I have no idea where this is going to land on the page, but is the first portrait of the book of paintings. Portrait is actually is misnomer in this case, because I did this painting before doing anything to the book.
Monday, May 30, 2005
The Voynich Manuscript
This is version two of my post. I just lost the first one into the void. I hate computers.
A few years ago, my boyfriend found an internet reference to a book called the Voynich manuscript. It was evidently produced in the Renaissance. It is full of great drawings and a totally untranslatable script. Here is a page with some good pictures of pages from the book. This is a very indepth page on the history and theories surrounding this mysterious book. I like the cosmological drawings the best. Most fans of the book seem to focus on the drawings of little naked ladies dancing around connected by tubes. Go figure.
The book is a common motif in my work as you may have noticed by now. So naturally I had to make my own Voynich manuscript. I started with a poem, that I wrote and inscribed into the book. Then I circled the word "star" and painted a blue wash over the rest of the poem.
This is in connection to a long ongoing project I've been working on in my studio for, oh, years now. The first picture posted here is of part of the project. I have two copies of an oldish book called Modern British Poetry. The word star occurs on many of the pages. In the first book I circled the word wherever it occurred in blue ball point pen. Then I painted an indigo wash on all the rest of the pages. This took about two years. I found the second copy of the book when I was almost finished with the first one. In that book, I cut out the word star and am still, now, painting out all the pages with blue watercolor. I'm not a big "process" person when it comes to things like this.
So that was the springboard for the painting book. A book of paintings with book as its theme. The next to last picture is the "circular ruins" that I also later drew on the little ceramic book in my last post. The rest of the images from the book I will leave as mysteries.
The painting on the wall in the background in my studio in the last photo is a series of "portraits" of the painting book. In my ceramic work, I often pair pieces with drawings or paintings. There are some examples on the main website. I'll post more from a show I had in 2002.
This allows me to create an atmosphere and a context for my often hermetic pieces. Otherwise they seem orphaned when yanked from my studio and put in a white cube.
A few years ago, my boyfriend found an internet reference to a book called the Voynich manuscript. It was evidently produced in the Renaissance. It is full of great drawings and a totally untranslatable script. Here is a page with some good pictures of pages from the book. This is a very indepth page on the history and theories surrounding this mysterious book. I like the cosmological drawings the best. Most fans of the book seem to focus on the drawings of little naked ladies dancing around connected by tubes. Go figure.
The book is a common motif in my work as you may have noticed by now. So naturally I had to make my own Voynich manuscript. I started with a poem, that I wrote and inscribed into the book. Then I circled the word "star" and painted a blue wash over the rest of the poem.
This is in connection to a long ongoing project I've been working on in my studio for, oh, years now. The first picture posted here is of part of the project. I have two copies of an oldish book called Modern British Poetry. The word star occurs on many of the pages. In the first book I circled the word wherever it occurred in blue ball point pen. Then I painted an indigo wash on all the rest of the pages. This took about two years. I found the second copy of the book when I was almost finished with the first one. In that book, I cut out the word star and am still, now, painting out all the pages with blue watercolor. I'm not a big "process" person when it comes to things like this.
So that was the springboard for the painting book. A book of paintings with book as its theme. The next to last picture is the "circular ruins" that I also later drew on the little ceramic book in my last post. The rest of the images from the book I will leave as mysteries.
The painting on the wall in the background in my studio in the last photo is a series of "portraits" of the painting book. In my ceramic work, I often pair pieces with drawings or paintings. There are some examples on the main website. I'll post more from a show I had in 2002.
This allows me to create an atmosphere and a context for my often hermetic pieces. Otherwise they seem orphaned when yanked from my studio and put in a white cube.
Thursday, May 26, 2005
Ceramic books in saggar firing.
I taught a saggar firing class at the RAC a few months ago. This is a process where bisqued pieces are placed in a container and filled up with combustibles and other goodies to produce wild and organic surfaces on the clay. I won't go into massive detail because the web is full of sites on the process, just google "saggar" and you'll be all set.
I started making ceramic books because I was so disgusted with my other pieces I was trying to do at the time. They were forced and contrived. I wanted freedom. So I just asked myself "What the hell do I feel like making?" I wanted to make giant ceramic books. Big as me. Well. I don't have the resources at the time to do that. But I thought, I could make the models for giant ceramis books, so that's what I started to do.
I was doing a demo in my sculpture class (pressing clay into dry ceramic material for alternative surfaces) and decided on the spot to do it while constructing the little book. This came out so cool, I thought, geez. Why can't I just make these? I know I know blah blah blah. For me there always has to be this huge master plan.
Anyway. The pieces made in my sculpture class became the demos in my saggar class. So here are some of the results. The second book with the drawing incised into it is actually one of the earlier "model" books and is a little boring. In my next post I'll talk about where the image came from. The funny thing about blogs is that they read from the top down, but you post from the bottom up. I guess that might make sense, but if you're trying to develop an idea you kind of have to plan backwards. This time I remembered to post the pictures first, so the'd go after this text. Yeah me.
I started making ceramic books because I was so disgusted with my other pieces I was trying to do at the time. They were forced and contrived. I wanted freedom. So I just asked myself "What the hell do I feel like making?" I wanted to make giant ceramic books. Big as me. Well. I don't have the resources at the time to do that. But I thought, I could make the models for giant ceramis books, so that's what I started to do.
I was doing a demo in my sculpture class (pressing clay into dry ceramic material for alternative surfaces) and decided on the spot to do it while constructing the little book. This came out so cool, I thought, geez. Why can't I just make these? I know I know blah blah blah. For me there always has to be this huge master plan.
Anyway. The pieces made in my sculpture class became the demos in my saggar class. So here are some of the results. The second book with the drawing incised into it is actually one of the earlier "model" books and is a little boring. In my next post I'll talk about where the image came from. The funny thing about blogs is that they read from the top down, but you post from the bottom up. I guess that might make sense, but if you're trying to develop an idea you kind of have to plan backwards. This time I remembered to post the pictures first, so the'd go after this text. Yeah me.
Saturday, May 21, 2005
Still getting the hang of this
The story behind this blog.
I have gotten sick of tinkering with my current web site. I am no HTML wizard and my ideas for it got ahead of me.
I have a lot of little projects in process and I thought this might be more spontaneous in terms of sharing them, as I go along. So, I'm not so much a "blogger" as a really lazy webmaster. I will link this blog on my main site and that's it for now on there.
Anyway.
I quit my job in September 2004 as ceramics tech at the Richmond Art Center in California. I had been there for 5 years, I'll be 35 in October, and tech was never my #1 career choice. I always figured 35 was kind of a cutoff date. If you're still a tech after 35, then you're a lifer. I still teach at RAC, sculpture, raku, and saggar classes.
When I left as tech I had a whole bunch of pieces that I was eager to finish up, and develop further. However, when I was in my studio a month or two later, I realized I hated most of them, and they were progressing badly. Bad news. I'll probably salvage a few.
I was in a slough of despond, for a bit. I decided to just make things that cheered me up. I started with books in clay, and fired them in different ways, mainly saggar. Now I am making cameras. I download pictures from ebay of cool old cameras and make replicas in clay. At first, I was trying to make them up, but this is working out much better.
The first ones I did I wedged into what I thought was stain. They looked so cool before firing, that of course I completely neglected to take pictures of them. They came out of the kiln at RAC and they were nude. What I thought was stain, was actually paint pigment and completely fired off. (One of the advantages of being a tech is scoring different random art supplies from students who don't come back and clean out their lockers or cabinets.)
So those didn't pan out, and I ran them through raku firing. I have pictures, which I will post today.
I am having trouble interfacing with this program a bit. I am using their recommended program "Hello" to send images to the blog page. But when it previews the blog page, it opens up in Internet Explorer, which I otherwise never use, being a Mozilla person. So then I have to open up Mozilla to text edit. Whatever. I'll get the hang of it. Maybe I will just bite down and wipe IE from my drive and let "Hello" try to figure it out. They don't have any option to switch browsers that I can find.
I have gotten sick of tinkering with my current web site. I am no HTML wizard and my ideas for it got ahead of me.
I have a lot of little projects in process and I thought this might be more spontaneous in terms of sharing them, as I go along. So, I'm not so much a "blogger" as a really lazy webmaster. I will link this blog on my main site and that's it for now on there.
Anyway.
I quit my job in September 2004 as ceramics tech at the Richmond Art Center in California. I had been there for 5 years, I'll be 35 in October, and tech was never my #1 career choice. I always figured 35 was kind of a cutoff date. If you're still a tech after 35, then you're a lifer. I still teach at RAC, sculpture, raku, and saggar classes.
When I left as tech I had a whole bunch of pieces that I was eager to finish up, and develop further. However, when I was in my studio a month or two later, I realized I hated most of them, and they were progressing badly. Bad news. I'll probably salvage a few.
I was in a slough of despond, for a bit. I decided to just make things that cheered me up. I started with books in clay, and fired them in different ways, mainly saggar. Now I am making cameras. I download pictures from ebay of cool old cameras and make replicas in clay. At first, I was trying to make them up, but this is working out much better.
The first ones I did I wedged into what I thought was stain. They looked so cool before firing, that of course I completely neglected to take pictures of them. They came out of the kiln at RAC and they were nude. What I thought was stain, was actually paint pigment and completely fired off. (One of the advantages of being a tech is scoring different random art supplies from students who don't come back and clean out their lockers or cabinets.)
So those didn't pan out, and I ran them through raku firing. I have pictures, which I will post today.
I am having trouble interfacing with this program a bit. I am using their recommended program "Hello" to send images to the blog page. But when it previews the blog page, it opens up in Internet Explorer, which I otherwise never use, being a Mozilla person. So then I have to open up Mozilla to text edit. Whatever. I'll get the hang of it. Maybe I will just bite down and wipe IE from my drive and let "Hello" try to figure it out. They don't have any option to switch browsers that I can find.
Monday, May 02, 2005
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