When cleaning up my studio today I found this happy little accident on a garbage bag on my studio floor. I had put the garbage bag down to catch drips from a painting and it caught this beauty. I am now doing further experiments with garbage bags rather than Mylar as the base for my abstract paint blobs. I am also reviving an old project using bubbles.
Frances Muldoon AIB MFA Blog
Friday, November 6, 2015
Thursday, November 5, 2015
What Happened In There?
A lot has happened since my last post in April. My
mother died, I got married and I missed the opportunity to finish up the Lesley
MFA program with a truly fantastic group of individuals, all of who
successfully earned their MFA's and are now off doing exiting things with in
the art world.
I stopped working for a while, only beginning again
to create work for a solo show this fall. I could have easily shown old work, I
have plenty but there was a sincere and driving necessity to make new work for
the show. My previous work it seemed after all that happened no longer fit me
quite right. Much of the new work created is in black, white and grey.
Referencing death, wedding and the in-between. I continued my previous work
using small drawings of domestic space but with a now muted overlay. Picking up
an old project and changing it a bit allowed me to being working again.
I have two paintings in the show, I view them as
finished products in their own right, however the feel like the beginning of
something. There is something important and mysterious about wallpaper. It
seems if something were to hide, some thought or desire it would surely take up
residency with in the wallpaper. Perfectly and comfortably camouflaged until
the exact right moment when it would exhume itself from the paper.
I am now interested in the idea of traces left on a space. I am still
working though exactly what traces mean to me but initially to my mind they can
be objects left behind by some one who died or has left a space, memories of a
particular moment triggered by interaction or visualization of a space.
Powerful acts committed in a particular space, which are highly charged with
emotion or traces can also be dreams. Where people and places come to us in the
dream world and allow us to hold, for a time what has disappeared from our
tangible world.
Tuesday, April 28, 2015
Dream Spaces of Domesticity. . .
I have been working on a smaller aspect of my thesis installation while planing the larger picture. Here are a few images of what I am working on. I have brought in drawings from this semester as well as a few from last semester and layered them with experimental blobs of paint, ink, alcohol and other non-traditional materials. The paint is on Denril, a slightly opaque surface which allows for a slight frosty distortion of the tiny domestic images in the background. The images will be 3 1/2"x5" when framed. This work has combined domestic spaces, references to blood and illness as well as linear cartoon driven images.
Tuesday, April 7, 2015
The Wall was Crooked . . . April Painting
April Painting
As I research the various elements that will go into my final thesis
project I had to keep working. And thus, this painting. Based primary off my
previous semesters painting The Yellow Wallpaper this time utilizing
appropriated wallpaper from film as apposed to the painted replication of my
childhood homes wallpaper.
Monday, March 9, 2015
Spring Break Art Show and First Meeting
Thursday
I had the pleasure of meeting with my new mentor Sharon Butler for the first
time. She had some really fantastic ideas about my future work/thesis project.
My original idea was to create a doppelganger room/painting, a room created
with furniture and wallpaper from my childhood home and from this create a
painting of the installation which would hang on the wall of the installation. Thus
forming dual realities of painting and installation similar to dual realities of
past and present which occur in the space of a childhood home re-entered by an
adult.
Sharon
suggested this might not be enough and encouraged me to push further. This
installation may now necessitate the building of a room as well as the use of
video and sound. On the train ride home my brain went wild, and I have since
reimagined the project in detail.
In
addition to discussing my past, current and future work Sharon suggested I
check out the Spring Break Art Fair running now through March 8th.
It was a truly fantastic experience. Trudging through the snow I came upon the
massive building and entered a world of youth energy and ingenuity. It was
fairly quiet when I got there likely due to the weather, however this afforded me the opportunity to talk to many of the
curators.
Sharon
asked that I go through the fair and select 10 works to photograph while thinking in
terms of curating my own show or about work that I would have made had I thought of
it. Below are the images:
Christine
Sciulli
A
magical installation involving projected light and sculpted white netting
hanging from the ceiling. The viewer was able to maneuver through the cloud
like installation guided by circles of light reflecting off the netted surface.
Sciulli’s is a truly immersive and otherworldly installation.
The
Varsity The Dead People’s Dead Flowers, by Danish artist Anne Mowank, curated by Cassandra M Johnson
A trail
of tiny floor bound white sculptures lead the viewer to a room full of hanging
cyanoprints of flowers. The flowers simultaneous uniformity and diversity create an unsettling feeling. At once empirically beautiful and quietly
disturbing. One almost feels as if they have walked into a stalkers photo lab,
and has seen hundreds of images of themself. The misty ghost-like images are
created from dead and disgarded flowers and plants found in the garbage or even
graveyards. Mowank’s reference to death and rebirth impart this installation
with a mystic and mysterious affect.
Daria Irincheeva, “Empty Knowledge” Curated by Kris Chatterson
and Vince Contarino
What If books were void? A simple yet provoking question asked
by artist Daria Irincheeva, in her installation “Empty Knowledge”. Several
shelves are filled with what appear to be vintage books. Upon closer inspection
the books are empty. Each oil painted canvas details a book which the viewer imagines
exists in some distant and fantastic library. The thought of books without
knowledge challenges the ideas of academia as well as consumerism. An obvious phrase comes to mind but with a twist; don’t judge a book by its
cover, it may not be a book at all.
Will Rahilly Curated by Alva CalyMayor
Past
a thick black curtain hung rigid strips in which light was projected. The
stripes vacillated between a rainbow of colors and white light in motion. At
times appearing as raindrops and others as falling cubes. This mesmerizing
installation of light and sound was captivating and immersive.
Mirielle Jefferson Curated by Natasha Becker
Across the hall from a carnivelexque explosion of work, hung the meditative work of Mirielle Jefferson. Quietly demure and exactingly sophisticated,
Jefferson uses acrylic paint to reference collage. Precisely painted fragments
of familiar images and bright white paint wrap around, lay and veer off her uniformly eggshell canvases. Jefferson’s precision and simplicity reference
not only collage, but minimalism and a fragmented realism.
Fall
on Your Sword, “Greed is Good” Sarah Bereza
Akin
to the idea of a magic mirror or the talking head in the Wizard of OZ, this
installation is complete with lights, projection and sound creates curiosity in the viewer. As the man in the orb drones on, the
semi empty wine bottles continue to orbit, creating a period of reflection and
contemplation on the part of the viewer.
Dan
Conway, “huh?’ Curated by Leah Dixon
Two works struck me in Speed Rack, An Exhibition of the Beverly’s 2015 Staff, Colin Tom’s “Blocks” and Dan Conway’s “huh?”. Conway’s
use of the backlit silhouette immediately caught my attention. Readily visible
is the profile of a stereotypical witch or crone. However, as I looked further
I wondered if it was similar to the image/illusion of the duck and the rabbit,
everyone seeing one or the other, only to be coaxed into
believing that there could possibly be another image present. Perhaps it is
the negative space that holds the value - simplicity or complexity, either
answer is possible.
Colin
Tom, “Blocks” Curated by Leah Dixon
Initially
drawn in by the fleshy pinks of the walls, I became entranced by Tom’s cartoon
images of domestic and sexualized objects. Mingled among this semi-grid of
concrete blocks, bananas, chairs and sandwiches are malformed humanoid
characters and body parts often in suggestive positions but strikingly missing
genitalia. I admire Tom’s flat style of painting as well as his choice of a
narrow color pallet. The sexuality and humor of this work is obvious yet
engaging.
Grace Villamil
A
driving instrumental sound track added to the mysterious ambiance
surrounding Grace Villamil's installation. Created out of thermal Mylar
blankets, Villamil's larger than life entities prompt viewers to inspect the
two sculptures from all angles. Finally it begs the question, "can I go
inside?" A small opening at the front of the lager sculpture allowed
viewers to squeeze inside. These sculptures play on thoughts of internal,
external as well as ideas of admittance and rejection.
Dirby Curated
by Ambre Kelly + Andrew Gori
A
room that could be strait out of an episode of American Horror or Oddities, the
artist known as Dirby created a space of intrusion. Dirby’s public space was
made to feel private. The viewer felt as if they did not belong, as if they
were peeking in on another person’s room or space. The overwhelming array
of doll heads and hanging curiosities make for a uniquely unnerving
installation.
Spring Break was a fantastic showing of new work. The pieces I have chosen to share here represent work that I immediately connected with in some way. The majority of these works are in the form of installation, many involving light, sound and projections as well as the creation of a space. I feel these installations will push me to involve similar elements in my own work going forward.
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