Shadows

Eyes Mirrors Boxes Follies

In the title of my show at MorYork the word "Boxes" should come first because the "Boxes" came first. That category includes my oldest work dating from the 1980s. The box constructions were mostly assembled in the late 80s although parts of the contents were made in the 1970s. Those early box contents include small sewn pieces which I created by making sheets of acrylic medium, stretching them, and stuffing them, like little pillows. "Pillows" makes them sound cushy and comforting but they're a bit creepy and absurd too like David's Lynch's Eraserhead: the baby. The arylic sheets I made are skins albeit acrylic skins so it's a bit like embalming or taxidermy. The box that appears to contain a shrunken blue head is the head of David Bowie. I made the skin from a printed album insert from Bowie's Alladin Sane. It's his head. It's so painted over you can't tell but he's in there.

Photographing my boxes has always been a challange. The first challange is that I'm aiming directly at a pane of glass which is naturally going to show my reflection. So I've had to be tricky about photographing that work. And with anything three dimensional there are any number of ways to light them which naturally changes the look of the piece especially when it is a shadow box. Of course that's also what makes them interesting to look at, always different, from different angles, different times of day. In future posts I'll include others from this tall series of boxes and my horizontal format boxes which were made in the 1990s. Stay close.

Scott Waterman at MorYork

More, more, more!

The show continues. At MorYork, the storied Wunderkammer created by Clare Graham. Within MorYork I've installed my own cabinet of curiosity which are works from series titled: Eyes, Mirrors, Boxes, and Follies. Some of this work dates from the 1980s and most of it is at least 20 years old. That said most of the work was created to look curiously old even when it was new. Running through February 25, 2024 please know that you are invited to attend. See my contact info. 4959 York Blvd, Los Angeles, CA 90042

I'll Be Your Mirrors

Paintings for sale. For the first time ever I've got paintings online for sale. I'm calling the collection, The Villa Mirrors. Some I've sold to private clients, a couple are in a restaurant in Charleston, S.C. and one hangs prominantly above the mantle in the main salon of the Villa Feltrinelli in Lago di Garda, Italy hence "The Villa Mirrors". While they last The Villa Mirrors are for sale on my webpage

Los Angeles

Look!

The all-seeing eye: Blade Runner, Warner Bros. 1982 

What the eye sees: Los Angles, the mythical future.

Roger A. Deakins won best cinematography for Blade Runner 2049, deservedly so, probably, though Blade Runner, the original, is simply superior in every way. Every way. Los Angeles is big, a big target, so it’s quite easy to hit. Hit it. What’s more sophisticated is to capture it in an intimate way. And can we have some warmth and wit? Thank you.

There is a city by the sea

A gentle company

I don't suppose you want to

And as it tells its sorry tale

In harrowing detail

Its hollowness will haunt you

Fr: Los Angeles, I'm Yours (from Her Majesty) Colin Meloy

Years ago I began a search on behalf of my power couple clients in charming Hancock Park, (a park-like Los Angeles neighborhood). I was looking for just the right imagery for a dining room mural. I like to make these sorts of projects contextual so I’m thinking: park-like, lots of foliage and bucolic. Alas nothing was sticking. Out of frustration I tried an urban view in which I had no confidence thinking it was not only not the right imagery but also too derivative of Ed Ruscha or Peter Alexander. Surprisingly they seemed to like that idea, still the project was put on the back burner and I thought completely snuffed out. In fact, I learned they’d covered their dining room in a patterned fabric. Years go by, end of story.

My painted sample pinned up for sizing up.

Last Spring, I received word, game on. No, this can’t be, I thought. Paint the urban L.A. view on top of the pattern? Ridiculous. But I went through the motions, made a painted sample and half-way through I could see it. This can work. And so it came to be. A “Little” fugue in G Minor. The yellow flower forms from the patterned fabric peak through here and there and read alternatively as a heavily body or lights from the urban fabric. And the grisaille palette derives from the grey in the substrate. And in fact my painting bears practically no resemblance to anything either Ed Ruscha or Peter Alexander painted. It’s at once abstract and evocative. Los Angeles, I’m yours. 

Addendum

There’s something else really special about this project. I managed to get my very good friend Sue Garner to help me.  So fun.  Sue and I went to art school together and we worked on The Ponce in Atlanta but that’s another blogpost. Be seeing you.

That's Sue, that's me.

The Folks Who Live on the Hill

Looking over the precipice 1500' up:  Mesa Verde, Co.

Charles Rennie Mackintosh's masterwork, Hill House, Helensburgh, Scotland.

Fall is always a little melancholy don’t you think? And I hadn’t really thought of it until just this moment but so are house museums because they’re not doing what they were meant to do, to be alive with people living in them. This past summer I visited where ‘The Folks Who Live on the Hill’ used to live, two house museums. One is actually called Hill House and the other, well the other was way beyond what you would think of as a house on a hill, the cliff house(s) of Mesa Verde. So in the way of a harvest for something that developed in the summer we will now take in some of what Charles Rennie Mackintosh and the Anasazi of present day Colorado cooked up. Seemingly so far apart in every dimension the more I look at them and think about them the more they have in common to me. It’s a little spooky.

What you see on the wall outside Hill House.

First view of the house, the Firth of Clyde visible in the distance at right.

Asymmetry from every elevation, a hallmark of Hill House's design.

The massing of forms and shapes defy expectations, delightfully.

Inside and outside views of the main staircase.

Just inside the front door.

Two closer views of the main hall.

Margarget MacDonald's work blends with CRM most everywhere you look.

Margaret's gesso panel above the fireplace.

Detail of Margaret's work.

The Cliff Palace at Mesa Verde, CO.

Balcony House, one of two cliff dwellings I visited.

The Anasazi'’s decision to leave the flat top of the mesa where they had been living, venture over the cliffs, and build in the recesses of the rock remains deeply mysterious. Why they left these dwellings in the late 1200s is also unknown so archaeologists continue to investigate this fascinating place, a UNESCO World Heritage site. I am not especially afraid of heights but climbing out of these cliff dwellings was terrifying. Satisfyingly when you’re out you get that giddy sense of having cheated certain death. Was it ever routine for the natives? Btw our guide for Balcony House kindly informed us before we descended into the dwelling that should you have a panic attack or any other kind of attack that might prevent you from getting our on your own steam a helicopter would pick you up, a $10,000. ride back to the top.

My photo taken in the Cliff Palace.

A  diorama of the the imagined life of the Ancestral Puebloan culture.

One of the ladders you ascend to get out of Balcony House.

Looking down into the canyon, something not to do when climbing up.

A section view of the mesa. The dwelling is the small notch near the top.

There's written and there's verbal too.

A earth view of Mesa Verde. It's slightly right of center.

And tell me, what did you do this summer?