Reflect

Imagine juggling three Chihuly vases


Three wet clay pots



Three loaded paint brushes

Megan Murphy ~ Video Stills / Matthew Di Tullo ~ 3a + 3b + 3c, 2009

(Untitled) Video - 3a + 3b + 3c, 2009 from Matthew DiTullo on Vimeo.

Much like Dan Graham's mirrors, I thought of Matthew DiTullo's work when I saw Megan Murphy's paintings Erode 1 and Erode 3 (based on video stills). 3a + 3b + 3c, 2009 is Matthew DiTullo's most recent offering on Vimeo. After viewing 3a + 3b + 3c, 2009 those images have become part of me. Whenever I close my eyes, they float up for me to watch – lines, shapes and ethereal color. Thanks, Matthew. Here is his artist statement for this work.

The purpose of my work is to breakdown photographic images into geometric abstract shapes using compressed digital video and controlling the pixels. I like to organize my work based on theories and ideas that come from Minimalism. From geometric groupings focusing on grids, angles, horizontal and vertical forms to industrial subjects and settings.

Similar to Clement Greenberg's ideas of the artist’s truth to the medium, I am making video works that force the moving digital image to the forefront. Similar to how Jackson Pollock would paint about painting, and Donald Judd made sculptures about three-dimensional space, I am making video works about video.

The Wall Drawings are non-representational and consist of simple lines and shapes. The forms of the drawings correlate with literal video images.

My intention is to leave out any meaning, thus conforming with the ideas of Minimalism. However, my Post-Minimal approach is the use of representational subjects. With such a juxtaposition of natural and man-made objects, it is understood that various interpretations may be read into my work.

One from the Workshop

Megan Murphy's Mirror

The closer I am
the part of you comes back
as part of me
Not my shadow the black
against the green
Not the muddled tangle of words
I see but cannot see
a reflection so slight
the part of you in me

Megan Murphy ~ Digital Transfers

Megan Murphy's work still includes mirrored surfaces but she has expanded to including video stills and has lettered transfers as well as oil paint and transfer lettering. Erode I and 3 shown here are two of her more recent works. They are quite beautiful and below is some additional information about the work.

Each painting is a reflection of life on the Columbia Plateau. The water is a metaphor for time, always sculpting, flowing, and changing. I have thought about this space, one that is inherently beautiful while simultaneously deadly, for some time.

Each painting is made with video stills of moving water. The place of each video holds significance to me; each being a part of my history and love of the West. The stills are printed on dura-clear, mounted between silver and Plexiglas. Thin layers of oil paint and text are applied and then sanded away. The text is a combination of history, poetry, mythology, and family stories. What is left on the surface of the paintings, after the sanding away, are remnants of thought and actions, and their impressions left on the surface.

Erode I - V are made with video stills, digital text, and transfer lettering. The images are made on a digital platform with text and video. The image is then printed on vellum and numerous layers of transfer lettering are applied. Each layer of lettering incorporates different perspectives on water, history, stories, and the mythology of the West.
Evaporate I - III are objects that are made with mirror, glass, photographs of water, oil paint, and transfer lettering. The photograph, printed on a transparency, is mounted between the mirror and glass. Layers of oil paint, wax, and transfer lettering are applied across the surface.

The text applied with transfer lettering on each object are stories of lost cultures. The stories are those of the American West, people who shaped it's history, place, and identity in the twenty first century.

Ekphrasis Workshop

Today is the ekphrasis workshop at the Portland Art Museum with instructor Joseph Bradshaw. As part of the workshop he chose six pieces for a tour. One of these is Megan Murphy's Pause. The first question we tackled was the mood, and somber was the answer. We discussed the kind of music it would play, had it a tune. We looked into and around it. Then I gave the background information. Something is so nice about holding out on that for a while, to give the piece a chance to speak.
When Joseph held his hand up to "Pause" Laura, one of the participants, said "I can see your reflection in the mirror" and we all took a breath in. His shadow was large and black against the greenish gray paint, but even closer to his body than it's shadow was the very subtle reflection of him in the mirror.
A piece that stands right next to Pause was also included in today's tour, it is Almanac by Marie Watt.

I had so many things to say about this piece by the artist who calls herself "a Cowboy and an Indian" having both Wyoming rancher and Seneca turtle clan roots. The thing people noticed that I hadn't considered was how the stack of blankets is precarious and imbalanced. How it looks like it could topple over and crush you. When we walked around it I noticed for the first time how a stack of blankets made of bronze seemingly totters atop the blankets made of wool. It really is quite disconcerting. Which is why the calm and serene presence of Pause on the adjacent wall balances out the area in just the perfect way.

Megan Murphy ~ Pause, Not Unlike Dan Graham

Pause by Megan Murphy is this week's selection at Fifty Two Pieces. Perhaps the intention of the artist is to have you take a moment to consider life, life and death, the time between life and death or all of this. Words may float through your mind or images of what your life has been and what will be happening next.

Dan Graham's sculptures can have the same effect. The image above is of one of Dan Graham's sculptures currently on exhibit at the Whitney Museum. Yesterday I spent two hours with this and other works by Graham. Reflections fascinate me, making me think about reality and perception. Dan Graham's sculptures are not unlike Megan Murphy's Pause. They can have you take the time to visualize yourself, here but not here. Standing near one of his sculptures you see a system of enclosures. You bump up against yourself and the world as you have constructed it. Stand there and you can pause and reflect about life and reality. And then of course you can just have fun too, another aspect of life.

Pause, Megan Murphy

Megan Murphy made this "object" in 2002. It is oil painted on mirror. It has a rhythm of letters in bands that move from the left to the right, or the right to the left, across the middle, throughout the piece. I don't know what direction they move because they are laid on top of eachother in an unreadable stack. The closer you get the more clear it all becomes, but the term is relative because there never is clarity.
There is a shine throughout the middle that you see if you step back, it is almost in a human shape, as if the halo of light from within has hips and a head.
Megan Murphy made this piece the year her mother died. Some say it is about that short period of time between life and death.
No doubt about it, it has a haunting quality.