Wall Drawings Inside Egyptian Train

Here's two drawings I saw on the interior walls of a train while I was traveling through Egypt. I can't read the signature, but right below it, it says "Cordoba '91."

New drawings online

I just added my new collage/drawings to my website...you can see them a bit closer here. Size is 11" x 11" each. Mixed media on paper mounted on board (gouache, pencil, graph paper, ink, joint compound and wood putty). Despite the variety of materials, I usually just call them drawings.

Above is a picture of 12 of them together because I like the way they look when displayed in a grid, but they are individual works. I finished them earlier this month. They came out of the smaller studies that I made in March. These 12 drawings are square format, but I also made some rectangular ones that I didn't post on my website. Here's two of them, both sized 10" x 12" (these are NOT from the group of 12 above):

The funny thing is that these drawings have very little to do with most of the new sculptures I have planned, although my intentions when I began working on them was to develop ideas for new projects. Instead they became a self-contained project, but there is a loose relationship to a future series of sculptures which will use the form of tenement buildings to explore ideas of emergency preparedness.

Oh yeah, all of this stuff is for sale (and reasonably priced), so if you like the drawings, contribute to my "build the sculptures" fund. I even accept PayPal. Just sayin'.

Back to the lab

I started making drawings with the idea that it would help me think about the sculptures I plan on making soon. However, it turns out that I am only effectively thinking about the drawings as things in and of themselves -- not the act making sculpture. And since I haven't been currently making sculpture, I'm not actively thinking about it in the way I had anticipated I would. It's extraordinarily difficult to do without actually making things, so here's the new plan:

Since I'm still interested in the drawings, I will continue with that, but since I (A) need to make sculpture and (B) haven't been thinking in sculptural terms, I have decided to make "thoughtless sculptures" -- sculpture without pre-meditation.

Of course, this is impossible -- the very act of making is thinking. But the idea is that I'm not really starting with an idea, or question, or thesis. I'm just going to use whatever I have on hand or stuff that I find and put things together so that it's form is negotiated in its making. Every thing that I make this way will exist on its own terms, whether those terms are conceptual, structural, etc.

This isn't intended to be a new body of work, but rather an exercise -- a homework assignment to myself. If it turns out to be worthwhile, I'll continue with it as background activity while working on whatever I happen to be working on. I plan on making these quickly or slowly, trying to let each piece decide for itself what is required. If I expect anything from this, it's probably just a pretty high rate of failure, but if anything good or useful does develop, I'll post the findings.

And with that, I'm off to the studio for the day.

Some new drawings

I've been busy/sick/tired/out-of-town over the past 2 weeks, but I still managed to squeeze in some studio time and make some new work. They are cut-and-paste drawings, paper mounted on panel, about 8" x 6" in size. They are studies for larger panels, which I've already started working on. I think they work better when viewed as a group rather than individually. (Click on the images to see them at approximately actual size.)

At least the studio is ready, even if I'm not there

When I woke up today, it was snowing pretty hard. It wasn't sticking, and I knew it wouldn't last long, but the forecast is predicting rain for the afternoon. I rely on my bicycle to get to my studio and even though bad weather doesn't normally stop me from riding, I wimped out today. Probably because I hate cleaning my bike after riding in the rain, and I recently got soaked really bad on Friday night's downpour. Now the weather isn't even that bad, but it's a bit too late for me to go.

At least I finally finished getting the studio set up. I also started building support panels which I will use for mounted drawings, similar to these. I was planning on mounting the paper today and starting some small studies. Instead, now that I've decided to stay home, I will do some sketches in my book and work on some ideas I've been thinking about for new sculptures...more info on that in the near future. I think I'll also study Mandarin for a bit. 下個星其一晚上我有第一中文課。(Next Monday evening I have my first Chinese class.)