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Review
by Ivy Moore
Published in Sculpture magazine, Nov. 2005,
Vol. 24 No.9 pg. 73, illustrated
“Stream,” Jennifer Pepper’s installation in Cazenovia
College’s Chapman Cultural Center Gallery (2005) continues
the artist’s career-long exploration of the connection between
language and the physical body. The stream in Pepper’s work
here holds many meanings for viewers, challenging us to use all
of our own consciousness to take it in completely. Built with two
levels, the  Central
New York gallery seems ideal for this exhibition, but it is Pepper’s
use of the space that actually makes it work – walking in
on the higher level, you are quickly drawn to the aquatic blue lettering
around the wall at the foot level, which is above your head once
you descend to the lower floor, much as you would walk beneath the
surface of a body of water. The lettering ripples like the surface
of a lake as it quotes Meret Oppenheim, in both French and English,
announcing that Il y a d’excellents jets sous ce paysage –There
are excellent streams beneath this landscape (1933). And indeed,
once below the landscape, there is excellence in abundance, as the
viewer allows his or her own stream of consciousness free rein.
Pepper’s principal “stream” is an eruption of
an undulating curtain of small, connected steel rings, raised slightly
off the floor. Its texture and implied movement suggest birthing
and growth. The ground-like color of the floor suggests a riverbed,
and the steel form an actual stream – the source of life –
as well as a strong suggestion of evolution of language and the
human form. The emergence of the shining stream also suggests the
birth and ever-evolving process of language.
Fertility and growth are echoed in the black sunflower seeds muting
the white I-beam that transects the open space – the implied
surface – between levels of the gallery. The beam is also
representative of land, and it is interrupted by a twisting, blue
cord that descends from it to riverbed level. Close examination
reveals the cord is actually Pepper’s artist’s statement,
crocheted in nylon and dipped in cerulean blue rubber, suggesting
that language is man’s rope ladder up the evolutionary scale.
Pepper’s use of found materials is ingenious. The viewer is
struck by the clean lines of the entire installation, so that each
element stands alone, yet melds cohesively with the next and the
work as a whole.
 On
the walls, enlarged digital prints of pages from books, “Field
Notes of Engineering Students (1925-1937),” exercises in physical
measurement, re-emphasize the terrain of the earth and the geography
of language. Where Pepper has incorporated found words and phrases
in her past work, here the integration of entire pages invites the
viewer to contemplate the geology of the area, measure it, contemplate
its importance. Words become landscape, become homo sapiens, and
the two meet harmoniously. Indeed, in Pepper’s hands, words
and phrases become concrete building blocks of humankind and our
world. Language, whether written, spoken or visual, takes physical
form.
A brain-like helmet of cowry shells, with its rounded bumps and
crevices, came from West Africa, near the supposed origin of man.
As such, it evokes memory of primitive beliefs, thought processes
and value systems, as the shells were used as currency by several
tribes. The crown-like headwear, probably having been worn by a
chief, implies power.
Pepper has always been interested in words as a physical manifestation
of the human being’s connection to his or her environment.
In Stream, that physicality extends the connection to the scientific
process of evolution – birth, rebirth – from the mere
seed of an idea represented by the oily, black sunflower seeds.
The fecundity of ideas is precise, almost resembling a museum exhibit.
Could evolution be so clean as the field notes suggest?
“Measure the distance between two points, both of which are
inaccessible,” one assignment reads. Pepper invites the viewer
to do the same. She leaves an abundance of clear space to suggest
there is much room for human progress.
The germinative power of language, the necessity of the stream,
ever bursting outward, reminds us of the complementary nature of
language and ideas, each changing the other in humankind’s
march forward. The stream is a constant reminder of movement, yet
does not allow us to forget our connection to source.
Stream presents an opportunity to literally and figuratively get
inside Pepper’s work and experience it as we would a landscape,
as the current apex of evolution, a setting that not just invites,
but lures the viewer in, makes us think and consider our own place
in the stream.
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Sculpture
February 1998 Vol.17 No. 2
Inspiration
and Renewal: Residencies for Sculptors
• Jane Ingram Allen
A residency provides a place whose primary reason for being is the
support of artists in their creative work. It is a place where individual
artists work on their art in their own way and live together with
other artists for a certain period of time. Residencies can provide
uninterrupted time free from the distractions and obligations of
daily existence. Most residencies are open to sculptors, and many
offer unique and special attractions for sculptors.
Many factors play a role in the realization of this unique environment
for artists. Most residencies offer artists a place to live and
work and do not ask them to do anything in return except be artists.
Many residencies also provide a stipend to help residents pay for
travel, materials, and other personal expenses. A few places do
ask artists to help pay for room and board, and many have a small
application fee. During some residencies artists are asked to volunteer
time or donate a work made during the residency.
Most residencies are not exclusively for sculptors but also include
visual artists and artists from other disciplines, such as composers,
writers, and choreographers. Many sculptors find it particularly
stimulating to have non-visual artists as well as other sculptors
and visual artists at a residency. Lasting friendships and helpful
career contacts can be some of the benefits of a residency experience.
In the following pages, I will discuss a few notable residency programs,
although there are many more not mentioned here that are also available
to sculptors.
Sculpture Space in Utica, New York, is one of the few institutions
offering residencies specifically for sculptors (another is Socrates
Sculpture Park, which offers residencies to work outdoors in
its Queens, New York, site). The John Michael Kohler Arts Center,
Arts/Industry Program in Sheboygan, Wisconsin, also attracts mostly
sculptors. The Kohler program provides residencies for artists working
in clay, cast iron, and brass-all processes used in the Kohler factory
where it is housed.
Many other organizations provide short-term residencies to sculptors.
Some residencies are like retreats, offering a few months in beautiful
surroundings and interaction with other creative people from a variety
of disciplines. These residencies focus on the creative process
and are not product-oriented. They can be places to get away from
it all and develop ideas; they emphasize rejuvenation, experimentation,
and creative development. The Corporation of Yaddo in Saratoga
Springs, New York, and the Millay Colony for the Arts in
Austerlitz, New York, are examples of this retreat type of residency
in a picturesque natural setting.
Lesley Leduc, public affairs coordinator at Yaddo, says that
many of their residents welcome the "spiritual refreshment
in the company of stimulating people working in different mediums
and fields," a special attraction of Yaddo. Itty Neuhaus,
a New York City sculptor in residence at Yaddo in the winter
of 1996 and 1997, says that she felt "incredibly comfortable"
at Yaddo. She added, "the pressure is off; you are accepted
on your past work." This retreat-like atmosphere at places
like Yaddo and the Millay Colony can be invaluable
for the development of a sculptor's work.
Jennifer Pepper, a Brooklyn-based artist who was a resident for
one month at Millay in 1995, says that the beautiful setting
offered excellent opportunities to walk and meditate. She arrived
without knowing what she would do, and an experience with sound
at Millay caused her to begin works visualizing sound-an
idea she is still working with. She did 200 drawings and cast some
pieces at Millay. Pepper also valued the strong sense of
community and enjoyed sharing ideas and studio visits with the five
artists there. Kim Waale, a Syracuse sculptor, was also a resident
at the Millay Colony, in 1996. To her, the experience was
"like working on a different planet." Waale found herself
working on an entirely different schedule, stay ing up all night,
getting up at 10 o'clock the next morning and continuing to work.
Her one-month residency of focused time in relative isolation was
"terrific for my work," she says.
Other short-term residencies for sculptors focus on the completion
of a planned project which may culminate in an exhibition at the
site. The Mattress Factory, in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania,
and the Connemara Conservancy in Dallas, Texas, are examples of
this project-oriented type of residency. Mattress Factory
resident artists are selected each year by the curator and work
on site usually from two to six weeks. During the residency all
expenses are covered, plus artists receive a negotiated stipend.
Residents at the Mattress Factory create a site-specific
installation which is then on public exhibition and may be added
to the institution's permanent collection of installation art. Over
100 artists, many well-known, have created works at the Mattress
Factory. Kiki Smith was recently in residence there, producing
a site-specific work using two floors of one of the Mattress
Factory's two buildings. This work is based on Smith's study
of the collections at the Carnegie Museum of Natural History in
Pittsburgh and drawings she has made of specimens from the collection.
Her installation will remain on view through July 1998.
Connemara Conservancy, a 72-acre nature preserve on the outskirts
of Dallas, has for the past 10 years been inviting 10 sculptors
each year to create site-specific works on its land. The sculptures
remain on public exhibition for three months and are then removed
to leave the land in its original condition. The sculptors are paid
a $1,300 stipend and offered free room and board at the conservancy
during the two weeks in early March when the works are made and
installed with the help of volunteers. The sculptors also are given
accommodations when they return in May to take down the works and
restore the site. This residency at Connemara is an opportunity
to realize a large-scale outdoor sculpture work in a short but intense
time period.
In a longer residency more time is available for a sculptor to develop
work and adjust to the place. Many sculptors say they change directions,
learn new things, and produce lots of new work at this type of residency.
There is less pressure to get something done and more time to relax
and think deeply. There is also more opportunity to experiment,
to make mistakes, and to change ideas. For shorter residencies it
usually works best to have a focused plan. But all of the sculptors
agreed that it's best to be open to changing that plan and adapt
to the place and people at the residency. The Fine Arts Work
Center in Provincetown, Massachusetts; Anderson Ranch Arts
Center in Snowmass Village, Colorado; and the Roswell Artist-in-Residence
Program, in Roswell, New Mexico, are examples of longer residencies
not oriented to predetermined projects.
The Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown emphasizes residencies
for artists who are usually young and just beginning their careers.
Hunter O'Hanian, executive director at the center, says that its
focus is to provide "time and space for emerging artists regardless
of age or background." The Fine Arts Work Center offers
seven-month residencies for visual artists and writers. Residents
receive a $375-per-month stipend and visual artists, an additional
$75 monthly allowance for supplies.
Ellen Driscoll was a resident at the Fine Arts Work Center
for two years, from 1983 to 1985. While there she worked on wood
sculptures that were primarily expressionistic and architectural
and did lots of drawing. Her extended residency in Provincetown
showed her what it was like to live as an artist and made her realize
what that kind of connection to her work could mean. She says that
she was able to maintain that connection even after the residency.
Sculptor Paul Bowen, a British native, also came to Provincetown
near the beginning of his career, in 1977-79. He liked the place
so much that he decided to make it his home and has worked there
for the past 20 years. He liked being in a seaside town, and his
work continues to be inspired by the sea. He states that the residency
at the Fine Arts Work Center changed his life as an artist,
because "the undiluted experience of studio time deepened my
involvement in my work." He describes Provincetown as relatively
isolated during the winter months, a factor that contributes to
concentrated time in the studio. For Bowen, the summer months of
bustling activity and many art-related events and visitors created
a nice contrast. He says that the Fine Arts Work Center residency
gave him his first chance to meet a "real writer." He
especially enjoyed the association with other creative people who
were intensely focused on developing their work.
Anderson Ranch Arts Center in Colorado offers October-to-May
residencies for sculptors as well as other visual artists. Their
new facility for sculpture opened in June 1997. The 2,500-square-foot
studio building with 10-foot-high ceilings has huge retractable
doors so that the space can be an indoor and outdoor working space.
Doug Casebeer, program director for ceramics and sculpture at Anderson
Ranch, said the new studio has equipment for working in metal,
wood, plaster, and other materials. According to Casebeer, James
Surls, a visiting artist at Anderson Ranch this summer, liked
the new sculpture studio and the place so much that he has decided
to move there from Texas.
The Roswell Artist-in-Residence Program in Roswell, New Mexico,
also offers sculptors a sustained amount of time to focus on their
work. The full-year residencies offered at Roswell provide
a $500-per-month stipend as well as $100 per month for each dependent
living with the artist. Roswell is probably the only residency
that welcomes spouses and/or families. Each artist is offered a
partially furnished house and separate studio space at the complex.
Adam Curtis, who was a resident at Roswell from 1991 to 1992,
says that his extended time there gave him a chance to make the
transition, get used to the space, and really focus on his work.
In Roswell he worked on concrete and steel sculptures. Curtis
felt that Roswell had lots of space, good resources, and
excellent support from the community while he was there. The program
at Roswell was started in 1967 by Donald Anderson, himself
a painter, in cooperation with the Roswell Museum and Art Center.
Coleen Sterritt, a Southern California sculptor who was a Roswell
resident in 1994, valued the expansive countryside at Roswell and
the relative isolation that helped her focus on her work. She says,
"the residency affected my work tremendously. I got to the
core of what I wanted to express. This one is unlike most others-there's
no urgency to produce work. You can go and lick wounds for four
months and it's okay. The residency is not about production; it's
more reflection about your life as an artist." Sterritt says
that she made major changes in her work with this time to focus.
She also finished about 10 pieces and did many drawings.
Sculptor Robbie Barber, a resident at Roswell for the 1991-92
year, also appreciated the luxury and significance of having a full
year as an artist in residence. He says that in his case, being
just out of graduate school and ready to focus on his work, the
residency was a great experience, though it might be difficult for
someone already working or teaching to take off a full year. Barber
found that the Roswell landscape, people, and local flavor began
to affect his work. One of the works he completed was a large painted
steel sculpture titled "Goddard Nomad V" (1991-92), an
homage to rocket pioneer Robert Goddard, whose collection of rockets
is on permanent display at the Roswell Museum and Art Center.
Since his Roswell experience, Barber has continued to make
mixed-media pieces, many times using images of trailers and other
vehicles.
The residency program at Sculpture Space is a particularly
valuable program for many reasons. Sculpture Space offers
two-month residencies in a well-equipped space geared to the needs
of sculptors. The facilities are ideal for those working in fabricated
metal, but the studio space is flexible and just about any type
of work can be done there. New equipment is added each year as funding
allows. Sculpture Space Director Gina Murtagh says that this
year they are adding advanced computer systems to enable sculptors
to use this technology in their work. One room at Sculpture Space
is dedicated to installation work, and a garden and grounds are
available for installing outdoor works. The outdoor space is equipped
with a 50-foot monorail hoist.
Sculpture Space has no individual studios other than one
400-square-foot installation room, and three of the four residents
usually share the 5,500-square-foot main space. Some sculptors say
that they find this sharing of studio space inconvenient and intimidating;
however, some say it makes them react to each other's work and creates
a dialogue they might not have otherwise. All say they learn to
adapt to the space and the shared situation.
Sculpture Space has a broad definition of sculpture, and
resident sculptors work in materials ranging from rubber to steel
and use many different and unusual processes such as inflatable
sculpture, burned and charred wood forms, crocheted fiber, and kinetic
sculpture. British artist Steven Pippin developed his technique
of using washing machines as pinhole cameras during his 1991 Sculpture
Space residency. This period was his first exposure to the United
States and led to subsequent museum shows at the Tate Gallery and
in the Project room at the Museum of Modern Art in New York City.
One of the advantages at Sculpture Space is having an on-site
technical assistant who is a working sculptor. Jonathan Kirk, studio
manager at Sculpture Space, is available to help artists
with the equipment and technical requirements of their work or to
introduce them to new possibilities and new processes. For example,
Kim Waale, while at Sculpture Space in 1996, was just beginning
to learn welding. Kirk showed her MIG welding, and she was able
to fabricate a large metal piece.
Securing inexpensive materials and large quantities of whatever
a sculptor wants to experiment with in his or her work can be challenging
in a new, temporary location. Sculpture Space residents mention
that Kirk is familiar with local resources and very helpful in guiding
artists to them. Waale says that the Sculpture Space stipend and
the available resources made it possible for her to buy quantities
of casting rubber and resin, to acquire materials to make larger
works, and to experiment with her materials. Many resources are
available in Utica with its industrial base and many salvage and
recycling centers. Sculpture Space has cultivated these community
relationships over the years, and residents have benefited from
these contacts. Jennifer Pepper says that in her residency at Sculpture
Space in the summer of 1997 she was able to "experiment
with materials in vast quantities," and created an installation
piece using a large number of baseball bats obtained as seconds
from a nearby bat factory.
Although Sculpture Space does not provide housing or group
living spaces for residents, eight sculptors each year are awarded
funded residencies that offer a $2,000 stipend which can be used
for expenses during the residency. Sculpture Space staff
members help the residents find affordable and convenient nearby
housing. The staff hopes to be able to provide housing on site in
the very near future. Sculpture Space has already purchased
a building next door and plans are underway to renovate the structure
as apartments for residents.
During their two-month residency at Sculpture Space, sculptors
are free to use their time however they wish and there is no pressure
to produce finished work. This laboratory-like emphasis is welcomed
by most residents. Sculpture Space also periodically offers
receptions for the public to see work in process and interact with
the residents. Some residents feel that this "opening"
interferes with their concentration and interrupts the process of
their work, because they have to show something even though they
might not be ready. Others feel that the openings give them an opportunity
to get feedback from other artists and the public while their work
is in process. Most residents at Sculpture Space produce
finished pieces which are used in later installations and exhibitions,
but some say they have used the time to work things out, change
direction, experiment, and plan for future work.
The site of a residency is very important to sculptors-perhaps more
so than other artists because sculpture is about space. A residency
gives a sculptor exposure to a completely new and different space.
Many sculptors have small, crowded live-in studio spaces in urban
areas, but at residencies they find themselves working in large
industrial spaces or outdoors amidst trees, grass, hills, and the
boundless sky. With access to bigger spaces sculptors can make works
they would never envision in their own studios.
John Bjerklie, a Brooklyn sculptor, went to his September 1997 residency
at the Ucross Foundation Residency Program in Clearmount,
Wyoming, "with a bit of a plan," he says, "But I
did far more than I could envision." The Wyoming landscape
and Ucross's location on a working cattle ranch certainly
influenced the sculpture he made there. Since Bjerklie likes to
work with recycled materials that have their own history, he decided
to use bits and pieces of a barn and corral that had been dismantled
and left on the site. During his one-month residency he made an
installation of eight structures occupying roughly 10 acres of land
near Ucross Foundation headquarters. He says, "It is
a sculpture park created for the birds and any other creatures observing
the site." The Ucross experience also gave him time
to develop ideas and he is continuing to build on the ideas generated
there. Bjerklie said that he especially enjoyed working outdoors,
using his own version of barn-building with basic hand tools, a
very different work environment from his urban Brooklyn studio.
Many other resident sculptors say the work they do in a residency
often relates to that particular place. Itty Neuhaus, who has done
many residencies, says that she always responds to a site and her
"work comes out of this response. Going to new places generates
new ideas and new work." At Sculpture Space during her
1994 residency, she did a site-specific piece titled "Catch
the Light II" which continued her interest in using light as
a sculptural element. The work consisted of a black fabric sleeve
fitted around a window that funneled light to a hemisphere made
of wax brick melted in place. The igloo-like form was lit from within,
giving the illusion that the heat or light from the window could
be channeled and concentrated inside the form. Later, during her
winter residencies at Yaddo, Neuhaus began working with snow,
inspired by finding the hollow spots in the snow left where three
deer had slept. She says that the independent momentum of her work
is "constantly changing and influenced by new places."
Jennifer Pepper was also inspired by place during her residency
at Sculpture Space. She examined the space of a bathroom
in the Sculpture Space facility by crocheting around its
edges. She also installed a site-specific work in Sculpture Space's
garden area. Kim Waale found that place also affected the work she
did at Sculpture Space. During her winter residency, part
of the sculpture she was working on involved knitting wire while
seated next to a wood stove. She made a large metal piece that she
would not have had the equipment to make in her own studio. It's
natural, she says, for sculptors to be affected by space: "sculpture
is molding and making a world." Different terrain, different
geography, different climate, different culture, and new people-all
these things about a particular location strongly affect the sculptor's
work.
During any residency the sculptor is removed from everyday obligations
and provided uninterrupted time to work. The sculptor is then able
to focus, with the gift of time, on his or her work. Gina Murtagh,
director of Sculpture Space and herself a photographer, says
that the "key to a good residency program is that you have
no other responsibility." Most sculptors agreed that the greatest
benefit of a residency was the time to focus, go deeper, and examine
themselves and their relationship to their work. Janet Goldner,
a New York City sculptor who has done residencies at Yaddo,
the Millay Colony, and the Virginia Center for the Creative
Arts, says that residencies give her time to think through a
body of work. She adds that many times the equipment and facilities
at a residency may not be ideal for making sculpture, but the benefit
is mainly having time to focus. Most sculptors said that they accomplished
much more in a shorter period of time than they would have been
able to do in their studios at home with all the responsibilities,
distractions, and deadlines of everyday life.
Jennifer Pepper says that the greatest advantage of a residency
is the "ability to be an artist full-time, to shut out the
world and be able to work through ideas rapidly because of not having
to work in fragmented bits." During her residency at Sculpture
Space she experienced a kind of "hyper focus" and
she began to think of everything in terms of her sculpture-even
the act of sweeping the studio floor.
One of the greatest benefits for many sculptors in doing a residency
is receiving validation for being an artist and feeling the respect
given to the work of creating sculpture. They are treated as artists
and nothing else is expected of them except that they concentrate
on the work of being an artist. That does not necessarily have to
be producing sculpture, but can be thinking, researching, and planning.
Some of the most valuable residency experiences reported by sculptors
are those that do not necessarily produce many new works, but that
make a change in the direction of their work or allow the sculptor
to focus on knowing him- or herself. When speaking about her residency
at the Fine Arts Work Center, Ellen Driscoll says that this
experience gave her "time to confront myself, go down deep
and encouraged risk and experimentation." She added that a
residency "helps you to know yourself better, extend into areas
that might not pan out, to say to yourself-I can follow this and
see where it leads. Sometimes the real world doesn't allow that
kind of open-endedness."
Suggested references for more information about residencies for
sculptors:
Artists Communities A Directory of Residencies in the United States
That Offer Time and Space for Creativity is a 1996 book by the Alliance
of
Artists' Communities. It has an introduction by Stanley Kunitz.
Allworth Press, 10 East 23rd St., New York, NY 10010. $16.95.
Artists and Writers Colonies Retreats, Residencies and Respites
for the Creative Minds was written by Gail Hellund Bowler in 1995.
Blue Heron Publishing, Inc., 24450 Northwest Hansen Rd., Hillsboro,
OR 97124. $15.95.
Sculpture Magazine The International Sculpture Center Directory
of Artists' Residencies was published in the February 1997 issue
of Sculpture. The directory describes more than 60 U.S. residencies.
International Sculpture Center, 1050 17th St. NW, Suite 250, Washington,
DC 20036. $7.
The Visual Artist Information Hotline Call 1-800-232-2789 to get
a fact sheet titled "Artist Communities/ Artist-in-Residence
Programs," which is available free of charge to artists.
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•
Pepper,
Jennifer. Charles W. Goolsby: Sfumato: Italian Landscape Monotypes,
authored exhibition catalogue essay: “Liminal Ports:
Italian Landscape Monotypes by Charles W. Goolsby,” 1912 Gallery,
Emory & Henry College, Emory, VA, March, 2003
The Italian word, Sfumato, refers literally to the non-definitive
painted or inked edge that blurs and oscillates between lightness
and darkness. It is this momentary state that gives rise and recognition
to the creation of illusionary form. It is here, in-between shimmering
impressions where light and shadow traverse, suggesting that each
is necessary for the other to speak. One is reminded that a picture,
any picture, is a construction of our world. It is within these
transitory translations that remain present in material, in motion,
and in memory, that a picture may be read and interpreted, continually.
It is in this interactive synergy where the paintings and monotypes
of Charles W. Goolsby reside and remain alive, forever speaking.
Roman
Courtyard
monotype, 29 x 37 inches, 2002
|
Philosopher
Maurice Merleau-Ponty has presented the phenomenological ideas between
the interfacing boundaries of subject and object, that may be said
to parallel the illuminative pathways into Goolsby’s work:
The body, is never just an object in the world, but the very medium
whereby our world comes into being, it is through this communication
that we are located and defined(1).
Goolsby’s recent Italian monotypes of 2002 make evident the
connection between the subtle and seductive skin of the plate’s
surface and the artist. One can say that Goolsby is forever tethered
to the skin of the picture. Through formalist means, he offers experiential
sites that affect our kinesthetic selves immeasurably. His works
articulate the rapid transformations of ephemeral radiant light
that has the holding power of stabilizing forms in place. Process
makes this evident. Whether it is pushing material around on a canvas
or a zinc plate, or the conscious rearrangement of shifting viewpoints
and planes in space, or in the physical process of the artist, who
emotionally has immersed himself into the lush filled ancient beauty
of the Italian landscape, all brings rise to things yet unnamed.
As audience to these new monotypes, we too make direct contact.
This is what brings about our engaged excitement to his work.
Within Goolsby’s inked and painted constructed worlds, framed
landscapes are presented as liminal ports where form and content
remain in pause - as if coming up for air. It is in this pregnant
pause where light meets darkness, space meets form, abstraction
meets representation, and temporality meets stasis bringing about
the complexity of his work and its ability to transport us, magically.
In these landscapes, where the gasp for humid-filled-air is thick
and almost too stifling dense, lie the potential to acquire meaning
from their highly constructed fields. Here, the blinding sunlight
gives way to somber shadowed space bringing about the pleasures
that connect us to the printed surfaces. We are no longer on the
marginal fringes of Otherness, but are situated at their thresholds.
Through sensitive composition, and where sfumato gives rise to things
known and unknown, we are about to take our first steps into these
ambiguous terrains.
In looking at the artist’s Italian monotypes, we are offered
multiple entranceways into them. At once, they are Albertian windows;
the linear perspectival system that was invented in the Italian
Renaissance that incorporated the use of orthogonals to recede into
constructed spaces for our eyes to drift along. Goolsby is a constructor
of these spaces and certainly knows the system of linear perspective.
The monotypes are portals that function as lenses onto spaces that
unfold before us. As the architect of these vestiges, Goolsby’s
work operates as apertures that offer radial expansion of focal
points scattering across the pictorial plane in all directions,
suggesting no hierarchical arrangement of forms or to the space
in which they adhere. Thus, importantly, denoting that all components
that architectonically are situated within the pictorial surface
share equal footing.
Liminal ports, entranceways, and windows serve as frameworks to
support Goolsby's diaphanous atmospheres, igniting the notion that
spatial conditions are in constant ebb and flow. It is within these
locations-non-locations that connections between interior to exterior,
image to idea, subject to object, and artist to world exist. Gestural
marks take us through Goolsby’s dramatic interpretations only
to repel us back out again through the circular motion of chiaroscuro.
The fluid monotypes are sites created by the push and pulls made
by the artist’s body. Freely and openly, Goolsby masterfully
orchestrates each composition through the undulation of light and
dark, illumination and ambiguity, form and space, allowing our attention
to be absorbed by each, only for us to return to them again and
again. We are given the freedom to wander through and fully embody
the printed solitudes. Our gaze catapults us inside these mythic
places which are punctuated by everyday things: a bush, a tree,
a shadow, a pathway, Italian archways and ominous courtyards, the
blinding light of open swelling skies. Each printed reflection is
devoid of human presence – we enter, we wander, we experience
worlds that we now fill with our own human activity. It is here
where presence and absence join. Scrutinized memory sheds light
on histories. The addition and subtraction of Goolsby’s activated
and sophisticated mark making system gives attention to the specificities
of place that propel our gaze.
At the heart of Goolsby’s work dramatic lighting concerns
emphasize atmospheric conditions and their traces. It is within
this activity - Goolsby’s sensitivity and bravura - that marks
reside and dwell, giving rise to dream like places; a suspended
residence for spatial concerns, where abstraction meets representation
just this side of recognition. How can one moment, one expression,
one presentation translate the ancient Italian landscape essentially
and completely? Goolsby has said that the excitement for him is
making his return to a new plate, a new canvas to begin again. He
is a thoughtful communicator of visual expression where he submerges
himself thoroughly into the journey. It is in the risk taking and
questioning, in the seeking out concerns and answers that Goolsby
is freely willing to accept of his spirit. This type of trip taking
propels oneself into alternative places and into the unknown, where
one may take up residence, if only for a while. Through commitment
of expressive gesture and meaningful artistic practice, we inherently
respond with livened eyes to Goolsby’s new monotypes. It is
within these painterly passages and porous utterances made from
inked plates that embed reflections onto paper where Goolsby’s
work speaks to temporality and the specificities of space as transitional
locations that oscillate seamlessly between interior and exterior,
space and structure, abstraction and reality, self and world.
Jennifer Pepper, Alfred University, March 2003
Jennifer Pepper, Assistant Professor of Fine Arts at Alfred University
since 2000, is a visual artist whose sculptural work and drawings
have been exhibited nationally and internationally since 1990. Pepper
has been an invited artist in residence to The Corporation of Yaddo
(2000), Sculpture Space, Inc. (1997), Millay Colony for the Arts
(1995) all located in NY State, Anam Cara Artists Colony, County
Cork, Ireland (2001), Foundation Valparaiso, Spain (2003) and The
Virginia Center for the Creative Arts where she had the pleasure
of being an artist in residence along with Charles W. Goolsby in
2002.
(1) Merleau-Ponty’s work is cited and deconstructed throughout;
Drew Leder; The Absent Body; The University of Chicago Press, 1990.
http://zeeman.ehc.edu/art/sfumatoessay/sfumatoessay.html
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