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James Cousens BFA Thesis, 2021

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James Cousens BFA Thesis, 2021 MAINE COLLEGE OF ART The Live Dead Experience By James Cousens III A THESIS SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF Bachelor of Fine Arts In Printmaking Portland, Maine May 2021 Table Of Contents Text Body ……………………………………………………... 1 Figures ……………………………………………………….. 12 Works Cited …………………………………………………. 18 Image Checklist ……….………………………………..……. 19 Images of Work ………………………………………………. 20 Artist Bio …………………………………………………….. 23 Artist Statement ……………………………………………… 24 CV ……………………………………………………....……. 25 Cousens 1 This past year, music has made its way to the forefront of my work. While it has always played a part in my studio process by informing my color choices and palettes, I have started to focus on the emotional effect of experiencing music and the people who make it, specifically the 60’s jam band the Grateful Dead. My installation consists of two large poster-sized prints, both featuring the same multilayer relief print of several members of the “Dead” in concert; one is printed on top of a collage made up of torn screen prints, and the other over a solid flat of color. By displaying these pieces together, I am comparing the impermanence of live performance with the reproducibility of studio records through the use of appropriated symbols which are representative of different parts of the concert experience. This visual sampling is the result of extensive research into the Grateful Dead’s tour scene, as well as growing up listening to colorful stories told by my parents who got to live it for themselves. I aim to pay reverence to the band themselves, as well as the artists and poster designers that created the visual language of expressive and psychedelic art. What attracts me to the arts, both visual and performance, is the ability to express emotion in ways that words alone can not. Live performances are especially exciting to me because the energy of a concert heightens the experience for both the audience and performer. The Grateful Dead was a band that particularly capitalized on this dynamic, playing long improvised jams and solos as their fans got lost in the emotional space of the music. So many factors contribute to the emotional and sometimes spiritual experience of live shows. Their concerts were not only about the music, but about the whole experience. My installation consists of two framed prints, both 36”x24”, which is a standard poster size and meant to be reminiscent of the classic gig posters that I am using as reference. Both prints feature the same multilayer relief print, which depicts several members of the Grateful Cousens 2 Dead in concert, including Jerry Garcia, Bob Weir, Brent Mydland, and Mickey Hart, each playing their respective instruments. One print, titled The Grateful Dead- Live, is printed on top of a collage made up of torn screen prints. The collage consists of different appropriated symbols representative of the concert experience, including elements from the original gig posters and album art, important characters such as Ken Kesey, popular venues like Winterland, ticket stubs, written accounts of what the experience was like, and some hints towards other things one may have experienced at a show, such as LSD. By printing the band over this collage, I aim to unify these different aspects of the collage into a visual texture, containing lots of ideas which intersect to form the live concert experience. By using slightly more neutralized colors in the collage, the focus remains on the band, which is the catalyst for bringing all of these things together in one place and time. In contrast, the second print titled The Grateful Dead- LP is not printed over a collage, but rather a flat of solid color. By removing the collage, which acted as the element of uniqueness in each print, this print is inherently easier to reproduce in mass. But there is something noticeably missing in this print. The spontaneity of the torn paper collage represents the improvisation present in live music, which can not be captured in recorded albums. The particular method of relief printing I am using also speaks to my personal relationship to the Dead. Multilayer reliefs, sometimes referred to as “suicide prints” are special because you slowly destroy your matrix with each layer of the print. In this process I start with a single linoleum block, and each time I print a layer, I carve away more and more of the block. For each layer, I “cut away the block everywhere that the previous color is to exist in the final image.” 1 This turns the printing process into a performance of its own, as once I am done the result can never be exactly replicated. I see an interesting metaphor in thinking of the performer 1 Fick, Bill, and Beth Grabowski. Printmaking: A Complete Guide to Materials & Processes. London: Laurence King Publishing, 2015. 96 Cousens 3 as the matrix, slowly giving more and more of themselves to the art until there is nothing left of themselves, only the remnants of what they had created. In the case of the Dead, that refers to their studio records and tapes of live shows, and for me the result is the print. Although printmaking is usually thought of as a traditional craft, many techniques have developed to take advantage of various rapidly progressing technologies. Early on in my process, at the planning and designing stages, I am able to utilize digital programs such as Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator which allow me to prepare my designs with greater control than with traditional media. I use these programs, which are designed to manipulate photographs, to turn my reference photos into digital paintings. In these paintings I use solid blocks of color which each correspond to a range of values. When seen together, these blocks of color give the illusion of three dimensional form in my images and figures, with each color showing how light interacts with the surface of the form. I enjoy using these programs in conjunction with traditional printmaking techniques such as linoleum carving, as I feel it strikes a balance between the control of my digital process and the evidence of my hand and the labor I put into carving and printing my work. When I go to print, my hand (along with an element of chance) is reintroduced, which is the part of the print process that I think gives each print that element of uniqueness and character. This conversation about the accuracy of digital manipulation and spontaneity of the printmaking process I feel also parallels the relationship between studio-recorded and improvised live music, as studio records are heavily edited and done in many takes, whereas live music can be imperfect and inconsistent, but that is a part of what makes it special. I must also acknowledge that to make a piece of art about live performance during a global pandemic where concerts and tours have been canceled for over a year, there is an Cousens 4 inherent element of longing and loss involved. As I am making my work, listening to recordings of shows, and thinking about the concert experience, I am wishing I could experience it myself once again. Compounding that feeling of distance and separation is the fact that even if there was no pandemic shutting down shows, the Grateful Dead themselves are no longer performing. To make work about them now is to attempt to recreate an experience that I never got to have in order to get as close to it as possible, loaded with the pent-up energy of quarantine. I grew up listening to the music of the Grateful Dead and hearing stories about my parents' experiences of following them on tour for multiple summers. I myself never got the opportunity to see the Grateful Dead live in concert because the band broke up following Jerry’s death in 1995, four years before I was born. So I am left longing for an experience I will never be able to get firsthand, except through recordings and reproductions. With this project I am attempting to understand for myself through research and conversations with people who are able to give first hand accounts of what it was like to go to a Dead show and the intersection of all of the things that contribute to that experience. This is shown through physically collaging and layering these elements together to give the audience a sense of what the experience might have been like. The Grateful Dead formed in 1965 in Palo Alto, California, just outside of San Francisco. Some of their earliest gigs were at Ken Kesey’s Acid Tests, which were wild parties involving music, dancing, and LSD. The structure of these events made it so that there was very little pressure on the Dead to perform a certain type of way, which meant they could take risks and experiment. Their members came from an eclectic background, both musically and personally. They played a combination of rock, bluegrass, folk, country, and jazz. The Dead were known Cousens 5 mainly for their live performances, and over the course of their 30 years together played over 2,300 concerts.2 The band has had many variations over the years, but the core group include lead guitarist and singer Jerry Garcia, rhythm guitarist and singer Bob Weir, bassist Phil Lesh, and drummers Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann. The keyboardist spot saw a number of faces over the years including Ron “Pigpen” McKernan, Keith Godchaux, Brent Mydland, and Vince Welick. Lyricists Robert Hunter and John Perry Barlow are also referred to as official members of the band, despite the fact that they themselves did not perform onstage.3 However the lyrics of the songs and the songwriting process itself were so important to the band that they were considered a part of the family.
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