The sun rising through smoke from nearby fires. A heatwave through the long weekend peaked at 102℉.
Morning of 9/8/20. Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA.
Waiting out the heat. Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA.
9:15 a.m. 9/9/20. Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA
Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA. Forest fire smoke trapped above the marine layer scatters light and bathes everything in a dense, amber glow.
Hours after sunrise. Lake Merritt, Oakland, CA.
There's ash on the leaves of the hedge beyond the window. So fine and light between the fingers. The rancid stench of smoke is everywhere. Even after the fires are done, it will linger, they say. For months, they say. My late-spring vegetable starts stay too long in their containers and wilt. Between April and July, I do no painting or drawing or writing or sculpting. I become very, very still. Like prey camouflaging itself in tall grass, waiting for the threat to pass. Chris changes jobs. I obsess over the news: the numbers that keep rising, and grief so large and so hot—processing it feels like trying to swallow the sun. I do the laundry. I try to track down TP and soap. I brush the dog and think about what to cook. But it's still there. The sky becomes so clear, so quiet, and everything feels dangerous. A primal need for water seizes me. I fantasize about the ocean, swimming out, boundless. I watch countless shark videos on youtube. I learn yellow is the only color sharks can see, but am otherwise not reassured. We start making pizza at home every Friday night. I pour wine and turn the whole thing into an elaborate affair. The neighbors gather for their happy-hour and I hear their chatter outside, but I never join them because they don't wear masks and it is too much to listen so intimately to the problems of strangers right now and that makes me ashamed. I bring home a box of Japanese vegetables and then I cry. The owners of the farm where it came from are in their nineties. I wonder if my hair is falling out again. Christina pours half her wine bottle into a mason jar and delivers it to my porch with our favorite truffle potato chips. We share the wine and chips and spend the afternoon together on zoom while she bakes and I look up ingredient substitutions and we do our best lopsided impersonation of Summertime. I am washing my hands so often. I am worrying about fascism so often. When a friend's twin boys leave home for college, I dream about lending her a blue suitcase. The stifling heat of August arrives. Our old walls rumble and creak as a storm moves through one night. Chris thinks we should sleep downstairs, but I reassure him and we stay up late to marvel at each crash of thunder and lightning. Later we eat breakfast on our tiny stoop, intoxicated by the dewey breeze. The sky drizzles and clouds groan distantly, lazily. The world looks greener. I feel a sharp mixture of relief and longing. I realize I haven't hugged my friends in 6 months.
While stumbling down an internet rabbit hole the other day, I ended up reading this 2017 interview with Carol Bove, who has some stellar sculptures on view at SFMOMA right now. The interview is an excerpt from the anthology AKADEMIE X: Lesson in Art + Life. She refers to a thought/speech experiment she undertakes, refraining from using the word “work” to describe her activities. I love the notion of being ever-more specific about what one is doing, and not relying on a work/play binary (personally, neither has ever been especially helpful or accurate in thinking about what I’m doing). Also: that words matter, even when casually to ourselves, even when casually about ourselves. And finally: how changing our words suddenly highlight the limitations of regarding time as a kind of currency to be used up. The ability to recognize and withdraw from “consensus reality” (or consensus un-reality?!) like this seems important in our algorithmic age.
Snippets from the interview:
I decided to stop using the word "work" as an experiment. It was very difficult! I had to compensate by substituting a more specific description of the activity. For example, instead of "I’m going to my studio to work," I’d have to say, "I’m going to make some drawings." Or instead of "I’m going to work around the house," I’d have to say, "I’m going to clean the kitchen and fold some laundry." I discovered that the absence of the word ‘work’ forced me to reconsider assumptions about leisure, because the idea of work implied its opposite. I let go of the notion that I deserved a certain amount of downtime from being productive or from being active. The labour/leisure dichotomy became uncoupled and then dissolved. I couldn’t use labour to allay guilt or self-punish or feel superior. Work didn’t exist, so all the psychological payoff of work for work’s sake had nowhere to go.
WHAT IS AN ARTIST’S ACTIVITY IF IT’S NOT WORK?
I started to adjust my thinking about productivity so that it was no longer valued in and of itself. It strikes me as vulgar always to have to apply a cost/benefit analysis to days lived; it’s like understanding an exchange of gifts only as barter. The work exercise made me feel as if I was awakening from one of the spells of capitalism. And there was more to it than that: I was able to begin the process of withdrawal from my culture’s ideology around the instrumentality of time, i.e. that you can use time. I think the ability to withdraw from consensus reality is one of the most important skills for an artist to learn because it helps her to recognize invisible forces.
Spent the final week of June in Idyllwild, California, at a workshop with Gwendolyn Yoppolo (@gwendoyo / gwendolynyoppolo.com) learning about glazes and devising methods to explore and test them. I’ve been thinking a lot about landscape in my other work, integrating plein air studies more directly into studio paintings. Without really planning it too much, my test tiles from the week landed on similar themes and color ways. A nice surprise.
In The Wake, a painting from 2018, photographed in situ. I made the oak frame as well.
Five-Alarm Fire, also from 2018, photographed in situ with two Anna Valdez paintings.
In The Wake, 2018
Five-Alarm Fire, 2018
Cy Twombly painting and sculptures
Cy Twombly, Untitled (The Mathematical Dream of Ashurbanipal), 2000-09, Bronze
I was down in LA last week and spent some time at The Broad. They were between special exhibitions, so I perused the permanent collection and then visited Yayoi Kusama’s Infinity Mirror room (The Souls of Millions of Light Years Away, 2013). Unfortunately I didn’t have my nice camera in tow, so had to make due with a few phone snaps.
The mirror rooms have always seemed gimmicky to me—I think they might for anyone who has worked in set design for theater or film. I don’t mean to sound overly cynical. They are a neat experience, quite photogenic, but the sculptural execution is lacking in a lot of ways and I felt that it veered toward a DIY aesthetic. The 45 second time limit helps. You’re not inside long enough to fully sense its material construction, and the brevity manufactures a feeling of longing.
It was great to discover some Cy Twombly sculptures on display, which I wasn’t expecting. They are so special and casual at the same time. Like small personal monuments or totems. And they have a mysteriously light touch despite the weightiness and permanence of the bronze. So nice seeing them next to his painted works, too, like a cast of characters in an opera.
I also saw some paintings by Kerry James Marshall and Cecily Brown, which I sat and contemplated for a long time. I regret not visiting Mastry when it was up awhile back, so it was a treat to catch a few works on display. This 2018 painting of a woman dressing in the window is such a wonderful negotiation of space. It’s tender, funny, intimate. Surprises keep unfolding as you look (the dog spying back, the moths chasing the light, the weave of the window screens relating each window near and far, the cheerful light from the distant street lamp, the solitary cloud).
The Cecily Brown painting had some astounding passaged of color and gesture. It walks a razor’s edge of control and chaos, and at a difficult scale that I’m not sure one can fully appreciate unless they’ve ever tried to work that large. I really found the experience of looking at them to be generous—no cleverness or pretense, just immense energy offered freely.
Cecily Brown, Tender is the Night, 1999, Oil on Linen
Kerry James Marshall, Untitled, 2018, Acrylic on PVC panel in artist’s frame
Araras (1973)
As a kind of experiment this year, I want to get my thoughts down about some of the art I’ve been out to see in a more intentioned way. I don’t want to get hung up on writing anything too elaborate (edit: I made this sort of long and elaborate, oops), and I even considered simply uploading my cryptic paper notations that I make at the shows. Something in-between is what I’m hoping for. I’ll take and upload my own photos whenever possible.
The first week of January I made it over to BAMPFA for Against the Static, the retrospective of Harvey Quaytman, whom I’d never previously heard of. If I had to distill my experience I would basically call the show a pleasure garden for the senses. The richness of material doesn’t fully translate photographically. It might even be tempting to categorize the work as reductive anti-painting if you only saw reproductions. But in encountering them, Quaytman’s affection for paint is central and substantial.
Preparatory collages
Sketchbooks
The earliest sculpted canvases (see Zhili-Byli 1976) establish his interest in a particular sinuous chisel mark. Think calligraphy. In general I was impressed by just how well the idea of this gesture, done with a specific tool and by a specific action, could be transmuted into sculptural form and scaled up to monumental size. What a chore it must have been to construct the surfaces! But amazingly the paintings are fresh and buoyant on the wall. They are crafted, but not fetishized.
The early-to-mid career sculpted canvases were my favorite of the group (pictured above and to the left below). I loved their material ambition and contradiction. They are full of air and light despite their earthy construction; they are whimsical despite the self-seriousness of their size. I wonder what his feelings about action painters and improvisation were. He was certainly a “planner” as evidenced by some of his sketches which are full of notations and measurements. But he seems to have compartmentalized the unexpected into a particular part of his process, a specific mode, from which he later extrapolates in a very precise way. An artist would really have to know themself, their own temperament, to be among the AbEx-ers of the time and yet develop this way of working.
Second Cupola Capella (1969)
Various preparatory drawings
Selection of notes and pigment tests
The show then moves into more medium-scaled and predominantly rectilinear works (see Bordering Text 1984). These do feel like a come-down, after the exuberance of the earlier stuff. Maybe he got tired of sculpting the large surfaces? Or he wanted faster iterations to get through more ideas? Maybe he grew suspicious of their showiness and sought a kind of refinement?
When he arrives at the cruciform structures (below), he seems back on his game again. These, to me, are more terrestrial—attuned to earth and body. The central forms in the visual field really ground you, but the surface modulation and color blocking move the eye around, so the effect is a kind of attentive stillness. Where the early works seem like containers for a free-form surface or pictorial structure, these later cruciforms have a very specific and linear surface experience; canvas material is added and overlapped, reflective areas of paint are overlaid onto matte, texture builds up next to a fine edge, linear vectors are revealed and subsumed. There is a feeling of being led through the time and space of the work’s making. In that way I suppose these are more holistic and matured. But they just didn’t give me the same buzz as the earlier stuff.
Realizing this, I tried to unpack my default response to certain shape language (i.e. rectilinear forms being static, curves being playful). Maybe it’s shortsighted to think the later works are less exuberant. Maybe they are an invitation to re-situate yourself. The subtlety of surface demands more time and a sensitive eye, but I think they are no less playful. There is also tons of material exploration to be considered in the late works. Rust and ground glass are among the listed mediums, along with extensive pigment notations that were on display in a separate case. I loved the Delacroix quote he noted, “ Yellow cabs make violet shadows” and also his own remark that “LUMINOSITY IS NOT INTENSITY.”
The Miller’s Delight (1992)
Left: Walnut, Slate, Clay (1997), Right:
One last thing I want to make note of is Quaytman’s use of doubles, or opposites, throughout all of his work. Many works are constructed of two sections that play off each other. And many works seem to have been built in tandem, like making a film positive and negative side-by-side. Even the chisel itself is a double—alternately thin or thick depending on its direction. His titles often use puns or double entendres. Harnessing the generated energy between dualities seems to have been integral for him to activate the work. It never settles comfortably into fixed meaning and so many years later remains a potent sensory experience.
(edit: I’m missing some titles for paintings. I’ll try and fill them in later.)
Sutro Bath Ruins, San Francisco, California
Page Street, San Francisco, California
Page Street, San Francisco, California
Sutro Bath Ruins, San Francisco, California
Portland, Oregon
Portland, Oregon
Spending these final weeks of 2018 reflecting on what has happened over the past year. I began January engrossed in building out a studio in my garage after leaving my rented warehouse space. Change has basically been ongoing since then; everything about living and working in the Bay Area is tinged with uncertainty. I've reacted by nesting. I bought a desk and put it by the window and smothered it in beautiful books. I purged junk from the closets. I painted over all the awful beige walls in the apartment. I am now a person who buys candles, apparently.
I have taken a deep dive down the rabbit hole of learning ceramics this year, consequently giving less attention to painting. Although, in the spring I did show some paintings. Anna Valdez put together a great show, Reading Between the Lines, at Hashimoto, and it was a real treat to show with friends and artists I admire. Also preoccupying me this year was, strangely, photography. I finally bought a proper camera to document work, but have enjoyed traveling with it and just generally using it as another daily observational tool. After the cinematographer Robby Müller passed away in July, I tried to track down all his films. In particular Paris, Texas and Barfly have spurred me on in trying to take better photographs.
C and I travelled to Annecy this summer for the film festival. Seeing Ce Magnifique Gâteau! there was my art-viewing highlight of the year. The short film Dreamland by Mirai Mizue was also a favorite. Other peak France experiences: swimming out alone in that cold, crystalline, alpine lake, then drying myself out on shore in the warm sun; in Paris, huddled together with friends under the awning of Du Pain et Des Idées eating fresh croissants and looking out onto the rainy streets; walking briskly across town at dusk among the dizzying incandescent lights of the Left Bank. Also curt Parisian waiters, forever.
In autumn, just following the terrible Camp Fire near Chico, C and I spent time in the Pacific Northwest where I thought a lot about rural environs. I took note of the sort of existence older artists have been able to carve out for themselves in the small towns clustered around Seattle. I wondered about our future in Oakland. In Portland I became utterly nostalgic marching around the Alphabet District in the rain with C; all our old haunts, all the new high-rise condos, our old friends, their new kids, everything that's different and the same. All the ways we are different and the same. I was surprised by my own animal energy, hustling to get around, in constant anticipation. Am I one of those abrasive Californians now?
So here we are in late December. Maybe this notebook is another manifestation of my obsessive nesting. It's doubtful that social media is going away any time soon, but I'm beginning to feel the outer limits of its usefulness. Or, put another way, I'm realizing it's incompatibility with the sort of observations I'd like to get down. I don’t remember where I read it, but someone once described social media as like being at a large dinner party where everyone is shouting over one another, competing to be heard but not really hearing anything. The effect, he said, was that he just wanted to stare at his plate and eat his food in silence. I think I’m tired of the noise for now. I need to make a little more room.
Still image from Ce Magnifique Gâteau! (This Magnificent Cake!) a film by Emma De Swaef & Marc James Roels
Lake Annecy, France
Experiments with porcelain
Oakland, California with smoke from the nearby Camp Fire
Various clay experiments in the studio
Oakland, California… bye beige.
