01 john w ford research and dissemination 2008 2014

JOHN W. FORD

RESEARCH & DISSEMINATION

2008 - 2014

Contents

FRAGMENTS

FORGOTTEN SPACE

HOUSE NOT A HOME

A SYSTEM FOR EYES, HALF CLOSED

SECOND SIGHT: SHADOWS IN DUST

SECOND SIGHT: BELOW EYE LEVEL

Selected Works from the series: FRAGMENTS These works serve as something of a visual diary, representing my travel and life experiences; objects found, memories collected, and impressions gleaned over many years. Though the images are quite personal, I would like to think that they serve as something of a portal for the viewer, such that the viewer constructs his or her own personal narrative based on associations drawn from an intimate engagement with the image and its parts. All works are intaglio monoprint, employing traditional etched copper, brass, and steel plates. The Photographic images are made by digital scans converted to inkjet transparencies, exposed to Image-on film applied to thin aluminum plates that are then cut to size. Each work is a result of background printing using traditional etched plates, then subsequent printing of multiple small plates, each individually inked. This process is very time-consuming, something akin to collage or drawing with inked plates, and therefore the final images are individualized works, not editioned.

FRAGMENT 15 (top) and FRAGMENT 16 (bottom), 2008; Intaglio monoprints; 8 x 16”

FRAGMENT 18, 2008; Intaglio monoprint; 24 x 25”

7 YEARS at TRANSIT GALLERY

The exhibition 7 Years, 2012; in transit gallery, Hamilton, ON

Selected works from the series: FORGOTTEN SPACES These works are an attempt to integrate the more traditional concerns of my monoprint, with an archive a compelling color images taken during a period of intensive work during the summer of 1991 in the apartments above an old funeral parlor in Derry Northern Ireland. I’ve tried to synthesize the notion of collecting actual artifacts, with the suggestion of immaterial sensibilities that are often present in abandoned space. All works are images made in Adobe Photoshop using scans of my intaglio monoprints and scans of actual objects, along with color negatives. This is an ongoing series upon which I hope to enlarge in the near future, and print and exhibit on larger scale. It is also my hope to use print-outs of the images as collage material in future collaged and painted assemblages along with the new sculpture that is my latest work.

FORGOTTEN SPACE: PINK WALL AND TREES, 2008-09; Archival Digital Print; 20 x 40”

FORGOTTEN SPACE: YELLOW ROOM WITH DOOR, 2008-09; Archival Digital Print; 20 x 40”

FORGOTTEN SPACE: PINK FIREPLACE, NAPOLEON QUOTE, 2008-09; Archival Digital Print; 20 x 40”

FORGOTTEN SPACE: GREEN FIREPLACE, 2008-09; Archival Digital Print; 20 x 40”

FORGOTTEN SPACE: PINK FIREPLACE BIRKENAU, 2008-09; Archival Digital Print; 20 x 40”

FORGOTTEN SPACE: ARTUR’S FIREPLACE, 2008-09; Archival Digital Print; 20 x 40”

FORGOTTEN SPACE: LONE CHAIR, PINK WALL, AND MEDALS, 2008-09; Archival Digital Print; 20 x 40”

A CASE FOR SMALL THINGS at NEW ENGLAND COLLEGE

From the solo exhibit A Case for Small Things, a small retrospective at 2012 New England College; Henniker, New Hampshire

Works from the series: HOUSE NOT A HOME More than a decade past, I had been involved in many years of making sculpture and engaging a series of site-specific projects. Concurrent to my graphic work, I recently began a parallel series of dimensional objects that are a direct extension of the ideas inherent in the prints. These works satisfy a need for in-the-round experience and viewing, and they also allow for a clarity of perception that I hope will eventually creep back into my graphic works. It is not a dramatic step to imagine my prints in three dimensions, and my intention with these newer spatial works is to create symbiotic relationships between illusionary and volumetric space. I begin the process by laminating printed surfaces to a wooden panel, which is then supported by a wooden frame or plinth. The printed surface is viewed in a horizontal plane, an unexpected orientation for viewing a graphic work; yet, it becomes the perfect surface/field onto which I can construct an actual structural space. I play with relatively minute scale in monumental yet ambiguous proportion. Using small wooden sticks cut on a band saw, glued and tied together with string and thread, I create superstructures reminiscent of an incomplete doll's house or an esoteric architectural model. It is within this skeletal space that I add and subtract elements, completely by instinct and without a plan. Shortly after initiating this sculpting process, I build a very delicate vitrine that serves to enclose the structure. This step is critical, as the vitrine often affects the character of the "object" I am making within, and vice-versa. It also creates the impression that the process itself is being archived and presented in a museological manner. With this body of work, I feel I am setting the stage for an important ongoing transition to a more mature level of artistic expression. These three works are a component of a total seven I plan to create to complete the series. (funding support from a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant)

HOUSE NOT A HOME: CHURCH WARDEN

Detail Views

HOUSE NOT A HOME: CHURCH WARDEN, 2009; Mixed-media including printed elements and found objects; 36 x 41 x 28” (detail view)

HOUSE NOT A HOME: PROSTHETIC REFLEXION

Detail Views

HOUSE NOT A HOME: PROSTHETIC REFLEXION, 2010; Mixed-media including printed elements and found objects; 36 x 37 x 28” (detail view)

HOUSE NOT A HOME: ANGLE OF REPOSE

Detail Views

HOUSE NOT A HOME: ANGLE OF REPOSE, 2011 (front), and HOUSE NOT A HOME: PROSTHETIC REFLEXION, 2010 (rear).

HOUSE NOT A HOME: ANGLE OF REPOSE, 2011; Mixed-media including printed elements and found objects; 46 x 57 x 29” (detail view)

HOUSE NOT A HOME at AUSTIN PEAY STATE UNIVERSITY

Three works from the series HOUSE NOT A HOME, as seen in the Trahern Gallery at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee. L to R: HOUSE NOT A HOME: CHURCH WARDEN, HOUSE NOT A HOME: ANGLE OF REPOSE, and HOUSE NOT A HOME: PROSTHETIC REFLEXION

HOUSE NOT A HOME (overall view), as seen in the Trahern Gallery at Austin Peay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee

HOUSE NOT A HOME at EMORY UNIVERSITY

HOUSE NOT A HOME (overall view), as seen in the Visual Art Center Gallery, Emory University

HOUSE NOT A HOME at UNIVERSITY OF WEST GEORGIA

HOUSE NOT A HOME (overall view), as seen in the Bobick Gallery, University of West Georgia

Press: http://www.thesil.ca/art-exhibition-critique-a-house-not-a-home

HOUSE NOT A HOME at McMASTER MUSEUM OF ART

January 9 – March 29, 2014

http://www.thesil.ca/art-exhibition-critique-a-house-not-a-home

HOUSE NOT A HOME, 2009-11; Installation at McMaster Museum of Art; Mixed-media assemblage; Dimensions Variable

Press: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXvUciaRftI&feature=youtu.be

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZXvUciaRftI&feature=youtu.be

A SYSTEM FOR EYES, HALF CLOSED (funding by an Arts Research Board grant) 2013 project in Nitra, Slovakia. With opportunities to work in unfamiliar settings, I have often taken clues from the surrounding location, abandoned architectural spaces , and discarded materials found within that context. In the past, I collected, examined, and rearranged objects I found on site, building a type of reliquary to house these bits and pieces, this evidence of the place, its past and present inhabitants, and the effects of natural forces upon the whole. Seeking to evolve the manner by which I interface and react to new and unfamiliar contexts, I decided to take a different material or media approach to my work in Nitra, Slovakia. I collected, but less the actual material of the location, rather the visual impressions and details of the city, such that they could become the evidence of my experience, the material that would eventually become my exhibit in six rooms of the Bunker Gallery. What I could not have predicted was the degree to which the space of the gallery itself would effect the nature of the final project. Hoping the viewers might see their city in a new way, I found myself seeing the gallery in new ways as well, as much a conceptual and visual resource as the collected photographic images of Nitra. Therefore, the final installation in Bunker Gallery becomes an homage to Nitra, but also to the residual history of the Bunker itself (a former Cold War bomb shelter), and also the experimental artists who had worked in the spaces prior to my arrival. An artist-made mouse hole became the most curious and ironic aspect of past activity in the gallery, and an image of the hole is repeated in photographic form throughout the gallery. By a thorough cleaning of the gallery, a residue of past construction in the floor became apparent in the gallery for the first time in years. All the subtle (and not so subtle) photographic details are meant to exercise the eye of the viewer , such that the audience must look very carefully to see what the artist has installed in the walls. Then the viewer begins to be confused by existing or natural blemishes in the floors and walls, second-guessing whether or not what is seen is unintentional or is it the result of the artist’s hand. Upon leaving the gallery, the viewer begins to look more closely at the world around them, and a different level of awareness begins to take hold. This is the nature of the project, and the nature of art, to heighten awareness, to see with eyes half closed, the inadvertent glance somehow serving to see as well as the focused gaze. (It was a challenge to document this exhibit adequately. In several instances of the documentation, I indicate the subtle insertions of photographic images with red dots, in case it has not been apparent what aspects of the space are artist affected.)

Preliminary photographic research, collection of images for proposed installation; Nitra, Slovakia

A SYSTEM FOR EYES, HALF CLOSED, 2013; Mixed-media, site-specific installation using photographic images, glue, plaster, and wall paint

Press: http://issuu.com/john.ford.art/docs/john_w._ford_nitrianska_galeria & http://issuu.com/john.ford.art/docs/j._ford_review_pravda_online_bratis

http://issuu.com/john.ford.art/docs/john_w._ford_nitrianska_galeria

http://issuu.com/john.ford.art/docs/j._ford_review_pravda_online_bratis

SECOND SIGHT: SHADOWS IN DUST (funding by an Arts Research Board grant) This project took place in a single room situated within a historic building in Kraków, Poland. It is one of many buildings in Kraków which has disputed ownership, many of these a result of WW2 and the fact that many people (particularly the Jewish population of Kraków) were forcibly removed, many exterminated. After the war, the Soviet influence led to Communist governments in much of Central Europe, and in Kraków the city government took control of these properties. So, the city rents out the space until ownership can be established legally, and in this building are housed a couple of businesses, some residential spaces, and increasingly the Department of Intermedia, a new wing of the Art Academy of Kraków. Intermedia had recently taken occupancy of the unique space in which I worked, a combination apartment/studio that had been occupied by an elderly couple, the husband being a painter. The artist was recently deceased, and regrettably, his widow had to be relocated (an ironic twist given the history of Kraków, and I came into this space that had been lived in (and perhaps barely cleaned or disturbed) for many decades. In a way, I was faced with the question, 'how do I occupy and create an interface wit this place and its history, filled with so many experiences and memories of this old couple?'. What you see in the space is an intuitive, 'stream of consciousness', visual and physical interaction within the space that was the painter's studio - it was an artist working in the space of an artist, a rather strange collaboration of sorts.

SECOND SIGHT: SHADOWS IN DUST, 2013; Site intervention; Kraków, Poland.

Press: http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/article/video-shadows-in-dust-john-ford-turns-abandoned-apartment-into-art/

http://dailynews.mcmaster.ca/article/video-shadows-in-dust-john-ford-turns-abandoned-apartment-into-art/

SECOND SIGHT: BELOW EYE LEVEL

This current project is intended as a careful, quiet reflection on the nature of how we see, but may not perceive, the world around us. For most of my career I have been a maker, all the while photographing my process, and the places I have worked. I want to go back and tap the photographic record of these experiences, and focus my eye, my lense, on what may have seemed at the time to be the least significant elements of my working method and environment. I have never featured photography as the exclusive medium of a body of work, but now is the time to explore what potential exists in a method that is so much about how we see. I envision enlarging the scale of these works, such that the micro becomes the macro, and we are faced with the potential drama of detail.

BELOW EYE LEVEL 1, 2014; Archival Digital Print; 40 x 71”

01 john w ford research and dissemination 2008 2014

Documents

archival digital print

digital scans

forgotten spaces

space house

abandoned space

intaglio monoprints

transit gallery

individualized works