Nudity is Only Skin-Deep

In July, MT Space paired me up with multidisciplinary artist Salomé Perez. Together, we collaborated and exchanged skills/knowledge. Both of us are eclectic artists with a keen interest in the natural world, so it was a perfect match.

Over the summer, we met several times in person, in our respective gardens, and also walked through the Laurel Creek Conservation Area. I shared my herbalism knowledge as we walked, and we discussed different uses for various plants. We collected grasses, flowers, and pollen for pigmentation and cordage. Salomé is an accomplished crochet artist and embroiderer, and she crocheted and embroidered with natural fibres.

She showed me how to crochet, and I showed her how to do relief printing. Although I didn't end up using crochet in any of my work (so far), Salome used some birch bark for relief printing.

My own relief printing is based on linocuts. I cleaned up some designs I made last year and produced these:









Salome did many sketches of the plants we saw on our walks. I went on a camping trip to Algonquin Park and did some drawing from life.



I also experimented with mixed media and natural materials. I incorporated wasp paper, wasp nest cells, leather, seal skin, butterfly wings, birch bark, and rose petals in my work. I gathered about 12 cups of rose petals from a grocery store parking lot. I made rose water with some, and macerated/simmered the rest to create rose beads. I ended up being most interested with the liquid produced in the latter process, and I used it as ink for this drawing:



In August, I was in preparation for the Indigenous Art Market Kitchener, and I continued to incorporate natural elements for that. I designed a line of earrings made from leather, sealskin, and birch bark.















I also embroidered some miniature pendants.






I continued playing with textures and contrast.

Birch Rose 1


Birch Rose 2


Sting of Pearls 1


Sting of Pearls 2


I continue to play around with another composition. This remains a work in progress.





I have enjoyed working with Salomé, and I anticipate we will continue our collaboration. I have very much enjoyed learning and creating with her, and want to thank both her and the fine folks at MT Space for putting this all together.

I continue to experiment and learn as I work on my historical survey of surrealism, and my project grows. What I'd first planned as a simple accordion-style book has turned into a piece of assemblage art. While researching the games and exercises played and implemented by surrealists, I reacquainted myself with Exquisite Corpse, a game I've frequently played throughout my life in visual and textual formats. I realized that the accordion book format is an ideal way to utilize exquisite corpse while simultaneously offering up a cross-selection of drawing styles inspired by various surrealists.

Exquisite corpse, originally called cadavre exquis,
"embodied the surrealist notions of collaboration and chance. Derived in part from a parlor game and in part from a dada game called Little Papers, in which poems were composed from randomly chosen words, the exquisite corpse was "discovered" by the surrealists in 1925 "on one of those idle, weary nights" at the residence of Tanguy, Jacques Prévert, and Marcel Duhamel at 54 rue du Chateau. Acording to Breton, a frequent "player": "What really excited us about these productions was the certainty that, no matter what, they could not possibly have been onjured up by a single brain, and that they possessed to a much greater degree the capacity for 'deviation.'

"Indeed the game's resulting images, which nearly always were anthropomorphic given the seeming preference for the vertical orientation and head-to-toe sequencing, evoke fantastic and often grotesque creatures that defy logical explanation. Since it involved chance and collaboration, the exquisite corpse separated (or at least distanced) the individual player/artist/writer from his or her creative will. And anyone could play. Certainly the naiveté of nonartists would have been welcomed in a circle in which innocence and artlessness were esteemed. But it was not all fun and games, as pointed out by Simone Kahn, Breton's first wife and frequent exquisite corpse collaborator: it was "a method of research, a way to exaltation and stimulation, a mine of numberless inventions, a drug perhaps." Bizarre creatures such as those generated via the exquisite corpse do seem to reappear in artists' individual works, most notably in Victor Brauner's mechanomorphic figures and in the quasi-totemic configurations of Wifredo (sic) Lam.

"The vast number of existing exquisite corpses, executed in a variety of media and types over many years, attest to their addictive quality. The earliest examples were drawn with graphite or ink or colored pencil on common everyday writing paper. Around 1929 to 1930, collaborators began using pastel or tempera on black paper, but because of the paper's fragility, it was often not folded. Instead, small marks to the left and/or right of the sheet indicate the divisions, or registers, of the exquisite corpse. Areas not being drawn were then covered by another sheet of paper to guarantee the chance results" (Jones L., 2012, pp. 31-32).

"Cadavre exquis drawings were inspired by an old parlour game. One evening at 54 rue du Chateau, a Surrealist meeting place in Paris between 1924-8, Jacques Prévert wrote on a piece of paper "Le cadavre exquis," folded the paper, and passed it around the room for others to write the words in their minds. The result was the powerful sentence "le cadavre exquis boira le vin nouveau" which astounded those present . Another night, they tried using imagery: one artist would draw three or four lines which would extend beyond the fold, and the next person would continue the lines until shapes emerged. Finally, this game was played by simply covering areas of the sheet.... The final result was a composition of interconnected images derived from the subconscious ideas of the artists. Simone Kahn wrote that the final results of this practice were 'creatures none of us had foreseen'" (from the Research Report for Cadavre Exquis c. 1931 obtained at The Marvin Gelber Print and Drawing Study Centre, AGO).

I chose to incorporate a cross-selections of paintings and drawings for this exquisite corpse method of delivery. The order of influences goes as follows:

1. A drawing inspired by René Magritte's The Son of Man
   
2. H. R. Giger's illustration for the cover of Danzig's album How the Gods Kill
   
3. Marion Adnam's L' Infante Egaree
   
4. Bridget Bate Tachenor's Velador
   
5. Roberto Matta's drawing for Les Chants de Maldoror
   
6. Giorgio de Chiroco's Two Mannequin Heads
   
7. Salvador Dali's Venus With Drawers
   
8. Hans Bellmer's La Poupée
   

Aside from searching online and in libraries for information pertinent to surrealism, I also travelled to Toronto on several occasions to visit the AGO. I took photographs and made sketches of original works at the Guillermo del Toro exhibition, and also visited The Marvin Gelber Print and Drawing Study Centre, AGO. There I spoke with the curator of the studio about my interest, and with the assistance of the archivists, was able to study two remarkable pieces up close and personal.

The first piece I studied is an example of cadavre exquis. It was created by Valentine Hugo, Tristan Tzara, Yves Tanguy, Paul Eluard, and Nusch Eluard circa 1931. This is a fascinating piece, not only to look at, but also from a historical perspective. It is a rare piece, as only a few were executed on black paper. The inscription on the reverse indicated which images each artist made. Valentine Hugo did the writing and the bird's head. Tzara drew the scissors. Tanguy drew the cliff and chameleon. Paul and Nusch Eluard did the rest.



The second piece I studied in detail is Two Mannequin Heads by Giorgio de Chirico. This drawing fascinated me because it is much more mechanical-looking than the majority of pieces I've studied by other surrealists. It is a beautiful drawing with excellent lines, and I decided to incorporate elements of it in my exquisite corpse study.



I want to go with the working title Body of Work. The play on words references Exquisite Corpse, the surrealists' fascination with the body, as well as the body of work put out by the surrealist movement. I have been looking at surrealists from around the world, and have been working at getting a good cross-selection of international artists. I have also been researching female surrealists, since men are more heavily represented in studies despite there having been plenty of highly-skilled and esteemed women within the movement. Some of the artists did not call themselves surrealists, but were claimed by the movement (eg. Frida Kahlo). Some dissociated themselves from the movement, but are surrealists nonetheless (eg. Salvador Dali).

With my research, I have expanded my original concept to something larger than just a book. I am creating a box to contain the book. The box contains elements of other surrealists.

I was inspired by the three-dimensional work of Méret Oppenheim, a surrealist more famous because she modelled for Man Ray than she is famous for her own works. This is unfortunate, as she was a skilled and imaginative artist in her own right. She created a fur-covered cup and saucer, and also made a diorama including feathers. I followed her influence to make an inset in my box including feathers.

Another part of the box incorporates elements of cut-up poetry. Tristan Tzara, who I discovered courtesy of the Exquisite Corpse, is considered to have been the progenitor of cut-up poetry. In 1920, "Tristan Tzara publishes 'To Make a Dadaist Poem' which instructs the reader to cut out words from a newspaper article, put them in a bag, shake, and then remove individually and compose a poem ' conscientiously in the order in which they left the bag'" (Jones, 2012, p. 63). I used this inspiration to create a poem, and combined it with collage.

The outside of the box is découpaged to continue with the surrealist theme of collage.

Jones, Leslie. Drawing Surrealism. Los Angeles, CA : Los Angeles County Museum of Art, [2012]. from pp 31-32

Yesterday, with some amount of trepidation, I attended a handstand workshop. My energy levels have been generally waning over the past year or so, and my endurance has been getting pretty shitty. Nevertheless, I've been working hard at improving my endurance, and I was able to make it through the entire workshop without needing to take numerous breaks. Despite not having done a handstand in ~8-9 months, I did quite well. My strength, range of motion, and flexibility were up to the challenge, and I believe that if I can practice regularly, I will have an unsupported handstand within a few weeks.

I did have one major whoops. While doing a partner exercise, I kicked off too hard, overbalanced, and came down on my head and shoulder. I didn't damage myself, but it was a reminder that being klutzy hurts. My next kick-off was much better.

......

Over the past year, combined with my fatigue issues, I've also gained a fair amount of weight. At the beginning of the year, I was the heaviest I've ever been, and it did not feel good. Over the past two months, I became proactive and have been monitoring my diet, doing daily exercise (burpees and regular strength training), and taking some vitamin supplements to help with general health and sleep issues. I'm feeling a gradual change, and two days ago, for the first time in many months, I noticed muscle definition again. I knew the muscles were still there, but it feels good to see them peeking out at me again. Hi there, guns.

(Self-portrait circa 1997. Pencil crayons on textured paper.)

It's been far too long since I did any substantial blogging. I do a lot of posting on FB, but it's not at all the same thing. FB does not encourage active conversation. The threading on posts is borked, and on more than one occasion, misunderstandings have arisen from replies made in these threads that were so severe that they resulted in people dropping me as a friend. In one instance, I was busy formulating a carefully-worded response to an earlier comment in a thread. While in this process, they were responding to other things and making other points. By the time I'd finished my write-up, there'd been several messages in the interim and because of simple timing and non-threaded discourse, it made it look like I'd completely blown off the points they were making. I tried to send a private message to explain what had happened, but they'd already blocked me.

This sort of platform does not make for good communication. It does not make for lasting friendship. Now, I'm not completely dismissing FB. It is excellent for sharing photos and links, and for networking and sharing events. I have missed the nuanced conversations and friendships I made in my years of blogging on my own defunct site and, later on, on LJ.

My intention is to resuscitate my old website. This is a daunting task. I hand-coded every single one of those many hundreds of webpages. It was years of work. Can I port things over without destroying my old formatting? How does FTP even work anymore? I haven't done it in so long that I've forgotten almost everything.

In other news, I've been working hard to promote my artwork and get more regular practice in. I started an Instagram account where I share artwork regularly. I've been updating it daily since I started paying attention to it. I haven't sold anything via that venue (yet). I have, however, sold several pieces through FB. Go figure.

I hope to go back to university at some point to pursue my fine arts training. In the meantime, I'll practice independently.

Here is my current major work in progress. If you click on the picture, you'll go to a gallery of my progress shots:



In other news, this afternoon I'll be going to Brass Butterflies (an aerial studio in Waterloo) to study handstands and acro-yoga. The training will never end until ten minutes after I'm dead.

I'm on a raven kick. ( Here's my third piece, done in soft pastels. )

Like H.P. Lovecraft? Check this out: The Innsmouth Look, ink on paper. I'm selling prints of this (and more). You can buy them from me in person, or go nab 'em online here. Prices start at $20.

I've been drawing pretty much daily again. I spend much of today in transit, and I had the craving to draw a raven. Tonight, I did. I decided to go with soft pastels on sanded paper. I call it "Ravenous."

( Here are the in-progress shots. )

In pop culture, Sigmund Freud is, perhaps erroneously, quoted as saying “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar” (1). However, in Jack Cole's “Murder, Morphine and Me,” from the May 1947 edition of True Crime #2 (Cole, 6), the sexual nature of the visual imagery is not just a matter of reading too much into the drawings. “Murder, Morphine and Me” is a horror story, and page 6 of the story is about sexual horror in particular.



( Read more... )

Dreams & Symbols is the culmination of surreal artifacts and the disintegration of procrastination. It all began several years ago when a local used book shop had moved to a new location and left behind a crate of books the proprietors didn't want to bring to their new store. I rooted through the box and found a book called Dreams & Symbols. I thought it was a bunch of malarkey, but there were numerous beautiful full-colour images inside. I brought the book home so I could do collage or decoupage with it.

For about the same amount of time, I've been keeping a rough pine crate which had initially been used to store cannisters of tea. It was covered with unattractive stamped print, but I always meant to get around to doing something with it. For this project, this finally happened. The pine crate met the metaphysical coffee table book and together, they became transformed into this cabinet.

Surreal images were cut with scissors, or with a utility knife on a cutting board, then affixed in place with high-gloss Mod Podge. I also attached a pressed flower to the upper shelf (which is removeable) in this way, and sealed it with copious amounts of Mod Podge. In order to dry the thick amounts of sealant/adhesive, I jerry-rigged a hair drier on top of some clay pots on medium heat and let it dry while I worked on the rest of the cabinet.

The few parts of the box which have not been decoupaged have been coloured with ink and accented with bindis.

I consider the cabinet itself to be part and parcel with the collection. The decoupage work is a collection in itself, and accents are added with metallic ink.

The objects without the cabinet vary, depending on the placement of the cabinet. When the cabinet is on my window sill, the collection sprawls out on either side and on top, including such objects as an hourglass, candles, plume, stone goblet, brass bell, a hand-made spider pendant, rose beads, and incense. The plume and rose beads I fashioned myself. I believe the scent of roses and incense are just as evocative as the visuals, and the sand trickling through the hourglass places a temporal value on the exhibit.

When the cabinet is in a smaller area, the viewer's eye is directed more toward the interior of the cabinet. Skulls, heads, bone beads, Catholic saints, North American aboriginal spirit stone, and voodoo dolls lurk in the upper level. In the lower level, hand-painted china boxes (painted by me), a feather, a curious metal button, a rabbit skull, and two thimbles (modern and reproduction Viking). The collection is meant to be dreamlike and to provoke strange mental connections.

( Images aplenty )

This project, which I've called Portrait of My Hand, is a two-part piece. I first composed my legs and hand against a tile background with filtered sunlight for lighting. I wanted to include strong diagonals in my composition, so I arranged the diagonals of my hand and legs in contrast with the strong parallel lines of the tile. Once I was happy with the arrangement, I took the digital photo and converted it to a grey-scale image.

I printed out the image on a laser printer, and coloured the reverse of the image with charcoal. Then I taped the image in place on top of heavy drawing paper, and traced out the outlines with a ballpoint pen. This left a line drawing of the portrait on the drawing paper.

Next, I cut out and tore a variety of shapes and strips from several newspapers, sorting them into piles of similar darkness/lightness values.

I used mucilage to place the bits of newsprint onto the drawing paper until the photograph had been reproduced in collage. This was a time-consuming process.

The image is perplexing to look at, with different elements popping forward and backward, often interchangeably. The fingers stand out in stark contrast, but sometimes they move forward or retreat behind the tile in a surreal method, with nods to Escher. The hand dissolves into a mash of words behind a strong, dark set of knuckles.

The line between the tiles is an extended series of ellipses, indicating there is always far more to be said.

( And the images are behind the cut.... )