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8/6/2011 the current state of the painted figure for the VERA piece. legs done, arms 90 % got the vinyl plotter up and running, so soon tons of tresses and vines are getting cut. still waiting to find out if i got the GAP grant so i can figure out how many vinyl colors i can use for the install, but most of the files are prepped and ready to go. prepping files for a bunch of screen printed bramble elements like the images below this these will be cut out and buidling the base of the vines. i know its not much of an update, but things are crazy right now...
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6/24/2011
here is the vinyl layout so far of sleeping beauty. havent gotten as far as i wanted to but the vinyl plotter is assembled and hopefully running by the end of next month. everything else isn't incredibly different from the post last month, as i was working on some of the things for Storefronts Seattle, but now that i have longer to work on that i've jumped back to the VERA piece so i'll get some of the new process work up soon.
update on storefronts: i will be doing mine in january 2012 at the vulcan building near the train station on 5th. i'll post the actual address when its closer. it will be a 6 month run of 4 windows that will change out every 2 months, so over the course of the installation it will equal to 12 pannels of different sections of the full fire bird tale. each of the 9 foot wide windows will be treated like a comic frame instead of a single theater as discussed below as im working with more windows and i think it will be an interesting way to approach the space. and this lets me create more elaborate set ups for some spaces and more subdued of others.
also: i added a bunch of the posters i've done for VERA that i kept putting off scaning since they were big and had to be pieced together. but they're up now at http://toryfranklin.com/graphic/posters.html
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5/5/2011
here are links to details of the prosess i was working on this semester for the VERA piece (tentatively Briar Rose, but i wan't to re-read the Grimm version to make sure it follows the same lines as the french version., although flourishes are much closer to french marquetrey than german decroative arts so maybe i'll just have to change that). i'll keep updating as different componets get fabricated. each section goes to its own page with a bunch of details.
i'll also post an update on the storefronts, still don't know my date or space, but i am almost finished with the wolf, and the girl is pretty close too, it would be great to have them ready to print so i can concentrate on all the other components of that piece as well. i'm shooting to start scanning those appendages this week now that i got my GAP grant in for the vinyl of the VERA piece. i wish i had the paitence right now to sit and write a bunch of stuff about all this, but i feel like i've been revising about this piece all day and i really really really wanna stop trying to make a coehisve statement about this piece. my brain is still compartmentalized into each of the elements that is making this up and so many of these need a kajillion more. its like making 5 bodies of work into a single piece.
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3/4/2011 for the multiple assignment i will be creating backdrop elements for my storefronts seattle installation from ready made materials (usually when i go for multiples i'm making them all, so this will be interesting, partially its a time saving thing, for this class its a way i can make stuff at home and use lab hours for continuing on the welded pieces for the VERA piece, and they're a great object to play with, and there is a bit of historical tie in). for the storefront I am revisiting the firebird installation i did in tacoma and making it more complex. i will also be creating a stop motion video of the puppets animating different points of the story. the whole tale will be told, not just the begining and all the characters will be in attendance. the setting of the piece is based on a baroque toy theater so there will be side flaps of scenic elements in silhouette that the characters will slip behind at different points of the tale.
the backdrop of the theater will have strips layered of sewn doilies interspersed with strips of wallpaper left over from my MFA show. while the wallpaper is a little bit beat up i don't think it will be an issue since it will be further back in the space, and a bunch of thumbtack holes hopefully wont be an issue after i burnish them flat. alot on that is going to depend on how far back the backdrop is from the window, but based on the fact that i have several more characters divided in space it will probably be at least 10 -15 feet back. there will be space between some of the layers so there is only a partial obstruction of the actual space. since the spaces havent been assigned yet i don't know quite how well this will work, i could be doing a bunch of these and toss them out of the installation later, and then they'll go in a box of things for future pieces. but i've got enough started to do some spacial mocks once i get the wallpaper picked up from yakima. if i don't like it with the wallpaper i go with just the strips (or toss both out alltogether when i see the space). the spaces ive seen in seattle all seem to be in much better condition than the tacoma spaces, which could effect how clean vs. tattered i wanna go with it.
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for the crit i dont know yet if i want to install these doilies in the school or install them elsewhere and bring them as documentation. part of me is leaning toward the latter since they won't be seen up close and it will give people a more accurate idea of what it may look like installed and feed back may help better from that aspect, but part of me wants to bring them in because they're so pretty up close and they wont get appriciated in their ephemeral frilliness in the installation. currently they all have one vertical stich in them, but i may add more to be another layer of vertical line work (especially since there are alot of vertical stripes in the teal and lime ones). i went with red because i wanted contrast from the doilies, it would stand out no matter what the color of the doilies (i didn't want to go white and have it hide in areas but become apparent in others, i'd rather it become part of the element than to try and make it dissapear) . i currently have about 10 strips of varring lengths (i want there to be a stagering to where all these things hang in the space, so not a full floor to celing). the obsucure / reveal ratio is gonna depend upon the space. don't know about all of the color combos, i was working with the stash of doilies i didn't end up screen printing for my serenata installaion. most of that stash is gone so i'm gonna have to start hitting dollar stores and seeing what i can come up with. if im to work with what i have primarily i may nix out the pink ones from the second row. i like them individually but as a whole i might wanna stick with the green white and gold, which is gonna blend better with the yellow and blue of the wallpaper (which historically is more of a french royal color combo than a russian, but i think the guilding will help a bit there, and i'm only accurate to a certain point, its not a period piece that the puppets will be in but a construct of my own memories of the tale mixed with research). there are also some that are just white, but they're not as interesting in photograph - since that will be a large aspect of what ends up happening in the 3 months vs. documentation life of the piece i might not use those, unless i need some areas that are quieter to deal with the caucophony that is sure to happen. |
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3/1/2011 here are some process images of the maquette i made for the crit. to the left is the sketch installed. to the right is what a stack of them looked like in process, and probably a bit more like a mass that i would like to make. the installed piece was a good attempt at making sure they would hang and get an idea of what the distance from the wall would be but its way to clean a line for me. its the kind of thing that would have to be done so much more pristinely and i just don't have the paitence to make work like that. or the comitment to not changing things as i go based on what the last incarnation was. i know it will change so much between every space i install the segments in that i need to allow for play, mistake and quick thinking in its eventual home, and i'll only have a few days to make sense of it, so basically overmake in mass, edit later. |
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i was thinking of what john said durring the crit about the nail shadows becoming distracting, so i went and put a direct light on it today to see how bad they are (which i can't believe i forgot to do before the crit, i'm normally way on top of the lighting issue). i think i actually need more nails, like about 3 times as many. if i can use it as yet another "drawn" line i think it will actually get closer to how i draw. this is one of the sketches i did in the process (think of it as a gesture drawing - the thirty second warm up before bending, the shapes never came out like the drawings, but i found i was making more interesting curve formations when i did the initial drawing) if i add more nails they will start to have hatching and the illusion of more marks which is one of the reasons i wanted to add the relif in the first place. its all about ways of getting depth of layers like i do in my figurative work, but since i don't have a single piece on my studio floor for 100 hours how can i quadruple the scale in about half the time. |
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its not as far along as i would like, but i feel like i've got a good idea of the direction i want to take the piece and now that i'm not wiping out all the time with a stupid cold (whomever started that thing should be shot, i haven't had something linger like that in a long time and feel like i'm gonna need two more weeks to catch up on all the stuff i had to drop). i got my process down enough to go into mass production and then i can stop and look at them when i have about 3 times as many. but i know its working enough to go forward without worring about hickups for a bit. still want to learn to actually get the nails welded on, but that can wait until i have a bunch to do at once and i'll have a much better handle on the welding equipment after ive made a pile of 'em. i want an insane tangle of them, kind of like the borders william morris did for kelmscott press i want the mass of hair to transition into the briars in a balance of caucauphony with a dash of order. |
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now i just gotta write a grant, print a poster that is way overdue, find someone to print the next set of cornish portfolios so i don't have to, finish the figurative drawings for the storefront so i can get them to the printers (the sides of this are where the figures heads are currently, still need at least 3 more layers there, bodies need about 7 more), stitch together a back drop of doilies (more on this next week, its gonna be my multiples assignment), and then figure out how to flip betweent the two installtions in a way that evenly distributes work and lets the two pieces be seperate but still have strong ties between that fill in some gaps between different bodies of work so i can bridge my documentation to be better tailored to the types of projects i want to line up for next year. oh and figure out what i'm gonna say about eroyn's piece tomorrow for Show and Tell. i'm gonna go hit my head against the wall. i guess i should also get her a birthday present. i am being a crappy sister. but her book Detained is in its last week or two before going to the printers, so i think she wont kill me for waiting a bit here is a link to the install from this summer, as soon as she gets the book up i'll post an update. and when she sets the book release info i'll pass it along http://www.eroynfranklin.com/2010/detain/detain.html its gonna be gorgeous. happy 30th sister. we can compare notes on who wants to stop making stuff and hide in a cave next week. |
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2/6/2011 so i didn't get much done in sculpture this week. between subing linda's class and teaching the seniors how to create halftones for screen print i added on an extra 6 hours of school plus my normal hours and also had a bitch of a time printing the poster i did for the vera project (gold ink + fine screen mesh = i never want to do that again). and to top it off my house has fleas so i'm staying half an hour away in south seattle until the chemicals fix the mess off. so my week has been crazy packed.
i did make it down there yesterday for a bit, but the plasma cutter was melting through too quickly when i was on the lowest setting so i decided to wait until rob got it fixed. here are a few sketches of the wall installation i am going to be doing in october at the vera project. i am going to use the scale project to work out what areas i want to weld as a contour drawing out of pencil rod and see if its feasable to make them in segements that would go on a 2 story wall and still work with the drawing behind it. i'm primarily going to be doing the hair tresses out of it right now, but may end up taking some of it into the briars and other elements. i'll post a pic of my first example i made soon, but want to wait for fabrication until i am able to get checked off on the mig and can make prettier welds before i go to crazy. but i got the name of the place from rob so i can go get a bunch more pencil rod once i use up my lab fee allotment.
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the installation is based on sleeping beauty, so there will be said beauty at the top left (2 storys up, drawn pretty large) her hair will cascade down and turn into a mass of briars and spinning wheel shilouttes. in the area of the sketch with the grid will actually be major briar patch but intersperced in there will be around 100 portraits of the townspeople who are alseep in the debacle. these are on wooden ornate plaques (some of the process below, there is a bevel on the shaped plaques that right now is a mess of paint drippings but will be guilded when the portraits are done. these are about 5" tall in real life).
some where near the bottom right corner will be the prince who comes to wake her snooziness up. havent figured out if this will be drawn on the wall as she and a good chunk of the landscape is or if he will be a fully painted figure assembled like the firebird figures. i have a figure half way through that was supposed to be for jack and the beanstalk, but he might work, although is less knightly (although some versions of sleeping beauty he is a prince traveling in disquise. i really need to nail down which version i'm pulling from which will also help me figure out what ethnic region the patterns need to come from.
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1/28/2011 so this blog thing terrifies me. i use my website to post documentation and other items relating to my career. but definetly not thoughts or opinions. its a space for artifacts. i don't blog, i don't read others blogs and i dont do social networking. i use the internet for research (need an image of 18th century furniture? giant balls of mating snakes? cryllic alphabets? zoetropes? i got it. wanna know whos band is playing tonight, i have no clue). maybe it's because i change my mind so much that i don't want to be held accountable for something that i may not mean a week from now. but it's out there in the ether and therefore that information IS history. then again there is so much data to sort through now days that it is just a mass. it is not precious. it is no longer the only account of 17th century daily life because for some reason that stack of diaries survivied. there is so much information that trying to catalog it and hold those oppions accountable is unsurmountable. sisyphus. |
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i figure if i approach this like reasearch maybe i can make it into something worth while. but be warned its living misspellings, mistakes, misquotes, misquitoes and all. the first image is my intial digital sketch for the firebird installation that i did in 2010. the other images are from the source material i collect along the way. at the bottom is a link to how the drawing grew physically.
i've been trying to figure out why i haven't made much since i got back to cornish. part of it i know is the flux of transition - from the east coast - from unemployment - from an installation that took 2 months just to do the damn drawing of - to just being BACK. in a weird state where i don't quite feel like i'm back in the city (or life) i left.
there is only so much delaying of things i can do before i start to beat myself up over not making stuff and spiraling. its not that im doing nothing, ive been applying for shows and grants, helping my sister get her comic to publication, trying to figure out how to logically transition into public works, and thinking about what changed in my work when i drove west, where interiors simmered to the back and all the settings for the narratives in my head went out the windows (literally, figurativly, et.all).
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i've been rexamining the things that i make and why i make them. i don't know how to talk about my work without makeing it sound trivial - a lark, an afterthought. i get frustrated because i'm not an all mighty conceptual artist in a contemporary climate that sucks in the clever and ironic ideals and shuns the pretty (unless its ironically pretty and then you get a pass). my work doesn't respond to the state of the current world - its an amaglamation of dusty tomes of odd trivia and children's books. an examination of obsolite fashion and furnishings. surface ornmentation. facades. horror vaccui. obsessive re-making in an attempt to keep an overwhelmed brain from shutting down. art speak and theory makes me shudder. i dont know what to do other than say i make snippets of stories, vingettes of action. some my own. some others. some based in fact, most not. i'm just making really really really big illustrations. |
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i was talking to dawn yesterday about grad school and how everyone would question why i spent so much time making the things i made. why didn't i outsource it? the east-coast-artist-assistant-ready-made-machine. it would be better made and quicker. because its all about getting the idea across. but i love (and hate, its a exhiliration/exhaustion thing) spending hours doing repetitive things. the mistakes i make dictate the next move. action and reaction, like playing chess with your half asleep self. if i tried to map what i was making for someone to create it will be no where near where i actually end up. the basic composition may be there, and some glimmer of the idea, but the things that happen due to limitations and accidents are what builds the bones underneath the sketches. that become prints. that become drawings. that become installations. that become videos. that become digital images of the components before they blow away. i chew the images like cud till they've cycled through enough media till all thats left is just sawdust and pencil shavings. i put the ephemera it in a box and realize three years later i'm aprroaching it again but from a compleetly different angle. |
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i think thats why i like installtion so much. i show up at a space with a truck load of pieces and have a week to make sense of it in the space, to make them play well together, a jisgsaw without corner pieces. sink or swim, with some coughing fits that never quite clear. but afterwards i have all these parts - probably slightly damaged because even though i keep trying to step up my materials and processes - use tyvek instead of paper so its not in shreads when it comes down, build better supports, contrive new ways of hanging awkward work, work modularly so its not too big to ship - i still end up having to do these quick fixes on the fly that work, but just barely. i try and take the knowlage i gain from various jobs to make things sturdier and last longer, but i think i might be more than a bit crazy for wanting to do public works. the more i am driven to take things into spaces that are not traditional rectangluar framed art galleries i realize that even if the worlds i want to create may make sense to be in those spaces my love of ephemeral and jury-rigged facades just won't work for the long term. its like the ridiculusness of using archival cardboard because collectors want it. its just becomes an aesthetic. it seems less real. which is odd because the world i make is definetly far from real. |
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but i want them to be around for a while. a month just seems so short for the amount of work that goes into it. hell even 3 months of display didn't seem long enough for my last installation. but there is so much that goes into it that no one sees but me. all the areas i have to sacrifice for the good of the rest of the piece. like pruning back plants so they can flourish.
i'm stumped reworking my artist statement to fit a grant aplication and figured i would look at the last installation i did and try to dechipher my process both physically and mentally. how the drawing components grow (and a whole other topic for later musing - why do i insist that they are drawings not paintings. i use paint. but i consider them drawings. ive been going back and forth on this damn fellowship as to which category to put them in, the one i think they belong in or the one others do...) anyway thats for later...i decided i was going to take my obsessive documentation into some sort of a life here. as i have hundreds of process shots that i never do anything with, other than say one day i'll use them for an animation. so here is how the firebird grew. you don't actually get to read the musings as they're even too convuluded for me to dechipher, but click below and you can see the steps between. if its averaged out its about 15-20 hours in between each layer, but actually thats math averageing not taking into concicderation that there is alot less going on between the begining ones, and that the tail was 8 feet long vs the torso which is human sized. oddly enough this is the first large piece ive made in 10 years compleetly devoid of screen print (although there is some spray painted stencil in there...
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click here for crazy process and details |
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