ARTEZINE

-- A Cyberspace Review Of The Arts

Volume 20.05
September 20, 2013



Sara Schneckloth

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013

at Soho20 and the
Fowler Arts Collective

In late June and early July of this year, Sara Schneckloth, an artist currently working in South Carolina who should be known better here (and in the world) visited the Fowler Art Collective in Greenpoint to do several days of intense work (ten hours a day, according to the artist) on her characteristic drawing. A few months previously (in March) she had a brief show at Soho20 in Chelsea, sharing the space with some other artists.

The first show was rather small, constrained by the space available to it. (Real estate is always a problem in the big city.) However, on the last day of the show, Schneckloth gave a talk and answered some questions about her work. Much of her talk was (to me) gratifyingly technical as opposed to theoretical or art-critical; I learned, for example, that many of her drawings are now done on a kind of plastic paper called Yupo. She also brought out and unrolled some larger drawings hidden away in a back room and displayed them on the floor, which was about the only space available for them given their size. The work shown at Soho20 was of what we might call the 'cellular' or 'textural' variety, which I expand upon below.

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
In the case of the Fowler Arts Collective, she was invited to work in their environment in Greenpoint, Brooklyn, which is housed in a loft or factory down by the waterfront that once was supposedly the site of the American Rope Company and other such earnest old-time industries. Coffee and gold were also once warehoused here; while some old beans have been found, the gold seems to have been treated somewhat more carefully. This loft contains various spaces partially separated from one another by plastic sheeting or other light partitioning, so they might serve as a site for collective work, something Schneckloth has participated in in the past, according to her website. However, her efforts in Greenpoint were entirely a solitary enterprise.

Her work is not easy for me to describe or analyze at the same level I react to it, intuitively and emotionally. On the one hand, it is mostly non-representational, but as one observes it it is clear that the forms Schneckloth is creating as she draws are related to natural forms and physical processes, rather than being confined to gestures, geometrical figures, random markings, or other figures, unrelated to the natural world, which abstractionists have often been fond of in the past. (Back in the day, saying 'This looks like...' to one of the severer abstract artists could occasion hostility or depression.)

One might well say, as with some other abstract artists, that her work is nature, rather than represents it. However, this statement has been made about Abstraction Expressionism of the entirely gestural sort (for example, Pollock) and may, therefore misrepresent it; Schneckloth's has a lot in it besides gesture.

Some of the other adjectives one might apply pretty much across the board are organic, biotic, cellular, spatial, fractal, motile, fluent, organic, visceral, textural, tactile, kinetic. Indeed, some of her works have been designed to actually move physically and to invite interaction (in a fairly controlled manner) with their audience, although these were not part of the recent shows. (Check her web site for these; there are videos.)

In fact, a considerable body of Schneckloth's work can be seen on her web site, going back several years; I can't help but mention the large drawing currently (September 20, 2013) on the front page of her web site, although nothing very much like it was in either of the shows. I will contend instead that principles or concepts underlying the more current work appear in it as well.

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
We observe that this drawing consists to a large extent of circular, spiral, helical, or otherwise loopy traces. These are not of the same size; instead, small ones appear to grow out of big ones, and vice versa, much as we observe in the form of growing plants, waves in the water, and other natural phenomena. One is reminded as well of the Mandelbrot figure, and, perhaps a bit more remotely, of the wide blank spaces juxtaposed to small detail in some Beardsley drawings. The effect is to give the work a strong sense of depth, which, however, unlike perspective, is not illusional; the depth, as with fractal figures, is actually present, because it is a depth of detail rather than of feigned, illusional distance.

One might see the whole of this particular drawing as the image of a brain or nervous system, or rather the trace of energies passing within it, somehow become visible. Other drawings along these lines remind me of the similar networks made by vines, leaves, mycelia, and other natural biotic forms which follow the same organizational patterns as nervous systems and the currents within them.

The sense of motion, that is, of repeated change in time, generated by the circular and spiral traces of the drawing, adds another dimension to the image. This may touch upon the sense of remembering which Schneckloth alludes to in her titles and writing (for example, 'Haptic Recall', that is, memory based on the sense of touch and proprioception).

Much as I would like to go on about many other examples of Schneckloth's past work, we must move along to the present.

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
In these more recent works that appeared in the two shows, Schneckloth's emphasis changes from looping to more solid, although living, structures. One thinks of cells, tissues, seeds, stones, walls, buildings; even urbanization. She worked not only at imitating stone walls in some of her drawing but of actually building one, a serious wall whose construction was overseen by an expert and is intended to last for 200 years.

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
One reviewer remarked that some of her most recent work in Greenpoint somewhat resembled the modest low-rise architectures of this once-humble industrial and residential district of New York City, which of course have a rather cellular or layered form when see from a rooftop: panes, windows, rooms, roofs, houses, streets, the river, the horizon. One doesn't often think of the streets and houses of Greenpoint imitating the cellular structure of a living being, but of course they do because, in a sense, that's what they are, at least until they're replaced by the sterile prisms of upscale high-rise condos.

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
However, to me the forms were more geological or tectonic, and a different form of motion and tactile sense is present, hard, slower, and achieving higher pressure, so to speak. Instead of sweeping the viewer into a moving orbit, they require concentration and contemplation of internal tensions.


Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Besides these drawings several of the drawings in the March show were called 'Deep Sequencing'. This is a a method of analyzing DNA and RNA, and the drawings resembled the charts which are produced by the machinery which is currently used to sequence (that is, discover the composition and structure of) genetic material. As it happens they also resembled (for me) the sound frequency charts made and used by linguists to analyze language production. The DNA sequence is, of course, a 'language' in that it contains sequences of symbols which have a kind of grammar. This rather philosophically advanced work may have been somewhat esoteric for those not familiar with the technologies. They might be seen as a trace of meditative study.

The remainder of the work at this show fell into what I call the geological category: the drawings seem to depict (or to be) layers of some kind of regularly split rock or other hard mineral, perhaps interspersed with metals or liquids. (Indeed, some of the drawings include metallic inks.) The drawing is generally multilayered, not only along the plane of the medium but in successive overlays toward the viewer, which gives in a sculptural sense.

It should be mentioned here that the medium used in these drawings is the aforesaid Yupo. It's possible that they could not have been made without it, since repeated overdrawing, at least in my experience, often leads to a physical breakdown of the underlying media, and in the case of inks and watercolors, they may break down as well due to repeated wetting, or permit the pigments to spread randomly outward. (Of course, some people like this effect -- but I don't think it would have been relevant to the work at hand.)

Yupo is something like Mylar, but unlike Mylar it does not reject water (or graphite or some kinds of crayon), and it does seem to hang on to the pigments that are laid down on it; they don't fall or wear off too easily. On the other hand, you can generally wash off a piece of Yupo and start over, which could be seen as either an advantage or a defect. It also requires some getting used to; it doesn't work the way paper or fabrics do.

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
At the Fowler exhibition, the 'geological' style prevailed as well, although in some of the drawings one sees other forms, of roots or tendrils, maybe, emanating from the closely packed rectangular cells or blocks. There is also a different kind of flow in many of these drawings, created by the spaces between the 'cells' and sometimes the 'cells' themselves. As a result, some of the drawings look very much like maps of urban territory, which one might refer to the locus of their creation. Another element present in some of the work was the fractal dimensionality mentioned above, which again gives the drawings depth not produced by perspective. Most of them also have a strongly textural appearance and, although flat, give a sort of bas-relief effect. I think this may be one of the areas where the Yupo medium is particularly supportive, since it can sustain heavy overdrawing or inking, thus allowing the artist to build up an opaque painted or sculpted effect.

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
There is also a use of color which might imply temperature or pressure, a new dimension for the work in this style. It looks, then, as if the current cellular or tectonic phase may be evolving into something new, of which the color and the tendrils could be the first harbingers. Artists have seasons, too.

Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Sara Schneckloth, 2013
Schneckloth also made some small drawings on cardboard while she was waiting for her materials to arrive (this took a few days) which she chose to put in the show. These are quite different from the 'geological' drawings, although one might say some of them have a form similar to collections of rounded stones, maybe resting in a field. However, their forms actually emanate from the folds and creases in the cardboard, which begin with a branching, biotic rather than a crystalline pattern and, so to speak, bubble outward from the base line. One exception to this rule is a drawing in which the base line (a fold in the material) is avoided by the drawn forms, which might be said to dance around it with each other, much as the molecules spiral around each other in the double helix of DNA. Maybe we are back to 'Deep Sequencing'!


Unfortunately this show lasted for only one day, so that I was not able to give the all works the extended study they deserved. But we have the web site to look at.


Fowler Arts Collective.  The artist is at the left.
Fowler Arts Collective; The artist is at the left.


Links



text by Gordon Fitch, 2013

images by Sara Schneckloth, 2013

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ETAOIN
September 20, 2013