punching the clock

Studio time has ebbs and flows. Sometimes it's pretty steady and sometimes it fluctuates wildly. I'm trying to get into a more standard routine this fall and so far it's going pretty good. I've been thinking about it more since I did a project for the College Art Association's career development pages. They just put up a podcast of it called Hybrid Careers: the work of balancing your work.

Starting Out

To warm up at Aferro, I'm creating some works on canvas tarp with house paint and large brushes.  Experimenting with black and white only, will give me insight into lights and darks. Since I don't have live models and my work references pop culture, most of my references are figures from magazines and newspapers. They run the gamut from football players to fashion models. Hopefully I will be able to snag some of the other artists to model for me when they are around the studio. To view more of my work, visit jameshornerart.com.

Dam Breach

 

During this “damming” venture I found it necessary to step back to distance myself from the activity because at some point “damming” became too exhilarating, too satisfying, too slick, too stylish and seemingly beyond reproach.  And so it’s a good time to find its weak points.  In the realm of actual dam construction, this point must be of utmost importance, where the catastrophic possibility of a breach is perhaps what drives civil engineers to intensely scrutinize every possible aspect of the dam: its design, structural integrity, safety, problems of seepage, corrosion and erosion, etc.  

“Damming” activity in painting and drawing - the term may be drawn from the functional constructed water barrier, but in painting and drawing, none of the practical imperatives mentioned above are pursued.  No lives, revenue or property are at stake, except for an aesthetic attitude.  Sharing the same term, linked by analogy- it seems there’s little else to tie together the activity of building an actual dam and constructing the "dam" for painting and drawing.  Regardless, the latter is equally subject to scrutiny as the former because every meaningful activity -whether it’s practical, theoretical, aesthetic or religious- harbors its meaningfulness in its transparency.

And so while utilizing it in drawing and painting I was able to find a weak point in the “dam.” This one is a tricky since the breach lies on the very intention the “dam” has been utilized for: “damming” is for strengthening the drawing, and making the forms, boundaries and categories clear.  But “dams” also fixate, establish and enforce them.  On that note, then the enforcement by “damming” gives no room for doubt when a particular boundary or category is false.  The falsehood is then set in place, fixated, and walled in by the “dam.”  This is merely one place where its faults fissure through.