I had the pleasure of checking out the Portland Museum of Art’s biennial during my trip to Maine last week. The overall theme connecting all of the work was the process behind each piece. From the exhibition catalogue:
“The subtitle Piece Work is derived from the exhibition’s thematic approach. It is meant to evoke the traditional labor-based notion of artisans and factory workers who are paid “by the piece,” but also to conjure the image in visitors’ minds of “one thing after another,” a seemingly endless repetition of making, passing, and making again… While the artwork featured in Piece Work spans a broad range of media, the thread that connects the artists is their use of repetition, handcraft, and translation.”
Michael Zachary, Dave at the Cabin (CMYK)
I have a habit of getting as close up to work as I possibly can without setting off an alarm. I am really interested in an artist’s process and mark-making, and I like to see if I can determine how a piece was made, or what line was put down first. So initially I didn’t really know what to make of this series, because I observed them from only inches away. I saw hundreds of rigid, methodical lines in primary colors, clearly done with a hand and a ruler. It wasn’t until I moved on to the Lauren Fensterstock piece installed several feet away that I was at enough of a distance to recognize what all that process was building up to.
The relationship between Michael Zachary’s drawings and the sculpture installed next to them is really exciting, because they both reveal themselves slowly. At first glance of Lauren Fenterstock’s “Ha-ha,” you see blades upon blades of grass at eye-level.
Lauren Fensterstock, “Ha-ha”
As you step back from Michael Zachary’s pieces so that your eyes can register the images, you inevitably notice the hidden interior space in Fenterstock’s sculpture, filled with thousands of hand-cut paper flowers.
JT Bullit, “I will not stop until I fall asleep”
I spent a lot of time taking in JT Bullit’s drawing work, including this piece from his passenger series. Bullit is deeply invested in mark-making and creating symbols; from his artist statement:
Every action we perform leaves its mark in the world. Putting pen to paper is thus an ideal metaphor for living. In doing so, over time, points become lines, lines become forms, and forms become symbols imbued with meaning. This hierarchical accumulation of small gestures adds up to a densely concentrated language of action and choice that can be rich with significance and emotional truth.
But my favorite piece of his was “Every Time I Did Not Think of You,” which I wish I could find an image of. If it were a sound piece, it would be a Magnetic Fields song. It’s a drawing made up of tiny checks drawn intermittently throughout an invisible grid. There are maybe a dozen or so checks softly marring the otherwise blank paper at sporadic intervals. Sometimes the marks are close together, as if the You of the title didn’t leave the artist’s mind for days, sometimes spread far apart. Pretty heartbreaking.
I moved from that sentimental piece to another one, just as clever.
Crystal Cawley, “Love Letter Sweater”
This was another piece that made me go “aww,” at first. The sweater is cozily constructed, the colors are pastel and soothing, and it looks like the type of comforting old thing you’d thrown on after work. When you are up close, you can see that it is made of shredded strips of love letters (presumably sent to the artist?) that are still quite legible. I almost didn’t want to read them because it felt so personal, like eavesdropping. The intimate nature of the letters definitely adds to the overall feeling of comfort and security, but it took on a sort of sinister feeling for me when I thought about the process involved. The artist had to shred and destroy all these mementos of past (or maybe present) loves in order to construct the sweater. That conflict between the comforting appearance and the destructive process is what made me this piece stick with me longer than others.