Framed

I had seen shadowbox frames on paintings before and liked their effect. A friend suggested that I frame one of my larger pieces in this manner so I did and I like the effect. Then Johann Ducharme purchased BrokenLine #4 and I decided to give it a world to live in. Here it is.

BrokenLine #4, antique painted wood, 9" x 8", 2009

Breaking lines and bending space: Broken Line #8

While looking at some of my art, my aunt and cousin were both drawn to a piece that I was unsure of, BrokenLine No. 5. What Cindy said she saw in this piece was what I had had in mind making it, subtle shifts in space created by broken lines. Cindy told me a story about a drawing studio she'd had as a student. The professor entered the classroom, took a black shoelace and two pieces of masking tape then taped the shoelace to the wall, stretched between the two pieces of tape. Then he left the room, presumably to get a coffee at the student union and read the paper or a magazine. Without instructions the students began drawing. They drew the wall, the shoelace, the clutter on the floor, easels, other students, all of it. After a time the professor returned to see the progress of his students. He walked in, looked at the drawings and said "Your lives are very cluttered." Then he left. An hour later he returned again. He looked around at the new drawings, more of the same, and said, "You have too much on your minds." He left. At the end of the studio period he returned to see if his students had made any progress. They had not. They had drawn the easels, walls, benches, students and the shoelace, but they had missed it. The professor walked over to the wall and stood by his two pieces of tape and black shoe lace and said, "Do you see what I have done here? I have bisected a plane." The rest of the semester the students used one, then two and eventually three lines to divide a plane and create spacial relationships.

Lines are something that I work with a lot in my sculptures and this story reminded me to pay attention to the profound effect on line has on a plane to divide it in many ways and so to affect that plane and cause it to move in space. I have tried to show this in the piece I am working on now; BrokenLine No. 8. What follows are a series of photographs showing the evolution of this piece.

Beginning with lines

Cut and place hundreds of pieces in one panel



And keep working on the other panel

Look at the panels together and consider the options

Consider a tree?

Hmmmm?

BrokenLine # 8, antique painted wood, 40" x 27", 2009

After considering the options and consulting some friends, I decided to frame the piece in a shadowbox. After some finish work on the piece, building the frame and hanging it all, I am pleased. I am sorry that the photograph does not communicate the sculptural aspects of this piece. There is much more character to BrokenLine # 8 in person than on the screen of your computer. If anyone is interested in seeing this piece in person, feel free to e-mail me at matthewlouisallard@gmail.com and set a time to come see my workshop and some of my completed pieces and my incompleted works as well. Art making is a long process and it has many frustrations, but I embrace it. I am already onto the next project, the next set of challenges, frustrations and multiplicity of lines.

Drawings and Ideas

During a recent visit to my Aunt Cindy's she and I discussed the work that I have been engaged in recently. Our conversation steered towards the ideas I have for work that I have not yet complete. It seemed that each time I mentioned an idea or described my vision for a piece she would ask me the same question: "Have you drawn that yet?" In most cases my sad answer was "No."

Cindy is a jeweler and she trained as a print maker. Her education placed a strong emphasis on drawing. What she told me was that when I have an idea, a problem or challenge that I want to solve, I should draw it. There are a few reasons for this. One is that the drawing will act as a record for myself, an image that I can return to some day when I have the opportunity to act on the idea in my mind. Also, art is a process. If I draw the solution to the problem that is in my mind, I may solve it there on paper and be able to move on to a greater problem that my solution has opened up to me without using the valuable materials I build with; antique painted boards. Lastly, making a drawing can help to clarify the image that exists in my mind. By creating a drawing, I make an attempt at bringing the idea in to the land of corporeal images and objects where I can asses the effectiveness of my attempt at giving it flesh.

I returned from my Aunt Cindy's and began to draw again.

This last drawing served as an inspiration for me in creating Broken Line #8

BrokenLine No. 7

First thing is first, I must appologize for such a delay in posting these images. This is some of my recent work, both in process and completed.

BrokenLine No. 7 (incomplete)

The artist at work

BrokenLine No. 7

This piece was sold recently at an invitational benefit auction put on by Manlius Pebble Hill School, my high school alma mater. I am pleased to say that this piece was purchased by John and Andrea Danial and will return with them to Philadelpia, PA. Andrea Danial was my fifth grade teacher. It is good to have connections with one's patrons.

In the Workshop

I have been living in Cazenovia, NY for a few months now. I have not been employed in any consistent fashion, so I have had a surplus of time which I've used to build a workshop in the garage at my parents house.

The BrokenLineStudio

My parents deserve a gigantic "Thank you" for being some of my largest supporters and patrons. I have been working hard to create this space, but I've been working hard with their resources. Thank you Mom and Dad.

I have fahioned a space here which I feel comfortable working in. It has been really good to change the space as I go along, adjusting it to better fit my needs. It can still get a bit chilly out there when the local temps drop below 20, but a kerosene heater has become my constant companion and together we are anticipating the warmer days of spring.

Matt in the studio

I own most of the tools, but having this intentional space available has motivated my dad to buy some tools that he might not have otherwise, so we share the space and share the tools. I will move on from this space, but it will still be arround, waiting for my dad to retire so he can come out to the workshop to play.

But for now it's just me. Here's a taste of a work in progress. More updates will follow as pieces are worked on and completed

Work-in-progress

Reincarnation

Untitled (cuts and wires) , salvaged wood, wire, 30" x 9" x 1", 2009

Untitled (cuts and wires) is the reincarnation of a sculpture I built in 2006. Originally I hung the sculpture horizontally, hanging each piece individually. Eventually I took the sculpture down and packed it into a box for a move. It was not until 2009 that I revisited it, and when I did, it became apparent, thanks to the keen eye of artist and friend Pam Steele, that the scupture wanted to be hung vertically.

Broken Line # 6, salvaged wood, 23.75" x 8" x 1", 2009

Broken Line # 5 and Broken Line #6 are two recent wall hanging sculptures I've made with a vertical orientation in mind.

Broken Line #5, salvaged wood, cedar, 23.75" x 8" x 1.25", 2009

Retrospective

Glance over the shoulder from whence we came

Bottle, wood, 7" x 8" x 1.25", 2008

As I mentioned before, there were many steps leading to the genesis of BrokenLineStudio. One of those steps was a brief exploration into the possibilities of using wood to create images working directly from life studies. I first considered this while I worked at Walker Creek Furniture, but the time was not available to act on the idea. Later, after going to California for the summer and returning in the fall, I found the time.

That fall I took a painting class at Montserrat College of Art. What I learned in class about color and line I employed in the workshop. I used wood that I had collected at my new job, sub-contracting for Ebersole Construction. The wood came from a number of different sites and it provided me with an adequate palate. These are examples of pieces I made that fall.

Other Bottle, wood, 8" x 9" x 1.25", 2008

Percolator, wood, 10" x 11.25" x 1.25", 2008

Three Bottles, wood, 14.5" x 18.5" x 1.25", 2009

I enjoyed making these pieces a great deal. It was rewarding to use a limited palate and achieve such image quality with wood as my medium. I looked at these pieces for a few months, brought them with me as I moved back to my parents house, and watched them as I began to create some of the first pieces in the Broken Line series. During this time I recognized a weakness in the mosaics I made from life studies.

My medium is wood. Nearly all of it was architectural at one point or another. This being the case, there seemed to me something disingenuous about creating an image of some other thing like a bottle or a kettle using wood that had a history unrelated to these objects. It reminded me of a passage in Tobias Wolff's Old School. The author depicts Robert Frost visiting a boy's school to lecture on poetry. Frost's character says this: "Would you honor your own friend by putting words down anyhow, just as they come to you--with no thought for the sound they make, the meaning of their sound, the sound of their meaning?" The meaning of their sound and the sound of their meaning.

How do I account for the history of the wood I use? How do I account for the wood itself in a piece that depicts a glass bottle? Sure, the wood is there. It is visible as wood. You can see the paint on the wood. You can see the paint is old. There are holes where nails pierced the wood. But the mosaic itself is trying to be that which the medium is not. The meaning of its sound, the sound of its meaning.

Wood is architectural. It has structure. It is living. Bear witness to these things. Allow the wood to be itself first, then you have something to work with, something to cooperate with in a work of art. I hope to develop this sensitivity further with the BrokenLine series.

Initial Public Offering

Broken Line #1, wood, 8" x 9" x 1.25", 2009

BrokenLineStudio does not have a single moment, point or place of genesis. Rather, it has grown out of my own searching, reflection, creativity and most importantly out of my interactions with the people who are dearest to me. I have been building objects with wood for a couple of years now and they have taken many forms. Furniture dominated the first two years while I was employed at Walker Creek Furniture in Essex, MA. Recently, mosaics have taken the center stage.

I began building mosaics as table tops and they were received with a positive reaction from nearly every audience. This reaction encouraged me to continue making mosaics and I began creating them as objects rather than functional pieces of furniture. As I progressed, there was a hesitation in me that challenged these mosaics and asked "Well, nice image, nice object, but what does it mean?"

There are many layers of meaning in a piece of wood. First and foremost, it is itself. Wood. Tree. Structure. Purpose. All these things combine into a history, whether we consider a sapling in it's first year or a 12 inch beam cut for a house in the 17th century, itself already a century old. When wood is touched by the hand of man, it becomes a player in a history much longer than its own life or the life of one who touches it. And as these histories collide and compound upon one another, wood, a medium, passes through my hands and I am offered the opportunity to tell a chapter in this (hi)story.

But I am a man. How do my wooden objects bear witness to a human narrative?

My father called me on the phone last fall and he told me a story about walking in the woods. This is what I wrote in my journal after I hung up the phone:
Today I spoke with my father, yes, my earthly one. What he told me was this, that he'd had a revelation about my work. He spoke of my use of lines, ceasing and restarting again elsewhere but perhaps at an odd angle; something that follows from the first line but also deviates. It changes in its continuity. And he said that this was like man coming to know God. We get glimpses here then there at another angle and only after years are we able to construct it all into a cohesive image, if we are ever able to.

With this in mind I began the BrokenLine Series.

BrokenLine #2, wood, 8" x 9" x 1.25", 2009


BrokenLine #3, wood, 8" x 9" x 1.25"

BrokenLine #4, wood, 8" x 9" x 1.25"