VIDEO

2019 VIDEO
Six years ago at the MOMA exhibit: “Inventing Abstraction 1910-1925,” I was quite taken with Duncan Grant’s “Abstract Kinetic Collage,” painted in 1914. I didn’t know anything about it, I just loved its 15 feet of beautiful abstract color panels. I guess Duncan’s  painting was always in the back of my mind, because when I found a 5” x 8” moleskine fold out book I nabbed it as a perfect travel art project. With some pens and watercolors it weighs almost nothing. What you see on the video is the result of three vacations of doodling, often inspired by environments. Costa Rica, Canadian Laurentians, St. John Virgin Islands.

After I finished all the pages and decided to put it to music, I looked up Grant’s painting again. It is a different piece, collage, with beautiful color rectangles and squares. I learned that in fact  he had conceived of this work of his as “visual music”. He never carried it through, but his intention was to put it on a scroll, accompanied by the music of Bach. Having no grounding in the academics of art, I had no idea of the coincidence.

Michael Hopkins and Harriet Livathinos conduct an experiment with alcohol inks on the unusual substrate of plastic slide sheets. The resultant vivid coloration harkens back to stained glass windows, albeit in a new and modern guise.