Cutting Holes to the Hush Hush Wonderland
I like to cut holes in things.
Last year I put a mouse hole into our hallway. If you come over, walk just past the bathroom and stoop down low. A potbellied gnome lives in there. He likes to forage for lost legos in the night while we sleep. I have also cut a hole in the side of our house (on purpose). Once I cut a couch in half. Don’t give me a sawzall if you don’t want to see some innards!
Hidden Compartments. Cutaways. Cross-Sections. Lockets. Pockets.
The idea that what you see is not what you get, but rather a husk containing some hush-hush wonderland. Because I also like the idea that what we call reality is a merely a taut membrane hiding the expansive unknowns. While I tinker with this notion playfully in my work, it’s always stemming from a serious instinctive yearning.
Wonder-hunger.
Some illustrative examples by others, from moody to charming to mechanical (click images for the artist’s website):
Which leads us to this,
my newest way of throwing lots of time into experiments with holes in things. What do you think these will be? It seems bonk-on-the-head obvious to me, but maybe I’m too deep in the plaster to have perspective.
Years ago,
I made an entire series to “furnish” a room with life-size paintings of objects. Many of the objects had hidden compartments, such as this bookshelf with two tall, skinny drawers that pull completely out of the painting.
This zeal has been rekindled, clearly.
Do you know the difference between a cross-section and a cutaway? I did not, until scribbling up this post. The first is cutting straight through something, and a cutaway is taking out a chunk.
These two both feature cross-sections. To the left is “Old Growth Doesn’t Grow Back” (currently on display at the Newport Visual Arts Center) and to the right is a painting on what we call a chipaway schedule. We’ve agreed, the painting and I, that I will chip away at it for another year or so.
And there you have the compartmentalized update on compartments from the land of my studio, which is a compartment shaped like Nevada, if you were an eagle looking down and someone had just performed a cross-section on my house.
Last morsel: On April 21st I will be teaching a one-day oil painting class in Newport! It shall be juicy! https://coastarts.org/events/cloud-painting/
Last question: What have YOU cut holes in?
Lubs, Khara