A Sense of Time, Place & Storytelling The exhibit of our recent work, which we decided to title A Sense of Time, Place and Story Telling, opened October 20 th at the White Raven Gallery in Las Cruces, New Mexico. This is our first exhibit since receiving the new HP Z3100 DesignJet printer, so the show features, among other things, the expanded selection of materials upon which we can now produce our 2D digital artwork. For example, at the gallery entrance (and visible from the street) this eight foot by six foot piece printed on three panels of HP Self Adhesive Vinyl and mounted directly to the wall displays the show s title and is a composition made of bits and pieces from most of the other works in the show. At the opening this created a sort of Where s Waldo? game as people went back and forth recognizing elements that they had seen at the entrance in the rest of the twenty-three new works hung on the gallery walls. A central feature for the rest of the show, are four large scrolls that Myriam created and which are printed on Lex-Jet Water Resistant Satin. These were hemmed using iron-on tape and hang from fabric hangers imported from Malaysia, which Myriam has been collecting for several years for a project such as this. The satin material is translucent and would look great hanging in front of windows, as well.
At the left sisters visit under a scroll entitled Totem Fishing and on the right Myriam with another of her scrolls entitled Daughter of the Wind. In another room is a piece that JD created entitled Vinegar Hill. Made up from an assortment of digital images and photos the piece gets its title from a small district near the Brooklyn shipyards. It reflects a Pop Art aesthetic and due to the sequential nature of the imagery seems to hint at a story. That story, however, is strictly the product of the viewer and not the artist. Still the piece gets at the show s theme of place and story, as well as, the times in which we live.
The original intention with Vinegar Hill was to also mount it directly to the gallery wall, but in this case the wall was textured and the adhesive panels (as was noted in the printed specs that come with the material) did not hold. As a compromise this piece was finally printed on HP Professional Matte Canvas (forty-two inches by 9 feet) and nailed directly to the wall leaving the sides and bottom edges loose. This maintained the graffiti-like aspects of the artwork and produced a much more durable (if not marketable) piece. The rest of the show features work printed on the same canvas and mounted in a traditional way on stretcher bars or other work that was printed on HP Hahnemuhle Te xtured Fine Art paper or HP Matte-Litho paper. The themes of time (which includes the times we live in ) and place are represented in these examples of Myriam s work printed on canvas: Costume Malfunction #3 30X40 on HP Professional Matte canvas
F Train to York Street 30X40 on HP Professional Matte canvas And this example (from a suite of four) that was printed on the textured fine art paper: Desayuno (Breakfast) 25X20 HP Hahnemuhle Textured Fine Art paper
These pieces by JD, printed on the Matte-Litho paper, go directly to the theme of story telling: Oral History 36X25 on HP Matte-Litho paper Duchamp s Nude Still Descending 24X18 on HP Matte-Litho paper
For this exhibit, we are offering the pieces on canvas and satin as one-of-a-kind and the pieces on paper are offered in limited editions of 15 signed and number prints. In the end, it was a lively opening. For some reason, we fielded more questions than ever before about our artwork. Perhaps it had to do with the size of the work or how well the work seemed to fit into a theme. I also like to think that perhaps people are more comfortable with the process of using digital tools and techniques to make art. I certainly had a lot of people ask me about the size of the image files and many more than in previous shows came to us with specific questions about Photoshop and about digital printing. A local computer programmer, an oil painter and a photographer enjoy the evening.
Here is the artists statement that we issued for this exhibit: A Sense of Time, Place and Storytelling White Raven Gallery October, 2007 Artist s Statement, Myriam Lozada-Jarvis and JD Jarvis: In the light of traditional art, you may consider us to be painters and printmakers. Although, we actually create our work in a very different light, namely the glow of a computer screen. There we have access to simulations of traditional drawing and painting tools, as well as a whole host of imaging tools that just 20 years ago could never have been imagined. However, we still work in layers, we still draw and mix color, cut and paste and even erase (a lot). We make compositional decisions based on the work as it develops in front of us. We sketch and experiment and; when all is said and done, we produce prints of this work on a wide array of materials and in different presentational formats. Then, and only then, does our work materialize. Before that the artwork is contained as electrical impulses deep inside the microcircuits where it was created. We view and alter this work only through the proxy of our digital input and manipulating tools. But our intent as human beings making art remains essentially the same as when we made art with traditional paint and brush. Since 1991, we have eagerly investigated ways that we can make digital machinery sing with a human heart. The work in this exhibit represents our latest developments in that journey. As we began to gather it all together and search for common threads for the show, we discovered a sense or suggestion of the time of day, as well as the times in which we live. We found the same suggestion of the places we have been during the last year-and-a-half and the creative place these travels have brought us. And, finally, there is a sense, in some of this work, of a story being told or of the essence of story telling itself. Humans cannot avoid stories. As we go from one image to another, our minds demand a story and where there is none we create one. People are evolving into beings that use technology as never before. Our homes, our hearts, even our clothing is being wired with machines miniature powerful digital machines. That we, as artists, should chose to explore how art can be made using these technological develops should come to no one s surprise. That is what artists do. Myriam and JD use and share the same digital tools when making our art, but what we produce is distinctive and individual. Even though we are very interested in discovering imagery that is unique to the new tools we have adopted, the individuality of our work stands as an example that it is the hand and heart of the human artist that makes these compositions. A computer is a tool and we decide when, where and how it touches the work. That is our story and we are sticking to it.
Myriam and I are very happy to have had over a year to plan and work on this exhibit. Before this, we have been invited to include work in group shows or to simply fill a space with existing work. A Sense of Time, Place and Story Telling gave us the opportunity to create a whole body of work especially for a specific exhibit, which is how it should be. And, of course, the icing on the cake was the creative shot-in-the-arm we got from Hewlett-Packard and the Z3100 printer. We d like to thank Harald Johnson for the encouragement to keep going digital and Jeanette Volk at HP for all her assistance and support with the fine materials and papers we were allowed to explore while creating this show. Waiting in the Garden 36X25 on HP Matte-Litho paper White Raven Gallery, 425 Griggs Ave. Las Cruces, NM 575-525-9543 www.whiteravenstudios.com