A Pacific Northwest Portfolio

I volunteer at a regional food bank in southern Oregon, which supplies local agencies rather than individuals.  We’ve had difficulty recruiting volunteers because of this.  Part of the problem is that we do not communicate who we really serve in our facilities, hence to prospective volunteers.  

I’ve begun a project of photographing recipients at the nineteen food pantries and community kitchens served by the United Community Action Network (UCAN) food bank in Douglas and Josephine Counties, Oregon.  

"Hunger", proposed as a billboard poster, 7' x 14', digital file
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

The idea behind this project is to communicate who we really serve, those in need, speaking their untold stories in the facilities where we serve them.  

Let’s humanize our facilities in order to more effectively engage those who are considering  volunteering with us.

Installation proposal, 24 units, each 20" x 16" x 10".

What if it were presented with a pallet of Campbell's Soup,
to be donated to the food bank after the exhibit?

Banana boxes are the ubiquitous containers used to ship, transfer, and distribute food in Oregon, and are an organic choice to support this imagery. 

The nature of “boxness” comes into play constantly:  what goes inside the box?

This portrait featuring Campbell’s soup draws a clear art historical reference, as well as a social reference to soup kitchens from the Great Depression, and a regional reference to the Campbell's Soup production facility just south of Portland, Oregon. 

"Shelf Stable", 2018, 19" x 35", Black and white gesso, latex paint
on reconstructed banana boxes, Campbell's Soup, rope light.
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

While conceptually astute, I maintain a studio for my practice.  It’s a practice that is hands on, technical, and sometimes messy.  I draw, paint, build, sculpt, and install, exploring materials and processes, often eschewing archival stability. 

Cardboard is not archival.  Each banana box has seen multiple cycles, and has become stained, stickered and worn.

"Relief", 20" x 16" x 60", 2018, banana boxes with florescent light. 
What if several filled a space?

There is nothing pretty or glamorous about feeding the hungry.  It’s urgent work with individuals who are sometimes emotional, sometimes desperate, sometimes unwashed.  The need is now, forget tomorrow and its worries. 

Archival, really?

"Food Insecurity", 2018, 96" x 80", Black gesso and latex paint
on banana boxes, stapled to loading pallets.
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

However, moving moments can be had in the midst of serving this population….  

Meeting the woman in Roseburg who shows up at 9am and stands, waiting for hours until the doors of the food pantry open at 1pm, so that she can obtain produce.  

The grateful couple who accessed their local pantry in Reedsport for years, who have now begun volunteering there.  

I met an elderly man in Myrtle Creek’s food pantry who was a long-distance trucker, and through it became disabled with sciatica.  

It’s caused me to be very conscientious about how I handle food during my volunteer shifts.

These are the faces of normal folks:  kids, moms, grandparents.  Who can afford not to be compassionate?

"The Light Shines Through Our Imperfections", 2018, 40" x 48",
Black and white gesso, latex paint on banana boxes
stapled to a loading pallet, two florescent lights.
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

Art as social practice necessarily confronts.  

This project began as a critique of UCAN’s lack of communication, while providing a solution for it.  This portfolio expands the discussion about food insecurity in our region, it promotes the Oregon Food Bank (located in Portland), and seeks to enlist viewers into the cause. 

Change happens one heart at a time.  That includes mine, swept up and renewed in the service to others.  The abundance of this heart expresses itself in artwork that promotes compassion, encouragement, and hope.

  

Custom Campbell's Soup can label, 8" x 4" nominal dimension, 2018, digital file.
James Thatcher  copyright  2018

Join me as an agent of cultural evolution.

http://jtnwdc.wixsite.com/jamesthatcherarts

Focus Project

I’m making thirty identical paintings.  They're each 8” x 10” and modeled after a study of a blue gradient Tree of Life hexagon.  

"Transformation Hexagon"  ©  2015

This image's step-by-step process make it a natural choice for this sort of project.  Focusing on the same shape, same colors, same process, technique and size will yield the same result X 30.

This is the most controversial assignment given by our faculty at the Corcoran College of Art + Design (Washington, DC, 1980’s). However, it was given after 2 months of free range creativity. Nobody mentioned it, but the piles of artwork generated during that first stage were about discovering our modus operandi and ONE image.  

A piece that summed up the range of our unfettered production; our free association, lateral thinking, uninhibited choices in art making that sidestepped our fault-finding, self-filtering, uptight, judgmental fearful selves.

Duplicating that one piece thirty times through the Focus Project was an exercise in discipline and an example of what to do when you found that idea worth pursuing.

Sometimes logistics becomes sculpture.

We do an awful lot of artwork in a lifetime.  We produce drawings and sketches, and ideas that take over our imaginations.  We rush on to generate more ideas, sketches, and proposals…. 

And then what--continue the search for “the next big thing”?  Ugh….

Let’s stay with that brilliant, reduced idea.  Why discard it in the search for another?  They're worth holding onto.  When you find it, focus.  

A focus project brings a meditation on an image, finding out all that it holds and in the process of re-iteration controlled progress reveals itself.  

Side work produced during the current Focus Project.

Thinking becomes ordered, step-by-step instead of random.  Your body of work becomes cohesive and its coherence is evident.  Clarity becomes a trait of your artwork and process.  The directions you take become manageable choices that your clients and fan base follow as well.

Dare to impose a little discipline into the mix.  Hammer out thirty!  You might like it.  If nothing else, you’ll find a few that really sing!  You’ll internalize the image, as well as the focus processes and the multiples aesthetic.  You’ll have that ability and insight as a permanent part of your creative options.  

Who can argue with increasing one’s creative options?  

It’s an investment in yourself; in your discovery.  Your work merits the investigation.  This sort of output declares the importance of your own thinking, research and imagery.

And here’s a surprise:  I’m not making 30 paintings, I’m making one. 

                                                                                                        
 http://jtnwdc.wix.com/jamesthatcherarts                        

Scale and Measurement: Creating a Mural from a Sketch

I just finished 2 ½ hours with a reporter doing an article about the New Vision Heron Mural.  A surprising amount of our conversation had to do with preserving the characteristics of the preliminary artwork in the mural.  How do you scale up drawings?  

For this project I began by overlaying a grid of ½” squares onto a copy of the sketch, and then drew 12 inch squares on the mural.  This creates a      ½” scale      (½” = 1’).

On the sketch I found where the edge of the heron intersected a grid line, and put a dot on that spot, on the mural’s grid.  Going to the next place where that edge crossed a grid line, I transferred another point to the mural grid.  As I worked around the drawing, marking the mural and then connecting the dots, the tiny drawing was faithfully rendered.

My pet peeve about many murals is that they don’t look like paintings.  Accurately rendering the sketch is my best attempt to make the mural look like art, so I’m taking pains to get the lines, marks and distortion in the right spots.

 

 I continue the same procedure for the distortion speckles in the background.  On a mural it may not be visible to drive by viewers, but it is a part of the approved design…it also creates a texture in the background, rather than simply having flat planes of color.

 

This drawing was approved by the town’s Historic District Commission. All the contributions were given to see this drawing made into a mural.  There is accountability to the community and all the donors to render the sketch accurately!

I also want to improve on the drawing by making the steps in background colors smoother and cleaner:  I’ve spent 12 hours mixing colors to achieve that. 

 

These samples were created using measuring spoons, converting to cups for painting the fields of color in the 30’ x 12’ finished mural.  I also make a sample chart using the mass quantity mixtures to verify accuracy.

Studies often surpass finished artworks in charm and spontaneity— translating that joy to a large scale work is a challenge.  These mathematic functions are only the foundation for accomplishing that.  All of your skill will be called on to fill in the gaps, once your proportions and color are properly translated.

Best wishes, and don’t be afraid to GO LARGE!

Andrew Warhola

Concerning Andy Warhol

           I never met Andy Warhol but I was removed from his presence once.

 

 

 

But that presence seems to inhabit plenty of art work these days…my own included.   Whether I am manufacturing cabinets or knocking out dozens of paintings, the foray into production work hearkens to that 60’s Factory aesthetic; and pays homage. 

I’m surprised to consider The Factory as a precursor to some classic Minimalist artists and their use of industrial practices.  Picture their artwork (as different as it could be both visually and in attitude) as being directly influenced by Warhol:  The cube sculptures of Sol LeWit, the boxes of Donald Judd…He brought multiple imagery to contemporary art, as well as mass production, although the cited Minimalists pursued different ends and means.  Curious….

Portraits of Campbell soup cans (or was that Still Life?) were the uncomfortable birth of something different; made more so by its proximity to the triumph of Abstract Expressionism.  In the immediate wake of the introspective Abstract Expressionists came one who depicted the plainly visible world in iconic fashion. 

Similar to The Ashcan School, with its own depictions of the everyday, Warhol also staked out the territory of everyday life (the boring) as subject matter; as well as the controversy of “urban realism”*.  Consider the early Warhol as an extension of this classic New York interpretation of art/life….

Fun stuff!  …And what about Mr. Brainwash!?

 

*  Weinberg, H. Barbara. "The Ashcan School". In Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History. New York: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2000–. http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/ashc/hd_ashc.htm (April 2010)