Taking Shape - Samantha Krukowski

Samantha Krukowski
Austin, Texas

When I work in my studio I am restless. I move between spaces. Big walls for big canvases. An alcove with computers and cameras. A garage with shop tools. An old chair and a rickety table stacked with books. A garden with cacti and a rooftop with flickering shade patterns. Moving between the spaces means moving between the modes of production/ reflection they encourage.

If I paint a particular mark or discover a formal relationship I sometimes want to express something about it in writing. I keep my laptop running nearby when I pick up a brush, so the latent potential for typing accompanies my paint-laden strokes. I used to worry about the blotches of color that were beginning to change the character of my keyboard. I’ve given up – paint simply wants to travel – and I accept and try to make something of the evidence of this materiolinguistic exchange.

If I am working on the sequencing and tempo in a video, I discover frames in the composition that inspire graphic attention. I make it a habit of exporting these frames as still images, storing and printing them. I keep a stack of these printed images nearby the drafting table where I do many of my drawings so that information derived from moving images can be brought to a halt and activated as objects.

If I am building something the act of choosing and assembling parts makes me conscious (self-conscious) about the nature of development and the systematic or non-systematic way in which it proceeds. I document steps when they seem to be nodes of some kind. Keeping a record of these steps is part of the narrative of the object but also focuses attention on external narratives that inspire future objects.

I have been working on a series of paintings that are inspired by biological and cosmological imagery, the visibility of which is dependent on devices of magnification. When I first started studying this imagery, most of which is digitally produced, I was fascinated by how its content is essentially fished from the invisible.

The imagery that drives the paintings is simultaneously microscopic and macroscopic; compositions develop in the folds between these two extremes of perception. While a painting is underway, I photograph it at various points of completion, capturing it as a whole composition and as an agar on which particular forms or relationships are suspended. Zooming out increases the pressure of the surrounding context, zooming in increases the evidence of materiality and surface.

At either extreme the painting vanishes as a painting – it becomes one ordered object among many (losing its focus as subject) or it becomes unrecognizable, a dark background for the shine of its innards brought to light. In either direction, scale is distorted and extended into the world beyond the painting or into the world within it.

I bought some clear film leader and sat down with it in front of my paintings. I began to draw some of the primary forms in the paintings onto the leader unsystematically and with a loose hand. There was an immediate hiccup. I was looking at a big painting field and I was drawing on a long, thin strip of 16mm film leader. My source material was derived from a circumscribed object made with wood and absorbent cloth, covered with opacities of oil paint and oil medium and varnish; I was making marks on a continuous, mostly rolled strip of plastic with waterproof and mostly transparent inks. The painting was a single frame that contained multiple narratives, the film leader consisted of multiple frames, the treatment of which would determine
the singularity or multiplicity of its narrative possibilities. Repetition in the painting was determined relative to composition; repetition of the forms transferred to the leader would determine the specificity of their kinetic relationships and their cinematic character.

These observations began to change the way in which I thought about the painted forms and what might happen to them in the course of transfer. I switched modes. I turned my digital camera on the painting as if it were a compass; I looked for paintings within the painting, folds within folds.

I printed a photograph of the whole painting and cut it into sections that corresponded to primary forms and masses. These notes made up a new icon alphabet derived from the painting but dissected away from it. I could write with these notes across the leader and posit my questions about sequence, score and cadence in their company, treating them as elements in a new language.

At one point I superimposed a grid on the print of the painting, then laid strips of leader across the horizontal divisions. I drew the positive and negative space in the painting directly onto the leader, using black and
white marker.These moves gave the painting frames that could be considered in relationship to the frames of the leader. The media were tending towards each other. The leader began to absorb, reflect and extend the painting’s content while the painting’s content, represented and activated in another medium, began to change character.

The images on the leader first became cinematic with the help of a Steenbeck machine, an old analog monster with dials and plates and spools and heads and a mirror/prism that catches and reflects imagery threaded through and passing by. A handle controls the speed at which the leader uncoils and recoils, and as images go by you can decide how much emphasis or action you want to give them. It is a remarkable thing to watch static imagery become kinetic, and to literally play the speed and duration and character of its recombinations. With a DV deck hooked up to the Steenbeck, I exported the (now moving) leader imagery into a digital editing environment. The experimental videos I’ve made using this method are the bloodstreams and galaxies and neural firings alive in and between the layers of paint on canvas. Still frames from these videos suggest new paintings; projecting these videos onto blank canvas suggests new choreographies for the body and hand of the painter.




	Samantha Krukowski Austin, Texas When I work in my studio I am restless. I move between spaces. Big walls for big canvases. An alcove with computers and cameras. A garage with shop tools. An old chair and a rickety table stacked with books. A garden with cacti and a rooftop with flickering shade patterns. Moving between the spaces means moving between the modes of production/ reflection they encourage. If I paint a particular mark or discover a formal relationship I sometimes want to express something about it in writing. I keep my laptop running nearby when I pick up a brush, so the latent potential for typing accompanies my paint-laden strokes. I used to worry about the blotches of color that were beginning to change the character of my keyboard. I’ve given up – paint simply wants to travel – and I accept and try to make something of the evidence of this materiolinguistic exchange. If I am working on the sequencing and tempo in a video, I discover frames in the composition that inspire graphic attention. I make it a habit of exporting these frames as still images, storing and printing them. I keep a stack of these printed images nearby the drafting table where I do many of my drawings so that information derived from moving images can be brought to a halt and activated as objects. If I am building something the act of choosing and assembling parts makes me conscious (self-conscious) about the nature of development and the systematic or non-systematic way in which it proceeds. I document steps when they seem to be nodes of some kind. Keeping a record of these steps is part of the narrative of the object but also focuses attention on external narratives that inspire future objects. I have been working on a series of paintings that are inspired by biological and cosmological imagery, the visibility of which is dependent on devices of magnification. When I first started studying this imagery, most of which is digitally produced, I was fascinated by how its content is essentially fished from the invisible. The imagery that drives the paintings is simultaneously microscopic and macroscopic; compositions develop in the folds between these two extremes of perception. While a painting is underway, I photograph it at various points of completion, capturing it as a whole composition and as an agar on which particular forms or relationships are suspended. Zooming out increases the pressure of the surrounding context, zooming in increases the evidence of materiality and surface. At either extreme the painting vanishes as a painting – it becomes one ordered object among many (losing its focus as subject) or it becomes unrecognizable, a dark background for the shine of its innards brought to light. In either direction, scale is distorted and extended into the world beyond the painting or into the world within it. I bought some clear film leader and sat down with it in front of my paintings. I began to draw some of the primary forms in the paintings onto the leader unsystematically and with a loose hand. There was an immediate hiccup. I was looking at a big painting field and I was drawing on a long, thin strip of 16mm film leader. My source material was derived from a circumscribed object made with wood and absorbent cloth, covered with opacities of oil paint and oil medium and varnish; I was making marks on a continuous, mostly rolled strip of plastic with waterproof and mostly transparent inks. The painting was a single frame that contained multiple narratives, the film leader consisted of multiple frames, the treatment of which would determine the singularity or multiplicity of its narrative possibilities. Repetition in the painting was determined relative to composition; repetition of the forms transferred to the leader would determine the specificity of their kinetic relationships and their cinematic character. These observations began to change the way in which I thought about the painted forms and what might happen to them in the course of transfer. I switched modes. I turned my digital camera on the painting as if it were a compass; I looked for paintings within the painting, folds within folds. I printed a photograph of the whole painting and cut it into sections that corresponded to primary forms and masses. These notes made up a new icon alphabet derived from the painting but dissected away from it. I could write with these notes across the leader and posit my questions about sequence, score and cadence in their company, treating them as elements in a new language. At one point I superimposed a grid on the print of the painting, then laid strips of leader across the horizontal divisions. I drew the positive and negative space in the painting directly onto the leader, using black and white marker.These moves gave the painting frames that could be considered in relationship to the frames of the leader. The media were tending towards each other. The leader began to absorb, reflect and extend the painting’s content while the painting’s content, represented and activated in another medium, began to change character. The images on the leader first became cinematic with the help of a Steenbeck machine, an old analog monster with dials and plates and spools and heads and a mirror/prism that catches and reflects imagery threaded through and passing by. A handle controls the speed at which the leader uncoils and recoils, and as images go by you can decide how much emphasis or action you want to give them. It is a remarkable thing to watch static imagery become kinetic, and to literally play the speed and duration and character of its recombinations. With a DV deck hooked up to the Steenbeck, I exported the (now moving) leader imagery into a digital editing environment. The experimental videos I’ve made using this method are the bloodstreams and galaxies and neural firings alive in and between the layers of paint on canvas. Still frames from these videos suggest new paintings; projecting these videos onto blank canvas suggests new choreographies for the body and hand of the painter.



			Ecovision 2, oil on canvas