8-Hour Projects, Allegheny College

Anytime I make a work using a grid the experience is meditative. Usually I am focused but relaxed. The grid creates security because decisions are broken down into small fragments. The complex, big picture is irrelevant. All that matters is one small line in one small square. It’s my version of a sand painting. I have a grid drawing of fireworks in my studio that I’ve been working on for over a year. The flip side, I guess, is that I can drag it out forever. This weekend I crammed all that meditative calmness into 8 hours. An endurance test. I loved it. My earliest painting was very time sensitive. I had a model, a canvas and maybe three hours. I haven’t had a model in my studio in over 5 years. The only thing I really miss is that sense of urgency.

Arriving at the gallery at 9am I started by drawing my grid on the wall. At 10am I started working on my first square. My plan was to spend roughly 15 min on each square. The first one took over an hour. I immediately let go of the idea that I would finish the entire piece. (The photo was divided into 20 squares!) No headphones, no music, the background noise of people talking, drilling, sanding ebbed and flowed in my consciousness. Step back from the wall for a break or to sharpen a pencil and the noise flowed forward into my mind. At the wall, drawing, I didn’t hear much. Towards the end of the day my breaks were closer together and my energy each time I returned to the wall was lower. (I will not share a photo someone took when I was done- but think hit by a truck) By the time I was done (or rather declared myself done because there was no way I could draw another line) I was exhausted. Nothing sounded better than laying on my nice, comfortable bed back at the B&B. But I was reluctant to leave. Leaving would be the last time I saw my work. It will be on the wall only until the end of the show when the walls will be cleaned and repainted. So this really was a ceremonial sand painting, meant to disappear, everything of importance packed into its creation. The long lasting result is not the image but the experience of creating the image. On some level art is always like that. The artist creates a work and then gives it (or sells it) away. I, however, am a collector, a pack rat, a person who clings to the objects themselves as if they might have some redeeming value. So this walking away and never seeing it again, in fact knowing it will be destroyed, was really hard. But also, I think, very important. I can’t wait to do it again.


In Search of Elk

On my way to Meadville, PA I decided to go on a quest. A quest to see the elk that inhabit the forests in the PA Wilds section of Pennsylvania. It was to be a short quest, only two hours. And the timing was not ideal (dusk and dawn are the ideal times.) But that just made me the underdog in my great elk quest. I saw a road dedicated to the viewing of elk, a scenic route of elk. I saw signs warning you not to stop on the road to look at elk, not to trample private property to see your elk and not to hit elk with your car. I saw restaurants, lodges and other establishments with “elk” in their names; private properties with elk images carved into wrought iron gates, and a special place for the elk viewing public to use the rest room. I stopped at the official viewing area where I overheard park rangers talking about how an elk had just been there moments before I arrived and a herd of 20 the day before. This is the closest I came to seeing an elk:

My next quest? How about the Loch Ness Monster?