Quodlibetica

If These Walls Could Talk

Written By: Ed Charbonneau Constellation 11 12.1.10

by Ed Charbonneau

Recently, I was a guest speaker for a class of senior level fine arts students. For the presentation, I was asked to address how I balance my career as an artist that includes working on public commissions, adjunct college teaching, and independent studio work.  My portfolio shows a range of painting from nonobjective abstractions to representational paintings that are more traditional-looking. As I prepared for my presentation, I began to look closely at what I have done and ask myself how I would describe what I do to another person who was at the beginning of their artistic career.

I’ve attempted to respond to the forces that are on each project, whether it be a commissioned public mural, or another independent painting within the series that I have completed in my studio. Forces are elements, both physical and intellectual, that affect the creative process and describe the potentiality of an artwork. This concept was first introduced to me during the mid-1990s by my uncle and mentor, the architect, Daryl Hansen. He made the simple observation that a tree on a property affects his decision making process while designing a building. It becomes a force within the architectural program – it has a physical and intellectual impact – as do all the other elements governing the project: usage, scale, environment, client, budget, time, history, etc., etc.

The basis of my creative process is to weigh and evaluate how I can play conceptually with the forces of my environment, constraints, and abilities. For instance, the recent murals that I painted across the exterior walls at Fat Lorenzo’s Italian restaurant, in South Minneapolis were a response to the building as a site of food preparation. The kitchen handles an extraordinary amount of produce on a daily basis. Considering the force of food and its preparation, I played with Italy’s role in the Renaissance to describe the mural’s subject: vegetables from heaven carried by angels to a kitchen on earth. Given the whimsy of this concept, the force of the joke was heightened as the painting became more technically proficient. In the end, the symbol of a creative gift influenced all further decisions concerning the murals.

The neighborhood and the environment of the site are other important forces on my public murals. The front door of Fat Lorenzo’s restaurant faces an extremely busy intersection in Minneapolis – a veritable beehive of cars, motorcycles, bicyclists, and pedestrians, with nearly constant airplane traffic overhead. It’s noisy and frenetic, so I responded to the force of the traffic by painting something calm that also has a sense of dimension and space. Additionally, winter and fall in Minnesota render everything in shades of grey and brown. So I reached for my green and blue cans of paint in an attempt to affix the image of a sunny afternoon on the walls that will be viewed in January when it is 20° below zero. In this way, the initial possibilities for the artwork’s potential are narrowed step-by-step as the project’s forces are examined, translated, and acted upon.

The architecture (or substrate), client, budget, and the time frame in which the artwork needs to be completed are additional forces upon a public project. I have had the pleasure to work with clients and patrons who want to be engaged with the creative process, and often I consider them to be collaborators. I enjoy collaborating with clients as well as with other artists. They invariably do and say things that I could not have predicted, and as an artist I welcome the opportunity to engage with the artwork in ways that are outside my normal range of experience.

In the case of Fat Lorenzo’s Italian restaurant, the north side of the building has an awning that spans the length of the exterior wall. This awning establishes an outdoor dining space along the sidewalk adjacent to the restaurant and as such, it is a dominant visual force within the architecture of my picture plane. It wasn’t until I began to consider this awning as part of the design that I was able to understand how I might complete the painting. In the end, Jeremy Szopinski, Brandon Regner and I painted Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa on the wall as if it were being carried in its frame across the sky over South Minneapolis by winged angels. The awning became part of the artwork as it blocks the face of the famous portrait from viewers as they drive past the building. Because we referred to a low quality, yet copyright free photograph of the Mona Lisa during painting, we concluded that we would paint a good reproduction of a bad reproduction of Da Vinci’s masterpiece.

The forces that act upon my public projects work to define the visual characteristics of the finished artwork. Additionally, they help me to comprehend how the artwork will ultimately function and who is my audience. Considering how the public will interact with the artwork plays a dominant role in my creative process. I have seen how these paintings become places to be experienced and remembered. The artworks can become landmarks on the map as well as within someone’s memory. I am interested in the experiences people have with my public murals, and so my attempt to understand and identify my audience becomes a force on the project. This force reveals the artwork not only as an image painted on a wall, but the work of art presents itself as a potential space for people to interact socially. In doing so, the painting becomes an element of memory and experience.

While I have worked to understand the nature of my commissioned murals, such as the ones at Fat Lorenzo’s restaurant, I have also worked in my studio on a series of non-objective reductive paintings. Considering the public vs. private forces on these artworks, the non-objective paintings may not respond to a client in the same ways as a public work. However, they do respond directly to other practical forces, such as budget, scale, the architecture – they have to be able to fit through the doorway of my studio – deadlines for exhibitions, and grant proposals. A private force that governs these paintings includes my interest in using unconventional materials, such as silicone and rubber. I focus on forces that invite me to contemplate these paintings by comparing textures, shapes, and colors from one artwork to the next. A visual language comprised of non-objective shapes, such as a circle, a line, or a square, becomes a force on new artworks. My process allows for the limited control of art materials to become an additional force within the series. I pour the paint and trowel the silicone, knowing that the viscosity and drying time of the media will affect the shapes, textures, and forms of the compositions. I allow these more random forces to act upon the artworks, which counters the importance I place on controlling the technique of my representational murals at places like Fat Lorenzo’s restaurant.

Weighing, translating, and acting upon the forces governing my creative process is an action that is always propelling me forward. I am continually in the process of becoming aware and acquiring new experiences that may influence my reactions to the forces that command my artworks. Whether I am working in my studio or on a public mural, my perception and process of translating and interpreting these forces affect the decisions I make regarding the quality of the composition, material use, and the subject of the artworks.

Image list:

1.-7. Fat Lorenzo’s Italian Restaurant

8. Unusual Landscape, Acrylic paint and aluminum silicone on canvas. 65” x 108”, 2010, Tractor Works building, 800 Washington Ave N., Minneapolis, MN.

9. Untitled (Circle), silicone on fluorescent orange fabric, 48” x 48”, 2010.

10. Process image working with silicone and fiberglass mess tape on canvas, 2010.

11. Untitled (Horizon), synthetic rubber coating on fluorescent yellow synthetic fabric, 48” x 28”, 2009.

12.  Delta No. 1, oil and acrylic paint on canvas, 24” x 36”, 2010.

13.  Delta No. 2, oil and acrylic paint on canvas, 40” x 40”, 2010.