Over the past four+ years I have spent a significant time away from social media & spent time adjusting to a new life in the Pacific Northwest. Last fall I enrolled in a Woodcut Printmaking class and tapped into a creative flow and a technical process that was relatively new to me. Below, an example of a first state of an ongoing piece:
It has been a while since I have posted here and I sometimes wonder how a viewer may change over the passage of time. For example, if say someone once looked at my blog/website upon a previous time and later revisited the same image of a work I had posted, is that view experienced the same way? Over the past four+ years I have spent a significant time away from social media & spent time adjusting to a new life in the Pacific Northwest. Last fall I enrolled in a Woodcut Printmaking class and tapped into a creative flow and a technical process that was relatively new to me. Below, an example of a first state of an ongoing piece: I promise I'll post more images soon of additional prints.
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Above is a sneak preview to a new line of shadow projections that I will be presenting this Saturday, 12/21/13 at the Winter Wonderland space located inside the Westfield Plaza Camino Real in Carlsbad (2525 El Camino Real; the space is between Cricket Wireless and Zales). The image you see is a shadow of a snow-covered pine tree layered over an inkjet transparency of a forest. A real pine tree sits in the right foreground. The smell of pine adds to the wonderland experience.
I'm pleased to share that I have been creating new work and hope you will stop by this Saturday to witness it in movement. My 2pm presentation and Q&A follows Jukebox Radio, a performance group that works with music, puppets, and play. They will be hosting a workshop at 12:30pm that day as well. Stay tuned for an additional update on my involvement with Winter Wonderland. I'll also be participating in a pop-up shop on Sunday, 12/22/13 and will be selling some recently new work and handmade crafts. Though this is a retrospective post, I still thought it would be appropriate to share something that I have done in the recent past. Behold, a couple of small-scale artist's books that I produced for the Dusk 'til Drawn event at the Santa Barbara Contemporary Arts Forum. I wanted to play around more with cut paper silhouettes and sequencing images. It seems appropriate that the physicality of a book starting from the outside, moving from page to page or along a cascade of folds can navigate a way of story-telling for the viewer. A Spark, A Flame, A Wildfire (tri-fold): From tree to tree (accordion fold): I wouldn't claim myself as a professional book artist, but I certainly have an appreciation for the genre and have been thinking of ways of incorporating some basic concepts of sequence and movement into my other work.
The shots are in. The first four photo credits go to my intern Jazmin. These photos are of one interview that I had with a student in my office space during the opening reception of Welcome to the Thunderdome. One of the faculty members Marko Peljhan also stepped in my office to speak. I squeezed in the remaining shots: my interns at work, my desk during a couple of my office days, and inevitably the trash can and move-out box. It was convenient, to a good degree, having that office space in the gallery. The location was comparable to my studio out in Harder Stadium, as well as my regularly posted office hours in the grad lounge in Building 434, as several students stopped by my office hours in the gallery. I was able to literally run to the other resources on campus to carry forward my various errands and commitments: Ellison Hall for my paperwork, Laurel's office/studio for our weekly TA meetings, mStudio down the hall for printing my maps, eStudio for my programming class, Troy's office to say "hi" and borrow a checkout laptop, FedEx Kinko's and the campus Post Office to photocopy and mail out my submission to a recent call for proposals, lunch, ...
One of the highlights in this experience was the unexpected but friendly visits from a couple of the other art grads. Daniela, a 2nd year was feeling winded one day and wanted to get her crit writing done. So we shared the desk space for the day and I enjoyed having an office buddy. We noticed a change in the dynamic of the gallery setting. It was quiet enough for us to work diligently, but the space was open for any visitor to walk in. The gallery sitters on the other end of room may have been confused about what was happening in our office space. Their homework, cell phones, and guestbook laid on the table in front of them in the other room of the gallery. It appeared that they took on the role of a gallery sitter and remained pretty quiet. For Daniela and me, we discussed out loud the procedure for adding classes, our 7B TA materials, coffee, taking turns watching each other's stuff as one of use went to grab coffee or run errands, etc. Rimas stopped by at one point to borrow my desk scissors. Bessie made a pit stop and we talked about class, more 7B TA notes. Fanny came by and she cut more business cards for me. The office space was a work space, but also a kind of catalyst for a type of social engagement within the context of the gallery space. Today was the day to get more organized. I restocked my water bottles and brought in some office supplies, cleaned off the remnants from last night's reception (and what a sparkly clean tablecloth we have now. Almost good as new!) Some transcribing was done; I'll have to post my recent Q&A with artist Rimas Simaitis soon.
I had several different visitors today. A few of my section students stopped by to either sit, talk about upcoming projects, or past overdue ones. A few of my colleagues made an appearance to check in on the gallery space itself. Daniela, a 2nd year MFA student was so kind to let me borrow her tape recorder for the reception last night. She came in today and seemed stressed out about her current situation as she is also experiencing a lack of resources and is struggling with adding an independent study class before the filing deadline. I had tried to assist by utilizing my office computer to find information for her. Bessie, a 1st year MFA had expressed some heat about the lack of involvement from the rest of the grads in regards to coordinating gallery sitters for our show. What are our needs? I also managed to get another office chair as I had loaned one of mine to the gallery guide but needed another for my clients. It's been a semi-productive day. Later this afternoon I was (ironically) interviewed by a nice girl named Sharon, who writes for the university's publication of "The Bottom Line." She sat down in my office and we got to talk about my piece. She asked me how successful I was in expressing myself, and I wasn't sure how to respond as this "piece" (or office, I should say) is temporal and spatial and will constantly change throughout the show. Perhaps later down the road I'll be able to reflect some more and provide a better answer. Or maybe not. Stayed tuned for the full report on the interviews, photos, and some notes from my interns. I'll be clocking out soon. |
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Van (rhymes with "fun") C. Tran Archives
September 2018
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