December 7, 2009. 3:02pm.

Looking…

I have started sniffing around a bit more.

I took out a book on BRONZINO and paged through it. I learned that Bronzino’s “real name” is Agnolo Tori, same as my nickname, and then read that wasn’t true.

I discovered a portrait of a young girl

that I attempted in a pen and ink drawing was also by Bronzino,

I read he may or may not have been gay, and realized many of his sitters, men and women, were quite attractive. One of them wasn’t and is kind of scary-looking. Ugolino someone… like the word ‘ugly.’ I saw him amidst the countless reproductions of Bronzino’s artwork – harsh, grainy, neon, dark, and realized most people only experience this portrait in a way that is totally misrepresented.

A bastardization. Holding none of the softness and nuance of the original.

Utter silence.

It occurred to me that I spend a disproportionate amount of time looking at his face. Maybe this isn’t true; I have no way of measuring what I think has happened.

When I’m away I resent the darkness of this picture – so rigid, so stiff, so limited, but when I’m here it’s so rich, without words-rich, in a way that I myself can’t understand. I haven’t started the damn skirt, or my Research Methods final project. I know there are endless ways to relate to you and I keep choosing the same one – dead-on, in an empty gallery, 4-5 feet away, recording my senses and whatever comes to mind. How am I supposed to create a template for self-guided learning when I’m constantly in this missionary-position rut? I’m signed up for a class next semester called, “Spiritual Development Across the Life Span,” because, although I don’t know how to explain it, it strikes me as mandatory integral to whatever it is that I’m trying to do. There’s the looking, which is a spiritual exercise, and the subject, which sometimes is devoid of everything except his staggering ego, and I wonder how this is supposed to be a spiritual exercise.

There is a naïveté and aloofness, with which I identify. Knowing and not knowing. Strong, and diminished. There is a sustained beeping coming from another gallery, the kind I would have imagined occurring when my young man was having unwanted alterations made to his poor lazy eye.

It’s distracting me, so I’m going to leave.

3:21pm.

January 22, 2010.

You’ve moved. Different gallery, diff color on the wall… I might even think different frame but can’t be sure. Is it different? The gold seems to pop from the blue wall, a wood frame…. You seem bigger here, and that you have more space around you. Wider.

How the colors play off the new digs – the new context… green is greener bluer green, your skin is pale, your lips are lost… not as neon, or @ least it takes a second longer to see how weird they are. Black coat isn’t as rich... you have a gauze over you,

entirely.

I can’t really see that the sash is a different color, I don’t notice its blue-ness anymore.

You are obscured by people, and by this imaginary gauze that is created by a spotlight on you, and a deep blue background.

You’re at sea wider wider here.

Your skin more luminous here.

Your eyes rheumy here.

What do you observe? Yes he made others and they’re peppered around you now.

You’re still the king – don’t be angry. Don’t stand in judgment.

Superiority. Calm.

Mastery, ownership.

All at sea………

Night Images.

Thesis meeting with G. Sullivan.

Scholarship

Engagement

A way of representing

Form that has currency

Don’t want it to be so idiosyncratic

needs to have a degree of formality in service of

an idea.

Artist’s book

Website

In process of encountering work

over time

Bronzino as a noun for the space

What kind of space gets created.

à good to decide on format/structure

sooner rather than later

to then have a discussion abt this

content

deceptively vague

but it’s excruciatingly difficult.

February 1, 2010. 1:03pm.

Glossy, glossy. The light in this room really makes you sparkle. About how tall are you? since you’re hung a little above human height level, it’s hard to imagine. I don’t think of you as particularly tall.

The light/spotlight is casting a scalloped shadow along the top of the picture, but in a double layer kind of way – one is opaque, and one is translucent…………

The sparkles alight on your hat, and somewhat in the upper background. Your hat is full of light.

And then scattered sparkles above & behind you. What else do we have – a more intimate room, a more intimate space. You’re smiling more than usual today. How’s your book?

Book of poems. What would it be like if you read the collected poems of Frank O’Hara? How much would you understand, and how much would be nonsensical, yet to be invented?

Let’s look @ the work of Neo Rauch later. I think about the art

Doilies Neo Rauch colors

Dainty and dead

Elegant and bizarre

But why?

Doilies, perfectly meticulously

Cut lace grays, greens, neon oranges, Neo Rauchs…. And then what.

Where’s the Bullheaded politician, and why? Maybe I’ll set you all up and see what I get.

Maybe it’s already done but I can’t see it yet………… Maybe I haven’t even started………… One can have more than one reaction to a work of art.

Contradictory; unrelated.

All the black fabric stacked has to fit somewhere – the lace, but I’m not sure unless you use the white ppr lace with the black lace.

I just can’t figure out how it all fits together, or whether I see two shadows or three of my pen cast on this notebook.

A perfectly, dully articulated lintel.

Lintel?

How many flat surfaces

Are there exactly?

Chair arm

Table

Column unceremoniously

shorter than height of

ceiling

Lintel, though it may just support the arch.

Blue on the top of your forehead right

under your hat.

above your lip

articulating the dimple in your chin.

ever so quietly blue under your eye

under your brow

and your cheek lined in the healthiest

Pink.

Your lips orange, with a smoky

Black line articulating the space,

The shape, making the smile,

And holding it back, and holding it set.

A hint of a chin under your jaw line –

You’re young still, when baby fat has

Not yet been renamed and reclaimed

As overeating and a weak chin.

Yes – you look healthy and plump

Today, like a putto.

*Ideas for art projects. February 2, 2010.

Girls (tween age) sitting in chairs

Half-circle wearing horizontally

Striped sweaters (white, w/ red stripes)

Wearing white fox masks, bunny masks

White fur animal masks, skirts

Silhouette of young man w/cut

paper. Tools of 16^th c. Cut paper.

Bronzino’s portraits in cut paper.

Young man re-sculpted in white paper.

Cut-paper silhouettes,

Silhouettes w/ detailed cut outs.

As of February second Two thousand ten.

Portrait of a Young Man, Bronzino

Silhouette jacket

Portrait of Napoleon with Bull’s head

Shredded white paper strips

White, red, gold heart doilies

Belgian lace laser cut paper edge

Book of Frank O’Hara poems

Man Ray book cover

Cut-out silhouettes

A page of women’s sleeves

How can I integrate these ideas without lapsing into a book format?

If I make a book, how can I keep it fresh?

Lace overlay on portraits

Maori tribesman w/ facial tattoos

Effect of cut paper silhouettes

Bull’s horns sculpted out of lace /

Laser cut lace paper.

To reassemble.

Carved horns.

Huge horn – size of me or 5’ high (multiple)

Addresses masculinity

Ego, delicacy, could do multiples, colorful, Neo Rauch colorful words.

Black background, white figures in relief – could this be abstracted? White paper shards on black silk cotton background. Abstracted silhouette.

Blue, red silhouettes / cut paper

Black marbleized paper.

Paint pictures of quilts.

Thinking about how my last few projects have been made of paper, specifically, printed paper à

*Self-portrait cut paper sculpture

*Bibliography w/ jingle bells

*Flip-book... ***is LITERATURE REVIEW***

Was I drawn to Portrait of a Young Man because of the featured prominence of two of my favorite materials printed paper/book and sculpted & shaped fabric?

Never considered it this way before but it might be something.

Huge horns. Series.

Masculinity

Ego

Arrogance

Also-kind of mocking

Impressive

Delicate

Series of horns. White cut paper. Lace.

Doilies. Red? Gold?

Words. Painted horns? Neo Rauch Totem pole horn.

Gray w/blue, neon orange bits sculpted into 5’ horn shapes growing out of the ground.

Fabric? Printed paper? Painted & cut canvas? All of these ideas?

How do I create armature?

Build a weighty base and then fit armature/horn over bottom?

Are these in a context, as part of a room? Do they stand alone? Are they part of something; are there images on the wall, lights adjusted, sculptures around, as part of this, or do they stand alone?

Wrap one with ribbons, threads, trimmings. Look at painting again. Make one of wood, of metal? Think abt malleable forms of each material. Thin wood? Metal foil, how can hard materials be shaped? Am I trying to say too many things or am I exploring materials to figure out what I want to say and how to say it?

I see a woman standing next to each horn, wearing one piece of clothing, a beautiful collar, a beautiful sleeve, a beautiful bustle. I see everything on a bed of hair, covering the floor of the space. I see low spotlights on each [horn/woman].

The gallery is mostly dark, save for these spotlights. On one wall, there is a sign; it is in little lights (bulbs) à in metal armature.

The lights are a warm orangey/sepia brown and they have a word:

I don’t know what the word is yet.

Is it women, men & women, men, women… what is the framing of the worshipping of male ego/totem?

Timeless? Specific? Afraid it will look like a dance piece if it’s men & women. But feel it is a misread of the painting to have it be heterosexual, since it’s not really about that, entirely… it is to me, but it goes beyond me at the same time.

Wood – wood……

Metal – foil, doilies

Paper – cut paper – black

Painted canvas – Neo Rauch

cut?

Words. Fabric.

Totem pole.

A beautiful baroque Indian colorful horn.

Printed paper, cut out.

Print out Neo Rauch pictures

And cut them?

Unicorn horn, fantasy, impossible

Worshipping @ foot of something

Unreal, unresponsive, aloof.

Design/concept partially inspired by powder horns.

Extravagant/expensive materials

Affordable:

Small units pieced together

Paper w/extravagant finishes

Think about ways to make adhesive à glue guns

Glue

Plaster

Encaustic

Sewing

Want to make sure I’m not just decorating a surface. Surface should be developed, sculptural, dimensional, finished.

à Embossed, decorated silver sheets / foil

see metal shoe.