Hello Out There, It Sure Has Been Awhile

Hi Cascus Friends.

It has been a really long time since I last posted. A really long time. Well, for me anyway.

Since I last wrote, I have moved to Portland, OR to live with Zack and Josh and run Appendix with them along with two friends, Ben Young and Maggie Casey. I have taken over much of the day-to-day running of the space, along with running our two other spaces, Hay Batch! (a performance space curated this past summer by our friend Matt Green) and Little Field, another garage/gallery.

I have had two shows here, one at our space, Appendix, and one at a gallery downtown called Tractor.

My room is that which used to be the living room, so I am still in a transition mode of life. Which is both nice and not-nice, in a great way for me. I am looking forward to a settling in this winter. It gets pretty hibernation mode here, I hear, so that should be both a time of productivity and warm cooking and lots of polenta.

But enough of the weather. To the ART.

These are from my show at Appendix. I was thinking about the tracing drawings that I had been doing in New Jersey and Vermont and how that overlay allowed for some shapes, colors, forms to recede and for others to come forward. I enjoyed the shifting between flatness and depth that that created I wanted to try and have this effect with objects rather than flat images. After I started though, I found out that I was a lot more interested in the patterning that was being created in some. This was definitely a product of the intense working I was able to do during my residency in the space and the critiques we went through constantly. I also started experimenting with a few new materials, including Vaseline, which I covered a lot of the vinyl with. I wrapped and stretched that over objects, painting on top of the vinyl as well. In the end I came out with a variety of work, much of which was, in retrospect, merely the middle point of thoughts rather than the ending. What was most important for me in this show was finding a new way of working that was full of exploration and the ability to follow new lines of thought without being too scared of the outcome. The paisley wall piece was an important piece. I really enveloped myself in the gaudiness of it and allowed that part of me to come through. SO here,

3.5 x 3.5 feet all together

4 x 3 feet all together


About 4 feet tall.

About 6.5 feet across.

This Vaseline painting is about 17 feet across.

This was in the alleyway and was about 4 feet high.

My show at Tractor had three pieces. All three were 8 x 4 feet. Each had a base of drywall attached to wooden studs. The show was called Roomscapes and I was thinking a lot about self-presentation and self-conception. Both are reflected in the atmospheres and the environments that we construct. As I set up my life here in Portland, I got more and more interested in how I was setting up my world to better fit my needs, not just aesthetically, but emotionally as well. These pieces fall somewhere in between architecture, furniture, and paintings and I wanted them to feel like all three at the same time, but without feeling false. For me, there is a tension between the flatness and the material richness that I liked and wanted to emphasize.

Graft is made with acrylic and pumice medium.

Here is a detail:


Mango is wallpaper that I shellaced and varnished until it was super glossy, about six or seven coats. It is hung on the wall.

Here is a detail:




Chaise is stuffed with cotton and upholstered using raincoat fabric, which is a navy with a gold grid. The intervals switch from 1 foot to 6 in. about 2/3rds of the way through. I leaned it against the wall horizontally.

Here is a detail:


And here are installation shots. They basically face other, but Chaise is leaning against a diagonal wall, so they are not parallel to each other:



I have also been doing some small works, mostly collages and drawings.





They are all quite small, each about a foot square.

What is next for me:
Zack, Josh, Ben, and Maggie are working on a show at New American Art Union for early November that I have been helping them with. It should be an incredible show.

We are taking a break in November and then doing a series of shows at Appendix throughout the winter, so we have to get on that as soon as possible.

We were invited to do a show in late January in southern Oregon near Eugene at Ditch Projects, so that is the next date in my mind.

Then we start on who will be showing next spring/summer and what the programming will be like. There are changes in the works so we have to figure out what is what and where the sky is. It always seems to be falling down around us.

Go look at the shows we have had and the artists we are working with! : www.appendixspace.com It has been a really fucking good summer and fall, all in all.

Sorry about the long length of this post. I had a lot I wanted to say and show to you all.

Hope you are all doing so well. I send all my love to all of your separate places.

travis