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.