pumpkin spice lint ball acrylic on wood 12x14 (no longer exists)
More fun with making acrylic string tangles. I like the visual static that starts to hum when you get a bunch of layers of this stuff going. More to come.
Purse(Clutch) /
Purse(Clutch) acrylic on wood 6.5x7.375 not for sale
About 2 weeks ago I went to visit my family in Boone, NC. While there I noticed a sweet pattern on my mom's new purse, or "clutch," as she likes to call it. All around it has big bold black and white stripes with a red interior and accents. Something about the look of it struck me and stuck in my head for a while. I used the basic design of it to make this one. The acrylic allows you to do some pretty interesting things in terms of utilizing it's somewhat plastic properties. I assume you could do something similar with oil, but it would be far more expensive, might be a bit unreliable going from one color to the next, and it would take forever to dry. So I went a more immediate route.
Sweater Nest /
Sweater Nest acrylic on wood 7.375x5.375
I've been having fun using acrylic in a somewhat sculptural way. With a little ingenuity you can make acrylic look fairly close to string. I'll be making many more of this type. They're sort of a bear, but I'm tweaking that process a little bit. Another process I'll be tweaking is my documentation of these paintings. Gotta get some more lights and standardize it a bit so my images don't look crummy. I'll get there.
Siliceous Oozes /
Siliceous Oozes acrylic on wood 7.375x5.25 (no longer exists)
Pulling from my geology classes at William & Mary here. I was always a big fan of the term siliceous oozes. It describes a situation where microscopic critters like diatoms accumulate on the ocean floor when the water is nearly saturated with silica. Very slowly blankets of a silica-rich ooze are formed. If I remember correctly, these oozes later become chert after spending a few million years in nature's pressure cooker. Chert's cool because you can make cutting tools and arrowheads out of it. I like chert.
I've included an image to show the scale - a good trick for photographing an outcrop or rock. I reckon it's just as useful photographing artwork. I'll try to make a habit out of it. The Nikon cap measures 2.125 inches in diameter, so this one is a little guy.
Snow on the Ground, Bang-bang /
Snow on the Ground, Bang-bang acrylic, graphite, and cotton on wood panel 12x14
This is another one pulled from my time at the National Training Center in Ft. Irwin, CA. Summetime, 1999. We were on a live-fire range in this valley, and out of nowhere it started snowing like mad. That completely blew our minds since it was around June or so and in the Mojave Desert and it was right in the middle of our live-fire exercise. Everyone was going apeshit. We loved it. Guns and snow in the desert make soldiers very happy and a little confused. We were experiencing something truly bizarre and magical.
Mines of Kinds /
Mines of Kinds acrylic and graphite on panel with drilled holes 34x42 SOLD
This is a mashup of a "disrupt" minefield pattern (drilled into the panel) and a field of geologic unconformities (the paint and graphite bits). A little tribute to my active duty days at the National Training Center in California.
Unconformities are tricky little buggars found in the rock record. They are the planes that separate rock masses when sediment deposition is not continuous, usually due to a period of erosion before the sediment deposition picked back up. I say they're tricky because they denote a loss in recorded time. It's tough to know what actually happened when you've lost time. Disrupt minefields are also tricky little buggars. They are meant to disrupt an enemy's plans, causing them to panic and lose precious moments. Warfare and geology are gritty businesses not for the faint of heart.
The last time I was part of an emplacement crew was in 2000 or so, training in the Mojave Desert as a wiry 21-year-old army combat engineer dude. My comrades and I were in this low area at the foot of a small mountain and the sun was just calling it a quits for the night. Below our feet was a mixture of big rocks and little rocks with a light dusting of sand on top to conceal the chaos below. The mines (inert) weren't too bad to put in, but the razor-wire frat fence around it was the real challenge. We spent hours pounding those pickets into the red rocky ground. Half the time the pickets would just bounce off a rock just below the surface, sending vibrating shocks into our hands and arms with each "Pang!" of the heavy, black picket-pounder. Sometimes we could find a crack in the rock to work with, but other times we'd have to find a softer spot to the right or the left, making for a wavy edge along our fence. Fortunately, I can't quite picture the fruits of our labor. The mental image is all but gone. Maybe it was dark by then, but I'll bet it was one of the roughest looking minefields we ever put in - haha! Needless to say, I enjoyed putting this painting's minefield a lot more.
Tube Top/Bottom /
Tube Top/Bottom acrylic on wood panel 16x20 SOLD
Another little ditty that follows the stripe theme. There are these times when things far away (say, a horizon) line up with things close up (a horizontal edge of some sort). In those moments it seems that space is collapsed and the world becomes flat just briefly. Keeping still keeps that phenomenon going; any movement and it falls away. I love those moments of being still and seeing weird things that destroy a logic that a moment ago seemed so sound.
Nice Try, Tie /
Nice Try, Tie acrylic on wood panel 12x16 SOLD
I'm a bit happier these days and am making work that reflects that. This piece and others that follow this post refer to my studies in geology, my time in the military, a deep attraction to stripes, and a recently developed appreciation for the benefits of meditation and meditative work. Maybe the attraction to stripes has something to do with how they vibrate visually or describe a texture that begs to be felt. I don't know what it is, but I enjoy creating them, toying with them, and looking at them immensely.
sidenote: For simplicity's sake, I've included prices with the title/medium/size info. If you see something that speaks to you that you'd like to purchase anywhere on this site, please don't hesitate to contact me: joegolney@gmail.com , olneyjoe@hotmail.com , or give me a call on my cell if you have that handy. In most cases I can ship it out the following day.
Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the posts!
Joe
Nurse V /
Nurse V acrylic on paper 15.5x11.5
Yet another drawing/painting made from family photos. Although she's gone now, she's still with us in one way or another.
Aunt 2 (with windbreak) /
Aunt 2 (with windbreak) ink, gesso, acrylic, and graphite on paper 22x23
Another painting/drawing inspired by a family photo.
Aunt /
Aunt ink, acrylic, and gesso on paper 23x22
I have these photographs of my family that I've been using for various projects. This one refers to a picture of my aunt (or grand aunt, rather) holding my sister, I think. Tough to tell sometimes who's who with pictures of babies.
Distorted George, 1969 #2 (Camo George) /
Distorted George, 1969 #2 (Camo George) gesso and acrylic on paper 22x25
Having more fun with this image of George Carlin being a goofball. I decided to expand the view to that of the original image while pushing "digital distortion" look a bit into the decorative. I have him slightly camouflaged here, which wasn't really planned, but I like it. Well, it was sort of planned. I had been thinking a lot about Ann Gale's work and how her subjects dissipate into their surroundings. I suppose that's the aim of camouflage, too. With this painting, I think had I aimed for a camouflaged look on the outset, it wouldn't have turned out quite like this. I've tried making an image like this before (with lines making up the figure in the foreground and also the background) with pretty bad results. Something about the boundaries of the body being too strictly adhered to makes for a stiff drawing or painting and one-way ticket to the garbage can. I'm much happier with how this whacky picture turned out. It seems loose enough, and it makes me laugh every time I look at it.
Distorted George, 1969 /
Distorted George, 1969 gesso and acrylic on paper 9x12
I've been making a lot of heavy stuff for a while, so I decided to lighten it up a bit. This drawing is from a still of George Carlin performing on, I believe, the Tonight Show in 1969. Shamefully, it's taken from his Wikipedia page, but fuck it, the original image made me laugh as he always has. As I made this one, I decided to pass the source image though a couple of imagined modes of distortion - first by the lined static common of the era of the original broadcast and then through a more digital distortion of the video viewing we enjoy today through youTube and other online video sites. Distortion on top of distortion. Something like that.
illustrations, 2014 /
untitled illustrations (2014) ink, graphite, and/or correction fluid on paper ~9x11
Although I haven't posted anything in while, I've been working on some illustrations and planning other dog tag projects over the last year and a half. The collection of drawings above were created while I was working at a local fountain pen company. While there, I made illustrations for a short time in order to promote the products they sold. A few of them have that feel as well as the company's watermark. Making these were a lot of fun and reminded me how much I enjoy building an image with a collection of little marks using a pencil, pen, syringe, Q-tip, brush, or whatever I can get my hands on. They're of James Gandolfini, Robin Williams, Buckminster Fuller's Dymaxion Car, a study of an Ann Gale painting, and Bill Mauldin. All but the Gandofini and Williams photos were taken by the very talented Sarah Mattozzi.
Yawn /
Yawn copper wire and approx. 2,400 nameless dog tags 59x79 SOLD
An installation I did for the Almost Famous group show at Reynolds Gallery that is up until July 12th.
This is a continuation of the ...Over project that I've been working on. While looking at photos of my last installation, I started to notice a formal connection to the shimmering quality of the steel dog tags and the chaotic dance of television static. I've also been thinking about the way we interact with war secondhand as American television/internet audience members. So this piece became an attempt to address the mediation of war and what I have seen as the overall American reaction to it - tuned out and bored with it. The proportions and shape of this piece reference television sets from the 60's, which alludes to the legacy of providing the American public with a filtered and stripped down version of what American wars are like.
Rock Ridge! Rock Ridge! Splendid! Splendid! /
Rock Ridge! Rock Ridge! Splendid! Splendid! sanded fixed powdered graphite and acrylic on repaired panel 12x16 (no longer exists)
Arthritis /
Arthritis (series) (top: current state ) intaglio plate: 12x16, paper: variable
I started this etching series thinking of the wood panel pieces I made earlier this year. Much like how sanding into plies of wood and glue creates an object/image, the process of drypoint (sanding and scribing), etching, and aquatint also creates an object/image. The main difference being that the final image in intaglio comes from the inked surface of that object.
This series was very much a reactive process whereby one image begat another in response to what came before it. I was not aiming at an end point image, and I do not consider this series finished. It will go on as long as the plate holds up to the abuse. This may take quite a long time, but the point is that with the process of intaglio, one does not need to stop working or responding just because something seems finished or resolved. It can go on and on and on until the plate has been eroded away.
I enjoy this process very much because it allows me to take "snapshots" with each working- and state-proofs. I should mention that no editions were made for any of the states. One or two prints were taken for each state and I moved on. In this way, no state is more or less important than any other.
...Over (silent version) /
...Over (silent version) 3,000 blank dog tags with copper wire 240 x 54
Reflection /
Reflection sanded gesso on canvas over panel approx. 33x41
This sort of work is not the easiest to view. It requires time and patience. It's a conceptual piece that I finished last year, and it addresses the tension one feels when starting something new. I feel I've had a lot of experience with new starts. Unlimited freedom can be a little overwhelming, but it can also be uplifting, terrifying, intimidating, and refreshing. These mixed feelings can bring about a hesitant pause in the face of endless possibilities. In that pause, important (and not-so-important) decisions are made. I chose to refine this gessoed surface to mirror finish in order to heighten the tension of what comes next: Mark number one, the first swipe of the brush, that first step on a new trail.
As for the reflection, it's one that denies the self. Because of how it's made, one cannot see one's own reflection in it, only that of their surroundings. Personally, I find that sometimes I can be my biggest hurdle to get over. If only I could get out of my own way. If only I wasn't so aware of myself, my fears and my past and more aware of what's around me, I'd be able to move on to the next thing. So with this in mind, I tried to catch the silent moment when misgivings are denied and new challenges are about to begin with clarity, courage, and openness.
for M and B
Scale Sketch for "Over..." Project /
Over...(scale sketch) screen print on four papers 396x54 (dimensions will vary)
This is a sketch of the Over... Project that I've been working on. The size of the tags are to scale. However, the overall shape of the piece and spacing of the tags may change. At least this roughly gives a sense of the area that I'm working with. I just couldn't see in my mind what 5,000 dog tags would look like, so I burned a screen and got to work pulling prints. I've ordered about half of the dog tags and the wire that they will hang from. So when they come in I'll have a better idea of what this piece will end up looking like.
I had originally intended to put this on a much taller, vertically-oriented wall (which would have changed it's proportions to something more like 5/6), but it's good to see on a wall like this because finding tall walls (30 feet or so) has been difficult. I may have to modify ...Over to the space(s) it ends up in.
In my critique, the possibility of this becoming a traveling exhibit came up. I like that idea. There was also a suggestion that it might change from site-to-site. I like that, too.