We Make Ready

Six students from the UGA in Athens came to visit us in Knoxville this weekend. Each artist provided several sheets of paper in addition to their screens, linoleum blocks, zinc and copper plates, and assorted ephemera. We'll have a show at Gallery 1010 (113 S. Gay St.) this coming Friday from 6-9. Stop by and witness the power of collaborative work.

Collaborative work always sounds good on paper, but the reality of working with others is the same in art as it is in most other industries: it requires that we shift our focus outward from ourselves. Printmaking is blessed by its inherent sociability. In addition to the communal nature of a print shop, the multiple image or object carries with it an historical intention to be distributed, viewed, and experienced on a scale larger than its maker's self.

We don't often talk in critique about an art object's future context. The immediate context is Art School. If we look beyond that, we assume our fine art prints will hang on the wall in a gallery, museum, or private collection. This is a generalization: there are many print artists considering space in their installations and doing beautiful work. I especially like the city-scape of the art-school educated street artist Swoon and the sculptural organic forms of my UTK peer, Crystal Wagner (image at right).

If you really want to take it to the streets, to have your voice heard by the largest possible majority, you've got more efficient technology than hand printing. The internet will broadcast images and ideas on a scale previously unimaginable. The humble photocopy might lose a little texture in translation, but how discerning is your audience, anyway? Why do we choose to use lithography and intaglio to make multiples? What ways of knowing are inherent to printing and what can other disciplines (artistic and otherwise) learn from them?

I want to keep working collaboratively. First to keep myself mentally out in the world more and secondly, to expand the realms in which print contributes to our understanding of Art, the World, How to Be a Good Person, etc. Maybe next time we can assemble a team of students from botany, architecture, philosophy, and art and work charette-style towards a yet-imagined product. This is a good beginning.

Lastly, in the spirit of having and broadcasting vision, here are many of the speeches of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Increase My Bewilderment

I got The Wedding Dress: Meditations on Word and Life, by Fanny Howe at the UT library yesterday. I'll admit that I grabbed it for the title and cover layout, but there is sublime serendipity in the library. She writes about her life with bi-racial children in Boston, the creative process as it touches the mystical (in writing specifically), and her return to Catholicism.

In the first chapter she quotes a Muslim prayer that says, "Lord, increase my bewilderment." Let me wander and not know and not judge. Let me suffer and hurt. Let me emerge loving and whole.

Similarly, Eric Lee's drawings (which are now hanging at the Birdhouse) sit in the mystic middle where you are neither comforted nor aggravated, and you will emerge better, but not in the way you'd imagine. You're drawn in by the familiar: attractive fashion figures lounging in typical fashion-photography slouches. Their posturing and expressions are interrupted by Lee's deft x-acto skills and draftsmanship. The precision of his line work is reminiscent of architectural renderings and large scale Sol LeWitt drawings. A family advertising Dillard's Easter sale (or whatever) becomes a cluster of shamans and lunatics. This subversion is only level two of the drawings. Level three is the smallest stuff: orbs, astral splotches, and textured patterns that reveal the obsessive attention of their maker.

I think Eric sold/gave away at least two of his drawings: female couples laughing like drunk bridesmaids and holding a severed head like a cute clutch. I wish I'd gotten one. If you're in Knoxville in the next month, you should make a point of seeing this work before it comes down. The next music show at the Birdhouse are Ghost to Falco and Eshka Paper (Jan. 14th, 10 pm), Three Man Band with The Alcohol Stunt Band (Jan. 16th, 9 pm), and Fugue State (formerly Gresham Greene and Sapient Blaine (Jan. 23, 9 pm).

we are legion (+ value)

The oxidizing walnuts I left out in open buckets are overtaken by an aqua-colored powdery mold. While moving them outside and trying not to inhale, I remembered the phrase, "We are legion." In the Christian Bible (the books of Mark and Luke, specifically) Jesus encounters a man possessed by demons. Jesus speaks to the demons, because he is Jesus and compassionate, and asks them to identify themselves. "We are Legion. We are many," the demons say. Jesus, again compassionate even to demons, does not destroy the demons, but transfers them to a herd of pigs. The pigs throw themselves into the sea.

Mold spores are many on the walnuts, and I lack the messianic compassion to cast them elsewhere. I imagine the thousands of spores sailing into my lungs, beating up my aveoli,and singing "We are legion." This is to say that dealing with several pounds of moldy walnuts was frustrating and possibly toxic. Is this why my lymph nodes are swollen? Bah. I thought this experience was going to be all zen and creative.



I drew a bit with the ink as it stands now. The color is weaker than I'd hoped, which is a little disappointing. I'll continue to reduce the liquid. An added bonus: the simmering dye bath reeks of weird burning. Samantha described the smell as "rotten barbeque". Between the mold (= demons), the smell, and the sallow brown color the shine is wearing off this project. And that's a good thing, because it prompted this line of questioning.

Am I doing this so you can compete in the ink market? So I can bottle and market my product? Why am I doing this? It stinks, literally. And it's anachronistically slow and weird. I think I'm doing this because I wanted to add value with my hand labor. Through the force of my labor and elbow grease, I will process raw material into more valuable product. That idea is a throw-back, but it's not entirely nostalgic. It's part of how our markets work: value-added products. Corn is more valuable as cereal than it is as unprocessed corn. These walnuts are now walnuts + value: their product can make marks or stain things. I like to think I am now Katie + value: a degree more patient and wiser about dealing with things that rot.

Does labor equal value? That's traditionally why we value labor, right? It increases the worth of the thing labored upon. I claim to value certain labor for its meditative qualities, but judge the success of this project by the quantitative (and olfactory) qualities of the product. Ya basta.

The Physical

It's been balmy and rainy for what feels like two weeks. Yesterday was very windy.

I've got three 5-gal buckets in my studio now. Two of them have ~2 gallons of liquid and walnut chunks. The third has a one and a half gallons of the boiled liquid with some gum arabic and denatured alcohol added. I'd hoped the alcohol would help limit the mold to form, but it's fertile stuff, that walnut juice. I plan to strain the batch thoroughly and seal it up well. Possibly in small bottles. Maybe can it in mason jars.





straining the ink from katie on Vimeo.

What I Learned on My Seminar Vacation

Graduate school is a luxury. We have the luxury of time, studio space, and a community of peers. That said, it involves a lot of work. As with most work in the modern world, it requires diligence, patience, food, water, sleep, caffeine, and social delicacy.

Here are some of my life lessons from this semester. The music is from the album Appalachian Waltz (Edgar Meyers, Mark O'Connor, and YoYo-Ma).


How I Spent My Seminar Vacation from katie on Vimeo.

plodding towards ink

Pouring off the walnut water from katie on Vimeo.

Anyone can look up walnut ink recipes online, gather walnuts, let them sit, soak them, boil them, and so on. Most people won't. My labor is not unique or special, but it is steady and patient. So much has to do with being steadfast and patient. Good work is not inherently glamorous or rewarding. I will repeat this to myself whenever I lust after rockstardom and recognition.

The Joy of Monotony

Hulling Walnuts from katie on Vimeo.

I am impatient and manic; vulgar and overly chatty; exuberant and precocious. There's not a lot of quality stillness or silence in my life. In light of all this, it is profoundly helpful for me to have monotonous jobs where I can zone out and repeat an action or motion to distraction. Jobs where the stillness can come and settle. I exclude from this category any repetitive action on a computer. While data entry and code tweaking can be satisfying, I need more of the mind-body actions to get the good silence and stillness. The above video is one step towards making walnut ink. The hulls (and not the nut) are the parts that stain: here I am removing the hulls and discarding the nuts. Working with plants is slowly changing my concept of time.