infection. And while that may sound terribly melodramatic, it was the impression that took hold of me when I picked up my assorted graphite pencils.

Lonely in the Snow

Winter Phoenix, 2009

acrylic, toner, and graphite on cheesecloth wrapped panel

6" x 6"

I didn't grow up with snow. Only in recent years have I had the opportunity to traipse about on mountainsides amidst snow flurries and I find the experience, for lack of a better word, chilling. Something about the silence of the snow enthralls me, but keeps me on edge. I cannot shake the awareness that this simple solidification of water has the power to bury the trees and smooth out cliff faces. 

My voice seems an ineffective tool against so much mass and, as I stand next to 100 foot tall conifers that have seen the first fifteen feet entombed for the season, I'm reminded of just how small a man is in the face of nature's simplest processes. 

* * * * *

I photographed this tree as it fought against the diminishing horizon line outside of Timberline Lodge on Mt. Hood. While it may have seemed lonely in the snow, there was something defiant in its shape. Perhaps experience had taught it that winter was transitory, and survival the norm.

Scratching the Sky

Tease and Tremble, 2009

acrylic, toner, leafing, graphite, india ink, and wax on panel

7.5" x 7.5"

I've returned to torrential downpoars and oppressive skies. For the past three days I was at the Oregon coast, which is notorious for foul weather, and nary a drop of precipitation sullied the trip. It just goes to show; in western Oregon, no matter where you are, it's only a matter of time until you get wet, and you can't predict the where or when.

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A year ago I stood alone in a large field outside of Grant's Pass. Just out of sight ran the Rogue River, which put a murmur and birdsong in the morning air. I came across a stand of thistles and spent some time watching them waver in the wind. To me, they are a most aesthetic plant, with a linear nature that always cuts a dramatic silhouette against the sky. I never tire of photographing them.

That morning I was feeling a bit pressed for time. Soon I would have to be back at camp and packing up for a day on the river. I shot a few careless images as the clouds gathered overhead. I thought to myself, thistles are how we should card the clouds of the sky, and then I walked away.

Olafur Arnalds and the Fall

Clinging, Slipping, 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, graphite, and wax on panel

7.5" x 7.5"

This small work was created while listening to seven sublime tracks* by Olafur Arnalds that are available for free here. Arnalds' "Found Songs" are improbably beautiful for compositions that were put together one-a-day over the course of a week. I cannot imagine what he's capable of producing given a more gracious schedule. 

As I'm never quite sure just how long promotional giveaways are intended to last I would encourage anyone who has a modicum of love for sparsity, simplicity, and the melancholic to download them promptly.

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Clinging, Slipping is a cropped variation of a much larger image of a waterfall that I've been working on in the studio. Both the large and small compositions have a ground of silver leaf that produces an elusive sheen beneath the black silhouettes of quivering vegetation and fallen logs. I found the original image in a flea market outside of Bend, Oregon and was immediately taken with the emptiness of the composition— it was so poorly exposed that all of the water in the fall had simply become a mass of white that consumed two-thirds of the composition. While I'm pleased that Clinging, Slipping turned out as well as it did, I'm not yet convinced that I'll be able to wrangle a successful work from the larger image. . . we'll see what a little rubbing alcohol and cold wax will do over the coming weekend.

*Recommended by Colorado artist Nathan Abels, who provides a weekly link on his blog to free music conducive to creative work. 

The Primacy of Proximity

The Whisper, 2009

acrylic, tea, toner, and graphite on cheesecloth wrapped panel

6" x 6"

It really is true, what they say, about reproductions of artwork being unable to capture the presence of the actual work. Regardless of scanner fidelity, Photoshop trickery, and color corrected light sources, there's just no way to trap the subtlety of the marks in this little drawing. Honestly, it only seems successful when viewed from six inches away and the light of a room is allowed to cut under the graphite. I suppose that might actually make it a failure, that it requires someone's physical presence to appreciate it, but isn't that what so much of our visual culture is lacking— the necessity of proximity; of intimacy? 

* * * * *

This grass sweeps across Yaquina Head just north of Newport, Oregon. It was shot just outside the imposing lighthouse that stands there using a modified Holga camera. I've never made a print of the image, the scan for this drawing was derived from a barely passable contact sheet I made years ago.

Fictitious Fog

Pressing Through, 2009

acrylic, leafing, toner, graphite, and pastel on panel

7.25" x 7.25"

My first experiment with using gold leaf* as a base for the transfer process. I was particularly excited by the color shifts in the fog created by the tarnishing of the leafing underneath. Revealing just a touch of the gold lower in the composition heightens the muffled quality of the fog created by the pastel.

*Well, imitation gold leaf. . . I couldn't afford the real stuff, and the cheaper metal tarnishes much faster (a big plus when artificial aging is the objective).

The Weeping Tree

Weep, 2009

acrylic, tea, toner, and pastel on cheesecloth wrapped panel

6" x 6"

Derived from a photograph of an oozing tree outside the crypt at the Santa Barbara Mission. A stigmata title seemed too blatant. . .

The Transformation of Baubles

May 5, 2005

This image from 2005 became this image from 2008. . .

The Sun and the Failed Portrait

April 9, 2005

The Spring sun really lent an ethereal grace to the studio mess that plagued our LA digs. There is no chaos so dismal that it can't be improved by a strong natural light source and the dramatic contrast it engenders. 

Looking at this image reminds me of how fortunate I am to have a studio space separate from my home where I can make cheery portraits like this:

This is also derived from a Spring morning, but one many years ago, in the worst little bathroom I ever had the misfortune to call my own. The original photo was an early Photo Phazer test, and I've had it set aside for years to transform into a drawing. Now that I've done it though I find myself disappointed. It seems vapid. The composition is bland. The flesh tones in the photo (a motley assortment of pale pinks, blues, and greens) are gone, and only the skull- like black hollows of the eye sockets provide any real intrigue.

Not everything you make can be a success. I understand that reality— I just wish I had more time to make things so that sheer quantity would take the sting out of my periodic lapses in quality.

The PITT

April 7, 2005

My wife and I had the opportunity to spend an afternoon working in an artist's studio on Bainbridge Island over Spring Break. I devoted my time there to experimenting with my new favorite pen: the Farber-Castell PITT artist pen with a brush tip. This little baby puts out a lovely variable line in waterproof india ink and might just be the answer to all my fears about inking a comic book. With enough control, and a bit of forethought, I bet I could eek out one page per pen and rarely (if ever) have to resort to brushes or other technical pens. This works out to about $2.50 per page to buy the PITT pen, but could save upwards of ten hours in work time: a fair trade even by the impoverished comic book artist's standard.

The first thing I did with the PITT is quickly ink over the very loose sketch I did from memory of a short-tailed weasel eating a squirrel. Do you remember that day? I do. I still think about the way that squirrel's eye looked at me without really seeing me. The drawing doesn't really capture much from that moment— it really only indicates that my memory transforms weasel heads into the shape of tiny bear craniums. Oh, and that I have no sense of proportion for weasel limbs.

Silhouettes and Light Pollution

March 17, 2005

Silhouettes have always captivated me. There's something about the complexity of form being reduced to a flat shape that I find visually compelling. I'm sure my Pavlovian response to high contrast is another factor in my strong admiration of the backlit form. Over the past few years I've created a number of drawn silhouette works; a few of them deriving from photographic sources that weren't silhouettes in the first place. In each instance I believed that an image of a silhouette would require less work than other imagery, and in each instance I was wrong.

I think the finest silhouette work I've created to date is a night time version of Blossom, in which the sky behind the cherry tree has been stained with a red wine color to mimic the light polluted night of a dense urban area. As a city kid, I always considered the night to be a purplish expanse that occasionally sported a few pin pricks of light at the uppermost part of the dome overhead. Only during those instances where I would go camping, or drive myself out to the Pacific and look out over the water, did I get a sense of how dark night can actually be. 

I never succeeded in photographing this dark version of Blossom— the low contrast between the sky and silhouette made it unbelievably hard to achieve sharp focus, and the silver sheen of the graphite couldn't be eliminated entirely in order to obtain an accurate representation of the drawing. The best I ever got was this small detail:

Progress in the Studio

March 14, 2005

My life isn't all children's theater, small film production, and blogging. Take a gander at the most recent fodder for my studio practice:

Riparian Grass

Boise River

Timber, Oil, Gum, and Resin

Some drawings seem as if they'll never end. This one has been in progress for so long I began to suspect that was its only state of being. But this week brought about the end, and I feel that peculiar combination of relief and doubt that always accompanies the conclusion of an artwork. This is a fleeting sentiment however; one that is quickly consumed by the compulsion to create something else. In my mind I already have grand plans for silver leaf, waterfalls, and the elusive texture of fog.

Forensic Portraiture

February 16, 2005

There are more than a few instances of Photo Phazer images serving as the foundation for finished drawings. Some of them have a presence that I can't quantify. They may be crude and jagged, but they express something about those fleeting possibilities for beauty that we so often miss. 

* * * * *

What is it about an x-ray on the light box that is beautiful? Is it the subconscious reaction to associate anything glowing with the mystical, or is it the subtle colors that ribbon around the junctures of dark emulsion and transparency? Is it the memory of lingering pain behind the molars where the plastic-coated film cut into the gum as radiation hummed behind my ear? Maybe it's just the fact that it generates a memory at all— that this one moment has been elevated to importance among a sea of forgettable days and months.

And does finding the "why" really matter. I love the off kilter composition and macabre implications. It becomes a meditation of mortality; a dualistic record of the transient moment and the timelessness of carbon. It is a self portrait. It is artistic forensics.