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.