Mobile Studio Project Artist Statement

The Mobile Studio Project enables my own artistic practice to move beyond the supporting walls of a traditional studio space. Containing everything I need to produce my current sculptural investigations, my mobile studio's design incorporates a display pedestal and easel, a functional model making station, a drawing tablet, and a container for the tools and materials necessary to perform my artistic practice. The Mobile Studio Project's design is made from waste hard wood flooring and molding; utilizing a similar language of craft, architecture, and references to the American home mirroring the sculptural investigations it aids in creating.

Mobile Studio Documentation

Mobile Studio

Mobile Studio
As artists we are driven to make. So much so that it often becomes a financial burden to bear. With mounting living costs, scarcity of employment, and living a lifestyle that does not offer financial stability the artist’s creativity must provide an edge. Most materials can be scavenged or found at reasonable costs to a savvy and frugal artist; however, the quest for a cheap and spacious studio space seems to always be just out of reach.
With this in mind, I have turned a critical eye onto my own artistic practice. Though my metaphorical artistic tool belt is vast, the reality of an affordable space and access to these tools is less likely. After examining my own practice, I have been able to narrow down the tools essential for the making process. The development of a list of criteria to accomplish a space-less art making lifestyle became crucial; the criteria is as follows: mobility, availability, practicality, and utilitarian quality. This list of criteria was then compared to my current body of work and art practice to determine the most commonly used tools, materials, and overall aesthetic of my work. From the comparison of these two lists the tools most commonly used were: a utility knife, a straight edge, a carpenter’s square, a pencil, a pen, a fine tipped marker, and a cutting board became most obvious. The materials were: paper, foam core, polystyrene, modeling glue, and Elmer’s glue.
These tools and material are able to combine to create any number of illustrations, models, and sculptural investigations. Upon the completion of which, these works will be displayed atop the “artist kit”. The design and presentation of this kit will incorporate all of the necessary tools and materials to contain, display, and aid in the creation of my sculptural experimentations.

Finished Exchange Project

I had a lot of feedback of how wonderful this project was. It helped many people with material collection, inspiration, and facilitated community communication. Here are some picture throughout the exchange as the pile grew and shrunk. One was really able to see through the documentation what disappeared first and was seen as the most valuable and what remains. Also, there were those who abused the exchange choosing the most precious of items and leaving behind clearly unfair replacements. Perhaps this is taking advantage of the communities generosity in a way.















The end of the Project





This is the document of exchanges that occured

As I gear up to display the collections that have been graciously donated to me from my artist community, I realize that I do not really enjoy doing the artwork that relies so heavily on the support of others. It is difficult to motivate, meet scheduling needs, contact, make drop off points, etc for each individual. I value my own independence and like working on my own time table. The questions of how to go about the display of these objects is on my mind. I have been thinking about laying out the objects in some kind of order or patterning. I am also curious what kind of information I will obtain during the duration of the work. I am also curious to know how the public will engage with the work itself. I set up on Monday.

Generosity

As artist our production space is often one of the most important assets we have as an artist and the second is the material we use to produce our work. Both are always in short supply. We often work jobs that never quite fulfill us to earn the capital necessary to purchase materials necessary to continue our creative investigation. Being strapped for cash, space, and material we must turn to our community for support.
Here at SUNY New Paltz, in the Fine Arts Building we are a teaming organism of creative production. Despite us all breathing the same air behind close doors, our community lacks communication. It lacks the flexibility to pass between the doors freely, engage with each other for the dissemination of ideas, skills, and helping hands.
For my project I will be facilitating an artist community material swap. This material swap will be held in a common community space no longer held behind close doors. It will provide a place to gather engaging with others. The materials will be coming from the artist themselves, donating material that is cluttering up their space, unwanted, unused, or scraps. This will then free up the valuable production space for each individual. Those who donate material are then able to select the from the accumulation of objects, materials, and supplies brought to the community space thusly reducing the financial cost of their own practice.
The accumulated objects will be arranged into a dense collection that will become a landscape of potential creativity. The project will be ongoing for 10 days. Each day the space and the collection will be documented noting what has been left behind and what has been removed. These photos will be the map of artist interaction with the materials, the community, and the transaction of goods outside of the capitalist system.

Accumulation finished

Completion of the project resulted in a few interesting revelations. The first being this is not a direction I wish to work in anymore. Though interesting I feel as though focusing to much on one thing is a poor decision. What brought me to play with the 2x4 as a material is not what I have begun focusing on. It is time to step back a little and take some time to play. The results will be much better. The second revelation was brought while working. I enjoy labor intensive projects. Doing tedious things suits my creative drive and personality. Here are some pictures of the finished piece. I am overall unenthusiastic by the end result but they can't all be winners can they.

In Progress

I fear that I have bitten off more than I can chew with this project. I feel as though the sheer amount of wooden slices I will need to really make this piece interesting is far more than I can produce alone. I have hit a few snags with studio access. These were not part of my initial assessment. At the moment I have one fairly large box. I would like 3 at least. There is definitely a power in quantity for this project.

Accumulation

Over the last year I have been engaged with a particularly interesting dialogue with the common 2x4. I have been trying to uncover its material potentiality and use it as a vehicle to discuss our current economic crisis and the plight that has afflicted contemporary man. Our civilization has been constructed in both a physical and metaphysical sense. I would argue that our world and the way we perceive it is the physical manifestation of our mental projections. We rarely are able to perceive what is in front of us clearly. We have become complacent with our own observations and have become reliant on secondary and tertiary knowledge to define our existence. In examining the 2x4 the preconceived notions of what a 2x4 is and what it is used for have stagnated our creativity of what its material affordances could be. A 2x4 is structural, used to build, it has an inherent strength. What if it wasn’t? In my investigation I have discovered a vast potential that lurks just beneath the thin veneer of its façade.
I envision a sea of potential frothing and writhing within the ordinary and mundane waiting to go beyond former constraints. I am curious to know what it is the 2x4 would like, if it were sentient, to be. For my project I will taking a single 2x4 and emptying it of its strength, of its stability, of all our preconceived notions of what it should be. I envision a river of potential pouring forth from the 2x4 itself.
I will do this by constructing a finely crafted 2x4 by hand. This 2x4 will be empty. Behind the surface, its façade, will be a space to fill with potential. The space that is contained within the veneer will then be poured out in the form of fine slices of wood, each piece representative of a possibility that has gone unacknowledged, unrealized, and unseen. These symbolic pieces of wood will flow across the floor accumulating, dividing up space, and making the viewer negotiate the world it occupies differently.