writing at bumper cars

Over fall break, I ran the bumper cars, which, during the off-season, offers great thinking time. 

I’m an artist, storyteller, and collector of ideas. I paint, build, or write, depending on the medium which best suits the details I narrate at a given point in telling the story. My process is additive; the details of the story come in pieces. The story begins with a thread when I’m not searching for it. I hear a sentence in a movie, television show, book, or in front of me, and it catches my attention. The constants in the sentences which catch my attention are: peculiarity, specificity in object or declaration, and an immediate mental image of what that sentence may look like if it were carried out visually.

The additive process of ‘writing’ the stories --by painted, made, and written word --comes next. I begin with a drawn sketch of what the scene of the sentence may look like. I find physical objects that might connect to the story. I write, adding my own experiences and threads of stories from other sources. The stories begin to have more depth. The meaning of the threads of sentences and experiences evolve into entirely new narrative accounts.

The evolution of the story during the process of making  is the most interesting part to me.

. Life is odd. The kind of ideas I collect are odd. From miniature silver forks given as a gift, to a colorful slinky left alone on a dusty wooden floor to an ostrich chasing a young girl. But they also give strong visual images.

The nature of my projects is visual, but as with Duchamp’s The Bride Stripped Bare of the Bachelors, Ever (The Green Box Notes), I intend the paintings and objects to be accompanied by a book and author’s notes, in an effort to prevent purely visual responses to it.

I am a painter who likes narrative and object-making. We live in a culture of storytelling and a desire to find meaning in everything. We watch movies and television or read books to feel like we can relate to others, to feel like we’re not alone, or to get out of our own complicated stories to sink into someone else’s. I’ve gone to school for visual arts, but I’ve always been interested in writing and sociology. From being an introvert, observing in a social sphere to sitting at a Starbucks bar, looking out the window and writing back stories of the people walking through the doors.

So if Annabel Olive is the author, who am I?

We become one in the same because her study is made of my notes, thoughts, plans, and previous objects from stories past. There is more distance with the other characters. I attempt to see through the eyes of Henry and Walter and to share their stories. Even Elizabeth has just a little bit of distance, but Olive, from the desire to being a writer, desire to get out, the vanilla Coke Zero and old Buick, staying with her great aunt (who’s now deceased, by the way) is me. Alter ego? I’m the story teller, the artist, maker, narrator. I’m the narrator and Olive is the writer. I’m the big picture narrator of the short stories in the form of writings, paintings, and objects. The narrator paints a picture of what’s happened in the best means according to what is being told. THat is my role within the various media.

Cabinet of Curiosities. What does it mean to make a body of work tied together? To make a body of work like this is to show the mind of the author and artist. There’s a transparency. The viewer gets to see the behind-the-scenes and is allowed in to try to figure out where the dots connect. It’s a visual representation of the map going on in the maker’s head.

When I thought about how best to visually describe Olive’s Kum n Go cup, an object that is specific in logo, in weight and texture, rather than make it out of clay or paint it on a canvas, the soft setting of plaster seemed more fitting and allowed more room for quirkiness in the making, an off-balance kind of weight to it, with still a chance of almost-awkward, ‘I can vaguely remember what this styrofoam cup looks like’ red detailed painting.

On quietude

There’s a quietude to my paintings. They have a horizontal, calm composition which is not busy. There is a politeness in the framing and cutting off of objects. My goal is to have a suite of paintings that the viewer can be comfortable staying in for a longer amount of time, with no feeling of stress or being overwhelmed. The characters in the stories are pensive, and the paintings should reflect that. As the storyteller of For Wintonbury, I make paintings that give me space to contemplate and breathe, because life is complicated, busy, chaotic, and disorderly.

For Elizabeth

“For Elizabeth” is a short story in the written collections, For Wintonbury. It began with the sentence, “The fourth stage of grief is making piles.” I wondered what the first three stages were, and I immediately began to picture what that sentence would look like in the form of a young woman’s living room. I made drawings and painted sketches. The spatial depth of the living room, color palette, and piles of possessions changed from painting to painting, as I was trying to get a feel for who Elizabeth is. At first, I had written her as a woman sitting on an orange couch that was much too saturated, surrounded by light yellow walls which were much too bright for her current conditions and emotional state. But the warmer color palette didn’t fit the character or the tone of the story. They sounded okay in the writing, but negatively affected the painting, so those details got revised. I trimmed the couch into a less-round form, and made it a blue hue with worn cushions. The scene now felt like less of one you would want to plop yourself into.

I added pieces into the fictional story from my own experiences, beginning with the first quote of the story, “Throw your towels in the washing machine.” I thought about how my body reacts to dejected and stressful situations and the tendencies I have. The development of the painting ran parallel alongside the fictional writing. Personal details began to make their way by form of objects returned in the loss of a relationship or friendship. The choices of pattern, color palette, and composition were based first off of the narrative of the story, but had to work with the painting as a painting, and not solely serving the text. The scale of the object is skewed slightly --the wooden, musical frog not quite making sense. The placement of the top cardboard box makes it appear as if it should be tumbling out of the painting at any time now. As the written story evolves, I add in those details to the painting, For Elizabeth and her smaller, connected paintings.

Being a collector of ideas, I observe and listen to my surroundings and keep a pen handy when consuming television, movies, or books. Sometimes I’ll hear or see something and know that it has to end up in one of the stories, but keep it in a repository until I’m more sure of where the parcel belongs. I knew, for example, that I wanted to share my Greyhound experience, of staying close to the mother with her young son. When the lady I work for pulled a pile of torn papers with written words out of her pockets, and casually explained, “choices.” When my sister got chased by an ostrich or a student brought a broken slinky to class. Taking dominoes from Collateral Beauty and a box of chocolates from Forest Gump isn’t enough without all of the other sources and personal experiences.

Chairs came to be after several times of driving by two rusty, and yet, brightly colored metal chairs that were positioned diagonally across from each other in a yard on a country back road. I thought, who sits in these chairs? What do they talk about? Then I thought about Harvey and Theo, the brothers, and how Harvey may listen to Theo talk about his day and his few years of life experience beyond that of the younger brother. How Harvey might be fiddling with Theo’s handmade, orange dominoes while he listens.

So that's just some of the thinking. I've been painting, making physical objects, digital drawings, drawings, and I've got the intro of my thesis paper written out and starting to sort through everything else, adding in research. Actually feeling pretty okay about things. A thesis date frame would be nice, though.