Tuesday, December 20, 2011

Discovered and Forgotten



9 comments:

Nomi Lubin said...

Oh, wow, that painting is fabulous and the space in it must be crazy. I guess you "explained," but I didn't get at all how you did that on a curved surface!

So it was covered up for a long time and now it's going away again? How very sad. It really is a wonderful painting. There's something about it. Surreal, but in the best quirky way. Not the icky slick way.

And that's your voice! Wait, are you sure that's your voice? That's not the voice I imagined for you, tho I don't know what I imagined. I'm much more intimidated by you now.

Carla said...

Don't be intimidated. That is a fake voice - sort of. I think I'm usually way more animated and higher pitched ( at least I hope that's the case). I was trying to enunciate, to avoid sounding Hoosiery, but the piratey "r"s made it through.

I used either tape or a charcoal pencil, and through multiple trial and error markings, mapped the main lines to appear straight from one viewing spot. I had a lift, so it was just a matter of patience, not a huge physical endeavor.

I was not sure it even still existed, and I liked the idea of it being hidden for like, 50- 100 years or so. It ended up being only about 10, if that. I don't think it was covered by a permanent wall, but it was covered while the building was the library.

Carla said...

I'm finding such ironic and strange twists all around me right now, as I navigate a personal path through an art gentrification minefield. The mines are all duds, but you still don't want to step on them....maybe it's more of a dog park.

Nomi Lubin said...

Phew. I imagined your voice more high pitched and animated. So, my imagining was perfect.

Ok, so is it like those crazy sidewalk paintings that look so 3-D until you look at them from the wrong point of view? Ha, no, I know it could not be that extreme. Obviously, it must work well enough from other angles, just must get a little stranger.

The painting really is quite something, Carla. I know these are commissions and you have to provide what the client wants, or at least what they think they want (heh), but this one goes way beyond that. I don't want to say it's a "real" painting, or a "complete world," though those things are both true, but there's no reason a mural shouldn't be. But still....I guess it's that considering they probably didn't say, "hey, do whatever you want," it is remarkably successful as a painting that stands on its own independent of commissioned confines. Plus it's all strange and surreal and somehow personal. Yay.

Nomi Lubin said...

(Um, not really sure what you're talking about in your last comment.)

Carla said...

The museum staff did not supervise me at all, just gave me photos and said they wanted me to make the back wall read like the corner of the Anthenaeum gymnasium.

I do remember now, that I did try to create a certain atmosphere, and that there were all sorts of other considerations that were more aesthetic-driven than how I now approach commissions.

The halo of light that falls on the gymnasts- I tried to make it look like it was coming from a circular window located on a wall that would be just behind you, the viewer, and to the right. The cast shadows were linking the figures together in a surreal way, and I think I pushed that a little, almost to a ludicrous place. I was following a very subtle secondary triad color scheme, where the wood area was my purple, the floor was orange, and the walls were green. The overall scheme looks almost monochromatic, but it had that triad harmony going on almost on the sly, really. I was really happy with that. Unfortunately, once I painted the orange "cork" floor (it's gone in the video) and the lights hit that orange and completely overtook my subtle triad. I found that a bit devastating at the time.

I just don't fuss with aesthetics to this point now, not with commissioned work. I've often wondered if I've taken the pragmatism too far now.

Elaine Mari said...

i am very very impressed by this. i've been reading the thread on facebook and here. this thing about the gentrification of the art community where you are is frustrating but keep on keepin on.

I found this pity quote helpful and I believe it to be true. "The hell with them all. Paint yourself out, through and through, it will come by you alone. You must come to terms with your own work not with any other being". ~Eva Hesse

All the same, I know, sometimes things just suck and we have to deal with our feelings about that.

Elaine Mari said...

that should have been "pithy" not pity, oops!

Carla said...

Yes, I'm mainly trying to just deal with my own feelings about things, and trying to do so without being too public or bitter about it :-). The work being sought out and promoted is not all bad and some are good artists, whose work also functions well within the gentrified zone. That zone tends to blend it all together though.