On September 16, the residency at Chanorth came to an end. It was a wonderful and productive hiatus, yielding more than four dozen ink-on-polyester paintings and a series of prints pulled from paintings in process. The new series is dubbed "Code Duello," inspired initially by a book, Duelling in America, lent me by one of my fellow residents, Jaime Bird. As the series progressed, from small to large works, the scope of the narrative shifted and expanded. Longtime collaborator Shane Kennedy, freshly returned from Voyage of the Hippo 2, at my request joined us in Pine Plains to help with the big pieces. I had an idea to revisit techniques dating to 1986, applied to the Trinidad/Santa Rosa series, techniques which re-emerged during my Content phase (CGU MFA, 2006-7) and the pixel/pull 3D paintings. Essentially, the process involves a pigment pouring on a substrate, to which another similar-sized substrate is pressed. Then, the two substrates, connected temporarily by paint and/or medium, are pried apart again. After the pull-painting dries, it's an option to paint over the abstract painting that results, adding another dimension or dimensions. For Code Duello, Shane and I developed a performative element, alternating turns pouring the ink and directing the subsequent pull. It was great fun, due mostly to our ease working together, an ease developed over the past 13 years on numerous projects.
As for Chanorth, I can share that Josh and Adrianna, the residency admins, were tremendously helpful, great people and doing excellent creative work, too. All the residents shared cooking tasks, and at the end of the month-long residency, we held an informal open studio night, so we could check out each other's new work. Aiyanna, Naro, Luiza and Jaime had used their time to good effect, producing drawings, paintings, sculpture, media works, photos and performance/video. It was a real pleasure seeing the output, which for the most part was new to me, given my studio schedule. The countryside upstate is lovely, and several days each week, weather permitting, I enjoyed the nearby lake. Other residents hiked and biked, and worked on the local farms. We visited neighboring towns, colleges, residencies, historic sites and villages, like Hudson, Olana, Bard, Wassaic, Woodstock and Red Hook, taking in the restaurants, sights, shops and so on. I didn't get a chance this time to visit Catskill, where we produced Wall Street to Main Street in 2012, but it was often in my thoughts, as were friends like Fawn Potash and Sam Truitt.
Below are a selection of the raw studio shots and painting documentation.
