Coliseum Installation Pictures

In January, 2014, I installed the piece called "Folly (Colosseum of Rome)" with the help of a few current and former graduate students: Nathan Cox, Chauncey Rasmussen, Biagio Scarpello, and Nin Filip (whose chief role was photo guru.)

Assembling the coliseum in its first location

Nathan Cox checking the quality of our eyeballed oval

Our "Brady Bunch" group photo with the assembled coliseum

This was the vantage point for the final selected photo. Camera lens and yoga mat  provided by Nin Filip. 

Summer 2013 Update

Last year, my entire summer was stolen from me when my landlords announced that they were not renewing my lease. They explained that they were going to turn my 680 square-foot one-bedroom apartment into a two bedroom apartment by building two new walls in the living room. (They did this in about five days and raised the rent by $425.00. Impressive!) So, I spent the entire summer searching for an affordable apartment in San Jose, and then moving, during this terrible rent spike. This summer I was determined to make up as much as possible for lost time. So, I haven't done a day of vacation-type things, but have just worked on art (plus the inevitable school issues that come up on most days.)
While I work on new projects, I have two pieces in a show called Navigating the New that's currently up at Pro Arts in Oakland. Here is a review of the show, which came out the other day. And here is a picture from Pro Arts' Facebook page.

Photo via Pro Arts, Oakland

Bob Robinson Makes a Classical Guitar

Hey wow, a new blog post! I stumbled on this amazing video about a month ago, of my friend Bob Robinson. I worked for Bob for only about a year and a half, right after grad school, in his custom furniture shop in Chicago. It was from Bob that I learnt most of what I know about woodworking. I left when Bob decided to pursue a longtime dream of becoming a veterinarian. Fortunately for the world, he quickly changed his plan and returned to another longtime dream of making classical guitars. I suggest watching this video in its entirety, because it's really cool. Bob Robinson: Luthier
Bob and his wife Deirdre have been running a high-end furniture business called Troscan Design for many years now, and he makes the beautiful guitars on the side.

"Mechanical Reproduction" at Mulherin + Pollard Projects

I spent an intense three weeks in the SJSU Art building over the winter break, completing a new piece. The heat was off in the building and the rooms were 50 Fahrenheit and below, and for some of the time the water was turned off too, while some major repairs were being done in the building. Additionally, everything that could go wrong on this project, did–– several times! I still need to make more of these stamps, both larger and smaller (with different patterns) to complete the series. The piece is called "Mechanical Reproduction"–– a reference to Walter Benjamin's famous essay from 1936, "The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction." Here is a brief statement I wrote about the piece:

The current series of oversized rubber stamps evolved as a whimsical tangent to a long-term project I am engaged in that involves casting black rubber tire treads. For me, this piece is about the tyranny of standardization. Damask wallpaper is a trope which connotes opulence and a bygone romantic era, while rubber stamps are frequently associated with bureaucracy and mindless repetition. These giant rubber stamps are hard to control, and their users will struggle to build up a logically repeating pattern. Perhaps they will quickly abandon all attempts at creating order, and succumb to more impulsive, chaotic overlays. In many cases there will be almost enough room for a stamped unit, but not quite, and the pattern will be forced to abruptly end. I am interested in exploring the many possible narratives that might arise from the use of this rudimentary but highly allusive form of mechanical reproduction. 

The first step to making this piece was drawing the damask pattern in Illustrator. I spent a month at the end of last summer making the drawing, and then had to refine the mold and rubber-pouring process which I had developed with my first tire tread piece. Unfortunately, there were many more urgent refinements I had to figure out on a tight deadline over the winter break.

Here are a few process pictures of the piece, and me in the amazing new powered air purifying respirator that I purchased with a generous SJSU Research, Scholarship and Creative Activity grant. I wore this every day that I worked on the project–– it protects against both organic vapours and particulates.

Four chunks of 16/4 basswood ready to glue into a block to turn on the lathe. I used the dowels to keep the seams lined up perfectly.

 Clamping up the block of basswood.

 The turning "blank" ready for the lathe.

 Cautiously beginning to lay out the dimensions.

A very backlit action shot on the lathe, with the camera sitting in the tool cabinet!

 The stamp handle takes form on the lathe.

 The handle next to the smaller test handle I made (the small one will eventually go on a smaller stamp.)

 Cutting the flat spot on the huge resaw bandsaw.

 The stamp body was made from 12/4 basswood which I could only find at MacBeath Hardwoods up in Berkeley.

 Drilling out the hole for the handle tenon using my carbide-tipped Forstner bits.

The system I came up with to make the stamp able to be disassembled. A threaded steel "cross-dowel" is embedded at 90 degrees to the tenon.

My amazing new 3M Powered Air Purifying Respirator, with belt-mounted fan and battery pack.

John Pollard of ADA Gallery in Richmond, VA and Mulherin + Pollard Projects in New York, invited me to install the piece in the NY gallery, in a two-person show with artist Jared Lindsay Clark. The show opened last Friday, February 3rd.

Below, are pictures of the installation called Mechanical Reproduction, at Mulherin + Pollard Projects, 187 Chrystie St., NYC.
 

 

"Mechanical Reproduction," (stamp,) 2012. 14" x 14" x 14".

 "Mechanical Reproduction," (stamp,) 2012. 14" x 14" x 14".

"Mechanical Reproduction,"(stamp,) 2012, at Mulherin + Pollard Projects, NYC. Cast urethane rubber, neoprene, basswood, paint, hardware.

 "Mechanical Reproduction,"(stamp,) 2012.  Cast urethane rubber, neoprene, basswood, paint, hardware.

 "Mechanical Reproduction," hand-stamped walls. Latex paint.

 "Mechanical Reproduction,"view from front door.

 

Action shot, stamping the wall. Image courtesy of Mulherin + Pollard Projects.

Stamping the wall. Image courtesy of Mulherin + Pollard Projects.

All images copyright, Shannon Wright.

Inspiration and Realization

My friend Tom Rebold just emailed me a fantastic quote from Wendell Berry. Although I can assume Berry was not thinking of sculpture when he wrote this, his words happen to sum up perfectly the enormous and complex challenge of making sculpture. And they parallel and complement the words of sculptors Arthur Ganson and Tony Cragg that I have included below.

"There are, it seems, two muses: the Muse of Inspiration, who gives us inarticulate visions and desires, and the Muse of Realization, who returns again and again to say "It is yet more difficult than you thought." This is the muse of form. It may be then that form serves us best when it works as an obstruction, to baffle us and deflect our intended course. It may be that when we no longer know what to do, we have come to our real work and when we no longer know which way to go, we have begun our real journey. The mind that is not baffled is not employed. The impeded stream is the one that sings."
— Wendell Berry

"...The real, physical world keeps me honest. Because I can imagine anything, but I like the discipline of the actual, physical world. It's a really good grounding plane for me."
––Arthur Ganson (speaking at the DeYoung Museum, SF, October 2010)

"... although sculpture remains for the greater part useless, unlike designed objects, it is an attempt to make dumb material express human thoughts and emotions. It is the attempt not just to project intelligence into the material but also to use material to think with. Sculptures are often and at their best not just the result of an artist taking a material, for example a piece of stone or a lump of clay, out if its normal environment and forcing them into a form which expresses a preformulated notion, but rather the result of a dialogue between the material and the artist. The material finds itself in a new form and the sculptor finds himself with new content and new meaning."
––Tony Cragg, from the exhibition catalog, A New Thing Breathing

It occurred to me after juxtaposing these quotes, that they bring up another, more practical, issue for sculptors. That is, if I succeed merely in "realizing" my "preformulated notion," then there is a good chance that another artist is out there realizing the same notion a week or two before me! This happens with many of my projects. In these cases, the only things that can save my work from sudden obsolescence are the richness and specificity that arise solely from process. This reminds me of yet another quote, from my longtime mentor, Elizabeth King: "It's our process that saves us from the poverty of our intent."

The Best Artist in the World

I first learned of the work of the Cuban artist Alexandre Arrechea in the Spring of 2009. I was dumbstruck– but I wanted to imagine I could keep my discovery to myself for a while. I just checked his website to see what he's done since then, and I am re-dumbstruck. It is my duty as a good citizen of the art world to sing his praises from every rooftop, or at least every blog, that I can. Here is a link to his website, and here are a few images of his work.

“Elastic Time, 2010”

52 x 5 x 26 cm

Transparent Lacquered Aluminum 2010

Metropolitan Tower

Aluminum

91 x 30 x 220 cm

36 x 12 x 87 inches

Orange tree, 2003-2010

lacquered aluminum

7 meters height

Location/ Jing’an Sculpture Park, Shanghai, China

“Masculinity”
170 x 130 cm
Watercolor on paper
2009

Dead bird flying 4” 170 x 130 cm Watercolor on paper. 2009 “

February

I suspect this will be my last post from Finland, as I'm leaving soon. As I write this, it is 0° Fahrenheit, and has been between 6° and about 12° all week, with lots of snow.

Midday sun a couple of weeks ago.





Residency house.

A Valentines Day Snow Carving event attracted more people than I had ever seen in Ekenas. Where have they all been hiding?

Double bunnies, carved by Kim Simonsson and the other resident artists at Villa Snacksund, another Pro Artibus residency house for Finnish artists.

KUVA, the Finnish Academy of Fine Arts, in Helsinki. I gave a lecture about my work there last Wednesday.

The handsome entry area/ student hangout area of KUVA, with swing and ping-pong table.

The auditorium at KUVA.

The Helsinki railway station at night.

The cafe area in Eliel Saarinen's famous railway station.