Sky Life

Here are some images of a new piece I have been working on since last December.  Title, "Sky Life", size 70" x 38".

Note: the image is a photoshop composite as the piece hasn't actually been assembled at this time and it will not be possible to photograph it in the studio.  Ultimately it will be photographed in its new setting, a private home, in its architectural setting, in sunlight.  This composite was made by photographing sections separately and putting them together in Photoshop. It is an accurate representation of a studio shot, except for the "lead lines" which are just Photoshop black.

Here's the original sketch:


Technical details:  the entire piece is two layers of flash glass. St. Just French Antique flash glass in a teal blue on clear.  On top of that is Lambert's red on clear 1001/R/CB.
The image is generated (as my images often are) by working with the layers of flash--I begin by sandblasting to prepare the surface, but the subtleties of tone are accomplished by using engraving tools and diamond hand files.  I used black vitreous paint, silverstain and fuchsia Fusemaster enamel to enhance the engraving and to get yellows, blacks and pinks.  I worked on the glass pieces alone.
 

The piece will be a copperfoil construction, soldered into a steel rebar matrix, which I named "Skeletor".

Skeletor

Help assembling this piece came from Bryan Willette and Beyer's Studios--many, many thanks to them!!!

As for the subject matter: BIRDS.  BIRDS!!  I love birds.  I love drawing birds.  You know, when I was in high school, I was lucky enough to be able to take and AP studio art course and that's when I discovered Brancusi and tried to rip off one of his "Bird in Space" sculptures in soapstone.  It was an epic failure.  The form of birds has always appealed to me as has their vocabulary of parts: wings,  bullet-shaped bodies and heads and tails.  As characters, they come equipped with colorful outfits and don't have boring areas like thighs which human bodies have.  God how I get sick of rendering thighs.




 
Bird forms provide a limited structure that one can riff on endlessly and also an "excuse" to get involved with pattern and color in endless re-combinations of certain motifs--such as feathers.  So birds are like an alphabet of design elements from which one can create words, phrases, and gawd forbid, poetry.


 I had the idea that the piece would have millions of birds, most of which would be carrying a flower--which could be read as nest building (this piece is in a private home after all!) or as a symbol--birds are often seen as "messengers" and in Victorian times were often depicted "delivering" a key, a letter or a flower in their beak.  So these birds are doing some flower deliveries and of course they aren't just any flowers but, like the birds,  hallucinatory imaginary ones.


Why  hallucinatory, why imaginary?  First of all, I privilege these things as ta primary source of original material. Yeah, I admit it, originality is still important to me and yes, I recognize that we don't exist in a vacuum and any good imagination is being fed by a thousand streams of input. But its how you crunch that input and how, once metabolized deep within you, it gets ejected as something entirely new. 
Its hard to use your imagination once you are an adult--its trivialized and even denigrated. Its a distraction, its not empirical, its fabrications are...well, untruths. But too much research and reason and your art project turns into a social studies report.  Fine for some, but not my game. I like to keep it an inside job. 

Also, I am not a "visionary" in that I don't visualize my work a prior making it, but I admire so-called visionary art.  As for hallucinatory: I only took psychedelic drugs on two occasions and I didn't like them much. It rankles me to think we must source these images from a pill, when they are right inside us already! I am interested in transcendent experience.  Hallucinations seem to be generated from deep within us and to be an actual image of our neurology.  They reflect the deepest mental experiences relatively uninfluenced by nurture, culture and academia, to name a few corrupting agents!  (Just kidding....or maybe not.) I love the way some visionary art makes every element pulsate, vibrate, throb at some ridiculous amped up frequency as though it were suddenly a primal energy source, broadcasting transmissions like some cosmic radio tower.  Yup, that's a good look for any bird or flower!  And in the end what are they saying?  "Listen up  The world is alive!"