Daviel Shy

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Sun, 15 Jan 2012 22:50:00 +0000

process:
Periods of deep, furious, binge research and that is compiling, listening, extreme openness.
The progeny of this research coupled with the images that surface through words and dreams are always figures.
Characters surface and I climb inside of them. What are their rituals, objects, fears, goals? What is their lineage? More figures emerge in relation or images. Drawings.
Actions, postures, uniforms and objects pour out dictated by these images, and I follow obediently. “I know what I have to do.” clear as arrows, now live, now in the illusion. I perpetrate the actions or remix the image. I pare down, invert. Enlist and expand.
I mine for meaning, return to the image anew through drawing and writing which spurs
periods of deep, furious, binge research and that is compiling, listening, extreme openness.
The progeny of this research, coupled with the images that surface through words and dreams are always figures. Characters surface and I climb inside of them.

...if you can hear me clap once

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 23 Dec 2011 02:51:00 +0000

I was asked to respond to a performance installation by Michaela Murphy at SAIC's Sullivan Galleries. The following text I read, repeatedly, from my notebook while inside the open locker and speaking through a megaphone during other responses.

The applause is over but the holes remain.
Last night there were hands, arms really, disembodied and clapping, applause.
There was an armless body locked in a locker.
Days- maybe weeks ago the same arms put holes in the gallery wall.
The arms most likely found their way back to the body
But the holes remain.

Last night the applause, unlike normal applause in that it kept on going – eventually became atmosphere.
At first an interruption bleeding across the space, as sound, uninvited into other’s pieces- became something you could get used to, live with, or ignore.
The sight of the arms without operator fitting tightly into the wall was less easy to get used to.
“Disturbing” I overheard someone say.
Disturbing the wall.
Troubling the view.

“Force is not to be confused with power. Power is the domestication of force. Force in its wild state arrives from the outside to break constraints and open new vistas. Power builds walls.”
-Brian Massumi, The User’s Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Force, in its wild state breaks constraints and opens up new vistas.
If power builds walls, what of the interruptions through that power?
The holes in the wall are a confrontation.

The first treatment of holes is usually a rush to fill them.
And yes, on a first reading holes can seem like an invitation.
We have a reflex, or perhaps a habit
Of filling cavities, closing gaps and patching holes.
As if the disruption itself was a call to its own destruction.

Holes disturb the unbroken façade.
They disturb the sense of double you wholeness that is a reliable illusion.
They expose a fault.
In geology a fault is a planar fracture or discontinuity.
In that case, they expose themselves.

All holes are alike in that they are made not of the substance they interrupt but of not it.

I’ve been asked to take a break. A rupture in my litany that will allow you to enjoy the intermission as well as the sound of others' work. A break that will serve to enliven everything else precisely because of its not this ness.

Maybe intermission is there to allow us to better see (or hear) and appreciate the faults and flaws of the work it pauses.

I heard a story about the silence and lift of 500 paper airplanes gliding in appreciation at the end of a show. Flooding the stage with noiseless applause.

Perhaps clapping – hitting one’s hands together with the intention of raising a din – is an attempt to fill the hole left when something is over?
Filling that silence with silence resonates with the disturbing beauty of a hole unpatched.

Consider the nose.
Two holes in the face that function to let air in.
Air crucial to the animation of the entire body.
Stop up the holes, the body dies.
To life, a vacuum is a theoretical space.
To live, material needs to breathe.

When I Go Deaf

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Tue, 20 Dec 2011 22:16:00 +0000

Performed with Dan Orendorff and Lihui Huang at Defibrillator (www.dfbrl8r.com)

Tramps

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 20:23:00 +0000

FOUR GIRLS excerpt/preview

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Mon, 22 Aug 2011 16:37:00 +0000

I finished drawing my 95 page graphic novella, Four Girls! Here is a little peek inside:

An Attempt to Change My Name

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:30:00 +0000

though we found it in the middle, it begins with an awkward dangling "a"

it was pulling and pushing it was hitting poses and holding it was trying not to writhe or dance seeing ourselves from the outside trying to grab myself back inside sometimes a fight always a struggle working together to allow each to rest clutching praying for the flame to go out thinking of everything else hating wanting to quit wondering if she is laughing she coming near to my ear she has a message she was never saying and the whole time it was dreaming.

two useless hermaphrodites relegated to paintings that are not reproduced or are covered by order of the commonwealth with leaves breasts and cock at once and for the first time I am the adolescent hero but reluctant tired and bored.

Abandoned Practices Chattaqua

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 18:05:00 +0000

Lecture

Trio

The Twelve: gesture

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:23:00 +0000

The Twelve

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:21:00 +0000

"...onboard were the twelve; the poet the physician, the farmer, the scientist, the magician, and the other so-called gods of our legends. Though gods they were!" -Donovan, "Atlantis," 1968

Abandoned Practices, week 1

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 05 Aug 2011 17:11:00 +0000

Orca Whales

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 17:26:00 +0000

I painted this for a new friend.

from Moby Dick

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Wed, 20 Oct 2010 03:05:00 +0000

a new whale

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Tue, 12 Oct 2010 17:54:00 +0000

my whale is too big for the scanner... here is part of it

(sold)

Phone Fiasco

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 01 Oct 2010 14:29:00 +0000

Ch.3 Newest Excerpts

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 13:09:00 +0000

From "Four Girls" a comic I began in 2005...

Leviathan

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 14 May 2010 19:56:00 +0000

4' x 4' acrylic, guache and glue on canvas $400

(sold)

whale

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Tue, 11 May 2010 17:28:00 +0000

I've been drawing whales. Here's the Humpback.

(sold)

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 02:49:00 +0000

trying out my new brushes- thanks Rami!

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 19:01:00 +0000

i've begun work on a new project. it will be a video/performance in the end, but as i prepare there will be plans and sketches of the eventual piece available for purchase- christo style!

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:11:00 +0000

Director's Statement
In the past few years my comics and drawings have focused on the idea of reverting. I was held hostage by a need to return to the source and a desire to crawl back into the womb.
In Exercises in Buoyancy, I used four women to embody different aspects of my journey to return home. The film is non narrative and can be understood out of sequence because each scene leads directly to the central thread: the tension between the difficulty of being a grown woman and the craving to be taken care of.

The locations and sets were meticulously constructed to create a world that is both mundane and fantastical. As I departed from the solitary medium of comics for the collaborative world of film making, I chose to use an all female cast and crew in order to preserve what I felt was a deeply feminine experience.

My current work continues to explore themes of evolving female identity. I am writing and drawing Four Girls, a graphic novel about the clumsy first loves of a college girl. I am the producer and co-editor of Body of Work, a feature-length documentary about Kai Beverly-Whittemore’s transformation from subject to artist.

Wallpaper

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Mon, 22 Feb 2010 17:14:00 +0000

I created this wallpaper of symbols for the background of my twitter page.

First Screening! Norway, Maine

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 19:56:00 +0000

Exercises in Buoyancy will have its premiere screening in Norway, Maine at Cafe Nomad tonight! Sitting at the cafe right now with my third cup of coffee, I can see the river stopped still by the frozen cold. The comings and goings of neighbors, local business owners, familiar faces and old friends punctuate the day, often leaving with a "See you tonight!" that along with the coffee conspires to send a shiver of nerves down my spine and to rid me of any concentration for screenwriting. (working on my first feature) Because of the help from Erik, Jess, Scott and other lovelies of the Oxford Hills, tonight promises to be a warm and intimate event opening with short films by the students of local filmmaker Tim Ouillette, followed by Exercises in Buoyancy's first public viewing.

Exercises in Bouyancy

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Thu, 29 Oct 2009 15:29:00 +0000

The film has been submitted to the wide world of film festivals!!! Hooray. I am also interested in showing the film in an artspace or gallery context- especially not in the NY area, as this may disqualify it for some festivals- so if you or someone you know is looking for video installations for your space, look no further! Contact me for a presskit and screener.

still from Exercises in Buoyancy, 2009

Meld

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 17:27:00 +0000

5' x 6' acrylic and pencil on paper. 2003

the film's got a new name!

noreply@blogger.com (Daviel Shy) — Wed, 20 May 2009 14:35:00 +0000

announcing Exercises in Buoyancy! the new name of our almost finished film! (formerly Back to Center)