Spots Before My Eyes: An Open Ended Encounter with Damien Hirst

A visitor to Hypergraphia at the Flatiron observed, "there is the infinite variety of things, then there is an infinite variation of one thing. Your installation is the latter". I like that a lot! Infinite is out of my reach, but it is true that each time I draw or paint on a paper coffee cup - always the one shape and surface texture - a new image emerges.

 Cup of the Day #99 by Gwyneth Leech

Homage to Damien Dot Cup - state 1

Colored India ink on upcycled white paper cup

This came back to me shortly after I entered Gagosian Gallery on 24th Street to look at the Damien Hirst Spotravaganza on view. At first it was just acres of spots, but as I wandered the huge galleries I noted with appreciation that no two canvases are alike. He too is engaged in the infinite variation of one thing, in this case grids of multicolored spots on pristine white canvas. Principally the colors and sizes of the spots vary, as do the sizes and shapes of the canvases, but within each group of shapes and sizes are further variations. I especially appreciated the different meta-patterns emerging from whites spaces between spots in a set of circular canvases in the rear gallery. 

The edges of paintings caught my eye also. Where the spots are huge and sit right at the edges, the canvases seem to bulge and contract. In another room a very long canvas contained the spots on three sides, but cut through all of them on the vertical - spots by the yard!

 Cup of the Day #99 by Gwyneth Leech

Homage to Damien Dot Cup - state 2

Colored India ink on upcycled white paper cup

All of this was interesting enough to take me to the second Gagosian gallery on 21st street. When I walked in the door and saw the same display of large and small canvases, with the same tonal effects of highly pigmented spots on pristine white canvases I was suddenly filled with a feeling of exhaustion. But plunging in I enjoyed the extremes of scale - in some paintings the spots so tiny that I could barely make them out hanging next to one the length of a football field. I also made the fun discovery that when you stand close to the wall the spots turn into rows. 

Overall I have to say, I like the spot paintings to the extent that they remind me of those strips of candy dots on white paper that we used to buy as kids! Funny then that some of the spot studies shown in an accompanying book are actually arrays of venoms. Some candy strip that!

  Cup of the Day #99 by Gwyneth Leech

Homage to Damien Dot Cup - state 3

Colored India ink on upcycled white paper cup

At this point, I would love to show you some photos of the spot painting shows, but the security guards said no cameras. I was tempted to photograph the Hirst gift shop through the window on 24th street, where a pile of Hirst coffee mugs was plainly to be seen on a plinth (a colored dot in the bottom of each), but respecting his intellectual property, I returned to the Flatiron window and drew a Damien Hirst homage spot cup and hung it up.

The color swatches on the white background looked all wrong hanging there. So I took it down again and considered. Would I leave all that negative space? Let Damien have it; I would follow the call of the fractal! Before long, a positive lace of smaller and smaller dots encased the cup, knitting it up until it found its proper place amongst the Hypergraphia cup drawings.  

 Cup of the Day #99 by Gwyneth Leech

Homage to Damien Dot Cup - finished state

Colored India ink on upcycled white paper cup

This is what I learned form the experience - painting free hand circles of color is hard! If my project of infinite variation involved that kind of pristine execution I would hire a stable of workers too. As it is, my approach has a lot to do with impulse, error and chance - of which there is an infinite amount in the world. It really is an open-ended proposition.

"And for that matter", said my husband, "so is a cup."

Good photos of Damien's spots at Gagosian can be seen on Blake Gopnik's Daily Pic.

And here is a posting of 10 spot reviews over on GalleristNY.

Season's Greetings from DVF and the Full Brew

"Where on earth did you get that dress??" I exclaimed the minute Rachel walked through the door for rehearsal a few weeks ago. She was wearing an exquisitely cut, sleeveless cocktail dress in Sienna brown, patterned with bright white brushmarks, each with a dropped shadow beneath. If one of my painted cups had walked through the door, this is how it would look.

 Rachel Farrar in the Flatiron window, December 2011

Photos by Gwyneth Leech

"Diane Von Furstenberg, 2010," she replied with a smile. "Great dress, right?"

Absolutely perfect!

Rachel Farrar is one of my all time favorite people; a collegial choral singer, wonderful soloist, fun person with a terrific eye for fashion. She is making her way in New York City as an extra for film and television and has great tales to tell of location shoots, actors and directors. She is a self-proclaimed  "proud member of the Screen Actors' Guild". Beyond all that, she has successfully helped me shop for clothes, which makes her a very special person. I am a famously poor shopper; I just have no stamina.

"You have to come to the Flatiron and wander through the cup installation wearing that!" I told her. She agreed to stop by.

In a pleasing turn of the circle, I was in Soho recently on my way to see my friend, Yvette Cohen's exhibition of shaped paintings at Cassina on Wooster Street. Right next door I was stopped in my tracks by a window full of inverted coffee cups, arranged into a Chrismas tree. A nice effect. DVF? Diane Von Furstenberg again! Art, coffee cups, fashion. It's official - paper coffee cups are cool!

DVF window, Wooster Street, December 2011 

DVF finally "met" my hand painted coffee cups a few days ago when Rachel did make it to the Flatiron Prow on her way to a Christmas party, wearing That Dress. She threaded her way happily in and out of the cup strands while I took photos from every conceivable angle, from both inside and out, having a high fashion New York moment which was shared by at least a dozen photographers who clustered round the windows. I wonder where those shots will turn up?

When I got home there was an e-mail from another friend attaching a photo of Diane Von Furstenberg's 57th Street window. The coffee cup Christmas tree again.

"DVF meets coffee", she wrote. "Have you seen this?"

"Yes," I replied. "And better yet, I've lived it."

The Full Brew wishes everyone a Merry Christmas. I will be back drawing in the window Tuesdays through Saturdays, 11 am - 2 pm, from December 27th until February 18th, 2012.

Sailing Past the Median in the Flatiron Prow

Cups of the Day #94

Fire Escapes by Gwyneth Leech

Colored India Ink on white, upcycled coffee cups.

I am surprised that it has passed already - the halfway point on my journey in Sprint's Prow Artspace at the Flatiron Building! Favorable winds of goodwill have buoyed us along since September 20th, and the exhibit has been extended until February 18th, 2012. 

I must admit, my first day drawing inside a sweltering triangle of glass seemed endless. I paced and peered out the windows in all directions. How was I going to manage this? But a routine took shape and my temporary studio has become an enjoyable and productive place to be five days a week. When I am not there, I think of drawings I would like to do, gestures and patterns to explore.

 

The artist at work

Photo by Trish Mayo

View from Fifth Avenue, December 2011

I top up the cup stacks daily with my own beverages from the many coffee bars and delis nearby. In addition, friends have donated stacks of their own used cups, each one with name and date on the bottom, and the place they drank the coffee, expanding the record of social moments.  I love to take lucky dip and see what color or text comes up from a coffee bar in deepest Brooklyn or Queens that I haven't yet had the good fortune to visit!

Rainy Day window

November 2011

Orchids from Eve and orchid cup

Colored India ink on white paper coffee cup

October 2011

Looking back over the first half of the journey, there are so many highlights: cups reflected in umbrellas during torrential rains, twins in brilliantly patterned rain coats smiling in at me, my hot dog cart so hard to draw, the tricky fire escapes on the buildings across 5th Avenue. Then there was the Bicycle Barber who came to call and gave me and the exhibit's curator, Cheryl McGinnis haircuts, the freakish blizzard that engulfed the Prow before the end of October, and Eve Suter who brightened a dark afternoon with a bouquet of coffee colored orchids in a tall white cup.  Not to mention the many great conversations with old friends, and new ones from around the world.

Hot Dog Cart Cup

White-out pen and colored ink on

Maroon printed paper cup

September 2011

Summer styles have given way to winter coats. I spy Santa hats, Christmas trees and giant bags of shopping these days. The trees in Madison Square Park changed to gold and are now a tracery of black branches against the pale stone buildings beyond. The sweltering heat of late summer sun turned to chill breezes inside the Prow. For awhile I sat bundled in coat and sweaters. Finally, the heat kicked on in the ancient radiators, sending the cups spinning in waves of convection.

Freak blizzard at the Prow

October 2011

Nights come early now and more and more photos are posted online, documenting the windows in all weathers and times of day.

Fortified by stacks of coffee cups, ample art pens from Faber Castell, the never ending flow of visual stimuli on the streets outside and the promise of many interesting social moments yet to come, I am looking forward to the rest of the crossing. February 18th will be here before we know it!

Night Photographers, November 2011

to view a Flickr album of other people's photos

of Hypergraphia at the Flatiron click here.

Drawn to Coffee Cups: the Complexities of Keeping it Simple

Cup of the Day #93

by Gwyneth Leech

White ink and colored India ink 

on green upcycled paper coffee cup

Numerous people have remarked at how simple the idea of Hypergraphia is - drawing on paper cups and hanging them up. My reply is, "it has taken me 30 years to get this simple!"

Hypergraphia is not my first go round with upcycling - I was doing it as a young artist living in Scotland. Then it involved collecting truck loads of plastic detritus from beaches and making them into sculpture. (That was in the days before digital photos. Where the heck did I store those slides?)

Now the paper coffee cup says it all. But how did I get there?

Aerial salt marsh views painted on

paper coffee cups

Stacked in the studio, October 2010

In 1999 I moved to New York City. Let's face it, New York can be a tough town for artists. There is so much stimulation, so many museums and art exhibts to see, so many other artists working here, not to mention the roiling sea of the art market that can buffet a person every which way. In the midst of all that it is easy to lose your sense of self and your visual compass.

To counter these currents I decided years ago to keep it local and keep it simple. I would paint portraits of my friends and their families. I did this happily until the complexities of commissions and the fraught politics of representation began to wear. Family portraits were not straightforward after all!

Wall of painted coffee cups

6 feet by  6 feet

In the studio, January 2011

I became interested in a local landscape, of tidal salt marshes along the coast of New Jersey, utterly familar to me from years of summers at the shore. It is the aerial view that intrigues me, first seen via Google Earth. The meandering streams and waterways look elemental, like the circulatory system of the body. Google Earth wasn't enough. I had to see it up close - first from boats, then planes. But it is not so easy to cage a lift on a small plane. Then back in the studio I struggled to get it down on large canvases, my ideas outstripping my time, my resources and my storage space.

Cup Collection

in museum display box with mirrored back

July 2011 

Finally, I started to pay close attention to my coffee cups which, in a casual way, had become the locus of an ever expanding lexicon of drawing and painting ideas, including abstractions based on those salt marshes. Started at meetings some four years ago, when paper replaced styrofoam, my image-making-on-cups habit had grown and grown, from stacks in my studio to a small window exhibit on 38th Street, and now to the Prow of the Flatiron Building where I will be drawing and adding new cups to the installation through February 18th, 2012.

I may even have 1000 drawn cups by then!

Hypergraphia Cup Installation

Sprint Artspace, Flatiron Prow

Interior view, December 2011

The exhibiting of the cups has presented its own complexities. I recently found pages of notes brainstorming the installation. I imagined elaborate ways of weighting the cups involving collections of personal items, household objects and even playground sand. Display ideas discussed were shelves, racks, pedestals. Finally the exhibit's curator, Cheryl McGinnis said she saw the cups "hanging every which way" which led to the breakthrough solution - loops on a line. Many different kinds of materials later, I alighted on the perfect weight of mono-filament and just the right kind of loop, reliably knotted yet imprecise enough to orient the cups pleasingly in all directions. 

Thus, after many meanders and through a process of trial and error, the seemingly uncomplicated and organic Hypergraphia installation came into being.

Hypergraphia Cup Installation

Sprint Artspace, Flatiron Prow

View from 23rd and Broadway

December 2011

Recently I calculated that Hypergraphia, the Cup Installation has been featured on over 75 web publications and blogs, including articles in Japanese, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Turkish, French, Arabic and Macedonian!

All this from the simple paper coffee cup held in the palm of my hand!

Coffee Cups and Supernovae: A Tribute to Saul Perlmutter, Nobel Laureate

I am sitting in the midst of my personal ever-expanding universe of cups and thinking about my high school friend, Saul Perlmutter, who just won the Nobel Prize in Physics.
Yep, I am going to say it; I knew him when...

Cup of the Day #89

Cosmological Cup by Gwyneth Leech

Colored India Ink on upcycled white paper coffee cup

It was 11th grade physics at Germantown Friends School in Philadelphia. I was terrified of word problems. Saul Perlmutter was a friendly kid in the class who happened to be super bright, generous and willing to help me. He had a way of explaining physics so that it all made perfect sense. I passed that class with flying colors and I owe it to him!

My favorite part of physics was undoubtedly all the space stuff - white dwarfs, red dwarfs, supernovae, black holes. Saul's too, I guess, since he went on to study astrophysics and become the supernova guy.

Hypergraphia cup galaxy  by Gwyneth Leech

at the Flatiron Building, NYC

October 2011

Saul was (and still is) gregarious and funny. In our senior year we were a couple, which essentially involved  going everywhere with a whole passel of his friends and mine - to the movies or piling into someone's living room to hang out and talk on a Saturday night. We went our separate ways in college - he to Harvard, then to Berkeley, I to the University of Pennsylvania, then on to Scotland to study art. But we kept in touch.

In 1988, with his freshly minted PhD in astrophysics and a job as a researcher at Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, supernovae took his fancy. He wondered if he could devise a computer program to scan the heavens for this rare kind of astronomical event - a task hitherto done only by certain human sky watchers around the globe with extraordinary visual memory. There was great skepticism amongst the sky watchers and astronomers about a computer's ability to match their skill.

Saul Perlmutter, 

Nobel Laureate in Physics 2011
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/05/science/space/05nobel.html

The goal was to use the light of supernovae to measure the speed of the theoretical slowing down of the expansion of the Universe.

The computer program worked; automated searches began to find more supernovae than the human eye. But his team needed a lot of these events. In Saul's hallmark spirit of openness and collaboration, he made the supernova search software public on the premise that the more teams working on the project the better the results would be and the quicker they would get them. He then embarked on many years of traveling to telescopes in far flung parts of the globe and coordinating scientists.

More and more supernova data was gathered but it took ten years to get what they needed. Then it came time to plot the data and see if it confirmed Hubble's theory about the decelerating expansion of the universe. In what Saul calls "the long aha" - a realization made over months - they could only conclude that this classic theory was wrong:
The expansion of the universe is not slowing, but speeding up! And this is a discovery which turns on its head everything scientists thought they knew about the nature of the universe!!

Tycho's Supernova Remnant:

Credit: X-ray: NASA/CXC/SAO, 

Infrared: NASA/JPL-Caltech; Optical: 

MPIA, Calar Alto, O.Krause et al.

His wasn't the only team to make the discovery. Several teams of astronomers, using his supernova software and doing the same research, had come to the same conclusion. But they had cast themselves as his rivals and the race was on to publication. In 1998 they all published their results within weeks of each other - one group the first to present the findings at a conference, the other the first into a peer-reviewed journal.  Last week three teams were honored with the Nobel Prize in Physics. Saul got one half, the other two teams split the rest.

Over the last ten years Saul has been on an elusive quest to fund the construction and launch of a space telescope devoted to supernova research. In tough economic times the Government funding keeps getting deferred, the telescope gets shelved again and again.

We had the rarest of opportunities to sit down together for coffee this summer when Saul and his wife, Laura, a professor of anthropology, were on sabbatical leave in Princeton and came into the City to visit art galleries in Chelsea.  We met at Buongiorno Espresso Bar on 9th Avenue. To be precise, Laura and I had the espressos; Saul had orange juice. Nary a caffeinated beverage has ever passed his lips. Hmm, if I give up caffeine would I have a hope of thinking more like a Nobel Prize winner?

Talking about the telescope, Saul said that technological advances had lowered the price tag considerably. No longer a billion or so, but mere millions.

"Heck," said a mutual friend later when I shared this, "we should just pass the hat and buy the guy his telescope!" I'm game. I am more than willing to do a cup-drawing fund-raiser if it will help.
Saul, just let me know.

Ready to draw at the Flatiron

Hypergraphia by Gwyneth Leech, October 201

And as for his ability to help ordinary mortals understand physics, he still has it as can be seen from this recent video interview where he explains the science which made him a Nobel Laureate. Moreover, it is apparent that his enthusiasm for science remains undimmed; That is worthy of a prize all by itself.

Saul Perlmutter, Press conference, October 2011

Time for A Refill: the Cups Go to Buck House

"Are you OK? wrote a friend this week. "Are your blogging days over? Of course there's always the possibility that they locked the storefront, turned off the lights and didn't realize you had fallen asleep under a comforting pile of pristine cups-in-waiting."

Locked away with my drawing materials! A lovely thought. But no, I have just been buried beneath all those domestic and mundane things long neglected for the sake of art. And in truth, by the end of six weeks in the window I felt as empty as a used paper coffee cup.

Raining cups in the Hypergraphia window

March, 2011

Photo: Marianne Barcellona

In early April, I packed up cup drawings for collectors, exhibitions and the Cheryl McGinnis Gallery and felt bereft to see the installation dispersed. After that, I continued to pack: for the Trans Art Conference in Boston, to clear space so I could repaint my apartment and for trips to visit family.

Then a few weeks ago, I found myself on the Upper East side drinking Arnold Palmer's (half lemonade, half ice tea) with Cheryl McGinnis and Deborah Buck at Buck House on Madison Avenue at 94th Street, to plan a second Hypergraphia Cup Drawing Window Installation.

This time it will be a one-day-only event. On June 9th I will be drawing in the window and from 3 - 7 PM they will be serving coffees, cocktails and chocolates. So if you missed it on 38th Street, here is a chance to experience Hypergraphia for yourself. Or if you loved it, please bring or send friends. Summer is here and I am refilled with fresh ideas and the energy to tackle that pile of pristine cups-in-waiting!
See you at Buck House.

Raining Coffee Cups: Time for a Refill

I gave a talk about my artwork over the weekend. After seeing a photograph of my drawings on cups, a man said to me, "Does this project have an environmental message? I hope not."
I was surprised, given that he is a science teacher.
"Only in the nicest possible way," I replied.

 Cup of the Day #78

Umbrella cup by Gwyneth Leech

India ink an Bic pen on upcyled paper coffee cup
Drawn in the window, March 21, 2011

Umbrella set by Gwyneth

India ink an Bic pen on upcyled paper coffee cups
Drawn in the window, March 21, 2011 

It is hard not to think about issues of over-consumption and consumer waste when surrounded by the results of my own small, daily act of buying hot drinks to go for over a year. Nearly 400 single use paper coffee cups is a lot to look at. I am now hyper-aware of the coffee cups I see everywhere in the city and know they aren't heading to recyling, but to landfills where they don't decompose because of their pesky polyethelene lining, the lining which allows them to hold hot drinks.

View from the Hypergraphia window

March 21, 2011

Yet I have grown fond of the sturdy paper cup. It has a history. Someone invented it in 1907, in my home state of Pennsylvania no less. And it even intersects with my family story, having first been used commercially on the Lackawanna and Western Railway. My great grandfather Alfred Fowler McCollum worked for Lackawanna at that very time, and since he was an inventor, I can imagine him being instrumental in the switch from communal water dippers to the newfangled but hygienic paper cup.

 View from the Hypergraphia window

March 21, 2011 

I decide that the least I can do is reuse some of my unadorned empties. One cup should last a few dozen times (not a patch on the travel mug which can be reused thousands of times, but I am not tempted to draw on those, yet). On the first attempt, at the deli, they take my proffered paper cup, throw it away and fill a new one. The second time, at Empire Coffee and Tea Company on 9th Avenue I specify reuse. They fill without comment, but give me a new plastic lid and coffee sleeve. All I need is another plastic lid! The third time I am at Guy and Gaillard on 38th. I ask for a cup of tea and hold out my empty paper cup. The man reaches under the counter and pulls out a new one.
"Please reuse my empty one," I say, still holding out my cup.
"Oh no," he says, "That's a cheap cup. No good. We have better cups, expensive - good plastic lining!"
He fills it and hands it over.
What can I do? I take yet another cup, pay and head out the door.

   View from the Hypergraphia window

March 19, 2011 

The Artist is in the Window: Drawing Days 1 and 2

Cup of the Day #73

By Gwyneth Leech

White and colored ink on upcycled 

White paper coffee cup

I am thinking of the Coney Island dunk tank, or a fish in an aquarium at the pet store, not to mention an animal in the window of that pet store. Yes, people knock on the glass, then they give me a thumbs up.

 Drawing in the window Day #1

I haven't felt the need to pace, unlike the snow leopard at Central Park Zoo, but then this is only the first few days. Besides, the space is so full of suspended cups that no large gestures are possible. So I sit, and draw. The cups turn gently in the draft and all is peace.
 

 Drawing in the window Day #1

 

Outside, people stop and look at the cups, then startle when they see me. Generally, they laugh and smile. Some take photos with their cellphones and walk away quickly. Through the glass, I can hear what they are saying. A young man wheeling a trash can works at the Fashion Center and gets what I am up to. He explains it to his co-workers.

  View from the window Day #2

A mother and daughter stop.
"Coffee cups." Mom says. "An artist drew on every single cup."
"And look," says the daughter, "there's a real live artist in the window right now!"
I smile and give a little wave, then draw a rabbit on the cup and show it to the child. She smiles too and they walk on.

   Drawing in the window Day #2

"Hm, that rabbit has possibilities," I think, examining the cup. By one O'clock rabbits are bouncing all around the surface and it is done. I put the cup on an upturned stack of empties, grab the chai my artist friend Elisa Jimenez brought by and head for the exit. I am getting into the groove of the window studio.

View from the window Day #2

Hypergraphia: Gwyneth Leech, the Cup Drawings is on view in the Fashion Center Window Space for Public Art at 215 West 38th Street, at 7th Avenue, in New York City February 28 - April 1st.
For full details click here.