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Hands & Stick
1991 collotype/litho, suite of 7, ed. 30, 21x15"
$5000
Click on the images above to view a full screen version of each print.
September 1991
In 1974, I had a studio in Costa Mesa located about 3/4 mile from where we are right this moment. Costa Mesa's an interesting area because it's still a (blight) industrial area and it's kinda the birthplace of the fiberglass boat and in those early years, John McCracken and I shared a studio so some of the pioneering work by just a couple of us who were sculptors, California sculptors, that was where we were day and night.
The Hands and Stick image was shot in that old studio of mine in Costa Mesa and not too long ago I had realized the ceramist, Gifford Meyers, had actually been the camera operator. I'd gotten it set up the way I wanted it with the hand and the stick and the background and Gifford had the studio next to mine in this industrial complex in Costa Mesa and I imposed on Gifford to come over and actually take the shots and so forth and he was very accommodating in doing all of that. I think that it went on for quite a bit of time and I bothered him for a good amount of his own time but there were a number of artists around there in those days and everybody was used to imposing upon other people's time so it worked out pretty well. So that was how the imagery was done, but it interrelated with some of the things I was doing here in the house--the balancing stick, what's kind of been referred to for years and that balancing stick relates to the stick and the hand and then I've thought of the stick as a wand which it, of course, represents, even in the photographs. So that imagery has always been with me because of the interest in magic, sleight of hand, stage magic and that kind of thing.
It's kind of a desperate attempt to find a way to engage yourself in something that you feel is reasonably plausible as an art work so to speak, the kind you blatantly use and involve your interest, and that's what I've always found challenging and for the most part almost impossible because so many things intrinsically I'm interested in visually--I mean hokey drawings from magic catalogues or whatever it might be that pertains to magic as an art. At the same time to use in any sort of blatant way that material and in a sense turn it into art--make something with it that still in a kind of visual way retains any of the essence of the original, is a difficult task. So I think I've kind of instead of using a refined visual implement like the magician's wand, I thought a simple stick is actually maybe more anonymous, more transcendent in the sense that if maybe it can ideally represent a more universal kind of magic--the levitating lady, the artist's paintbrush, the architect's beam--that kind of thing.
Certainly I'm very happy with the end result of the collotype and being a bit dense about printing methods other than responding on a gut level to what I like--I think the collotype can be extraordinary in the gradation and in the sense of its visual appeal, its softness and the fact that it does not make itself up of dots to transfer the image. It seems like such an extraordinary way to deal with the halftone and I find that immensely appealing. I understand that it has a short life span--it breaks down relatively quickly as compared to almost any other method.
I would say I think that the imagery of the hands and the stick, I think in a kind of way that it relates more to what is going on than it did at the time I did it. And at the time I did it, you know the audience is small now--but when it was done, it was nil, except for myself and maybe Gifford who took the photographs. Which is not entirely true because I did show the first images just as hand-tinted photographs, actually, and I showed them at an exhibition at the Santa Barbara Museum of Art as a kind of mini-retrospective back in the mid 1970's and there were an artist or two who responded to them--said they enjoyed them and could understand them.
Going back even before the Hands and Stick I did a little portfolio called 13 Magic Tricks--which were just commercially printed. These images were taken, clipped from magic catalogues--a very hokey kind of little drawings and printed commercially while I was still in San Francisco and I liked these a lot but I showed them in the mid 60's to, oh, to a well-known critic who liked my work very much, but just absolutely did not get what this was about. Or why I would want to do it, or why I liked it. And I think although that same thing may certainly be questioned and all, and that's understandable, the room for this kind of thing now is much more prevalent than it was at that time. Because going back to the 60's, we're talking about the beginnings of minimalism and everything was so mainstream and if you deviated or indulged in something like this then so many just didn't' get it, you know?
At the time you do something like that you kind of overestimate the idea--I mean you almost throw out of proportion any kind of end result to your enthusiasm, and you underplay the means to arrive at the end. And I think that it takes time to look at something like that afresh and say, "Well, you know, I still really support this concept and what I did and I still like it." But I didn't really have the vision or the time to put it into a kind of proper context and I think that's what nice about seeing it now because I see it so beautifully printed and in a context and a format that in a sort of way went beyond my means of thought at the time because I didn't have the opportunity to have it done in such a luxurious way.