“Pattern and Dispersion for November 11, 1012″
This painting started with a large canvas spattered with primary colors in a graded pattern: yellows merging into greens and blues. Over this I placed thousands of froot loops in a grid.
The canvas was about 6 and a half feet by ten feet. Lots of froot loops. Lots of time for contemplating these little organic/nonorganic shapes. All the same, no two alike.
They make a beautiful pattern that has nothing to do with the final image—all the loops eventually get swept up. I like the idea that the objects that make the images are absent from the final painting. The artwork is just their shadows.
Then I spattered multiple rounds of primary colors, disrupting the center section with compressed air each round. Here’s how it looked halfway through the process:
The underlying layers assert themselves or disappear, depending on how much they contrast with the subsequent layers.
“Pattern and Dispersion for November 21, 2011″
You can’t step in the same river twice, Heraclitus tells us, but is it possible to make the same painting twice? If it’s the same idea and same events that produce them, are they the same? Accident and chance and human error always interfere, but suppose chaos is part of the plan?
So to investigate this, I prepared sixteen 12″ x 12″ panels and set out a 4 x 4 pattern of sixteen froot loops in the center of each. Here’s a shot of just getting started:
I decided to spatter four rounds of four colors (sixteen layers of paint—are you starting to see the deep web of repeated repetition I’m weaving here?) I then worked out a plan for each spot masked by each froot loop. Each spot would get different exposures to the layers of paint, but they’d have the same plan from panel to panel—so the spot on the upper left would get all four rounds of yellow and all four rounds of red. I’m aiming at sixteen different color recipes. Here’s the schematic I did to help me keep track of which loops to remove each round of paint:
But the spattering process is inexact—I can’t get the coverage perfect. You can see how some panels got more yellow or blue than others. How does this affect the plan? Will the target colors be the same from panel to panel?
To add another level of obsession to the project, every round I randomly placed an additional loop on each painting. But exactly randomly: I divided each panel into 12 x 12 and randomized two sets of digits 1-12 to provide me exact coordinates for where the random loops will go (the example below shows me placing a loop at the 4, 4 position: 4 spaces over, 4 spaces down).
So all this to say—what? Well, what happens to our intentions when exposed to happenstance? Does repetition reveal intention? Each painting imperfectly reflects my intention, but do the images accumulate and present a clearer vision of my intent? How does revelation happen through accumulation of layers of data?
How does the experience of seeing only one painting alone differ from seeing all sixteen? The randomized loops initially look scattered and apparently chaotic, but can you can spot the light blue one in each painting? Look long enough and you’ll see other patterns. But they sure look accidental at first glance, no? How is the perception of these works changed by hearing the obsessive, detailed plan behind them? How is your experience of the art changed by knowing what the heck I was up to? Does it enhance or spoil the experience? What does it say about my intent as artist to share or hide my process?
And finally, what about life’s chaos around us? See any patterns? What’s hidden? What’s revealed?
“God’s Appointment Book for November 7, 2011″
I’ve been collecting books on the creative process, and the latest one I’m perusing is “Creators on Creating” a collection of writings by authors, artists and musicians on how they go about doing their thing. One chapter that struck me was by the poet W.B. Yeats, who thought that “will is the enemy of creation,” that creativity comes in a flash of enlightenment when the mind is wandering or in meditation or even in trance. He strove to “prolong the moment of contemplation, the moment when we are both asleep and awake, which is the moment of creation…”
So I was right all along about the value of lounging in bed in the morning—my most productive part of the day!
I’ve seen a lot in my reading of this tension/balance between the inward and outward. Some take a scientific/psychological approach that meditation allows the subconscious mind to work on the problem. Others take a mystical bent (like Yeats and Jung) that reflection dials us in to the “collective unconscious,” the “great memory.” Still others take a spiritual view that in order to be creative, we need to be filled with the spirit of the Creator.
My vote? All of the above! Hey, anything that promotes letting the mind wander is aces with me.
It’s a central idea in theology— “Islam” literally means “I submit.” Bhuddism is all about emptying and filling. And—especially appropriate to mention this Christmas season—scripture says Jesus is “seated at the right hand of God” because he “emptied himself, taking the form of a servant.” Power through relinquishing it. Cool.
So, does the will restrict creativity? Do we let something slip through our hands by grasping too hard?
To explore this idea in my paintings, I always deliberately introduce an element that forces me to relinquish control. In this painting, I submit to a random number generator, my good pals at www.random.org. Then I set out a 7 x 11 grid of 4″ square masks. Here I am setting up the grid: (Notice: this technique requires a lot of time spent on my knees. Hmm. Love it.)
Then I exerted my will and decided this painting would be created by removing 40% of the squares and spattering primary colors. So I generated a bunch of random digits 1-10, and every time a digit came up 4 or less, I removed a square from the grid. Then I spattered blue paint. Here’s what it looked like at this point:
Below is the grid after spattering a round of all four colors. You can see blues and pink and yellow squares, and also orange and green and purple starting to emerge. Notice in the lower left I’ve begun to inset the squares by half to divide the 4″ grid into 2″ squares. I’ll do another round of four colors with the masks in this position.
Then back to position 1 for another round of all four colors:
Here we are after a few more repetitions of the process. Remember, I have no control over which squares get exposed each round, because the pattern of the masks is dictated by the random numbers. Always a random 4 out of 10.
It’s wild what patterns the numbers come up with. Look at the second and third rows from the bottom in the photo below: almost all the masks remain on the 2nd row and almost all are removed from the 3rd row. Then on the 5th row only one is removed. It’s an interesting art experience to just let the process do its thing, rather than enforcing aesthetic judgments of my own.
The staging nails pounded through the plywood squares keep the masks off the surface so paint doesn’t creep around the edges of the masks. The strict grid is made by a soft fuzz of droplets.
So, how to get more creative? I give up!
Filed under: Control and Chaos
“Pattern and Dispersion for May 16, 2011″
I had set up a grid of froot loops on this smaller canvas, intending to disrupt the middle section after spattering a couple rounds of color. I was working on something on the computer when I turned to see that Marley, my springer spaniel studio dog, had eaten half of the froot loops off the canvas. Glad I’m using non-toxic paint!
I took this to be an intervention of a chaotic event on the work and decided the the plan was now modified: one side would now be different than the other. Thanks to Culture Hound.
“Occurrence for October 13, 2011″
It was a nice overcast day yesterday morning (before the rain started), so I took advantage of the diffused light to photograph some recent work. In the series I call “Occurrences” I set up a grid of circles but let the grid decay in some way. I put my trusty wooden gridwork (see its construction story here) over the surface and randomly dump in ping pong balls. I lift off the grid and some balls stay put and others wander. Between layers of spatters, I replace some and remove others. The result is a grid that’s not really a grid. In “Occurrence for October 13, 2011″ above, the grid appears and fades in the yellow and pink and blue swirls.
How much order do we need to see a pattern? When does the grid cease to be a grid? At the bottom edge, the paint barely delineates the circles, and at the top the circles wander to the point of not really being a pattern. How much order is necessary for us to make sense of our lives? Too much order and we’re bored. Too much variety and we’re disoriented. Maybe you’ve heard the Chinese curse, “May you live in interesting times.”
And when the pattern is decayed, what clues remain of the original system? Knowing the backstory helps, doesn’t it? Telling how I did the wooden-grid-overlay bit makes the image—and the reason for the encroaching chaos—more understandable, yes? I’m fascinated by the idea in Genesis of a world that was created perfect but then suffered a disruption, a breakup. Perfection decayed. Order disordered. I find it makes an interesting backdrop for pondering the world around me—which daily proves to be a shifting mix of gorgeous and goshawful. What clues remain of the original plan? Does knowing the backstory help with detecting the pattern?
“God’s Appointment Book for August 8, 2010″
(In this painting, a color target of 50 blue, 20 red, 80 yellow, 30 black grades into a target of 30 blue, 80 red, 20 yellow, 50 black)
“God’s Appointment Book for August 9, 2010″
(In this one, 80 20 50 30 grades into a target of 30 50 20 80)
Relinquishing control is hard to do. Whether it’s giving your teenager the keys to the car or pondering how to do business with a Supreme Being in the mix, it takes some head-scratching.
Working with random numbers is an exercise in letting go. With my painting method (you old-timers know this in your sleep, newbies can click “About My Process” for more), I open up a certain percentage of the grid randomly to expose it to a spattering of a primary color. My target color for the left side of the painting at the top was 50 blue, 20 red, 80 yellow, 30 black. That means when it’s time to spatter yellow, I get a set of random numbers 1-10 from random.org, and any time the number comes up 8 or less, I remove a square and open that part of the grid to the rain of yellow paint.
This means a lot of the grid needs to be open for the 80% yellow to happen, right? But random numbers do what they want. So I’ll get a sequence like “10, 9, 10, 10, 5, 10, 3, 10, 9 , 9, 9, 9 …” No kidding. Grrr! 20% of the grid’s getting exposed, not 80. It’s not coming out the way I’ve planned. Panic? Cheat? I feel like it sometimes. This is what random numbers do when you let them loose. (see http://www.random.org/analysis/ for an article on this, including Dilbert’s take.)
But, random numbers have another property: they average out. Guaranteed. Over time, 80% of the numbers will be 8 or less. I can be assured that the next time I do the yellow part of the grid, the numbers will push back toward exposing 80% of the grid to yellow. I’ll bet I will even get some sequences like “5, 3, 6, 2, 2, 7, 8, 1, 5,…” when NO occurrences of 10 or 9 will come up. Probability is a bulldozer. If you set it up for 80%, even though the current numbers are not looking good, it WILL come out 80%.
Are you still with me? Come on! This stuff is fascinating! Buckle up for the philosophical/theological-pondering part of our day:
If God is perfect and omnipotent, how can he abide the current system of stuff going on that is so chaotic, evil, and generally not apparently what his plan should allow? In other words, it looks like he wants 80%, but a quick scan around the globe looks like it’s currently coming up a LOT of nines and tens! But if 80% is the plan, 80% will happen. Randomness IS a chaos – you never know what will happen next. But probability IS a bulldozer. It WILL achieve 80 percentness, heck or high water.
A life of faith means betting on the bulldozer.
Filed under: Control and Chaos
“God’s Appointment Book for August 10, 2010″
Thought much about circles lately? One of the balance-of-opposites that I love to ponder is the circle and the square. They are the most basic items of geometry (with the triangle coming up as a distant third). Every kindergartner who knows their shapes will list these two first (unless they are a smartaleck like me and say, “dodecahedron”).
It strikes me that the circle (and sphere) is the only geometric form that nature strives to makes perfectly. Think about it: a soap bubble floating in the air wobbles out of round as it drifts, but it is always straining for perfect sphericity. Let that bubble land on the wet countertop, and it will outline a perfect circle. A drop of water floating in the space station would eventually settle into a perfectly round ball. Take a hot ball of burning gases and put it out in the middle of the universe and it’s a perfectly round sunshine in the sky. Okay, you may quibble that the soap bubble is out of round because the soap film is thicker on the bottom, and the sun’s rotation skews its shape, but all things equal, nature loves a sphere. In the midst of the jumble of forces and energy clashing all around us, things want to settle into a circle.
So in the painting above, I’m seeing if a circle can emerge from the chaos of my random-controlled grid. I’ve assigned a target color for the squares that vaguely outline a circle and another target for the background area. So for instance, the background gets 20% yellow and the circle gets 80% yellow, so I randomly remove 2 out of 10 blocks in the background, and 8 out of 10 blocks in the circle area. For the squares that border the circle, I split the difference, 6 out of 10. Spatter yellow, let it dry, replace the blocks and do the blue layer. And the red and black layers. Repeat a whole lot of times. (Yes, this took forever.)
The circle did emerge, and though it does look a bit diamond-shaped close up, stand back and squint your eyes, and it gets pretty darned circular.
Amidst the chaos of the day, it’s nice to ponder an underlying force pulling everything toward a calm circularity.
“God’s Appointment Book for November 17, 2010″
How “guided” can we claim to be in this life? If there’s a Higher Power or a Supreme Being or a Force, how involved can I expect him (her, it) to be in my everyday life? Omnipotence carries a lot of freight. “All Powerful” means all the knobs are at 11. Nothing goes on without a signature from the front office. But wait a minute: it sure seems like I can stop for a sip of coffee right now (Ewww. It’s cold) or put my feet up on the desk (Oof. Hard to type).
I have friends who feel that God helps them choose what socks they wear each day, and friends who believe that God —if there is one— has no say-so whatever in their daily life. Most of us fall somewhere between the socks and the cynicism. But where?
In this painting, I chose to use the proportion of the floor plan that God gave Moses in telling him how to build the Tabernacle, which was a portable tent/temple the Jews used for years. Interesting, that the Ruler o’ the Universe would get so specific—I mean, building plans? But wait! There’s more! There are specs for furniture and tools, recipes for oils and incenses, even specific artists and artisans God drafts for the project. Check it out— it begins in Exodus 25. But get this: The artisans had to make two angels on the top of the ark, but they could make them whatever kind of angels they wanted, I assume: beefy or slim, buff or dumpy, guy or girl. Baroque or Mannerist, Expressionist or Art Deco (my vote). Or whatever style was hip in the Middle East desert in B.C. This got me thinking: specific instructions, but not direct guidance. God’s omnipotent, but not into micromanagement?
So I set up three areas on the canvas to correspond with the outer court, the holy place, and the holy of holies (where God’s presence was supposed to hover over the ark of the covenant). I chose three different color formulas for each area, and removed a random percentage of the masking squares according to each area’s formula, and spattered primary colors. (Check out “About my process” if I’ve lost you.)
So I was directed by the voice of God, right? By swiping the proportions he dictated to Moses, plus by subjecting my color choices to randomness—throwing the decision into his lap, so to speak. But wait a minute—I thought the whole thing up, didn’t I? Did God turn from the big screen, chuckle indulgently and point the remote my way? Why? Why not? Would I have worn that color socks anyhow?
“Swarm for April 3, 2010″
In my ponderings about control and chaos, I’m really intrigued by the idea of swarms: you know—how thousands of little fish will all swim in one bunch then—zing—all of them hang a quick left turn in unison, so it seems. Bees and some birds do it too. There are sometimes thousands of individuals, each with their own path, but acting as one and making—really—one path. How does this work? Is there a leader? Do they have a greater kinesthetic awareness than we do and just instantly cue off each other? Then where does the “Hey! Turn left!” impulse originate? Or is their individuality overridden by some kind of “one mind” experience? Do all those little brain waves somehow converge?
Last Summer, I read “Searching for the Sound: My Life with the Grateful Dead” the autobiography of bassist Phil Lesh, and he said their concerts were experiments in trying to achieve a kind of “one mind” experience. From the vantage point of the stage, the music (and of course, pharmaceuticals) caused the crowd to move and respond like one organism.
Cool National Geographic article on the subject: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2007/07/swarms/miller-text
Which made me think of the Christian idea (okay, weird connection, but what do you expect?) that believers are “the Body of Christ” and Jesus acts as the head (Ephesians 4:11-16). It’s the same fascinating balance: an immense numbers of individuals, with individual paths and wills, some straying, lagging, or out ahead, but all engaged on this one path, one destination. Some overarching force or mind or awareness is causing individuals to achieve a single path. There’s always strays and stragglers, rough edges and the like, but the general vision happens. And God doesn’t seem to mind using this fuzzy-edged means to get his perfect plan accomplished.
So I’ve been working on a series of “swarm” paintings where I try to achieve a particular vision by vaguely influencing independently-acting individuals. In the painting above, I dumped hundreds of ping pong balls onto a smooth, white masonite surface with the vision of creating an orange circle. Before I spattered blue paint, I took a stick and pushed the balls vaguely where I wanted the orange circle, so they’d block out the blue. After the blue dried, I herded the balls to the center and edges to open the circle shape for the red spatters, then the same for the yellow, and so on.
Ping pong balls really like to roll on smooth masonite, so there was a limit to how much I could influence the swarm—their assertion of their independence is strong, and there were a lot of strays each time. But after dozens of layers and repetitions, the swarm actions created a unified image that reflected my intended vision, but a vision filtered through the unruly movement of hundreds of individuals.
God’s Appointment Book for 5/11/2010
I continue to be fascinated (ok, obsessed) by the problems of God and the world: the idea that there’s a perfect, omnipotent being doing stuff in a world fraught with imperfection. I mean, it’s tough to picture, and endlessly intriguing, to me. Here you are, perfect—plus you wield the unrestricted oomph to pull off all your perfect plans—yet you seem happy to operate in a context that allows for chaos to happen and is chock full of individuals who seem pretty free to honor or ignore what you have in mind.
So, as omnipotent master of my canvas and colors, I explore what it’s like to have a distinct plan, but work it through a chaotic system.
In this group of four paintings, I chose four target colors, with the blue, red, yellow and black ratios based on fibonacci proportion of 2,3,5,8 (another thought stream there, sorry. More later.). Here’s what the targets look like:
So, when it’s time to spatter blue paint, the first grid gets 50% of its squares randomly removed, the second gets 20% removed, the third gets 30% removed, the fourth 20%. Red it’s 20% on the first, 30% on the second, and so on. (Check out “About my Process” in the left column if you’re new.)
Here’s the result of the intersection of my target intention pushed through the sieve of a random system. What does this tell us about how God works his thing?
