August 23, 2018
Danica Phelps
Many Drops Fill a Bucket
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
August 4 - September 1, 2018
Danica Phelps installation views
Since 1996, Danica Phelps has been keeping track of her income and expenses, integrating details of her financial life into her artworks. Often placed below simple, yet elegant and descriptive pencil drawings, Phelps creates long strips of short vertical lines— red for expenses and green for income— where each painted mark on the page represents a dollar. Using her finances as a point of departure, her layered and multi-dimensional artworks investigate the relationship between labor and value, both within and outside the art marketplace. Cleverly titled Many Drops Fill a Bucket, this exhibition not only presents her iconic drawings, but also includes an installation of small sculptures made from detritus she and her son collected on recent visits to beaches in California, as well as the drawings they inspired.
During these trips, Phelps and her son would comb beaches to remove shards of trash and later assemble what they collected into small (Richard Tuttle-esque) sculptures. In downtime when not cleaning up the beaches, Phelps would draw. She documented the sculptures she and her son created as well as moments from their daily activities—relaxing, eating, making the sculptures, etc. Once finished, Phelps auctioned the sculptures on Facebook to raise money for non-profits and charities like the Ocean Conservancy, Pro Activa Open Arms, World Animal Protection, Refugees International, Climate Central, Oceana, Smile Foundation India and Resilient Power Puerto Rico.
Presented on and dangling from simple wooden shelves encircling the back gallery, these small assemblages made from collected trash are like ad hoc, three-dimensional doodles. They are small inexpensive mementos created for charitable barter. Each sculpture has a hand-written tag with its title, materials and price. Interested purchasers can send a donation to one of the suggested organizations and receive the artwork at the close of the exhibition. Phelps is also posting one of the exhibited sculptures per day on her Facebook page. Interspersed with these pieces are drawings depicting assemblages that have already been "sold" and the exchange process that occurred. The difference between Phelps' drawings and sculptures is significant. The sculptures have an immediacy and spontaneity — as in Sculpture #56 where cut strips of pink and clear plastic fill the center of a clear plastic drink lid or Sculpture #76b in which a green plastic numeral five is attached to a stack of red and orange bottle caps or Sculpture #47 where the handle of a pink toy shovel hangs below the shelf from a push-pin. Suspended from the handle by a thin red thread are more caps— one red, one white and one pink. One can imagine picking through the collection of discarded and broken objects, then putting them together to make quick and quirky arrangements that charm and formally cohere. However, the drawings illustrate Phelps' ability to render with exactitude and care. Though they appear to be simple line drawings, Phelps' imbues these funky three-dimensional objects with grace and purpose.
Phelps photographs the sculptures and later draws them, adding factual information about the initial sale and donation. These new artworks are her bread and butter. They are what the gallery sells and how she earns her living. While completely open and transparent about these exchanges and the costs for her travels, supplies and existence, this documentation does not transcend the fact that it is personal information made public. Sculpture 7: Beach Cleaning Trips, 2018 is a sketch in which a hand supports a dangling string of bottle caps. Below the pencil drawing, Phelps has collaged two horizontal strips of paper (recycled US currency), one for expenses, the other for income. In shades of green (income), she tallies 25 lines to represent the amount the buyer paid to purchase the sculpture ($25), as well as who bought it and when and where the objects were collected. A second strip contains 25 lines (in shades of red) for the $25 donation to Pro Activa Open Arms. The price to purchase the drawing ($1200) is hand-written and circled next to the red stripes. The work presents the fact that the original sculpture sold for $25, but the money did not go to Phelps, it went to Pro Activa Open Arms. Should the drawing of the absent sculpture sell, the $1200 would be income. Yet only half of that would actually be paid to Phelps, as 50% remains with the gallery.
Exchange value aside, the installation of wooden shelves covered with small, colorful, inexpensive sculptures made from refuse is both exhilarating and inspiring. It is hard not to want to immediately pick one (or more) and think about the ways that the money will support a cause. But how to decide? And to make things more complicated, should one support the artist as well (by buying a drawing), or make a token donation to a cause. Phelps should be applauded for cleaning the beaches and offering her artworks in exchange for donations to organizations that help people and the planet. So much of her practice is honorably good intentioned — one drawing was a fund-raiser for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria— yet the work is also very personal. It touches on the difficulties of being an artist and a mother in today's political and economic climate while simultaneously charting her complicity in the art market. Phelps has found ways to integrate art and life by making work that is both personal and political. It is not easy to do what one loves to do and survive on that labor.
Many Drops Fill a Bucket
Luis De Jesus Los Angeles
August 4 - September 1, 2018
Danica Phelps installation views
Since 1996, Danica Phelps has been keeping track of her income and expenses, integrating details of her financial life into her artworks. Often placed below simple, yet elegant and descriptive pencil drawings, Phelps creates long strips of short vertical lines— red for expenses and green for income— where each painted mark on the page represents a dollar. Using her finances as a point of departure, her layered and multi-dimensional artworks investigate the relationship between labor and value, both within and outside the art marketplace. Cleverly titled Many Drops Fill a Bucket, this exhibition not only presents her iconic drawings, but also includes an installation of small sculptures made from detritus she and her son collected on recent visits to beaches in California, as well as the drawings they inspired.
During these trips, Phelps and her son would comb beaches to remove shards of trash and later assemble what they collected into small (Richard Tuttle-esque) sculptures. In downtime when not cleaning up the beaches, Phelps would draw. She documented the sculptures she and her son created as well as moments from their daily activities—relaxing, eating, making the sculptures, etc. Once finished, Phelps auctioned the sculptures on Facebook to raise money for non-profits and charities like the Ocean Conservancy, Pro Activa Open Arms, World Animal Protection, Refugees International, Climate Central, Oceana, Smile Foundation India and Resilient Power Puerto Rico.
Presented on and dangling from simple wooden shelves encircling the back gallery, these small assemblages made from collected trash are like ad hoc, three-dimensional doodles. They are small inexpensive mementos created for charitable barter. Each sculpture has a hand-written tag with its title, materials and price. Interested purchasers can send a donation to one of the suggested organizations and receive the artwork at the close of the exhibition. Phelps is also posting one of the exhibited sculptures per day on her Facebook page. Interspersed with these pieces are drawings depicting assemblages that have already been "sold" and the exchange process that occurred. The difference between Phelps' drawings and sculptures is significant. The sculptures have an immediacy and spontaneity — as in Sculpture #56 where cut strips of pink and clear plastic fill the center of a clear plastic drink lid or Sculpture #76b in which a green plastic numeral five is attached to a stack of red and orange bottle caps or Sculpture #47 where the handle of a pink toy shovel hangs below the shelf from a push-pin. Suspended from the handle by a thin red thread are more caps— one red, one white and one pink. One can imagine picking through the collection of discarded and broken objects, then putting them together to make quick and quirky arrangements that charm and formally cohere. However, the drawings illustrate Phelps' ability to render with exactitude and care. Though they appear to be simple line drawings, Phelps' imbues these funky three-dimensional objects with grace and purpose.
Phelps photographs the sculptures and later draws them, adding factual information about the initial sale and donation. These new artworks are her bread and butter. They are what the gallery sells and how she earns her living. While completely open and transparent about these exchanges and the costs for her travels, supplies and existence, this documentation does not transcend the fact that it is personal information made public. Sculpture 7: Beach Cleaning Trips, 2018 is a sketch in which a hand supports a dangling string of bottle caps. Below the pencil drawing, Phelps has collaged two horizontal strips of paper (recycled US currency), one for expenses, the other for income. In shades of green (income), she tallies 25 lines to represent the amount the buyer paid to purchase the sculpture ($25), as well as who bought it and when and where the objects were collected. A second strip contains 25 lines (in shades of red) for the $25 donation to Pro Activa Open Arms. The price to purchase the drawing ($1200) is hand-written and circled next to the red stripes. The work presents the fact that the original sculpture sold for $25, but the money did not go to Phelps, it went to Pro Activa Open Arms. Should the drawing of the absent sculpture sell, the $1200 would be income. Yet only half of that would actually be paid to Phelps, as 50% remains with the gallery.
Exchange value aside, the installation of wooden shelves covered with small, colorful, inexpensive sculptures made from refuse is both exhilarating and inspiring. It is hard not to want to immediately pick one (or more) and think about the ways that the money will support a cause. But how to decide? And to make things more complicated, should one support the artist as well (by buying a drawing), or make a token donation to a cause. Phelps should be applauded for cleaning the beaches and offering her artworks in exchange for donations to organizations that help people and the planet. So much of her practice is honorably good intentioned — one drawing was a fund-raiser for Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria— yet the work is also very personal. It touches on the difficulties of being an artist and a mother in today's political and economic climate while simultaneously charting her complicity in the art market. Phelps has found ways to integrate art and life by making work that is both personal and political. It is not easy to do what one loves to do and survive on that labor.