While Rome Burns

I spent a good portion of the 1990s justifying my work as an artist, especially as a painter, to myself. It was a moral dilemma; a question of validity and purpose. How can I indulge something with such intangible meaning and value? Once I finally acknowledged the value of making art, it became one of the few absolutes in my life. Afterward, I rarely questioned the value/virtue in making paintings, even as cultural dictates changed. Human existence matters and so making art matters.

The continuation of human existence is quickly becoming less of a given. The most recent climate measurements and projections are dire beyond belief. And the worst-case scenarios are looking less and less speculative.

Making art is once again a dilemma. A Dr. Zhivago-like engagement in painting seems ridiculous in the face of world-wide environmental calamity. I won't make environmental art, because that's rarely an effective vehicle for change. And while making non-purposed art is no longer a personal moral uncertainty, it's impossible to do so without making some acknowledgment of broader concerns. All I really know is to acknowledge the situation.

While Rome Burns - I think I've used this post title before. I know it's in a notebook somewhere. I may begin adding an “acknowledgment” of these broader concerns to my paintings - a narrative or emblematic aside that sidecars the primary subject. Artist Randy Wyatt had his “Yellow Man” that appeared in most of his paintings. I want to make a Lane Marker scene, with a sustainable garden silhouette in the distance. Or a Shelter House image with a distant indication of a burnt forest. How would these quietly suggested addenda read in the painting? And in the broader sense? Can I do it without pandering, and does that even matter? It's an acknowledgement that does not solve anything. Again, it's all I really know to do.

Gallery Ideas, Part III (plain ole studio)

I'm skipping over Part II ideas, but may post them later, for kicks. Here's Part I posted yesterday. As much as the studio space itself inspires these other ideas, I really need to focus more intimately and more individually. This is how I connect to the world, and others, in a meaningful way - as an artist partially ignoring that world, and others. It took me a very long time to accept that personal artistic exploration has meaning, and that at its very core this activity is generous in spirit. 

I feel oppressed by the municipal/corporate interests that have been guiding our local arts since around 2000. While there is much more going on, and some money being invested in local arts and artists, it creates a whirlwind environment of highly social, but disconnected participation. It's being done to promote an identity, which is fine, but I wish they would have gone for "world-class" architecture, rather than art.

I don't really need to add my gimmicky ideas to that pool. We have plenty of entrepreneurial art activity planners. It's difficult for me to ignore the space's gallery potential, and I may occasionally clear it out for the occasional Swivel Gallery Show (the space is perfect for placing a single swivel chair in the middle of the room and hanging one work on each wall, or one person's work on each wall).

This is a long-winded way to say I'm going to scale everything back down to using this space as a studio, at least for now.

Same Side of the Same Coin

I made an odd connection recently between two very different ways of seeing oneself, and of working, as an artist. Maintaining a perspective which is independent from the art-world has always been very important to me. I don't shun influence, but I do want to keep one foot in "Rocktown, Indiana" at all times. I'm too easily influenced and so I consciously maintain some insularity from what's going on. It's really just a mental positioning more than anything. An artificial, adopted outsider-ism. Outsider Faux.

It's about making a place from which I have the confidence to make independent, original choices.

As I recently looked at some new work, deciding what to do next, I thought, What choices would I make if I were someone like Dana Schutz? What if I had that sort of place in the art world, not just well known and respected, but revered? I mentally adopted that cloak and it did make a difference in my thinking. It made me make different choices, mostly by going with dumber and bolder choices, unquestioningly.

It made me feel more independent from the art world, just as being an "isolated artist" does.

I'm not talking about ability, but rather about the actual types of decisions I would make, within my own work, under this guise. I'm also not talking about having art world success per se. I'm imagining a position where it's a given that I'm the type of artist who, through her uber-success, is immune from regular art world pressures/influences/thoughts/envies/garbage, and therefore is working more honestly and independently from a personal place.

I want it to be a given that I'm an artist making art. I don't want to have to prove myself this way. It's tedious and counter-productive. I don't want to have to prove my standing, locally or on a wider stage. This does affect one's work; it changes what one makes. I'll do what I must to present myself well, to explain as well as possible. But when I'm in the studio, I'm going to adapt my version of "who" is making the work.

Audience

I don't think we should make art based on where, or who, is our audience. We spend ridiculous amounts of time and attention engaged in the artistic process. This is where its value lies; in what cool new comprehensions we can sometimes, if we're lucky, bring forth into existence. This is the value of artistic exploration.

We've all had those things materialize, which we doubt anyone else will respond to. They are too obscure and too situational to extend beyond our own audience of one. These experiences have value. It does not matter that I, Carla Knopp, experienced it, but it does matter that some human did. It matters that it happened.

This is purely belief.

It comes down to "does life matter?" or does it need justification. If life does matter, without justification, then a single artist painting in the woods matters. It is enough. This is why it is such a great bonus when the work clicks with others as well. If you're reaching into barely comprehensible places, then it is just amazing when others can and will peek into that realm with you. I find this more exciting and meaningful, for everyone, than crafting my boundaries to engage a particular audience.

...handed to me on a plate

"Peak" paintings by Julia Kuhl courtesy of frosch & portmann gallery........

"Mount" paintings by Carla Knopp.

Julia's are so beautifully distilled to the essence of their painted imagery.

Mine seem self-indulgent and lacking the confidence to be simple. ....or to simply be.

Lately I've been pondering the honesty of my work. It seems I'm still overly influenced by external considerations. I really do best when I go hyper-insular. That's where the beautiful shit is, and it's my job to go find it. It is not my job to make sure everyone appreciates it. It's not my job to limit my findings to that which can be easily consumed by a mildly engaged audience. It's not my job to devise social constructs under the guise of art.

Go see all of Julia's work. I really like it and it deserves to be presented as its own post. But it's also such a weirdly direct lesson for me, that I had to compare. It's both devasting and exciting.

Bear with me, I need to try something

I had a moment where this was on my computer screen, and I briefly thought I was looking into a painting of mine. I just wanted to see it next to my header painting. Go back to whatever you were doing.

I caved and bought linen

Even a rocktown dwelling artist like myself is aware of the current silent code regarding one's painting ground. If you're serious, you paint on linen. This did just happen in the past few years, right? Is there a huge archival or durability difference between well prepared canvas and linen?? I'm abandoning wood for now and must now deal with this coercive new rule. I want to rebel, but I get the linen, and the size, and an oil primer.

I leave the store disgusted, but also very excited....

Barbie's Pantheon?

12" x 8.5"

This thing is so light and fairey-like, which is odd since I was pretty irritated while painting it. Just general winter blahs. This makes me want to do entire series of creatures/phenomena from invented belief systems, developed for various fictitious entities. This would be some deity in a Barbie Pantheon.

The central area is metallic silver, so it's quite different in person.

Pep Talk

I feel guilty and I shouldn't. I'm in the studio every day right now, and am making great progress, but I'm in a relaxed productive mode. This means I'm not clicking fast, but I'm not destroying anything either. I'm making fairly courageous decisions on what was finished work. I'm risking failure, but I'm not volunteering it up. I'm being an adult about revisions. I think this is good, but it has a different psychological feel from freefalling annhilism, which is more my comfort zone. Annhilism is heady stuff. It's dramatic. It satisfies an emotional need. It's a tad bullshitty that way.

New Panels

Where's Alan? I can't find Alan.

Embracing My Inner Soft Pornographer

Thanks Abby Kent for this great photoshopping. It was even more hilarious in its original context. I had just posted images of my "Mounts" paintings on a message board, along with some thoughts about them, where I ignored mentioning anything about the blatant sexual innuendo. This particular group of folks were not having it; I was called out.

I truly think of this as a subtext, a quietly humorous aside. When one paints nudes every day for a few months, very quickly the model's physical nudity loses its domination of the experience. Over the past several years, I stopped worrying about having suggestive shapes and meanings in my work. I became less self-conscious about it, and eventually came to encourage it in a playful way. This seems integral to my imagery and to my conceptual considerations. I have always maintained a mental boundary; I have always held it away in its "interesting and funny subtext" role.

Well, I'm calling myself out now. I may have been fooling myself about the impartial nature of my tourettesian tendencies.

I'm finally connecting with these recent paintings. They had been very focused on formal decisions, especially in dealing with awkward and contrarian aesthetic choices. They are beginning to lurch more into an area of personal expression, and it's because I'm letting the imagery be truly sensual, rather than jokey sensual, at least in my own perceptions.

I think I need to give the subtextual suggestions a promotion. I think they may be more real and more important than I admit to myself. So, here's to horns and fallopian imagery!

*1-12-10 Correction made, Abby Kent invented Soft Porn Ben and Jerry's, not Pat Strong.

Blind

This is an in-progress shot from 2007. I remember being most interested in the white foreground shape, and being frustrated by the rest of this painting. I ended up painting out all but the white shape and cutting the panel into a shape. I tossed it aside for a couple years, and then painted it into something else.

I just happened onto this image and am blown away by the simple egg shaped figure in landscape.

When one paints imagined figures within the illusion of a gravity-bound space, it so easily slips into a yucky type of surrealism, stylistically. Some of this results from a perceptual rut, where we tend to lump together to many different things, without distinguishing what's really there. I tend to reject some of my own tendencies, because I start identifying them a certain way, with certain types of work.

Long-winded way to say I wish I had this panel and I'd paint out the white shape and the yellow shape, and just leave the big egg.

Rulers and Rules

6' x 12', latex, glazing medium

As I painted this, I kept being reminded of Harry Davis. He was my foundation drawing professor, and his pet peeve was ruled lines. He banned rulers from his class, yet he insisted we draw straight lines. I totally get it, and especially during this project, where I painted quite a few long straight lines with a script liner brush. The handpainted line is beautiful.

The next year I had Robert Weaver for an illustration-focused drawing class. He insisted that every straight line be made with a ruler. He expressed every bit as much outrage as had Prof. Davis (for non-ruled lines) that anyone would do otherwise.

Were I to go back in time, I would stump them both with a Mary Yeager quote, "Rules are for amateurs". Mary used this phrase most often in reference to gardening, but it's applicable to almost everything, and it's really fun to say. Mary is also responsible for the "Dumbass with a dream" title I've used on a couple paintings. Some friends have chattered of about collecting and publishing Mary's unique truisms. If you ever run across a book titled "Yeagerisms", buy it!

Pursuit/Refinement/Culmination

Not sure what to title this post. Greg, a close friend, has been working away at an evolving personal concept for well over ten years now. It's roots may be his own emergence as a hippified persona, living within a conservative Christian community in Illinois, but he really has gone beyond that. I've watched as he has transformed his gallery/picture shop, forever tweaking and adjusting and organizing. He has used this physical location, through his constant manipulation of its purpose, to flesh out his own philosophies.

It's so interesting to see an artist push on for so long, towards an unknown, and possibly unstate-able goal. It's so interesting to watch someone who has something to figure out, and is compelled to do so. He may well be there now. He has melded together truly original visions of subcultural and religious philosophies.

This property is up for auction Sept. 16. If he does get booted out, it will be at a remarkably appropriate time in this process. If not, then be sure to visit the shop in the next year or so.

"Behind the Sign"

"Sign of Jsu is located at 3318 E. Tenth St., Indianapolis, IN USA (46201). On the sign is a little box containing free copies of parable doctrine (help yourself). Behind the sign is a subcultural thrift shop. I have for sale many back issues of 'Art News', 'New Yorker', and other magazines, a nice collection of experimental international music from the sixties and seventies on CD, over on hundred cassettes of the jazz greats from the Forties and Fifties, many Lp's with cool cover art, buckets of beads and beading supplies, pictures, and several examples of what is probably the only fiber craft practiced widely on a local level, the inexplicable 'afghan'. I accept donations of books, magazines, disks, and tapes. I am presently looking for introductory liberal arts text books. I would like to put sets of these together, like a B.A. in a box, for local distribution. The shop is theoretically open Fri. Sat, and Sun noon to seven (call ahead for the real hours and to hear Duoot play a tune on the message machine).

In the shop there is more parable literature including Hala Maloki's "Commentary on Parable Doctrine" and his "Application of Parable Doctrine to the Alternative Subcultures" (both in final draft form). There is online versions of parable literature at http://www.parabledoctrine.blogspot.com/, http://www.halamaloki.blogspot.com/, and http://www.signofjsu.blogspot.com/.

I welcome anyone who has something for Sub Art to give me a call, I am particularly interested in local art histories, especially any that involve the 'cheap art' movement of the 1990's, Contemporary art that is below the applicable standards, or anything that addresses subculture. For the religiously inclined; who would like parable literature mailed to them, who have a commentary or application to publish, or who might put up a sign, contact Greg @(317) 684-9883. telephone"

Teaser

I'm about to start some new paintings that will be more scenic, as in rectangular pictures, mostly landscape-type space. They will incorporate imagery from my current body of work in a way that, frankly, subverts it. I'm bursting with delight at the prospect of mocking what I just did.

Oh, I've already said too much....

Studio Stuff

MD 29, 16" x 16", oil on wood

This is one of several things going on in the studio. This painting was sanded down and "ornamentated" into a surprisingly refined piece. I am reconfiguring small junk panels. I am reworking some of the earlier large shaped panels. I am considering a new context for the large shaped panels. What if they become "image generators" for various ongoing bodies of work? Some of these larger paintings have passages which could become, or inspire, a more simple "single statement" painting. What if the large panels are never completed, but rather evolve over time, giving me ideas, and directing paths of exploration. They would truly become both a practical and a metaphorical creator. The "ID" in the titles has always stood for "Intelligent Designer". It's all probably a little too resolved, too much of a plan, for my temperment. But I'll keep it in mind as a possible phantom framework in which to work.

Studio Happenings

Today's plan was simple. Work on this all day.


Add a couple minor elements to this.


Hmmm. It was too bold and too intuitive and too in the moment for me to feel anything but good about this.
It did get me thinking about Star Trek (Next Gen) characters. What a fun series that would be. I went back and forth between this referencing "Q" or "Laroxanna Troi".

Henri Art Magazine Essay

I have been invited, along with other artists, into a discussion over at Henri Art Magazine. The topic is Style vs. Brand, and it's being addressed in interesting ways (though I got off track a bit, my is essay here). "Henri" is forever generating original and well-reasoned thoughts, and I'm grateful to be included here.

Image is from fellow artist/ contributor Hans Heiner Buhr's notes.

Tire Balancing

58" x 48", oil on wood panel

See the little swath of color on the left edge? I hate this sort of decision. I started adding edge shapes along the sides to address the edges and balance the composition, not as an integral part of the entire piece, but in the crudest way. It's a tacked-on "fix". I kept pretending I was dealing with the painting, but there's something almost shameful about caving to this type of convention, in such a conciliatory manner.

But a composition which locks into place supports all the loose ends. It allows more chaos. The mark-making and imagery can almost fall apart, in a good way, when it's manacled compositionally. The passages can be more arbitrary, the juxtapositions more ridiculous and illogical.

Compositional integrity is a beneficial tool. I just hate when it becomes rule or obsession-driven.

Then I noticed how this painted edge shape resembles a tire balancing lead, both visually and functionally. That seemed very funny at the time.

Cull of the Wild

Major development. Last night I finally connected with this painting, and it changed my decision-making from fretful formal meanderings to more of a decisive culling. I was able to move forward, not by changing or fixing or fiddling, but by promoting a more focussed expression. It still has plenty of contradictions and co-existences, and I didn't tighten up edges or shapes much. The cleanup was conceptual.

This is where I usually get stuck. I'm realising that while I want the confusion and the unknown and the unknowable, I also want to use my reigns, and occasionally my whip.

An aggressive meander?
_____________________

I'll have to put aside the large work for a few weeks. Main studio wall will have day job (undersea) mural on it.

Mind-Blow-Blips

Blythe Hager, "Visitor"

3' x 3'

I can't shake this image. I first saw it online, then happened upon it in an auxillary display, then came across it online again. I know Blythe. I know this scene. It's a very interesting area next to a nearly obsolete train track. Once a year the state fair train runs on this track. This all enhances the experience for me, but regardless, this is an outstanding painting. The skin/chair tones against the snow are amazing. It is by far the best painting I've seen in person this year.

_________________________

I was recently invited to participate in a survey of local artists and venues, with the main question being: What five Indianapolis artists should everyone be keeping an eye on? I kept thinking of artists who have the potential to do some great work, but who could just as easily sit on their thumbs for the next five years. What excites me is the potential production of a mind-blowing work or body of art, regardless of an artist's career trajectory.

The survey is certainly legitimate, and my selections gave a nod to both one's career track and their sublimity-achievement potential; it was a compromise of sorts. But it helps me realize priorities. I want to classify or distinguish certain artists and certain work. Everyone is capable of a highly charged artistic experience, and the products of such moments can be very special. This work happens everywhere, and yet in artistic production terms, it's very rare. It's often outside/beyond the framework of one's own artistic intentions. It's often lost, or only very locally appreciated.

I'll be presenting such work here in some sort of categorized way. (I'm just so freakin' non-verbal and illogical right now, not to mention the grammatical struggle....and I can't even spell anymore)_________________

In summary, this is a very exciting painting by a local artist.