In my previous post, I explained the story behind Ekeliges Zeug!, a new paper art collage I finished last week. I’d like to follow that up with some detail shots, to give you an idea of the detail that went into the piece.

And here’s the whole thing, again:

There’s a lot of fluorescent paper going on—but, unfortunately, fluorescent anything doesn’t really come through on screen. You’ll just have to take my word for it. Better yet, if it gets into the show for which I created it, you’ll be able to see for yourself, in person!

I had some important accidental realizations as I was making Ekeliges Zeug!:

• As I was cutting the colors up, the scraps fell to the floor, just piling up. Some very weird and unexpected color combinations resulted. These gave me ideas for color combos for future paintings. Like mustard brown, light fluoro orange, and crimson. Or beige, fluoro red, violet, and navy. It goes on and on.
• Halfway into the project, I noticed that I kept gravitating toward the same colors. Naturally, I wanted to shake things up. So I reached out to my pile of available colored papers and flipped it upside down. Suddenly I was working with light lavender, burgundy, robin’s egg blue, seafoam, slate gray, etc.
• I figured out how to turn off my brain in mid-project, and not overthink things. That was probably the most valuable lesson I learned. I just let one pattern or design element flow to the next.

In other news, I’m in the process of redesigning my site. I completely realize that the painting galleries are unfinished—there’s no detail information (like size and medium) on any of the images! I just never got around to adding it in. Regardless, I’m going to scrap the slide show format. It doesn’t work. Hopefully the new site will be up by the end of July.

Well, that’s it for now. Thanks for stopping by and checking things out.

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness,
—Grant

Hey there, friends,

I’ve just finished a three-week-long odyssey involving paper, glue, and spray adhesive coming up to my elbows. And I’d like to share evidence of it with you!

It’s called Ekeliges Zeug! The piece is 6 inches (15.2 cm) high x 60 inches (152 cm) wide, and it’s made of 100% paper and glue. No ink involved. Here ’tis … click to enlarge:

Ekeliges Zeug! is a German expression that means “Revolting stuff!” or “Nauseating stuff!” We had a German friend over for dinner a couple of weeks ago, and we forgot to put dessert (an apple pie) in the oven. As we were chatting, it became apparent that our guest had never experienced a Hostess Twinkie, Ho Ho, Sno Ball, or Ding Dong ever before. Seizing the opportunity to freak her out, once dinner was over, I raced up to the neighborhood convenience store to grab every Hostess “dessert” I could find. We cut up the Hostess treats into petit-four-sized pieces, and we walked her through a tasting. Our friend’s reaction was marked by predictable revulsion. “Ekeliges Zeug!” she remarked. Hilarious!

Title aside, I made this “paper construction” expressly for a local art show, which will feature works on, and made of, paper. Since it’s in my home town’s museum, I tried to do everything I could to experiment in paper. I think the project brought out my best.

Originally, I planned to make a series of five 6×6-inch pieces. But after the narrative–about an astronaut who gets lost in space–broke down, I decided to take the best parts of that and incorporate them into a paper panorama.

Long story short, this is where I’ve been for the past 3+ weeks. I’m looking forward to painting again. No more being hunched over a cutting mat and an Exacto blade for hours on end!

Thanks for visiting,
Grant

Over the past few months I’ve put focused almost exclusively on producing minimalist paintings. And now I think it’s time to explore the opposite end of the compositional spectrum: what I call “maximalist” paintings. (It’s not my term, but it’s what I call that part of my work.)

One of my favorite maximalist paintings, “Ultraam Aeterrix,” from 2005. More on my flickr pages.

To be honest, I think I’ve hit a wall with minimalism…for now. But I will come back to it at some point in the near future, I am sure. This isn’t the first time I’ve gone back and forth between minimalism and maximalism in the recent past.

I feel the way I do for two reasons:

One, the minimalist designs I’ve produced recently aren’t blowing my mind. For me, minimalism is a sensibility, a way of thinking, a way of making. The process of designing minimal compositions is very rewarding, in itself. But I’ve found that the end product doesn’t quite reach the intensity I originally sought.

Two, maximal compositions are a blast to make, because they are often generated through improvisation. They afford seemingly infinite room for combinations of colors, lines and shapes, which excite the eye and fatigue the retina. Sources of inspiration are limitless. And to top it off I can give them perfectly strange names, like “I Got Distracted by the Grass” and “Still Life with Inverted Florida Maritime and Diamonds.”

I look forward to giving shape to the mental pictures I am currently carrying in everyday life. I see bizarre combinations of patterns, fluorescent colors and blown-apart logos. I see horizons of twisted significances and a color wheel that is spinning out of control!

I look forward to showing you the progress of this exploration quite soon.

Innovation means failure is inevitable

One of the things that has motivated me to paint was the idea that I was innovating: pushing new territory. That’s what got me going when I started 14 years ago. I wanted to make stuff that had never been seen before. I wanted people to experience work that was completely unhinged from reality. It was nonrepresentational and nonsensical.

When I paint a minimal painting, I get caught up in things like surface and lines. Minimalist painting is a purely visual experience. There is nothing to “read” on the painting.

It’s difficult, however, for me to try to innovate with minimalist painting. I have the horrible feeling that it’s already been done. No matter what I paint, it reminds me of something else. This may or may not be true in reality, but it feels that way.

With maximalism, anything goes. I can try to make things that I know for certain have never been seen before. I may triumph, I may roll the canvas up and hide it. The potential to innovate is there, however, and that’s what attracts me to it. Failure is part of the process.

Well that’s my story for the moment. Thanks for reading.

Until next time,
Grant

I present to you the fruits of the this week’s labor: two new geometric paintings with a flowing design. While I put considerable thought and effort into designing these, when I finished these paintings I felt oddly neutral. Can’t explain why this happens. But it happens, and it’s part of the process. It’s not up to me what the “consensus” will be on these works.

Regardless, I’m in the process of reworking this concept for more paintings—reconsidering how much negative space to let in, what colors to use, how many stripes to involve, etc. While I feel like I’m not there with these, I can live with the uncertainty. And that’s what keeps me going.

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness,
—Grant Wiggins

I’ve long believed that random color combinations are an unfailing key to artistic inspiration. I’ve used everything from having an “art lottery” format—where I’ve assigned numbers to a chart of colors, and picked the numbers at random using a bingo drum (a long story!)—to using random.org’s random number generator to select CMYK values.

Last night I bumped into ColorSchemer’s ColorSchemer Studio software app, which is a nifty tool for building color schemes. It also has a randomize feature (exactly what I was looking for), which assigns groups of colors according to triads, tetrads, etc.

After messing with the randomize feature for far too long, I have decided once and for all that random color combinations can’t be trusted, because of the eye-irritant stuff that they yield most of the time.

Examples:

Back in the day, when I deliberately used multiple discordant colors in one painting, this a randomization strategy would prove very handy. But now I prefer schemes that are more direct—I leave less to chance.

While I have eschewed color randomization, I will say that I have very fond of an another app made by ColorSchemer—a free app, at that—called Color Pix. This tool lets you read the hex numbers & CMYK values of anything on your screen. Now that’s a recipe for color success.

Back to work for me!

Wishing you happiness and the causes of happiness,
Grant

Here for you is some fresh-off-the-griddle goodness, my latest paintings in the Süfnex series. Just put the finishing touches on them, as a matter of fact.

From left to right are Süfnex Seibu 4, Süfnex Solaris, and Süfnex Seibu 3. I painted them Sunday (Apr 27) through this evening (Apr 29) … in about 54 hours.

Each of these recent explorations of minimal art measures 10 inches square and is acrylic on canvas, as usual.

Keeping the creative energies going, flowing through my speakers over the past couple of days have been these remarkable recordings:

• Dandelion Gum by Black Moth Super Rainbow. Utterly phenomenal!
• Pop Artificiel by Lassigue Bendthaus … which was brought on by the aforementioned album.

Also, I am reading Minimalism: Origins by Edward Strickland … a very well-written survey of how minimalist visual art, music, etc. came about in the United States in the mid-20th century. I also have my hands on a pile of CSS books, because I’m getting ready to redesign wiggz.com. The functionality will remain the same … just need to start making it look a bit jazzier.

Other from that, things are going well. Can’t wait to cook up more new designs and paintings soon. Until then, I wish you happiness and the causes of happiness.

—Grant Wiggins

Taking a pause from the Space Loops canvases, I’m trying my hand at remixing a painting I made in February 2004, called Süfnex. It was one of the first minimal paintings I made, veering toward minimal art after years of pop art. After all, I figure, if musicians can remix their own tracks, so artists can remix their own paintings.

The project is a rethinking of the Süfnex design, but with a red, green and blue color scheme—one that struck me when I rediscovered an image of a phone card sporting the mascot of the Japanese baseball team Seibu Lions. But the red, green and blue scheme is also the turf of Ellsworth Kelly, one of my favorite painters. I decided to amp up my paints a bit, throwing in fluorescents into the mix, if only for a placebo effect. (If I think the paints look brighter, they must be brighter!)

Below, clockwise from upper left, are: the Seibu Lions phone card; the original Sufnex painting; and four variations of the design.

I’ve really enjoyed the process so far. It’s brought my mind back to what inspired me so long ago. Plus, it’s a series, a form of production of which I’ve grown more fond. A lot of minimalist painters of the 1960s worked in series, propelled by a similar impulse.

Lawrence Alloway—who in 1966 organized a show at the Guggenheim called “Systemic Painting,” which included minimalist painters Frank Stella, Agnes Martin, and others—described the serial process in minimal painting as “One-Image art.” Read the full essay here. Alloway explains the serial approach to minimal painting in a very powerful way, in a way that really resonates with me, as follows:

The artist who uses a given form beings each painting further along, deeper into the process, than an expressionist, who is, in theory at least, lost in beginning; all the One-Image artist has to have done is to have painted his earlier work. One-Image art abolishes the lingering notion of History Painting, that invention is the test of the artist. Here form becomes meaningful, not because of ingenuity or surprise, but because of repetition and extension. The recurrent image is subject to continuous transformation, destruction and reconstruction; it requires to be read in time as well as space. In style analysis we look for unity within variety; in One-Image art we look for variety within conspicuous unity. The run of the image constitutes a system, with limits set up by the artist himself, which we learn empirically by seeing enough of the work. Thus the system is the means by which we approach the work of art. When a work of art is defined as an object we clearly stress its materiality and factualness, but its repetition, on the basis, returns meaning to the syntax.

On that note, I will leave you with an image of work in progress—taken in my studio this evening:

Thanks for reading,
Grant Wiggins

Here are pics of the latest in the Space Loop series of modern paintings, produced on Thursday, April 10 and Friday, April 11:

SL0612D30 (30 inches square; acrylic on canvas)

SL0612CX10 (10 inches square; acrylic on canvas)

The latter (chartreuse) piece is an alternate design of the Space Loop series, as noted in my previous post. Felt like I had to paint it anyway, if only as an experiment. It’s now available for sale in the store.

Since then, I have been developing a new set of sketches involving a painting I made four years ago, called Süfnex. I look forward to revealing those sketches within the next few days.

I’ve also been brainstorming titles for new work, whether they’re prints, paintings, etc. Some names: Phratophir, Biyuvial, Ostroddol, Etcholxen, Exubeix. There are others, but I will spare you of them! The Basque language is particularly fascinating, and ripe with points of inspiration, as demonstrated by the newspaper Berria.

Otherwise, I have been doing quite a bit of gardening lately, before the Arizona sun increases the degree of difficulty on such activity. Gardening is much like painting, I have found, because it’s very meditative. I started a compost pile in late December, and I look forward to starting a raised garden this summer.

On that note, I wish you happiness and causes of happiness. Thank you for reading.

Sincerely,
Grant Wiggins

This afternoon, my first Space Loop painting evolved out of concept form, into canvas form:

I am encouraged by this afternoon’s result. I look forward to continuing the series in the near future.

I have to admit that spent a seemingly ridiculous amount of time trying to get the stripes “right” for this series. Hours adjusting the curves, undoing those adjustments, bending the curves some more, comparing them to the original sketch, measuring the distances between stripes, rethinking all of my edits, starting over, etc.

After arriving at two designs, all of the editing came down to one big “hunch,” to borrow a term used by Frederick Hammersley, one of my favorite painters. One composition looked more dynamic. But the other composition looked slightly antisocial, but in a good way. I chose the former.

But would anyone know the difference?

Decide for yourself: Left to right are original sketch (December 2006), the more “dynamic” version (from three weeks ago) and a “rethinking” of that version (last night):

As I was going through this process, I was reminded of the saying “Too much tuning, not enough music.” I do find myself deliberating, wondering, and doubting my designs perhaps a bit too much. However, I am trying to be more mindful of overthinking my designs. I have to be able to cut off my thought process and say “Time’s up. What’s your decision?” That’s where the hunch comes in.

Anyway, today was a great day. Beautiful weather and good music. Among the many albums on the stereo today were:

Animism by Expo 70 (mind-blowing space/ethereal/droning/classification-defying stuff)

Back from the Futer by Aavikko (brilliant 8-bit Casio tunes from Finland)

Affenstunde by Popol Vuh (a classic from the dawn of the digital era)

I highly recommend any of these albums. On that note, I am heading back to the easel. Thank you for reading.

- Grant Wiggins

Something incredibly cool has arrived in my mailbox. Make that under my mailbox—it was too big to fit.

I just received a couple of copies of Passages, a collection of winning entries in the Maricopa Community Colleges Creative Writing Competition. On the cover is a tightly cropped image of a painting I made back in late 06, titled Still Life with Inverted Florida Maritime.

Left: The cover of Passages. Right: A photo of my 2006 painting Still Life with Inverted Florida Maritime.

Above: An inventive way of introducing the Essay section.

What’s really cool is that the book’s designer, Janet Sieradzki, isolated elements of the original design and incorporated it through the rest of the book. (I provided her with the original Illustrator file.) In other words, in the Fiction section, you’ll see a group of diamonds; Essay features a diagonal borrowed from the design’s stripes.

It’s fascinating to see how someone else can run with my work and make it new. I see my own work in a completely new way. And it’s refreshing to see my work in a completely unexpected context—a college writing contest.

Big ups to Janet Sieradzki for doing something new with my design! Nicely done, Janet!