Across the Borderline

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Across the Borderline opens at University of Dayton

After cross-country flights and a long day of installation, Across the Borderline opened this past Thursday, January 11, 2007 in the University of Dayton's Rike Center Gallery. We were originally slated to have the upper level of the two-tiered gallery, but a last-minute cancellation of the other scheduled exhibition allowed us two expand the show to both of the levels. We had more than enough work. This enabled us to design an exhibition that demonstrated the various bodies of works we made together, rather than installing the collaborative work only on one wall in the "accumulative" way we originally envisioned.

Above are six exhibition views. We'd like to extend our sincere thanks to University of Dayton art professors Jeffrey Jones, Kyle Phelps, and Erin Holscher Almazan for all the support they provided us. Particular thanks to Jeff Jones, who was behind this project all the way from the day he got our proposal (you treated us like rock stars!). Also special thanks UDayton students Ally Meier, Jess Bohne, Rachael Dennis, and Sam Wukusick who gave us a tremendous boost helping to install what turned out to be nearly 100 individual pieces.

Click here for a web gallery of nearly 40 images documenting the installation and opening of the show, (plus a few just for fun).

On Friday we enjoyed meeting with advanced painting students for critiques, and travelling to Cincinnati with Jeff to check out the scene there.

Sunday, January 14, 2007

AtB Stars @ UDayton

No, there's no parallax in this photo- that wall is curved.

More to follow.

AtB @ UDayton

Tuesday, January 09, 2007

Your notebook, my mess

A few of these

Ballpoint pen, 20 x 15.5 in

A little different

About 20 x 16, ink and marker on vellum

More of these

Here's an idea for next time

"For 8 hours we sit, each at a table, blindfolded, facing one another. We have next to us the pencils, graphite sticks, inks that we shall use. Stacks of paper are placed nearby. When either of us deems a drawing to be finished, an assistant removes it, and it is clipped on the wall of the gallery where nails have been prepared for that purpose.

"When either draftsman needs to leave the scene, he remains blindfolded and his assistant guides him for a walk."

--Lucio Pozzi with William Anastasi

At White Box

[Douglas here: first, we need to start referring to ourselves as "draftsmen." Then, I think we're gonna need those Bauhaus chairs in order to make anything cool...plus, don't forget: hot assistants. This is too hilarious.]

Monday, January 08, 2007

the stars

Here's a bunch in progress. Selected pieces below. All ink, acrylic, and magic marker on phone book paper.

star preview

Hi Chris--here's a sneak peek at what I think I'm doing with the stars. Back in 2000 I made a series of multi-layered drawings on translucent paper (now destroyed) that used this kind of "connect-the-dots" or "pick up sticks" or whatever you want to call it kind of motif. They had all these interlocking lines of color. My plan today is to put them all up and go a little nuts with it. It might get crazy. Stay tuned!

Friday, January 05, 2007

Ballpoint 1-12

Ballpoint 1-12, 2006-07, ballpoint pen on Strathmore medium drawing paper, 8 x 6 inches each

Thursday, January 04, 2007

Fifth of five

Douglas, this is the fifth of the five large pieces you sent. To be honest, I'm not so sure about this one- I may have wrestled it too much, but I'll bring it and we'll find out.

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

New Year

Douglas- below are four out of the five large pieces you sent with my additions, all done New Year's day: acrylic on Fabriano, 30 x 22 inches. The fifth is in progress: I did something, screwed up and rescued it, made another move, slightly screwed up, need to make another rescure move. Also below are seven out of eight small notebook pages, ballpoint pen on your white acrylic shapes. These are a little suite. I just totally lost the eighth one by overworking it.

[Chris--I hope you don't mind me inserting myself into your post here. I realized we don't have very many "before & after" shots. I discovered that I photographed all the large pieces before I sent them to you and thought it might be interesting to see them this way. By the way I really like what you did with these...dgls]

[Dougalas- not at all; I like the comparison.]

Thursday, December 28, 2006

one more thing today

Here's that bunch I was referring to. If you decide not to do anything to the others I sent, I like the idea of trying to arrange them all together in some weird way...collaboratively, of course. I'm also in to the idea of us peppering "unfinished" drawings throughout. There are also a lot of duds I'm sure. Make certain to bring it all so we can have a laugh.

Today's finished batch

Chris--I love the stuff in your last posts. Yesterday I also got the pack of drawings you sent, and hope to work on them today. I think I'm just about finished working on this notebook paper for now. I'm still ruminating about the green/red/blue unfolded ones. I really want to try something on them. No clue on this end what to do with the stars even though I'm enamored of them. One of the ways this project is challenging to me is that it makes me have to "do stuff." What I mean is I like to ponder a lot. But this is becoming more and more about action as we get closer to the exhibition. Kinda exciting, kinda scary. I just made 15 more of those little ones with the white stripe down the center. I'm hoping to put them in the mail to you before I leave tomorrow for El Paso.

Wednesday, December 27, 2006

Winter 1-10

Douglas Witmer & Chris Ashley, Winter 1-10, 2006, ink and acrylic on paper, approx. 7.5 x 5.5 inches each

Douglas- here's how this came about: you sent me about eighteen piece on small white paper. There were eleven pieces with architectic orange shapes, and seven similar black ones.

I screwed up the first three oranges ones trying to figure out what to do, and then kind of hit my stride on the remaining other pieces, using permanent markers, and posted them a couple of days ago.

I treated the three screwed up orange ones with black gesso in a way similar to how you approached the seven black ones. Three plus seven then gave me ten black pieces to start with. I thought I'd draw on them with white acrylic, kind of in the "tree" manner of the thirty unfolded notebook pieces I sent to you several weeks back, but in making them I had to consider each situation differently and instead found an unexpected variety of imagery. A little more black, and then a few orange highlights to unify the group, and there they were.

A number of these you had indicated on the back as horizontal, but I didn't realize that until later. I automatically viewed them as vertical, and everything I've made so far for AtB is vertical. I'm having a horizontality problem. I think I've had it for a few years.

They look like winter to me. Black and white. I made these at night, the light wasn't great. Just as a group, they felt like December, like the end of the year.

In some ways, staring at someone else's piece and looking to see a way into it, and to working on the other person's marks, is worse than staring at a blank piece of paper. And there is something about this that is bringing out in me the desire to "finish" pieces, to make something composed and whole, but in very detailed ways- little lines, shadows, very fine-point drawing like inclinations, much less brushy and broad and gestural. In my own work I struggle against this kind of detailed finishing- it's an impulse I have rules in my head about- to bring in "skill" kind of goes against something I feel about painting. I avoid measuring and tape and small brushes. Doing all of this collaborative drawing makes me more aware of this conflict I feel, something that will probably be played out in the near future.

[Note added 20070105: as I look back at these now I can see into how these are very much about being home alone right now, in this house, in this neighborhood, at this time of year, is thoroughly in these drawings: stairs, blinds, the moon, wintery trees out the window, especially the large pine trees in the canyon behind our house, the sky, the hills, the night, the night. This keeps seeping into what I've been doing the last couple of years. I like this.]

Lots more stuff.

Douglas- this is just a whole bunch of stuff. I don't know how much of this will make the cut. I'm just making lots of drawings, trying to stay in motion. I imagine the stars being distributed throughout the installation. Don't know, just intend to show up with a lot of stuff. Except for the red, black, and blue pieces, everything here is on recycled paper.

Tuesday, December 26, 2006

Orangies

Hi Douglas- nice stuff with the previous post. I'm really impressed with how you got into what was happening with the initial marks of each drawing, and responded to each so invidually. I especially like the first three.

I spent pretty much all of today drawing. My back is tired from leaning over my drawing table. I have that buzz of exhaustion from looking and making and moving back and forth. I made about twenty five star drawings on telephone book paper, about fifteen blue and green "mountain" drawings, and started a bunch of other stuff on pages ripped from a book. I also worked on five pieces that were part of ten- I sent you five the other day; I tried to approach the other five in imitation of you. And I made a bunch of other stuff. I must have worked on nearly one hundred pieces of paper today, no kidding.

That tape you sent me is amazing stuff! Eye-opening.

Below are several pieces you sent me with my additions from tonight. You sent me thirteen, and I had to work through and screw up four, so these nine are ones that came through. These are orange ink, which you laid down, and on top are ruled marker lines in various colors, with shading. Now I wish I had twenty more of these to mess around with.

Friday, December 22, 2006

today's finished batch

Hi Chris--here are some drawings I finished today. You and I both tend to start the drawings by doing a bunch of things in series. It would be easy for me to finish things off that way. So the challenge I took for myself today was to approach each one individually and try to really zero in on a strong basic visual impulse. It went slowly but I ended up doing a lot of different things and I like how the results vary and I got a lot of ideas. We need more of this school paper. Just about anything seems to look great on it. The first image might be my favorite so far. I have all of these other ones you sent spread out around the studio, but I haven't mustered up the courage to touch them. They're so good as is. Maybe I'll work on half of them.

On their way

Douglas- a few things I sent to you today:

Tuesday, December 12, 2006

Blue & Green.

More blue and green- acrylic. I think you've seen me use blue and green many many many times before. There are twenty six of these on 11 x 8 pages from a really thick financial report that came in the mail. I really like recycling paper like this. These need finishing, some final something. I'm think of sending half to you and working on the other half myself. These fill out the "mountain" part of my star, tree, mountain, wave gestalt thingy image approach I'd decided on.

Tuesday, November 28, 2006

More starts

Chris--I love the ones you just posted. I'm sending you a bunch this week before I head down to Richmond. You'll see already that there are some direct responses to things you posted, or things in your work that interest me. There are magic marker drawings on the school paper, white acrylic gouache on school paper, and marker on the Mexican quadrille pads. The quadrille pads are punched for some kind of 3-ring binder. For these I trimmed the paper to remove the holes and joined two sheets together with tape.

Blogger is having image upload issues. These are just two of the 45 or so total. The whole batch can be viewed by clicking here. (Of course, iPhoto also did something screwy with the sizes and layout of the web gallery...so make sure to scroll right as well as down.)

Monday, November 27, 2006

Drawings 1-30

Drawings 1-30, 2006, ink on unbound, unfolded note paper, 17.25 x 6 inches each

Monday, November 20, 2006

My turn

My turn- Douglas, a bunch of drawings I'll be sending you. Disposable, in a way. A lot of black and white.

As I said, I wanted to make drawings of four things: stars, trees, mountains, waves. I'm getting two out of three here, hinting at two. There's something appealing about making very iconic, graphically clear images like this. Stars- we all learn to make a five-pointed star in five strokes. But you can twist it and turn it. And it's part of a basic vocabulary, like square, circle, triangle, stripes- I want to make the star an abstract shape as much as possible, but there's no way to escape the nostaligia and symbolism of the star (sort of like Dine's hearts, I guess).

These are all on non-valuable paper, scraps, extras, cast-offs.

Here's what I'm sending you:

"Waves"- charcoal and white crayon on kraft paper- about fifteen. Handcut- no attempt to make squared formats. Recently, in George Lawson's studio he outlined a number of paintings he's planning to make, and one uses the wave motif. He pointed to a graphic sample of curving waves- I borrowed that, and you can them below, along with other kinds of waves- hatches, inverted Vs, rolling Os.

"Stars"- ink, and some with white gouache, on telephone book pages. There are around thirty of these.

"Mountains" and other images- ink on old school notebook pages you gave me; some are ballpoint, some are marker.

These are all intentionally "open" drawings, hopefully something you can work on top of. Perhaps you can think of these as second generation found surfaces, and find a way to do what you do in reponse to something a bit foreign.

here comes some stuff

Hi Chris--
I'm putting this stuff in the mail to you today. I'm going to send it next day, hopefully you'll have it in time for the holiday weekend. I really enjoyed making these, there are about 35 pieces in all, plus a few things I just threw in...you'll see. I'm also sending you a few exhibition pamphlets and a roll of that tape I was telling you about that works great on the school paper. I'm getting ideas about how to start some other things.

I think of these as "drawings with you in mind." They're all on the buff paper I bought after seeing your drawings. The orange ones are done with that beautiful Japanese ink we bought in Berkeley when I was visiting you. In my mind, the orange and black ones riff off the feel of your html drawings. The black ones are made with black gesso by the way. I think it looks as good on paper as it does on the canvas.

Then there are the various colored ones. You'll see they're made with a single band of tape. We've talked about your personal preference not to use tape. In response to that you'll see that a few of these show the ripped edge of the tape. They're less neat and tidy as they first appear...something about the rip...a "hand" in that process...a relation to the hand-tearing of the individual sheets. The two images posted here show me playing with ways to group them or install them. Just put that in your thoughts. It's just sketching. At the moment I prefer them in horizontal groups. But it's in your court now.

You'll see I've initialed all of them on back. Add your initials or signature after mine to the ones you work on. Then we can keep track of order. I've also specified orientation on some, but not all.

Looking forward to getting your stuff.

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

Here we go

Some images from our time together at Chris's place in Oakland, September 14-17, 2006.

Tuesday, August 01, 2006

Trading Card 2

Trading Card 2, 20060731, HTML & JPEG, 442 x 322 pixels

Monday, July 31, 2006

Trading Card 1

Trading Card 1, 20060731, HTML & JPEG, 450 x 320 pixels

Monday, July 17, 2006

Trading Cards

Chris...I'm sending you this "pack" of cards and you can do what you want with them. Sorry, no bubblegum this time.

Thursday, July 06, 2006

Liner Notes

From the liner notes to Beth Orton's Best Bit EP featuring Terry Callier:
...For three days we sat and sang together. I asked Terry, when I met him on the first day, how he felt our voices could possibly go together. He told me: "Well, you're gonna try and sound like me and I'm gonna try and sound like you. You see?"...

Wednesday, July 05, 2006

Where to start?

Chris, you said you're kind of puzzling over how to begin things. I said earlier we could pretend we're a band. I think if you and I were to sit down and play our guitars, your fingers would likely go the places they typically go on the fretboard...the intervals and voicings you favor, and then if I'd come in with something I'd be doing the same, except now instead of just the familiar sound of one of our guitars, it's a new sound of two guitars. We'd do that for a while, I'd guess...just overlaying what we're most familiar with...until it felt comfortable to try something else. So to that end I'm going to start sending you things that I've started and you can do something to them. I have a couple ideas of formats already. These will all be very modest in size...we can call them drawings.

A thought about the floorplan

You know, Chris...that's not a lot of space in the upper gallery. I used my tape measure here at home and it's only only about one-third bigger than my kitchen! (My kitchen is kind of big as kitchens go.) Plus, do you notice that it says the one wall has a 40-inch high shelf? We should find out more about this.

Proposal: Across the Borderline

Across the Borderline

Submitted Apr 17, 2006 (download PDF with images, approx. 1mb)

In the song Across the Borderline Willie Nelson sings "There's a land where I've been told | Every street is paved with gold | And it's just across the borderline*." The song describes how difficult dreams can be to realize, and how dreams can be so close and yet still slip through one’s fingers. This is the artist’s dilemma: crossing the border to reach a place where one’s art is like a street paved with gold.

Artists attempt to cross borders all of the time. A border might be represented in issues regarding media or color, subject or composition, scale or presentation, audience or intention. Sometimes individual artists find ways to cross borders on their own, and sometimes the most effective way to cross a border is by being challenged.

Douglas Witmer and Chris Ashley live on opposite ends of the United States: Witmer lives in Philadelphia, PA, and Ashley lives in Oakland, CA. Witmer makes paintings, drawings, and sculpture, and Ashley makes paintings, drawings, and digital images with HTML. Over the past year their friendship has developed by crossing transcontinental borders via email, weblogs, and cell phone. Their regular sharing of written messages, images, and conversation has shaped a dialogue that points them towards crossing the border into the territory of concrete collaboration. They view an opportunity to work together as a way to both exploit shared values and confront contrasting methodologies and tastes.

Douglas Witmer and Chris Ashley propose an exhibition titled Across the Borderline for the University of Dayton Rike Center Gallery. This exhibit will consist entirely of installations of drawings: Witmer’s painted works on paper; Ashley’s drawings made with HTML and inkjet printed; and a collaboration between the two artists that merges both approaches.

Witmer and Ashley share an approach to abstract image making that zigzags back and forth across the line between the expressive and geometric. Witmer’s drawings made with ink, acrylic, gesso and tape have a tendency towards blacks, whites, grays, and low key colored lines and solid blocks teetering on the edge of solidity and dissolution; Ashley tends towards high-keyed colors across the spectrum used in hard-edged shapes that overlap and often result in transparency and gradation.

For Across the Borderline each artist will produce a large-scale installation of drawings in their usual mediums in consideration of the galleries physical specification. These installations will explore the nature of series and individuality, variation and consistency, constancy and disruption. For a third large-scale drawing installation Witmer will paint on printed versions of Ashley’s HTML drawings, and Ashley will produce HTML drawings using Witmer’s scanned drawings as backgrounds.

In the individual drawing installations the artists will work within their own domains. By collaborating together and meeting in the middle in the third drawing installation they will each stretch their approaches to cross borders to make something new. Viewers will see each side of this approach and watch as the drawings mix, merge, mutate, and emerge, hopefully to something approximating a street paved with gold.

*Across the Borderline: Ry Cooder, John Hiatt, Jim Dickinson. Recorded on Across the Borderline, Willie Nelson, 1993.

University of Dayton Rike Center Gallery floorplan

Across the Borderline will take place in the Upper Gallery

March 14, 2006: UDayton's Call for Exhibition Opportunities

UDayton's Call for Exhibition Opportunities
University of Dayton Rike Center Gallery
Exhibition Opportunities for 2006-2007 and 07-08
gallery seasons. Open to all artists and media.
Possibility of lecture, workshop honorariums and
limited shipping support. Deadline for entries is
April 7, 2006. Send 10-20 slides or digital images,
CV, statement, support materials, and SASE

Sent to:
Jeffrey Jones
University of Dayton. Department of Visual Arts
300 College Park. Dayton. Ohio. 45469-1690

Posted March 14, 2006 by Jeffrey Cortland Jones

Wednesday, June 28, 2006

This is the weblog for ACROSS THE BORDERLINE, a collaborative project by artists Chris Ashley (Oakland, California) and Douglas Witmer (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

Across the Borderline

Tuesday, January 16, 2007