installation

The process I've been documenting in this blog is complete. The drawing was expertly installed today by Ty Art (Chris, David, Christopher and Kyle), and there's nothing left to do. Here are some photos of the final day.

before installation

Here is the finished drawing, the left panel, and a detail of the left panel in the studio.

drawing completed

I finished the drawing this morning.

shadow study

This is a study for the work I'll begin tomorrow - painting/drawing the shadows on the banner. Note that the placement of the radiating lines in the actual commission has been changed; I decided I wanted them radiating out from a point behind the word "truth."

masking tape removed

Okay, I'm getting closer. Yesterday I sprayed varnish on the drawing, and tonight I finished taking off the masking tape that covered the banner. Next I have to paint the shadows in the banner, which is a much different mental process than creating the ground. Working on the ground is a more spontaneous, intuitive act in which the image I'm trying to achieve has to comport in some way with the image I have in my head. Painting the shadows is more about looking carefully and painting what I see. Installation is scheduled for a week from tomorrow. Lots left to do.

grounds complete

Today I finished snapping the lines and working the ground. After that I took the plastic mask off and filled in the cut-out letters with charcoal. As you can see above, the charcoal smudged outside the contour of the letters. When I take the masking tape off, the letters should be crisp and precise. Next step is to spray the painting with varnish. Then I'll take off the masking tape and paint the shadows on the banner. Then I'll spray another coat of varnish on the painting. Then, I'll let it dry for a couple of days, roll the two canvasses onto tubes, and wait for Ty Art to pick them up next Friday.

progress

Here's a compilation image of where the drawing is now (twenty six feet compressed into four inches). I'm almost finished applying the charcoal snap lines, and almost finished with the grounds. After that, I'll fill in the letters, then I'll spray the letters and ground with a fixative/acrylic picture varnish, then I'll finally take off the masking tape and "paint" the shadows in the banner with charcoal and water.

a dirty business

I thought I'd give you an idea how much charcoal dust is generated when I make these drawings.

more charcoaling

Tonight I finished snapping lines along the top edge of the drawing, and added more charcoal powder to the background. The drawing looks like hell right now; and that's pretty much what it's supposed to look like at this stage. I have to gradually develop the values in the background, considering the composition across both panels, and the shadow pattern that's on the banner. What isn't visible now, but will make an enormous difference in balance and contrast, is the pristine white banner under all that masking tape. I'll leave the tape over the part of the banner that has highlights until I'm done with everything else on the drawing.

turned the corner

It's too bad George Bush and his gang gave the expression, "turned the corner," such a bad rep, because it's an apt description for what happened in the studio today. If the infrequency of my posts hasn't clued you in, then let me tell you explicitly that this commission has been eating my lunch. Kind of.

There are lots of defensible reasons for it - the general, natural pressure one could expect with a public commission; the pressure from it being the biggest drawing I've ever done; the stress of using new materials; financial pressure, deadline pressure, installation pressure, etc. The effect of this pressure in the studio has been that the canvasses have taken on an almost contentious, anthropomorphic presence. This is the first time this has ever happened to me. Usually, I see the blank piece of paper as an aesthetically gorgeous site on which to leave evidence of a performance, or maybe more precisely, a place where I prosecute a graphic intention. Either way, there is definitely a performative aspect to the process that I enjoy - one more self-conscious, the other, aware but not self conscious. With this drawing though, the canvasses have taken on a life of their own, and I've been sub-consciously dreading confronting them, probably because they're so damned big. The piece of paper on which I normally work is large, but not so large that I can't contain it in my reach (except diagonally). These canvasses dwarf me, so I think I've been intimidated (even though I've also been enthralled).

Today, though, I turned the corner. I started snapping the lines radiating from behind the word "truth" in the banner. I've almost finished snapping three sides. I also worked on the ground, spraying the canvas in places with a fine mist of thinned mat medium to hold the charcoal dust. With these "aggressions," the canvas relented, and I now feel like I'm somewhat in control again. It's still going to be challenging, but the dynamics of my relationship to the canvas have changed in my favor...for now.

installation scheduled

I've not made a great deal of progress on the drawing but I have scheduled its installation for Friday, September 21st - about three weeks away. Ty Art, an art services company from town is going to handle the delivery and installation of the drawings. It's going to be a fairly labor-intensive process: I'll first have to roll the canvasses on 10"-12" diameter, 10' long tubes, then Ty Art will pick up and deliver them and the un-assembled stretcher bars to UH. Since the drawings will be installed at app. 18' off the ground, it will require scaffolding and ladders. Ty Art will stretch the canvasses in the commons area, then install them. As Christopher Tribble, co-founder of Ty Art, told me, it's doubtful a sheetrock wall will be perfectly flat across 13'(let alone 26'!). So I'm sure there will be some issues to work around. We're anticipating it will take a full day. First though, I need to finish the drawing. I hope to make some headway this weekend.

right panel taped and trimmed

This weekend I finished taping and trimming the end of the banner which appears on the right panel. Now comes some experimentation with charcoal dust on a separate, smaller canvas. A note: the panels, when installed, will be closer together. The banner on the right panel was positioned with that distance in mind.

taped and trimmed

Tonight I finished trimming the tape on the left panel banner. The tape is necessary to mask the banner when I apply charcoal dust to the ground. Tomorrow I'll work on the right panel. I've still got to sand the gesso, then project and mask the small, end piece of the banner. Once I get that done, it will be time to put the left banner on the floor of the studio so I can apply the charcoal dust.

progress

After a bit of a setback, I made some progress this evening. The setback was my realization that the initial banner I photographed and projected onto the canvas was scaled too small. I'd actually had the feeling since I'd drawn it that it was too small, but had tried to convince myself it was okay. Finally this weekend, I realized it wasn't going to work, so I reconfigured and re-photographed the banner, and tonight when I projected it onto the canvas, realized it was the right thing to do. It's curious that if I initially get the scale wrong, it's always under scaled rather than over scaled. Not sure what that's about. Fear?

I've drawn the banner on the left panel and begun taping it off with masking tape. Next I'll trim the tape to the contour of the banner with an Exacto knife.

brief update

I've been traveling so much I haven't had much chance to work in the studio, so, not much to report. Work has begun on the drawing, and I hope to have the whole thing drawn in and masked off by the end of the coming weekend. Then I'm going to put the canvasses on the floor and apply the charcoal dust from above and from all sides. I'll take some photos once the banner is completely masked off and ready for charcoal.

process

I've determined the text that will go on the banner, and decided the shape I want the banner to make (after photographing multiple variations of the banner). I've also put three coats of gesso on each canvas. Here's the process from here:
1. sand each canvas
2. project left canvas image, draw banner contour and demarcate shadow lines
3. photograph projection for later printing of reference for shadows
4. tape acetate sheets to canvas, trace banner contours with sharpie
5. roll up acetate sheets and put away for later cutting
6. draw/paint shadows (powdered charcoal and water)
7. project same banner image again, outline letters
8. draw/paint letters
9. repeat for right panel
10. cut acetate masks for both panels
11. spray mount acetate masks on canvas
12. snap radiating charcoal lines
13. apply powdered charcoal to ground
14. apply fixative (mix of vmp naptha and Soluvar)

the final text

After multiple edits, I finally decided on this text for the drawing:

Shine and rise, gentlemen and ladies! Smell the coffee and wake up! Forget and forgive circumstance and pomp. Learn and live nothing but the truth and the whole truth, for all and once, over and over… ever and forever.

studio work begins

Today I finally began work in the studio on the commission. I've only applied one coat of gesso to the left canvas, and I still need to mark off the right canvas before I gesso it.

what to do? part 5

Now I was beginning to feel that the reversal idea was gaining some momentum. I started experimenting with combining multiple reversals (I'd done this before, but with 5 phrases maximum) and I started sketching a diptych with the banner spanning both sides. On April 20th I had a breakthrough, for the first time putting together over twenty phrases in a way that created a new message. And although this first combination was a little too rambling and contained some passages that I ultimately considered too dark (unusual and cruel minds and hearts enter and break) I knew I was close to getting the text I wanted.

serendipity

On April 18th, I went to the Honors College to look at the space again, and afterwards I stopped by to see Ted Estess, Dean of the College. He wasn't there, but I saw on his administrative assistant's desk a copy of "Not Knowing," an essay written by the late author, Donald Barthelme. Another writer and friend of Donald's (and mine) named Paula Webb, had given a copy of that essay to me 3 weeks earlier after I had told her about my re-reading of Tristram Shandy and my interest in the idea of "not knowing" in his work.

thinking about the format

As I was thinking about content, I was also thinking about the physical space and how the content of the drawing would be influenced by the size of the space in which it would be installed. I had determined that my initial impression that the entrance wall was the best opportunity was correct, and it was going to take a large drawing to "hold" that wall. In thinking about this and sketching it in my sketchbook, I began to think a diptych format (a format I hadn't used in years) would be appropriate both in terms of content and in terms of responding to the architectural demands of the space.

what to do? part 4

sketchbook entry, April 14, 2007
thinking more about the idea of the 'great conversation' as the basis of this commission. Thinking of a very long banner that is convoluted and twisted so one can't read more than pieces of it - implying how much we don't know - radiating lines behind implying the effort to know, none-the-less. The question remains - what is the text? Today thinking it's a collection of reversals - selecting the ones that have 'big idea' implications.

Following this note, I wrote down an initial list of 46 potentially applicable reversal phrases in my sketchbook.

what to do? part 3

The American Puritans were fond of making anagrams out of a person's name. Apparently they thought that if a pious phrase could be found in that name, it was a sign that they were one of the elect, and would end up in Heaven. I became interested in the Puritans years ago when I realized that I had some Puritanical impulses of my own, so I began making my own anagrams. The first one I tried was out of "American Puritan" which generated several interesting phrases, my favorite being the oddly poignant, "I am crap in nature."

I reverted to this anagram strategy early on in my thinking about this commission, beginning with the phrase, "The Human Situation" which is the heading for the mandatory curriculum for all Freshman Honors College students. This generated nothing of value, producing nonsense phrases like, "Hi! I heat a mutton sun," and "It in a nut, thou shame."

At about this time I pulled from the pile of books on my night stand, a brilliant book by Tom Phillips called A Humument. A Humument is a Victorian novel titled A Human Document that Phillips "treated" (and continues to treat) by obscuring and connecting letters and words to create an entirely new narrative which bristles with a logic and wisdom all its own. I've admired this book since finding it 10 or so years ago, and I thought I'd take a look at some works in the Honors College curriculum which I could reorder in some fashion. I decided to first try anagramming a phrase, and for reasons I don't remember, I started with Dante's Inferno and the line, "Abandon all hope, ye who enter here." Fortunately, I could only squeeze out the odd and worthless phrase, "When here a bone, a needy hell, a trope." For twelve days I tried finding meaningful phrases out of various Honors College references, with no luck.

Finally, on April Fool's Day I wrote in my sketchbook, "Easy and Free/Determined and Bound," not knowing this was the beginning of finding a solution for the commission.

an update

I've been traveling and unable to find the time to post to the blog. To those of you who've checked in from time to time during my absence, I apologize. I've ordered stretcher bars and canvas, and they're due to arrive this week. This is going to be the first time I've used canvas for a support, so I've got some experimentation ahead of me. In the next posts I'll try to catch up to where I am, real time, in the process, and explain how I got to my final drawing for the commission. I'll be out of town next week as well without internet access, so please be patient with me.

an assumption

During the time I was thinking about what to do for this commission, I came across this post card I purchased at the National Museum in Prague in 1996. It seemed fortuitous as I hadn't noticed it for years even though it was on a bulletin board in my son's bedroom. It's called The Destna Assumption and was painted in 1450. It's not the one source of reference for my banner drawings but it is in the family of annunciation and assumption paintings transmitting a text message via a twisting and turning banner, that were influential to me. In many ways it represents a form of text messaging much more sophisticated than what today is called text messaging; for example, the text is shown transmitted on a two-sided, spatially complex and varied platform that in some passages causes the text to be illegible.

digression

sketchbook entry, March 30, 2007
For in talking of my digression - I declare before heaven I have made it!
Laurence Sterne, Tristram Shandy

what to do? part 2

sketchbook entry, January 10, 2007
*initial idea - take passages from texts representative of the areas covered in the Honors College and make reversals of them.

I began making "reversal drawings" in 1996 or so. I select a commonly used phrase or cliche that contains the conjunction "and" or "or," and reverse the order of the words on each side of the conjunction; for instance, "determined and bound," "country and god," "weep and read 'em," "shine and rise." I'm interested in the potential for poetry and political commentary intrinsic in these reversals. That they might cause a viewer/reader to pause for even a second is also a desired effect, because in that nano second of doubt, the viewer is really engaged. In some ways, I see the act of reversal as a reclamation particularly appropriate for use in a culture that's tired and sick.

what to do? part 1

A note: As this commission process started in January, I'm writing about this part of the process after the fact. I'll make sure to let you know when what I'm writing is current.


While I was thinking about where the drawing should go, I was also thinking about what the drawing should be. I was interested that it was going to be in the Honors College, where the curriculum is influenced by great books of Western thought that have fueled the so called "Great Conversation." (See the "new five foot shelf" Ruppersberg link.) As my work for the past decade has almost exclusively considered the relationship of word and image, I was anticipating that one or several of those books would be the basis for my commission. I first visited the Estess Family Alumni Library inside the Honors College on January 10th of this year. Here's a short list of books I wrote down in my sketch book:

Michaelangelo the Painter
Collected Work of John Stuart Mill
Selected writings of Lord Acton
Collected Works of James M. Buchanan
Selected Writings of Sir Edmund Coke
etc.

I hadn't previously read one word in any of those books, nor had I heard of some of the authors. And I wasn't aware, for instance, that Sir Edmund Coke was responsible for a sentimental quote I'd heard my entire life: "A man's home is his castle." My experience in the Estess library underscored my insufficient education, and maybe provided a reason as to why the best I could ever hope for in my conversations was "good." This wasn't feeling like where the source for my drawing was going to come from, but I wasn't ready to give up yet.

the space

The commons area at the Honors College (above) is a trapezoid-shaped space with two long, 10' high uninterrupted sheetrock walls that begin above the wood-paneling at approximately 10', and two other shorter walls that are punctuated by large windows on the west and south sides of the room.

After several visits and spending time in the space, I decided that I would concentrate on the north wall (above) for the commission as it was the entrance and exit for the room, and because of the symmetry of the door and windows. It also seemed that it would be the most visible location in the room, and at a little over 37' long, an appropriately scaled wall for the size drawing I'd have to do to hold the room.

an introduction

An art panel at the University of Houston recently approved my drawing proposal for the commons area of the Honors College at the University. I decided to create this blog as both a way of sharing my process with anyone interested (especially students in the Honors College), and as an incentive for me to keep a detailed, up-to-date record of the process. And, as the commission will presumably have a definable beginning and end, it seemed like a sensible enterprise about which to devote a maiden blog. I'll have more background explanation on my next post.