Tracey Gaan - MFA Thesis

Abstract:

My work takes aim at a politically charged patriarchal society and attempts to turn it on its side to imagine what the world might look like if women were in charge. The result is a huge installation I call “The Utopian Ranch.” I envision it as a destination where one can visit, celebrate, play, and dream. Designer gowns, along with my own original designs, are worn by the female figures that populate my installation. They are dressed extravagantly and tend to chores on the Ranch—gardening, tending to animals, frolicking about. The Utopian Ranch is a place where they can be free and be in touch with nature and cherished animal life, and fill their days with creative exercise. The Ranch includes the promise of a safe place to wrangle self-confidence and enjoy meditative success.

The Utopian Ranch sets the stage for a robust and immersive unpacking of many struggles, identity issues, stereotypes, joys, mischievous critical thinking, and problem-solving. It is a fantasy experience involving “campy” female protagonists as they celebrate empowerment, discovering the joys of being women in a still highly patriarchal pernicious environment. Layers and layers of paper cutout characters drenched in sparkle and blended in beading deliver a bombastic intoxicating experience. Joy is viewed palpable through craft materials and a childlike, whimsical style that infers permission to play.

Introduction:

Many inspirations contribute to the development of The Utopian Ranch: My own personal background, lots of art research, an interest in fashion, and a lifelong engagement with animal life contribute to the development of The Utopian Ranch. As much as my work involves fantasy, the themes I work with reflect my most profound interests. The bone structure, so to speak, highlights my history of pageants, runway modeling, years of competitive canine and equine showing, and a foundation of wildlife bronze sculpture work. Countless hours of working with show animals to prepare them for championships allowed a seamless transition to a bronze practice and now serves as a ground for making art that touches on all my diverse passions.

This paper will include sections that discuss:

1. What is The Utopian Ranch? Why does it exist, and how do the characters work in this make-believe world?
2. How does my background influence The Utopian Ranch?
3. What are the important aspects of my process and development?
4. How has my art research influenced the ideas in The Utopian Ranch?
5. What is the future of The Utopian Ranch?

What is the Utopian Ranch? Why does it exist, and how do the characters work in this make-believe world?

When I was a little girl, I was timid and introverted. In all likelihood being legally blind in one eye, extremely nearsighted in the other, and falling on the deaf spectrum for much of my early childhood stands to blame. I spent many hours during those days trying to hyper absorb my surrounding environment. My mother helped me learn how to organize my meditations of these surroundings as both a defense and motivation to overcome hardship. She walked me through building a fantasy place in my head where I could practice and envision achievement at anything.

The work building my meditative safe place still serves me well today, and The Utopian Ranch represents a snapshot of the fantasy land I developed as a child. The Utopian Ranch is populated by prominent loud characters who are bold and fierce in a fantastic creative environment. It is a full bombastic experience filled with characteristics meant to overwhelm and events meant to envelop the viewer as she imaginatively enters the scene. When you first enter the installation, it is like a big rush of many different things happening at once. The overload it delivers slaps hard, but once over the shock, you recover and enjoy a relaxing invigorating experience as you move from one part of the installation to another and explore all the fun events. I intend the viewer’s engagement to be soothing and palliative.

My own meditation experience is influential in this respect. I used it for many years to envision myself winning or accomplishing anything I needed or wanted to conquer. The Utopian Ranch involves a bit of fantTaesxty, dream, nightmare, fairytale, and meditative organization of feelings aimed to create success, joy, peace, love, and understanding. The eclectic style I use in rendering all the figurative dimensions of the work illustrates how different emotions evoke different visual representations.

All of the women characters fold into a representation of me. The women represent strength and resilience, showing beauty, brains, and brawn can exist simultaneously. The rest of the characters have a significant metaphorical meaning as well. The bulls represent the heightened male energy wafting throughout society. They are attractive and stylized, pointed, and simple to express how complicated yet seemingly childlike masculine energy can be. The sheep, ducks, and bunnies represent life’s different stages of innocence. The ballerinas, butterflies, dragonflies, and bees depict the loss of said innocence and experience. My love of the outdoors and Western themes inform the profusions of flowers and naturalistic elements. For me, Poppies symbolize deception, desire, intoxication, temptation, and a certain kind of mischievousness. Daisies imply playfulness and naivety, while my sunflowers deliver pure joy. I try to insert darkness and light by providing elements of fairytales in encrypted messages and give hope of emancipation with liberating song structure and representation through the equine forms that live on The Utopian Ranch.

How does my background influence The Utopian Ranch?

When discussing The Utopian Ranch, much consideration of my bronze work comes into play. I always enjoy representing in my bronze work the particular movement, energy, and power that animals possess. My eye and feel for nuanced action has been achieved from years of competitive showing, training, and grooming of show animals. This training allows me to understand so much about animals and their body language: How animals twitch, grunt, and fidget depending on a given fight or flight instinct reflected in their hunter or prey posturing. I am bringing these years of Free Style Gallop, Bronze 2015 by Tracey Gaan study to the overall feeling and messaging of The Utopian Ranch.

This education, as mentioned above, has made me privy to recognizing the animals’ natural motions and emotions. It’s like being able to speak in a secret language. I focused on the smells and subtleties surrounding muscle and bone structure, movement, and hair placement in my bronze sculptures and now all that helps translate those experiences into very different media. My intent now is to bring all these influences to life again in visual displays that transform installation space into explosions of nuanced behaviors orchestrated with color, paper, glitter, and beads. The difference between the two mediums is pronounced. Bronze and paper are undeniably polar opposite, yet they share expressive attributes. Paper lets me gain immediate success or grief, depending on the outcome.
Bronze involves foundry visits, patina
choices, and months of waiting and Anticipation Bronze, 2014 by Tracey Gaan hoping everything comes together successfully. I am so excited to have this new instant gratification for my efforts. With the patience that I learned with bronze I am now able to envision long-term projects but to work spontaneously and with a fury. What I once thought was liberating in bronze, I now view as stiff and find new satisfaction in craft materials I hope to lift to the level of high art.

Process and development.

When starting the work on The Utopian Ranch, I recognized my biggest challenge would be translating the language of three-dimensional concepts to a two-dimensional platform. I want to marry my love of bronze to the freedom and immediacy of two-dimensional work using craft paper and decorative supplies. The immense gratification obtained in seeing color and context vs. bronze’s static nature drives my ambition. Each roll of paper I fill with drawings of flowers that require cutting out one at a time by hand, gives me anxiety at the thought of how much labor is required, but the process quickly fills me with joy and the process becomes sustaining. I have discovered that working with such humble materials such as poster paint and craft paper and lots of glitter can be quite liberating, and I am amused at the vibrance of the special effects I create.

The road to The Utopian Ranch was a bit of an afterthought. Originally I had built a cyclone of foil horses after being dazzled by Boccioni’s Unique Forms Of Continuity In Space no. (88.) For the pure joy of creating and a constant burning to paint, I invented some women characters wearing some of my favorite designer gowns. The fun I had making these paper dolls that give a nod to Yves Saint Laurent’s paper dolls acted more like an escape. The paper dolls hitched a ride to my first critique and became the focal point of most of my discussions. I put the foil on hold, recognizing this liberating character development was in tune with my true passion.

The leap from bronze to empowered paper women who frolic in gardens and interact with animals and do chores on the ranch was a significant one for me. The decisive shift surfaced after speaking about my love of animal husbandry and fashion in discussion with Jan Avgikos. She suggested I might think about developing the theme of a utopian ranch, and thus The Utopian Ranch was born. I am inventing a place where all the things I love and that empower me are suddenly compatible and in harmony with one another. I decided everything I love should live with many of the things that fear me as well. What fun to have a fantastic destination to visit. Jan blew the lid off a metaphorical box of ideas that continues to grow. A fantasy world accommodating and colliding with my love of animal husbandry, fashion design, set design, and cinema design, along with my bronze sculpture, can exist simultaneously through a new delivery vessel of paint and paper. It is my joy to defy limitations. The challenge now is to take my women and bull characters and embed them into a world full of pleasure, vibrancy, danger, and hope.

How can I make these characters live and intertwine with one another while acting out a narrative? How can they have a relationship with one another, with their surroundings, and with the audience?

My desire to achieve unity and cohesion is abetted by taking an architectural approach. I decided to let representations of landscape and natural elements dictate the layout, which I manipulate by inserting many fanciful twists. I play with scale and shifts of size with some characters and their placement along with stylized exaggerations to emphasize different strengths and emotions. The architecture of my mural-like works acts as a structure for my rhythmic visual poems that employ different types of treatments for the foreground and background. In this respect, my interest in set design is an important influence.

The actual making of each piece literally takes over my life and house. Scraps of paper and sparkle mark every inch of my home and studio. I push the paper, paint, and sparkle to achieve a sculptural effect. Many of the cutout elements are only partially glued in place. As a result they tend to bend or curve or wrinkle and that is an important component in achieving 3-D effects. The placement of individual components (which could number in the hundreds) also plays a big roll in merging 2-D and 3-D effects. The result is a mural that almost has a movement and life of its own. I reflect on my studies of Matisse’s The Dance. His many manipulations of his cutout dancers proved quite sculptural once they were given their final form. I, too, find satisfaction laying out all my characters and manipulating their positions until they find their ideal stance before I adhere them with glue to a surface. Working in this layered way helps me to achieve a three-dimensional effect in the variety of curling and bending that occurs in relation to the foundation paper. I see a gracefulness in letting the materials help dictate how many or how few characters and “extras” are needed to tell my story. I think back to Futurist artist, Giocomo Balla and how he said the process sometimes becomes the piece.

I also find when I place segments of a large mural piece in a particular way, they infer different meanings and can imply even more movement. This movement helps breathe life into the overall experiences I hope to convey. I approach my three-dimensional pieces the same way; by conceptualizing and meditating first, I try and imagine how segments or characters can move through space, and how I might capture a snapshot of that movement. Different genres of music help my eclectic group of characters dance in my head and ultimately gather into poetic positions. I find blending very stylized characters with more realistic pieces helps personify overall movement. The energy conveyed through orchestrated interactions helps create tension and excitement. Now I start seeing color along with shadow and highlights.

The colors are chosen both by the example of nature and my desire to manipulate how we think about various subjects and experiences. I am very inspired in this respect by artists who were active in the movements of Fantasy, Dada, and Surrealism. I reflect quite a bit on Chagall during his Paris years, along with his stained glass work. I seek to capture the fluidity in movement and light he achieves in his glasswork and also the vibrancy of his color. Glitter and beading deliver a high punch to the senses and help me punctuate select pieces. Sculptural dimension is activated with the layered sparkle and pilling on of beading. This relief effect helps boost the visual impact and triggers a dance between two and three dimensional play, delivering the hyper immersive experience I seek to deliver to the viewer. Like Chagall’s characters, many of my figures have a childlike whimsy, which I find infectious as we all wish to play as adults.

The current version of The Utopian Ranch installation is equivalent to a room approximately twenty-five feet square. It exists as two eight and a half foot, by twenty-foot panoramas depicting day and night at the Ranch. The pair of scenes are anchored at the center of the room by what might be described as a 3-D sculptural paper chandelier weighted by a disco ball. The ten plus foot sculpture is festooned with horses, sunflowers, and poppies, along with clouds and sparkling raindrops all hanging over a delicious sparkling paper pond full of paper sculpture ducks and fallen blooms. A path winds around the centerpiece and the stage set-like installation. Women fashionably dressed are positively magical and are engaged with training their horses and dogs. Bulls roam nearby and keep watch while horses and sheep appear to bust from two dimensions to live and run in a virtual three-dimensional world filled with fields of paper trees and flowers and sparkle. The experience is further orchestrated by a light and sound loop to highlight ranch sounds and cast shadows while spotlighting specific characters.

Art research that influenced The Utopian Ranch.

The first and most important internal cog in my research for The Utopian Ranch is a feminist view. Mary Anne Staniszewski states, “Art, as we understand it, develops in conjunction with a revolutionary transformation of the way in which an individual conceives his or her humanity in Western culture.” The more impowered we are as citizens and individuals and artists, the more art can reflect enlightened points of view. As a whole, society still has a long way to go, especially in the realm of gender identity. It is not uncommon to reserve the accolade of “genius” exclusively for male artists. That position has got to go!

In Griselda Pollock’s article, “Modernity And The Spaces Of Femininity,” she talks about society’s psychology and sociology (modernity) and its pigeon hold on women whose choices to work, or not, or to be feminine, or not, are often a function of class. Women are infinitely resourceful and have developed many forms of resilience and resistance. Men still “rule,” (just look at the state of the world today) and the art world still favors them to the disadvantage many times of female artists, but women have produced powerful push-backs to the dominant system. The Utopian Ranch delivers a big push-back to the status-quo, subverting male dominance and antiquated societal thinking. I want my work to participate in discourses of liberation and, in particular, to be informed by feminist art discussion. What I think about when I’m making my work is intertwining women’s issues in an imagined matriarchal environment, how women grapple with patriarchal influences and celebrate difference and find common ground.

I often pivot from these ideas to think about artists and art movements that help me conceptualize and build my work. Among the most important influences is Degas. I am very inspired by his ballet dancers and his work with horses and jockeys. The brush strokes and materials he used, such as charcoals and pastels, elevated the sophistication of his work, making soft spontaneity immensely appealing. He serves as a great inspiration for The Utopian Ranch. The ballet shared quarters with horse racing as muses for Degas. I find myself falling for the simplistic yet sophisticated placement of subjects I observe in his art, and marvel at the grace of the gestures he used to imply light, shadow, and motion.

Equally important for me is the work of Matisse during his Fauve period. The bright colors seem jarring, but I love that the shock of color can wake up the brain. I have struggled to find a way to express sculpture two-dimensionally. Matisse’s cut out period helps me to find an answer, which comes many times when I’m studying his work, The Dance. I relate immensely to this monumental piece. The simple cut out shapes and they way they occupy space is an example of his brilliant ability to solve problems, like how to achieve great sculptural effect within a painting. The Dance led me to Jazz, and his engaging use of scissors in his late work that Jazz by Henri Matisse 1947 is so sophisticated and seemingly spontaneous. Negative and positive space flow effortlessly on the paper and create a vision of sculpture crafted with scissors. Lessons I’ve learned from Matisse are fundamental in my practice.

In Jazz, Matisse quotes Renoir, who observes: “When I have arranged a bouquet for the purpose of painting it, I always turn to the side I did not plan.” Reading Jazz marked a big “light bulb flashes on” moment for my work. The theme running throughout The Utopian Ranch is “liberation.” While doing my own scissoring I discover new mental spaces; as my work takes off in new directions, I find I begin to look at the things from different angles or perspective.

When I look in-depth at Picasso’s work during his Cubist period movement, I am captivated by the angular aspects that compress space and distort subject matter. I find the pictorial effects of Picasso’s Cubism to be very sculptural, and the way he structures form compounds this.

Another big influence for my work turns up in Futurism, particularly the breakdown of form into abstract patterns and movement. Boccioni became an important source in that he navigates so successfully between painting and sculpture. In my opinion, he really finds his voice with sculpture. Boccioni found the blending elements I take particular note of the “harmony” of body and objects. He once remarked, “By such means, the object itself is destroyed and liberated from its outward look:” The purpose no longer was to make sculpture look “like”something but instead to create a “duration of the appearance.” After all his studies, Unique Forms Of Continuity In Space (no 88) emerged, the highest point in his sculpture practice.

The sculpture uniquely resembles movement, depicting wind, human form or perhaps clothing, while blending ideas about nature, and human form.

I also find inspiration in the overlaps of Dada and Surrealism. From Surrealism, I found use for the idea of the unconscious, especially in how I imagine the thoughts that entertain or motivate the women who live at The Utopian Ranch. Dada simply gives me permission to be whacky and helps me forge ahead with the crazy ideas I hope to bring to life. Together they both allow for the irrational, and I can relate to the mischievous behavior both movements sponsor.

Studying these artists and movements helps me understand that permission is given by one’s self, not by society, to create. Breaking rules becomes necessary and is almost expected preliminary to being able to express something personal.

The Utopian Ranch takes shape by drawing on so many art historical resources and favorite artists. I take what interests me and make it mine. Many artists have blazed trails that I have followed in. This is true with Chagall. I learned a lot from his “raw” childlike gestures and characters. When looking at works such as The Feast Of The Tabernacles,1916, and Poet Reclining,1915, I remember that realism can be viewed as craft and that the childlike qualities in his work are strengths. He was always true to his roots and told great stories within his paintings. One of my favorites is The Cattle Dealer, 1912.

As I mentioned earlier, Chagall’s designs for stained glass windows are important for me as well. I get the same feeling when I’m engaged with Chagall’s windows as I do with Mattise’s The Dance. Chagall’s windows are so deeply moving and mystical. It is breathtaking how the color within the glass can mimic paint on a canvas, with the acid able to create shadowing and creaminess that creates flow. In my own work I use beading and sparkle to achieve the special effects that animate Chagall’s windows.

I can’t neglect discussion of Rosa Bonheur. Her work stops me in my tracks. She somehow embraces the soul of the creatures she paints. It’s amazing how she captured the essence of her subjects. She wrote, “Always begin with a vision of the truth. The eye is the soul, and the crayon or brush must simply and tastefully render what you see.” She pushed to study the anatomy of animals. She spent countless hours in a slaughter house, sketching the muscle and bone structures of animals. Bonheur also dressed as a man to be able to enter the auction house for livestock. Though risky, her disguise proved most valuable in service of studying animal anatomy. I believe this to be the inspiration for arguably her most significant painting, The Horse Fair, 1852-1855. I was excited to learn she gained a metal at the Salon for this painting and that it sold, and it now belongs to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

In addition to the several artists I count as primary influences, I also want to mention the importance of “camp” to The Utopian Ranch. Here’s what comes to mind: Playful, exuberant, glitzy, sometimes naughty, flirtatious, and excess. I am attracted to bombast and high-keyed decorative effects. Reading Susan Sontag’s Notes On “Camp” and Andrew Bolton’s, Camp:

Notes On Fashion, stirred all kinds of emotion and excitement for me. Camp’s history, heartache, evolution, and layered meanings reflect multifaceted dimensions. Sontag writes, “A sensibility (as distinct from an idea) …It is not a natural mode of sensibility,…Indeed the essence of Camp is its love of the unnatural: of artifice and exaggeration. And Camp is esoteric- something of a private code,…” I am so attuned to her observation and relate to Camp’s lighter side.

Andrew Bolton’s, Camp: Notes On Fashion is so refreshing. He writes, “J. Redding Ware’s 1909 dictionary of “Eterodox English,” inconspicuously defines it as “actions and gestures of exaggerated emphasis,” mainly used “by persons of exceptional want of character.” Camp defies reason and can act as a “field of knowledge,” as a psychological paradox blending fun, love, and sensibility. The abundance, and perfection translate to fashion in such a spontaneous and celebratory way, incorporating everything I want my work to embrace.
My work leans maximalist and champions the potential of an overwhelming experience that can be afforded by installation. As an installation, The Utopian Ranch argues for a great “decentering” of the way we view the world. It favors plurality over singularity. I derive ideas of decentering from feminist theory, from which I’ve learned there is no “right” way to view the world. It invites emotions, memories, and anxieties to stir to life and interact, both playfully and profoundly.

The future of The Utopian Ranch.

My future intent for The Utopian Ranch is to continue to seek ethical, moral, and inclusive ways to honor and respect all women and those who support them. In my art practice I want to celebrate women from all walks and their abilities to conquer life’s hardships. I wish to expand The Utopian Ranch to include an Utopian Carnival, an Utopian Carousel, an Utopian Forest, and an Utopian Urban Oasis. I feel these ideas have such tremendous potential to accommodate many of the goals I set for myself in my artistic practice. I want to incorporate movement and perhaps branch out into children’s books, and perhaps even a film. I think my characters will translate well into these new media.

I also want to continue visiting pain and fear, pleasure and joy, along with an ever-evolving figurative painting style that works with character placement and metaphor. The Utopian Ranch pokes at the subconscious, tugging at what lives in all of us, seeking the sublime. As I mention above, this is where I want my art to fit in the contemporary art conversation.

Conclusion:

I want my art to be a protagonist and a partner in strutucing rebellion and joyful discovery. I use inexpensive craft materials to emphasize the vulnerability that women experience and, at the same time, to have fun with camp and fantasy influences. The simplicity that informs the materials and styles in my work is intended to amplify the harmony of layered characters, and to build complexity of thought and feeling. Each animal, flower, and ornamental feature is part of a story element embedded with metaphorical meaning. Together, they pose a puzzle of sorts wrapped in a songlike story rich with narrative themes and lyrical natural elements. The purpose may be intense but the work is playful in tone. I hope that the result is an infectious, liberating release of one’s childlike innocence. The campy definitions sing with the acrylic brush strokes, loud colors, and paper cutouts. The Ranch aims to be both pleasing and controversial and is ultimately a mindset to lose yourself in, and to explore the depths of your imagination. The excessive use of glitter and beads intends to animate the maximalist quality and aid in its immersive capacity.

I am always looking for ways to combine my interest in Haute Couture fashion and my roots in Big Sky Country. These desires are expressed very directly in the imagery of The Utopian Ranch. It is brilliant with Fire and lightning and tender with a field of hand-cut daisies and flamboyant with the ladies who play masquerade at their tea parties. In their world, play is both innocent and tinged with ominous undertones. I use this undercurrent throughout the work as I weave riddles from many worlds into one. Sheep run around and past a woman dressed in Dior wearing a top hat while a haunting wolf and a sheepdog keep watch. They might be shepherds, they might be hunters, but they are inextricably part of complex scenario. The Utopian Ranch brims with potential and empathy for all the roles we play—humans and animals alike.