Short video of me working on various projects

Day three- drawing on Space's wall, all done!

It looked a lot like this yesterday, but I did another layer all day today, ultimately using 11 markers. The size is 10 1/2 feet tall by 32 1/2 feet wide. This is a bartender's view of it.

The opening for Polyhedra is January 7th during the First Friday Art Walk, but stop by and see it in person starting this Wednesday, or for Icing, Space's New Year's Eve Bash.

Day two- drawing on Space's wall

I've never done anything this big before, but thankfully my current inclinations are infinitely scalable, I just have to change the size of my marking tool and I'm good to go.

If anyone wants a mural in their home like this, or in color (which would be different and fun) please let me know, I only charge a gazillion dollars per hour...

Day one- drawing on Space's wall

Things are moving along quicker than I expected on this wall drawing. I'm almost done with the first layer, if I work another 12 hours tomorrow I might be done.

Choosing to use markers instead of india ink and a brush was a good call, probably makes me twice as fast. I'm using Permapaque markers, which are water based double ended felt markers that work really well, the line width on the chisel end is about 6mm, and I'm using that exclusively. I've gone through 5 markers so far, I don't quite use them until they're dead, but they get "different" and I set them aside.
This drawing is part of a group exhibit entitled Polyhedra at Space Gallery, and will be open for viewing December 22, through January. Other artists participating in the show are Katrine Hildebrandt, Peter Jackson Huffey, Irina Skornyakova, Kyle Downs, and perhaps others, curated by Jenny McGee Dougherty.

sketch for a wall drawing at Space Gallery

Here is a 30" x 22" drawing made as another practice piece in preparation for a much larger wall drawing at Space Gallery. I will begin work on the mural tomorrow and have four days to fill about 300 square feet of wall space with dense line work like below. I have a more interesting composition in mind for the actual piece, I'm just experimenting with the markers, patterns and density in this sketch.

In the next few days, there will be more images of the actual wall drawing, so stay tuned!

like a self portrait from a desktop screen capture

new ink paintings

I just finished some india ink paintings I've been working on in preparation for Open Studios next week.

This is a detail of an ink painting on a 30" X 40" piece of paper:

This is ink dropped into wetted triangles on 22" x 30" paper:

This large painting is actually a practice piece done in preparation for a large (12 foot x 30 foot) wall painting I will be doing at Space Gallery in mid-December. I did this painting to test the brush size, gauge how much I could scale up the patterns I usually use, and estimate how much time something big will take to make. This probably took me 4 or 5 hours to make. I'll have 4 days to work on my wall painting, so I think I won't get overwhelmed, maybe just tired.

I'm in the picture for scale reference.

Upcoming Events

Please stop by for these upcoming events:

Conversations with gallery artists at Susan Maasch Fine Art, 567 Congress Street, Portland, Maine, Thursday December 2, 2010, 6:30-8:30PM

Participating Artists:

Anne Ireland, Tom Butler, Kate Russo, Jemma Gascoine, Elizabeth Jabar, Clint Fulkerson, and Jan Pieter Van Voorst Van Beest

Open Studios at The Artist Studio, 536 Congress Street, Portland, Maine, Friday December 3, 2010, 5-8PM

Participating Artists:

Greg Day, Kelly McConnell, John Knight, Lisa Pixley, Tina Purves, Sage Lewis, Joe Begnaud, Christopher Campbell, Lucinda Bliss, Stephen Benenson, Tim Clorius, Tim Keeshen, Roz Gross, Annie Larmon, Clint Fulkerson, Pickwick Independent Press, Cat Jensen, Jenny McGee Dougherty, Edwige Charlot, Kim Convery, Hilary Irons, Shoshannah White, Sean Newton, Kate Cleaves, Martha Miller, Carol Morrissette, Kevin Moquin, Elizabeth Chapman, Catherine Lo, Greta Bank, Jim Lynch, Kris Johnsen, Timothy Wilson, Joshua Loring, Edie Ware, Sean O'Brien, Devin Dobrowolski, Maria Wolf, Michelle Livingston

Two more drawings just finished

This is the fourth ink painting (or drawing) I've made by dropping pure ink into wetted triangles and having the overall form look like clustered cells. This time I made the ink droplets around the same size, to help make a gradual value change from a distance. I also used slightly gray water for the triangles to ensure that the overlapping edges would show up as light gray lines. You can see these in the second image:
For this second drawing, I made a preliminary layout to space the placement of my starting points or "seeds". The spacing is based on the porportions of the paper, and dividing areas in half.

I hardly ever make layout guides, but for this drawing I wanted things to start out regular and end up more irregular by way of compounding small scale inconsistencies. The drawing isn't quite done, but looks close enough to done for a blog post. The edges will get denser with a couple hours more work.

New ink painting

Here's a freshly dry ink painting on my drafting table. It's 22" x 30".

Finished drawing and my steamrolled print

I think of this as a drawing but it certainly skirts the line between a drawing and a painting. It seems painted because I used wet media exclusively, but doing it on paper in black and white makes it look like a drawing. Maybe it has more to do with using color or not, rather than based on wet or dry media, because people tend to "paint" with pastels. In the end it doesn't really matter to me what I call it, but I do plan on cropping it somehow and mounting it on a wood panel.

And here is one of the prints made on September 12th using a steamroller, printed on canvas 50" x 48" hanging up on my studio wall. A tentative title is The First Seven.

Working on two drawings

In the first one, I drop ink into wetted triangles and pack them into a big overall blob that is about 18 inches in diameter. I like the challenge of trying to keep fluids in a geometric framework, but have the end result still look like some sort of bacterial culture.
The second drawing is a donut shape about 18 inches wide drawn with white pencil on black paper, and it's internal patterning looks a lot like that in my big steamroller print. I really like the immediacy of drawing with dry media and I'm so happy I found a brand of colored pencil that does not break every 5 seconds (Prismacolor Verithin), because I have to press pretty hard to get these lines.

Both of these should be done in a few days.

Space Block Party Video

2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial

A full series of 7 of my drawings were chosen for inclusion in the upcoming Biennial Exhibition, I'm so excited! Below was taken directly from the museum's website.

2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial

April 7 through June 5, 2011

After receiving more than 900 entries for the 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennialexhibition, the Portland Museum of Art is pleased to announce that 66 works by 47 artists have been selected for the show. This past summer, artists submitted more than 3,600 works of art to be considered by a panel of three jurors: Jim Kempner, Owner and Director, Jim Kempner Fine Art, New York; David Row, a painter based in New York and Maine; and Joanna Marsh, the James Dicke Curator of Contemporary Art at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, D.C. The jurors spent a weekend in September viewing images and selecting the work for the upcoming Biennial.

Each Biennial is uniquely formed by the jurors' collective vision and the work presented to them. As a series, the Biennial exhibitions create a visual record of Maine's evolving contemporary art scene and testify to the profound influence that the landscape, traditions, and people of Maine continue to have on living artists. Maine has nurtured artists for centuries, and its influence reaches far beyond its borders.

The majority of Biennial artists are full-time Maine residents and a number of them are part-time or have spent significant time exhibiting, making work, and studying in Maine. Of the 47 artists chosen, only nine have participated in previous Biennial exhibitions. Their work is created in media ranging from painting, drawing, printmaking, and photography to sculpture, installation, and video. This blend of influences and experiences enriches the state's artistic community and defines its art scene as one that reflects a diversity of traditions-both established and new.

A full-color catalogue will be published in conjunction with the exhibition and will be available in the Museum Store next spring.

2011 Biennial List

Stats:
902 applicants
47 artists selected
66 works
9 artists have exhibited in previous Biennials
*denotes participation in previous Biennials

*Mary Aro (Sargentville, ME and Grosse Pointe Park, MI) (2009, 2007, 2001, 1998)
Carol Aronson-Shore (Portsmouth, NH)
Jeremy Barnard (Friendship, ME and Georgetown, MA)
Kim Bernard (North Berwick, ME)
Natasha Bowdoin (Lyman, ME and Houston, TX)
Philip Brou (South Portland, ME)
David Caras (Portland, ME)
Avy Claire (Blue Hill, ME)
Thomas Connolly (Portland, ME)
William Cox (Auburn, ME)
Jon Edwards (South Freeport, ME)
Alicia Eggert (Portland, ME)
Sarah Faragher (Stockton Springs, ME)
Clint Fulkerson (Portland, ME)
*Kathleen Galligan (Bristol, ME) (2001)
Marissa Girard (York, ME and Goffstown, NH)
Carly Glovinski (Berwick, ME)
*Alisha Gould (Kennebunk, ME) (2005)
James Groleau (Sorrento, ME and Oakland, CA)
Tyson Jacques (Providence, RI)
Michael Kahn (Coatesville, PA)
Rachel Katz (Portland, ME)
Siri Kaur (Los Angeles, CA)
John Kelley (Cumberland Center, ME)
Mark Ketzler (Kennebunk, ME and Scarsdale, NY)
Selena Kimball (Brooksville, ME and Brooklyn, NY)
*Colleen Kinsella (South Portland, ME) (2005)
*Sarah Knock (Freeport, ME)
Lesley MacVane (Portland, ME)
Robert Monroe (Portland, ME)
Lauren O'Neal (Vinalhaven, ME and Cambridge, MA)
Heath Paley (Arundel, ME)
Michael Penney (Durham, NH)
Beverly Rippel (South Easton, MA)
Rebecca Rivers (Searsport, ME)
*Liv Kristin Robinson (Belfast, ME) (1998)
Gavin Rouille (Portland, ME)
*Michael Shaughnessy (Windham, ME) (1998)
*Robert Shillady (Brooklin, ME) (2007, 2005)
Suzannah Sinclair (Greenville, ME and Brooklyn, NY)
Andrew Thompson (Farmington, ME)
Richard Veit (South Portland, ME)
August Ventimiglia (Gorham, ME and Wellesley, MA)
Don Voisine (Brooklyn, NY)
*Mark Wethli (Brunswick, ME) (2003)
Ellen Wieske (Deer Isle, ME)
Deborah Wing-Sproul (Cape Elizabeth, ME)

Focus and Eligibility
The 2011 Portland Museum of Art Biennial is the seventh in an ongoing series of exhibitions showcasing new work by living artists connected to the state of Maine. All artists who have spent significant time in Maine during the last two years (since January 1, 2008) were invited to submit images in any medium for consideration by the jurors.

If you would like to be added to the Biennial mailing list, please email Sage Lewis with your mailing address.

The Portland Museum of Art Biennial is made possible by the William E. and Helen E. Thon Endowment Fund.

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The announcement on the Portland Museum of Art Website, www.portlandmuseum.org.

The press release in the Portland Press Herald, www.pressherald.com.

The 60 wpm review by Lori Waxman

During my scheduled 20 minute time slot, Lori Waxman looked at 10 pieces of artwork, then sat down at her laptop to write. The review was projected behind her as she wrote and when she was done, an assistant posted a printed version on the wall.

Feel free to review this review in comments or e-mail me.

Here it is:

Clint Fulkerson draws and paints and prints geometric abstractions. That sounds simple enough. Yet his works are anything but. Imagine Bucky Fuller’s geodesic domes as if they were viral structures gone wild. Picture a sprawling city seen from above, at night, dotted with glowing centers and crisscrossed by the lines of endless roadways. Fulkerson’s forms cluster and spread, multiply and divide, pop an recede. They’re organic and mathematical, precise but improvised, flowing but utterly tight. In all these contrasts, his forms prove themselves as complex and dualistic as living things—despite looking, at first, superficial glance, to be the repetitive doodles of a scientific hand. Which they may be, in part, but what, after all, isn’t worth at least a second glance? That’s one lesson of these works, though it’s not the pleasure of them. That should never be a lesson, but rather an experience to have, for oneself, thanks to the generous nature of artists like Fulkerson who put such strange, surprising work out for the looking.

-Lori Waxman

You can read All 30 reviews written during the 3 day performance at the Portland Phoenix Website.

60 Word per Minute Art Critic

I have an appointment to have my artwork critiqued at this event tonight at 6pm during the First Friday Art Walk at Space Gallery:

Lori Waxman is a Chicago-based critic and art historian whose reviews and articles have been published by The Chicago Tribune, Artforum, Modern Painters, Gastronomica, Parkett, Tema Celeste, as well as the sadly defunct Parachute.

In her three-day performances as the 60 wrd/min art critic, Waxman makes herself available on a first-come-first-serve basis to local artists seeking succinct and opinionated reviews of their work. While a receptionist processes each artist’s submission, Waxman churns out one review every twenty minutes, the texts of which are displayed live on a nearby monitor for artists and observers to read. As each one- to two-hundred word review is finished, the receptionist will “publish” a physical copy to a nearby wall. Eventually all or some of the reviews are published in a magazine or newspaper.

The format of the 60 wrd/min art critic brings artist, artwork and review into the same space simultaneously. The performance raises questions about the interaction of critic and artist, the value of on-demand criticism, and the effect of a solitary writer working in public. What emerges from the experiment is a literal and comical grappling with the idea that there are too many artists and galleries, and not enough critical venues to cover them all.

While the reviews aren’t guaranteed to be positive, Waxman insists they are thoughtful, critical and informative. For artists who have been reviewed carelessly, who have never been reviewed, or live in a city where there is little local criticism, the performance presents an opportunity for honest, informed criticism at the same time it questions the role of criticism itself.

New Drawing

This is yet another approach to explore these patterns and forms I keep coming back to. Now there's less emphasis on the triangles, and I'm giving the inky centers more presence. This looks like a messier negative of pen and ink drawings I did several years ago:

There's something so satisfying about dropping ink onto wet areas of paper, watching it spread like a little contained storm. What happens within the triangles is literally contained chaos. I set it up and let it go. The whole result looks 3 dimensional to me, like a faceted paper sculpture with holes in it.

New Drawing

This is a new way of working from the basic triangular array, using different values and precisely chaotic patterning; it's graphite and ink.

Steamroller Printing with Pickwick Independent Press

Two days before our big steamroller printing extravaganza, I had a mad rush in the studio to finish carving my block of MDF. The whole block was designed on the fly directly on the block. I had no idea what to do on the outside of the "knobby donut" so I decided triangular rays would be striking for a public event, and a simple way of fading from white at the edge of the form to black at the edge of the block.

The grey part is acrylic paint used to seal the parts of the block that hold the ink. MDF is so porous that it will just soak up the printing ink, so this makes it so oil-based ink rolled onto the block will sit on the surface.
This past Saturday we set up on Oak Street at about 4pm, and started printing at 6pm as part of the Block Party organized by Space Gallery. We made 15-20 large prints using a steamroller to press canvas onto inked blocks. The response from the audience was amazing, and they applauded at the revealing of each print.

I was on the inking team so I was considered "dirty handed", which meant I couldn't touch any clean canvas. I ended up completely covered in nasty oil-based ink.
On Sunday, the day after the Block Party, we set up in a nearby parking lot to print the rest of an edition of three of each print. Sponsors to the event get one good print, the artists get one, and Pickwick Independent Press gets one. We were there for 9 good hours printing away, doing some on muslin.

I had decided the night before that I wasn't going to be an inker. I had to wash my whole body with vegetable oil and scrub in the bathtub for a good long time and I decided I was going to be "clean hands" on Sunday. But as soon as I got to the parking lot, I picked up a previously inked block and got all messy so I was like, "F#ck it, I'm an inker today".

The three closest prints below are by Cat Jensen, Delphine Sherin, and Erin Leon:
These left to right are by Abigail Swartz, Corliss Chastain, and Josh Eckels:
These are by Cassie Jones, Sage Lewis, and me- Clint "Super Mario" Fulkerson:

And here's a closer shot of my print:
To see more about this event, check out these links:

Lisa Pixley's Post, article on liveworkportland.org with an image of my print, article in the Portland Press Herald, Kyle Bryant's blog kylebryantart.blogspot.com, and Abigail Swartz's blog tiptoethrough.blogspot.com

I'll post links to videos as they're published. There were several people filming but I haven't seen anything out yet.

Working on a drawing

I'm working on a new drawing based on my print Nodule 5, this is pencil with ink wash. Another layer of ink will connect polygons- I plan on leaving some white areas open so the whole thing doesn't end up mono-tonal.

Studio progress

Here's an image of a corner of my new studio. This is where I plaster every inch of wall space with unframed finished drawings above and things not yet finished below (so I can reach them and modify them). A ten foot ceiling is a great luxury I'm not used to and I want to take advantage of it. At the bottom is my block in progress for the Block Party on September 11th. Looking at the block this way, rolled with india ink to actually see how it will look printed, I may want to preserve the look of the rolled edges messy and varying in value. It looks like a gravestone rubbing, which is exactly how my similar looking graphite drawings in the Division and Vergence series' were made- by impressing the paper with a hard pencil, then rubbing over that with softer graphite.

New print and a block in progress

Here's an etching I just printed today and below is the block I am carving for the Space Block Party on September 11th. We at Pickwick Independent Press will relief print gigantic blocks (4'x4' and 4' x 8') in a grand public performance using a steamroller. People who help support the project financially will get either a limited edition poster for the event, or for a $300 donation will receive one of the large prints, a downright steal if you ask me, considering the quality of blocks I've seen so far. You can donate to the cause at our Kickstarter page.

Sketch of a sculpture

I wanted to just sit down and draw an object from life today, something I rarely do. For a model, I decided to use a tiny unfinished wax piece I made that will eventually be cast in metal.

I was intrigued by the idea of taking a sculpture based on my drawings, then depicting it again as a drawing, completing a cycle.

I'd like to build models just for drawing reference, then destroy them. That way I'd preserve a version of an object that once existed and never will again.