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Manifestations Appendix
This is a group of pieces that were exhibited to portray aspects of the Manifestations process and show some of the source material for reference. The notes here were not exhibited in the original exhibition. The pieces stood as further abstractions without explanation.
The Piece of Paper Where the Manifestations Project Was Installed in Public
2.21.2009 1:27 a.m.
This piece references the 4th Manifestation.
Blank Clips is a Stand-In for more than one
Proper Noun and the psychological state of being ineffectual or perpetually lost.
Night Cats is a reference to Pablo Neruda's poem by that name published in the book The Yellow Heart.
This references one way concealment is, at times, used in this project. Overtly, on tracing paper, it reads 'There are eight ways to create meaning.' Beneath the surface, there is an advertisement for a singing cab driver performing CHAMELEON WORLD. In the annotation, l m n o p are condensed upon one another and w is isolated in space. At a point in linguistic development children often combine l m n o and p as if they are a single letter or a merged set of letters. This point is used here to show how merging with another can be useful for development, but can also leave one without a differentiated sense of self (for example, the actress blank clips).
'W' is isolated here to represent a mirror of you, which references the 26th manifestation.
Found Objects March 31, 2009 that were used as source material for Manifestations #7
This piece is mostly a section of
This project was partly born out of having cut many past paintings into 4x6" pieces, this self-portrait being one of them.
This is a journal cover created at the time of working on this project. It references the paintings
Inside, Waiting 1 and Inside, Waiting 2
which were made at the time.
35 pages of Bb references the journal that preceded this journal, which was comprised of 35 pages of tracing paper from a children's psychological testing kit.
5 pilots walking references the drawing made on the back cover of the journal inside, waiting. The drawing was a nude self-portrait drawn from the behind in black/white on graph paper with the subtitle 5 pilots walking.
Fran E. Goldstein is a Stand-In for a Proper Noun
A Spanish Elephant Counting Up & Up was the name of another journal worked on during this project. This picture depicts the process of cutting paintings into 4x6" sections
This presents the cover and the interior backside flap of the primary journal worked on during this project: 77 nicknames was a reference to the naming of things that stand for other things. The typewritten hyperlink originally led to a daily image project.
The Source Image of Manifestations 10
and the source experience that led to the title of the writing for Manifestations 13
One of the source images for Manifestations 13
Self-Portrait Referencing
Manifestations 2 & Manifestations 25
This is the Backside of Manifestations 17
This includes a writing excerpt about Relational Aesthetics and a photograph of two cacti planted together in a pot labeled 'join us together'. The window mat is a reference to the source experience for the writing of Manifestations 19 and a related hanging sculpture: a two sided t-shirt that reads DROP THE BOMB on one side and DON'T DO IT on the other.
While working on this project I went to NYC for the first time and bought a set of books from a vendor on the street. The books were:
Robert Henri, The Art Spirit
E.E. Cummings, Is 5
Melanie Klein, Love, Hate & Reparation
This card quotes Robert Henri. It also nods to the NYC bus driver who is the source for the writing of Manifestations 21 and likens him to the Great Man who is talked about in the I Ching. The confusion about the meaning of the Great Man roots in reading Jung's assessment of the Introverted Intuitive Type in Psychological Types, which personally references two of my earlier paintings:
This is the backside of Manifestations 10.
The painting and the writing in this piece describe an association to gladiolus as funeral flowers or relating to grief. The backside here takes a found object, a credit card, and a graphic used for young children to depict the sense of danger and threat to one's identity in situations of loss. The copious text surrounding it signals the inability to grasp and express the emotion and the feelings of guilt for a projected fantasy of having caused the loss.
Preface to the Manifestations Project
Big Trouble in Little China
In the Original Exhibition, the backside of paintings were not exhibited except in the Appendix. Here is the the Backside of Manifestations 15. The subject of Manifestations 15 was 'The Art Studio'.
This piece is the citation for Manifestations #24
and is annotated with a quote from this song by Joanna Newsom:
This shows some process behind the naming of Manifestations 1. It also employs the same quote from Robert Henri that was used in another appendix piece. The purpose of using and reusing this quote is to demonstrate the relationship with time as an underlying principle of this project.
This references Manifestations 18 and a set of ritualized uses of materials, double sided tape and yellow thread. On a day that I and my colleagues were informed that our program would be cut in half, my work partner had freshly painted toenails that were red with white dots. While biking home that day I hit a bump and my ipod flew away. I wasn't able to find it. What I did find was a red sign with white dots.
is the song that was playing at the moment when I hit the bump.
One Self-Referential Attempt at Explaining How Digit Summing Works
References Manifestations #23
Bodies August
This project was created as a distillation of the daily image project. In the daily images, I had created a piece of artwork each day between 2006 and 2009. In 2009 each day had a main image and a counterpart. This was the inspiration for the Manifestations project. I sought to use that method in a contained way to express its essential processes. This painting emerged in the other direction, as a learning from the Manifestations project toward ongoing art practice. 'w' here is a reference to internal and external coherence
While working on this project I came across manna for the first time. It brought to mind the oranges on Janet's bedside table from Manifestations 1. I was so struck that I tried to recreate that image and elaborate upon it. I submerged the manna nougat in a bag of blue water and scanned it.
Here, a statement was made wondering if seeing black/white photography as information as opposed to an expression in its' own right was equal to black/white thinking in the general sense. It also was an effort to penetrate the unconscious dimension of the manna picture in blue, i.e. to put language to the forces that made that image.
Paraguay, as stated in Manifestations 25, is one of two landlocked countries in the western hemisphere. In this image, I have labeled a ziploc bag, Paraguay, and enclosed within it broken glass sitting in windex. It is the same ziploc bag that once held the manna nougat.
A Polaroid picture of the Manifestations project hanging in the studio as it was being worked on. This was the last Polaroid film I had in my possession when Polaroid stopped producing such film. The picture is adhered to a painting fragment that was included in the painting series Fragment of a Loveish Letter
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This is a stack of the manifestations paintings and writings in progress. It is subtitled Zz88. There are 26 pieces in the Manifestations project and 26 letters in the alphabet. Z is the 26th letter of the American English Alphabet. Summing the digits of the number 26 brings this to 8. 8 is a reference to the other appendix piece "There are 8 ways to create meaning." 8 then becomes a symbol of infinity and a reference to the seemingly endless references within the project.
