Tactile Drawing//Addicted to 8Track

This drawing project has been on the back burner for a while, but it’s time to start getting it done now that the end of the academic year is rapidly approaching. I’m going to write up the questions first, but to answer them I might just explain what I’ve been doing in my drawing/studio practice. Or I might write out answers… Guess we’ll both find out. The photo below are a few new works, working a bit larger and experimenting a bit more.

1. Describe your drawing practice in relation to your studio practice.
2. How does drawing influence the process and methodology applied to contemporary practice?
3. What choices can be made that would shift the way in which work is generated within the studio?
4. What changes can occur as a result of these choices being enacted?
5. Are you using a problem-solving approach or an experimental one, involving such things as free association?
6. How does your approach assist in the realization of work?

In my studio practice I’ve been using drawing to solidify my imagery from the image I have in my mind, and to work out how that will look best when put onto paper. I don’t need detail, the messier the better really, so my workbook is mostly full of really bad thumbnail sketches. So bad I sometimes need notes beside them so I can remember what I was thinking of to figure out the scribble I made.

The problem I have now, and the aim of my drawing project is: figuring out how I will present my work. So far I have been blue-tacking them up with the intention of pinning them closer to the final presentation, because I didn’t want to damage them. Blue-tack is not professional and actually does leave a residue after a while, which I  didn’t believe for a while but now accounts for my very bare-looking studio wall.
Pins aren’t really working though because sewing pins are too long and flimsy, but nails are too heavy handed. How can I keep the idea of ephemerality if I literally pin the works down? After seeing this image of Robert Ryman’s work, Surface Veil, 1970, I started experimenting with different kinds of paper and tape.

 

At the moment these images above are my drawing practice, as well as continuing the thumbnail sketches before I paint. They are sort of like 3D sketches, I can’t remember the other name for them apart from mock-ups. I think it starts with ‘c’. When I did these I liked the one that is obscured by the paper most, so I’ve been trying to think how I can partly-conceal the images in their presentation while also leaving the narrative or sequence up to the viewer. As I wrote in my proposal, I want the images to read intuitively as glimpses of things that seem to be nearly related but don’t actually work in any kind of sequence.

The way I present these works will create a sequence of some sort. If they are pinned in a line they will read like a film strip, if presented in a block (like the first image in this post), I have less control over the movement of the viewer’s eye, but they images are still fixed. The viewer might not even look at the works individually. They might only glance at it for a few seconds. I’ve always loved art that pervades the space it’s in, extending beyond the wall and floor, or beyond expectations. It’s something I keep coming back to but never have had the guts to try yet. It has come up again because the gallery our end of year exhibition will be in is on the smaller side for around 20 students with some pretty large works.

So that’s how the idea of hanging my work from the ceiling began. Still going to have to do some fine-tuning, and I’m still considering whether to include blank papers or slightly stained paper that are like something forgotten that also make the other images more difficult to decipher.

Here are some related images.

Annette Messenger

Not trying to hide the threads. This is similar to what I pictured initially.

Kai Althoff (This year’s Whitney Biennial)

Christian Boltanski

I’d like to look further into Boltanski’s work because of his use of light, which is something that I am fascinated by. I think light is very powerful, it sort of subtly works on your subconscious, effecting the way you move in a space, they way you look at something, the connotations you have when in that atmosphere. As a way of moving away from the square canvas on a white wall, it’s a pretty good place to start.

I should use my glasses more often.