Study for a Flag

 

Study for a flag, version 2

Study for a Flag. A flag of resistance. 

Since early in the year, I've been looking for, and playing with options for displaying an American flag that communicates something about the current state of the country.

I remember first seeing an upside down American flag in the TV miniseries Amerika starring Kris Kristofferson. 

Promotional graphic for Amerika

This was in 1987, and I found it a powerful image. I think it was attached to a vehicle in a commercial I saw. I soon learned of its significance to communicate distress. This signal has been displayed much in recent years...and much in recent months by political partisans across the spectrum.

It's not the signal I'm interested in sending. I guess it's fitting, to flip the flag, but I worry it undercuts the significance of the intended gesture in the service of demonstrating displeasure. It's also lost that shocking impact I felt upon first seeing it. I will say that we are in a state of existential distress of the kind I've certainly not known. 

I first envisioned a shroud for the flag; something that signals something not quite right, something that has changed. The thought being the shroud is transparent, but slightly obscuring, but also protective; a covering that can be removed once sanity has been regained, and the threat of stain has receded. 

First version of the study.

My first question was what color would the shroud take. I chose black for the first parry, even though it evokes a sense of mourning that I want to avoid. It's not unfitting to acknowledge a sense of mourning, but I don't want to connote a sense of resignation or concession. White is another option, and I may try that too for another iteration to see for myself, but that option seemed to me to convey another level of. acquiescence.

Just in the last week or so, I happened upon the flag of the Sons of Liberty. An array of vertical stripes, five red, four white, known as the Rebellious Stripes, sometimes adorned with the segmented snake of the first colonies, sometimes plain. 

Those Rebellious Stripes are embedded in our American Flag and I knew they could be foregrounded. I'm now thinking of the version of the USS Enterprise in the Next Generation Series that in times of high conflict, would be separated, with the "saucer" of the ship holding the command deck would advance on it's own as a more nimble war vessel, preserving the extended crew and families in the section left behind. A tenuous comparison, but the point is that the signs for action, for rebellion, are embedded in the DNA of the image. 

With this alteration, I feel I've arrived at a point near completion. It brings what felt passive to something much more active. The contrast between the shrouded composition and the naked red and white stripes is stark and jarring. Front and center is the coursing blood and rigid bone of resistance that rests at the heart of what this corpus is intended to be made. It's an act of preserving the essence of the whole while showing one's intentionally Rebellious Stripes.

Time to scale up and play more with materials. I expect to have a large version ready to display on October 18th for the No Kings observance.

Study for a flag - Rebellious Stripes.

Another Advent Calendar Project: ChristmasK

After a hiatus of a couple of years, I'm back with another Advent Calendar. This one I'm calling ChrismasK. 

You can see a snapshot of the ChristMask Project on my website.

Celestial Sensing Device

Fig Tree branch and metal tripod

 

Arrhythmic Accretion

 

Arrhythmic Accretion, paper, graphite, wood

 

I'm participating in FourteenFifteen Gallery's Fun-a-Day 2023 exhibit this month (Feb 10- Mar 3).

This annual exhibit invites folks to commit to a daily practice throughout the month of January - whatever that practice might be.

After ruminating on it for several weeks I decided that I would commit to playing the set of bongos that Angelika bought for me as a birthday gift 20-21ish years ago.  I've only very occasionally tapped on them over these ensuing years. 

To format this exercise as an exhibit-able physical form, I covered the head of each drum with a square of heavy paper. On top of this I attached a piece of carbon paper.  The idea being that the spanking strikes on the bongos would be transmitted through the carbon paper onto the layer beneath.  

After a quick test, it was clear that the record of a single day's playing would render very little visible interaction so instead of a collection of 31 separate pieces for each drum head, I would use just the two pieces of paper to collect the accumulated wear over the course of the month.  

A side view showing the support structure.

Day Off

Of birds and men

In my last post, I referenced Ana Mendieta in relation to the group of tiny 'land works" I did on one of the beaches yesterday.  Not quite an appropriate reference, but she immediately came to mind, particularly her figurative earthworks she made.  A much more accurate comparison to my activity of gathering and arranging would be that of the bower bird which was very much fore in my mind.  More fitting too since, I've brought David Rothenberg's Survival of the Beautiful as my reading material on this residency.  A perfect book for working in and reflecting on a setting as perfect as this.  

Last night, prior to dinner, a fellow resident reminded me of the most obvious human analogy to this activity is in the work of Andy Goldsworthy.  I was stunned that I simply hadn't even thought of him once during that morning's beach excursion (for I went out to tinker again yesterday morning) or during Monday's for that matter, which is really funny since those resulting actions are virtually a direct copping of his M.O. 

It's crazy to me that Goldsworthy was washed from my mind and an artist like Mendieta, whose work I might be able to respect, but don't have much time was the one whose work rooted itself in my brain. Goldsworthy's work, which I find entrancing, entertaining and inspiring is not loaded with angsty-feminist conceptual underpinnings which one would rightly assume would make it even more amenable to my own preferences - which it does.  That just doesn't explain why she, and not him, was in my head when I was essentially channeling him.   

It might be a sign of the influence my oft-environment has had in altering my thinking - namely the types of work and rhetoric I'm surrounded by while working at Bard's Curatorial Studies Program which is more concerned generally by Mendieta's flavor of gender identity politics and other such stuff from other such artists.  

Synchronously, David quotes Goldsworthy in Survival of the Beautiful:

I am not a bird and I do not mimic the things I see that birds and animals make.  However, there are parallels to be made.

The sculptures are a response to place, light, atmosphere, the daytime.  But it starts with the material.  That's the beginning and if there are a lot of branches that have curves in them, then that takes me in a certain direction.  It allows me to work with the material in particular ways that I cannot with a straight branch.  

That sums it up the motive/process nicely.  

I revisited one of the works made the day before to see that the tide placed a small rock in the center - improving the piece.

I went out again yesterday, early, and messed gently with the landscape on other shores of the island while also and for more trinkets to bring back to my own temporary bower.  It was a real man-bird hybrid of production.  I found myself compelled to touch and arrange these objects as I went along.  Whatever I couldn't/didn't want to carry along with my, but still intrigued me, I included in some little gesture.  They're not really compelling, but great fun to do, and I understand that upon discovering these little leavings on their own walks, some fellow residents created their intervention of their own...which I have yet to go search out.  

 I lassoed this great boulder and tied it down to a small tree found on the shore.  It felt too much like a clothesline to me, so when I passed it again on my way back to the studio, I altered it.  I removed the tree and anchored the boulder to a small rock I wedged into a fissure in the granite shore.  Though not adequately expressive, I liked the idea of the large, large stone being anchored by the small, small stone.

Gallery

The Watcher

I spied this great strong bit of geometry in the sides of a crushed plywood box.  A very modernist bit of flotsam.  I had to find an appropriate perch for it. So I tried various plinths and contexts to best suit it as either a hard edged framing device or reductive formalist sculpture:

In the end I returned it to the first pedestal I tried, and it worked well enough there.

Wind

I found this disposable cup in a crevice.  The hole appeared as a silhouette of  a flower.  It seemed beautiful (I brought it back to the studio.)

Short Pant and Shoe

The March of Nature

Untitled, 2003, wood, paint, glass....living vines and dead antlers

This sculpture from 2003 has been hanging on the wall behind Phyllis Lerud's garage in Denver since I finished it.  I was glad, on this recent trip, to spy it in this condition of nature overcoming it, and augmented by a small rack of antlers pinned between the work and the wall.

Day by Day, Done

 Some images of the densely packed advent calendar/ mini sculpture park that has been living and growing on my work table as I create a new sculpture (as an exchange for the minuscule pieces of chocolate hidden inside) each day of these last 24 days.

Day by Day: Dec 24

outdoor carpet

Day by Day: Dec 23

 cast latex paint, outdoor carpet

Day by Day: Dec 22

 wood, drywall

Day by Day: Dec 21

 push pins, the clear kind

Day by Day: Dec 20

screws, plastic caps

Day by Day : Dec 19

wood, gypsum, latex paint, latex caulk

Day by Day: Dec 18

 outdoor carpet, cardboard, construction adhesive

Day by Day: Dec 17

 matboard, latex paint

Day by Day: Dec 16

 construction adhesive

Day by Day: Dec 15

 plastic nozzles

Day by Day: Dec 14

 plaster, copper