Crossroads

I just completed a study of Robert Johnson for an Equality Utah fundraiser.  I call it a study because I used it to experiment with both the subject and the medium.  I adapted part of a painting done by Nicola Verlato that really struck me, and made the image by selectively rusting a sheet of steel with various oxidizers and patinas.  In other words, there's no paint used -- the gradations in color are due to chemically changing the steel.  I've played around with this technique before on the 'Others':

http://blueboathome.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-other.html

The Other

As part of the E Pluribus Unum show I'll be doing two works, one on my own and one as a collaboration with Chad Crane.  My solo work is titled 'Others: Thoreau, Weiwei, DeChristopher, Solzhenitsyn'.  It is made of a sheet of steel with a welded frame; the images are made by oxidizing the metal at different rates with different chemicals.

The basic idea of the show was to investigate what unites us as a country.  I think part of the answer lies in having an 'other' to unite against.  The catch is that we have a history of demonizing people and movements that hold up a mirror which would have inspired us to our better selves, if we didn't throw these folks in jail.

Specifically, the four individuals in my work were all put in prison for their efforts: Thoreau refused to pay taxes that funded slavery and Solzhenitsyn criticized Stalin.  The last two are our contemporaries; Ai Weiwei is critical of the human rights abuses of the Chinese government and DeChristopher disrupted illegal land auctions to oil and gas companies.  The thought process I've described here, along with the theme of the show.


https://www.facebook.com/epuartshow

http://chadcrane.blogspot.com/2011/01/familiar-territory-art-access-september.html

http://blueboathome.blogspot.com/2012/08/what-unites-us.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_Disobedience_(Thoreau)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn

http://aiweiweineversorry.com/

http://www.bidder70.org/

Ammo Table, Part 3

Now that the search is underway and I’m gradually gathering these casings, I’ve found I should start figuring out what on earth I’m going to do with them when I get several thousand of the little suckers.  I’ve tried to approach prototyping my art like I approach voting -- do it early and often.

While fondling some of the casings (why is it everyone edges away from my table at the coffeehouse when I do this?) I realized that the open end and the closed end are two very different colors -- the shadow of the open end is dark, even when viewed outside, and the closed end is reflective.  Now I’ve got a direction -- I plan to arrange the casings open-end or closed-end up so that the resulting pattern depicts a portrait, kind of like if you zoom in on a digital black-and-white photograph.  At some great magnification, all you see is black or white pixels.  

Who would be an appropriate subject for a portrait out of spent ammunition?  Martin Luther King, Charles Taylor, and JFK all seem a little too trite and obvious.  Mickey Mouse?  The McDonald’s logo?  Here are a few ides, pixelated to the approximate degree they would be on the table.

Several years ago I did a series of sketches on Humphrey Bogart, and was fascinated with his eyes in particular.  Here are some that have potential for the table design.

Since pixelated computer graphics only have a small resemblance to bullets, I decided to prototype the image again, this time by drilling holes (representing the open-end-up shells) into a board with the graphic of Bogart’s eyes.