You can see my piece Galaxy (Shell, Fecundity, Emanation) on display at Manifest this month. The artist Mike Reedy has two pieces flanking mine.
Photo courtesy Jason Franz
And here’s one of my grads, Natalie Hellman with the piece. Photo via Ian Shelly
While I realize it’s a little odd for a 33 year old to play with toys and that Star Trek is odd in any case, I have to say that I love them both. One of the things I like to do – especially after a semester of high intensity, intellectually challenging dialogue and investigation – is to break out my LEGOs and work on some space ships… just like i did when I was 9 or 10. It’s a recharge of sorts, and I prescribe creative play to all of my students. Anyway, I just made a new ship. I’ve christened it USS Abblasen after Gottfried Reiche’s famous fanfare. Here are a few shots of it…
My work, titled Galaxy (Shell, Fecundity, Emanation), will be seen at the 6th annual MAGNITUDE 7 exhibition at Manifest coming up at the end of this month. The piece is a mezzotint print that has been embossed with a unique collograph print.
And here’s my statement about the work for the show:
Over the last two years I have become increasingly enamored with the mezzotint printmaking process. I have used mezzotint as a way to find new and different access to some of the subject matter I have used for years in my paintings and drawings. Bricks, shells, geometric forms, and bodies have all become part of my mezzotint repertoire. Those geometric forms – specifically the Platonic solid called the dodecahedron – have begun to inform my mezzotints beyond simple representation; I have started using the angles of the dodecahedron and its constituent, the pentagon, as dimensional embossments upon the mezzotint prints.
In the work I present here at MAGNITUDE 7, titled Galaxy (Shell, Fecundity, Emanation), the beautiful gradients and milky consistency mezzotint is known for are used to display a shell, spinning in an amorphous space. Yet a fine tracery of lines and angular counterpoints shifts the surface level of the image itself, creating a bas-relief. The angles are formed using a collograph print over the final mezzotint. This collograph is a unique, one-time embossment; though the edition of mezzotints is all the same, the embossment seen in each print is one of a kind.
By embedding these angles (taken directly from the dodecahedron) onto the image of the spiral form shell, I reintegrate their inherent relationship, since both the spiraling of the shell and the angles of the quintessential Platonic solid display the natural mathematical beauty of Phi, the golden ratio. While the depiction of the shell can be a visual entry point for contemplation, the angles of the subtle embossment encode a physical reality into the artifice of the image. This duality is something I am hoping to develop more and more. I want the image and the icon, the depiction and the object, the picture of the idea and the idea itself, to become manifest in these prints as I continue them.
In May 2008 I received an Artist Residency at the Glen Arbor Art Association in Michigan. It was a great time and a really fantastic space. You can see a couple of the pieces I made there here and here. Maybe I’ll upload more work from that period of time in the future, but today I want to post a few images of my “studio” spaces there at Glen Arbor.
My apartment space. Did a lot of reflection after days of driving and drawing.
The Thorston Farm. Click for larger views. I had full solitary access to these buildings. Such an evocative and time-full environment.
And the lake, dunes, and trees were ever-present…
My most recent completed work is an oil painting, 48 inches in diameter, titled Certainty. Because of the nature of the ideas involved in this piece, it was constructed in a manner that did not allow for an “up” orientation. I actually never painted it from the same picture-plane position twice. I frequently moved my model and altered my position of observation with each session.
The work has any number of “correct” reading orientations, but I’d like to settle on one or find a way to spin the work slowly so that many possible positions are presented to different viewers. Click the image below to see a large GIF of the piece. The GIF shows 14 different “stations” of the painting (give it a few minutes to load fully). What’s the best way to view it?
I love this Group Project we do together. Click to enlarge.
It’s 8 feet tall by 6 feet wide (or thereabouts).
I’ve been working on an apparatus to help me streamline and control my mezzotint copper plate preparation. In moving toward the incarnation you see in this post I built 3 other models, each one becoming more and more refined and tweaking elements that didn’t seem to work.
Ultimately what I wanted was a rotating deck that would keep the copper plate stable and offer ease of movement through the different angles one has to use to rock the plate properly.
The rocking deck would also need a secure place for the rocker itself, and a place to keep the blade protected when not in use. The sheath I built on the forward end of the deck holds the rocking blade without contacting the serrated edge of the blade at all.
Learn more about mezzotint here. See some of my mezzotint work here. Two really great mezzotint artists are Michelle Rozic and Stewart Duffin. Check them out.
I’ve got a show coming up next Spring at Gordon College in Wenham, MA. Though I’ll be presenting 50 or more works, a good portion of them will consist of mezzotint prints. I’m well on my way to completing the group I want to exhibit; the prints will follow the imagery from Lamentations chapter 3, verses 1 – 20. Below I’m posting some shots of the newer plates – click the title to read the verse.
I think this (and some other stuff) has been influencing me in various ways…
In the forms I make for students to work from (drawing above, painting below)…
…and in the forms that make their way into my own work. Below, an experimental brick-based sculpture and a mezzotint featuring an invented pentagonally-based structure.
My latest essay is now up for reading on Neoteric Art. Please check it out.
eikonktizo 