The Wall

In 2005 I was asked to submit work for a show called Three Cities Against the Wall about the large wall that Israel had built in Palestine to cordon off the Palestinian people and further plummet them into economic poverty. It’s basically a 25 foot high, 400 mile long wall that aims to segregate a whole population of people from another. Here are 2 quotes that I used for the text that went along with it. I should also note that I showed this piece under the name Associated Artists for Propaganda Research.

“The concepts of terrorism and retaliation are supple instruments, readily adapted to the needs of the moment.” N. Chomsky

“We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.” G. Orwell

For the show I made a small diorama of a wall winding through a sparsely wooded landscape. I started with a large plexiglass case that I had gotten from work that was long and narrow. The base of the case had a nice wooden finish that I was eager to preserve in the final piece so I made sure to make my measurements so that the landscape left a one inch border around it. I decided that I wanted to use molding to finish the edges of the landscape so I adjusted for this in my measurements and then cut out the base for the landscape and cut the molding and attached it. For the landscape I wanted small hills so I used newspaper and glue to create a paper mâché terrain. When I was done with the paper mâché I let it dry and then cut my wall out of matte board and attached it with glue. I added small foam railroading trees that I ripped into smaller pieces to complete it. The final step was spray painting it with matte gray and attaching it to the base. When I was done I needed to make a pedestal which I made out of particle board. I put it together and wood filled and sanded it several times before painting it white.

This was the first time that I had made a sculpture landscape that I painted all one color. Usually my landscapes are left green (the color of the trees and grass) but for this was interested in creating a more somber feeling. I would later use this same technique for Epicenter City.

The Architect’s Tomb and The Architect’s Tomb (Small Scale Model)

The Architect’s Tomb is a sculpture that I made back in 2009 and is 6″x19″x62″. I started by making a quick drawing in order to work out the proportions and to anticipate any logistical problems. After that I made a small balsa wood model of it called The Architect’s Tomb (Small Scale Model) since the final sculpture would take a while to make and would need a lot of preparation to complete. The balsa wood model was easy to make since I could cut all of the wood with a sharp knife. I made the window in the front out of glassine to mimic the frosted glass that I planned for the larger sculpture. In the end the lights and the power source were the most difficult since I needed to install them in such a small space. I wanted to imbed the power source within the sculpture but found that this was impossible and instead opted to use an external battery connected via wire to a small light bulb from a flashlight.

After I built the model I decided to go ahead and build the sculpture at full size. The first obstacle was the size of the fluorescent lights that were available which was four feet so I had to adjust all of my proportions according to these limitations. The second challenge was the front face which needed to be rounded out with a router. My initial sketch had a lighted geometrically cornered rectangular face but I quickly decided that I wanted rounded corners to make it more “futuristic.” I needed the sculpture to be as thin as possible so I adjusted for the thickness of the fluorescent light housing unit and had all of my wood cut according to this size. I cut out the face with the router and put it together. I painted it with F.L.P. white and then purchased a piece of frosted glass and secured it to the inside of the box; I made sure to secure it in such a way that it could be replaced easily in the future in case the glass was ever damaged. I then attached the fluorescent lights to a thin board that was covered in aluminum foil that fit snugly inside the box. I put handles on it so that it could be pulled out easily and attached blocks on the inside so I could screw the board with the light on it into it. One of my main concerns was the distribution of light within the box as it was transmitted through the glass, so I made sure that I had an adequate amount of tin foil inside to help dissipate the light (I didn’t want any hot spots.) I also attached a long white 20′ cord to it that could be wrapped up inside in case I needed to plug it into an electrical outlet that was far away. I made a small hole for the extension cord in the back on the right side; I dreaded doing this but I needed to make the piece as flat to the wall as possible. The last thing I did was to create a cloth backing for it so that the light wouldn’t shine out the back and then attached some rubber “feet” to the bottom to help elevate it off the floor.

I don’t remember how I came up with the idea for The Architect’s Tomb other than wanting to make a large flat white light box that existed somewhere between a piece of furniture and a sculpture. I really enjoyed seeing it when it was finished, and enjoyed the process of making it since I challenged myself into accomplishing certain goals that I set for myself (like using a router.) I’m disappointed that I never got to exhibit this piece and it sits in the back of my studio wrapped in plastic. One day maybe.

Below is the sculpture and the model, which is only an inch tall.

TEST SET, MK-4 GTS/APU SYSTEM A/E -24M-40

In 2003 I was asked to create a piece that utilizes a suitcase for an exhibition at the Denver Airport in Colorado. It was a collaborative project with the artist Max Yawney in which he made a large series of cutout foam suitcase shapes all painted grey and he asked individual artists to make pieces that use a suitcase as their main form of material. Max found a corridor in the airport that had a long line of glass display cases that were divided in the middle in which he could place both one of his gray cut outs and the individual artist’s piece. For this project I made the sculpture TEST SET, MK-4 GTS/APU SYSTEM A/E -24M-40 which was made using an old military aircraft container that I found at a flea market and some plastic model aircraft missiles. The case is made of 2 halves and uses 8 heavy duty clasps to keep it together. This turned out to be a nice feature for displaying it since the case was designed to be stacked, so the top could be taken off, flipped and put underneath so that the bottom “feet”, which are concave, could fit exactly on of top of the cone shaped “feet” from the top (which is now upside down and on the bottom.) I also liked the stenciling on the side which is where the title comes from and I stenciled AAPRHIGBEE04 on the other half of the lid which can’t be seen in the final photograph. I cut out some gray foam so it would fit in the bottom half of the case and cut slits for the missiles which I had built from 3 different sets of missiles used for model aircrafts. I made the missiles as realistic as I could and even found a way of fitting the missiles into the end of a Dremel tool to spin it like a lathe in order to produce accurate stripes where needed. I then attached pins to the missiles with glue so I could sink them into the foam where I made the slits, sinking them slightly and securing their positions. I did this in pairs to further emphasize their symmetrical use on fighter planes.

At some point my piece was pulled from the exhibition along with 2 other pieces that were found to be offensive. My piece was eventually returned due to the fact that it was considered to be only “borderline offensive.” The ACLU got involved and there was some minor reporting in the news. One of the funny things that I found repeated in the media was that my suitcase contained “small planes and missiles” which was obviously not true, there were only missiles. Also I found it ironic that people were offended by the sight of missiles when I had purposefully made sure that the model missiles that I used were for U.S. fighter planes which I found to be more offensive.

At the Gates of Dawn, From Dawn To Dusk and New Dawn Fades

Here are 3 paintings that I made in 2010 and 2011 that are all enamel on canvas. I made the original colored pencil drawings for these back around 2001 and 2002 when I was starting to come up with some ideas for the Future Living Projects. I had originally wanted to design paintings for the future using colors from the 1970’s. The ideas for these colors came from early experiments that I did with pale blue and orange enamel latex paints on the back of plexiglass panels. When the panels were turned over the paint became flat and mimicked the panels that I would see on the sides of schools and other brightly colored buildings from the 1970’s. The panels that I made seemed to exist somewhere between sculpture and painting and I wasn’t sure at the time how these were even art and never completed the project. In the end I made only 2 panels and completed a series of computer generated drawings that illustrated the different colors as they would look when finished. I decided at the time to switch to the designing of paintings instead which provided a more traditional platform for my art making ideas.

I generally don’t like the idea of designing paintings but use the term deliberately. I feel that design is the antithesis of what art should be about. One solution that I had was to have somebody else design my paintings for me; I would essentially become only a worker. This idea appealed to me and I felt that I had reached a new forbidden area of creativity in which the artist would become liberated from design and could be creative solely as a producer of ideas and context. I thought of this as the logical extension of what Marcel Duchamp was achieving in Tu m’ and later John Baldessari for his series Commissioned Paintings which both employed other artists to paint for them. (Is it a coincidence that they both had artists painting pointing fingers?)

So I designed the paintings myself and decided that I wanted them to be long and thin to coincide with an earlier architectural project for Future Living Project’s which imagined a future with thin horizontal buildings. The first painting that I made from the colored pencil drawings was At the Gates of Dawn and was only 12″x48″. I wanted to use glossy enamels for this project since I had never used them before and wanted a change from my usual painting practice. The orange that I mixed for the painting was a color close to what I had originally used for the earlier colored panel project. Here are the final 3 paintings. The first 2′ At the Gates of Dawn and From Dawn To Dusk are 24″x84″ and are stretched over panels. The last one, New Dawn Fades, is 18″x79″.

The Problem of a Compounded Abstraction (The Field)

Here is a sculpture that I made in 2010 called The Problem of a Compounded Abstraction (The Field). This is another piece that I consider to be a floor sculpture and is 24″x48″x48″. I had the idea for this many years ago but never made it; I wanted to make a landscape with a circle crop in it. I started by looking at pictures of crop circles on the Internet to try and figure out how they look. The most important thing I found were the lines that the tractors make in the fields when they mow; I planned for these in order to make a more realistic looking landscape. I made this the same way I’ve made all the rest, by painting the board green, applying watered down glue and adding mixed railroading foam grass. The only difference was the design of the concentric rings, which I made by cutting circular strips out of sticky paper in order to block out the tan paint that I had painted underneath. I used this same technique for the lines using tape.

The title takes its name from Robert Irwin and the original title is Notes Towards a Model: The Process of a Compounded Abstraction.

From the book Seeing is Forgetting the Name of the Thing Seen:
“He used the phrase “compounded abstraction” to describe the progression that is involved when people try to make sense of the world… In Irwin’s view, sensemaking moves through six stages, beginning with perception (synesthesia of undifferentiated sensations). The undifferentiated perceptions begin to take on meaning in the second stage, conception, where people isolate unnamed zones of focus. In the third stage, form, these zones begin to be named. And in the fourth stage, which Irwin calls formful, the named things are deployed relationally and are arranged in terms of dimensions like hot/cool, loud/soft, up/down. So far there is some fluidity in the process and some possibility of reversing and redoing and relabeling. But at the fifth and sixth stages, people begin to act as if the labels were immanent and discovered rather than extrinsic and imposed. In the fifth stage, which Irwin labels formal, patterns of relations begin to be reified and treated as entities. For example, the formful relation of up/down now gets reified into the more formal relationship of superior/subordinate, master/slave. And in the sixth stage, formalize, the reifications dictate behavior and become taken-for-granted fixtures around which people organize their activities. By the time people formalize their experience they are essentially estranged from direct perceptual experience. At each step in this sequence of compounded abstraction, details get lost, the concrete is replaced with the abstract, and design options get foreclosed.”

The Lost Estate of Ed “Johnson” Shepard 1972-1991

Here is another project that I started back in 2007 called The Lost Estate of Ed “Johnson” Shepard 1972-1991. Here’s what I wrote about it:

The Lost Estate of Ed “Johnson” Shepard creates a fictional biography about an artist living in the late 70’s and 80’s. He’s a Vietnam vet who’s art explores notions of male masculinity and teenage fantasy, U.F.O.’s and space travel and ultimately, the horrors of the Vietnam War.

And here is the statement that I wrote for the website:

The Lost Estate of Ed “Johnson” Shepard is a conceptual website. It explores the semi-fictitious artwork of an artist living in the rural mountains of Pennsylvania from 1972 until 1991. I don’t know much about him except for some basic facts.He was a Vietnam vet and didn’t start making art until he was back from the war. Like most young men of his era he was fascinated by muscle cars, sex, rock and roll, guns and U.F.O.’s. He dissappeared in 1991. He is a culmination of myself, my father and my grandfather. The photographs were taken by my mother, the self-portrait is of my father and the paintings, without U.F.O.’s, are by my grandfather.

I started this project because I was interested in exploring other kinds of artwork outside of what I had already been working on, in particular on the creation of a biographical narrative which I had never done before. The ideas came first, mainly drawings of muscle cars and plastic model projects, and needed a context for these new ideas. I was interested in the idea of someone working as an “amateur” and how this could be re-contextualized into a conceptual framework. The name comes from my middle name, which is Edward, the street I live on, Johnson, and the street I grew up on, Shepard. I dated it 1972-1991 because 1972 is the year I was born and 1991 is the first year I was out of high school (I graduated in 1990). These years loosely represent my youth and I wanted to make artwork that took me back to this time when I was young and free from certain constraints. I wanted to imagine a time when someone was interested in simple pleasures like fast cars and sex but was also influenced by the unimaginable horrors of war and the intricacies of violence. I made “him” a Vietnam vet in order to shatter the innocence of his youth and to effectively halt his “natural” societal transition from being a teenager into being an adult. This young man is effectively forced out of the innocence of youth while still clinging to it and forced to face the realities of war, traumatizing him in the process.

For this project I developed a website and spent about a year making work for it. I made several drawing series including drawings of muscle cars, drawings from Vietnam War photos, pen and ink drawing of Gulf War aircraft (all using GE parts called GE: We Bring Good Things To Life) and included the space drawings that I had originally made for the Associated Artists for Propaganda Research. I made many models of fast cars which were all spray painted with a gloss black enamel finish. I made many painting of U.F.O.’s by using landscape paintings that my grandfather had made and painting U.F.O.’s on top of them. I first did this digitally and later, after my grandfather had died, painted directly on top of his paintings (with paint that could be removed if needed). I also include photographs that my mother had taken and photographs that I take as well. Below are some of the models that I made.

Associated Artists for Propaganda Research

Since 2000, I have been showing some of my work under the title Associated Artists for Propaganda Research which was developed as a project to help explore and organize multiple political, philosophical and artistic ideas within the context of a collective. The projects tend to be political in nature and explore themes of propaganda, political dominance, corporate control and military prowess. Here’s what I wrote about it. The second paragraph is used as the introductory statement for the information page on the AAPR website.

The body of my work is channeled through an organization called the Associated Artists for Propaganda Research. The A.A.P.R was developed as a project to help explore and organize multiple political, philosophical and artistic ideas within one common context. Through this “organization”, a framework is established in which many forms of art can be developed under one common title, that of the collective. By distorting traditional notions of personal identity, this restructuring helps loosen the conventional emphasis on a single, personalized aesthetic, instead placing the activity of art within a larger artistic context.

The Associated Artists for Propaganda Research has at its roots a critique of the political and economical disinformation distributed by those intent on protecting invested interests. These private tyrannies aim to circumvent democratic processes by misinforming the public through very select, corporate controlled media outlets while continuing to carry out illegal and often state sanctioned acts against popular interests. This elaborate system of control becomes an important tool of the status quo and provides, as “truths”, a systemized set of beliefs that can be easily assimilated into the greater society. Propaganda in this way provides an interesting study on how information, and therefore ideas, can be altered by an intricate filtering system intent on subverting intelligent discourse.

Over the years I’ve made a lot of different kinds of work under the AAPR title including installations, paintings, sculptures, drawings, posters, stickers, 3 websites and digital work. When I exhibited any work for the AAPR, it was important to do so using the name Associated Artists for Propaganda Research, not my own. This was an important detail that I felt was necessary in order to fully complete the illusion that I had worked so hard to create. For many years everything was placed under the AAPR banner but I eventually took out what didn’t belong. I liked the idea of the AAPR being a loose organization that allowed for non-political work, but in the end, thought that for conceptual purposes it needed to be kept political. In 2006 I had a show at Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center in Buffalo, NY which I tilted Epicenter City about the atomic bomb. After this exhibition I felt exhausted with the AAPR and briefly closed the organization down in 2008 after I felt like the political climate had shifted. Truthfully, I hadn’t done very much for the AAPR in the years leading up to it, so it seemed like the natural step. I started it back up in 2010 when I made Sursum Corda which is also a Future Living Projects piece and Silence is Golden in 2011. Since then I’ve been filling in a lot of older ideas that weren’t initially included like the rubber stamps that I made that said “AAPR Approved” and “AAPR Archive” and the T-shirts that I made that say “The Future is Now”. I made a lot of work without thinking about wether or not they constituted proper art objects. I was more interested in their digital format anyway so a lot of stuff I made web only which poses problems when trying to figure out what is and what isn’t art.

I have a lot of unrealized ideas for the AAPR including a zine called, “Strategy is for Fighting” which I’m still going to make one day. I want to present it as a book of zines that back date everything back to 2000-2008. I made a résumé lately that mimics one that I found in the back of a John Miller book that I have. Most of the information is true but some of the photos are faked, including several book covers. I also made a poster based on an old eye chart that I found. I thought that it would make a great announcement for a show. Here it is and below that are 3 different zine covers that I designed.

Future Living Projects

Since I’ve been writing so much about the Future Living Projects I figured it was a good idea to share a statement that I wrote about this particular project. Here it is:

The Future Living Projects is a Brooklyn based collective which was developed as a way of directly addressing the growing concerns of living in an uncertain and unpredictable future. The two possibilities which the Future Living Projects entertain include both a post-apocalyptic, desert laden wasteland and an overcrowded and overpopulated vast metropolis. Both possibilities explore the general problems of space and the continuing struggle for environmental domination. In the future the struggle for space will be the struggle for survival.

By involving itself with the development and construction of buildings for future living, the Future Living Projects has the ability to explore the many kinds of architectural styles which are shaped by environmental and cultural conditioning. The models used for these constructions depict a broad variety of architectural structures including public sculptures, alternative-energy based family homes, corporate buildings and several structures for the sci-fi fantasy movie MEGA-CITY VI. The paintings made by the Future Living Projects are minimal and favor a horizontal composition to delimit the boundaries of vertical growth.

Something that I excluded that was part of some earlier statements was that the Future Living Projects was developed as a subsidiary of the Associated Artists for Propaganda Research, an earlier project. This meant that all FLP projects would be under the umbrella of a political context and would essentially place the AAPR as a “parent” organization; I was interested in mimicking the language of contemporary corporate structuring.

I started developing ideas for the Future Living Projects sometime in 2001 and 2002 in order to expand outside of what I was doing politically with the AAPR. It’s initial set up was meant to create a context that was based around architectural design from the 1970’s who’s interests were in the future. Like the AAPR, I wanted to create a project that could use drawing, painting, sculpture and web media for common recontextualized goals but would not necessarily need to be political in nature. Some of the earliest work included computer generated color panels, some color pencil drawings for horizontal paintings (some of these I didn’t make until 2010) and some models for the fake movie MEGA-CITY VI, which was also the name of my band at the time. The first public exhibition of a Future Living Projects piece was at the Carriage House out in Islip, NY. The installation/sculpture was officially exhibited under the name Associated Artists for Propaganda Research and the title of it was Future Living Project’s Planned Residential Development. It was the first time that the two names were exhibited together and shows the blurriness of the two concepts at the time. The Future Living Projects wouldn’t really become its own entity for many years. Here is a statement for Future Living Project’s Planned Residential Development and below that some images of the piece. It was hung on the ceiling which is why it appears to be upside down in the last two photos.

Sometime in the near future the irreversible effects of urban expansion will reach a critical peak. Forced minimum wage labor and the increasing concentration of power and wealth will ultimately disintegrate and alter the economic climate permanently. As this system begins to slowly collapse, the population will become increasingly stratified between the overcrowded and economically poor metropolises and the vast rural and suburban landscapes which surround them. Caught on the very edge of capitalisms inevitable defeat, the suburban and rural populations have no choice but to cling to war as civilizations last hope for prosperity. Until their eventual destruction, they will be sustained only by the distractions of survival and the propaganda system that aims to keep the failing empire alive.

The Future Living Project’s Planned Residential Development is a large six foot by fourteen foot model landscape hung from the ceiling in the entrance of the Islip Art Museums Carriage House. In the middle of the landscape is a two foot crater surrounded by two rows of small suburban houses which are built at the very edge of the craters rim.

Burning From the Inside

Burning From the Inside is another painting that I made in the winter of 2011 and is 12″x48″ and is acrylic on canvas over a wood panel. It gets it’s name from a Bauhaus (the band) song and is also the name of their last album. The painting was made with simple shades of grey. The innermost vertical row is white and the outside is #3 Golden Grey. The shades are, from outside in on each side, #3,#4,#5,#6,#7,#8 and white. Starting from the inside, each vertical row outwards is 1.5 times the size of the row before it. The narrow vertical black lines are each .25″ inches thick and act as a border between shades. The result is an optical illusion, causing the painting to pulsate and wave.

Here are the lyrics for the song.

Running without aim
Through the razor weeds
That only reach my knees
And when I’m lying in the gray sleep
I don’t know how to walk the boards
I open my eyes and look at the floor
And now I don’t see you anymore

There is no choice
We make a point
To counteract a threatening hand
Close my hold
Let’s be near, let’s be near the atmosphere

Running without aim
Through the razor weeds
That only reach my knees
And when I’m lying in the gray sleep
I don’t know how to walk the boards
I open my eyes and look at the floor
And now I don’t see you anymore

Any more
Any more
Any more

“From Safety To Where…?”

From Safety To Where…? is a painting that I made in the winter of 2011. I was interested in revisiting perspective as a compositional concern in a similar way that I had done for Journey Into the Realm of Reason. If is 24″x84″ and is gouache and acrylic latex on canvas stretched over a wooden panel. I had first explored the use of gouache and acrylic latex on an earlier painting and decided to use this technique again. I started by rolling on off-white acrylic latex, which is the same white that I like to use for my Future Living Project’s projects. I then gridded out my composition symmetrically according to a pre-determined exponential mathematical spacing formula. Starting from the center, each vertical line is 1.5″ inches the distance from the last. Starting from the middle, each horizontal line is 1.5″ inches the distance from the last and extends to the horizontal axis of the next distance, resulting in outwardly angled lines. I used black gouache to fill in the lines that were a quarter of an inch in diameter and when I was finished, blurred the edges between the black lines and the white background to create a slight hazy effect when looked at closely.

From Safety To Where…? gets its name from a Joy Division song.

Here are the lyrics for the song.

No I don’t know just why.
No I don’t know just why.
Which way to turn,
I’ve got this ticket to use.

Through childlike ways rebellion and crime,
To reach this point and retreat back again.
The broken hearts,
All the wheels that have turned,
The memories scarred and the vision is blurred.

No I don’t know just why,
Don’t know which way to turn,
The best possible use.
Just passing through, ’till we reach the next stage.
But just to where, well it’s all been arranged.
Just passing through but the break must be made.
Should we move on or stay safely away?

Through childlike ways rebellion and crime,
To reach this point and retreat back again.
The broken hearts,
All the wheels that have turned,
The memories scarred and the vision is blurred.

Just passing through, ’till we reach the next stage.
But just to where, well it’s all been arranged.
Just passing through but the break must be made.
Should we move on or stay safely away?