Look, See

Three Edges (Purple) III

Three Edges (Green) II

Three Edges (Red) I

Don't Know How 10-18, Set 2: Slippage

18. Don't Know How

17. Don't Know How

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13. Don't Know How

Smithsonian Archives of American Art Oral History Interviews

The Smithsonian Archives of American Art Quick Reference to Oral History Interviews

Don't Know How 3 & 10, imagined gallery view

Background borrowed from Richard Schur.

12. Don't Know How

Ed Moses, 197x, BAMPFA

This is a pretty nice ca. mid-70's drawing by Ed Moses- graphite, watercolor and narrow masking tape on paper that has rhythmically buckled vertically. I didn't know the BAMPFA owned this drawing, and apparently they don't know either, as there is only one record for a 1971 painting in the database there. I came across this drawing in the lower lobby near the rear Durant entrance near where the old Pacific Film Archives theater used to be.

It's quite beautiful, appearing delicate, although made quite simply with quick strokes of red, blue, and some yellow watercolor over quickly ruled pencil lines. Weaving and Najaho blankets are an obvious starting point. Notice how on the left side the angle of the strokes gradually decline, so as one looks from bottom to top there is also a stacking in perspective of planes at angles to each other, edges exposed.

I found out a few minutes later that photography isn't allowed in the museum, which seems absurd for a university art museum the principle goal of which is research and education. More later about succesive secret photographs taken while student gallery attendants are out of view.

11. Don't Know How

Compilations

• Don't Know How 1-9, Set 1: Slippage, May 20, 2004, 9 HTML drawings
• The last light at the end of the branch, 1-12, May 05, 2004, 12 HTML drawings
• Notches & Spaces I-VIII, April 23, 2004, 8 HTML drawings
• Grace I-XII Compilation, April 14, 2004, 12 HTML drawings
• Dukka (10), April 01, 2004, 10 HTML drawings
• 11 Bodhis, March 17, 2004, 11 HTML drawings
• Dasarâjadharma: Ten Principles of Good Governance, March 05, 2004, 10 HTML drawings
• 18 Lohans, February 16, 2004, 18 HTML drawings
• 16 Arhats, February 07, 2004, 16 HTML drawings
• 16 Arhats, January 23, 2004, 16 HTML drawings
• Mexican Xmas (ended January 18, 2004), 18 HTML drawings
• Hand I-X (ended December 21, 2003), 10 HTML drawings
• Smokey, Jackie, Jackie, Mookie, November 30, 2003, 4 HTML drawings
• Places I Have Slept (ended November 22, 2003), 133 HTML drawings

10. Don't Know How

Thanks Lloyd

Thanks, Lloyd.

Don't Know How 1-9, Set 1: Slippage

On 20040504 I posted a photo of a painting from 1981 and wrote, "... the two panels stacked vertically provide a kind of visual slippage or movement, as if the blue sky above had filled in the sunken black ground below that was fighting to pull itself back up again." This is idea of a kind of slippage, and the many things that might imply visually and emotionally, was on my mind each day as I made the nine drawings in this series Don't Know How 1-9, Set 1: Slippage. Each of these drawings has a misalignment, disconnect, or incompletion of some type. I'm going to continue on a 9 image Set 2.

Olivier Mosset on painting

Rein Wolfs: How automatically are you painting then? We were walking together through the show of Jackson Pollock in New York at the beginning of last December. When I listen to what you say about the surface, then I think surfaces are something which have to be painted. And how automatically do you paint? Is the painting, its definite structure well planned in a way?

Olivier Mosset: It is not well planned, or when you do a painting you tend to lose the plan you had. Even when you think you?re in control, you still are going to be somehow surprised in the end, and then you realize ?OK, that?s what it is?. Through the actual making of a painting, somehow the paint takes over the plan. Often you get something which is certainly not what you had planned...

Olivier Mosset im Gespräch mit Rein Wolfs
Ausstellung von 1999
Englischer Text (PDF) via Galerie Susanna Kulli, Zurich

9. Don't Know How

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7. Don't Know How

Oakland Library, 1985

Oakland Public Library, Main Branch, 1985, housepaint on canvas, 47 x 68"

In 1985 I did a number of drawings of the lobby of Oakland Library's Main Branch. This is inside facing the checkout desk, with 14th St. out the doors. The lobby's layout changed significantly in the mid-90's; now books are checked out at a long counter on the right. Behind the viewer the lobby goes through a wide hallway to the rear of the library directly at the reference desk, which is right by the "N" section, which is where all the art books are.

If you walk through the hallway and go to the reference desk, turn around and look at the wall above the hallway- there's a terrific painting of a baseball stadium hanging there by Ralph Fasanella [1] [2]. (While searching for references via Google a post I made in June 2002 about this painting, and about which I'd forgotten, was one of the returns.)

In the top left of this 1985 painting there's a figure going up a staircase to the second floor. Upstairs are the library offices, but also the excellent Oakland History Room and the Periodicals Room. The halls of the second floor are lined with historical photos of Oakland.

This painting was in the first juried Pro Arts Annual in 1986 in Oakland. A number of now fairly well-known artists were in that show: Jamie Brunson, John Zurier, Donald Feasel, Rick Arnitz; I thought it was fluky that my painting got in. The show was reviewed by Kenneth Baker in the Chronicle. I think I got a whole paragraph, which begins by describing the process I wrote about in the catalogue (drawing something over and over as a rehearsal for the final painting), and ends by saying that the painting is, and I think I have this perfectly memorized, "not as naive as it looks, which is not necessarily to its credit." I could never quite get my mind around that comment, but I've always remembered it.

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Drawing: Martin's Beach, 1979

Martin's Beach, 1979, pencil, colored pencil, watercolor, collage on paper, ca. 9 x 8"

Martin's Beach is a few miles south of the town of Half Moon Bay. I used to go fishing there with my father and brothers. I once saw an adult gray whale breach maybe fifty to sixty yards out. It was amazing.

Freewayblogger

Freewayblogger (via Tom Moody)

5. Don't Know How

Untitled, February 1982

Untitled, February 1982, pencil and colored pencil on drafting paper, 15 x 20"

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Ya call this art?

Ya call this art? Enamel on cotton over wood stretcher, about 12 x 12", October 1986.

3. Don't Know How

Drawing: Santa Fe, New Mexico, 1978

This drawing is dated May-June 1978, and is titled "Santa Fe, New Mexico" (look at the top right of the burnt orange area; the title and date are written in pencil using a drafter's template). It's around 14" square, with pencil, colored pencil, and ink stamp on paper. This is actually a collage of separate drawings. The left and right heavily drawn areas used to be a separate single drawing that was torn vertically and glued on another piece of paper; see how the traced wrench on the right continues off the right side and re-enters on the left side. You can see in the central white area two seams where torn paper is glued.

The graphite drawing was mostly drawn in May, as I recall; at the end of the month I was gone for two weeks driving to Louisiana and back, which included going through Santa Fe and seeing a friend. I loved the drive through New Mexico. After returning I used the previous drawing, torn and reassembled onto another piece of paper, and drew the pyramid in th desert, a pretty obvious landscape.

I'm not sure how much can be deciphered from the rest of the imagery that is specific to Santa Fe; I think there is a feeling in this jumble of images of a time, place, and experience, of many things seen and remembered. I think it's a view past up-close details swinging open like doors to show a deeper, open, empty space filled with bright sunlight. I feel a sense of splitting open a cluttered collection of tangled stuff to get to something peaceful, quiet, light-filled. I think specifically that this drawing came as a reaction to being busy at the time personally and at school in contrast to two weeks of freedom on the road.

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Oakland Drawing, 1985

This is probably close to the final drawing I did for the Oakland painting posted last week; conte crayon and gouache, about 8 x 10".

Three Studies, 1985

Three 1985 drawings for the Oakland painting I posted last week; these are each in the 15 x 20" range:

1. Don't Know How

Untitled 1-5

Untitled 5