Works in Progress

Hey Beautiful People! I changed my mind. I decided to let you see some of these pieces I've been working on for the Natural Selection show in the fall. I have been concentrating on just designing and making the sculptures recently, leaving the whole big decisions about color until later in the game. I have been struggling, believe it or not, with what I want color to do in this project. Part of me wants to see these pieces very colorful so they emit a glow of their own when you stand outside the neutral greenhouse structure looking in, and part of me wants the pieces to be neutral themselves with smaller bright color spots to enhance the active parts of the pieces more subtly. Decisions, decisions. This conflict led me to an idea that if I just keep making pieces, that maybe seeing the forms en masse will help me come to the right choice in this matter.

As you faithful readers know, I was on the road a lot in April, which meant less studio time. One of those weekends presented me with an opportunity to do some drawing. Christian played along with me and suggested themes that I would try to illustrate with my bonsai forms, like "voyeurism" or "sex changes" or "rejection." That was not only a fun game, but proved to be really helpful in the studio later. I typically don't work from drawings, but in this case, I found it really helpful with the enormous task of creating fifty one of a kind and sculptures that conceptually can stand alone and also work as a whole installation. Every time I do one of these big installations, I learn a new trick or two about how to tackle these challenges and keep me on track without feeling overwhelmed.

So here's my drawing of an exhibitionist plant form. The style was definitely inspired by some of the collages I did during the residency in Costa Rica last winter. And here on the right are the elements I am working on which will make up the leaves or flower parts. I still want to work on some of them to give them more curves and detail, but you get the idea...

Two drawings I did of flasher bonsai. And here's my piece. It's hard to see here, but in between every leaf pair is a tiny little phallic projection.

Here I was thinking about peep shows and having one perforated element in the middle, a flashy piece on one side, and little peeping ones on the other. This piece is extremely hard to photograph, but here's most of those elements, still in pieces because it will make painting easier.

We were talking about infertility here, and here's a drawing I made where the balls can't quite reach those tempting cups....followed by the pieces which will eventually combine for the sculpture. I have tons of boxes around the studio right now with elements of finshed pieces waiting for their color assignment.

I'll leave you with a few parting images now. My apologies for the poor photo quality, but they're studio shots, right? Click on anything in this blog entry to see it bigger.