In the Studio; Ending the 1970's

In 1979 I graduated from the University of South Carolina in Columbia, and while it was the height of an economic recession, I was fortunate to receive two fellowships in my first year out of graduate school. First was the NEA/Southeast Seven IV artist fellowship from SECCA, the Southeastern Center of Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC. Next was an individual artist fellowship from the South Carolina Arts Commission, an organization that has been highly supportive of artists living and working in SC. I'll post more about the fellowships in the future, but here I want to show a few examples of how my work gelled in graduate school into a minimalist style concerned with materiality and a heightened concern with surface, as I began to embark on my career-adventure as an artist. Keep in mind the poor quality of images have come from scanned film slides over thirty years old.

The 'integument series' of canary paper and masking tape. Applied directly to the wall with the same tape. These were designed to roll into a shipping tube, install and present in exhibition, then tear down and dispose. You can imagine just how much gallery dealers and museum curators liked me.

The 'integument series' varied in size and occasionally included multiple panels. The folds were a numbered sequence I developed for each work, and the units repeated to construct a subtle pattern.

Here an 'integument series' detail shows the translucence and opacity of the paper and tape as it layers in the folds. Attached to a white surface with standard masking tape only at the top, the pieces would hover diaphanously, just inches from the wall emitting light and creating delicate shadows.

In conjunction with the works in paper, I was producing a similar body of work that explored the subtleties of material and surface using canvas, latex paint and graphite. You might image the fun of documenting on film white paint on whiter paint with graphite on raw canvas.

This detail shows just how subtle the variations are in the latex color on raw canvas with no graphite. A large part of these works rested on the surface change in the painted raw canvas to the unpainted areas. A detail that cannot truly be recorded in photography. Something I continue to struggle with in my current work.

The works on canvas were based on the rectangle and were typically sized 36" wide and 48" or 72" long. Like the paper installations these also used horizontal bands that repeated in a subtle numerical sequence.

This image is a bit more effective showing some of the banding variations from the paint, graphite and raw canvas.

This detail on canvas gives more clues to just how delicate and subtle the surface I was developing.