MikeAdamsArtist.com Blog

I forgot to thank Hanne Lund for lending me her sewing machine! Now I have a machine from 1969! The one I used this spring for my thesis show was from 1960, so I’m moving up. Det er en veldig fint symaskin. (Did I write that right?)
Here’s another video test, this time on tubes of sewn of tulle (bridal veil material). The tubes are supposed to infer (can I say that?) tree trunks. I would have enough of them, in a final version, to create the shape of a ship, like the strips of paper in previous posts. These are nearly a meter tall, and have a spiral sewn into them. I’m not sure how many I could project through and still see the image. I like how they glow. The video imagery is again of Rodin’s garden.

Here’s video of video projected upon Spawn of Shagadelic. Now I’m confused. It’s like the Cream of Wheat box, with the man holding a box with a picture of a man holding a box with a picture of a man. . .See what I mean?
You can see that Spawn of Shagadelic got clipped a bit more. That was just to give the video projector more room. The finished version would likely be symmetrical. Here’s the earlier post with still images of video on the more balanced looking version.

Here are some photos of video projected upon Spawn of Shagadelic after he/she/it got a haircut. See the uncut version here. I was using one video projector for these photos. What I would like to do in the final, enlarged version, is to use two projectors. For now, I was happy to see how the little “tree-trunk” strips looked. I fiddled with them a bit, sliding them around (they are adjustable more-or-less laterally). That’s my socks drying in the background in one picture. In another picture, what looks a bit like a view out of window, is the projection upon the wall. These pictures were taken with the projector on the center-line of the boat-form. Having it offset looked better, but then there’s the problem of where to put the projector in real-life so that the beam won’t be blocked as people walk around the sculpture. An annoying problem, or perhaps an invitation to a really good idea?

Prior to starting on the Boatchair, I began two small sculptures, both of layered wood. I wanted the wood to be reminiscent of the planks of a boat, and I wanted the “caulking” (which is some sort of siliconized acrylic, I think) between the planks to randomly ooze, like frosting between layers of a cake. Like Boatchair, this sculpture is also made out of wood scavenged from shipping pallets, and stained black (with wood stain), then stained red with (raw sienna oil paint), then stained black again (with ivory black oil paint). I also used plenty of beeswax between these layers of stain, and waxed on top of them, with lots of rubbing. I want the wood to look experienced. I don’t have the piece in front of me to measure at the moment, but it’s about 50 cm long, 10 cm wide, and 20 cm tall (about 18″ by 3″ by 6″). I’ll post its comrade soon. (Click on a thumbnail for a larger version, then click again for the full file-size.)

I started this one, and its comrade, out of a desire to make something, since I hadn’t been in the studio for months, because of moving, and traveling, and moving, and settling in. . .But, there’s something to be said for just doing. I think it frees up the mind, as long as it’s something pleasurable. Also, doing small pieces like this, which are basically studies, or at least start out that way, and I hope gain a “life” of their own, allows for a very specific exploration of materials. It’s also a reality-check, like experiments that make sure a scientific theory corresponds with something in nature.

I showed you HMS Shagadelic a few posts ago. Here is a new version, although I haven’t given it a haircut yet. I will shape it into a hull shape, like Shagadelic. This version has moveable “tree trunks,” i.e., the white strips, which are plain paper. I’m trying to figure out how to line them up so that I can more-or-less evenly project video upon them. I would have two projectors, one on each end of “the boat.” Here, I’m using a small spot-light for testing purposes. I’m planning to make a final version that is about 5 or 6 meters long (around 15 to 18 feet) for the Viking Ship Museum. I would like for the vessel-form to move a little. I think that would make the video projections more interesting, since they would be more dappled, as the trunks would cast shadows on each other. Any idea how to do that? Perhaps some kind of air current from a little fan, or a little electric motor? I want the movement to be subtle. The sculpture will be very light-weight (I hope), and will be supported on a center pivot, in lieu of suspending it from the ceiling. It is possible that the “tree-trunks” will be made of light colored paper, or perhaps out of dark vinyl projection screen material (which lights up very well).

I’m considering having the projectors on either end project different images from each other, i.e., one will project landscape images, and other water images. I want to develop the theme of voyages and migration, so I’ll by trying out different things. One of the nice things about the inclusion of video imagery is that it can be modified so easily (in comparison with the physical sculpture).

Hmm. I’m a farther along in David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity, and he’s making more and more claims that the “scientific” method is applicable outside of science. And I’m getting more and more annoyed. Are we going to quantify how peachy Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is, and figure out that it was “good”, because of that particular D-flat in that particular measure? Oy. Seems to me his utopian vision of a better world of the future, with better scientific theories, is quite naive. One can’t have new-and-improved humans if we lose what it is to be human, even if we become better widget makers. It seems that Deutsch is losing track of value, which is intangible, while chasing facts for his utoptia. What seemed to me to be a kind of parallel with Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature, is ironically just the sort of thing that Rorty is arguing against: that the scientific method is an “end-all” of our problems. I came across something interesting today in Rorty, in which he states (perhaps echoing Hans-Georg Gadamer), that we think we know ourselves better because we know all sort of “objective facts” about our bodies, electrons, and can make zippers, yet delude ourselves into thinking we know who we really are.

Well, I suppose there is no sense in posting pictures of a black chair with black pearls (actually glass beads), since I posted the photos of the Boatchair, aka Keikobad in an earlier post. I replaced the blue beads with black ones, restrung the fishing-line, used a Sharpie to color the fishing-line black (which worked well, I should add), and then decided that black wasn’t going to do it after all. . .I went to Panduro and bought genuine faux silver pearls (no doubt from silver oysters lying in a silver sea), which I will use tomorrow. . .I’m hoping that a bit blingier bling will be just what Keikobad needs. I could of course make up any reason I wanted for switching beads, and what the beads signify. I do have a couple of thoughts, though. The beads remind me of the ornaments in Baroque music, and I suppose in Classical music, too, where the broad sweep of the melody has little trills and figures added. They act as a kind of balance and lend symmetry. I was also thinking of the Vikings and their love of baubles and discrete ornamentation. The wooden part of the sculpture, the boat-chair, is rough-hewn. We’ll see how the dainty pearls look in contrast. . .

I’ve also waxed the wood again. . .Can’t stop. . .I love loving surfaces. . .

I’m reading three books at once, somewhat by accident. The first, and most interesting, is Richard Rorty’s Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. This one is an actual book! The other two are downloads, so I read the real book while I’m on the bus and subway going to-and-from the studio. I picked up the book in the Seattle-area at Barnes and Noble, partly because it looked interesting, and because Rorty states that the most important philosophers of the 20th century were Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Dewey. It was the inclusion of Dewey that piqued my interest (not the other two, with whom I am only superficially familiar), because his Art as Experience, is the best book about art I’ve ever read, and is something I’ve written about here and in subsequent posts. Rorty’s premise is that western philosophy is based on a shaky foundation: basically, we look for an “ultimate” reality that is separate from ourselves and the world in which we live, i.e., we seek Platonic Forms, or try to discover how the mind (or language) structures reality. Rorty says epistemology is dead. (Epistemology means a Theory of Knowledge, i.e., “How do we know what we know?”) And that we should replace it with hermeneutics (which is an investigation of how we interpret things). It’s a kind of softer approach to philosophy, which will allow for a more open-ended exploration of everything.

This leads me to the second book, David Deutsch’s The Beginning of Infinity. He too, writes of an open-endedness, in this case of human knowledge. His thesis is that the Enlightenment set in motion a new mindset of openness in the sciences and other fields, a willingness to allow dissent, and for “error correction.” This creates an exponential “progress.” He uses the word “knowledge” more than “creativity,” which is unfortunate as this favors the “hard” sciences, since “knowledge” tends to mean that which is applicable to some problem, whereas “creativity” is broader since it is, you might say, the act of developing knowledge (along with other things). As interesting as Deutsch’s book is, I have a feeling that a philosopher of science would slice-’n-dice it, because of the confusion between scientific and technological progress, and creativity. The other problem is that Deutsch thinks that myths were “untrue” attempts to explain natural phenomenon. Narrowly, I suppose he is right, but he’s oblivious to the role of art (and how myth was more than explanation, but is also an art-form). Alfred North Whitehead would never had made that mistake, and leave art out of the picture of our being human. These criticisms aside, it’s still an interesting book, although the chapter on infinity left my brain numb. But, heck, that’s maybe just me.

Book number three is Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception. I don’t know if it was this particular book of Merleau-Ponty’s, but his writings had a significant influence on the Minimalist artists of the ’sixties and early ’seventies. I’m not quite sure why, since M-P is not writing about divorcing meaning from the act of looking at something, which is what the Minimalists seemed to want to do. My sculpture professor at Idaho State University, Doug Warnock, is quite familiar with the goals of the Minimalists, and their desire for a kind of pure (and manly) experience, without all that artsy-sentimental-stuff. Personally, I don’t think one can divorce meaning from anything. Sure, something can be very boring, but that’s still a meaning. Anyway, back to M-P: this is a very psychological and physiological kind of philosophy, which to a great extent discusses the case study of one Schneider, who, due to a head-injury, seemed to lose his “humanness.” Schneider can still function in the world, but in a sort of mechanical way, as if by rote. M-P is pointing out that there is a richness to our existence, that is not just the action of an intact brain, nor of “mind,” but with interaction in the world.

There are a number of ideas that tie these books together (besides masochistically reading them simultaneously). They all have a huge scope, at least in the sense of desiring to minimize limitations to personal and societal development.

I like multiple titles. I feel they help keep a work of art from getting stuck in a particular meaning. So, I’m going to add Keikobad to Boatchair’s titles. Keikobad is the name of a spirit in Richard Strauss’ opera Die Frau Ohne Schatten. I was listening to a recording of it in the studio, featuring the late great Leonie Rysanek as the title character, with Karl Böhm conducting. It was doing something to me. . .It’s such a weird opera.

Here are the latest pix, although the blue beads (you’ll have to look at the one of the detail shots) which were given to me by another fan at the Jimmy Buffett concert in Paris, will have to be replaced because they are a bit too fragile. The fishing-line which runs through them can cut the bead (since they are some kind of mystery plastic). I bought some really beautiful Czech glass jewelry beads yesterday. Black. I was like a kid in a candy store, looking at the beads at Panduro on Karl Johan. I think black will go better with the black chair.

The black chair is now lightly rubbed with some raw sienna oil paint and beeswax. I initially used some black wood-stain, but it was too blue-black, and incredibly dense-looking. I sanded the wood (which I had intended to do after staining), waxed, then added the raw sienna (which is a reddish-brown). I think I’ll do one more layer of a warm black (lamp black), but very transparent. I am trying to make the wood look like, or seem like, the ships at the Viking Ship Museum. Old and dark and knowing.

Just a thought. . .before I forget. . .I saw a lot of large paintings in Paris, although the longest would have to be Monet’s various Waterlilies paintings at the Musée de l’Orangerie. It struck me that you can’t really stand back and see them, you have to walk by them, as if you were walking in his garden in Giverny. (Click here for my photos from Monet’s house and garden, and the Museum of Impressionism in Giverny, and some shots from Vernon, which is where the railway station is.)

I went to Paris to see Monet’s paintings (many of which, alas, were not on display since the Musée d’Orsay is being revamped), and Rodin’s sculptures, and of course Jimmy Buffett in concert. For Jimmy’s concert, I was standing, not really walking, but to experience Rodin’s sculptures in the round, and Monet’s large paintings, I had to amble around. I wonder if Monet was conscious of the effort the viewer would have to put forth? I assume Rodin would have been.

*That’s from Jimmy Buffet, so let’s close with another Parisian Jimmy quote: “I think about Paris/When I’m high on red-wine/Wish I could jump on a plane.”