Genevieve Waller

Pulp: Works on Paper

2011-10-19T12:24:00.000-07:00

For the group exhibition "Pulp: Works on Paper," held at the E.B. White Gallery at Butler County Community College in El Dorado, Kansas from March 3rd to April 9th, 2010, I made the two new works below. The exhibition was curated by Matthew Hilyard--one of my favorite artists.


Those Mysteries, two color photograms of ribbons, streamers, trimmings, and contact paper, 2010


Close-up of Those Mysteries

Beaded Curtain for Oscar Wilde, paper sculptures, thread, and metal riveted rod, 2010

Here is the statement for my work that I wrote for the show:

Those Mysteries is made up of a pair of color photograms of ribbons, streamers, paper tape, and other objects that form cascading stripes inspired by wallpaper and stripe paintings like those of Gene Davis or Kenneth Noland. “Photograms” are photographs made without the use of a camera or film. You create them by placing objects on photographic paper, exposing the ensemble of paper and objects to light, and then processing the paper in photographic chemistry. In photograms, the values and colors of objects reverse, so white becomes black, green becomes magenta, and translucent items turn into x-ray versions of themselves. Opaque objects, like the rickrack and festoon trimming in Those Mysteries, change into white silhouettes. The title of this piece comes from a song by the band Sparks, from their 1977 album Introducing Sparks. In the lyrics of “Those Mysteries,” the protagonist is an overly-curious child pestering his dad to answer questions like “Why is there time? Why is there space?” and, by implication, to explain the “mysteries” of sex.

Beaded Curtain for Oscar Wilde is my first attempt at paper sculpture, in homage to Wilde—the aesthete, writer, and tragic figure whose trial at the end of the 19^th century contributed to codifying homosexuality as an identity. Some of the elements in the curtain directly reference Wilde, including the green carnations that he and his friends wore at the opening nights of his plays. His allusion to his affairs with younger, often working class men as “feasting with panthers” is in this work as well. Other parts of the curtain have no direct correspondence, but evoke Wilde’s preoccupation with décor and decorative objects in his life and writing (he even designed some of his wife’s dresses). Making paper beads for curtain room dividers was also an activity that Victorian women engaged in together in their homes. I’m not sure if Wilde ever joined in one of these crafting sessions, but I like to imagine that he would.

Homemade Target

2010-03-08T20:51:00.000-08:00

I made a new sculpture in November 2009 entitled Homemade Target. It consists of styrofoam rings and a styrofoam ball covered in fake rose petals, pompoms, crepe-paper streamers, yarn, sequins, and googly eyes. I wanted to reference target paintings from the 1960s, like those by Jasper Johns or Kenneth Noland, as well as those by the contemporary Swiss artist Ugo Rondinone. But with craft materials substituted for paint and 3-D for 2-D, the piece pays homage to geometric abstraction while also poking fun at it.

Homemade Target was on display at the Rochester Contemporary Art Center as part of the December 2009/January 2010 "Members' Exhibition."

Homemade Target

Detail of googly eyes and sequins

Detail of orange yarn ring and blue streamers

Detail of textures, including green pompoms and red silk rose petals

Three-quarters view of Homemade Target

With Our Powers Combined!

2010-03-08T19:39:00.001-08:00

For the October 2009 exhibition entitled "With Our Powers Combined!" at the gallery Barbara & Barbara Love You in Chicago, Cheri Charlton and I created a collaborative sculpture that we called Love Magnet. We started with a metal ironing board and using craft materials such as yarn, beads, fake flowers, and ribbons, we meticulously covered and adorned the structure.

Here is the statement Cheri and I wrote for the piece:

"When Marcel Duchamp added a bicycle wheel to a wooden stool, we might say that he put the icing on the cake. He made something good even better, but also transformed something functional into new kind of object: a mishmash entity. In our work Love Magnet, we partake of this tradition, putting together the wooden stool’s gendered cousin—the ironing board—with an abundance of our favorite things—pompoms, ribbons, and fake flowers, to name a few. Making a stool or an ironing board no longer useable in its original sense is one gesture; furnishing such an object with a bicycle wheel crown or candy coating of ornament is another—an entrée or unrestrained plunge into illogic. Yet for us, there is a logic. Things like googly eyes and crepe-paper streamers belong somewhere, and although their rightful place may be difficult to pinpoint, we propose to let them find refuge, intrude into, and overtake the world of substance—or at least, a semi-obsolete and sad object like the ironing board."

Also on display were some of my photograms with pompom frames and Cheri's paintings on doilies, as well as works by four other artists: OnSmith, Nudd, Kid Douche, and Josh Sigmond.

Cheri and I working on Love Magnet—our collaborative piece

In progress

Cheri tore apart and flayed a teddy bear,

then attached it to the top of the ironing board!

Detail from one end of the ironing board

This is how the piece looked when I left Chicago, then Cheri

continued to add to it and the image below shows how it turned out...

Love Magnet on display at the

Barbara & Barbara Love You Gallery,

with mirrors and a felted board poodle below

My photogram series Chaque instant de chaque jour

on display at Barbara & Barbara Love You

Cheri's works mixed with mine at the opening of
With Our Powers Combined! at Barbara & Barbara Love You

Ev'ry Night About This Time

2009-05-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

From April 11 to May 2, 2009, I had a solo exhibition of my photograms at the Bowen-Thompson Gallery at Bowling Green State University in Bowling Green, Ohio. For this exhibition, I decided to cover all of the walls of the gallery with faux fur —one of the most colorful and luxurious of materials that is at the same time unabashedly artificial and (relatively) inexpensive. I wanted the emphasis on texture and surface that the fur calls to mind to relate to the photograms' qualities as "trace" images that testify to objects that were once there, touching the paper.

I titled the exhibition after the following song, which speaks of longing and lost love.

“Ev’ry Night About This Time”

Every night about this time, oh, how I miss you

I drift into our old rendezvous

Every night about this time

The gang keeps askin' why you're not around

And I keep pretendin' that you're just out of town

Every night about this time, memories haunt me

Wondering, too, who's dancing with you

Every night about this time

And whenever they croon our favorite tune

A tear falls with every rhyme, oh, how I miss you

Every night about this time

Recorded by The Ink Spots in 1943

Written by Ted Koehler and Jimmy Monaco

Bowen-Thompson Gallery, Bowling Green State University

Title wall

Fake fur letters

Exhibition cards

First room of the gallery

Space is the Place

Blame It On My Youth

View from the first room of the gallery into the second

Real plant adorned with fake flowers

(When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas

Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

Something for the Girl With Everything

I Get Along Without You Very Well

Some Velvet Morning

At Night

Queercraft Exhibition

2009-05-13T15:01:00.000-07:00

In conjunction with the College Art Association's Annual Meeting in 2009, the CAA Queer Caucus of Art organized an exhibition at the Los Angeles Gay & Lesbian Center's Advocate and Gochis Galleries. It was a group exhibition that ran from January 22 to February 27, and it was curated by Joon Oluchi Lee, assistant professor of gender studies and English at the Rhode Island School of Design. He chose my color photogram diptych Midas in Reverse to be included in the show, and one half of the work appeared on the show's postcard, as you can see below.

Midas in Reverse

C-print photograms of Easter grass
20 x 30 inches each
2006

The title of the work refers to a 1967 song by the Hollies called "King Midas in Reverse." I indulged in a little fantasy here, imagining "the golden touch" transformed into rendering things into plastic Easter grass--albeit in the opulent, psychedelic-colored mode of the photogram. Easter grass definitely makes a better photogram than gold would, and this reversal of values is important to me. Here is the statement I wrote for my entries for the exhibit:

"Within the aesthetic of Camp, the values of logic, restraint, and authenticity are highly suspect. Gilding the lily is a must, more is more, and fake is usually better than the real thing. Working with craft materials like patterned fabric, Easter grass, pompoms, and beads, I make photographs and photograms (cameraless photographs) that draw on Camp’s ability to regard the world in other terms and posit alternate uses and merits to objects and ideas. Grapes take on the import of jewels; Easter grass stands in for macho, abstract expressionist paint marks; and vermicelli stars (one of Jean Cocteau’s favorite things) show up to interrupt a sober pastoral. Queerness—a definite attribute of Camp— is manifest in the unlikely combinations of objects and strange substitutions in these images."

Rochester Contemporary Members' Exhibition

2008-12-31T17:00:00.001-08:00

For the Rochester Contemporary Art Center's Annual Members' Exhibition in 2008, I submitted a work called Born to Be Loved. It consists of three circular color photograms of fabrics that feature patterns of objects that might be dear to a pre-teen girl: brightly-colored, Victorian-style, lace-up boots; purses and handbags floating in space; and paperdolls with matching clothes. I covered the photograms' frames in pompoms, pinning them in place. For the RoCo show, I also supplied a metallic, green paper to serve as wallpaper behind the photograms. The exhibition took place from December 5, 2008 to January 18, 2009. Below are images of the work in the exhibition space.

Born to Be Loved
C-print photograms of fabric with pompom-covered foam frames
10 inches in diameter each
2008

The title of this work comes from reggae song by The Maytones from 1972.

Acid Love Letter

2008-12-31T16:59:00.002-08:00

From December 3 through 17, 2008, I participated in a six-person group exhibition called "Acid Love Letter: The Visual and Cultural Studies Holiday Show." The exhibit was held at the Harnett Gallery--a triangular space designed by I.M. Pei--at the University of Rochester's Wilson Commons. The purpose of the exhibit was to highlight the art practices of doctoral students in the Visual and Cultural Studies Program at the University of Rochester. Six of these students were involved in the exhibit: Bo Zheng, Dinah Holtzman, Lucy Mulroney, Nicola Mann, myself, and Victoria Pass. I designed the postcard for the exhibit using photographs of each student wearing red wax lips.

I created an installation for the corner of the triangular gallery. It was called Space is the Place and featured two 30 x 40 inch C-print photograms of plastic and glass plates, platters, and bowls, blue craft paper decorated with stickers, Easter grass, side tables, vases with fake flowers, and above all of this hung lit paper lanterns in various colors.

The stickers I adhered to the craft paper were white notebook paper reinforcers as well as neon circles used for garage sale pricing. I placed them in a regular, wallpaper-like pattern on the paper.

A view from the windows above the gallery, looking down into the corner installation.

A view from inside the installation, looking up.

The second-floor hallway above the gallery has windows looking into the corner space.

Here are the two 30 x 40 inch C-print photograms of plastic and glass plates, platters, and bowls featured in Space is the Place. This title is a reference to a song by Sun Ra and his Archestra.

Ten X Ten Exhibition

2008-12-31T16:59:00.001-08:00

Nur Einmal Kommt Die Liebe
Color photograms of fabric in circular foam frames covered in yarn
10 inches in diameter each
2008

I created this piece for a group exhibition called "Ten X Ten" at the new Center Gallery in Wichita, Kansas. The gallery focuses exclusively on contemporary photography and is managed by Linda Robinson, Assistant Professor of Photography at Wichita State University. For more information about the show and the gallery, visit http://www.centergalleryonline.com.

For these photograms of fabric, I decided to make custom frames that are decorative and match the images but also draw attention to themselves and compete with or even overwhelm the photograms.

Installation of "Kiss and Make Up" Exhibition

2008-10-21T14:33:00.000-07:00

Outside the Art & Music Library Gallery

Cut-out felt lettering

(When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas
Oval C-print photograms in ornate black plastic frames
15 x 19 inches each
2008

Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars
Square C-print photograms of plastic craft string in white wooden frames
15 x 15 inches each
2008

Blame It On My Youth
Oval C-print photograms in black wooden frames
9.5 x 14.5 inches each
2008

View from inside the gallery--Installation of Marine Blue Astroturf on the floor

Matching gold tinsel trees on tripod decorator tables with rose red felt table covers

Lipstick kisses on the gallery windows (my own lips and 4 shades of lipstick)

View from inside the gallery door--the orange wallpaper is homemade
with a lipstick kiss pattern

Artist's statement on a gold tinsel garland-framed door

Image #1 from (When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas

Detail of #1

C-print photogram of polka dot chiffon fabric with plastic doves,
paperclips, and sequin flowers

Image #2 from (When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas
C-print photogram of polka dot tissue paper with safety pins,
sequin circles, and sequin flowers

Image #3 from (When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas

Detail of #3
C-print photogram of polka dot tissue paper with straight pins,
sequin butterflies, and sequin stars

Image #4 from (When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas

Detail of #4
C-print photogram of polka dot tissue paper with
architectural model human figures and sequin flowers

Image #5 from (When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas

Detail of #5
C-print photogram of polka dot cotton fabric with
jacks, buttons, and sequin birds

Close-Up of Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars

Detail of one image from Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars
C-print photograms of plastic craft string
(the plastic string that you use to make bracelets and keychains,
known in France and Germany as "Scooby-doo")

First three images from Blame It On My Youth

Detail of Image #1 from Blame It On My Youth
C-print photogram of Cabbage Patch Doll fabric

Detail of Image #2 from Blame It On My Youth
C-print photogram of bird and flower patterned fabric

Detail of Image #3 from Blame It On My Youth
C-print photogram of Barbie bathroom fabric

Last four images from Blame It On My Youth

Detail of Image #4 from Blame It On My Youth
C-print photogram of stylish women walking fabric

Detail of Image #6 from Blame It On My Youth
C-print photogram of geese patterned fabric

Detail of Image #7 from Blame It On My Youth
C-print photogram of tennis shoe patterned fabric

Kiss and Make Up Exhibition, Oct. 7-31, 2008

2008-09-29T19:26:00.000-07:00

(When We Are Dancing) I Get Ideas (detail)

Color photogram of polka dot tissue paper

14 x 18 inches

2008

Quiet Nights of Quiet Stars (detail)

Color photogram of plastic craft string

15 x 15 inches

2008

I'm having my first solo exhibition in 2 years at the University of Rochester's Art and Music Library Gallery, Oct. 7-31. If you cannot make it to Rochester in October, I will also be posting images of the exhibition online once it's up. Here is the press release I've written for the show:

WHAT: "Kiss and Make Up” is an exhibition by Genevieve Waller that includes color photograms (cameraless photographs) and decorative installations in the spirit of “Camp”—an aesthetic where more is more and gilding the lily is a must.

WHEN & WHERE: October 7-31, 2008 in the Gallery at the Art & Music Library on the ground floor of Rush Rhees Library at the University of Rochester's River Campus. The opening reception takes place on Thursday, October 9, from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. The gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday; 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. Friday; noon to 5 p.m. Saturday; and noon to 10 p.m. Sunday.

DETAILS: “Photograms” are photographs made without the use of a camera or film. They are created by placing objects on photographic paper, exposing the ensemble to light, and processing the paper in photographic chemistry. The resulting images are one of a kind, they have a one-to-one ratio to the original objects used, and they resemble silhouettes or X-rays with inverted tones. Some of the first photographs produced in the 19^th century were actually these cameraless images, and artists have continued to make photograms ever since.

Using color photo paper and a variety of craft materials, Genevieve Waller makes color photograms in which not only the values are reversed—black becomes white and white becomes black—but also colors. The images of reality generated have the high detail of the photographic, yet their mixed-up, vibrant colors paint strange versions of the recognizable. Arrangements of plastic string turn into Abstract Expressionist compositions of line and color floating in the black of outer space; patterned fabric and tissue paper become dizzying Op Art compositions; and tiny, everyday objects take on the import of a Rosetta-Stone text, affirming their presence but speaking in code.

Accompanying Genevieve’s photograms is an installation of decorative items that echo the objects that appear in the images. She treats the exhibition as an interior design opportunity by adding floor and wall treatments, furniture, and accents—but in a do-it- yourself, Dollar Store, automatic glamour style. Overall, the photograms and the installation are a study in “Camp”, looking into the aesthetic which Susan Sontag described as "the love of the exaggerated, the 'off,' of things-being-what-they-are-not" (Notes on ‘Camp’, 1964).

Photograms of Dishes, Lamps, and Ribbons

2008-08-04T12:44:00.000-07:00

Sweet Mystery of Life At Last I’ve Found You!
C-print photograms
15 x 15 inches each
2005

Lonely House

Silver gelatin photograms processed in color chemistry
20 x 48 inches each
2005

How Did He Look?

C-print photogram
18 x 20 inches
2005

Larmes toxiques
Cut C-print photograms and table
48 inches in diameter
2005

These are photograms from an on-going series using everyday objects, household items, and craft supplies as image-making materials and subject matter. Sweet Mystery of Life at Last I’ve Found You! and Larmes toxiques are two examples of works featuring dessert plates, serving platters, and various other cut-glass and plastic dishes. I have been amassing a collection of photogram-able dishes for the past few years, and I have made various stand-alone and multi-part images with them. In Sweet Mystery, I made photograms of single plates and bowls, placing each in the center of a square sheet of photo paper when I made the exposure, and then I organized the resulting images in a tidy grid. The excessive geometry of circles within squares caught in a grid may be orderly to a fault, or a vision of a perfect world. I also have a version of this piece that is made up of 9 photograms instead of 4 (the grid is perhaps more oppressive or impressive with more components).

Larmes toxiques is a bit more free form, but still has aspirations to perfect symmetry. I made multiple photograms of each dish for this piece—going against the general photogram rule of the singular image, as opposed to camera-based or digital photography’s infinite reproducibility. Then I cut out the multiple images of dishes from their black paper grounds and arranged them on a table—the rightful place for dishes. But here, the dimensional, functional plates, bowls, and platter have been replaced with paper versions of the originals, and the colors of the real dishes have been reversed to their psychedelic complements.

Lonely House is the first of a series of images I’ve made by processing resin-coated silver gelatin photo paper in color chemistry. The beige ground on which the white silhouettes float would be black if I had processed the paper correctly, or used color photo paper, but with this cross-processing you get a more subtle effect. In this piece, I made photograms of various lamps—putting the same shade on each lamp—then I put the images together in a police line-up of sorts. By reducing the lamps down to their silhouettes, their anthropomorphic quality is more pronounced, the various styles they reference—such as Neo-Classicism or some version of Orientalism—are still visible, and you can study their careful proportions, which are surprisingly sophisticated.

How Did He Look? is the first color image I made in a series of black and white photograms of arrangements of ribbon. In the silver gelatin images, I put ribbons together to create stripe designs with variation in width, style, and value on a gray-scale. Because the ribbons are quite translucent, when I switched to using color the resulting images came out mostly in pastels, for bold color photograms can only be made with translucent objects that are highly-saturated in color. The white ribbon in the center of this image is opaque and red in real life; it helps create a bolder value in the arrangement. In some ways, my photograms of ribbons seem somewhat analogous to Kenneth Noland’s stripe paintings from 1960s and 70s, but made with craft supplies rather than virilely-applied paint. Incidentally, I’m planning a series of photograms as an homage to Post-Painterly Abstraction, made in a similar vein.

Color Photograms of Fabric and Toys

2008-08-03T12:22:00.000-07:00

You Do Something to Me
Cut C-print photograms
16 inches in diameter
2005

You Do Something to Me is a series of circular color photograms of fabric and toy animals. To make the prints, I began by choosing fabrics with patterns of vegetation and then I paired them with plastic insects, reptiles, and even a tiny horse. When I exposed and processed the paper in the darkroom, the colors in the fabrics were transformed in the images into their photographic complements—black became white, green became magenta, cyan blue became yellow, etc.—because the fabric itself acts like a piece of film/a negative. Since the toy animals are made of opaque plastic, they appear in the photograms as white silhouettes, interrupting the transcription of the fabric. The animals hint at small narratives, even danger, as they move across the stylized landscapes of impossible leaves and flowers. I cut the prints into circles to add to the dizzying effect of the fabric patterns.

Hand-Colored Photograms (Part 3)

2008-02-18T20:31:00.001-08:00

Nobody’s Lonely Tonight
Silver gelatin photograms hand-colored with marker
6 x 4 inches each
2008

I Get Along Without You Very Well
Silver gelatin photograms hand-colored with marker
4 x 6 inches each
2008

Hand-Colored Photograms (Part 2)

2008-02-07T13:20:00.000-08:00

Darn That Dream
Silver gelatin photograms hand-colored with marker
4 x 6 inches and 6 x 4 inches
2008

There's No Tomorrow
Silver gelatin photogram hand-colored with marker
8 x 5 inches
2008

Hand-Colored Photograms

2008-02-07T13:02:00.000-08:00

Some Velvet Morning
Silver gelatin photograms with marker
6 x 4 inches each
2006

Something For The Girl With Everything
Silver gelatin photograms with marker
4 x 6 inches each
2006

Here are the first pieces I completed in a series of hand-colored photograms I began towards the end of 2006 while I was living in Berlin. The images are actually black and white photograms made from photocopies of (usually) black and white photographs—in the case of this series, photographic reproductions of Post-World War II furniture and décor. Although the design aesthetic of that era is often revered for its clean lines, bold and simple forms, and new, space-aged materials, there is also a side to this interior decoration movement which is not often touched upon: most everything was created in brilliant colors, even in a palette that some might deem “gaudy.” The mostly black and white images of these objects and rooms do not communicate this.

In my images, I have made photograms from photocopies. A reversal of values happens in a photogram. For example, a dark chair on a white background becomes a whitish chair on a charcoal or black background. The details of the original are still visible—one can make out most of the objects and even textures—but there is certain strangeness to this new image because it is an inverted sort of world. Once I have made these photogram “inversions,” I then proceed to hand-color them, much in the style of Technicolor films from roughly the same period as this modernist furniture. I combine colors to create certain contrasts, and many of the pigments I use have optical brighteners in them that actually do not translate to the digital images.

Finally, I pair or combine images and add titles that you may recognize. “Some Velvet Morning” is the famous Nancy Sinatra and Lee Hazelwood song, and “Something For The Girl With Everything” is one of the many amazing songs by The Sparks.