I'm sharing with you some process work for a new series of prints that I am working on. These will be a lot of 24" x 36" canvases placed beside one another to create a larger composition. Each piece will connect in a sequential manner. As you can see from the image, I have this broken up into two compositions. Each composition will house 7 24 x 36 pieces. I'm looking to do about 5 comps, making it a total of 35 pieces. That should fill a gallery no problem.
I plan on this being the centerpiece for my 2016 showings. As I morph from doing traditional collage into larger scale print pieces, I am finding that there are a few more important things to take into consideration. Not just in the process, but the outcome. For example, because I am incorporating more typographic elements, I have to make more of a conscious effort to make everything fit more consciously. In other words, if there is a stronger message being presented,I need to make sure that that message doesn't get too confusing. ...or too abstract. Or even TOO direct. There is definitely a fine line when incorporating type. Especially when you want the viewer to interpret their own conclusion to your work. I'm learning how to use type in an abstract way. How to do you take something that means one thing and turn it into another? For instance, we all know what the word, "Go" means. What it's referring too and what it means to us. But how to do you take that those two little letters and design them in a way to where the word has no more meaning. That's a very hard thing to do. Total deconstruction.
"Boy, it sure is fun to slap a bunch of random things together to see it's strange and wild outcome."
Personally thinking, this is really just my attempt at creating this surrealist fantasy world rooted in low tech antiquated graphics. These are things that people connect to but I try to present it in a way that more broken down and mutated. From a graphic design point of view, I use this shared language that we all connect to. Things like form and colors and shapes and type... The artist ties it all together to communicate a certain message or theme. But once it's out into the world, it can be interpreted in a million different ways. I suppose that is my real intent here is to play with that subjective outlook. Almost pitting fine art and graphic design against one another and seeing the results. No one wins. Everybody loses. HA!
Hold on partner, you can't mix those typefaces. Those colors don't go together. Where's the hierarchy? What am I suppose to be looking at?
"Up your nose, chrome dome!"
By trade, I am a graphic designer and I spend most of my time drilling specific ideas into art that people will understand. I use this shared language of design that connects on a pretty basic level. Do this. Do that. Buy this thing, interact with that thing... I use visual persuasion tools to get people to act. The design is a doorway to those actions. I spend all day building those doorways.
So, my art attempts are more on the opposite end of that. I think of it as mutated graphic design. Graphic design that just got thrown into a vat of boiling acid. It's functionality completely stripped away in a slimy melted goo. What's left is just some pretty pictures that don't hold much substance. Functionless design. Kind of an oxy-moron right?
"Oooohhhh... look at the pretty pictures."
