GILL ALEXANDER
CIRCUMSCRIBED #4: RECEIVER Ink on Paper, 20 x 14"
DATE COMPLETED: DECEMBER 29, 1986
TOTAL HOURS WORKED: 166
Receiver was a HUGE project! And it took almost 9 months to finish! It was a drawing that grew out of an idea. I knew I wanted a scene in which the subject was interacting with a telephone, preferably a pay phone. The way David Byrne had acted out the line in Once in a Lifetime in the Talking Heads concert movie released that year had made an impression on me: “How do I work this?” I had a vague feeling that some kind of alienation or rejection of the phone, (or the audio in the phone) was what would be most effective. I started to make this idea real by asking people I knew to pose for me. I was quickly dissatisfied. I then started to take photos of myself at multiple pay phones. I even tried to use the Portland airport as a backdrop. Nothing seemed to be working. Finally I bought a tripod for a shoot at a highly public phone outside a local sports stadium. I added the now obligatory sunglasses (“blinders”) and the walkman headphones. Think of the poster for “Tommy.” I imagined this as capturing the moment of the subject’s “uncorking” and emerging back into his actual environment. The fact that this particular phone booth had the “Avoid Hell Trust Jesus” graffiti (have faith in something not visible) was a bonus. At the time I felt very self conscious about being the subject; however, I seemed to be the only model who knew how to execute what I had been going for.
I would later develop a well structured way of creating rough drafts for all my drawings. “Receiver” was executed with some of this; but most of the heavy lifting was done during the final draft. It was time consuming and laborious. Plus I never really felt sure of what I was doing. One can see that the stippling technique has all but taken over. Just the hair remains defined by line. The highly detailed interior of the phone booth may have been what made me decide that stippling was my way forward. It consisted of its own network of dots after all. I felt enormously proud of this when it was completed, and, despite some obvious shortcomings, it remains one of my favorites to this day.
Greenville SC, 2018
DRAFT
Drawing Process
Chicago, 1988
University of Illinois Gallery, 1990
Nacogdoches, Texas 2017
Publicity for Pleiades Gallery Show
This is the "How do I work this?" Moment from Stop Making Sense. The film was very much an ambient presence at the time. There were people I knew who would mimic this hand talking to the face motion as a gestural short hand for a general attitude. I don't think I consciously wanted to reproduce this. The poses in the photo shoot suggest otherwise; but I think the pose I did ultimately select may have appealed for its congruence to this. The clarity of hindsight makes me now aware that I was going through some of my own feelings of how do I work this. I had only recently jettisoned the idea of becoming a high school teacher after a year and a half of horrifying experiences with employment agency arranged job interviews. Yes, I had always been someone who excelled in the elite academic environments which I had been privileged enough to attend; but I was never ambitious. I never really wanted to pursue the professional goals that these kinds of institutions might afford me. I never really wanted to be professional -period. I don't think I thought this way at the time; but in retrospect this a portrait of me at the moment I stepped off the path to the beautiful house in the song. What's in that phone? Perhaps every thought or stimulus that had ever made me think that I might have wanted the beautiful house in the first place. I may not have been at the where does that highway go to phase; but I was certainly in a what are these crazy expectations I have for myself moment. Do you really want to be an artist...? OK, then let's go for it. This mindset is present in Receiver in both the intense technical process that followed and the subject matter itself.
DETAILS
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