The first week back at school was very interesting, both productive and unsuccessful. It took about 3 hours of conversation with professors and peers to realize that I wanted something more from my senior exit. I had spent Christmas break making a PowerPoint of my blueprints for my senior exit, which consisted of 6 projects divided into 3 phases.
Phase 1 was my master's studies and large-scale scab portraits as the backbone of my senior exit and my main displays of skill within textiles for my senior exit
Phase 2 was 2 work jackets made from scratch with custom-designed applique and 2 varsity jackets based on Kennesaw State, with CAD patches that I would manufacture to show my mastery of garment construction from both sides of the production pipeline
Phase 3 was 1 large, tufted rug based on an Atlas page of the United States Virgin Islands and 1 basketball jersey “reupholstered” that I would donate back to my high school. These projects would be the most personal to me (all the work is personal, but these would be the most direct references back to myself)
I ultimately had 2 interactions that shifted this completely: ART 4990 SPTP Special Topics in Painting, Concepts of Abstraction, and the first 35 pages of Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art. I’ll go into further detail, but the long and short of it is that I think abstraction, understanding its concepts, and applying that abstraction into painting on and around textiles will be critical to my work and finally allow me to start “making art.”
The intro lecture to Abstraction was greatly instrumental to adding my understanding of not just abstraction, but why abstraction happened. “The creation of the chemical camera in the 1830s shifted the goal of painting from representation/mimesis to free expression”. For so long, the goal of painting was to recreate what you saw in real life as faithfully as possible through proportion. color realism and accurate perspective. But with the creation of something that could capture real life in an instant, painters were enabled to do whatever they desired in any way they wanted to express themselves. I can’t intelligently talk about any of the -isms, but this explanation of the founding of abstraction spoke to me.
Outside of textiles, I struggle greatly with other mediums, especially in the sense that I can’t bring what I want to do into fruition. Drawing, Painting, Graphic Design, and Illustration are all mediums that I can create a concept for, but in execution, my shortcomings in both skill and knowledge of the medium lead that work to be very uninteresting. The past 2 years, I feel like I’ve hit a wall in my textile work, wanting to create more complex work but struggling to create work that is interesting. I have a desire to make layered compositions on a large piece of fabric, but the stopping point has always been the lack of interesting ideas. I’ve tried to take landscapes and photos of compositions I enjoy and have tried to reinterpret them in fabric. The 2 failure points (that I see) have been compositional weakness and not adding much to the original photo. What’s the point of spending 30 hours bringing a picture to life if it's just a simplified, less detailed version of the photo? The one credit I can give some of this older work is that the fabric choice can enhance the piece, but not enough to make it an engaging work of art.
Grappling with this conundrum for the past 2 years is what made the statement about the chemical camera so impactful. I’ve been focused on mimicry and exact representation of ideas/compositions, that I’ve shut myself off from simply expressing myself. It’s so simple when said, but I’ve misplaced the importance on how accurately I can depict an idea and concept rather than focusing on exploring the ways I can express a concept. Focusing on the expression is how I can make work that’s truly my own rather than trying to perfectly replicate something.
A funny aside is looking back at my work and realizing that I’ve been unknowingly knocking at the door of abstraction since I started wäne. The entire Scab, Scar, Vein, Super Scab, and 3D Scab lineage is an abstraction of the ways damage is healed in the body. My stencil design process begins with abstracting the concept I want to create into a format that I can both draw, recreate, and sew consistently with as few challenges as possible. The entire wänelite series is a set of abstractions of my logo. I’ve been thinking abstract for years, but I had too much ego to embrace and utilize the idea fully. But better late than never.
My desire to use abstraction was only deepened with the start of my reading of Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925: How a Radical Idea Changed Modern Art. I got about 2 hours alone with the book (Kennesaw, please do something about the BOB), and I came away with 2 conclusions. From how I understand it, Abstraction is the representation of an idea absent from and fully removed from any references to that idea. The other is I am sorely lacking in my knowledge of art history and the figures within it. So much of art is a reaction/response to other art movements, culture, and the world as a whole, and I want to become more understanding of this world. I’m sure I'll be able to find plenty of books, though.
Ultimately, this realization is useless if I am able to do nothing with it, and I think this is the artistic challenge I need to push my work forward. I skipped the abstraction class yesterday (sadly missed a lecture) to go to Blick and run through my material list and meditate on how I want to incorporate abstraction into my work. I’ve sketched a few compositions and begun sampling using my new tools and materials. I’m still undecided if I want this blog to be more process-focused (talking more about what I’m doing and how I’m accomplishing things) or more thought-focused (what I think about the project as I am going through it). I think I’ll fall somewhere in the middle, where there will be progress updates on major completions, but keeping this from being a sculpture 1 style process blog.
I am excited to progress in work.
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