Yesterday marked the grand opening of Denver’s Clyfford Still Museum. Hundreds of miles away from the opening festivities, in the small hamlet of Good Thunder, MN, I was sipping coffee in my studio and thinking about Clyfford Still.
My first project of 2012 will be a site-specific installation at David B. Smith Gallery in January, coinciding with the museum’s new presence in the city. The project has been both a unique challenge and an exciting opportunity. When first presented with the concept, I’ll admit to being slightly perplexed. How could I respectfully appropriate some of Still’s forms, colors, and compositional devices while creating something true to my own interests? Would the forms in Still’s work be exciting to work with? After all, I’d been researching weapons all year…and this abex-er’s painterly strokes seemed a bit of a departure from swords, knives, missiles, and guns!
Once I began my research, my fears were quickly put to rest. Still’s oeuvre provided a kind of creative jolt, a dose of something that otherwise would never have crept into my conscience. Instead of easily translating to stencils, his brushwork translates awkwardly. Mimicking a Still gesture is an effort in futility, especially when that gesture is to be translated as a hard-edged stencil. Through a careful process of identifying and isolating marks and gestures from a variety of works, I was able to freeze Still’s organic, expressive marks in Photoshop (ahem, please excuse lackluster Photoshop skills), create stencils, and begin translating these stencils to felt.
Although distanced by process and material and recombined to suit my own goals, I am excited that some of the energy and aggression of Still’s seemingly simple canvases still shines through. There is a disobedience to these shapes, a kind of unpredictability. They are a little unwieldy. And I like that.
I am always reluctant to share progress pics, perhaps because my progress is not very linear. Or perhaps because my studio is littered with coffee cups. Today’s progress may well be washed away tomorrow morning by a new strategy. And certainly all preliminary strategies will shift as the work moves into its home in the gallery. For me, this is the magic of installation–the ability to respond to a space, to improvise during the act of creating the work on-site.
Still, I think these initial dress rehearsals in my studio are important. They create a kind of logic for the ways in which various forms work together and allow me to experiment freely with no audience and no obligation.
The title, Recalcitrant Mimesis, summarizes my approach. I will admire Still’s work. I will study it. I will scrutinize it. But when I copy it, I will do so obstinately, and when possible I will deviate.
I’m not sure what Clyfford Still would make of my installation. But I like to think that he would approve of my attitude.
In the interest of a surprise, the remainder of this project will be mostly top-secret right up until the install. Can’t wait to share the finished work with you in January.
Thanks for reading and have a wonderful Thanksgiving everyone!