16 Blanks

16 Blanks

Those are 16 new 6" x 6" panels I'm planning on using for a new series. I spent most of the afternoon and evening sawing and glueing. The panels I purchased in four packs and added the wood supports myself. I enjoy doing prep work like that, but towards the end of the night, I just wanted to be done. I almost stopped for the day, but decided that it would be better to push through and finish the last few. The more I finished, the faster I could move on and get to working on them. I've had it in my head for a while to do some smaller pieces after working on larger paintings for two back-to-back shows this summer. It'll be interesting to see what comes out of working on such an intimate scale.

Of course, there are more paintings swirling around in my head, as well. There are some ideas from the 'Stratum' series that I want to pursue in different ways so there are some potentially interesting artistic challenges to work out this winter.

I rarely read, much less buy, Artforum. There was one of the October issues on the shelf with a striking image of two casts of Barnett Newman's Broken Obelisk on the cover. Next to the image was the title, The Art of Production. After wading through the first 150 pages of gallery exhibition ads, I found the articles, all of which explore the issue of the 'readymade' and artists who have to rely on fabricators to realize their works. That was worth it, so I wound up buying the mag. I'm looking forward to reading about how the artists they feature deal with the fabrication process and having teams of people essentially produce their work.

I often wonder where some of the artists get the money to have large projects done and I'm sure a lot of the money comes from grants and so forth. Then there are others, most notably the blue-chip names that probably get backing from the galleries and institutions they are associated with.