Tuesday, May 4, 2010
Here are some pictures from the closing reception of my thesis show that I said I would post. There aren't many, but you can get a slight idea of the space. the images are kind of low res, but they were sent to me through e-mail, and I, unfortunately, don't really have a camera to use. so, this was the best I could do for now. 
Sunday, May 2, 2010
Here is a new drawing, and a look at somethings I'm kicking around now. This piece is dealing with the idea of heaven in terms of the contrast between the Biblical depiction and the picture perfect beach resort we all imagine. I hope to be posting some more flushed out and polished writings about it soon.
Saturday, May 1, 2010
The UARTS senior painting thesis shows have now gone up, had both receptions (open and closing), and will be soon taken down. I would have to say we had a fine turn out, and that everyone's work looked great. There are some fine painters graduating from the program this year. As well, I thought I would post my thesis essay that goes along with the body of work in my show, as well as the majority of work that I have posted on this blog, which you may find below. I hope to be posting some pictures from the event as soon as i can get my hands on some. Also, I came across a kind of small review of the senior thesis exhibition that was on Rob Matthews' blog. He came by to see the show and wrote a little about a few of us. Take a LOOK.
Time is the perpetual countdown to the end of all things, and is the ultimate signifier of our temporality. “In the beginning God…” as states the first verse of the book of Genesis, illustrates the start of all we know, and subsequently renders a picture of a beginning with a corresponding end. Whether it exists on the face of a clock, the grid of a calendar, or the streak of gray in one’s hair, we are all intimately familiar with time. We all move through time in our own way, and are in most cases dependent upon it. Enveloping all things, including past, present, and future, it stands to reveal its uncontrollable and ever fleeting manner. In my working I have brought myself to question the issue of time on a grand scale and what it means to me: The idea of time being given as a means of something expendable, as well as the idea of it being taken/spent as apposed to being used. I feel to emphasize the fleetingness of our time on this earth, is to amplify its preciousness, and to draw specific attention to how important it is that we make the best use of it while we can. My work is very much about the formal as it is the spiritual and emotional. In my work, I deal with symbolism through the means of minimal abstraction and collage. In some cases the pieces are more of an embodiment of a concept or ideal, and in other cases, they stand to represent something more narrative. I agree with Kandinsky, in the sense that I too feel that there is an initial, physical, and optical reaction to an image that takes place in the eye, but that it may also go further to touch on another level of a being: the emotional and spiritual level. I believe that the formal issues of art are perfect vehicles for the allegorical, and may further more leave the message to supersede the artwork itself.
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel… we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. –C. S. Lewis
Lewis writes about the timelessness of God, and about the time frame in which we live, with fleeting moments and intrusive futures, and how ultimately expendable it all really is for us.
To see time as a whole, or to understand that time exists as one thing, is to come to the realization of a start and a finish, a beginning and an end, or an ultimate sense of boundaries. If we were to hold an object in our hands, we would recognize the edges, the plains, and we would see where the object ends, and where the deep space that surrounds it begins.
All photographs are memento mori. –Susan Sontag
Not only does time’s having a beginning and an end exist on a grander scale, but it is also something that exists on an individual, as well as a personal level: there being a beginning and an end to everyone and everything—a lifetime. The photo, Sontag is saying, is the material proof that time does in fact pass, fade, deplete, and die; and that photos are not only a visual record or evidence of a specific event, but it is a depiction or caption of time that has withered and died. As Sontag says, a “memento mori”—a memorial to dead time. The present rapidly becomes past at every second, laying way for the future which remains ahead and out of sight at all times.
Abstract constructs have been devised as a way to feel as though we have a grip on such a thing as time, or as if we ourselves make the future. Calendars are one example, where we may look at time in advance only as an arrangement of squares, vacant of plans to be plotted on the grid, and to further make sense of something virtually abstract. These devices (calendars, clocks, date books etc.) are man’s attempt to contain something uncontainable, as a means of rationing, as well as merely conceiving. Like staring out across the Grand Canyon, the vastness of something so great nearly disables one’s ability to come to any full rationalization of it, unless it is captured in the frame of a photograph or seen through a lens. Either way, the vast and overwhelmingly pure essence of the thing is diluted in order to be constrained for the human mind. In a sense, the grid of the calendar helps to reiterate the theory that as each day, week, month, and year, begins and ends, just as the very object ends in space, so does the time itself; and like the calendar, each day is numbered. Time is not in the business of moving in any other direction but forward. Which is why we make plans in the future, and not the past. Not even the day just passed could you affect in anyway possible. For we say that calendars and such are for keeping track of affairs, arranging meetings, remembering dates, events, and all the rest, yet not one of them may be carried out if time has stopped for any one individual. What are we really keeping track of, and what does time actually stand to show us?
But if the object is not itself seen, but only heard, the mind of the hearer receives an abstract impression only…and a corresponding vibration is immediately set up in the HEART. –Wassily Kandinsky
We have not seen God, but we have His word (The Scriptures). And in the same way that Kandinsky speaks about objects, so too could this apply to the way in which we experience God—abstractly. We merely get a view of God, through His interactions and works, with and through human beings, but we do not see God Himself. Art, already being something experiential, stands to lend an affective way of experiencing God through a medium. But not just art, but the formal issues of art, through means of symbolism via minimal abstraction. In this mode of working, perhaps the essence of a thing is revealed without facades, in a pure and basic form. To stand and reflect on an actual object, and read the information given as something representative of something larger than itself. As God’s word and people are an embodiment of His presents on earth, so could artwork do the same. Furthermore representing God and His essence through a form that engages and provokes discourse, extending the works meaning beyond its formal and material being.
Morning has not occurred!
That shall aurora be
East of eternity... —Emily Dickinson
Time, having a beginning and an end, therefore leaves the space between the two—our existence as we know it. Our everyday lives as humans wade in the temporal, vulnerable to the condition of our fragile and rationed existence. Time could stop for anyone at any moment. What it would be like to wake up every morning to the realization of this fact, and to adhere the very notion to our hearts at all times. Among the trials and troubles of our everyday lives, perhaps we would attempt to be more patient, and administer more love and kindness. Perhaps if we were to value every second of our lives on earth, we would weigh the worth of our own pride, to be less self-seeking, and more readily to forgive, protect, trust, hope, and preserve; that maybe even we ourselves could stand to represent something more than our material being. For now it is night, and though the sun has not yet risen, the dawn will be at the horizon of eternity, and all will be new.
EAST OF ETERNITY
THESIS ESSAY
BY
STEPHEN EVANS
THESIS ESSAY
BY
STEPHEN EVANS
Time is the perpetual countdown to the end of all things, and is the ultimate signifier of our temporality. “In the beginning God…” as states the first verse of the book of Genesis, illustrates the start of all we know, and subsequently renders a picture of a beginning with a corresponding end. Whether it exists on the face of a clock, the grid of a calendar, or the streak of gray in one’s hair, we are all intimately familiar with time. We all move through time in our own way, and are in most cases dependent upon it. Enveloping all things, including past, present, and future, it stands to reveal its uncontrollable and ever fleeting manner. In my working I have brought myself to question the issue of time on a grand scale and what it means to me: The idea of time being given as a means of something expendable, as well as the idea of it being taken/spent as apposed to being used. I feel to emphasize the fleetingness of our time on this earth, is to amplify its preciousness, and to draw specific attention to how important it is that we make the best use of it while we can. My work is very much about the formal as it is the spiritual and emotional. In my work, I deal with symbolism through the means of minimal abstraction and collage. In some cases the pieces are more of an embodiment of a concept or ideal, and in other cases, they stand to represent something more narrative. I agree with Kandinsky, in the sense that I too feel that there is an initial, physical, and optical reaction to an image that takes place in the eye, but that it may also go further to touch on another level of a being: the emotional and spiritual level. I believe that the formal issues of art are perfect vehicles for the allegorical, and may further more leave the message to supersede the artwork itself.
If you picture Time as a straight line along which we have to travel… we have to leave A behind before we get to B, and cannot reach C until we leave B behind. –C. S. Lewis
Lewis writes about the timelessness of God, and about the time frame in which we live, with fleeting moments and intrusive futures, and how ultimately expendable it all really is for us.
To see time as a whole, or to understand that time exists as one thing, is to come to the realization of a start and a finish, a beginning and an end, or an ultimate sense of boundaries. If we were to hold an object in our hands, we would recognize the edges, the plains, and we would see where the object ends, and where the deep space that surrounds it begins.
All photographs are memento mori. –Susan Sontag
Not only does time’s having a beginning and an end exist on a grander scale, but it is also something that exists on an individual, as well as a personal level: there being a beginning and an end to everyone and everything—a lifetime. The photo, Sontag is saying, is the material proof that time does in fact pass, fade, deplete, and die; and that photos are not only a visual record or evidence of a specific event, but it is a depiction or caption of time that has withered and died. As Sontag says, a “memento mori”—a memorial to dead time. The present rapidly becomes past at every second, laying way for the future which remains ahead and out of sight at all times.
Abstract constructs have been devised as a way to feel as though we have a grip on such a thing as time, or as if we ourselves make the future. Calendars are one example, where we may look at time in advance only as an arrangement of squares, vacant of plans to be plotted on the grid, and to further make sense of something virtually abstract. These devices (calendars, clocks, date books etc.) are man’s attempt to contain something uncontainable, as a means of rationing, as well as merely conceiving. Like staring out across the Grand Canyon, the vastness of something so great nearly disables one’s ability to come to any full rationalization of it, unless it is captured in the frame of a photograph or seen through a lens. Either way, the vast and overwhelmingly pure essence of the thing is diluted in order to be constrained for the human mind. In a sense, the grid of the calendar helps to reiterate the theory that as each day, week, month, and year, begins and ends, just as the very object ends in space, so does the time itself; and like the calendar, each day is numbered. Time is not in the business of moving in any other direction but forward. Which is why we make plans in the future, and not the past. Not even the day just passed could you affect in anyway possible. For we say that calendars and such are for keeping track of affairs, arranging meetings, remembering dates, events, and all the rest, yet not one of them may be carried out if time has stopped for any one individual. What are we really keeping track of, and what does time actually stand to show us?
But if the object is not itself seen, but only heard, the mind of the hearer receives an abstract impression only…and a corresponding vibration is immediately set up in the HEART. –Wassily Kandinsky
We have not seen God, but we have His word (The Scriptures). And in the same way that Kandinsky speaks about objects, so too could this apply to the way in which we experience God—abstractly. We merely get a view of God, through His interactions and works, with and through human beings, but we do not see God Himself. Art, already being something experiential, stands to lend an affective way of experiencing God through a medium. But not just art, but the formal issues of art, through means of symbolism via minimal abstraction. In this mode of working, perhaps the essence of a thing is revealed without facades, in a pure and basic form. To stand and reflect on an actual object, and read the information given as something representative of something larger than itself. As God’s word and people are an embodiment of His presents on earth, so could artwork do the same. Furthermore representing God and His essence through a form that engages and provokes discourse, extending the works meaning beyond its formal and material being.
Morning has not occurred!
That shall aurora be
East of eternity... —Emily Dickinson
Time, having a beginning and an end, therefore leaves the space between the two—our existence as we know it. Our everyday lives as humans wade in the temporal, vulnerable to the condition of our fragile and rationed existence. Time could stop for anyone at any moment. What it would be like to wake up every morning to the realization of this fact, and to adhere the very notion to our hearts at all times. Among the trials and troubles of our everyday lives, perhaps we would attempt to be more patient, and administer more love and kindness. Perhaps if we were to value every second of our lives on earth, we would weigh the worth of our own pride, to be less self-seeking, and more readily to forgive, protect, trust, hope, and preserve; that maybe even we ourselves could stand to represent something more than our material being. For now it is night, and though the sun has not yet risen, the dawn will be at the horizon of eternity, and all will be new.
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