Opening Exhibition 08.07.09 • Noteworthy* Paper&Press

The Leaving and the Left - Teardrop on the Fire opens August 7th, 2009 at Noteworthy* in Missoula

Magic Love

Originally uploaded by love not fear

Finished another one. Learning a lot about love, myself, relationships in this process.

The love I have now is real, true, and lasting. I am so happy.

Also learning much about the logistical process of putting these pieces together. One major struggle I’m having is that the metal upon which I’m mounting everything is so thin, I’m having to mount the metal itself onto a piece of wood & hanging it with wire means it pulls away from the wall quite a bit.

Using the “teeth” style hooks may be an option, but there is so little control with those, I think. That, plus pounding them into the wood may break the glass in the artwork.

I may just be having to figure out how to cut my own metal and tack weld a box frame fro these pieces. If I pay Bitterroot Welding to do the same thing, it’s $60 a pop. Worth it, but I don’t have that kind of money for the amount of work I’m planning to produce with this series.

One of my Favorite Days Ever

Originally uploaded by love not fear

Back in the studio after what seems to me like a long abscence. Completed four new pieces. Will write more about the process soon.

Patina, n. The complex quality of ruins due to its ability to communicate age and history through physical change.

Rusty metal, worn wood, decayed wires. Love, when it first sparks, burns hot. Love needs heat to form, just as metal does, and glass. If the fire burns too hot, it burns itself out. When allowed to cool, it forms a solid recognizable thing that is affected by the ravages of time, and becomes more beautiful as it is exposed to the elements.

The feelings of intense love may fade, but they have been expressed, and still exist somewhere out there in the ether. Also floating out there in the Universe are these bitter, rancorous feelings. Feelings that are just as valid and important as the I love yous and You mean the world to mes. Both feelings deserve to be honored, and the best way to do this is to honor them in the same space in time.

A relationship gains, over time, a collective memory of what the relationship is. The two central figures in a relationship have an idea of what their relationship is, as do those around them. These ideas may be different ones, but they all make up the definition of what that particular relationship is — a collective definition of the relationship. Once the relationship shifts, changes, fades away, what’s left is a collective memory of the relationship.

This emotional patina is best explored with old things. Rusty metal. Reclaimed telephone wires, used in communication. Glass, a liquid that behaves like a solid. Glass, like metal and love, needs heat to form. These materials, along with remnants of forgotten love letters and post-love emails, explore collective memory and emotional patina in The Leaving and the Left, a Celebration of Love and Loss. The series will continue on, hopefully, using letters and emails donated by others, so that the celebration of emotional patina may continue.

Contribute
Please send original love letters to be included in future incarnations of The Leaving and the Left to: PO Box 7457, Missoula, MT, 59802.
If you’d like to send email to the project, which will be printed and remixed for inclusion in future artwork for The Leaving and the Left, please send email to theleavingandtheleft@gmail.com.

Marc Moss
Marc Moss was born and raised in the Rust Belt near Akron, Ohio. Shortly after earning his Bachelor of Science in English from Kent State University in 1995, Marc worked in Yellowstone National Park seasonally until 2001. He kicked around several Montana towns before settling in Missoula in 2002. Marc has created artwork all of his adult life, and has shown in Akron, Ohio, and throughout Missoula, Montana.

Thanks
Without the support and continued patience of many many people, this project could not have been completed. Thank you to all who have helped along the way, including, The Art Hang Up, Lucas Dupuis, Lucas Grossi, Home Resource, Abby McGill, and all who have believed in the project, especially those who have contributed to it.

Prototype Leaving and the Left 1

Originally uploaded by love not fear

I finished the prototype last night. I’ve never approached making art in this way — making a prototype. Typically I go with first draft=final draft. But this series is important enough to play around a bit and figure out what works and what doesn’t. I’ll explore below what I’ve learned logistically during the process thus far.

I generally like the way it turned out, but there are some obvious imperfections. I’m anxious to make another prototype to see how what I’ve learned from this one can be applied.

Visually it looks good. I know I need to do a few things:

• Spread the superglue evenly on the glass so that the sticking points are not visible
• Go back into the electronic communique and even out the way text is distributed
• Mix the colors more evenly before applying them to the glass — I wanted to see if the paint organically blended
• More sandwiching of glass

I’ll learn more about the process as I do it, I’m sure.

A few questions I’m asking myself need to be worked out.

Should I quarantine each person’s sentiments per piece? For this one, I mixed letters from two different individuals with the idea that these types of emotions are universal. I’m thinking that maybe it doesn’t work within the piece, and that I should isolate feelings from individual writers. Still include both love and loss in one piece, just keep it focused on one person per piece. That will mean making more than one piece per person.

The inclusion of paint comes from a suggestion that another artist gave me as I explained the idea to him, and I like the idea.

Sorting Letters and Prototype

Originally uploaded by love not fear

Last time you wrote you said that you thought collage was a nostalgic impulse. I think you’re wrong. Can we argue about this? Kurt Schwitters would laugh up his sleeve at you for saying that. His collages are like writing letters. Letters are collages. Educations are collages, too. –Jolene Iolas to Martin Sloane; Martin Sloane, Michael Redhill

So often, when I’m working on a project, layers of that project reveal themselves to me in other aspects of my life. Recently, I was introduced to the writer Michael Redhill. I’d heard an interview in which Redhill mentioned his fascination with Joseph Cornell, the artist who makes intricate boxes of objects. He said that he drew inspiration from Cornell in his book Martin Sloane, which I have just begun reading and am enjoying very much.

It’s making me think a little more cerebrally about the Leaving and the Left project I’ve undertaken recently. I posted some early sketches and notes about the project previously here, but I never flushed out the idea. I guess the idea won’t be fully flushed out until the project is completed, but I’ll explain a little more about the concept before tracing the process thus far and then sharing what I’m learning as I go.

My progress on the project has been slower than I’d hoped. Part of the reason for that is that I unintentionally made excuses as to why I could not move the project forward, namely that I didn’t want to be cutting up glass in my kitchen and risk having glass shards in my food, or on my floor for me to step on like some sort of modern Bukowski, going weekly to the doctor to have them removed from the bottoms of my feet.

Excuses are always barriers to progress, and I have begun eliminating them and will have a prototype completed by the end of the weekend. I already have one laid out. A quick todo list:

1. Create prototype
2. get wood scraps at Home Resource
3. cut wood for pieces : 20 pieces at 12″x12″ (allow extra pieces in case of screw-ups)
4. paint cut wood, allow to dry
5. get more glass from the frame shop
6. cut glass for each piece. Work on each piece individually, or no more than 2 pieces at one time

Each piece will likely have its own todo, but that’s a good start for now.

As far as the actual idea for the series, let’s backup a minute and I’ll share some insights that the process is teaching me. My own little art education.

Love relationships, and I’m speaking here about relationships comprised of romantic and/or sexual love, break down for a variety of causes for their crumbling. Granted, sometimes they don’t break down at all, which is good, but when they do break down, there can be a variety of reasons for their demise: a wrongdoing to one or another in the relationship, new information that informs the feelings of the relationship’s participants, lack of communication between partners, new honesty in the reasons for entering a relationship in the first place, clarity as to the goal of the relationship and realizing that one or both parties are on different paths, geographical distance that cannot be overcome. I’m simplifying a huge thing here, and am not trying to create an all-encompassing list, but you get the idea.

When a relationship ends, there are associated with its ending a variety of feelings: hurt, anger, resentment, relief, regret (again, not an all-encompassing list). But my thought as I have been thinking about the series is that the love shared between the two individuals does not just disappear. That which has been given cannot be taken back. Amidst the pain and heartache we often forget the good and valuable things that drew us together in the first place.

Where does that love go? How does it manifest itself in our lives moving forward? How can we grow from the love we shared, honor the hurt and pain of parting yet allow the love to become a part of us, enriching us and renewing us? How can we grow from both the love and the heartache? These are some of the questions that the series intends to explore. I cannot pretend that the completed pieces will answer all or any of the questions, but the discussions are important ones to have, and hopefully the viewer will be challenged to have these kinds of discussion with himself and others close to him.

Initially, I had intended to use snippets of old love letters, juxtaposed with after-the-breakup letters to illustrate that love and sadness can exist in the same space, although maybe in different time continuums. Acknowledging and honoring both disparate feelings is important. Attempting to replace love with hate isn’t truly possible or healthy. The concept may not be fully articulated here, and I’m still spinning it in my head, but it’s stuck around long enough that it’s worth exploring.

Some unexpected things are coming up as new themes while I continue working on this series. The big surprise was that I had almost all of the love letters, but none of the breakup letters. No “You hurt me, I hate you” letters. Nothing.

Then I started going through some old email archives. (I save everything. I’m going to be one of those old men with goat trails in his house, I swear). I noticed that I had some love letters sent electronically, but what surprised me was that there were quite a few residual after-the-breakup letters in the emails I was reading. This realization raises a question about technology and the coldness of words displayed as intangible pixels on a screen. Sure, they can be printed, but the former love/lover had not physically touched the printout. Her essence is not present. This creates distance between the leaving and the left. Is this intentional? Does it matter if it is or isn’t?

The process is a fascinating one for me, and I’m learning much about myself in the process.