Hidden Objects / Primary Sources, Cedar Crest College, 2015

Essay for the Catalogue
by Elizabeth Johnson

     Pat Badt emphatically states, "I am not an abstract painter," and after deliberating, I have to agree with her. If you only look at the front of the paintings included in Hidden Objects/Primary Sources, you might think she's advancing the work of Abstract Expressionists; specifically, she seems to be multiplying and layering the effect of a Barnett Newman zip painting. A groundbreaking Minimalist or Color Field painter, Barnett Newman called the vertical stripes that divided his painting zips. His linear divisions replaced conventional subject matter, such as landscape, figure and still life, which reveal taste; and they suppressed gesture, which signifies the human hand or emotion. Distilling paintings into color equations, Newman pursued what he considered to be a holistic, sublime, pure and universal aesthetic by not referring to familiar realities. Working against these rules, Hidden Objects/Primary Sources links quotidian objects to the work that was derived from them, presenting Pat's primary sources--observations, stories, memories and keepsakes--as related, but subordinate to, her abstract painting.

     Pat dips her brush through a taut matrix of strings, accumulating brushstrokes that are firm and straight, but not hard-edged. She sources her color palette from unique, personal objects that she shares with us: her grandmother's nail buffer, sea glass they collected together, an invitation to a party, or the wool of a particular sweater is studied then safely stored and documented on the back side of a painting. Some of her paintings are hinged for easy flipside viewing; though she is careful to loosely define the relationship between the source objects and the painting, stating, "I am willing to tell and willing to not tell the audience what is behind the painting." She leaves the search for her sources completely up to the viewer. By removing herself and not directing but mirroring the viewer's curiosity, her work exits the realm of Abstract Expressionism, becoming instead a hybrid of sculpture, abstract and conceptual art.

     If I imagine a Pat Badt painting next to a Gerhard Richter Strip print, abstract work also indebted to Barnett Newman: Pat's striped brushwork looks textured, lush and three-dimensional in comparison. Richter creates luminous, rigid striations with image-editing software by taking a pixel-wide sample from a former painting and replicating the sample sideways. His densely striated, textile-like, digital patterns seem super-flat and hermetic compared to Pat's painted surfaces; though, both artists are attracted to blurring layered bands of color to suggest movement, speed and time passing. For each, the blur effect purifies and distills their primary sources into chromatic music. In the time it takes to look at them, Richter's prints become weightless; yet, Pat's painting/sculptures unfurl edges and corners, solidify as structures, allowing the viewer to move past the painting's surface, and explore the back and inside of an object.

     Time is of recurring importance for Badt: the paintings December, January, and February bring her primary source to the front of the painting, claiming a right hand margin for a date log. Next to a librarian's date stamp, she daubs each color she mixes as a dot--the simplest signature stamp. Clocking in and keeping track of her studio attendance reveals only the parameters of her studio practice, alluding to activities that she doesn't record. In our era of government surveillance and shrinking privacy, I find her pieces to be very satisfying, as they mock managers and bosses and fold conceptual art into her pieces. I'm reminded of On Kawara's Date paintings, part of his Today series. On Kawara and Pat Badt both: elevate the dates they record, slow the rhythm of time passing and

objectify the fact that we share time. Pat's use of the verso in her work reminds me of Kawara's pasting the corresponding day's newspaper clipping inside each Date painting's special built storage box. A painter, sculptor and conceptual artist who wrote postcards to friends stating simply "I'm still alive" from cities all over the world, On Kawara's use of the newspaper runs parallel to Pat Badt's inclusion of quotidian objects, as both artists sandwich the experiencing time between autobiography and fiction.

     And speaking of books, Pat creates one-of-a-kind, art books that lightly entertain: a volume of airplane window views with a drawn shade on one page; a collection of puns, Band adages for bandages; a map that collapses into book; and swatches of paint chips are sewn onto pages. Her work references handling books, as each has a front cover, a back cover and room inside for a mysterious, indeterminate middle. Her painted objects at first resist, then as you understand the sources, they reveal themselves like short stories, memories, haiku poems, magic tricks or dreams. Pat says a good piece snaps and I imagine a single hand closing cardboard covers, or the pause to gaze at a book's cover art after you have finished reading. Pat rifling through one of her pieces--a wooden box snuggly fitted with custom-made remembrance cards--recalls library card catalogues, the clack of the cards, chance discoveries and then returning the cards like fish back to the sea. The contained disorder, the way she relates color to particular people, seasons and experiences causes me to pause, subvert the visual and sense stories instead of read them.

    

List of Work:

1.     Sweet Life so far, oil on support, 60 x 48, 2014

2.     Sedona, oil on support, 36 x 18, 2014

3.     August Blooms Yellow in the Butterfly Garden, with hidden object, 36 x 18, 2013-14

4.     One Little Cloud, oil on support, 212 x 24, 6 x 9, 2014

5.     Topo, oil on support with hidden objects, 30 x 24, 2013

6.     Melba Toast (from the Nana Series), with hidden object, 30 x 30, 2013

7.     For Pops,
            a. (K)night, oil on alumalite mounted on wooden box with                                                         hidden object, 16 x 12

                   b. Curtains, oil on alumalite mounted on wooden box with                                                         hidden object, 16 x 12
            c. 7/5, oil on alumalite mounted on wooden box with hidden                                                         object, 16 x 12

                   d. Clubhouse, oil on alumalite mounted on wooden box with                                                         hidden object, 16 x 12, $700
            e. Beautiful Women, oil on alumalite mounted on wooden                                                         box with hidden object, 16 x 12
            f. Beach, oil on alumalite mounted on wooden box with                                                         hidden object, 16 x 12
            g. Battleship, oil on alumalite mounted on wooden box with                                                         hidden object, 16 x 12

8.     16 Waking Hours, oil on support, 18 x 18, 2012

9.      1-5 Monotypes, 2014

10. December, January, acrylic, 20 x 16, 2014-2015

11. I Remember series (1-9): oil on support, 12 x 9 

               a. Styrofoam Cup

               b. Her Nails

               c. LA evening

               d. Stone Harbor

               e. Nail Buffer

               f. Pressed Shirt

               g. Wehr's the Dam

               h. Collecting Sea Glass

               i. Mohair Throw

               j. Small Cabbage Whites

COLUMN:

Night Web, 2014 

Litter of String, variable, 2015

      VITRINE:
Laura’s Torah, 1998         

Band Adages, 2014
Memory Swatches, 2012 

2592, 2014