Post-graduation: what I've been doing

It's been 8 months since I graduated. Time has gone by so fast. Since I graduated in April I feel like my work has suffered a little bit but I am ready to jump back onto the horse. I am going to start researching more artists and spending time in the studio.

In May, Carey Francis, Andy Perkins, Venessa Gromek and I got a 1,000 sq. foot studio in the Ogden Industrial Park. It's a really nice big space and most of the time I feel like I have a huge studio all to myself--we are rarely there at the same moments. I miss school and being in class with other like-minded people the most. It really motivates me to work. I know that if I didn't have a studio I probably would have produced zero work so far, so I am glad we have it. We have also used the studio as an exhibition space. In mid-October we held a show titled The Ineluctable Modality of the Visible: An Exercise in Pretention. It was a one-night only show and it was fantastic. I think probably close to 100 people were at the opening, which is a lot for a little show in Ogden. We were really excited about it and are planning on doing another one in the Spring.

This summer I did some work with UMOCA. I painted a piano for the "Play Me I'm Yours" project. It was one of 10 pianos that were placed on the streets in Salt Lake City. Nordstrom at City Creek selected my piano out of the 10 to display in front of their window. It was cool because they coordinated my color palette with their window display. Here is the link -- Street Pianos. I also did a painting for the museum for the exhibition "Cantastoria." It was part of a project by Rainer Ganhal.

Other than those things I have been working little but trying to stay on top of things. My ideas have gotten away from me and at this point I am just trying to produce something. I basically did two series of works this summer and I have recently started on little paintings again. I am applying to Skowhegan, one of the nation's top residency programs. I am crossing my fingers I get in, I really need it. I was going to apply to grad school this year. I started the applications and everything, but I changed my mind recently. I don't feel like I am 100% ready to go yet. I know I want to go, but I want to see how I do on my own first, if I can get into any shows, etc. I want more time in our studio and I want to keep holding our own shows in our space. I am just not ready to leave and I don't think there is really anything wrong with that. I really need to build my body of work up some more...just a little more time is all.

New Site

Hey folks!

I now have a new website. I will still post on this blog, but the website will be more cohesive and profesh! Check it out.

www.hollyjarvis.com 

Art should be like sushi- less is more.

The show is up, the deed is done. I want to make a poem about how it feels to finally have finished but I come up with none.

er....

This morning, Aaron Moulton, curator at UMOCA came and had a guest crit with the BFA students. It was laid back, he had good comments and everyone was laughing at one point or another. One thing that I really took from his visit today was the idea that "less is more." There is no mystery anymore and sometimes we can get carried away and say too much. This topic came up with Holly D.'s work and with my own. Maybe my sculptures were getting carried away, maybe I haven't quite activated the space enough for my own purposes but it's all a learning experience. I am not going to change anything at this point. It's over and it's time to move on. It made me really think about art in a different way. Sometimes I get caught up in the richness of things, objects, ideas....that I forget to keep it simple and to let the viewer wonder.

Keep it simple stupid.

I am excited to start new work-eventually. I am needing a break. After graduation next Friday Brock and I are going to San Francisco and I am thrilled. I am going to see the SFMOMA while I am there and possibly check out the Art Institute. The semester is ending on a good note and only time will tell what happens from here. 

10 days to opening

It's 10 days away from the Thesis opening. I still have a lot of work to do on my large paintings, and the sculptures, but I think I have enough time to get it all done. In reflecting my semester, I think I put forward my best effort and I just hope that in the end it all looks good.

Since I haven't been blogging (at all) since January, I think that I lost a little bit of my direction conceptually. It's still there, but not actively thinking about it and just being worried about producing the work has definitely put a halt to any development. I don't think it's bad to focus on simply making for awhile, and I think I certainly need to take a vacation outside of my own head a little bit. I am trying to prepare the final stages of my artist statement, and I think that's going to be the hardest part of everything.

...

My work has essentially been centered on experience. Describing a certain reality of my own, and trying to imply one with the viewer. It stemmed from some kind of mental-emotional state I was in, but as I have worked through the paintings, I have also outgrown that state of mind. It still is true, and still applicable, but I think I am trying to look at the big picture of things. The figures in the work, both painting and sculpture are important for describing experience, creating empathy between viewer and work. Humanism is something relatable. Honestly, when I look at my paintings, I feel sad for the figures. I want to save them, but I am the one creating them and their insane environments. I think that is an interesting dichotomy between what I am capable of and what I am actually doing. I think that's what it's really all about. It's not about what kind of environment the figures are in, or what they are doing, but rather how I relate to them in that moment in time. In creating them, I felt like I was playing the role of absolute power , but now as I reflect on them I feel like I want to save them and I feel helpless with them.

Inside my head.

Today I made a small moquette of what my Thesis show will look like. It was a fun exercise and had me thinking about installation issues that I probably wouldn't have thought about had I not done it. I made it so I could keep rearranging things as my ideas grow. It is really helpful when it comes to planning out the placement of work and what is going to happen in the space, especially when my work is concentrated on the distortion of it. It also serves as a little reminder about how much work I have to do, and the materials I still need to acquire--such as sculpting my bodies! So much to do, so little time. This definitely helped me as a visual planner, though. 

Workin' hard, painting harder.

This week I had two of my first critiques for the semester. I have to say...they went pretty well. I got some good feedback. A lot of people liked my work, and I got some ideas on where to go next. I am happy with where I am at in my work and I am getting really excited about my show. Oh, and since I last posted I got into the Student Show at Weber. Woot! I submitted to CUAC this week as well, and I really REALLY hope I have a chance at getting in. It would be awesome to show there and to have an opportunity to show in L.A. (The juror is from L.A. and is looking for Utah artists to represent in a show there).

I decided right now I am not going to do a video animation for my show even though I was really excited about it at first. New genres is something that I am interested in and I think that I have seen a lot of strong work in new media recently, but I don't think my ideas are ready for that. I received some good advice from a few different professors this week and I feel I have a stronger direction now. I am still going to make various "figure" sculptures, but they won't be projected on. I am really going to explore what interests me about the space and the figure interacting together. I think I was trying to force that with the video part of it, and it just wasn't there conceptually. I can create an interaction of space and figure without video. Most of the positive feedback was about the architectural spaces I was creating for my figures, so I think I am going to explore it even further. I know right now that the space is important because it creates a context of distorted perspective for the audience and for the figures in my work. The figures are a metaphor for the ways life can distort us. This weekend I have a lot to do and catch up on, but I am looking forward to a complete weekend of art. 

I paint butterflies and rainbows. Not.

Mourning death is never easy, especially when it's a child.


To be painting what I am painting right now is odd, to say the least, but also constructive to my ideas and probably necessary.

I can't just stop what I have been doing just because it hits too close to home. Sometimes making art isn't all butterflies and rainbows. It's work (all of the time), and most of the time, it's brutal. 

I have been more or less dealing with "death" in my paintings for awhile now. Not just death in a literal sense, but death and the experience of being a person, of life, living, and trial. Death of ideas, of trust, of relationships- all kinds of death. The figures in my work to me seem to be a metaphor for that human experience. The strange, indirect ways in which I have contorted the "bodies" are the ways in which life sometimes will disfigure us as people. Our experiences more often times than not, will lend themselves to be disfiguring in the mind and in the body, sometimes even in our environment. Of course some of these pictures are more narrative according to my own experiences and there are some that aren't. I think that's why I like to make these images. Who really knows what goes on inside my head or in my life? Who really knows what happens in anyones life? We really don't know the story behind every person we meet, but I can bet that they are similar. The way we deal with them are not. I deal with things on a much different level than most people I know.

In a way, continuing these paintings while mourning the death of someone is confirmation for me. Death is elevating human experience in my pictures even more so now than it was before. Or maybe, it's just me and the way I view my own pictures. Right now, everything seems to be moving in slow motion all of the time. It's like I am taking in every detail and moment on a literal level.

In all sincerity, I won't ever get the answers to all of life's big questions. But at least I can make urgent pictures and raise some of my own big questions, for myself and for others. 

Land of the Rising Fish Heads

Here is some of my work going on in the BFA house right now: 

Detail

This is the painting I showed in my last post. I have re-worked it since then and now I am taking a little break with it. Right now it feels right, and I want to let it sit for a few days. While I'm resting with that painting, I have gone back to one I started last fall but haven't touched in months (pictured below). I felt like it became irrelevant to my new ideas and wanted to start again on it. Today was an awesome painting day. I got a lot accomplished and I felt good about what I was doing. I wish every day could be that way. I think I am most productive when I can be working on multiple projects and bounce back and forth. It's not really my thing to do something start to finish. I like to ponder it and re-visit paintings a number of times before they really feel finished to me. 

The colors in these images are not perfect, but you get the idea. In this new painting, I am playing with the idea of hybrid spaces and figures. I think it is similar to my big paper painting (of course). This work is something of landscape, in orientation and in content, but it also becomes a room or enclosed environment. I think it is kind of funny that since this is the first landscape orientation I have painted on in awhile (My last few have been vertical), that I decided a land formation needed to be in the foreground (Conditioning!?!?). Nicole probably was getting annoyed because I kept saying, "Oh look, how funny, that dead fish head is a rising sun," but I thought it was kind of interesting.  Sometimes weird moments like that inspire titles for me, so I think I may call this piece, "Land of the Rising Fish Heads" or something to that effect; even if in the end, I decide to paint over my dead fish head.

Nicole painting in our sweet studio! :)

That's all for now. Feel free to comment! :)