Chasing transformation
No matter how many times I tell myself I should buy canvas and paint like other people, it is not what my brain feels like doing. Instead, I must forge a new path, with new materials and new methods and very little advance planning. This makes it seem like I am a highly impulsive person, I am not; I actually crave routine and safety. But, I also need complete and total autonomy to be calm and doing what I or someone else has already done feels like a complete waste of time to me unless there is more compelling me. I have very little desire to spend time and energy honing or perfecting something. I am a person of urgent efficiency and momentum is what I try to nurture in my practice, not improvement. This drive to get elsewhere has always been there and I find it sets me apart some from my peers, who I’ve noticed will fret for hours, weeks, or months, over one work, making sure it says exactly what they want. I am not built for that. There is absolutely no fretting during the creation stage. I stop once a piece exists completely usually because making ideal art is not my goal and I am rarely pushing materials towards a specific outcome. Making art that expresses the lack of hierarchy in my thought, the validity of all, the existence of equal and opposing forces that do not cancel each other, opening instead of declaring, that is my goal. It feels like I won’t ever be able to stop because there will always be another way to say it. And once I’ve said something, that statement is just another raw material to work with.
Last night I created this archival pigment inkjet print from an impromptu marker drawing I did on paper towel during the LA fires. The paper towel had originally been used to catch excess dye under a doily I had dyed for other work. I use paper towels a lot for this purpose and others. In fact, they are one of my most used, and shameful, materials. I have a lot of trouble dealing with the textures and scents of washcloths thanks to some of my intense sensory avoidances. Paper towels are therefore my preferred cleaning, wiping, touching anything icky go-to. It isn’t just the lack of yuck factor, I actually really love them as a material unto themselves. I love the texture, the very slight patterning, the way they sound when ripped and of course their absorbency. As an artist that pauses frequently to observe and document the incidental beauty of my processes, I’ve long wished that I could use them as a surface and make them last. They are usually evidence of something that has happened-an action, a mistake, a mess, a process. And I tend to save them when they soak up any color because all color is precious to me. But, the guilt I feel for using them is intense both for cost and environmental reasons. It’s only just occurred to me to try to preserve them, to try to make them something else, to turn my transformative focus to this basic, every day, somewhat damned, material. How can I use the special qualities that I love to my advantage? How can I subvert them?
When used under wet crochet to catch dye the paper towel was functional. When I picked up markers and drew on it in a moment of expression, the paper towel was still acting as an absorbtive surface, it was still fulfilling its function, soaking up what I needed it to. I poured my emotion into it, so many individual marks coming together to become something else. After it dried, I didn’t want the piece to be over. I had previously discovered the effect of resin on paper towel on accident and I wanted to play around with purpose. So, I coated it and left it to dry. The resin leaves the paper towel semi-transparent in places, allowing light to pass through almost like stained glass. It stiffens but remains flexible. The print image was made from a photo I took after I clipped the paper towel to an existing lamp shade, allowing light to shine through it, creating stronger contrast between colors and enhancing the texture. The paper towel is no longer paper, it is plastic, and it is no longer a towel as it has lost all its absorbance. I have successfully transformed my material and added another process to my practice.
It’s worth noting that I am differentiating my prints prices by how much intervention it took for me to get to the final image. There are plenty of images that are made simply from my intuition and they “cost” me little. Much of my work comes as easily to me as breathing. I’d like to sell that work for very little because it spills from me like a fountain and I don’t feel the need to keep it all in fancy containers. I believe some pressures artist face to maintain price consistency are a capitalist construct and I don’t want to have to practice within constructs that don’t work for me just because it’s what others have come to expect. So when an image goes through multiple transformations, when it involves my hand and not just my eye, the prints will be valued slightly higher or fewer of them made.
Lastly, turning paper to plastic was not my goal, but I think it says something about where we are at and we have done to our earth.