Art:Note

2011-04-01T16:30:00.000-07:00

Drawings made from google search results. Making these digital collages are great ways for me to ideate since I am not a big sketchbook fan. These two images use abalone shell imagery.

Back to Photography

2011-03-14T12:59:00.000-07:00

An image from some still lives I was shooting today. So cool, so flat, so colorful!

Nose bump

2011-03-09T17:57:00.001-08:00

Here's a sketch of a nose star

Baleen Study

2011-01-03T18:16:00.000-08:00

I am determined to make some work around baleen. It is the sieve like hairs found in certain species of whales and is made of keratin, the same material as our hair or fingernails. There is something very terrifying about the filter feeding process and beauty in evolutions ingenuity at finding an alternative to the tooth. Here is a sketch.

Re-Designing Women

2010-11-24T11:28:00.000-08:00

Here are some more cut paper pieces, these have more to do with displacing one face with another.

Eloise Fornieles

2010-11-22T12:20:00.000-08:00

This work by performance artist Eloise Fornieles is a beautiful mixture of gesture and object. Her Oyster Bar piece in which visitors 'exchange a tale of loss for an oyster or an orange' is so appealing to me. The exchange, participation, parameters, rich materials and a overarching solemnity is the kind of performance art I can get into.

Sputum

2010-11-18T16:39:00.000-08:00

A new piece that is going in the Artist Trust Auction!

Sputum | glue, wax, plastic | 2010

Oda Jaune

2010-11-16T11:18:00.000-08:00

This is work by Paris based artist Oda Jaune. They are absolutely stunning, straddling a visual morphism between figure and organ, close and far, consumption and birth. It is particularly striking to me now because of its collage like disparity in these contrasting forms. All the works are 'Untitled' (that must make things difficult) and are oil on panel or watercolor on paper. The complete website is here.

Picasso Alterations

2010-11-09T18:42:00.001-08:00

Here are some Picasso postcard alterations I'm working on for the VS the Matador show in December.

#1 This is an actual collage with a red line running through it.

#2

#3

#4

#5

Asger Carlsen

2010-11-02T11:41:00.000-07:00

Wow, this stuff is great. A combination of the full flash aesthetic so common to social documentary photographers such as Weegee or Diane Arbus mixed with a truly bizarre post-production. Seemingly banal imagery is mixed with monstrous piles or crude (yet totally believable) body modifications of pieced together wooden bodies. This is on my Xmas list of books to buy.

Gristle photo

2010-10-25T20:00:00.000-07:00

Here's a piece that was bought from the New Members Show.

Gristle
2010
found ceramic, latex, watercolor

New Collage Works

2010-10-18T23:42:00.000-07:00

These new collage works are totally about my fear of going blind. I've had eye problems in the past and will undoubtedly have more in the future. I also have nightmares about clouded vision and forced perspectives.

Making Teeth

2010-09-19T22:56:00.000-07:00

Here are some teeht I'm making at the moment. They're in stage one really and they aren't in order of anatomy really. I'm making them out of various stuff, soap (seen here), fish scales I found in Galveston & paraffin. More to come.

New Image | Aorta

2010-07-21T17:41:00.000-07:00

Aorta | Archival Inkjet Print

New Sculptures added to website

2010-06-09T17:35:00.000-07:00

Here are some images of two newish (March) sculptures that were in the Design Center Show.

Krill | wax, glycerin, watercolor

Cilia | wax, glue, plastic

A peek into the photo series to come

2010-05-26T18:26:00.000-07:00

Most AH-MAZING Dream, not boring I swear

2010-05-26T10:53:00.000-07:00

I have a dream, yes hearing about dreams suck but this one was AH-MAZING. Thought I should write this one down.

Oh my god so check it out. First I am in a convention center type place and I am there it seems to enter into a drag queen competion. I'm in the hallway between categories I guess and some women from a dog convention in the same building are like, 'do you think you look good in that dress?' and I say, 'You know I kind of did this last minute and it's not my dress but I certainly wouldn't be giving me advice lady because you look like you are in a blue burlap sack." Needless to say, dog lady wasn't happy, especially at the expense of all the other dog ladies who were saying, 'oh snap' and 'did you hear the Susan' etc. I then go back into what I thought was my pageant room but it is ANOTHER convention only this time its for the most boring white guy thing like office supply expo and I am still in this awful pageant dress with cake make-up. I pretend to act natural so I sit down, nod my head for a bit, look like I belong, and then excuse myself (shuffle in heels) out a side door. Now I'm back inside this convention place lobby (which looks suspiciously like my middle school cafeteria) and we (theres a bunch of random people) are noticing a group of tornadoes in the distance, probably eight or so. They're beautiful, duh, so some of us go outside to look at them. I tell this kid he can come if he holds my hand. He does for like 2 seconds and then pulls away. He does this twice so I send him back inside (little shit). Suddenly, the tornadoes are gone and a giant tidal wave shape of pyroclastic cloud is now coming at us. I take charge and tell everyone (a couple hundred) to go back inside and lie down face first, cover the faces and the faces of the children and allow the blast to go over us. I push a baby carriage on top of a baby (in a protective way) and put my hand over its face to protect it. As we are waiting for that roaring blast to hit us the baby is sucking on my finger. I can't even concentrate on the impending blast because I am thinking (oh, it's nursing). Anyways, the blast hits and it's more or less a 2 second gentle breeze. Nothing like the awesome and destructive force we thought. So, we go outside and its all beautiful and then I look to the right and see, of course, the giant robots from War of the Worlds but they are more retro 60's. I am terrified and excited and even mention that I am terrified and excited by the movie War of the Worlds. Naturally, we all panic and flee, looking for hiding places. My friends Kim, Jen and I go to this bridge. The robot is a couple hundred yards away but that is like 2 steps for this thing. They hide in a nook and cranny of the bridge with everyone else while I swing off the side and drop down to a column under the bridge (no way back up but whatever, I am not getting stepped on). The robot actually shifts to the water and its leg saddles up right next to me. It's covered in millions of sensors and switches and all sorts of things which appear to take readings. I hold my breath in case it can sense CO2 (like mosquitos) but I guess I am not doing it well enough because the next thing I know I wake up in a laboratory surrounded by what look to be humans. They are actually the controllers of the robots and they are all like (we're peaceful, you guys were totally freaking out for no reason). Everyone is in a lab coat and I am watching this sort of 'how to' animation for a smaller (cat like. mew two from Pokemon) robot suit to be worn. And, the helmet, this is the best part, can allow you to see 363 degress. That's right, 3 more degrees than a full circle (don't ask, I thought it might be a 'mental' 3 degrees). They ask me, 'so, how many of these do you need', I said, 'one for everyon on the planet please'. "haha, no really we can give you about 150." I said I would give them to the best scientific minds of our planet. I guess they werent fine with that necessarily because I was then back into society (which is all post apocalyptic with people living in these large public mansion/structures and no cat 363 suit. I was the one who was abducted by the robot alien folks and have been trying to tell them that they aren't malicious and that the robots aren't actually the aliens themselves. A whole new bullshit religion where everyone looks like whirling dervishes and revering the giant robots has sprung up and I am trying to talk loudly to everyone in this building so they can listen and understand that I KNOW WHAT I AM TALKING ABOUT but people keep chatting, one guy keeps vaccuming (jerk) and basically no one is listening to my in-depth and ultimate answer to all this topsy turvy situation. So, I retire to my room where I find an awesome sketchbook that is filled with beautiful red drawings and watercolors of all the photographs that I took the other day in real life and am very pleased as I do not remember making them but sure as hell proud of them. Errrrrrr, cut, new scene. I AM IN MOTHERFUCKING VIETNAM, first person view following behind a bunch of Viet Cong who are going through a village and shooting other Vietnamese.? Like I am 8 feet away from these women and children in front of me being shot in the back and face, some falling into puddles and a bunch of airbubbles gurgling up. It's terrifying and sick and all the bullets have the tracers that I rememner from my first images of the Gulf War where I thought (oh my god, they're using lasers!). So i follow for a bit and see a bunch of gruesome deaths and indiscriminate killings until a bloated glove hand (which reaches to the shoulder) sticks out of a shack. It is made of sewn muslin and is pretty terrifying actually. It doesn't get shot, but instead waves over a soldier who teases the rest of the hand out. It's a full bodied muslin person (like mister Oggey Boogey man from Nightmare Before Christmas) with packing tape over the face. It hands the soldier a package and then my dentist calls and wakes me up.

Somewhere during all this I also watched a TV broadcast showing the tallest manpile (stacked on top of each other) which occurred in Mexico and killed 2 people. It was an impressive sight but so dumb. Of course they were all men.

Good Morning!

To Re-Cap:

A Reworking

2010-05-01T21:20:00.000-07:00

I have reworked my ACT window idea. I was panicking a little yesterday when I visited the space because I was envisioning my rotting fruit idea in the space and while it fits the space, and I have all the elements, I realized that the image was really simple and didn't raise any questions. At least none of the questions that I thought it originally raised. So I was thinking about other ways I could show and abrupt change in this domestic setting, something that was definitely off kilter and amiss. I then came up with the image above. This is a little mock up that I have in my living room but it gets to the point.

Basically, in this domestic setting which is obviously the setting for a home maker and a child (both of which are absent except for their chairs and things) a grown man is found cowering under the kitchen table. Only his feet would be sticking out of the back and perhaps his forehead would be pushing out the tablecloth (this would be against the window itself).

I thought the idea of a grown man under a kitchen table could be funny at first, or alarming. It's scary to me as it represents a breakdown or a snap in this man. It's a nod to domestic abuse as well. Don't know. We'll see what the final product looks like.

ACT Theater Comission

2010-04-26T15:05:00.000-07:00

Here is my 'sketch' of what I am installing in one of the five ACT theater windows. They approached SOIL to fill five of their windows with artwork. Since many of the plays address America, we decided to do a series of windows that progress through out time (40's-present) through various representations. The only constraints were that they had a limited color palette of all whites and neutrals with one pop of color. My era is the 40's-50's and I have drawn my inspiration from Pompeii surprisingly enough. I remember once seeing a kitchen scene from Pompeii in which the residents, fleeing the pyroclastic material heading their way, left their kitchens exactly as they were the day Vesuvius exploded. It is surprising to find but organic materials such as eggs, bread and cloth all were preserved even today.

I feel that so much of the 50's in particular is painted in a very wholesome manner. My idea was to apply this same sort of Pompeii feel to this 40's-50's kitchen scene. A scene in which the residents, for some urgent reason, had to leave their kitchen in a hurry. Leaving the toaster to scorch the wall and a bowl of fruit to rot onto the tablecloth.

It's a lot of work but since most of it is stage setting really (a nod to the theater) I think I will be able to get all the elements that I want.

Ryan McGinley

2010-02-18T16:00:00.000-08:00

The artist Ryan McGinley pops up every 4 months or so in the past 2 years. I am familiar with his more romantic and pubescent series simply called 'Photographs' in which an entourage of handsome young thangs go romping through fields and waterfalls. Quintessentially roadtrip in nature they incite that liberated feeling only nudity in the great outdoors can bring as well as a definite eroticism.

His other series, Moonmilk, takes the figures into less liberating and more endangering settings of stalactites and tight craggy crevices. It gives precedence to the surroundings and the tricks of light and reserves to the figure to a unit of measurement.

And now his poetic sense of framing and decontextualization is brought to the Winter Olympics. It is a far less machismo portrayal of the atheltes and really shows the winter games in a much more spiritual light. Some pictures are devoid of a landscape alltogether and simply have the athletes in a state of flight, seemingly out of control and twisting like rag dolls. I really appreciate this different perspective on the heights of athleticism. It reminds me in fact of the work that David LaChappelle did some years ago called 'Awakened' but only technically really.

Synapse

2010-02-18T15:50:00.000-08:00

Here is the finished piece called Synapse. While I am working with small sculptural objects lately, it's still very exciting for me to work in Photography because it is so much about the illusion. I really want to explore the gum work more thoroughly and will definitely have to rent some equipment again. I am tired of the flat white background though. I need to push it further.

Kate MccGwire

2010-02-01T12:08:00.000-08:00

It can be a bittersweet feeling when you see an idea that is so similar to your own manifested already by some other talented artist years ago. I've been imaging the twisting forms (zeitgeist moment) that Kate MccGwire has already created and I am so impressed at her execution. Much of her work is structured around the use of wishbones and feathers, using them in such high volume that their singularity as part of an animal is lost in the largess of the installation. Often spiraling, swallowing or falling in on itself pieces like Wrest have a kinetic tension in them that sound like the ruffling and flapping of pigeons fighting over scraps in the street. The featureless masses also point to the deformities seen in pigeons in the city as well. Funny, pigeons would come up again , I don't particularly feel that interested in them but maybe the fact that they are so ubiquitous it's hard not to see them referenced. MccGwire lives and works out of London so pigeons must be even more pervasive. I was surprised that she referred to them as, 'little more than pests living off detritus', as it would seem like a very conventional and myopic view of pigeons (or rock doves as they are also known as) rather than a more personal relationship born out of using their materials so often.

While the feathered pieces are definitely my favorite, the wishbone pieces are equally impressive but more for volume than form. Tens of thousands of wishbones each belonging to an individual animal in that volume makes any onlooker wonder about logistics. The piece Brood, which debuted at her MA Royal College Sculpture show must have looked gorgeous with that beautiful shadowless skylight found in the RC's rooms.

Wrest | 2009

Illusion/Delusion | 2006

Vex | 2008

Brood | 2004

Lara Viana

2010-01-21T16:49:00.000-08:00

I love these oil paintings by Lara Viana. Even though I'm missing half the detail by viewing it online I can still see how thick the canvas is with impasto. How much of the painting is carved and squirted arounded. It retains a high level of dimension and 'reality' even though its' brushwork is so large and unarticulated. Last night I watched Simon Schama's the Power of Art: Rembrandt and they mentioned Rembrandts deft ability to utilize rough brushwork to actually be more dimensional and closer to perception than any superfine articulation. I believe Viana's work accomplishes this as well.

More work here.

Studio Day | January 7

2010-01-07T17:48:00.000-08:00

Here are two images made today. Just experimenting really.

Old Hard Drive Pt. 1

2010-01-06T12:56:00.000-08:00

I have a habit of fixating on how my hard drives are organized. I treat it like physical space really, often cleaning out or purging files that I know I won't be able to see again and doubly ensuring those files I do like by backing them up in multiple locations. While it can mean easy access to stuff I did 6 years ago, it can also be a stumbling block for sitting down and actually doing new work. Still, fun to see what it is I've always been interested in.

Cocoon | 2005

Web | 2005

Blue & Purple | 2007

Levi van Veluw

2010-01-05T13:15:00.000-08:00

Found the artist Levi Von Veluw in a book my friend Kim gave me called Hair'em Scare'em.

The work is beautiful. Always using himself as the subject, Veluw graphs materials to his own bust and photographs them with neutral backgrounds. In the veneered series there is a more complete obscuring of identity and Levi really takes on a sort of sex-less proto-form quality. I'm especially drawn to the hair pieces because, like any one who has had long hair, the feeling of wet hair on the back of shoulders or the front of the face can be an eerie and heavy sensation. It can be kind of suffocating.

The older work is nice as well. That small gesture which can make a photograph take a turn for the horrific but still tinged with a bit of humor reminds me also of Erwin Wurm. It makes the body look really clumsy, vulnerable.

The artist's description is a little heavy handed and the video wouldn't work when I opened it but there is a bunch of lovely photographs oh his website exhibting how this repetition can be quite limitless.

Hemoglobin

2010-01-05T11:59:00.000-08:00

Found Polaroids

2010-01-05T11:36:00.000-08:00

New Website!!

2009-12-14T15:53:00.000-08:00

Derrickjefferies.com has a new website design brought to you by Indexhibit.org. Overall it's definitely what I am looking for in terms of updatability. I guess I haven't explored too many options beyond Yahoo Site Building tools (boo). It seems that with a little knowledge of HTML it will be possible to have something no frills and functional yet really elegant.

First Real ost

2007-10-07T18:01:00.000-07:00

2007-06-28T16:35:00.001-07:00

The intent of this blog is to serve as a record and reference to interesting contemporary art both local to Seattle and abroad. I enjoy writing about art, it helps me understand my own context and exercises critique. I invite anyone to start dialouge, point to artists that you think I should see, or generally disagree with me.