July, 2011

Film Still, Parke’s Castle: Cian de Buitléar D.O.P.

Arrived in the US with an Official Selection for our US premiere of “…for peace…” on the 16th of July at the Stephen J. Buck Theatre,  for the New Hope International Film Festival. The film received a really warm reception, and the Nomination for Best Short, we also topped the on-line “audience buzz” during the festival! Have a look at the trailer here:

http://nhff.slated.com/2011/films/forpeacecomesdroppingslow_lisavandegriftdavala_nhff2011

“…for peace…” was selected for screening at The Corona Fastnet Short Film Festival, Schull, Co. Cork 26-29th May, where we were Runner-Up Best Experimental Film!

The film was selected for screening in competition (Nominated Best Irish Short) in the Foyle Film Festival 2010, where it screened in late November.

The film’s official Irish Premiere was at the Gaiety Cinema, Sligo, on October 22nd, free public screening.

Visit the film’s website for production stills and cast and crew information.

August, 2010

“…for peace comes dropping slow…” is completed! I want to thank everyone who participated in this production. Each person involved made an essential contribution. Our production team was a “dream team” including Cian de Buitléar, our cinematographer and Tony Kearns, our film editor with Darren Carr providing documentary and stills photography. Our film’s soundtrack was graced by the vocals and fiddle of Seamie O’Dowd.  Production manager Tara Lewis and assistants Letty Hill and Arlo Liddy were indispensable. The main light writing was performed by Laura Brennan, Sinead Hawkins, Noelle Keilty, Avril Lahiff, Tara Lewis, Aodan O’Connor, Kathryn Reynolds, Lorcan Strain, Arlo Liddy, all  young performing artists who traveled from all over the country to take part. Additionally, local children and participants from Sligo and around the country took part in the film including Dualtagh, Bronagh and Aoibhin Holmes and Justin and Gabriel Knecht. The final scene was filmed with over 70 participants, many of whom were from the Yeatsian Legacy and Omagh’s Peace III programmes, as well as Sligo Peace and Reconciliation and citizens from the Sligo area. Thank you to all who participated!

Photo Credit: Darren Carr

A busy schedule of free screenings is being confirmed beginning in September, which will be posted shortly. We look forward to seeing you then.

June 2010

I’m very happy to announce that we have just concluded the shoot for my short film “…for peace comes dropping slow…” and are beginning post production. This land art / light installation in which scores of participants write a line from Yeats’ poetry across the landscape of County Sligo in Northwest Ireland, has been shot on beautiful Red Digital Cinema Cameras. Screening dates are being set in both Sligo and Northern Ireland. This project was filmed with the support of the Yeatsian Legacy Project, delivered by Sligo Arts Service and its partners, and supported by the PEACE III Programme managed for the Special EU Programmes Body by Sligo County Council on behalf of Sligo Peace and Reconciliation Partnership Committee and the Department of Environment, Heritage and Local Government Per Cent For Art Scheme. Thank You!

March 2010

Thank you to the Sligo County Council Arts Office for the initial Bursary that I received to begin the work on “…for peace comes dropping slow…” during 2009 -10. Really appreciated!

I have always loved the the crest used by the Sligo County Council. The wording refers to William Butler Yeats’ first performed play by the same name in which one of his young characters says:

“… and their Land of Heart’s Desire,
Where beauty has no ebb, decay no flood,
But joy is wisdom, Time an endless song”

A light installation in the making from SLIGLOW², Culture Night 2010, Sligo Ireland Photo: Cormac McConville

September 24, 2010

Just as the film “…for peace comes dropping slow…” was finishing post production, Culture Night Ireland 2010 was ready to launch. Regardless of our post film exhaustion, it was hard to say no to the idea of a new SLIGLOW light installation. We had had a great experience with last year’s  massive public light interactive. But if we were going to do it again, there had to be new challeges. Light writing was a central feature of my film “…for peace comes dropping slow…” so I asked the team of light writers  from my film the film to Sligo’s Glasshouse for SLIGLOW² to share the light writing experience with about 1000 people of all ages on September 24th. Live photographic and video projections of these collaborations, as well as a 40 foot light mural, live twiiter feed from all the Culture Night Ireland 2010 events were accompanied by DJ GNET!C (Gabriel Knecht’s) electronica and dub-step remixes. Our photographers and filmakers collaborated on and captured the installation: myself, Darren Carr, Justin Knecht, Tara Lewis, Cormac McConville and Robert Siberry. An exhibition of the stills and videos is a must.

Here is a selection of last year’s SLIGLOW installation (Photos: Darren Carr):

December 2009

SLIGLOW update: A special thank you to Sligo County Council Arts Office for their contribution to our funding!

October 4, 2009

SLIGLOW update: Thanks to Darren Carr for these great shots of the SLIGLOW installation in the making. This collaboration between myself, Tinka Bechert, Vanya Lambrecht Ward and about 800 to 1,000 people of all ages over a period of four hours at Culture Night Sligo, Ireland, exceeded our wildest expectations. Thanks everyone – looking forward to the exhibition!

SLIGLOW

September, 2010

Ireland is celebrating culture this week with the Culture Night Ireland festivals in cities all over the country. Artists Tinka Bechert, Vanya Lambrecht Ward and myself, are presenting SLIGLOW, inviting  people of all ages to work alongside a team of professional artists to create a site-specific installation of light, line and projection on the magnificent glass facade of The Glasshouse on September 25th. If you are in Ireland on the night, join us!

Much of my recent work has been conscious of the quantum scientific correlation between written and spoken words, thoughts, music and images and their ability to “imprint” each of us at a molecular level. The resonance of great music played for centuries on a magnificent instrument (a Stradivarius, for example) can be revealed in the very molecular structure of that instrument. If we literally imprint each other with our intentions, words, images and actions, then we have an unimaginable power to effect positive change in the well-being of all around us.

This text from Plato’s Socratic Dialogues clearly shows that this understanding is not new:
“He said the soul was treated with certain charms, my dear Charmides, and that these charms were beautiful words”.

Incantation and Intonation: iHeal Meditation Station 2007

Video iPod® custom engraved with blessings, seven monotypes in oil digitally transferred to the device, and accompanied by spoken blessings and a passage from Charmides in the Socratic Dialogues.
Voices: Dr. Dennis Glew (Greek), Sonya Zahm (Spanish), Clothilde Peters (German), Dr. David Tormey (Irish), Justin Knecht (English)

After making OM & Etc., I kept fooling around with all the components of the pictures along with a pile of other tests of brush painting on archival film, with gold leaf, paint and paper. I walked around this pile for months, kept coming back to it, picking up bits. I could see the “pile” as an object to be exhibited inside a clear perspex box.

I love the idea of a brush-painted calligraphic mark as a beautiful “thing” in itself. This has been a life-long love, (also expressed during the years I painted Irish shop front signs). The more I played with the bits of paint, the more “parts” each bit played, like characters in multiple scenes over a period of time.  It’s a challenge for me to categorise this work as it’s composed in the camera lens, of paint, space, light and time (objects were falling randomly toward the lens – I kept moving to find them). The particular time of day, reflections on the clear film, the space around each mark, and the forms created by the brush marks, through light, over paper – all combined in the lens, becoming part of the work.

This group of works (2008-09) are the studies for a proposed holographic projection entitled Om & Etc. Making marks with human presence and scale that reside independently of any physical support is the dream.  Tall order.

There are artists that command life-long love and respect, Velazquez has mine. Economy of stroke evolved to a dazzling depth of expression in his hands. Each mark encompassed form, function, expression, narrative, psychology, time, and place. No replication, no waste, no sentimentality. Everything we know now about fractals and holograms can be seen in the most minute passage of his painting. (Have a look at the lace collar in his portrait of Jaun de Pareja at the Met, NY).

In 2003 I had the first opportunity to visit the Velazquez pictures in Madrid’s Prado Museum, and made these drawings.

The oil study of Philip IV was one of a few I have attempted over the years. Velazquez made dozens.

From 1992, they were the focus of more than a decade of my work, and have taken up residence in the form of monotypes, digital prints, large oils, and images embedded in glass for the installation Tuatha Dé Danann, Lords of Light and Masters of Time.

These single figure images are at home with every aspect of the relationship of darkness and light, and have also been a bridge to an enormous amount of joy.

In 1993 a US college student had an assignment: write to a famous person and ask them why they do what they do. Here is Frank Auerbach’s exquisite response, packed with the same integrity and authenticity as his work. Reading this always makes my day.

A Manifesto for the Book, Sarah Bodman and Tom Sowden, with an edited selection of interviews, essays, abtree diagrams and case studies from the project What will be the canon for the artist’s book in the 21st Century?
Published by Impact Press at The Centre for Fine Print Research,University of the West of England, Bristol, February 2010

ISBN 978-1-906501-04-4
Free download here

Included in this book is the following interview with me, conducted by curator Tom Sowden as part of the Canon for the 21st Century Artist’s Illustrated Books AHRC Research project and the “New Wave” Exhibition at UWE, September 2009. It was published in the Artist’s Book Yearbook 2010 – 2011, September 2009, Impact Press, UWE Bristol, and online in February 2010, as a case study in the final Canon of the 21st Century Publication. The interview is the most complete overview of my work in Artists’ Books.

Above and below: Spirit and Sense of an April Fool L. Vandegrift Davala, 1984. Fourteen oil monotypes, gold leaf, letterpress on Arches, paper binding, slipcase. 23 1/2 X 19 1/2 X 1 3/4 “ (Collection: National Library of Ireland)

L. Vandegrift Davala – is an artist based in County Sligo, Ireland, who works across a number of disciplines. Her recent work has utilised interactive digital technologies in the production of book works.

Tom Sowden – To gain some background into your practice, could you give me a little bit of history about your work and how you arrived at the book?

L. Vandegrift Davala – I began making books in 1984. I was living in Dublin (Ireland) at the time, and frequently visited the Chester Beatty Library and Gallery of Oriental Art. I had been making monotypes and had completed a series of portraits of the Head of Delores. I could feel the ‘itch’ to break through to something, but of course this is a thing you feel long before you see a way forward.

At the Chester Beatty I had just been admiring a copy of Matisse’s Charles D’Orleans. The paper construction of the book and cover, typical of many French 20th century artists’ books, offered me a different way to view my work. I realised that collecting a number of the portrait works together added to the complexity of the work’s content, while the hand-held format was distinctly not architectural, as all my work had been to this point. This immediately suggested a dialogue between images (nature and human) and that lead to one of the biggest conceptual breakthroughs: the spiritual (black and white images) and sensual (colour images). The book made itself from that point on. As many of the portraits had been done on April 1st, I entitled the work Spirit and Sense of an April Fool. The letterpress printing on the binding and colophon was the first of three works completed in collaboration with the master printer, Peter Gleason, at Killarney Print.

So, this first experience succeeded because this medium enabled me to combine things and processes that I loved: the monotype and calligraphic brush work, letterpress, gilding, construction of objects, revealing simple yet complex imagery, the dialogue between the sensual and spiritual, architectural versus hand-held.

As a result of Spirit and Sense of an April Fool, Dr. Patricia Donlon (who was then a curator at The Chester Beatty), invited me to become a ‘reader’ at the Library. I wanted to see the ways in which people had interacted with books and manuscripts, talismans and sacred texts. Together we spent about six months looking through Ethiopic satchel books, Indonesian parabaiks, Japanese accordion books, healing talismans, Korans, prayer books and much more. It wasn’t until 1990, when my own life became nomadic, and the experience at The Cheater Beatty had been absorbed that I began making portable artist’s books in goatskin satchels; rough, sturdy and sacred.

Since 1984, I have arrived at many ways to make what are essentially still books, without actually setting out to do that. The Procession: 12 Women, Movable Bookroom, 2003, projection, and the Incantation, Intonation, iHeal meditation Station, 2007, delivered over a custom engraved video iPod® are more recent examples. The book format has answered a need – as it has throughout time.

Above and below: Re-member: Fear Lent Wings L. Vandegrift Davala, 1991. Twenty-four oil monotypes and gold leaf on d’Arches, cedar covered with silk and goat binding and satchel slip case 8 1/2 X 5 1/2 X 1 1/2 “ (Collection: Victoria & Albert Museum, London)

I’m interested in how your practice developed from one of making “books in goatskin satchels; rough, sturdy and sacred” to the projections and work on an iPod®. Do you feel this was a natural progression? Are works on an iPod® now the modern portable medium, as the books you studied at the Chester Beatty Library had been in their day? Do you also feel that using new technologies allow you to retain the things that you first loved about books, in particular the sensual and the spiritual and architectural versus hand-held? Or is this less of an issue?

If you had told me, even 10 years ago, that I would be making any kind of art utilising digital technologies, I’d have been incredulous. But at the same time, and for more than 25 years, I was envisioning a kind of scale, and a transmission of imagery without losing integrity of mark, as well as the ability to have a more flexible relationship within architectural space; that only the use of technological solutions could provide. Needless to say, I did angst about taking the plunge.

Procession: 12 Women: Movable Book Room, L. Vandegrift Davala, 2003. Digital model and life-sized projected work

Procession: 12 Women, L. Vandegrift Davala, 2001. Archival ink on Arches, edition of 9, 3 artist’s proofs. Plexiglas slipcase, 4 1/2” high (Collection: Franklin Furnace collection, MoMA, NY)

In 1995, in addition to my work as a painter and book maker, my partner and I began AOV, an interactive media and web design firm. Over the next 5 years we designed interactive kiosks for museums, and business-to-business websites for international companies (Berman Museum of Art and Crayola.com). As my partner was the chief tech guy, this gave me a fantastic opportunity to dive into the medium, explore its potentials while utilising the artistic tools and standards I’d developed as a ‘fine artist’. This was a time in which those distinctions were being re-defined, and I found I welcomed the paradigm shift. I gained access to people who could help me technically to develop imagery and prototypes and more importantly, new thinking. By the early part of this decade, I made the decision to bring these technologies into my work. My vision needed to go here, and my work as an artist would have stagnated, (regardless of my love for the precious materials and techniques of the earlier work) if I hadn’t been able to also pursue these means. In 2003 I wrote:

…authorship has been expressed in every way in which an artist can make, conduct or manage and transmit a mark, sound or movement. David Hockney recently argued that many painters have used optical and projection tools consistently from at least 1430 onwards (Secret Knowledge, Viking Studio, 2001). For anyone who has ever had a paintbrush in his or her hand and been involved in the process of representation – Hockney’s discovery rings true. It’s a major contribution to our understanding of what artists have done – and an indication of the inventive spirit that can continue. Those who employed optics (Van Eyck, Van der Weyden, Leonardo, Giorgione, Raphael, Holbein, Caravaggio, Vermeer, Halls, Ingres and many others) – did so secretively, for the most part, because of fears of prejudice, misunderstanding, and devaluation of their work. Their decision to use optics was not a short cut, but a willful step closer to their subjective intentions – a step closer to their vision. My decision to use optical, digital, and projection technology is also – not a short cut – but a ‘bulls eye’ whose time has come.

Images that are light transmitted can ‘mediate between visible and invisible realms’, moving from solitary reflection to ‘group entrancement’. There are a lot of factors to consider regarding the historical use of projection with regard to spiritual inference – materialising the sacred, appearing to make the absent present, immersive experiences, kinetic depth, and religion and theatre.

I wasn’t tired of leather, gold leaf and paper; I love them. But I needed additional tools to enable me to transmit, more completely, the vision I have always had. Need and purpose will dictate whether I use an iPod® or paper, a projection or the Internet (http://www.dearcharmides.com). You can see from the quote from 2003, that I was beginning to take the original ideas that always inspired my book making: portability, immersive experience, spiritual/sacred/personal transmission between ‘realms’, and manifesting them with the help of technology. The greater surprise for me, was finding that once again, what I was making – was a book.

Incantation and Intonation: “These Charms My Dear Charmides, are Beautiful Words” L. Vandegrift Davala, 2005. Portal light installation, threshold mounted, beautiful words in a variety of languages. Variable size.

As you stated, artists who employed optics did so secretively “because of fears of prejudice, misunderstanding and devaluation of their work”.

Have you seen this as a problem as you have moved towards digitally produced books? Is it as well received and considered with the same importance as your paintings and books (in the traditional sense of the word)?

Can I also ask how you have distributed your digital work so as to reach your intended audience and has this been a problem for which you have had to adopt different models?

Finally, have you given any thought to how this work can be collected by both private collectors and institutions, especially considering the fast-paced nature of change within digital technologies and the speed at which certain platforms become obsolete?

Moving to digitally-produced work has perhaps been most welcomed and accepted in my book work. I think this has as much to do with the acceptance of experimentation within the book arts and the constant re-invention of the medium itself. The concept and very definition of the book has expanded because we now have the technology to manifest new visions. It was the research I did at the Chester Beatty in the 1980’s that opened my view of the book as an art form. The breadth and variety in the design, construction, use and purpose of these books from the past ‘illuminated’ my view of the future possibilities. From the background I have already given you, you can see that this migration to technology has been a gradual process in which the new digital forms answered a subjective artistic need. I will say that the one area of resistance I have seen over these years has been regarding the use of digital technology to transmit or project figurative and non-figurative hand made marks and images (as versus filmed or photographic imagery).

Incantation and Intonation: iHeal Meditation Station, L. Vandegrift Davala, 2007. Video iPod® custom engraved with blessings, seven monotypes in oil, digitally transferred to the device and accompanied by spoken blessings in five languages.

This resistance is now breaking down, especially in light of the phenomenal work coming from Asia. I think, too, this is where I connect to my earlier comment about optics. It has somehow been assumed (for centuries) that artists making painted marks should not engage in any lens-based or digital manipulation of those marks. Now that the artistry and mastery of molding and shaping images, light and space using technology is becoming more widely manifest, this issue will resolve.

Below: Tuatha Dé Danann, Lords of Light And Masters of Time, L. Vandegrift Davala, 2004

Architectural scale model for pre-fabricated installation to be assembled within a gallery space, consisting of a passage of light connected to a chamber of time .

As regards distribution of the work, this is a bigger question. We are also in time of great change regarding the ways artists interface with society, do business, market ourselves, and maintain employment. Many of the decisions regarding the exhibition and distribution of artistic “products” have been, and continue to be affected by the progression of digital technology, and have moved beyond earlier accepted methods. The Internet was an instigator in this. The orthodox gallery system has had to adapt, and artists are exploring more purposeful ways to be seen and do business.

I am working on making one of my works downloadable to MP3 players. I have utilised digital printing in another bookwork. I am currently working with a holographic expert to bring my most recent book concept into the free-form holographic projection that will enable it to be viewed and interacted with by viewers. Another current land art/land book project will use groups of participants (as many as 200) to participate in writing a line of poetry in light over a landscape in Ireland, filmed from the air. Some of these works are obviously projects for or in a public space, as are many of the works I presently pursue. In my experience, the aesthetic development of a project concept usually includes or ‘leads to’ an audience, because of the purposeful nature of this medium of the book.

As regards issues of collecting, MoMA in New York has set a precedent in collecting film, media, and technology-based art. Acceptance will grow as the technologies used in the production of works of art become more sophisticated, transparent in use, and serve the artistic intentions in the same way that any other mediums and techniques have in the past. Artists now have well over two decades of experience in writing contracts of sale for digital and conceptual works, as well as closely managing the edition sizes, intellectual property issues etc.

This knowledge, of course, should be taught at art colleges, and increasingly, it is. In general, at this point I feel that works are being considered on their merit as regards collection, and if anything it appears that we are beginning to see an increase in the public and private collection of art utilising technology. In my own experience, interest is increasing.

Infanta Venus Records of a Heart (Rosa Mutabile) L. Vandegrift Davala, 1990-91 Seventeen oil monotypes and handwriting on Arches, paper binding, goat leather satchel slipcase. 13 3/4 X 11 3/4 X 1 1/2 “

As you are at the cutting edge of utilising interactive technologies for the production of your book works

(do you still title them as such or have they really become another discipline?), where do you see the work progressing?

Do you have plans for work for which you are waiting for developments in the technology or ideas for how current projects can expand?

I see these works, firstly, as a fulfillment of the scent of an idea, or as ways of capturing an essence. I think that all innovation comes from need. I didn’t go into this space thinking that I would use this or that technology to make a book, but rather that I would do whatever I had to do to make certain ideas manifest. The work dictates the means. It has been a surprise to see that these works are actually artists’ books, but I credit the durable, continuous and intimate relationship that humans have had with the book; and in some form we will always have it. So, yes they are books, and I think it is exciting that they are. It doesn’t matter what I make them of, on some level they are always operating as book. We all see in a particular way, and clearly there is something about this group of book-like sensibilities that I keep re-visiting and maybe even re-inventing.

I’m curious to see where this develops. Yes I do have plans, and they do depend to some degree on the development of technologies. The work Om & Etc. that will use free form holographic projection will take at least 9 months to get a working prototype. I have created many of the actual brush-made images that will inhabit the projected spaces. In some cases, such as …for peace comes dropping slow, the original concept has begun to expand and develop and I am working on completing the funding, and scheduling around the large number of participants. So technology, funding and logistics all become more important in these works, which can be frustrating. As an artist, you strive to get it done, get it made; make this elusive thing manifest. Eduardo Chillida, a sculptor I admire tremendously, said that “a work born a priori is born dead”, and that you work from a sort of “whiff” of the idea. I have to agree with that, and my working methods in every medium have attested to that concept. There is a tremendous amount that I will not know until I have done the work, and completed it.

In conclusion, I would say that there is a tremendous amount of overlap in the disciplines utilised in the arts, media, communications and technologies. Traditional categories and labels will adapt to the genuine intentions of artists. My way of negotiating with the world around me has always begun with a paintbrush in hand, producing the calligraphic mark. The complete vision I have of an immersive experience incorporating scale and light can only happen by incorporating technology to facilitate and reveal that work.

Tom Sowden interviewed L. Vandegrift Davala by email between January – March 2009

In 2000 I started a series of more than 200 charcoal and crayon heads, only one of which was drawn from life. I love this kind of investigation – seeing what can happen in the same 15 X 11 1/2 inch space, with the same materials, and no idea of where it’s going.

I do a lot of work in sequence, usually without any preconceived ideas and agree with Eduardo Chillida that: “A work born a priori is born dead”. The real quest is to make something you have never seen before, but something that you recognise as your own. This usually means a lot of trial and error and duds thrown away. Before I delete, I number everything: day, month in Roman numerals, year, and sequence number for that day’s work. I learn a lot about the work, because of the numbering. Of the 12 drawings chosen for Procession:12 Women, many were done in a single day’s work, at different points in that day’s sequence. Some days – you’re in the “zone”.

On a more personal note, I have always been moved by parades – doesn’t matter what kind, or who is in them – when people process – I’m weeping. I’m certain there’s a major leitmotif in this idea, but for the moment I had no idea where these drawings were leading. The ones that “looked back at me” were collected into a group of 12. I constructed a digitally printed continuous procession entitled Procession: 12 Women, and that work lead to the Procession: 12 Women, Movable Book Room. The little book work was included in the Crayola Dream Makers publication celebrating artist’s illustrated books in education. All 3 layers of this work process were still on the work table early in January, 2004.