Explaining My Work:: A Pattern of Uncertainty/ A Pattern of Stability.

This is a new post in my series Explaining My Work.

For this post, I'm going to talk about 2 brand new pieces. I've been thinking about the pieces for a long time, but i don't usually write about brand new pieces because living with the work for a time usually brings new thoughts to the conversation.

The pieces are sisters, and both are slated for a show Personal Patterns at the Cafritz Foundation Art Center in Silver Spring Maryland. 

This is the information I sent for the catalogue:

I began the works in Personal Patterns by thinking about choices we have previously made, and choices we are currently contemplating. The two pieces I have created reflect these two different issues and the underlying patterns of those mental places. 

A Pattern of Uncertainty

In the Patterns of Uncertainty, I depict doors as the options presented before us. There is an act of volition in choosing what door to enter. But also shown, is the capricious and outside forces of a child blowing wind affecting the course of a ship at sea. The interplay between our will, and the motions of the universe on our actions. 

A Pattern Of Stability

In the 2nd piece, The Patterns of Stability, I thought about decisions I’ve made in life, decisions that resulted in being held securely, but also being held, locked into place. The locks hold an ambiguous meaning of both security but also inaccessibility. A double looped knot and the emergence of a key in the imagery adds to the sense of the result and resolution of past decisions.

Both pieces are presented with a background of a pattern. For me, this is the patterns that we fall into, keeping the rhythm and reoccurring themes of our lives, but also sometimes, a predictability we try to overcome. I use the patterns from old tin ceilings to create a feeling of the age of these patterns, that they are remnants of decisions made even before we are born. The represent to me the influences on our lives, and sometimes things we are simply drawn toward. 

My work is window glass that I form into molds in a kiln. Once fired, I add drawings and photos, and paint various layers of glass. Finally the pieces are backlit, allowing the viewer to see all the subtle layers of imagery, textures, and bubbles in the glass. 

Explaining My Work: She Drowns The World With Her Sorrow

Continuing with the Explaining My Work series, I wanted to address a piece from my Alice Revisioned series.

She Drowns the World With Her Sorrow
Glass, Paint, Photo, Found Objects, Video
19.5"x16"x5"
(Photo by Pete Duvall)

This piece comes from my series based on Alice in Wonderland. It is directly informed by the chapter Pool of Tears. Indirectly, it is informed by personal experiences. It is also a adapted remake of a piece in the original series I created in 2012.

Pool of Tears
(photo by Pete Duvall)

In 2012, I created a series based on the works of Lewis Carroll and exhibited at 410 Goodbuddy Gallery in Washington, DC.  (Here's an interview with the Huffington Post about the exhibit)  I was really happy with my approach to the pieces and my first inclusion of video in my work. I felt that there was still room for more piece in the series but didn't have the right opportunity to continue with it. in 2013 I was contacted by the College of Southern Maryland to Exhibit in their gallery. I waffled a bit on what I would created, considering a series based on the Wizard of Oz, or possibly simply random pieces without a unifying theme. I do like themes though. Earlier this year I settled on remounting the Alice series and knew that based on the size of the space i needed more works. I had in mind pieces that didn't quite work in the original batch, or that i just didn't have the time to complete. Since the original piece, Pool of Tears, was no longer available to exhibit, and I had an idea of how to make it differently, I set about creating/recreating She Drowns the World With Her Sorrow.
When first conceptualizing Pool of Tears, I had imagined a video of eyes crying behind a boat, inside of a room with drapery. The designed morphed a bit and I decided to include a video I had taken while on a kayaking trip on the Susquehanna River. The boat, the oar, little sea creatures stayed with the design.  With the piece being unavailable and the chance to remount the exhibit with additional pieces, I was able to rethink and fine tune my approach. I was certain I wanted to include my original idea for a child crying. I wanted to rethink not just the elements, but what I was trying to convey. I wanted to really think about the self pity aspect and the destructive part of that. And I wanted to make it a warning to myself. The piece is actually quite personal.

I'll talk about the different elements and how they came to be.
On the top section is a flat window pane with the image of a cargo ship. The image came directly from Cargo Ship, a piece from another series, The Luxury of Dreams.

Cargo Ship 
Glass, Paint, Photo

The image is part photo, part drawing, part photoshop. The pane of glass has been painted as well. I wanted to add another ship element to the piece, and a pretty open metaphor of the baggage that we carry with us. The load that weighs us down in the water. but also the things that we're able to transport to others. The Cargo Ship only exists because of the load it can carry. And I really wanted to draw connections to other pieces I've made. To draw a connectedness, to illustrate that these pieces are in the same world I'm connecting.

The main portion of the sculpture is a slump cast window glass pane. I carved the boat out of insulation foam and made a mold of it for the glass casting. The boat is the same boat from Pool of Tears, but this time with more people, and oarless, adrift in the current. but surviving.

The setting for this current is a section of rowhouses along First Street NW in Washington, DC. As with the cargo ship, the image is a photo that has been highly altered with drawings, photoshop, and paint. And was also taken from a piece in The Luxury of Dreams series.

The scenery represents the world around us, and the ramifications of what could be, and is, lost. This was my old neighborhood, a place I was quite found of, and worked tirelessly for through a home renovation, street clean ups, volunteer work, starting an neighborhood blog, and making murals on a few business. It was really the first and only place I've felt "home". The loss of place, even through a necessary direction in my life, holds a profound effect on me. Theres a lot going on in the piece for me. layered and with perhaps a blurred distinction between Alice, Home, The boats, the rising waters, and those in the boat. I think that we are all of those things simultaneously. The piece represents the destructiveness of self pity. It represents survival in the face of destruction and change. It represents the things and people we carry with us. It is a touching and beautiful moment in the book, and I wanted to bring a sense of that to my work, while adding my own world, and vision and viewpoint. For me it holds a warning, and a reminder, and a fear of sadness. It also holds hope and a means to move forward.

detail

Also, as with most of the pieces in my Alice in Wonderland series, there is a hidden image of a rabbit.

What do you think?

Explaining My Work: Seeing Beyond

A continuation of my posts trying to give you a glimpse into why I make what I make, and what I think it means. I wrote about this piece before, but felt I should expand on it.

Seeing Beyond
Glass, Paint, LED

24”x30”x4”

I want to give you a sense of the arch of my feelings toward this imagery. I love locks. Ever since I was a child I was fascinated by locks. Padlocks, key locks, combination locks, door locks, they all fascinated me. When I worked in theatre, I was always pleased that we used old fashioned and historic antique locks for trunks and doors and chains. The shapes seemed to tell a story of the preciousness of what it was protection, or the strength which which it did it's job. A lock is a puzzle, for which there is, if you can find the key, an answer.

I began using locks in my paintwork, really for as long as I can remember. When I began working in glass this was an early piece that I used the lock imagery.

Doubt
Glass, Concrete, Paint
42"x13"
2009

 I was thinking about things that hold us back. The obstacles we face in life, the things we must break free from. With this piece I wanted to lead the viewer toward a psychological understanding of obstacles and titled the piece "Doubt". Our doubt holding us back. I used the imagery for a number of pieces, exploring how to express this idea of locks holding back our growth. This was a suite of 3 pieces which starting with Doubt, also included an outside aid -Path of the Boatman, and a resolution- Both Shores.

My next series included the imagery of Goggles that I've revisited for Seeing Beyond. I first used goggles in science class in school. And for swimming, and I think I even had some for sledding. I used goggles in college when i learned oxyacetylene welding and steel cutting. I even bought a pair of goggle sunglasses back in the 90's when i thought i was a bit cool.  They were at least good for raves and waterslides. 

I created a lot of paintings with figures wearing goggles. a lot of those never made the jump from slides to digital files so may be lost forever... but the image to the left was the first time I used goggles in glass.
It's a retelling of the story of Prometheus. The story of Prometheus has been a huge part of my artwork for a long time and something I've thought about since I first read Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus in High School.  In this piece, I use the goggles to represent Victor Frankenstein, the scientist, or Prometheus in his capacity to think creatively and problem solve. This also goes into why I use lightbulbs so frequently in my work

So, onward to 2013 and Seeing Beyond, which i initially posted here

Explaining My Work: Ghost Lights

Diogenes At The Barter

Everyone that knows my work has noticed that I use the lightbulb imagery pretty often. Not everyone knows why.
I have two reasons, and they both were formed when I was an artisan at the Barter Theatre in Abingdon, Virginia.

At the time, I was a recent graduate, trying to find a place in the world, trying to figure out what was what. I was intrigued by the story of Diogenes,  who would walk around with a lantern searching for an honest man. He slept in a large ceramic pot and lived in poverty, I could barely afford to eat and I slept behind the sofa in the kitchen of a friends apartment. I had also minored in Philosophy, so I was too heady for my own good. But most importantly, I was actively seeking my Karass. I was looking for an honest life.
I first painted Diogenes as myself inside a theatre. I had access to lots of scrap wood and pieces of sets after the shows would come down. The piece Diogenes at the Barter was from a door and measured roughly 9.5 feet tall by 4 foot wide. It was a monstrous piece for me. I depicted Diogenes holding his lantern surrounded by electrical wires and theatrical lighting. It was a product of my jumbled mind and living conditions at the time. Everything was crowded. Everything felt like a mosaic. Everything felt larger than life. My sense of the lantern evolved to utilize the background electrical wires and became a lightbulb. A Modern Diogenes.

The other image of a lightbulb came from a theatrical device know as the Ghost Light. A plain lightbulb set on a pole and stand, protected by a cage, with a long extension cord.  As a set painter, I often had to work late at night doing touch-ups after the show had come down, or work on set on Mondays when the theatre was closed. After everyone leaves the theatre for the night, the Ghost Light is set out. So, often it was me that set it out and i really loved doing it. Practically, it is a safety light to keep people from wandering around in the dark and falling of the stage. Superstitiously, and far more interestingly, it is to keep the ghosts of the theatre happy and comfortable. And everyone knows that all good theatres are haunted. I certainly recall some very creepy nights at the Barter Theatre. Here's an article about the Barter. Symbolically for me it is a beacon for something that may or may not exist. It is a metaphor of faith. Of constancy. And of hope and kindness.

Diogenes by Sean Hennessey

I began using imagery of lightbulbs, fire, and lanterns in a number of paintings. As a fan of creation stories, I imagined Prometheus as giving the gift of electricity and light instead of fire. And through that I imagined light bulbs to by symbols of consciousness. A spark of life given by the gods to set humans apart from other animals. I created small paintings of electrical outlets, of wires and switches, of sparks and of light bulbs. Sometimes i created larger more narrative pieces, such as Diogenes (pictured to the left).

This piece was the piece that actually made me start working more sculpturally. I wanted the lightbulbs, plugs and electrical outlets to pop out from the picture plane. At this point I began creating painted fiberglass castings and started to use real lightbulbs in the mold making process.

Soon I moved on from fiberglass to working in concrete. I created many concrete castings of lightbulbs to sell at street festivals and art fairs.
This produced lots of experimentation and surface treatments.









From plain concrete, to stained concrete, to gilded concrete, to painted concrete, to complex layering of tinted concrete


                                 














I then found the process of working in cast glass to be the most satisfying. This was my very first glass casting

I begin creating glass pieces with wild abandon, as often as I could. At first I made small singular lightbulbs that were individual pieces or attached to larger mixed media pieces. I began to develop narratives with the Lightbulbs in glass and deeply explored many possibilities. I added colored float glass to the pieces, colored frit to the pieces. I painted them with all kinds of paint. I gold leafed them. I even coated them with concrete. 

I continued to use the Lightbulb as a symbol of hope. of dreams. and of the inner strength we all have. I had always wanted to build a lightbox to display my pieces, but I really hate fluorescent tubes, I didn't want something inefficient, or to generate too much heat, or to create a lot of bulk in the piece.
Finally I found two products I liked and began backlighting my pieces which gave me the ability to do more complicated paint work on the glass. I decided that my first backlit pieces would be fairly large, The largest glass pieces i'd ever done in fact. 3 Foot by 2 Foot.

Limitless

I have now created a number of backlit glass panels using the lightbulb( among the other pieces i make)

Our Dreams Make it Possible

A Relentless Offering

The Possibility

Ghost Light

Bouquet

Update this post to add my newest one

Heres a photo set of many more lightbulb pieces

Explaining My Work: Seeing Beyond

Part 3 in an ongoing explanation of the thoughts that go into my pieces. I've previously discussed Humpty Dumpty is a Rabbit Hole and Sharing What Is Held Close.

Please let me know what you think.

Seeing Beyond
25"x30"
glass, paint, steel, led
sean hennessey

I've explained my thoughts on locks in a previous post. When I made Promises that Remain Unbroken,

I wanted to give a counterpoint and to more viscerally feel a sea of locks. A swarm. I wanted to be a bit overwhelming. Daunting. 

I always loved science. And all the science classes I took. I've played with imagery that involved things that affect and augment sight. Glasses, googles, telescopes, microscopes, magnifying glasses etc... .

I think there is something powerful in that. Unsettling and settling. It speaks of how independent we really can be. It speaks of opportunity and possibly of trust. It also speaks of desire. Of the compulsion to move beyond and experience more. The use of the old plastic lab safety googles from science classes of my childhood was a perfect inclusion for this piece. Experimental, exciting, eye and world opening.i wanted to express a device and means for a person to look beyond the mere obstacles that might be present and see into the place that they want to be. 

But it's also about hope and determination for me to get beyond my own hang ups. I sometimes feel burdened by details, and while I strive to maintain my sense of the present, to be mindful of what's around me, and conscious of how I feel about it, I often lose something in that. I forget to look ahead, to plan, to make far reaching goals. I have a strong sense that every moment could be my last. This piece is to remind me, and others to be mindful of where we are heading. 

I bounced back and forth for awhile about color, and possibly the use of imagery behind the goggles. I wondered if a video behind the goggles was the way to go. It will be in future pieces, I'm sure, so keep an eye out for those. They're coming soon. 

I also wanted a lack of color in this piece. A clarity and a focus. Sometimes I'm not 100% sure why I make my decisions. This is the case. It just felt right. 

Explaining My Work: Humpty Dumpty Was A Rabbit Hole.

This is the second post in what i hope to be an ongoing series sharing a glimpse into how i see the work that i create. Please let me know what you think.

During a summer artists retreat at the beach, i brainstormed some new ideas and was looking to come up with a way to create a longer narrative that included video and lighting along with a variety of materials. A mixed and multimedia series. I happened to bring along Alice in Wonderland for some fun reading and decided that this was perfect source material for an entire exhibit.

I immediately envisioned two pieces, The Mad Tea Party scene, and A large cracked concrete egg of Humpty Dumpty. The piece had to fall in line with a very cohesive outline that i had constructed. It needed to be a certain size... I wanted the series to feel somewhat like pages in an old book... the same size, sepia tones

So, with Humpty Dumpty, the interesting prideful character in Through the Looking glass, I wanted to deal with externalities and internalities, I wanted to deal with ego, pride, the fall, a journey. I wanted to include the ceiling tile patternwork that i love so much, I wanted there to be a moment of surprise and discovery, a bit of a shock, and a reward for seeking. The form of the large cast concrete egg came to me right away. I looked for large eggs to make a wold of and found something on ebay that i had to cut up and set onto a background of tile work. I then had to make a large rubber mold into which i cast concrete.  Very process oriented work that require a lot of planning.
Once the concrete was cured, i stained it green and gold leafed the insides. I know i wanted it to seem precious. A hardened stoic exterior to a warm glowing interior. At first i thought i would have a cracked heart inside, maybe on a spring so that it seemed quivering. That piece may still come. The form of this is something i still want to play with. I really let it sit for a while as i decided what was the thing that would be the essence of humpty dumpty. Sometimes creativity is a momentary flash, sometimes it takes a long time to mull over, to decide if it's the right fit, supports my vision, is tasteful and interesting. But then it dawned on me that Humpty Dumpty as a metaphor of ego, pride and arrogance, also represented the Rabbit Hole that Alice fell into. A vortex of trying to find your true self through trials. A form or purgatory almost. I envisioned people being hurled into the rabbit hole on their own journey to whatever end they find there.  reconciliation, humility, nothingness, nirvana. I also felt that the reward is that we all can see ourselves in this state, in this piece. We all all susceptible to Humpty Dumpty. but i think we can all be put back together.

Explaining my Work: Sharing What is Held Close

I'm going to start a series of posts that share a glimpse of what i'm thinking about in making the works that i create. I do love when people bring their own explanations to works but i feel that a little behind the scene thinking from the artist is valuable too. let me know what you think!

Sharing What is Held Close
Glass, Paint, LED, Steel
24"x30"
2013

This piece began with my thoughts of locks. As both a means of protection and an obstacle keeping you away. I've done a number of pieces that are explorations of this ambiguity. I considered how to develop a narrative around this. I have an absolute love of Mediterranean decorative tile work, but also appreciate the symbology of patternwork. there is an activation of space, an excitement with color pattern displays, but internally we find the patterns of how we deal with others. This dualism appealed to me. I wanted to make it very personal.  I've become increasingly aware of my inability to let others know me. the patterns of my own protections. my walls. my desire to know others without letting them in. a repetition of that pattern. i've only really let people know me through my work. And even that has been very cryptic. While still a struggle for me to really be open with others, I am trying. This piece represents that attempt. But even within that, when i reach out to others, there is always the fear that i've been too open, too outgoing, too personal and I visualize my arms being chopped off.  Thats the risk, the possibility that i may lose the desire to reach out altogether. I think this is why i have gravitated toward artwork. i can make things, express myself, and others can choose to witness, partake, engage in their own way, at their own time, or simply walk away. i can put my things out there and let them be. I have no fear of interacting that way, but i did have a fear of something deeper.
This piece is about a reciprocity of fear, and the attempts to overcome the impersonal. Both are scared, both have protections and things we are hesitant to share. It is about the process of overcoming these patterns of interactions and fear. Sharing the things we hold close.

I've been doing this more and more. with mixed results. even this post makes me feel like i'm pushing my self into the faces of others. but i'll give it a try. and at least i still have my arms. (knock on wood)