Look, See (2003-07)

Scavenger 5

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Scavenger 4

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Scavenger 3

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Scavenger 2

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Speaking at ATDP

I am speaking to Lloyd Nebres' class of high school webloggers at UC Berkeley this morning about weblogs and art.

Birthday books

In June I made three birthday books (see album): for Ann's sister, Mary Jane (May 23); for MJ's daughter, Shannon (June 16); and for MJ's husband, Peter (June 17). These are each 10-12 pages, handpainted on good paper, sewn together, around 6x7 inches. I scanned each page before sewing them together. There is a bit of an inside joke to each of these books, especially the fact that MJ & P are now the owners of a 200 year old house in midwest France to which they will retire in the next few years, and that P is a devoted White Sox fan.

Scavenger 1

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study

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study

HTML, 300 x 340 pixels

study

HTML, 300 x 340 pixels

Thirteen Records (revised)

After Bob Dylan's 1975 masterpiece Blood on the Tracks he recorded album after album of mixed successes and peculiarities, many full of raucous, not terribly rehearsed live takes, backup singers, and changing lineups. Slow Train Coming was his first record after converting to Christianity, a phase which lasted through Shot of Love. This strange Christian period yielded a lot of very good and under-appreciated music. Knocked Out Loaded brought him back to the hard driving bluesy Americana that incluenced him when starting out, Down in the Groove took this further, which eventually resulted in two cover albums of traditional and folks songs, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong.

These thirteen albums, s uneven as they might seem, are full of surprises, nuggets, and "The Old, Weird America" that Greil Marcus wrote about in his book subtitled, "The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes." These records show a musician constantly returning to and working with his folk and blues roots to take part in the folk continuum, and making music that, despite its hits and misses, is far beyond what almost any other singer/songwriter in the folk/blues/rock vein, with the exception of Neil Young, could even begin to accomplish.

The thirteen drawings represented here, square in format, just like an LP jacket, borrow colors from the original album art. I did not attempt to re-represent the album art or alternately represent the music. This series acknowledges a musician who is certainly recognized and valued, but not as fully or completely as I maintain he ought to be based on the evidence in this strange middle period.

Thirteen Records

After Bob Dylan's 1975 masterpiece Blood on the Trackshe recorded album after album of mixed successes and peculiarities, many full of raucous, not terribly rehearsed live takes, backup singers, and changing lineups. Slow Train Coming was his first record after converting to Christianity, a phase which lasted through Shot of Love. This strange Christian period yielded a lot of very good and under-appreciated music. Knocked Out Loaded brought him back to the hard driving bluesy Americana that incluenced him when starting out, Down in the Groove took this further, which eventually resulted in two cover albums of traditional and folks songs, Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong.

These thirteen albums, as uneven as they might seem, are full of surprises, nuggets, and "The Old, Weird America" that Greil Marcus wrote about in his book subtitled, "The World of Bob Dylan's Basement Tapes." These records show a musician constantly returning to and working with his folk and blues roots to take part in the folk continuum, and making music that, despite its hits and misses, is far beyond what almost any other singer/songwriter in the folk/blues/rock vein, with the exception of Neil Young, could even begin to accomplish.

The thirteen drawings represented here, square in format, just like an LP jacket, borrow colors from the original album art. I did not attempt to re-represent the album art or alternately represent the music. This series acknowledges a musician who is certainly recognized and valued, but not as fully or completely as I maintain he ought to be based on the evidence in this strange middle period.

13. World Gone Wrong, 1993

11. Under the Red Sky, 1990; 12. Good as I Been to You, 1992

9. Down in the Groove, 1988; 10. Oh Mercy, 1989

7. Empire Burlesque, 1985; 8. Knocked Out Loaded, 1986

5. Shot of Love, 1981; 6. Infidels, 1983

3. Slow Train Coming, 1979; 4. Saved, 1980

1. Desire, 1976; 2. Street Legal, 1978

mouthsounds 1-30

hum, croon, drone, moan, mumble, murmur purr, rustle, sing, strum, warble, whir whisper, buzz, hiss, mutter, breathe, exhale flutter, gasp, heave, huff, pant, puff whistle, sigh, cackle, pucker, swish, smack June 26-July 10, 2004, HTML, 396 X 270 pixels each (represented by a size-reduced .gif)

One day, somewhere in the middle of the second recent Hummingbird series, I mistakenly titled a drawing "Humming" rather than "Hummingbird." Jim took that as a transition in the series, and commented about it to me. In was just a typo, however, which I fixed, but it did give me a subject for more drawings. Rather than just do a bunch of drawings about humming, though, I had the mundane idea of using a thesaurus to make a list of words for sounds, which turned out to be a list of thirty words for sounds made with the mouth.

Usually a series of drawings these days run from twelve to eighteen, and I usually do just one drawing each day, but I thought for a change I'd do two drawings a day over fifteen days, rather than drag it out for thirty days. I decided to limit the number of colors each day to two to four, which didn't last, and I decided not to use color in the way I've done a lot recently to depict a kind of transparency, overlay, or, even, a kind of glaze effect, which did last throughout the series. As usual, making images with a grid that don't seem initially and lastingly grid-bound is one of the greatest problems.

Each drawing is an attempt to represent either making, hearing, or experiencing the sound. Although making and hearing are also experiences of the sound, so is something which is quite different, which is the memory of sound, the imagined, mental, internal sound, like thought, and the range of associations one has with a sound: who, where, when, why, sight, smell, touch, time, emotion, and reaction.

15. cackle, pucker

14. swish, smack

13. whistle, sigh

grockwel takes note

grockwel says:

Chris Ashley: Look, See

sally mckay suggested this artist's blog, Look, See. What I like about Look, See (among other things) are the html art - simple works written with tables with coloured cells. (See his discussion of these at Visual Problems and Solutions.

So here is my experiment with html art. I used Dreamweaver to make a multi-cell table and then selected cells and chose colours. The dimensions don't work as expected ... time to play more.

See Geoffrey Rockwell's attempt at his weblog.

This is flattering, though also a little amusing. Over the past couple of years I occasionally notice- or it is brought to my attention- someone's attempt to make an HTML drawing. My drawings, though, don't stand alone. They exist within a context; anyone who has followed these for awhile will have a sense that:

1. the drawings have or respond to a subject, and are somewhat representational, but not always of tangible things;
2. the drawings also derive their meaning from the fact that they exist within a weblog where I have a daily deadline, one drawing (typically) is exhibited each day, and the weblog serves as a gallery and an archive, all public;
3. meaning is also inherent in the fact that the drawings (almost always) are in series, so that drawings are part of a body; and
4. I am really working up against the edge of the limitations of HTML tables, a very simple medium, so that even though I use the grid everday I am working against making an image that is just a set of blocks;
5. I use color like a painter, which is my background- I mix, tint, shade, and use it for structure, space, and composition.

Later today... Geoffrey responds. And I'll need to respond back.

12. pant, puff

11. heave, huff

10. flutter, gasp

9. breathe, exhale

8. mutter, hiss

7. whisper, buzz

Comments

I have disabled the comments feature of this weblog becuase of blogspam. I just don't want to deal with it. Comments welcome at chrisashley-AT-yahoodotcom

6. warble, whir

3 Heads, ca. 1999

Untitled 1, 2, &3, ca. 1999, ink & gouache on rag, 10 1/4 X 6 5/8" each, scanned
I just found these undeniably Mardenesque drawings yesterday near the bottom of a box when I was looking for some rubber cement. I had forgotten about these, and am not positive when they were made- I'm thinking maybe around 1999, when I was doing occasional drawings of heads, but not doing much else. Other influences behind my thinking about these heads include Pollock, Auerbach, Giacometti, and Bacon. I think these were all drawn rapidly in one go with a bamboo pen I've had for twenty years; it's an 8" long piece of bamboo, almost 1" in diameter, cut at one end at about a 45 degree angle, notched along the top to make a resevoir for the ink to flow down a groove to the point, and three more notches underneath to hold ink, too. If you look closely it's marked in the way Amersterdam Arts on University Ave. in Berkeley always priced brushes: retail above, their price below. So this was priced at $2.50, but sold for $2.00. The paper is torn, not cut, using a ruler, so it has that nice ragged but even edge. It's a rag printmaking paper, cream colored, a warm, soft color that doesn't absorb liquid too quickly, beautiful for drawings like this.