Fractal Expressionism

            Last Friday visiting artist and scientist Dr. Richard Taylor delivered a lecture at UAF on fractal expressionism, his term to describe the paintings of abstract expressionist action painter Jackson Pollock.  Pollock had explained his splatter paintings as an on canvas, artistic expression of his feelings.  Taylor, a physicist obsessed with the study of fractal math patterns, their occurrence and reoccurrence in nature, went on to demonstrate that Pollock’s paintings exhibited a fractal pattern quite similar to those found in tree branches or nerves. 

While many would argue that Pollock’s splatters were the result of random chance, Taylor demonstrated that Pollock paintings are in fact quite specifically organized.  He admitted that Pollock may not have understood or set out to create this specific mathematical pattern, though he must have found something pleasing in the result, because he created it in a fairly large series of work.

Taylor went on to explain his theory that the fractal pattern evidenced in Pollock’s paintings were likely the natural result Pollock’s process.  He laid his canvas on the ground and painted from above.  As he strained to reach out over the canvas, he introduced a state of imbalance, and the movements necessary to regain balance were traced by his drippings and fall into a specific fractal pattern.  Pollock, being an alcoholic, had pretty bad balance.  So specific were the patterns created that Taylor is able to use computer fractal analysis to distinguish authentic from fake Pollock paintings.

Pollock paintings, like other naturally occurring fractal patterns, are shown to reduce stress indicators in viewers.  So if you ever get the chance, sit down in front of a Pollock, don’t worry too much about what it means, just relax, and let the fractals do the work.

Autumn Rhythm, 1950

Sustainability Art Show

            The UAF Sustainability Art show officially kicked off last night with an opening reception at the Wood Center.  UAF student artists mingled and exchanged ideas about techniques and materials while students and guests enjoyed a showcase of their abilities to employ sustainable practices in their artwork. 

At the show, chairs made of cardboard, including an inviting rocker and a functional recliner, accompany found and renewed object sculpture.  The items on display are largely composed of discarded or otherwise unwanted materials.  For notoriously penniless art students, preparing for this show presented a welcome chance to shop for art materials where they didn’t have to pay.  Many of the materials given new life in the show were acquired from local transfer sites, recycling collection points, and personal junk collections.

Visitors to the gallery in the Wood Center will have a chance to witness a range of work.  The Last Supper is eerily acted out by four Barbie dolls.  Plastic bags are converted to items including a mask, a crane, a handbag, barnacles and a giant inflatable $.  Wood is combined with scrap or excess metal, and even slumped glass in one instance, to create a variety of beautiful forms.  Glass and compact discs are broken down and reassembled into beautiful studies of form.  Electronics are converted to a sculpture of a ram and a convincing ray gun.  In all instances, unwanted materials are given fresh and creative new life.

The show will be on display until Saturday, so make your way over to the Wood Center and see what UAF artists are capable of sustaining.

Let ‘em Eat Cake

            Two girls walk into Take Five Coffee Lounge, they order drinks, and one of them a piece of pie.  They sit down at a table near me, and start discussing cake.  I like cake, most of us do.  One of them is getting her wedding cake made at this coffee shop.  She describes the cake to her friend.  She brings up her married friends cakes that she has seen on Facebook, and notes that most of them had grooms cakes while she will not.  They joke that a groom’s cake sounds like it should be at the bachelor party.  They talk about her plans for the bachelor party.  I finish my coffee, then get up and leave.

            There are a couple of parts of this conversation that I find interesting.  The first one is when she mentions her married Facebook friends.  In the world of Facebook we get to share just how wonderful our lives are with as much photographic evidence as we can procure, and in the case of weddings, that’s usually a lot of evidence.  In this situation, this abundance of documentation was creating a sense of competition.  She was speaking to her unmarried friend who, due to her relationship status, is obviously not a contender.  Yet she was in it to win it.  She was organizing her attack.  She was feeling out her competition.  She was carefully managing her resources to be able to post the best Facebook wedding pictures she could.  Since she couldn’t afford a grooms cake, she wrote it off as silly and a non-traditional extravagance.

            The second part of the conversation that struck me as interesting is when they began discussing her plans for the bachelor party.  When asked what he was doing for the bachelor party she responded, “I was thinking maybe he and his friends could hang out at our house and play beer pong, then us girls could catch up with them later and we could all party together.”  This desire for control and limited mobility of his bachelor party shows a lack of trust and a level of insecurity.  A bachelor party is intended to be a last hoorah, time with the boys, and a ceremonial end to the bachelor lifestyle.  If she is unwilling to allow him this freedom, she obviously doesn’t trust him.

            These, of course are only assumptions that I have made based on a few lines of exchanged dialogue, overheard one day and written about the next.  Perhaps she only brought up Facebook because she needed a point of reference from which to even speak of this new concept of a groom’s cake.  Perhaps her partner really likes to stay in and play beer pong with his friends, and she is only suggesting the things she believes will truly make him happy.

Going Native

            In her essay “Going Native” Francine Prose gives several examples of individuals who chose to identify themselves with a culture that does not belong to them.  She starts with examples that cast the practice in a negative light, but by the end of the essay she seems to conclude that it is a means of stirring the melting pot.

            I think she fails to make a distinction between “going native” and becoming a native.  The examples she casts in a negative light would be examples of going native.  While the positive experience of truly adopting a different culture would be becoming a native.

After a short exposure to a new or different culture it is easy to “go native,” and adopt practices and ideas that are appealing.  In order to “go native” one must find themselves in a location where there is a distinguishable group of people who have been there longer, observe one or more of their practices, and then adopt those practices as their own.  It may or may not even involve location.  It is possible to “go native” for a place one has never even been to.

To become a native in a different experience altogether.  It involves a true understanding of all of the practices and principals associated with a local group.  It cannot be based on a few simple observations.  It involves location and understanding.  It can only come with time and dedication.  Only after genuinely understanding and truly adopting a different culture as one’s own, can one become native.

Premature or misguided attempts to become native would fall into the category of going native.  I would go so far as to say any attempt to become native would fall into the category of going native; for becoming native is not something one tries to do

Tanana River

            David Mollett tells the story of standing in the back room of his gallery while a show of his work was hung on the wall.  A patron walks in and says, “Ah, this is a Mollett, never much cared for his work, not much of a blender.”  The point of telling the story to his class is to take advantage of honest critique while you can get it, because rarely will you hear someone speak their mind about your work.  The truth is, he’s not much of a blender.  His bold use of line and lack of blending can be seen upstairs at the Museum of the North in his work, Tanana River. 

The painting depicts the Tanana River.  The Alaska Range can be seen in the background.  Piles of driftwood and the snaking river make up the foreground.  This work quickly caught my attention because I was able to identify it as a Mollett painting, I enjoy his style, and the depicted location brings back a flood of wonderful memories.

            David Mollett employs the liberal use of bold lines in his landscape paintings.  He lays down broad lines of color on top of planes of solid color to achieve a striking likeness.  Though quite simplified, his painting still holds a powerful unmistakable description of its subject.  The cooler tones of blue in the mountains and green in the boreal forest push the background farther into the distance, while the warmer tones of the logs and the sandbars reach out toward the viewer.  He uses his bold lines to guide the viewer throughout the canvas.  Logs point back and forth across the scene, and the river weaves its way slowly toward the mountains.  This painting is quite pleasant to view as you sit and contemplate how such a strong likeness of the location can be achieved from such simple lines.

            As I view this image I can’t help but recall the time I have spent on the banks of the Tanana River.  I think back on summer evenings spent cooling off by jumping in again and again.  I remember skipping rocks there, just to see how far they will go.  I think of the time my brother and I pushed one of those logs in, and rode it a short way in the current, taking turns trying to stand up and balance on it.  It is a place that holds very fond memories for me.  These are the first feelings I have.  As I look longer, I start to think more of its technical merits and feel a deep respect for the man who painted it.  I see some of the things he teaches in his painting, and I feel fortunate to be his student.

This Place We Call Home

            The landscape we know as Fairbanks consists of an unusual balance of the beautiful and the unsightly.  At no time is Fairbanks as a whole entirely beautiful, and at no time is it really that ugly.  Without a cohesive urban core, the grid structure that defines a city, and sharply cuts any natural landscape, spreads far and wide.  But even within that grid, despite its disturbance of a beautiful natural rhythm, there lies a certain calming pattern, rhythm, and beauty all its own.

            This effect can be seen from a campus lookout just above the Patty gymnasium.  Here, you can watch as the sun rises and sets, sending the entire expanse of wilderness from there to the Alaska Range into a glow of yellow, orange, and pink.  From the same spot, you can look down a path to the power plant and see its stack billowing smoke.  But it is when you looks out to the right and sees Chena Ridge, and the Chena River, which eventually leads to the Tanana that it all fits together.  The road on the ridge is shaped by the ridge in the same way the river is shaped by the ridge.  The buildings on campus are all worshipping the sun in the same way a plant would, each with its face directed to receive maximum energy.  It turns out, that no matter how we cut it up, we can’t escape the fact that we are indeed a part of the landscape.

            It is when we enter a place of human creation entirely that we can see the true human landscape.  From the edge of the food court in the Wood Center a whole range of human creation can be viewed.  From the very functional food court itself, though even that is adorned with elements, such as wood floors, to improve the quality of the landscape.  This place is designed as a place for students to relax.  In the student lounge area, a birch forest painted on the wall brings the natural world inside.  A backgammon board painted on the table reminds us that this is a place to relax, and unwind.  In such a well-crafted building, the landscape doesn’t stop at the doors and windows, but is welcomed in.

            From the top of Ester Dome looking to the north we can see even more of the interactions of humans with nature.  The ski runs cut into the side of Moose Mountain remind us more of water flowing down a hill than they do of the typical grid work of human development, yet there is something strikingly unnatural, though particularly beautiful about the way that hill looks compared to the rest.  Those who know where to look can find the remnants of a rope tow towers and hemp rope that once hauled skiers up Ester Dome to ski the runs that had been cut into that hill.  Those runs have all but disappeared.

            The marks made by humans affect every landscape.  Even if we were able to view a perfectly virgin landscape, in viewing it, we would bring a whole range of human experience to our interpretation of it.

People as Pictures

            My longtime fascination with Japanese design was quickly aroused by People as Pictures.  I have at my house a bottle of sumi ink and sumi brushes, that I have yet to reach much proficiency with.  Understanding a little of how the masters are able to control the ink on paper, I am amazed to even think they would apply it into skin.

            Most Japanese art that I have experienced seems to be centered around a master subtly controlling what appears to be a simple technique.  Irezumi seems to fit into this pattern.  The process, while painfully brutal, seems quite simple.  Ink is plunged into the skin with rather primitive tools.  It is the master’s skilled subtle hand that is able to achieve complicated delicate patterns.

            Brushing ink on paper also appears to be a simple process.  When a master applies sumi ink to paper, there is no simple line.  Each mark is carefully crafted to hold a maximum of information in a minimum of apparent effort.  The key to unlocking this information is in the loading of the brush.  The density of ink is carefully controlled on different parts of the brush, so that when is dragged across the paper, the right amount of ink is deposited in the right spot.  In this way one brushstroke can hold a whole range of values and line weights.  One stroke can hold an abundance of information.

            Irezumi also reminds me of the tea ceremony in the way the design is built up slowly over time.  A tea master does not just purchase a tea set, but slowly builds a collection of items.  He slowly collects teabowls from a variety of kilns, insuring that no two are alike, that each fit into the collection, and each brings the holder into a state of careful contemplation.  While each component is important, it is the overall experience of the ceremony that the master wishes to create.  It is the same with irezumi.  Work is added slowly over time, but it is known to be a component of a greater design.

            I continue to be fascinated by Japanese design traditions.  Even the tough guys, while proving how tough they are, manage to keep it classy.  Not just keep it classy, but create something complex and beautiful, yet understated and subtle.