Touch them and they will touch you back.

Hooray! I've managed to photograph some of my in-progress studio work! The long hanging items are to be part of a serial installation that will be my grad piece! (These photos don't really do the objects justice as of right now.) The whole thing has materialized within a matter of only two or so weeks, and before that, I found myself racking my brain, trying to decide what to include in our grad show in May.  So, after much sittin' and thinkin', I decided not to show a video, despite having worked in video predominantly for the past year and a half, and represent my department- Painting, and show something that will represent my material practice- which I think it does! (Even though it's not even finished!).  The rest of the photos are various snapshots from my studio.

Note to self: be more professional

Next week, I plan on documenting my studio/ in progress-grad piece-work/ weird objects.

It's been a while since I've actually lost sleep thinking excitedly about a body of work, so I suppose I should be thankful that I only got a total of four hours slumber last night.  But this is the price one pays when thinking through problems and planning wonderful artz.  I've been working steadily since last friday, on some strange new things that will be my grad piece.  I just love to be near my objects, working on or around them.  In a super creepy way, my little objects/items/sculptural hybrids are like my children, though as one instructor pointed out, they do feel as though they are the rejects from the Island of Misfit Toys, and have those faces that only a mother could love.  And love them I do.

I really need to stop turning this blog thing into a diary, especially since I don't really have too many photos these days to support and validate my inner thoughtz.

Seriously, photos to come.  In the meantime, here is a still from a super creepy random video that I made for no real reason other than "because I could".

Bearz Jamboree

unfinished business

Hmm.  I sort of feel as if I am preparing for my death or something.  Okay, perhaps that's a tad melodramatic, but it's sort of true in a way.  I am working (FINALLY!!) on my grad piece, which, in a nutshell, is all of the contents of my studio+spray foam+gloopy thick layers of paint, stuffed into and stuck onto heavy, sagging nylons.  I originally figured I'd just fill the nylons with crumpled newsprint or something- anything to add volume to the otherwise static socks, figuring I'd just paint over it anyways, so I was surprised when, without giving it much thought, I ended up stuffing them with leftover material scraps, sponges, cotton balls, a bag filled with mirror shards, and pretty much anything and everything that is a remnant in my studio; inevitably fated to either disposal or misplacement in my year-end studio eviction.  So I suppose you could say I'm liquidating my worldly assets and tying up loose ends. It is rather poetic that I am stuffing these collected, accumulated bits into my grad piece- in other words putting everything I have left into my final art-school work.  Ha.  As a result, I find myself reflecting on my years spent at this institution (four in total), kind of the way one might if they were going through a deceased loved ones' belongings posthumously.  How incredibly emo of me.

Photos to follow soon.

Oblique

Only one month/five weeks-ish until school is over! I am just s'darn excited to go back to work at my job in the greenhouse, and I finally have a car again, so getting to work wont be a problem! Things are falling into place! Well, sort of- I have yet to figure out what my grad piece is going to be.  The debate going on in my mind is objects versus videos.  On the one hand, I consider my videos to be my "real" work- the crowning achievement of my technologically-challenged, luddite self.  On the other hand, I've been making & collecting these strange, fetishistic and useless little objects all year now, and it would be a damn shame to never exhibit them, because I just love them so much.  But strangely enough the videos and the objects don't really work together, so it'll have to be one or the other.  I am leaning towards doing something with the objects, so I need to get my shit together ASAP.

In the meantime, it's thursday, so I don't have class, therefore I must get back to painting little kitty heads on my finger nails.

Yield & Hoard

Uhh. So here's some installation shots of my piece that's in a month-long group show in my school's library (WTF, I know).  It's not my favorite work by any means (read: one of my least favorites EVER!) because of the bizarre conceptual parameters assigned to this show (it's for a mandatory studio-ish class that is required for graduation), as well as a substantial amount of time to prepare for the show (I suppose I ended up stagnating in my freedom...) however, I am a firm believer in taking pride of ownership, so I did my best to document and contextualize my reasoning for making what I made.

Anyways, here's my artist statement:

Yield & Hoard (2012)

Michelle Liane Baillargeon

Mixed media installation (ongoing)

“Play” is the locus of everything that I make.  Good luck finding any substantial literature on this subject, though.  Believe me, I’ve looked.  What research I have done, however, has often lead me to material in this dead-ended alcove.  

So I’ll show you play.  

From playing I make objects: stretchy things, shiny things, hole-y things, tentacled things, things which exist solely for my enjoyment.  Playing is a rather hedonistic process.  I also make videos.  They sort of look like my objects: nebulous, primordial, fleshy, and invertebrate, and they are derived through the same sensory-satiating means of play.  The parallel among both bodies of work is through my obsessive collection of residue: studio residue, psychological residue, digital residue.  Yield & Hoard both consolidates and archives some of the material and immaterial residues of my working process through some of my favorite objects, materials and film stills.  This is what I’ve discovered about playing.  Feel free to take a gander.

Pinkieee

Yay! Excuse the bad documentation! I realize it's rather crooked, not to mention the actual projections were nowhere near as seamless as I would like.  But alas, that's what you get from three different sub-par A/V rentals.  

I am rather happy with it nonetheless.