Drawing Primarily: Creighton Michael
 a brief and annotated history of my relationship with drawing

Part 5
expanded horizons through collaborations

My collaborations took various routes through unforeseen opportunities yielding fascinating results. From  teaching studio art, to working with former students in my practice, to engaging public audiences, to working with artists in fields unfamiliar to me like music, dance, and video, to fields more familiar like sculpture, ceramics, and printmaking. In every instance, exciting new discoveries occurred that would not have been possible otherwise.   

One of my fondest childhood memories was of the mechanical displays in the store front windows of jewelry stores during the holiday season. These mechanized puppet shows were an introduction to the potency of a pictorial narrative that later would be the genesis for work like Salute to Asparagus.

Salute to Asparagus, 1981. A production of 10 on 8 tracing the life cycle of an asparagus in ten episodes: Conception, First Prenatal Fantasy, Second Prenatal Fantasy, Birth, Adolescence, Adolescent Fantasy, Another Adolescent Fantasy, Adult Harvest, Consumption, and Discharge. Each window: 18 x 24 x 8”.

10 on 8 (Windows on Eighth Avenue at Fifty-third Street) was a nonprofit arts organization funded by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs that managed art installations in the ten display windows on 8th Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Streets during the 1980s and 1990s.

Due to Mic-Nic’s positive response in the Art Parade, Horace Brockington asked us if we would be interested in relocating Mic-Nic somewhere in Central Park for a two-month installation during the Fall? We chose the small lake located near West 103rd Street.

Mic-Nic, September 1983. Sponsored by Art Across the Park, Central Park (5th Avenue at East 104th Street), New York City. In collaboration with Jim Nickel.

Mic-Nic: Alternate Take, October–November 1983. Sponsored by Art Across the Park, Central Park (West 103rd Street), New York City. In collaboration with Jim Nickel. Curated by Horace Brockington.

Installation at 412 West Broadway, May 7, 1983. New York City.

In 2004 Munson-Williams-Proctor Arts Institute Museum of Art was hosting an exhibition of my work but needed additional assistance with the installation to open the show on time. I suggested to the curator, Mary Murray, that she ask sculpture students studying at the institute to help with the installation since this work had been designed for someone other than myself to install. A blend of drawing and sculpture, these new works were in essence drawing kits with instructions that allowed the preparator varying degrees of freedom in deciding how the piece would be installed and in turn the preparator would become invested in the process and its outcome. The student response was overwhelmingly positive not only in mounting the exhibition but also with their attendance at both the lecture and following reception. As an artist and educator, whose primary focus is drawing, I realized developing this experience into a mobile project could be a powerful tool in the understanding and teaching of drawing to students both in studio programs as well as in related fields. Creating an exhibition through collaboration between student teams and engaged faculty as well as myself has proven to be an inspiring platform for teaching drawing from an unconventional vantage point. 

Initially video was used to capture and record marking activity. It was subsequently employed as the lighting source for the installations such as Filament and Drawing Curtain. Realizing its potential for the further exploration of marking systems including those which incorporate sound, I produced two drawing videos, Shadows Trilogy and Double Dutch: The Wedding Feast. 

Captured on video, the redistribution of marking episodes are interpreted as an act of drawing.

An interaction between light and line, Filament combines the sequenced light simulations of Bill FitzGibbons with Creighton Michael’s fiber drawing creating an environment, in which the viewer encounters the tangible nature and intimacy of drawing. As the primary light source, a collaged video of both artists captured in various drawing activities, Filament fuses the viewer’s participation in real time with the artists’ historical marking pursuits.

Tapestry * was created with a patchwork of video stills from Filament** and became the lighting source for The Drawing Curtain. The flickering shadows from the video projection animate the space while  suggesting a metamorphic time lapse.

Drawing Curtain, 2011. Charcoal- and paper-coated rope with wire connections and video-projected lighting, 95 x 88 x 24”. Gallery 817, University of the Arts, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Intervals, a nine-month, remote collaboration with ceramic sculptor, Jon McMillan and assisted by Ryan Chase, transformed an assortment of my rope-based marking episodes into glazed earthenware clusters.

Pattern Play Clifford Art Gallery. October 23, 2013 - January 29, 2014

Installation of Pattern Play, October 23, 2013–January 29, 2014. Clifford Gallery, Colgate University.

ShadowsTrilogy, was a two-year remote collaboration with a graphic artist and two animators. The piece reveals the limitations of communication, which leads to a sense of isolation often followed by despair. In ShadowsSpeak, one hears someone typing repeatedly; Can you see what I am saying? as the shadows of someone signing the words, Can you hear what I am saying? The typewriter’s cadence paired with the rhythmic passing of shadows further helps in creating a space that is as curious as it is anxiety provoking.

Premiered at the Allentown Art Museum’s exhibition, PAST/PRESENT: Conversations Across Time. It was one segment of Double Dutch: a drawing in five parts, a satirical update on art and customs in 17th century Holland. 

With Punctuation, a series of multi drop, solar plate intaglios, I attempted to replicate Moholy-Nagy’s process of disengagement used in his1922 Telephone Paintings, by e-mailing nine digital files containing previous drawing activity and color samples to Christopher Shore at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking. His instructions were to exhaust pattern and color possibilities. No further communication or instructions would occur until the prints were finished and ready to be signed.

The INd Project (2017-18) is a twelve-print limited edition produced in collaboration with master printer, Christopher Shore at the Center for Contemporary Printmaking in Norwalk, Connecticut and Mark Savoia at Still River Editions in Danbury, Connecticut. The project began with the creation of the black and white digital scans and finished with the monochromatic intaglio edition. 

rgbDrawing was a collaboration with Ben Diep that resulted in two exhibitions. The eight related series of digital prints were created using a motion capture process that compressed the extended activity of a drawing episode into a single image. The unusual drawing tools used were patterns produced from former dimensional drawing installations through a computer anomaly that occurred while opening a raw image file with an outdated application. These works complete a cycle of image to pattern, pattern to image.

Carving Air, dance collaboration with choreographer, Courtney Collado, performed during the opening of my In Process solo exhibition. Ms. Collado had seen Ellen Sinopoli’s Embedded Façade a year earlier had wanted an opportunity at translating my work into dance.

Carving Air, January 23, 2018. Choreography by Courtney Collado. Performed at the Corn Center for the Arts at Columbus State University, Columbus, Georgia.