Since the close of the Nakanojo Biennale 2017 in October, studio activity has slowly been winding down as 2017 comes to a close. There are have pages and pages of mental meanderings about the last two years of intense studio activity. Rather than bore and confuse you with cluttered and disjointed thoughts. I am going pull excerpts out from the writings to share here in digestible bits.
One of the things that I am looking forward to is exploring the ideas that have come up in the process of making work as well as discussing work over the last two years. I have literally hopped from exhibition to exhibition without the usual time to reflect, digest, and synthesise new ideas as deeply as I would like.
From this bit of writing, you can see the paths I would like to travel over the next year in my studio.
"...With regards to the Memory Walks, I have this idea of using all the data from 2017 in an On Kawara fashion to make Memory Walk drawings on a single eggshell. Each day of Memory Walks would be separated by a layer of acrylic medium coated the day before after making the drawing. I also have an interest in returning to the variations that I explored in the HAGISO exhibition. Drawing, covering, drawing, covering, etc. and then scratching away. Deleting everything. I also have an interest in exploring variations on the Memory Walk Cells beyond the uniform size and stacked form.
With the Daily Drawings, I have plans to continue them in 2018, but again, I feel like 2017 is going to be a data collection year for the Daily Drawings project. I have a longer term idea that the second iteration of the Daily Drawings Network would be the piece I would make for the 2019 Nakanojo Biennale. I am interested in exploring the reasons for making the Daily Drawings that I make at any given time. This becomes one of those research intensive projects which may lead absolutely nowhere. My desire to remain analogue and intuitive about the process may be a stumbling block. My recent Daily Drawings on vellum offer a chance to play around with some of these experimental approaches to understanding my drawings. In some ways, this may be the opposite of what artists who create cosmologies do. Do their marks and images have meaning before then hit the paper/canvas? Is it through mark making that these marks and images gain meaning and/or a role in the cosmology? I think what I am trying to do is deconstruct my Daily Drawings as a way to see if there is an underlying cosmology. I am convinced that there is an underlying cosmology, but I am not sure if I am ready to do the work that I need to reveal this cosmology. I also might not like what I find. Beyond this large scale idea which would really be ideal for a residency, I am thinking of doing more studio based drawings pulling from my experience over the last two years with the Daily Drawings as I find myself less and less satisfied even with one hour of train commuting time. The appearance of painting is certainly a possibility.*