Sculpture Studio Spring 2010

Project 4: Self Designed
ARTIST RESEARCH/Source to Self Comparisons

Tim Hawkinson

Tim Hawkinson is an artist who works mostly sculpturally.   His pieces become extremely complex, and yet he uses simple materials to make them. Hawkinson’s work varies in size and can be very small, or as large as a football field.  He explores multiple themes including his body, music, and the passage of time (1).  Some works incorporate more than one of the themes.  The way he engages with the material is extremely tedious, and the technique and process is evident in his visible manipulation of simple materials.  Hawkinson never tries to hide his process or the mechanics behind his works—he simply likes to work on a piece until he believes it is complete (6).

Hawkinson makes many references to the body in his work.  He starts out with primitive features and goes on to abstract them in order to reference bodily experiences (4). “I use my own body, but at the end it becomes so abstracted that I don’t identify with it any longer.” Hawkinson uses his own body because he has the rights to it, and it is readily available (3). In using his own body, he hopes to operate neutrally—that is, he wants people to be able to identify with (abstract) images of himself. He doesn’t intend to personally identify with viewers, rather identify with them in terms of everybody’s common ground that is the body, and the recognition of the relationships that happen within and around them. “It’s not about my identity; it’s about our identity and our experiences within our bodies, and our bodies’ relationship to the external world.” (4)

Even still, Hawkinson believes ideas of his work are misinterpreted, made-up, or skewed.  Viewers and writers tend to interpret ideas that weren’t his intentions (6). Perhaps some vagueness of his ideas is attributed to his lack of preparation.  “I don’t do preliminary drawings for pieces. I can’t think that far in advance and I can’t visualize the piece in a finished state. I find it much freer to go right in and start the piece,” Hawkinson has said (3).  I find this is partially where Hawkinson and I merge in terms of the early stages of our work. We differ in that I do make preliminary sketches, but we identify together in that I don’t ever accurately visualize correctly my pieces in a finished state.  I do believe this has its pros and cons.  It is always interesting to see how intentions of a piece change from the initial stages to the final product based on material availability and usage, and ever-changing ideas.  However, the change in the initial idea to the final product makes it very difficult to convey the same conceptual ideas that were intended from the start.  This is something I’ve learned over the course of the semester, and something I struggle to stay consistent with.  While I find beauty in the change, there is something to be said for the ability to be consistent and follow through with original ideas.

One of the only times Hawkinson intensely prepared for a piece with sketches and a model was for Überorgan. “I had to fill a space the size of a football field.  I felt nervous about following through with that,” he commented (3).  Überorgan falls under one of Hawkinson’s repeating themes: music.  Überorgan is essentially “a stadium-sized, fully automated bagpipe,” and was created using electric hardware, miles of plastic sheeting, sharpie, and fishing net, among many other basic materials (2).  Large balloons made of the plastic sheeting were tied together with fishing net.  The fishing net was a fast way to shape the balloons and easily manipulate such a large volume.  Large sheets of plastic were marked with black permanent marker.  These marks were the notes and the durations of the sounds that were created.  The music that was played were Protestant church hymns that Hawkinson grew up listening to and found to be beautiful, as well as swan lake. Hawkinson has always been interested in music growing up, and after making a couple of musical instruments, thought he might want to make instruments for a living (3). Überorgan is a large-scale sculpture having to do with Hawkinson’s love of music, musical instruments, and mechanical systems.  He is interested in how musical instruments work, and wanted to create an instrument that operated at an “über” scale. Hawkinson tends to come up with an idea, and work until it becomes what he has envisioned.

Above: Tim Hawkinson, Überorgan

One of Hawkinson’s works that I most identify with is Emotor.  The piece derived from a large-scale photograph of Hawkinson’s face.  He cut up the different features of his face (eyebrows, eyes, nostrils, lips) and created a light-sensitive mechanism that connects to those pieces and moves them based on light signals.  Light sensors are attached to a screen of a television, and transfer the light signals through tubes connected to the movable parts of the face (5).  Aside from the bodily and humanistic theme he is addressing here, he is also addressing the theme or process of a mechanical system.  “I was interested in using random signals, in this case generated by a television screen,” Hawkinson notes.  There were nineteen signals.  Each one turned on when the area of the screen went dark, and turned off when the area became lit.  The piece becomes about, as well as dependent on, the mechanics (4). “What I’m shooting for is just to stick with whatever that idea is and play it out till it’s totally this pure form,” and this mechanism is what Hawkinson needed to make his idea functional (4).  As an aside, the motors of the nineteen signals were connected with Velcro, another example of the simplistic materials Hawkinson chooses to use to make his pieces operate.  Emotor creates a random assortment of emotions, most of which Hawkinson cannot physically make with his own face (3).  He believes the different emotions create something that anyone can read anything into.  We’re only familiar with emotions that are possible to show on one’s face, so Hawkinson was interested in the possible implications of a mixture of these emotions. 

Above: Tim Hawkindon, Emotor

In my work, I hope to create the same effect Hawkinson does in mixing different features of different real emotions.  While we differ in systems (his complex, mine simply manifesting as a book), we create similar effects in the multitude of expressions we can produce, not to mention the implication of these expressions on viewers.  I’m wondering what real emotions the mixtures of emotions in my work will cause viewers to generate.  I’m wondering if any mixture of emotions will turn out to look like a different real emotion.  Just like Hawkinson, I’m interested in all of the implications.  It’s not about the fact that we’re using our own faces, and it has nothing to do with ourselves.  It has to do with the dialogue of emotions we share with other humans and what is interpreted from them.

Bibliography

1. "Tim Hawkinson." Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, 03 Mar. 2012. Web. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Hawkinson>.

2. "Tim Hawkinson." Art21. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. <http://www.art21.org/artists/tim-hawkinson>.

3. "SEGMENT: Tim Hawkinson in "Time"" Art21. Web. <http://www.art21.org/videos/segment-tim-hawkinson-in-time>.

4. "Tim Hawkinson: "Drip" and "Emotor"" Art21. Web. <http://www.art21.org/texts/tim-hawkinson/interview-tim-hawkinson-drip-and-emotor>.

5. "TIM HAWKINSON." ACE GALLERY. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. <http://www.acegallery.net/artistmenu.php?Artist=1>.

6. Coggins, David. "In the Studio: Tim Hawkinson with David Coggins." Art in America 1 May 2009: 84-88. Art & Architecture Complete. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=5&hid=19&sid=5d9ac015-e836-4f1c-8066-6192c81bb758%40sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=vth&AN=39788205>.

7. "Tim Hawkinson." PBS. PBS. Web. 14 Apr. 2012. <http://www.pbs.org/art21/artists/tim-hawkinson>.

8. "Sign-in to Artforum.com." Artforum.com / Archive. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. <http://artforum.com/archive/id=15295>.

9. Harvey, Michael. Art in America Nov. 2007: 210. Art & Architecture Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=112&sid=5d9ac015-e836-4f1c-8066-6192c81bb758%40sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=vth&AN=28031513>.

10. Harvey, Doug. "Gargunta." Art Review Apr. 2007: 54-61. Art & Architecture Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=19&sid=5d9ac015-e836-4f1c-8066-6192c81bb758%40sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=vth&AN=25505196>.

11. Wood, Eve. "Tim Hawkinson." ArtUS Nov. 2005: 12. Art & Architecture Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=19&sid=5d9ac015-e836-4f1c-8066-6192c81bb758%40sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=vth&AN=18894150>.

12. Zellen, Jody. "Electronic Wizardry." Afterimage Sept.-Oct. 2005: 50-51. Art & Architecture Complete. Web. 15 Apr. 2012. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=126&sid=5d9ac015-e836-4f1c-8066-6192c81bb758%40sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=vth&AN=18766367>.

13. Coggins, David. Modern Painters Apr. 2005: 108. Art & Architecture Complete. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=4&hid=104&sid=5d9ac015-e836-4f1c-8066-6192c81bb758%40sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=vth&AN=16989274>.

14. Miles, Christopher. Art/Text July 1998: 80. Art & Architecture Complete. Web. 16 Apr. 2012. <http://web.ebscohost.com/ehost/detail?vid=6&hid=17&sid=5d9ac015-e836-4f1c-8066-6192c81bb758%40sessionmgr15&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=vth&AN=33206712>.