Jul 6th, 2008 by vanessa |
 Alongside recent installations that were very physical and collaborative, I’ve set aside a few hours each week to work privately in my studio on these prints. Layers of silkscreen and digital images appropriated from ongoing installations are collaged into made-up landscapes. I thoroughly enjoyed writing my MFA thesis and the research for the document has inspired these works. (Related: Mel Andringa, gallery owner of CSPS | Legion Arts , called Plot “Marsattacksfragonard” as the many details and colors remind him of Jean-Honore Fragonard’s rococo paintings , mixed with sci-fi and black comedy.)
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Jun 20th, 2008 by vanessa |
 
Right image by Cliff Jette/The Gazette
The artist-run gallery CSPS as well as many Cedar Rapids-based artists have been affected by the floods. Please visit CSPS’ web site to find out more about donating to their artist fund:
https://secure.groundspring.org/dn/index.php?aid=2091
Mar 27th, 2008 by vanessa |
Mar 14th, 2008 by vanessa |
 Through research and presentation, we will become familiar with the process through which art content is conceived, researched, reworked, and materialized. We will have the opportunity to explore a variety of subjects and push the boundaries of mediums including installation, time-based media, and site-specific work with emphasis on conceptual development of individual interest. Slide lectures, presentations, and reading assignments will provide a historical context for media unique to the development of Intermedia art forms. Grades will be based on attendance and participation, discussions, completion of assignments, and synthesis of final projects.
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Dec 30th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Beginning Print is a general survey of the art of printmaking. The emphasis is on studio activities and practices promoting visual literacy and sensitivity to the various printmaking conventions. Students have the opportunity to learn basic techniques and concepts of relief, intaglio, lithography, foil, monotype, stencil and computer applications. Slide presentations and critiques will augment studio exercises to facilitate greater awareness of the cultural context in which printmaking functions.
Nov 16th, 2007 by vanessa |
 In October 07 I was invited to participate on an International collaborative project and present at “Impact 5,” a biennial print conference held in a different country each year. I spent 8 days in Tallinn, Estonia and worked on a collaboration that was then presented to the public as an installation.
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Oct 22nd, 2007 by vanessa |
 Hoping to be an agent of change in this world.. I am currently creating an ecology, an environment encompassing species that are synthetic, beautiful, and 100% composed of artifice. First round of material brainstorm: car headlining, fly trips, beads, Joanns fabrics treasures, shrunken sweaters, foam, foil stamping, and flocking. I hope to have the entire environment smell like Herbal Essences or Rainforest laundry detergent. More to come with a 50’s vintage feel and fantasy.
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Oct 21st, 2007 by vanessa |
 Etherial images with references to Japanese decorative landscape paintings as well as malignant growths. I found that car headlining works very well as a maleable surface to hover between a soft print and a sculpture. Images are melted into the fiber via a heat gun. Nature vs. Artifice: Innocent, beautiful, fantastical, and idyllic worlds. Packaged nature for human consumption while teetering on kitsch and visual indulgence. In the middle two prints a slow accretion toward a black shape occurs-a massing of string among hundreds of pins.
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Oct 5th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Accompanying Body Beasts is a six-minute film depicting used sweaters manipulated and sown into shapes of grotesquely enlarged bugs. The abject creatures traverse the landscape of the human body as well as domestic environments and provide jarring relationships through shifts of scale and contexts. We see them fly through the air, crash to the floor, analyzed in labs, vainly vacuumed, and given back massages. The video examines our instinctual repulsion for the millions of creatures that live, eat, and sleep with us in a continuously symbiotic relationship.
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Sep 25th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Monotrace on a sheet of clear plastic. A knitting mistakes included to create a stretched, torn, and worn fiber mesh feel. Drawing a line is simply the documentation of a performance. The knitted structure is two feet wide and approximately five feet tall. Here, the prints or virtual fiber mesh growths organically as sections are added through time.
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Sep 17th, 2007 by vanessa |
 In the basement of the old International Center at the University of Iowa. Car headlining painted, burned, printed, and weathered. Clouds form when the dewpoint of water is reached in the presence of condensation. The Atmosphere is a dynamic system consisting of many types of clouds. At the same time, minerals occur naturally through geological processes. The site of “Cumulus” is warm and moist with a concrete echo that travels through the adjacent rooms.
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Sep 17th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Installation focusing on the relationships created by smell, food, fungus, and scale. The baked objects, containing flour / detergent / yeast / soap / ramen noodles, are hybrid experiments referencing mad science. They are treated as specimen, dissected, documented, and meticulously labeled to become abject microcosmic dissections. Much like a visual haiku, half a loaf of bread is positioned next to a gigantic fungus.
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Sep 17th, 2007 by vanessa |
 An eclectic array of drawings executed in conjunction with the multimedia projects. The drawings are studies of objects, that resulted from my research, and function as a way for their documentation. I focus on the quietude and direct hand-eye coordination when engaging in these pencil or watercolor drawings. More to come as I continue to scan them in. The trompe loeil renderings, especially, allow me to dissect and conceptualize the ideas, images, and things I work with.
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Sep 2nd, 2007 by vanessa |
Through research and presentation, we will become familiar with the process through which art content is conceived, researched, reworked, and materialized. We will have the opportunity to explore a variety of subjects and push the boundaries of mediums including installation, time-based media, and site-specific work with emphasis on conceptual development of individual interest. Slide lectures, presentations, and reading assignments will provide a historical context for media unique to the development of Intermedia art forms. Grades will be based on attendance and participation, discussions, completion of assignments, and synthesis of final projects.
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Sep 2nd, 2007 by vanessa |
 This class will reinforce techniques previously learned while exploring and pushing the multi-faceted boundaries of relief and printmaking. Heavy emphasis will be placed on individual research, conceptual development, work, and critiques. The course is conceptually driven as we continue to hone in on craftsmanship. Consideration for alternative relief methods, via field research, will also be stressed. We will have the opportunity to explore alternative ways to relief printing, thereby investigating our definitions and understanding of contemporary printmaking.
Slide lectures, presentations, and reading assignments will provide a historical context to investigations into the media unique to the development of relief’s art forms. Grades will be based on attendance and participation, discussions, completion of assignments, and synthesis of final projects.
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Jun 18th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Re-assembled from the architectonic designs of milk cartons after they were printed on different surfaces, such as knitted wool or shop rags. With minimalist fascination, by the angles and planes of intersection, the cartons are translated into two-dimensional prints and sculpted objects. The removal from the carton’s function for consumption, its transference onto cloth and its three- dimensional reconfiguration out of other material, refers to some sort of intimacy, mythology, and Joseph Beuys-like aesthetic.
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Jun 16th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Alongside the installation, that used dried pancakes to mimic tree fungus, I also drew the yellow, flat, disks. I documented the various stages of the pancakes via detailed sketches leading me to further investigations on food; drawing parallels to scientific research and centrifugal forces. In the United States pancakes are known to be thick, round, and dry. In England they are thin, slightly oiled and taste best rolled up with sugar in the middle. In Egypt they are eaten as a snack, folded in half, deep-fried and soaked in sugar. The creation of a pancake has fascinated me since childhood as I watched my mother make Pfannkuchen.
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Jun 16th, 2007 by vanessa |
 I am interested in the organic flow of thoughts and how one contemplation, during mental meanderings, weaves itself into another. I see my practice analogous to the act of having a conversation where participants start with one subject and meander to another in a creative, free, and organic way. It is similar to the German author W.G. Sebald whose stories undulate through seemingly disparate fictions, facts, memories, and narrative. Within the last two years my work has traversed through bread, fungus, fiber, lint rollers, dust mites, and so on. I glean, record, expose, map, in order to investigate the materiality of things.
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Jun 14th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Alongside my fiber work I am also interested in the alchemical potential of food. As a dollop of dough drops into the frying pan it spreads from the center outward and forms concentric rings. With each stroke of the spatula the edible disks are widened. In dry weather the pancakes become brittle and hard after several days. I dissected the disks and formed a wall installation wherein the dehydrated pancakes took on the pattern and shapes of tree fungus.
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Jun 14th, 2007 by vanessa |
 I currently interrogate the culture of domestic activity and it’s environment as fertile ground for an existence between the artificial and organic. Wool sweaters are manipulated to look like microscopic topographies. Through them I explore dualities of sensual tactility and abject/fungal references. I enjoy co-mingling disparate sentiments, like repulsion and attraction, in a single piece.
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Jun 13th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Whenever used, the sticky roll traces its environment and creates an index. It accumulates what washing machines or vacuums have neglected and partakes in the cycle of personal cleanliness. The lint roller’s function, to collect and transfer detritus, is what interest me in them. Perhaps this series is ultimately overshadowed by my other work but ranks amongst my favorite projects conceptually.
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Jun 12th, 2007 by vanessa |
 This project was very much inspired by my recent journey to Las Vegas where I saw a Cirque du Soleil show. This work is comprised of over 700 water-filled clear plastic bags, projectors, and mushroom-shaped lamps illuminating the ground, gave an otherworldly sense to the viewer. One was immersed in warmth and color reflections as the crystal-like drops, suspended from string, refracted light while slowly twirling around their fastened threads. During creation, the ritualistic activity of filling clear bags and binding them onto string gave way to repetition and focused precision. The recurring physical action located me in a serene state that was reflected by the installation’s peace and lightness.
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Jun 12th, 2007 by vanessa |
 Body Beasts was a multimedia investigation into the uncanny nature of dust mites. The research resulted in disjunctive relationships through shifts of scale and contexts. I explored dualities of sensual tactility and distrusting, fungal, and microscopic references, as I co-mingled disparate sentiments, such as repulsion and attraction, in single pieces. Because my work has a strong natural science overtone I explore viewer’s perception between inspecting vs. experiencing.
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