A personal accounting of 2020...

Where do I begin? Well, 2020 sucked!

As a matter of fact so did 2019, but here we are at the beginning of 2021 and things appear a little better.

It is with this moment of reprieve from a very long and unproductive period in my creative and personal life

that I’ve decided to look back at those things that I could consider productive and positive.

For me, that’s a simple accounting of achievements.

In 2020... I, under unusual circumstances for me, made some art.

COVID-QUILT:

I started the  “Covid-Quilt” project, something to focus on and distract me from the world outside of my temporary doors. Without a studio and moving around a lot I decided to do something simple and less involved than my usual collages. I started to make drawings (aka: doodles) on 4-½”x4-½” paper about the random things that held my attention for that moment. The goal, as I began this when Los Angeles was ordered to stay at home and quarantine, was to create one every day until there was a cure/ vaccine. Since this project began I’ve decided I will continue until I receive my 2nd of the two shots required for the vaccine. To the day of writing this I have completed 311 so far. They can be viewed individually on my instagram page @tmgratkowskidraws. When the drawings are finished I will combine them into one very large “quilt” to represent the entirety of my quarantine focus.

During quarantine, a lot of artists struggled to figure out how they would survive and for that matter how the world we existed in would operate. I’m not sure if I made any grand alternative choices, but somehow I was able to get some attention with some press- this definitely made me feel appreciated even though the normal channels of shows had been put on pause.

PRESS:

"Isolation Row: Artists Alone" by Bondo Wyszpolski,  Easy Reader (cover story/ image), April 16, 2020

I was also the cover story artist for this publication- great honor!

“What Is a Drawing? Part Eight”  Vasari21 by Ann Landi, Apr 19, 2020 

"How Artists Are Nurturing Their Creativity Under Lockdown", KCET by Sharon Mizota, July 16, 2020

“NOT NORMAL: Art in the Age of Trump”,  Catalogue by Karen Gutfruend, (p 2, 87, 112, 120, 127, 148, 153)

“NOT NORMAL: ART IN THE AGE OF TRUMP” LA Weekly, by SHANA NYS DAMBROT, NOVEMBER 3, 2020

“not normal – art in the age of trump” book review from The Jealous Curator, November 2020

“Meet Tm Gratkowski" - Visual Artist, ShoutOutLA, October 5, 2020

“A View From the Easel During Times of Quarantine” Hyperallergic by Hrag Vartanian Nov 26, 2020

ZINE:

One thing I attempted to do during this quarantine period was focus on a couple projects I was unable to get done,

this was harder than I imagined and I struggled for most of this year to get any one of them done.

I am happy to say that a zine of collages I created to criticize and comment on the current administration

was finally finished on January 13, 2021. I put it on this list because it has lingered for so long - it's hard to say

when it was started had anything to do with when it was completed.

The zine is called “NOT MY CHEETO” and it's finally done.

    

COLLAGE:

A slow and secret project of 52 black collages. These collages each represent the 52 weeks of 2020 and

will be presented as one single piece titled “2020”. It will probably spend most of 2021 framing them and figure out

the tiled presentation. (stay tuned)

   

So that's my list of accomplishments for 2020. Absent are all the details of the day to day life challenges, but when I create a simple list like this it makes me see what has been accomplished and that 2020 wasn't a complete loss. As for 2021… it’s time to find the energy and the way to get back to the usual productivity levels I am most accustomed to. Thank you to everyone who helped facilitate all of this. It's nice knowing we are not alone and your help does not go unnoticed. Thank you!

Oh... and I did a lot of street art posts too ;)

    

a brief statement...

 My art is about accumulation and the layering of information. 

To be specific, I accumulate data from various sources, the bulk of which primarily comes from magazines. I layer this information until its original context and meaning begins to disappear and a new alternative meaning becomes the defining pattern of the composition.

HYPERALLERGIC - a view from the easel

hyperallergic.com, a-view-from-the-easel-during-times-of-quarantine- 

COVID-QUILT project (in progress)...

The covid- quilt documents the daily thought doodle from the time covid first appeared until a vaccine is proven to stop this virus and all the various moments in between.  Each drawing is ink on paper and 4-1/2” x 4-1/2” square. When completed all the panels will be combined to form this covid memory quilt. 

You can follow the progress in instagram @tmgratkowskidraws

 

Shout Out LA Interview

https://shoutoutla.com/meet-tm-gratkowski-visual-artist/

NOT NORMAL: Art in the age of trump

I am honored to be included in this book with other like-minded artists expressing their current political voices!

My work appears 7 times (pages: 9,87,112,120,127,148,153).

You can order now on Amazon...

https://www.amazon.com/Not-Normal-Art-Age-Trump/dp/B08DV5D3YL/ref=sr_1_1?crid=26RIJ1QIDRAZV&dchild=1&keywords=not+normal+art+in+the+age+of+trump&qid=1597277639&s=books&sprefix=not+normal+art+in%2Caps%2C190&sr=1-1

A little process update from KCET

https://www.kcet.org/shows/southland-sessions/how-artists-are-nurturing-their-creativity-under-lockdown?fbclid=IwAR0WDLdK5C7EIOEV_Ek0S8hi4U18yI_jCGns7qzs1E9ZgTe1CqYgpPELwzo

Cover Story/ Cover Art!

"Isolation Row: Artists Alone" and article by Bondo Wyszpolski

Most of The Time, I Feel Alone In My Thoughts, 2018, 48inx48in, paper

link to article here:

https://easyreadernews.com/isolation-row-artists-alone/

Vasari 21 articly by Ann Landi "What Is A Drawing?"

https://vasari21.com/what-is-a-drawing-part-eight/

A few words reviewing TYPE at GWC gallery (March 3- April4, 2020)

Polyphony, 2016, paper and silver paper foil on 11 wood panels, 78in.x 264in. (available)

artandcakela.com 2020/04/15 TYPE at GWCart gallery

Latest Interview...

Most of The Time, I Feel Alone In My Thoughts, 2017, 48inx48in, paper

artmoire interview

paper-crete no.53

 paper-crete no.53, 2019, 10in. x 9in. x 4in., paper and concrete

Throbs With Song

Throbs With Song, 2019, paper on paper on wood panel, 22in. x 32.75in.,

Why, Aren't We, Better. 2019, 4 pannles - 27"x27"ea, paper on wood panel.

Collage Manifesto (part-3)

To simply state the obvious: We are well beyond its 10th Century inception when calligraphers began to apply glued paper when writing  poems and we are now past living among the troves of modernism. Wouldn't it make sense that the simple shift in the ideas and ways we make art must also forge a new direction? One perhaps more relevant to the times we live in and the ways in which we make things and comprehend newer ideas.

Collage is no longer about the combined image or the manipulation of several images to make a new one. Collage, “to glue” (coller), is more about the complex networking of simultaneous information composed, or even compressed, into a new visual typology. We are no longer reliant upon outdated printed data to receive information; ie: news. We are now conditioned to receive information via bits , dpi’s, and  jpegs, et.al. and at an alarming speed - it is right at our fingertips , all of it, all at the same time  - whether we want it there or not. In order to still navigate this rapidly flowing current of information we must learn how to see, read, and even hear multiple things at once. It’s a kind of an information mash-up. In the context of collage, it becomes the multiplicity of both additive and subtractive layering to arrive at a new composition which can hold our attention and satisfy our conditioning for multiple forms of stimulation. In fact, the term collage, to combine/ to glue, may be simply outdated. We are surrounded by information all the time, weather it be a magazine or an LED billboard with moving images, or at the gas station with a mini-commercial broadcasting information while our tanks are filling up, we are surrounded by all kinds of ways information is filtering into our lives. Both the medium and the message, to reference Marshall McLuhan, offers itself  to explore and expand beyond that one dimensional representation of the traditional flat image collage, so that we can now explore ways to incorporate multiple layers, textures and materials to create something new... something never seen before. The avant-garde is not back, but the mainstream art world has got to stop playing it safe and move beyond its love affair with the past.

My point of departure here is not to criticize the ways we receive information or how much of it by various digital technologies, but it is to promote (create) a new visual typology out of the visual chaos our brains are being conditioned to receive and process in different ways. There’s no better way to play with these ideas than  with collage.. Collage is the slowest evolving contemporary art form; It's time to change that!

sketches. black and white

My mom once commented that my art was so dark/ without color. “Why always black?” she would ask. That, was in fact, a long time ago and besides my art she was referring to, I wore black - All The Time. But the point of this little story is that she was right and the reason I’m writing this now is somewhat of a revelation I had recently… I still make a lot of dark work- “colorless” if that’s all you see, but monochromatic is better. 

The moment of revelation took place as I was listening to a conversation I was in, but in the end I was like a Diptera on the wall and seemed to be listening in on it while it was happening.  Like a fly, I was soon listening to the words being exchanged and  looking for my halteres for balance. The conversation was quick, something like this:

Person 1: hows you doing?

Me: OK, I guess.

Person 1: Well you look busy as usual.

Me: Not really.

Person 1: Well, looks like you’re making a lot of work.

Me: (I didn’t say anything, interrupted by…)

Person  2: They are sketches.

That was it.

They are sketches (mom). That was the revelation. It was not a noun, it was a verb. But that wasn’t the revelation either, it was that what I was doing (what people saw as art) was me thinking, doing, doing something/ anything, sketching ideas. In a lot of day to day instances what most people may see (note: what they are commenting on is always what they are seeing images of online) as art is really images of what I’ve made that day to think out an idea or to see what that idea looks like. I’m doing this so I have something to react to , learn from, experiment with or just visualize. Sure you can call it Art - da Vinci’s sketches have become this elusive art object, but in reality these were just ideas I was working out.

To give a little more detailed background of the many ideas that make up any one thing I may be doing at any time, I’ll try to explain a small part of my art practice and these elusive art objects/  aka: sketches.

• I’ve always believed sketches had an inherent/ ephemeral life about them. They could appear unfinished or still in progress, so they had this feeling they could change - they were full of potential; ie: they were alive.
• Sketches were traditionally loosely drawn and monochromatic- like an idea being worked out, but not ment for formal presentation. In most cases they were made with graphite or charcoal. It’s the monochromatic aspect of sketches that I found appealing. They are simple to see and understand. Color (not always) I felt complicated the subject. 
• It is also my opinion that most people are poor colorists. Color theory is a complicated subject (I took two years of it in Art school) but knowing what to do with that color is the difference of making a perfectly rendered sketch into one bad piece of “art”. Somehow, I've typically migrated to the minimal use of color and a monochromatic palette because I wanted the complexity of all the elements in my work to still be legible and not be over burdened by too many colors. It's not that I'm not good with colors, I think I'm a really great colorist, but in some ways the work seemed to identify with and was simply constructed out of the idea of a limited pallet so I could focus on more formal aspects of the art like composition, structure, balance and subject. The irony with this is that if you look really close at what I do (in person, not online) and if your eyes have really developed cones you will see that what at first appears to be a monochromatic palette is actually made of af many colors in the field of range with a specific patina. That color or surface you see is a very complex chemistry to present a rather modest visual effect - the closer you can get to the surface, the more complexity you can see in its surface.

Then there was the first art show I was ever asked to be in… I was a sophomore in college and it wasn't the art I had finished for the final piece of the year that was asked to be in the exhibition (a large 48”x48” pastel) , but rather the sketch I made for the final piece. The final art piece was color and it was well received (I got an A), but the sketch, also 48”x48”, was what they wanted in the exhibition. That was it, the defining moment when what I did and how I made art and to this day what my art practice focuses on- the sketch, the idea, the process. From that moment on my art became more about note taking than about some final conclusion to achieve some image or object. 

So in conclusion, they are just sketches- things I do to keep challenging and seeing the ideas. The challenge is to make what I consider the formal art pieces for exhibitions just as fresh and lively as the “sketches”. But that's why keep sketching, practicing, experimenting; in the end, they are all sketches, but some will always be seen as (just) art.

A recent article about the use of computers by artists in creating their art

https://vasari21.com/the-soul-of-the-new-machines/

WHY AREN'T WE BETTER

Why, 2019 (2.22), 27in. x 27in., paper on paper

Aren't, 2019 (2.26), 27in. x27in., paper on paper

We, 2019 (2.28), 27”x27”, paper on paper.

Better, 2019 (3.2), 27”x27”, paper on paper.

voyageLA inerview...

A little interview/ press from VoyageLA magazine.

http://voyagela.com/interview/meet-tm-gratkowski-artist-south-la/