360 panorama

App on tap:

Bruce just introduced me to a very cool iPhone app called 360 Panorama.  You basically move the camera around while it takes frames of images and they get combined into one shot.  Voila! A 360 degree panoramic photo. Tons of potential for creative picture taking with this app.

If you see me around town spinning in circles with my phone in the air, I might be playing with this!

Bruce took this panoramic snap to show me how it works.  

Update 29 November 2011: 


Okay, Bruce took another photo that is pretty funny so I must add it here.

take a load off Mac-ee

Last winter my Mac G5 desktop died. Luckily I didn't need to panic.  Months before  I had bought a laptop so I could work with more flexibility as we travel more and more, so it wasn't a crisis.  But I was left with a big heavy pile of metal. 

I researched what to do and found Apple does have a reuse and recycling program.  On a web page you enter the type of computer to be recycled into a form which calculates what the machine may be worth for a store credit.  Sounded fine by me.  Mine was worth nothing.  At best it might have brought $50 if it weren't dead.  Sheesh.  Even worth nothing, the recycling program was willing to take this model and they pay for the shipping as long as I packed it up.  I couldn't find the stupid box.  Our basement is like a museum of boxes, but apparently I didn't hang on to this one, or even one box big and stable enough for this towering heap.  

Determined to get this big ass metal box out of my office right then but not just stick it on the curb for the trash, I called the guys at Recompute Missoula, to beg them to take it.  They said, "Yes!" 

I bagged the installation discs and the power cord and hauled it out and over there immediately.  After leaving their store, I felt so relieved with just the possibility of parts being salvaged and reused. 

No shit, while I drove away "Take a Load Off Maggie" was playing on the radio!  So, I tried harmonizing with my own variation, "Take a Load Off Mac-ee."  Ha!  

Yeah, okay, this might by my dorkiest confession on this blog yet. 

a letter from Sol redux

                                                                            VXSP3PS3YT6H

Remember my post "a letter from Sol"?  Well, apparently Sol's letter is trending a bit.  That video was made in 2004 (according to its credits) and uploaded in 2007 by Joao Leonardo.  Here (below) is another video made by someone else inspired by the famed letter to Eva Hesse.  I found it via my friend and photographer, Doug Ness, who posted it on facebook and apparently picked it up from Jane Fulton Alt.  

Sheesh, the art world can be so... incestuously small and repetitive sometimes, eh?  Even so, I still maintain that every artist could use hearing this advice and repeatedly.  

Plus, I appreciate the different tone of this video.  Joao's is more minimalist and post-modern, in keeping with Sol Lewitt and Eva Hesse's sensibilities. This newer one (2011) by animator Levni Yilmaz is a refreshing departure; it is arranged differently, less intense in its energy, and incorporates hand-drawn imagery.  And the message feels more youthful and human because of it. 

To read the letter which begins "Dear Eva, It will be almost a month since you wrote to me and you have possibly forgotten your state of mind (I doubt it though)" in its supposed original content and order, go to this blog.

If you find more interpretations of Sol's letter out there, let me know. Perhaps I'll make my own video version of the letter.  Who knows?

a studio of one's own

A while back I received a letter in the mail notifying me that I had been nominated to an artist residency at Jentel by an art curator in Seattle whom I respect and admire.  The letter alone had me floating on air.  The residency had me hopping out of my skin.  (It still does.)  




At Jentel, I wandered around working in my head.

I wrote every day. I studied wind causes and patterns.  I watched a stack of avant-garde movies by  surrealists and early film experimentalists until I had a headache.  I read myself to sleep with novels at all hours of the night and short stories at breakfast. I listened to books on CD while making drawings.  I took leisurely walks, even if just to the mailbox.  I took many notes. I cut circles out of paper.  I made storyboards with ink, watercolor or graphite.  I sewed strips of black cloth into circles. 


I snapped  hundreds of photos.  

I just did stuff.   
 

I hiked with my video camera a couple times each week.  

I recorded the texture and movement of dry rattling grass and brittle sage shrubs.  

I edited video until I was dizzy. 


I followed the clouds and tried grabbing the sun.

While crawling around trying to get the better shot, I dragged my leg across a prickly pear cactus. (I don't recommend this.  I pulled at least 50 needles out of my calf and it's STILL bruised.)  Prickly Pears are low-growing and sometimes hidden in the grass, especially hard to see in late winter and early spring.  It's much easier to see in this picture, plus the cool crusty rock next to it.

I pondered the conical lava mound mountains. 

I revisited certain rocks.

I considered how each bit of scoria (lava rock) looks like a red, black or dark brown miniature mountain.  

Miniature scoria mountain.

And how it is sooo light.


I bound the scoria with string.

And hung them on the wall in the profile of the mountains outside on the other side of my studio wall.

T. Matlock, Lighten Up, Jentel scoria, nails and string.

T. Matlock, Lighten Up, angle view.

T. Matlock, Lighten Up, detail.

Finally, I cut them all down, cut away the threads and mixed them back into  the rest of the scoria gravel in the driveway.

Stay tuned for more about movies.  I'll be editing the video I collected for awhile.  

getting to know

I'm still getting to know my new studio.  I moved into it over two years ago.

Between projects... aka after a show.

Works in progress, Toni Matlock © 2010

Fantasmagorie

Fantasmagorie by Emile Cohl in 1908

Fantasmagorie is considered to be the first fully animated film.  Find more free historic films online at Open Culture.  (I learned about them on Twitter from @brainpicker.)  

I have some animation projects of my own on the back of my desk that I hope to dust off and let breathe this winter.  

video of my video on a window

At The Brink Gallery first friday opening reception of my show fix yourself, I watched a person taking a video of my video, learn more to earn more, on the window with their point-and-shoot camera.  It might have been the most perfect moment of the show for me.  

First, you can only see this video at night.  The projector hangs inside the gallery and points out an exterior window, so during the day the light of the projector doesn't compete with daylight.  

learn more to earn more, video, lectern, encyclopedia minus core cut out, moss, window, silver leaf

In daytime, you can see just inside the gallery stands a lectern with an encyclopedia and moss growing inside it.   On the window's surface, silver-leaf layers form a circle at eye-level, over the book on the lectern.

learn more to earn more, view from outside during the day

When dusk rolled in on the later side of opening night, it was after most gallery walkers were heading to dinner with friends.  I was about to leave for the night too.  I stood in the middle of the gallery, when I saw a person outside the gallery stop to watch the video emerging in the circle on the window.  learn more to earn more was the last piece that we had installed for the show only a few hours before, so I had not even seen it on the window yet myself.  The person outside was probably the first to see this video as it was intended - on this window of this gallery, framing the objects inside.  

learn more to earn more, demo (with gallery staff member, Marlo,) of a person looking through the window

As I stood inside, twenty paces away and watching, their face, blurred by the filmy substance inside the circle that 'catches' the projecting image, they were perfectly framed in the silver-leaf halo.  I thought, "fini." But then they lifted their pocket camera, framed  a shot of the video and held steady.  Their lens pointing into the window, framed by the photographer's fuzzy face, framed in a halo of silver-leaf framed by a window of darkness.  This was more than I had hoped for.  The woman next to me saw what I did, and without a hint of irony said, "Toni, you gotta get a picture of that!"

A companion piece to learn more to earn more, titled swell, hangs on a nearby way in the gallery.

swell, core of encyclopedia, rope

learn more to earn more, detail at night

You can't really see the video at this angle, but you can see the layout of the elements at night.  The light from the video is 'captured' inside the circle of silver leaf, and also reflects off of it, back onto the encyclopedia.  

The video with learn more to earn more ran for the last time last Friday night.

solo show at The Brink Gallery

For the month of October, I have a show of new work titled fix yourself at The Brink Gallery in Missoula.

fix yourself features some of my efforts to pare down and seek clarity of knowledge - a moment that you look and hear and feel something that you’ve seen, heard and felt before but now you are convinced it’s a part of you.

integrating thoughts, LED lights, wire, ink and acrylic on butter papers

installing integrating thoughts

integrating thoughts, detail

the exhibition includes objects, pictures and video works.  see more samples of my work here in the future and at my new blog for my artwork here.

have you seen the signs?

All imagery has meaning.  It's inherent, right?  As does any object.  Hiding messages inside imagery is as old as the hills of course. And it's everywhere, not just in art.  We depend on symbols daily.  

I am exploring communication through symbols and gestures in my studio.  I recently discovered (from Bruce) one obscure way to turn text into symbols or hide a message called QR (Quick Response) barcodes. They won't be obscure for long, I don't think, plus they are already big in Japan (where they originate). I am seeing them more and more in the margins of magazines, as ads, signs and on the web.  Have you?


Image is everything. Symbols and imagery as signage is so often more concise and simply more aesthetic than text, which so easily (and often) becomes clutter.  (When text is done 'right', it is a different thing of course, but save that for another time please.  And save for later another personal favorite - when symbols are more confusing than effective.  Love that too.)  

Today, I'm interested in how QR codes diminish text into clear tidy boxes.  They aren't only to hide a message but to condense them.

In order to read the message, you need a QR reader which now is as cheap as um, freeee and as easy and portable as an iPhone app.  (For any mobile device really.)  There are about a dozen apps for this.  I got the MAAD QR app and it works perfectly fine for me.  You open the app, point the camera lens of your phone at the code and zap, it pops up a translation which could be text, a number or web link.  It's super fast.  So, imagine reading a magazine and instead of jotting down notes on a new solar-powered gadget or ripping out pages to save recipes, you just zap a QR code with your iPhone and you get the additional information. Plus it's handily stored so you can revisit it later.  Love. This.

It's no surprise that artists are embracing the new method to add another layer of visual communication in paintings, music videos and fashion.  Techno and Mod styles merge so well in QR codes.  Beyond the standard bold black and white palette and hard edges, the concept alone can add a juicy layer to a piece for the avant-garde as well as Pop.  Or domestically, how about hiding a message publicly in a chain-link fence?  See below Kylie Minogue's video, All The Lovers, featuring some codes (and other more obvious symbols).

Beyond the artwork itself, galleries and museums (like the Mattress Factory) are using them to condense wall text - gawd isn't that refreshing? As well as use them to track art pieces just like your basic bar code does.  Educators are finding handy ways to utilize them in the classroom.  This site has a list of tips for creatively using QR codes. A downside for luddites is that without a reading device I can't see how a person would translate the messages with their eyes alone. So those people miss out.  However more and more even luddites carry a cell phone.


The appeal of QR codes is more than just being relatively new.  They offer a wonderful aesthetic compromise.  They have just the right ratio of high contrast portions that a person could ignore them if they choose, and say, appreciate the art nearby, be it natural or artificial.  And conversely, they are eye-catching enough to easily spot them among the clutter of the world.  Can't you just see them on t-shirts?

You can put a phrase into a QR generator at this site and make your own code.   

spinning plates

After months of work, we are beta testing our new iPhone app, Stinky Maps.  It has been so much fun for me imagining, planning, outlining, constructing, discovering and reshaping apps.  I love learning new materials and methods. I like what it does to my head - from the tingly sense of discovery to the burning pressure of unknowns.  Making iPhone apps has been a fantastic challenge and humble journey.  

Stinky Maps has been especially liberating because it is all our own and not for a client.  (Though so far we have been fortunate at salty snack studios to work with delightful and creative clients.)  It's been a playful collaboration between Bruce and I, swapping ideas and putting them in motion.

So, here it goes. Finally we are in the home stretch launching Stinky Maps.  Setting it loose on the world won't mean it is done.  We'll continue to add features, rearrange the app and recreate it.  In this way, it's like most of my studio work.  It never truly ends. Most of my sculptures, installations and videos have an ongoing status.  The trick, of course, is keeping up when you get so many plates spinning. If it turns out that I'm spinning too many then something inevitably drops and I keep going. That's always been my studio management process.  I wonder when I look back later what will still be in my hands and what I drop.

Some people wanted to know what some of the sounds would be on the Stinky Maps app, so I made a little sample video of the audio and a few graphics.

Stinky Maps sounds from salty snack studios on Vimeo.

See the Stinky Maps website for more images and updates.     stinkymaps.blogspot.com/

learning at Linda's

So how was the rest of the day at Linda's?  Fabulous of course!  It was way more than the just the demise of my PD150 and plans to capture moving pictures of Linda in the kitchen. (See my post, 'keep learning.') Luckily my Canon PowerShot G6, which I am nuts about and almost always have on me, made it possible for me take a few still pictures. Whew!

First of all, Linda and her husband Bill have a fantastic ranchette that is fun to just hang around and soak in all the characters, like Elvis who is a bit like me and hates to miss out on anything.

  

Wine to start the visit.

Linda casually showed us all the steps and we took turns pitching in.  She makes everything look so easy.

Um, Linda also prepared a tart and other delectables for snacking while we prepared the tortilla espanolas.

This is the Tortilla Espanola - a simple, hearty dish made mostly of potato and eggs.  

Linda is a fabulous pastry chef as well as an over-achiever in many other areas.  Fortunately for us, she generously shares her mastery as she did this day.  I think she calls this Avalanche Cake.  Chocolate, caramel and peanuts.  When you cut into it, the caramel floods down the sides, like an avalanche.

First and foremost, Linda is a fantastic painter.  We became friends through our art first, then our mutual love of good food and wine. Linda's art draws heavily on her experiences in her garden producing food for the table. Her perspective is rich and bold which comes out beautifully in her art.  And she has a big bawdy laugh that I love.

When she gets a website together, I'll link to it.  In the mean time, she has a piece you can see on Ask Art.  This summer Organic Gardening Magazine is visiting her garden and studio, so watch for a coming spread on Linda there, too.

make something

Last night, I joined friends and colleagues at the Missoula Art Museum to present the MAM Award to Martin Burke.  During my years on the Board of Directors at the museum, I worked alongside Martin while fundraising and building a new addition to the museum.  We started calling him The Reverend for his gift of repeatedly rallying our spirits. When planning events we looked for extra opportunities to have him speak and to woo us.

Several thoughtful speeches and humorous anecdotes were delivered in the cocktail hour celebration.  Fellow artist, Cathryn Mallory and I sat side-by-side, giggling to each other while lifting our glasses to wipe away tears.  It was that kind of love fest. Ten of us delivered a 'Martin Burke Top Ten'.  Always impressed with Martin's dynamic speeches about art and Missoula's arts community, I wrote this as my top ten item:  Martin Burke is a Fountain of Youth to the Arts. An eternal well of hope.  Passionately and eloquently he reminds us all of the depth, meaning and vitality inherent to the arts.  

In Martin's acceptance speech he illustrated my point beautifully once again. If you haven't heard him, you must. Martin is so dynamic I'm tempted to sneak into one of his classes in tax law, of all the crazy things. I couldn't (and wouldn't) try to recount all of his message last night, but one part in particular struck home with me. Talking about community and culture, he praised the resourceful and powerful ability to 'make something out of nothing.'  Speaking to everyone at once, he demonstrated a respect and admiration for art and artists. He got to the heart of it in a way that lets everyone connect.  And in a way that stirs our pride. He just gets it. And he doesn't hesitate to get on his soap box to tell everyone about it.

Thanks a million Martin for being such an amazing and generous force in this town.  You are our hero.

make haste slowly

My head has been in and out of my studio, even if I physically sit in it ever day.  We moved to this house over a year ago and left behind what had been and felt like my studio. I was in it longer than any other studio and I seriously possessed it. I made some of my biggest leaps and discoveries in it.  It looked like this........

Jack, when not under foot, would lay right outside the side door.

Me editing bay was right next to my work bench.

The bench, perpetually a place of work in progress, was always covered in bits of drawings, assemblages and stuff.

I made things there.

I spread out and tested installation arrangements and presentation.

Occasionally, I cleaned it up for parties.

The best was a disco.

Food was in the house and the studio served exclusively as the dance floor.

Work and play mixed fluidly.

There was enough space for more than one of us to work in there at the same time.

Enough space to run movie projections, make transfers or just watch.

At it's peak one summer, the entrance looked like this (decorated extra special for a garden party).  With the arbor, working outside was a pleasure - especially doing wet work like hand felt-making or paper-making.

I have made a few portraits over the years, and I consider all of my work to be personal, but here, I made my first openly and decidedly autobiographical body of work, titled, 'make haste slowly'. It dealt with family and nostalgia.

We set up tables with holes in them, lenses taped to foam core and cardboard everywhere, to play with pitch distances.

Eventually we had a video projection running where I wanted it - on the lens of a pair of glasses. (You can see finished images of this piece in the slide show below.)

Slide show of 'make haste slowly' installation.

Now, that particular body of work is packed in boxes in my basement. I still have the editing bay. Jack has been gone awhile. A tiny work bench is at my side. New drawings are tucked around me. More installations in the works.  Finally, I feel like I'm owning my new little studio.