It draws inspiration from the motifs and politics of the arts and crafts movement, as well as from the history of appropriation and. Mortise and key is a phrase that seems antiquated in the language and probably refers to the bones of the walls around us (certainly the walls that surround me as I write this book) but not to the way new buildings are built, not for the last 50 years . Let me paint you a picture of a parking garage that made my mom want to run.
Let me knit you a sweater to keep you warm on the long, sidewalk-less walk downhill to the train station. Concrete has a storied history, ranging from the inimitable concrete of ancient Rome—fortified with the bone ash of Vesuvius' eruption—to the decaying urban remains of Brutalism. It can be smooth or rough, depending on the surface against which it dries or the aggregate added to the cement mix.
As this project reached its natural limits, I was still drawn to the material significance of concrete and its inverted yet integral relationship to the home. Choosing to shape the drop cloth before pouring involves decisions about composition and surface, just as is done later with the painting of the surface. Once poured, I press the steel mesh or metal lath into the "back" of the concrete.
This bare and honest infrastructure is integrated into the work and further strengthens the opposition between material and motif.
Replication and Appropriation
This play with the cycle of reproduction is most clearly seen in my series Daffodils included in my MFA thesis showLath & Key. images 6 & 7) This series of 6 paintings are all of the same William Morris pattern of the same name. They are created using a projector, where the pattern increases in scale and changes in the color palette. The departure from the original pattern through replication is a process similar to playing the whisper down the track alone.
I started the series by sticking relatively close to the original color scheme and scale of the surface-projected pattern. After the third painting I inverted the colors of the original model in Photoshop (image 8), moving away from the recognizable green leaves and sky blue. You could say that these changes in color and scale relate to different options for the same pattern available in a commercial interior design pattern book, but more importantly, these shifts are another way in which I get into these patterns. acquired.
Shifts in color, composition and scale created by the slow reproduction of painting allow the motif to break away from its original context as a decorative object. As the scale increases, less information is given about the entire pattern, allowing myself and the viewer to break from the original source or context. Although these paintings begin with the appropriation of decorative motifs, I transform them through the individual pictorial level and my own choices as a painter into contemporary works that still actively acknowledge their domestic sources and their place in design history.
Pattern Through a Utopian Socialist Framework
Understanding the complex history of the sources I draw from directly influences the way I approach these motifs in paint. My painting process replicates the handmade nature of the sources they draw from (image 9). I approach the painting the way the patterns are designed: I separate colors as if they would have been separated on the hand-carved woodblocks with which they were originally printed.
The shapes in the foreground of the pattern are cut out by applying the background or negative space. Allusions to irregularities in the block printing process are seen in the tension between different color layers that meet, overlap or separate slightly. The inclusion of wax speaks to expensive embossed or flocked wallpapers as well as adding dimension to these patterns, which are devoid of illusionistic 3-dimensional space.
My decision to leave some areas of the model unpainted not only allows the concrete to shine through and serve as a ground or neutral color in the painting palette, but also speaks to a loss of information through repetition and time. This approach (image 11) to these models aims to replicate their effect, while being fully aware of their history and contradictions.
Bringing Outside In
The leaves in Image 12 cover the entire space around the unicorn, but on closer inspection individual plants do not overlap. These plants, varying in genus and color, fit together almost like a collage of botanical illustrations. This symmetrical and contained display of abundant nature reflects Classical aesthetics and Christian ideas of man's dominion over nature and also lends itself seamlessly to the creation of decorative repeating patterns.
If we look at a well-known example of William Morris's wallpaper, The Strawberry Thief (Figure 13), we can see the same approach to floral motifs. In this pattern, the flowers and plants fit into each other as separate units, rather than overlapping naturalistically, providing a limited but abundant background for the central birds with berries in their mouths. Western culture, influenced by classical and Christian ideas about man's place in the natural world, has always influenced our decorative impulses.
We want to bring nature indoors, but our desire to present orderly nature indoors is defined not only by symmetry and the pattern printing process, but also by the Western tradition of controlling nature. Our cultural view of nature leads directly to how we fill and decorate our homes and how we live. This need to stick outside and get excited about flowers and S-curves is given to me by the white-christian-god.
My changes in color, scale and composition are simply a step further in this legacy of idealizing the original natural source of these patterns.
Marrying My Politics to Practice
Conclusion
Bibliography
