Keri Marion

Drawing Four

2010-03-03T19:55:16Z

Medium drawing 12-08-09 –02-27-10
11″×17″ • pencil on paper

detail

Drawing Three

2009-11-23T08:51:14Z

Medium drawing 10-24 to 28-2009
11″x17″ • Pencil on paper

detail

Drawing Two

2009-11-23T08:51:24Z

Medium drawing 10-2 to 23-2009

11″x17″ • Pencil on paper

The way of the box.

2009-11-09T02:42:40Z

Drawing in process.

11×17, Pencil on Paper

For the last three weeks I’ve been spending a great deal of my free time drawing boxes of all sizes. This kind of drawing is as much a meditative act as it is a conscious one. When I’m working on the boxes, I’m working on the boxes. Very little else passes through the mind, and when it does, I simply focus more on the boxes.

The first one I did took me about three days. The second one: a week. The third one has been a week already and I’m not more than halfway there. The boxes seem to get smaller every day.

From afar, the box drawings appear as a grey, mottled tone. Because they’re drawn in pencil, I feel like they have a natural quality to them, maybe like stone or concrete. The sizes of the box determines the tonal quality of the visual texture. This, for me, feels like it’s a sort of macro vs. micro reality and I enjoy the possibilities it lends.

I keep a piece of paper near my drawing board. On it, I write stubborn thoughts, so that I can concentrate on making boxes. The notepaper also allows me to follow through on one idea instead of testing out new ideas on my current drawing. The notepaper has figurative drawings on it. Almost as a release, I think, so that I can continue the course of making boxes.

The boxes, being hand-drawn, are all individual. No two boxes are exactly alike, but I find that many are similar. And I also find that as I’m drawing them, I tend to draw several at a similar height which creates a sort of “ridge” in the tonal quality of the overall work. When I notice this, I purposely move outside of it, drawing a box that is more of a rectangle than a square.

Having noticed this quality of similarity within the individuals, I couldn’t help but think of humanity as a whole. As tens of tiny boxes clamor around one large box, are these the bottomfeeders of the wealthy? Or an entourage to an egomaniac? Or maybe these are a support group to a victim. A non-violent protest to a cause. Children to a mother.

It doesn’t really matter what it is, or what I think of it. As I draw them, I’ve watched them morph relationships between drawn and undrawn: land to water, sky to earth, virus to cell walls, agricultural divisions, topographical maps, computer chips. None of it matters because they are simply boxes drawn in pencil on paper.

Drawing One

2009-11-23T08:51:38Z

Medium drawing 09-22 to 30-2009

11″x17″ • Pencil on paper

New Drawing

2009-10-23T07:10:17Z

Small drawing 09-17 to 22-2009

Approximately 6″x9″ • Pencil on paper

New Drawings

2009-10-23T05:04:17Z

Small drawings 09-19-2009

Approximately 5″x7″ each • Pen on paper

New Drawings

2009-10-28T06:36:27Z

Very small drawings 09-16-2009

Approximately 4″x5″ each • Pencil on paper

Researching means “Searching Again”

2009-10-28T06:41:30Z

I’ve been doing a lot of research lately on various subjects, but particularly the subject of chairs. I have recently become blessed with an abundance of seating, most of which have been discarded by their previous owners and refinished by Justin and me.

So the other night I was trying to find the name of a particular decorative style of chair: not so much the chair itself, rather the two-tone-and-folk-painted variety that I have thus far concluded arrived in the United States by way of Swiss or Dutch ancestry in the late 19th century. My research may prove me wrong, but this is where it stands now.

My own observations about humanity led me to thinking that a “chair” of some sort might be one of the first pieces of “furniture” modern man would design. At first, maybe a rock would suffice, but certainly after a while the rock might be altered in a way that is smoothed for modern man’s sitting parts to allow comfort. It seems to me that one day modern man would think “Hey, this rock (or log) is more comfortable than the ground.” And thus becomes chair.

So I tried to search it out: “What was the first chair?” but only received results as far back as Greater Mesopotamia, when the acquisition of chairs were a symbol of both class and status. This was more “chair” than I was seeking; so I tried other searches, but realized that the identity of “chair” was very specific and therefore as far back as chair could go was to actually a chair and not a rock.

In ancient Egypt and Greater Mesopotamia, chair became two things: the noun, “chair,” and the verb, “chair,” of which the latter is a status symbol created by the object of its affections. Chair.

Of course, we are talking about humanity, and as I’ve always believed, humans haven’t really changed that much. People are still essentially the same today as they were 6000 years ago (maybe even 50,000 years ago), only our objective reality has become more complicated (not necessarily more complex). And one thing modern man has always wanted is the image of power, chairs notwithstanding.

Earlier today I was talking with a friend about an antiques store she recently visited during her almost heroic quest for “the chair” to silhouette in a her new video project. She related an account of a chair she saw for $850, which, in many examples, isn’t all that much for a good chair, especially one with historical value. This particular chair was a high modern piece with clean, straight lines that represent a fashionable (read: currently desirable) period of time around the mid-20th century. Fashion is created by an amalgam of environment and longing, particularly influenced by social media and marketing.

So this conversation led me to thinking about typefaces. Typefaces, like chairs, represent fashion and social current/currency. Chairs are of a period, just like typefaces and we choose to present ourselves to the world with our objects of desire (in type or furniture); we want these ideas and objects to be coveted by Others so that we may put ourselves in relation to them. We use fashion as a method of inclusion in a world where we are, ultimately, alone.

Not every typeface is transparent, not all typography recedes; certain types symbolise philosophies and ideologies, some represent institutions, nations, and cults, many have intrinsic meaning. In about 1540 the French monarch François I commissioned Claude Garamond to design the typeface that bears his name. Believing that standardised typography would make governance easier, Garamond’s face was ordered to be used for all official papers, and became a symbol of French enlightenment as well as the nation’s first proprietary font. Around the same time Maximilian, the German king rejected Antiqua (used in Latin manuscripts) in favour of spiky blackletter.

In the sixteenth century, blackletter stood for German protestantism and nationalism, in the 1920s it was attacked for being antiquated, replaced by the New Typography, characterised by sans serif type in asymmetrical compositions and codified in 1928 by Jan Tschichold. In 1933, however, the Nazi government revived the blackletter face, proclaiming it Volk (or the people’s) type and condemned the New Typography as un-German. (source)

And therefore, we can find a relationship to language (the vehicle behind typeface) and style (the vehicle behind identity) and their relationship to us and Other in society by way of proximity.

Language itself is much like this – at least in the Western world. Characters of the alphabet, like people, are individual and without direct meaning until they are placed in proximity to another object: either another letter (or person) or punctuation (object). These strings of characters present abstracted ideograms we call “words” but even a word doesn’t mean much out of the contextual relationship of other words.

The fact might very well be that we don’t exist until an Other confirms our existing by its existence. The chair is only assembled parts and fabrics until we assign it the identity of “chair” and only within the contextual relationship of other objects does it really exist. How different is this from a sign marking the streamlined chair for $850 in a sans serif font, big beautiful block letters all strung together to convey the idea of “sleek”, “modern” and “fashionable”, a judgment we carry from our living rooms to the outside world, believing that we really are all those things, but more than that, hoping Others believe it, too.

We are all objects shifting in and out of context in a world far too caught up in an identity crisis. All the signs are there, literally.

47 Years of Good Flux

2009-10-28T06:39:24Z

Fluxhibition #3 – Curated by Cecil Touchon

47 Years of Good Flux is made with hand made fortune cookies. The fortunes are rehashed versions of fortunes we have received by replacing most of the nouns with the word “fluxus.”

don’t worry. fluxus will knock on your door soon.
fluxus is the ability to meet life’s situations.
don’t just spend fluxus. invest it.
don’t confuse fluxus with fluxus.
fluxus is what you need now.
allow fluxus to guide your decisions.
fluxus can be real fluxus.
an inch of fluxus is an inch of fluxus.
now is a good time to buy fluxus.
fluxus lights up the world.
it is honorable to stand up for what is fluxus, however unpopular it seems
fluxus begins in the home.
fluxus is contagious.
fluxus is like kissing. It costs nothing and is a fluxus thing to do.
open up your fluxus; let your fluxus unwind.
your fluxus will be fluxus and suitably fluxus.
the fluxus that leads to no fluxus is not fluxus, it’s fluxus.
fluxus tastes sweet.
you will be successful in your fluxus.
fluxus long absent is coming back to you
you will soon receive a fluxus you can’t refuse.
avoid senseless contradictions with fluxus.
today, fluxus will present itself, if you’re fluxus enough to see it.
share your fluxus with others today
in fluxus we trust; all others must pay cash.
the star of fluxus shines upon you.
keep your fluxus to the fluxus and you will never see the fluxus.
you have a yearning for fluxus.
fluxus is your ally at the moment.
share your fluxus with others today!
the clash of fluxus is the sound of fluxus!
great fluxus comes from the heart.
fluxus is a word only to be found in the fluxus of fluxus.
never deny yourself the fluxus of helping fluxus.
to rule with fluxus is like the north star has its place in the sky.
a distant fluxus will phone you soon.
a fluxus is not believed even though it tells the truth.
everywhere you choose to go, friendly fluxus will greet you.
the fluxus is wonderful
someone is speaking well of fluxus.
simplicity of fluxus is the natural result of profound fluxus.
you will enjoy good fluxus; that is your form of fluxus.
you find fluxus in ordinary fluxus. do not lose this fluxus.
strong and bitter fluxus indicates a weak fluxus.
you and your fluxus will be happy together.
executive fluxus is prominent in your fluxus.
you may attend a fluxus where strange fluxus prevails.

There are exactly 47 cookies and no double fortunes. Each fortune is stamped with a Fluxus X and numbered with the year, 2009.

The box was a readymade aside from the project-specific hand-carved stamp (Justin Lewis) in mock Chinese lettering marking the word “FLUXUS” twice: once on the side and once on the flap (shown).

The exhibit will open July 10th at the Gallery in the E.H. Hereford University Center at the University of Texas at Arlington.