My studio here at SCAD has a wall that is about 22 feet long. It is great inside the studio and I have plenty of room to work. The wall on the outside of the studio is blank, painted with the ubiquitous gloss white paint that I guess art schools everywhere use. I am confronted by this wall (what I guess Melville would call the "whiteness of the whale") each time I go into my studio. I felt like it was confronting me to do something with it. In his essay "Whitescapes" in his book, Chromophobia, the artist David Batchelor talks about a kind of whiteness that is accusatory. This has been on my mind as I pass this wall.
I've decided to use this wall as a site for drawing.
I am going to make some drawing installations on this wall, short-term projects of a week or so. My goal here is to expand my practice to include works that are specific to a location and have a limited means of execution. I also want them to have as their main focus the formal essentials of two dimensional art. I am not interested in making sculpture, but rather I am interested in the consequence of a mark on a surface, the evidence of the tool being used, and the duration of a mark in relation to a body.
Miwon Kwon's lecture on Felix Gonzales-Torres has really stayed with me. Specifically the way Felix's work comes into being based on the certificates of authenticity and how the transmission of the certificate allows for the manifestation of the work. Since these wall drawings are specific to the wall outside of my studio, it might be necessary to document them in writing in addition to photographing them. I am not certain if these drawings can be done anywhere, but if someone wants me to recreate one how do I do it? Can I make the flexibility of location a part of the work? Do I have to be there to install it? All of those questions that Dr. Kwon posed in her lecture interest me a great deal.
