Paintings that Move

st woolf = susan woolf = artist, friend, colleague, collaborator, inspiration

at a nyfa business-of-art daylong workshop-conference thing (taking it to the streets: a guide to making art in public) in october 2008, i was wandering around trying to figure out where to sit during lunch, feeling like it was the first day at a new school, hoping to meet people but somehow nervous. i elected to sit at a table alone and take my chances, passively, knowing that all seating would fill up eventually and i'd inevitably be flanked by somebodies, and we'd either hit it off or we wouldn't - but i'd have eaten my lunch and exchanged at least one word with at least two other people. three bites into my first sandwich, i hit the jackpot. i didn't know it at the first second ("hi, i'm susan"), but there was energy, smiling, quickness, and within the first two or three minutes out came the portfolio - beyond impressed i was thinking "this is the kind of person i want to know, i want to have more friends like susan, i need to keep in touch with this person" - and i was so glad i got to see her work.

i think about painting every day. i don't paint every day but i look at paintings most days and "what it's possible to do with paint" is never far from my mind. so if ever i feel that someone is expanding my comprehension of "what painting is or can be" then i am prone to become a fan of that person. susan's work was so simple, so beautiful, so ephemeral, so bold and so unlikely (it seemed to me). it made me think "wow, there is so much more territory for artists to explore" and "the universe of painting can keep growing" and "there are infinite places for me to go with my art" all at the same time.

she showed me these pictures and she told me about how she created them.

she had collected leaves and sorted them into different buckets by color. she was then in the process of putting the leaves onto the tree trunks by simply dipping them in water, she claimed that was usually sufficient to keep them up for a few hours. however, on this day, after sorting all the leaves, a brisk wind began to scatter the leaves, they wouldn't stay up. the wind only increased as the light began to wane, and partly out of frustration, partly in an attempt to salvage something from a full day's work, she scattered the as-yet-unarranged buckets of leaves on the dock. i thought this was just too cool.

anytime susan showed me new work or talked about projects she had in mind, almost invariably i thought "that is just too cool." here you can see her passionately describing a future piece at the first business-of-art group meeting she invited me to.

i started taking pictures of her because i thought "that's just too cool" and somehow being with susan often felt like a historically significant moment in the course of my life. this particular project involved putting seeds on big stacks of newspapers - the roots would bind and wrap the newspapers. as the stacks of newspaper decomposed, they would become part of the trees as they grew.

susan always seemed excited about what it was possible to do, and she had as much passion and ambition as anyone i've ever known. to know susan was to not only know someone who was driven, but to somehow be driven by susan. she constantly encouraged and exhorted everyone around her to do more, work harder, think bigger, and ignore obstacles.

it is rare, i find, to meet artists who you both really, really connect with as friends, as well as really, really admiring their work. you do find those people, but it is a rare thing, a difficult thing. susan was one of those most special people for me - a friend as well as an artist whose work i not only appreciated but admired. when ruthie and i decided that we wanted to start having art shows in our new space, there was no question in my mind who i wanted to invite for the first show - it had to be susan. i invited her over to talk about the advantages and limitations of the space (big, but outdoors) and see if she had anything in mind. she decided to install her in-progress work "carry water." she wanted viewers to bring a glass of water with them to the show, to place on an painted map of new york city and its water lines, showing them the source of the water they consume. surrounding the map hanging from the wall would be several bottles of water. these were all discarded water bottles susan had found, and filled with water from a publicly-accessible water source (such as a river). each bottle was labeled with the date on which it was found, the location it was taken from, and the source of water used to refill the bottle. the installation was beautiful and made me think well beyond the confines of the exhibition space, imagining susan at six in the morning on a tuesday finding a bottle and figuring out a way down to a river to refill it, and keeping track of this information. at the opening, ruthie and i both thought, and remarked to each other, that this is exactly how we want to live our lives - surrounded by new art we love, good friends and fresh acquaintances there with us to appreciate it together. i was grateful to susan for sharing her work with us, and i'm glad i had the opportunity to give her a show.

i want to say a little bit more about the type of influence susan had on me besides simply being a funny, honest, open-minded, supportive friend and an incredibly inspirational artist. first of all, she was there. if you wanted to meet susan for coffee, she would meet you for coffee. if you wanted to go to get dinner before or after art openings, susan would go to openings with you and get dinner with you. this is normal among friends, but what was exceptional is that susan was pretty much always willing. beyond that, she would come to see your art. this is a hard thing to ask people to do - i'm showing something, but it's in brooklyn and you live in queens, and i'll only be there for three hours on a thursday night, and you have to work and maybe you want to go out drinking with your friends on a thursday night and none of them would want to come to brooklyn or to see some art - and it's not just a one-time deal, it's every month, over and over - i'm showing a piece this month at this location, i'm showing a different piece next month at that location. susan was always there. just a handful of people have seen more then five or six shows i've been a part of. i think susan made it to every single thing since i met her. i don't think anyone else did that. (she didn't make the six-hour drive to pennsylvania last year - however in that instance we collaborated together on a piece for that show - a bigger commitment, a bigger surge of support from susan.)

one of the last pictures i have of her is at the "intangible" opening at taller boricua.

it is incredible to me that someone was always so willing to come and see my work. i know i am not the only person who feels this way. part of the gift she gave me was to show up when i was hoping that someone would. second of all, she made you be there. i mean, she would invite you to be a part of something which you weren't really sure you wanted to do, but you wouldn't really want to say no, and then you would be there and you would inevitably think "wow this is incredibly good for me, this is exactly what i need." i'm referring specifically here to a monthly business-of-art group susan started. she was a natural leader, there was never any question that there was an agenda which needed to be followed, work we all needed to be doing, and that we were going to follow that agenda and do that work. of course she led by making you want to do all these things, by making it so obviously evident that these things needed doing, it was absurd, really, that we hadn't done them already and why on earth weren't we taking care of them right now.

it felt like i knew susan for years and years. i couldn't believe it when i checked the date of that nyfa workshop where we first met and found that it was just over a year she had been in my life. for somebody to have such a profound impact in such a short span of time is not normal. susan was not normal. susan was extraordinary - a fiercely dedicated artist, and a caring, giving friend. i have had two extremely vivid dreams in which she has appeared since she died. in both of them she was very happy. i always remember her as living exactly the live she wanted to live, an example of how to be the kind of person i want to be.

here are a couple more pictures of susan being susan:

at a business-of-art meeting with tracy and linda, video-skyping with the bostonians:

and on her roof with angus, on one of the occasional and super-special evenings when it ended up that only she and i were able to make it to one of the business-of-art meetings, freeing us up to yes talk about the business of art but also anything on our minds (some of my favorite memories of susan):

in closing, here are a few of the emails i received from susan. (here are many more of them: http://eriksanner.com/random/2010/st_woolf/100215_some_emails_from_susan.pdf.) it's easy to see why she is so missed and so beloved.

Sun, Nov 9, 2008 at 8:06 PM

Subject: Installation

Erik,

I enjoyed meeting you at the NYFA seminar, several weeks ago.

Although I did not find much of the information to be useful, I did enjoy meeting others interested in public art.

I am pushing more in that direction with a plan of working full time on my own projects within the next two years.

I am starting a small group for artists who are interested in forming a regularly meeting group to help each other with the practical aspects of our artistic goal.

Are you interested? I have a stained glass artist a graphic designer and a filmmaker/ photographer.

Below I am pasting the email string so far.

I am interested in the potential collaboration you mentioned when we met. Can you give me a little more background info?

Best,

Susan Woolf

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Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 10:03 PM

Subject: great to hear from you

Erik,

Nothing vague about this group.

It is all about the setting of personal/ business/ career goals and mapping a path to achieve them.

The members help you stay on task, come up with good ideas and give encouragement when things get tough.

I will include you in the email loop as we go forward.

Yes I am very interested in learning more about the Lycoming idea.

I 'm wondering what exactly you are thinking about my art.

Are you interested in doing a collaboration on a local guerrilla enviro/ installation piece?

I have one percolating through my brain.

It involves a shipwreck I discovered in an abandoned canal in queens.

There could be some very interesting media aspects.

Best,

Susan

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Thu, Nov 13, 2008 at 9:48 AM

Subject: hi all

Erik,Hey if you ever need company on your gallery crawl give me a shout.

I always plan to but rarely go.

Are you doing the Basel Miami?

Best,

Susan

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Wed, Nov 19, 2008 at 6:43 PM

Subject: Let's meet! - making it.....

Hey you all,

I am looking forward to our meeting on Dec . 4th.

I am attaching the powerpoint presentation from the grant writing workshop I attended at NYFA.

Although it is pretty basic I did find several point of interest.

If you would prefer that I not send you this sort of info please let me know.

Best,

Susan

P.S.

I am no longer freelancing as a wax sculptor at New foundry, more time to devote to my art!

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Fri, Dec 12, 2008 at 10:22 AM

Subject: open call digital

Erik,

Don't know if you are on any of theses listserves but this one made me think of you.

http://www.islipartmuseum.org/open.call.html

best,

Susan

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Sat, Dec 13, 2008 at 11:17 AM

Subject: Susan Woolf has sent you an Evite Invitation

You are invited to Holiday Brunch by Susan Woolf.

We invite you to join us for big holiday fun in Astoria! There will be lots of people you know and want to know around a groaning board filled with delicious food and drink. P.S. Bring a poem or thought to type out on the antique Underwood typewriter.

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Mon, Mar 2, 2009 at 6:34 PM

Subject: Art biz group

Hey All,

Although there are nine meetings I think everyone in this group is wanting to take a big step forward toward financial success as an artist. Let's!

It is a commitment and I totally understand if it will not work for some folks schedule.

There are nine salon meetings—one every other week.

So if we start next Monday at 7:30 pm we will have meetings on 3/9, 23, 4/6, 20, 5/4,18, 6/1,15 and 29.

All Good?

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Tue, Mar 3, 2009 at 1:10 PM

Subject: saturday and/or sunday morning?

Erik,

What a great idea, I am thinking of going to one of the Armory related fairs, but messing with art is way better than viewing it.

I wanted to thank you for inviting me to the crit the other night. You showed great patience with some odd and (I thought) unhelpful judgments.

I am fine with criticism but judgment doesn't move the mind toward reshaping the art.

I think your planting video clearly needs something because in it's current state it doesn't have the dynamism your other projects exhibit.

What exactly is needed I could not say.

Some interesting ideas were expressed and who knows which tangent your mind will light upon.

Keep me posted on time and place for this weekend.

I will bring materials relating to the theme.

Best,

Susan

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Sat, Mar 21, 2009 at 12:53 PM

Subject: DAC

Erik,

This is a shot in the dark...

Dumbo Art Center is looking for proposals for the 2009 season.

I was thinking a site specific installation using only cardboard and cardboard boxes with video of ...boxes?

My thoughts have gone to large stacks of cardboard, boxes on boxes in boxes, boxes in water melting over time, video in boxes canyons of boxes with limited sight lines

If you are interested in a collaboration I would be happy to write a proposal jointly or do most writing (as I have more free time) with edits input from you. It is a long shot, the call is highly competitive.

Let me know what you think.

Best,

Susan

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Mon, Apr 6, 2009 at 9:54 AM

Subject: great way to get some buzz

Hey all I know we do not have Laelia or Ronnie tonight.

We have entered the hardest part of this program.

This is where we realize exactly what we committed to and how hard it will be.

The exercises are not hard, rewriting our own assumptions about our limitations is VERY HARD!

If you are able to squish this tiny, but strong, voice in your own head, you have made a giant leap forward toward success on your terms.

Showing up is really 90% of the work.

So I encourage everyone to think about what we want and how helpful it is to be together as we create new and wonderful paths for ourselves.

Here is how I was feeling yesterday, Laelia picked me up by my bootstraps. Thanks!

I am feeling overwhelmed by everything.

I know it is good, what I need and want. I just get the shakes when I think about the power of my dream and how close I am to it.

I hate that women are so afraid to set their sights high. DAMN IT!

I am working choking that voice in my head.

No Limits.

Best,

Susan

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Sun, Jun 14, 2009 at 6:54 AM

Subject: Next mtg

Hey All,

As often happens in my world, the circumstances of my life have shifted dramatically.

I am excited to announce I will be moving to a live/ work loft in L.I.C. on Tuesday. I am therefore unable to host our meeting as I will be away till the 27th and have no time to get wireless till July.

Is it possible for someone else to open their home? I will try to bring soup!

Best,

Susan

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Sun, Nov 1, 2009 at 4:58 PM

Subject: west prize

Erik,

I did not see you listed in this years applicants.

Are you submitting, you have till midnight?

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Fri, Nov 20, 2009 at 4:53 PM

Subject: My Fall Newsletter

Here is my Fall news, Enjoy!

http://eriksanner.com/random/2010/st_woolf/100215_ST_Woolf_NewsletterNov09.pdf

ape meeting

monday evening the final ape (aesthetic purposes exploration) meeting in 2009 was held. it was fun!

in the evite, david and i had put forth the following potential discussion topics:

- the (genuinely) new versus the (merely) novel

- awesomeness (particularly as it relates to the contemporary in art)
(http://blogs.harvardbusiness.org/haque/2009/09/is_your_business_innovative_or.html)

- "the contemporary" (specifically, creating art in a time period which could have existed in no other time period, which is intended only to be appreciated to be appreciated by those alive at the time of its completion, will in all likelihood lose relevance with age and eventually be consigned to the grand dustbin of historical artifacts)

i always really enjoy the unpredictable nature of ape meeting discussions. i used to take copious notes with the goal of transcribing them. these days i listen and try to figure out, by the end, if there's some sort of conclusion the discussion has led us to, so that we can have a distinct answer to the question "what is the function of art?"

today, can't find what i wrote, but it was something like "the function of art is to create awesome artifacts which engender such passionate feelings about them that one is moved to attempt to share their awesomeness with others and find other like-minded individuals, ultimately binding us together."

the next day extremely valuable first time ape meeting attendee justin emailed the rest of us. here's what he sent.

"
Tue, Dec 8, 2009 at 11:18 PM
Subject: APE

So, I was all hopped up after leaving you all last night and had all this decontextualized dialogue rattling around in my head resulting in the below prose piece. Sorry I'm not great with titles these days.

I had a blast. Thanks!

POEM: APE TRIBUTE
For Katharine, Erik, Daniel, Toby, David and Nicole

Which is your favorite planet? Did you ever wish it had a different name? I wish erosion were the verb form of Eros or one of its particles, instead of its sometimes, sad consequence. Ah, the folly of expectations, of reliable metrics by which to justify the simplest things. Breathing, for example. That’s an important one. The urge to glue things together; things which hatch. How many choices are there? You’ve never met my family, have you? It’s about evolution and they keep changing the formula for the glue. They’ve changed it four times since I started. What do you use to clean seltzer from the carpet? Bread. A rye or whole wheat, something hearty, with seeds. Really? Yes. Kandinsky was Pollack’s awesome. I heard that too, somewhere. Does that hold true for everything? No. Cool is more minimalist. Cool is a subset of awesome. Like rectangles and squares. All squares are rectangles it’s like that, you know? Everything that’s awesome is cool but not everything that’s cool is also awesome.
"

ruthie was a good sport (and we broke the rules)

spent most of the past few days programming:

had (arbitrarily) decided to use only found imagery in found landscape, seemed to give it some kind of cohesion, helped limit my methodological choices (film new painting done on top of a picture of the painting? etc.). but then got to a point where i thought "hey, i'd really like to add something" and wanted to make it instead of finding it, so make it we did.

will see what it looks like tomorrow, getting more and more nervous that it won't look so good projected onto the painting, might make more sense as a virtual piece, viewed through your screen. however, did make it so that the background painting can disappear in the projection.

and, thinking more options would be a good idea, also made it so that i can adjust the transparency of the background painting (from totally invisible to totally opaque, here's maybe 25% opaque).

tomorrow i'll find out what it looks like. regardless, i had fun this past week! and thank you ruthie for helping me out!

found landscape (work in progress)

next week showing a couple of pieces and giving a short talk at a small private salon. (i'd like to invite more people but space will be tight and a few other artists are presenting work as well.) anyway, a few days ago i stopped by to figure out where to set up. i figured i'd probably show spring planting since it's interactive and that seemed like a fun thing to have going during an evening of cocktails and so on. however, usually whenever i show work, i want to make new work. i mean, i almost always want to make new work, but logistics (where, when, and how to show, where to store before and after, what materials to use, how large to make something, how much money and time to spend, etc.) can make me hesitate. but what might appear to be logistical obstacles can also end up providing opportunities to do things i wouldn't have thought of otherwise. and that's what i really want to be doing, working on things i couldn't have thought of or wouldn't have imagined unless i had started working on them. this is what happened earlier this week. isabel and i were talking about where to hang spring planting and we decided the best spot would probably be a place where there's already a picture hanging. while we were talking about materials and dimensions for this presentation of spring planting, i kept looking at that painting. i started thinking that maybe i wanted to make something new, which would involve projecting onto that painting. after mentioning that to isabel and then hanging out for a few more minutes, i decided yes, that's what i wanted to do - rather than show spring planting i'd make a new piece, a collaboration with an unknown artist (whoever painted that painting and gave it to isabel). so i took a picture of it and started thinking about what i wanted to do.

the first step was to isolate the painting from the rest of the room.

decided that since it was a landscape painting i had stumbled upon, it would remain a landscape painting, and i'd call my piece found landscape. at first i thought i would do some paintings (or parts of paintings, and collage, somehow making animation maybe) and project them onto that painting, but then i decided that since i had found that painting, i wanted to find all of the elements i was projecting onto it as well. what did i want to project onto it? although it's a recent painting, it shows only nature. i thought i'd try to make the water appear to move. and i decided i'd like to introduce some human artifacts and technology into it, along with some color tension. began searching on the internet, where i found these balloons:

decided to use the bottom-left one above, needed to get rid of any backgrounds in order to isolate just the element i wanted to include in the piece, here (below) you see the sky around the balloon being erased:

after i had a few balloons and watercraft, wanted to see how they fit in the landscape - figured i'd get some motion not from the trees and the wind but from the artificial artifacts making their way through the scene:

one thing i won't know until i show the piece is whether or not to project the painting onto the painting, or a black background. the images might look very transparent and ghostly either way. i'll be borrowing a projector and anyway there's no way to know until i set it up. but i'll make it so that i can toggle between both versions and decide which i like better just before showing it.

the only remaining decisions are what to keep adding (decided no buildings, just things passing through) and how many new elements to introduce. i'm very happy with the walking skeleton:

and once it became as surreal (maybe goofy) as that, decided to make some burning giraffes which can walk through. i've been reading a biography about dali, and today started thinking about breughel (was probably the skeleton that brought him to mind).

it has been really fun working on this. i like the short timeframe, and i'm not feeling much pressure, it's not something i've been building towards for a long time, it's just something i wanted to do which is happening very quickly. knowing i'll be able to set it aside after tuesday evening makes me want to work hard on it until then (but not too hard). one surprising "crafty" note is that i had a much harder time with the walking giraffe than with the flames on it. i thought it would be the other way around. i'm happy with the flames (although i might want to add smoke) but am thinking of redoing the giraffe (am just using an animated gif i found at present, but maybe i'll be happier if i animate it myself). anyway i have until tuesday to show it one way or another. want to see what it looks like!

the way forward (nakasendo)

a few weeks ago i was working on a way to make a dynamic video piece with some of the video clips i took during matthew-and-my walk from kyoto to tokyo. we had always intended to make some sort of collaborative new media art out of our experience. i think we're close to being able to make something which will enable both of us to want to work on it, convey something of our journey, and pay homage to hiroshige. matthew and i are talking tomorrow hopefully so i'll know more then how he feels about this latest iteration of something-we-might-want-to-do.

anyway the technical aspect of it is that i want to be able to combine video in a way which has been in my head for a long time, but which i haven't seen people using. and i wanted to figure out how to do that. first i looked at some of the existing built-in ways you can combine layers of video in flash, to make sure i wasn't making it more difficult than it needs to be, just seeing if maybe i could use those built-in settings and achieve the same (or a suitable) effect:

none of those options were really what i had in mind, so i tried to figure it out another way. either i wasn't doing it right or flash is too slow and too processor-intensive to do what i was trying to do. here's a still result from as close as i was able to get to achieving the look i wanted:

basically what i want to do is ask every pixel, at random, to choose whether to show the top layer of video, or the layer below that, or the bottom layer (combining three layers). in the above image, every third clump of pixels (not at random, and not single-pixel granularity) is showing the corresponding video layer, shifting over during the next frame, and so on. this is something which took me many hours spread over a few weeks to do, but it still wasn't what i had it mind, just as close as i could get it with the time and know-how i had. so i was very excited when on the second day of the processing workshop, will figured out how to do it in processing (exactly what i had wanted to do), and walked me through it. here's a still from that result:

this is something i have wanted to see (and create) for a long, long time. however, for the piece, conceptually, i wanted something more than just random-moments-in-the-walk. what i want to do, and need to talk to matthew about, is include something of the longing and the now-that-we've-been-and-it's-over distant almost dreamlike-wistful quality of the memories of the walk. the training was as time-consuming and as intensive, in its own way, as the walk itself. so i want to do some of the training walks again, and i know matthew is still walking - i want both of us to start shooting little video clips, and integrate those into the piece, which would combine footage of my walks (probably all in and/or around new york city) and his walks (probably all in and around christchurch, new zealand). with luck we'll clarify between us tomorrow night if we're interested in pushing forward in this direction or if we want to do something else. either way i'm excited to feel like progress is being made and something wil come out of the nakasendo project this coming year.

processing

this past weekend, spent both days learning a bit about processing, an "electronic sketchbook" and an "open source programming language and environment for people who want to program images, animation, and interactions."

http://processing.org/

i found out about the class from the dorkbot nyc mailing list.

http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotnyc/

the workshop was held in teacher will's apartment, as a fundraiser for parts and crafts, a collective which teaches kids (and adults), believing "building, playing, and experimenting are the best ways to learn, but, beyond that, we believe that they are also

the best ways to live."

http://www.partsandcrafts.org/

a picture from saturday, will's computer is hooked up to the tv so we can see what he's doing:

a screengrab after making a program which would draw lots of randomly-colored circles of random translucency and move them around in random directions at random speeds:

when judson and i collaborated, he kept telling me i might really like processing, and be able to do some of the things i want to do in it, maybe easier (better) than using flash. i was really glad to brush up on my programming and start seeing what can be done in a different environment. i don't know how comfortable i'll be with processing outside of the context of a class, or if it will replace flash for me, but i like having the option of using it, and i want to learn more.

the occasional collaboration with isaiah

maybe twice a year (seems like becoming a regular thing) isaiah and i end up in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of people and we end up putting a short video together. here's a still frame from something we made two weekends ago. always low pressure, very free-feeling, ultimately fun.

installed and viewable

color study is about combining additive color (e.g., luminous projection):

with subtractive color (e.g., pigment):

to understand what the different combinations look like (e.g., yellow video projected onto orange paint vs. orange video projected onto yellow paint).

color study is up and you can see it for the next month or so, here are details:
http://www.eriksanner.com/random/2009/color_study_2009/taller_boricua_intangible.pdf

installation went like this:

put up the projector:

projected lines where i wanted to paint the colors:

got some help painting:

which resulted in only minor mishaps:

and eventually a completed painting:

the next day, after it dried, i took a picture of the painting:

then tried to match up the colors as best i could, and removed the background:

put the picture of the painting into a video file where it rotates back and forth:

the video of the picture of the painting gets projected back onto the painting, completing the piece:

if you've never seen color study, i hope you make it to taller boricua, and i hope you enjoy it. again, here are exhibition details:

november 20, 2009 –january 9, 2010
tuesday through saturday 12-6pm,
thursday 1-7pm
monday and sunday closed

taller boricua galleries
1680 lexington avenue, nyc
(212) 831-4333
www.tallerborica.org

6 train to 103 street

accessible for individuals with disabilities
free and open to the public

http://www.eriksanner.com/random/2009/color_study_2009/taller_boricua_intangible.pdf