protective custody blind 3

December 2011
ink, tape, graphite on Yupo synthetic paper
38 x 25 inches / 96.5 x 63.5 cm

Filed Under: Drawing,Works

In early December 2011 I  produced a suite of drawings in black ink on white synthetic paper.  I filled the paper with permanent black ink and taped into the image , then pulled off the tapes or otherwise drew into the black ink, causing levels of resistance to the black.   I thought of these as  'blind' drawings I made for Santa Lucia Day in December.. since Lucia is the patron saint  of sight .  You can't really see in advance how a photographic print is going to look and feel . You are working blind to some extent.  I also wanted to subvert my drawing skill by working so densely that there might be a frisson of light at the edges of the darkness, an effect of marginal illumination.  The drawings also reflect a certain quality of blinds, like venetian blinds.  I was drawing iconic eyes like isis-eyes or evil-eyes (for protection) into the drawings, then covering them up or wiping them down til the iconic sign was subliminal.   The sequence of protective custody blind drawings is imaged here:  http://www.christinamcphee.net/protective-custody-blind/

Teorema drawings at Headlands: “De-Mobbing: Landscape Structure Bioform”

Two of my Teorema drawings from 2010-11 are included in a new exhibition at the Headlands Center for the Arts.  “De-Mobbing: Landscape, Structure, Bioform,” curated by Brian Karl, is at the project space at the Headlands, Marin, California,  January 22 -  March 4, 2012

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2012
drawing Filed Under: Installation,News,Works

playa sampling black shard fragment 7

2012
archival inkjet print
5 + AP
21 x 14 inches / 53 x 35 cm

Filed Under: Installation,Photography,Works

This is a photograph from a series of around twenty images of an ephemeral installation of drawings in the alkaline playa surface of Soda Lake, Carrizo Plain, California.  The notion of the 'site sample' derives from archaeological field techniques, which endeavor to understand patterns of habitation in a site by intervening in the surface only at pre-determined locations, in order to preserve the site despite the archaeological intervention. The black ink drawing Accumulation 2, of December 2011,  was first created in the studio by drawing 'blind',with my right hand (not the favored left) on a vertical sheet 60 x 44 inches in scale.  The calligraphic marks in graphite were then covered with a semi random set of ranks of tape fragments, like shards, as in 'Accumulation 1."  Following this procedure, I layered heavy graphite and ink in near black values across the entire sheet.  The traces of my blind moves thus partially obliterated.  Or, enhanced through black definition lines, like architectural edges.  Once the drawing was nearly covered in black markings,  I took it outside and cut or tore it into shards.  I transported these to Soda Lake, where, now in winter, the surface of the playa is very fine, the saline crystals meshing with the mud substrate in a nearly clay like meld, yet slightly yielding to touch and footfall.  I searched for pre-existing cuts in the salt / mud  crust; these arrived in the form of bobcat and lion tracks and human boot prints.  I set up a sequence of black drawing emplacements at points where such tracks could yield a small depth or cut for insertion of the black drawing shard.  As a performance, the playa sampling black shard process is a reversal of archaeological procedures, site in future tense.

green sea (there is no writing outside the green sea)

2012
oil + graphite on c print
45 x 46 inches / 114 x 117 cm

Filed Under: Drawing,Painting,Works

This is the first painting on chromogenic print using traditional oil paints and technique over a matrix derived visually from drawings, in this instance,  the glyph drawing 'Medusazoa vs smart bombs' 2011.  The sensation of cyanobacterial slick on the oil-tarred beaches at Port Fourchon, Louisiana during the BP oil spill, is recast here as oil on polymer substrate, the Kodak Endura metallic photographic paper. As in the Double Blind project I am working through iterations of cancellation and obliteration like veils between what I want to see and what I can't... because of the oil... Cyanobacteria, the 'green algae' do two things: they 'eat' oil; and they also proliferate so rapidly as they feed on sludge, that they kill littoral water ecosystems, like the dead zone off the mouth of the Mississippi River, and the plague of the 'maree verte' on the coast of Brittany. When I deploy markings 'on' the medusazoa (jellyfish) shapes,  the paint brush marks are another language writing over the life below.  If there is no language outside the 'green sea - maree verte'..... then I must write within it.  Try -- through the toxic. Reconnaissance, inside the poison green.

possibly the skin (watershed) 1

2012
ink, watercolor, graphite, and acrylic gel on synthetic paper
25 x 38 inches / 63.5 x 93.5 cm

Filed Under: Drawing,Works

private collection Portland

double blind study 8

2012
silver gelatin print
18 x 24 inches / 46 x 61 cm

Filed Under: Photography

double blind study 18

2012
chromogenic photomontage print / lightjet
122 x 251.5 cm / 48 x 99 inches

Filed Under: Photomontage,Works

double blind study 17

2012
silver gelatin print
61 x 46 cm / 18 x 24 inches

Filed Under: Photography,Works

The Double Blind photographs expand on the gesture of ‘glyph’-- moving towards diagrams of unknown life forms ‘in fearful symmetry’ like Blake’s tiger burning bright in the forest of the night...To study these ‘animalia’ I first shoot the glyph drawings, then convert the digital files to gray scale, and reverse them. Detourning science’s 'double blind study', I consider how a relationship between the drawings and photographs develops using bilateral symmetry as a processual and formal device.

double blind histogram

2012
silver gelatin print
38 x 25 inches / 96.5 x 63.5 cm

Filed Under: Photography,Works

The image  is a simple reversal of one of the protective custody blind drawings.

protective custody blind

2012
ink, tape, pastel and graphite on synthetic paper
six part drawing on synthetic paper 38 x 150 inches / 96.5 x 381 cm // each 38 x 25 inches / 96.5 x 63.5 cm

Filed Under: Drawing,Works

'blind' drawings I made around Santa Lucia Day in December...Lucia is the patron saint  of sight.