Pseudologia launched

Today is the second day of my Kickstarter campaign for my book Pseudologia. I can’t pretend that right now feels like a good time to launch a Kickstarter for an art book. Coronavirus is ravaging the world, hate crimes are being committed by those in power, protesters are risking their lives to have their voices heard, and our President is doing all he can to divide the country and destroy democracy while looting what he can from the American people.

Right now I wish I was the kind of artist who could make work about current events. But that isn’t who I am as an artist. I can’t ‘decide’ to make anything, it just never works. I have to let the process lead. My brain isn’t good at directing my art process consciously. At least, I know I’ve never made anything good that way. And I know it can’t sustain my interest over time. That’s not to say I can’t get involved in other ways in what is happening now, because I can and I do.

I am not yet posting on social media about this campaign. I know I should be, but it just feels irrelevant at this particularly sharp moment to be talking about my artwork. Nonetheless, people are looking for a few moments of inspiration, and many are still stuck at home. And art can provide respite and a reminder that we are capable of good things. Link to my Kickstarter: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/rebeccahorne/pseudologia/

Pseudologia Kickstarter launches tomorrow

Pseudologia is a book that was born about 3 years ago, on a day when I was home sick from work with a really bad cold. Laying in bed wasn’t making me feel better, so I proceeded to work in my studio. I drank cup after cup of coffee to try to lift the fog in my head, laying the photos down all over the floor of my apartment. There were too many of them to fit on our big kitchen table. I arranged and re-arranged, photographed the arrangements then arranged again, for 8 hours or so, until I had something I felt good about.

These photographs really did add up to something more together than they did alone. Seeing the story emerge was exciting, I could see areas I needed to fill in by shooting more. The book allowed me to work in new way—instead of chasing perfection I was digging as deep as I could into my singular obsessions, to see how far they would go. Would I get bored? I wondered. The answer was no. After scratching and digging my way into these shapes in hundreds of images, I still wanted to shoot more. And I was finding new ways to do so.

In my working life, I’ve almost always had a full time job. Since my son was 3 years old, I’ve been a solo parent, supporting us both. I usually get a lot of satisfaction out of my day jobs, and sometimes they even inspire me in my studio. However, this means I have to be disciplined about my time, and often means working my butt off in the studio on vacations when other people are on holiday, on weekends, early mornings, evenings, and on sick days.

On that sick day, and on many days afterwards, the book was simply called Book One. I intended to make a series of three slim book that would fit together in a case. However, when I finished Book Two, I started to realize this was really one book, and there was no point in overcomplicating things with an arbitrary set of divisions between the photographs. So Book One and Book Two were re-edited and merged to form one.

The book Pseudologia has been edited and updated since that first day, but the bones of Book One are still there. The themes in my work, which I have been returning to over the years, remain intact.

"How to design spaces for people with autism" video wins a Gold Telly

My design video for Spectrum has taken home a second award, a Gold Telly award in the documentary category. The video is a four minute documentary on two schools, built from the ground up for people with autism. I am psyched, and I hope the video will find a completely new audience from its location on the Telly awards site. See the 2019 winners here: https://www.tellyawards.com/winners/2019/online/general-documentary-individual

Autism design video takes home prize in the AI-AP Int'l motion art awards 7

I am happy to say that my autism design video (above) for Spectrum is a winner in the 2019 Int'l motion art awards 7.

The pre-production work on this video took me almost two years to finish, as I was only able to work on it during rare breaks from an intense daily workflow at Spectrum. I started interviewing people on the topic in 2017, and maybe even earlier. I learned so much on this project—highlights were interviewing Magda Mostafa professor at The American University in Cairo, Cathy Lord, distinguished professor at UCLA, and Merilee Meacock, architect at KSS.

It was great working with the talented Vanina and Johannes of Ninetyninefilms who directed, shot, edited and helped script-polish. Truly, it was a lot more fun, and more meaningful, than shooting bland corporate videos and CEOs in White Plains. Which we definitely did. In the past.

Walking stick

Working in the studio today felt disjointed, trying to catch the light in the morning before it gets to bright, and then again in the evening before it gets too dark. In between, all the other stuff: groceries, running, housework, cooking, playing soccer with Oliver in the park. All in all, a good day.

Not sure exactly what I am up to right now in the studio. I am in a transition and trying to roll with all my impulses. I am working on several different images/threads at the moment, seeing where things go. One of the threads is a kind of custom collage where I shoot, print and cut stuff out. Another thread is deconstructing and rebuilding a few of the simpler Hilma af Klint images, and reading some science papers on how proteins and fluids inside living cells behave.

Chasing volume

Cornelia modeled for me earlier this month, and this is one of my favorites from the shoot. I am still figuring out where to shoot in the house, I guess it is good to have options. Cornelia is a great model, anticipating what I want and reminding me that I can control the camera when I get too involved in a shot and forget...

It was great to catch up and talk pictures with Cornelia--she makes a great model because she is such an exacting photographer herself!

This shot evolved out of a kind of chroma-key image I had sketched--three disks of primary color in transition. This photo is a double exposure, here the hand was only in frame for one of the two shots.

Forging a new path

It was the last meeting of Salon 28 for the summer, and we met at K's Parisian style apartment in Park Slope. We feasted on food and wine and conversation, on goals and expectations as artists. C. talked about the many projects in her life, and how the stress and crazy parts of her life are transformed into her work in the studio. Somehow, it all ends up in the work, through some alchemical process. 

M. talked about her experience with the implosion of the Artist Pension Trust, and finding alternatives to the art market, and the art world. Trying to find a new or different way was a theme that came up a few times; the need to find another path, and what that might be. Artists do talk about the soul-hollowing experience of having an art show in a gallery. I've had this experience too. It seems like there must be a better way to share art and have dialogue. What are the non-traditional options? 

K. and S. talked about their moods since both of their recent shows closed. A. reminded everyone how in the 1970's in NYC galleries would be begging artists to show in their galleries-- but many artists didn't want to participate in the capitalist economy.  They all really thought that things were changing, and becoming more egalitarian, but turns out change is slow. 

I think a discussion topic going forward could be ideas about alternative paths for artists outside of the art world, alchemy in the studio, and other ways life turns into art.

Reading Chekhov

More snow is due tomorrow, public school is closed. Reading Anton Chekhov on David’s recommendation--some of these I’ve read before, but the majority of the short stories are new to me. Something about reading Chekhov puts one in a mood. The stories pry into all manner of human flaws and vanities, and it is impossible not to see and suspect your own among them. Special punishments await the characters who use philosophy to justify their own indifference, apathy or cruelty; sometimes it is hard to tell the difference between these three.

Last few shoots have yielded slightly underwhelming results, Oliver modeled for me on this shot a few weeks ago, but only in a desultory way. Next time I hope to find him more amenable. This weekend I plan to work on a shot of a box folding and unfolding. It is something I have tried before, but still haven’t got it right..hopefully this next shoot will yield satisfactory results.

Book 2 mock up completed

I wrestled with a few different versions of the book yesterday, until I finally came to a point that feels resolved, if not totally final. Having an mockup with actual, turning pages is essential, I can't fake or imagine the way the images will read together within that format and rhythm otherwise.

I think this book might be better than the last one--which is a good sign, I hope. I really can't wait to have these books printed. It will be amazing to hold them in my hand. I am looking forward to having something people can buy from my website, and these books will be the first. I will be selling them cheaply. 

This weekend David and I were among the first 100 people into the Met Saturday morning to see the Michelangelo exhibit in its last weekend. As we were leaving we were astonished to see a massive line of people snaking all the way through the museum and out onto the street. As it was, you really had to elbow your way in to get close to any of the works. This is the biggest grouping of his works I've seen in one place before, and it was overwhelming. It included sketches the artist probably had discarded, images he had crossed out, and pieces of paper worked on both sides, which gave a sense of his time and his personality as an artist.

The portraits shimmered, with a spooky aliveness. Red chalk limbs floated in space, filling in every spot on the paper. I noticed the absence of female figures. In the sistine chapel sketches and finals you could see how he used his male assistant to stand in as a woman, and just how manly the female figures looked as a result.  

The David Hockney show, just a little ways down the corridor was a blast of light, color and contemporaneousness after the low light gloom and archeology of the Michelangelo. It is not possible to make a complete report here, but the famous portraits of his friends and of his parents stood out from the rest. The way he painted furniture was also amazing--the attention to detail; the shapes and colors and angles that suggest independent personalities and movement. I love the still life in the foreground here; playful, and funny, but so beautifully executed that the little joke seems barely possible. 

"Camouflaging" and Pinterest mood boards

Pinterest has turned out to be a surprisingly useful tool for me as an art director. I've been using it to corral and share my visual ideas in advance of making a more formal art proposal. Currently I am working on feature about so-called "camouflaging" by women with autism.

The illustrator picked for this story is Alessandra Genualdo, someone I have not worked with before, but her images came up again and again in my ideas stage, and in the end my Pinterest folder was full of them. The germinating image for this collection is the image in the lower left below. 

This is a fascinating problem from a visual standpoint--women with autism often feel they are 'faking it', or that they are trying hard to blend in socially, or even that they are disappearing, or losing themselves. There's a lot of mental strain, and distorted self-image. Its a scary feeling to imagine, and a terrible thing to live with, but it is a rich concept to tackle in art.

The collection is around different iterations of the idea of 'camouflaging', including an actual kind of camouflage, wallpaper, or pattern that would surround a female figure and hide her somehow in her surroundings, or emphasize potentially awkward gestures, or stimming. The logic of the collection is not based around a particular style, but rather variations in ways the concept could be expressed. See it here: https://www.pinterest.com/skyone1/camouflaging/

Changing the shape of time in the studio

The official topic for discussion at our creative women's Sunday night meeting was 'methods', but the topics ranged wider than studio techniques. I took a few notes to keep track of a few of the ideas that came up:

M said how she always feels a conflict between the freehand line and the straight, ruler-drawn line in her work, but then she realized that the conflict between the two opened a third space where something else could happen.

I talked about my drawings, and how they may or may not come to life in a photograph, and how I sometimes come back to the same objects again and again over the years until I am satisfied, and have gleaned every resonance from it.

C admitted that sometimes when she is unhappy, doing her work is easier, because she is more careless, maybe freer. She also brought up the concept of slowing time down, or literally changing the shape of time by working in the studio...

It is as if somehow time stretches in different directions, larger than the space of your lifetime. Sometimes it feels as though life could be so big, in such a short moment. This led to a more metaphysical conversation about a sense of a larger awareness, a kind of bigger picture of things glimpsed from the moments of creative work.