Scenes from My Life in the Art World - The Fine Arts Work Center

I am once again at the Fine Arts Work Center for an annual retreat. A fellow in 1978, I have the good fortune of being able to return for a short residency each year. It is a time to regroup - to clear my head after the busy winter months when work outside the studio limits work in the studio. Summer always comes with great expectations and more often than not these expectations are not met - fewer finished drawings, a stack of unread books, missed deadlines. However, I am usually surprised with what I manage to do each time I settle into my Provincetown routine.

I start this year's residency with more questions than plans. There are lots of ideas floating around but little clarity about how to proceed. Typically, this time is spent exploring new terrain - as it was 30-some years ago when I was a fellow here. I step away from the flow of activity related to my ongoing studio practice and investigate tangent paths.

Since December I have been looking closely at the structure of the New York Times - the source of most of my drawing references. I realized, one Sunday when I was looking for an article embedded in the front section, that the advertising was taking over and obscuring the news information. Splashy, colorful, often full page, the ads easily distracted me. Oftentimes the juxtaposition, on facing pages, of brand messaging and news content was absurd. Also challenging is the complexity of information. Not information itself, but the noise of too much information - especially when it is layered with opinion which further distracts from the essential.

Early this year I started a drawing project where I schematically mapped out a front section of the Sunday Times, replacing each rectangle of advertising with a camouflage pattern. This led to some gouache paintings and now I'm exploring how I might approach the images digitally. There are so many more questions than answers right now about both form and concept - including why do this at all when I have way more work than I can manage with my large graphite & gunpowder pieces?

As uncomfortable as it is sometimes, I always find that these periods of exploration result in a deeper engagement with my work - even if the particular side path dead ends. So, I'm grateful to the Work Center for the ongoing support and for the quiet freedom to stumble around on my own for a couple of weeks each spring.