Of Measure and Material Masters Thesis Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Fine Arts Degree In the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By Nicole Langille Graduate Program in Art Ohio State University 2009 Thesis Committee: Suzanne Silver, Advisor Laura Lisbon Alison Crocetta Robert Derr Copyright by Nicole Langille 2009 Abstract Measure and material are both the physical and conceptual components of my work. Using the body and other substances, the intangible elements of space, time, movement and gravity are made palpable. Through objects and performances, videos and drawings, the invisible is made rigorously and subtlety visible. ii This work is dedicated to Gerald DiBona. iii Acknowledgements My research and achievement would not have been possible without the mentorship of my advisor, Suzanne Silver, and committee members Laura Lisbon, Alison Crocetta, and Robert Derr. Each constantly extended themselves and most critically, asked the right questions when they were most needed. I would like to acknowledge the entire Painting and Drawing Area for providing a stimulating and diverse environment for inquiry, and in particular, my wonderful colleagues for the constant rigor and challenge they brought to the studio. I would also like to thank the Department of Art and The Ohio State University for giving me the opportunity and support to study here. The experience obtained during these last two years has brought me to a new chapter in my career as an artist and educator, and it is with a debt of gratitude that I move with confidence towards the future. iv Vita Education 2009 Master of Fine Arts, Painting and Drawing, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH 2000 Bachelor of Fine Arts, Sculpture Boston University, Boston MA Professional Experience 2007- Present Instructor of Record, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH Drawing I, Time Arts (including sound, video and performance) 2005-2007 Instructor of Record, The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA Installation Art, Sculpture, Professional Practices, and Figurative Sculpture 2004-2007 Visual Art Instructional Technician II, The Evergreen State College, Olympia WA 1998- 2000 Studio Technician (Ceramics), Boston University, Boston, MA Selected Exhibition History 2009 2009 Master of Fine Arts Exhibition: Begged, Borrowed and Stolen, The Ohio State University, Urban Arts Space, Columbus OH Something About Nothing, Wayne and Geraldine Kuhn Fine Arts Gallery, The Ohio State University at Marion, Marion OH Resisting Distance, ROYGBIV, Columbus OH Jim Voorhies and Mark Harris, Curators v 2008 The Ohio Art League Annual Fall Juried Exhibition, The Ohio Cultural Arts Center, Columbus OH. Richard Roth, Juror. From Painting, Wayne and Geraldine Kuhn Fine Arts Gallery,The Ohio State University at Marion, Marion OH Shift F7, Hopkins Hall Gallery, The Ohio State University, Columbus OH 2007 Convergence: 14 Emerging Artists from the Northwest, Burien Center for the Arts, Burien WA 2006 Showcase, The Basement Gallery, Knoxville TN Black and White, South Puget Sound Community College, Olympia WA 2005 Tiny Visions, Lake Washington United Methodist Church, Kirkland WA 2004 New Year, Evergreen State College, Olympia WA Recognition and Awards 2009 The Graduate School Alumni Grant for Graduate Research The Ohio State University, Columbus OH The Fergus- Gilmore Foundation Award The Ohio State University, Columbus OH 2008 The Ohio Art Foundation Award The Ohio Art League, Columbus OH Art all Around, One of five award-winning finalists in an international public art competition, The Maine Center for Creativity, Portland ME 2000 William Randolph Hearst Scholarship, The Anderson Ranch Art Center, Snowmass CO Bibliography Starker, Melissa. “TOUCHY subject”, The Columbus Alive, 26 November 2008. vi Beem, Edgar Allen. “Tank Farm as Work of Art, Art All Around gives new meaning to “oil painting””, posted on 20 August 2008, http://www.yankeemagazine.com/blogs/art/tanks Cronenweth, Scott. “Judging aTank by It’s Cover”, Port City Life, October 2008. Keyes, Bob. “Tank Project Goes Very Public”, The Portland Press Herald, 17 August 2008. Keyes, Bob. “Artists compete to show tank farms true colors”, The Portland Press Herald, 13 August 2008. Robinson, Jerry. Artists Converging in Burien, Highline Times 6 February 2007. Curatorial Experience 2009 Locomotion, The Ohio Art League, Columbus OH Fields of Study Major Field: Art vii Table of Contents Abstract ……………………………………………………………………………………………..……ii Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………….……iii Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………….…..iv Vita……………………………………………………………………………………………………….…v List of Images…………………………………………………………………………………….…..ix Preface………………………………………………………………………………………….………..1 Chapter I………………………………………………………………………………………………...4 Chapter 2………………………………………………………………………………………………..8 Chapter 3...…………………………………………………………………………………….……..15 Chapter 4……………………………………………………………………………………………...23 Chapter 5………………………………………………………………………………………….…..28 Afterword………………………………………………………………………………………….……33 Works Cited……………………………………………………………………………………….….34 viii List of Images 1. Lift……………………………………………….……………………………………………………...7 2. Support………………………………………………………………………………………………12 3. Fold…………………………………………………………………………………………….……..13 4. Fold II…………………………………………………………………………………………………14 5. Puncture…………………………………………………………………………………………....20 6. A Page From the Book of Inventions III…………………………………….………..21 7. A Page from the Book of Inventions III (detail)……………………………….…..22 8. Collapse…………………………………………………………………………….……………….26 9. Standing…………………………………………………………………………………………....27 10.Transnavigation………………………………………………………………………….……..32 ix Preface “One should be light like a bird, and not like a feather.” -Paul Valery It’s a cold day in December when I leave the hotel and head for the National Mall. I stand on the sidewalk, preparing for the task that I’ve given myself: to touch each person that passes within arm’s reach. Once I depart for my first encounter, there is no time to think, I can only seize the moment as it presents itself to me. I reach out my arm and touch the gentleman as he passes by. I repeat the action again and again, each time transgressing a new boundary. Touching Strangers represents a specific but revealing aspect of my practice. It draws together my interests in the body, space, movement and time. It also points to the small and silent revolution that I am enacting in this work. It is one that is distinct from our daily experience of speed and sound, distance and spectacle. It is a counterpoint, a breath, a pause. This work engages many strategies and approaches to making, some of them with physical form and others without. Yet each demonstrates a meeting of substance with something else, something intangible yet palpable. It becomes visible through the body or material, and it is everywhere: in the force of gravity pressing on 1 a surface, in the space between one thing and the next. It is what is pointed to, embodied, or demonstrated through the visible. In Touching Strangers, the material is the body, but the subject is the removal of space that occurs between myself and the stranger; it is the touch and the impossibility of touch. In the following, I discuss a range of work where despite many distinctions, a constant concern persists- how the intangible may be made manifest through substance or activity. Each investigation, regardless of discipline, resonates with the same question- how do I find a means for the material to become fully itself? Restraint is evident in every work. They are laid bare, made plain, and in that plainness reveal a truth about themselves. It is a quality that Brecht called the Verfremdungseffekt, or distancing effect, which he employed to produce a state of recognition in the audience. He claimed that if they were too emotionally tied to the characters, they could miss the meaning of the play, so he created emotional distance through a variety of strategies. One of these was through lighting: by suffusing the stage with light, he would make the actors completely visible. These pieces recall the plainness of the Verfremdungseffekt, they suffuse themselves with exactly what they are (91). Craft is dismissed in favor of an immediacy that comes with directness of execution. To maintain a quality of animation, works are constructed at the speed of thought. As such, a strange physicality is evidenced, moving from form to formless, delicate to dumb, and direct to oblique. Most take a position between these attributes, seeking out places of overlap and contradiction in the search for the poetic between material and means. Similarly, the works themselves defy easy disciplinary categorization, instead preferring an interstitial space between the practices of performance and video, painting, drawing and sculpture. 2 In the following, I will identify some of the sources and strategies that have directed distinct lines of investigation, while acknowledging that much, if not all of my work, crosses those lines as a matter of course. In The Blurring of Art and Life, The Education of the Un-Artist Part III, Allan Kaprow introduces us to 5 models of artworks, with a disclaimer that, “A number of them do not fit neatly into their assigned categories, but can belong in two or three at once...” (130). I issue the same warning for the following, for, as I discuss the relationship of various works within the frame of specific terms, each inevitably contains elements of the rest. 3 1. Substance In my practice, the substance is the agent