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<\/a>John O\u2019Connell\u2019s new work fascinates on several levels: they are abstracted 3-D compositions with spare painted portions that beg for lots of time to absorb. Mark-making and writing are there but mostly obscured beyond recognition; inexplicable cuts are evident in the surfaces of the structures, some modular sections are almost sled-like in construction, others squared off. \u00a0\u201cIt started maybe a year, year and a half ago,\u201d says the artist. \u201cAll these new ideas, all the possibilities, all the new strategies that can be folded into this work: That\u2019s what it\u2019s all about for me \u2013 making things that I haven\u2019t seen yet.\u201d<\/p>\nThe majority of this new work was in a recent solo show at NAU Art Museum in Flagstaff,\u00a0A Subjective Archaeology,<\/em>\u00a0including massive pieces as big as 15 feet long. A selection of more modestly-sized work is featured this month in Salt Lake City at A Gallery\u2019s exhibit of the artist,\u00a0Fabricated<\/em>, where the abstract visual vocabulary the University of Utah professor has been refining for years crashes into the basic construction skills learned in the postindustrial New England of his youth. The results are impressive, a high-water mark for a prolific artist whose journey, sometimes angry, frequently spiritual, has led him to see painting not as visual representation but a form of existential re-presentation.<\/p>\n A misconception about this artist\u2019s work is that it is made up of found materials. The wood, in particular, looks aged, much of it like pallets \u201creclaimed\u201d from a chain-link-fenced junkyard guarded by angry pit bulls. In fact, O\u2019Connell always uses new materials. \u201cThat\u2019s a kind of conceptual underpinning for this work,\u201d he says. \u201cHistorically my work is about the idea of how we put together a sense of identity to interact within the world. So, I identify myself in terms of my gender, in terms of my socioeconomic status, my ethnicity, my nationality \u2013 I kind of put all those things together . . .\u00a0 so that I have this ego that walks through the world and is able to act in the world,\u201d he explains.<\/p>\n \u201cThis work questions those kinds of narratives. It sits there and says, \u2018Is that really true? The stories I tell about myself, are those true? What about the stories that society tells about me or even the stories that society tells about itself?\u201d he asks.<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea is that nothing is found, nothing is authentic. These surfaces that look like they may have 100 or 200 years of history on them, the reality is the only history that is there is the history I put there. It is a true surface, it is wood, but at the same time it was made yesterday of completely new material. . . . I never put in anything real. If there\u2019s a rusted nail in there, I make the nails rust. There\u2019s nothing that\u2019s a natural authentic thing.<\/p>\n \u201cOn a more personal note,\u201d he adds, \u201cI want to explore what I tell about myself, what I ask about myself. Is that true? And how true is that? And when I realize it\u2019s just something I\u2019ve been handed by somebody, by culture, by my parents, by school, then I get to renegotiate that; I get to tell a new story,\u201d O\u2019Connell states flatly.<\/p>\n Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, O\u2019Connell grew up in the Northeast and never lived in a house that was less than a hundred years old. Now he lives here in another one: a spotless yet charming and comfortable place where the shelves near the dining room are filled with captivating art books that would take an uninterrupted decade to peruse. That surely would be considered time well spent. The very large studio he built behind his home in 2006 would have been bigger still if zoning had permitted.<\/p>\n There is a garden in the back, too: strictly flowers, not a vegetable to be had. \u00a0\u201cBeautiful, useless stuff,\u201d he says. \u201cI grew up in an urban place; gardening wasn\u2019t really on the menu.\u201d<\/p>\n He was an Irish kid in a big Irish neighborhood. \u201cThere was a lot of poetry but there was a lot of brutality in this place also. And so instead of me expressing that into the world I express that in [the studio].\u201d His father was an engineer (something O\u2019Connell would later study); his mother helped raise four children \u201con a woman\u2019s wages working in high-tech production,\u201d he says. There wasn\u2019t much to spare. \u201cBoth of them did the best they could with what they had,\u201d he recalls. \u201cI never wanted for food or clothes or a place to live.\u201d<\/p>\n When O\u2019Connell was 18, his father suffered a stroke that would leave him progressively more disabled and his son progressively more bewildered — and angry. His dad\u2019s loss of language affected O\u2019Connell profoundly. He would die 22 years later, by then severely debilitated. That led O\u2019Connell to some existential queries: What does it mean to be in this world? What am I in the world? \u201cIs there any resolving of that? Probably not. But the way I was taught was to just get better and better questions,\u201d the artist recalls.<\/p>\n \u201cSo I would make my work about being angry but I would be actually angry. I\u2019m making marks on the work with a hockey stick and with a hatchet and it\u2019s not a representation of that, it\u2019s a re-presentation of that.\u201d<\/p>\n This stems, he says from the Dionysian concept of how something is being re-presented \u2013 \u201cWe all get together and we drink a lot of wine and rather than some symbolic idea of the god appearing the god would actually appear \u2013 that kind of idea. I\u2019m not making a picture of history in a painting; I\u2019m making a painting that has history.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I can express that in a symbolic, spiritual, ritualistic way, I can walk through the world and be OK and not have a problem with anything directly. I just think those experiences, the narrative, have colored where I was and where I came from so there was a good amount to process. So instead of prayer or good old Buddhist meditation that\u2019s what I do to negotiate the world and find my relationship to divinity, to people, to all those things. \u201c<\/p>\n He works on between five and 10 pieces at once \u201cso there\u2019s a kind of mass production \u2013 the energy\u2019s moving from here to here . . . I like that because I\u2019m kind of a nervous guy. I used to be a figurative artist, very much into representation. Eventually I realized that for this organism, that is me, this is not the right movement. I need to be moving around and burning the energy. Driving nails in, hitting things is kind of spiritual, therapeutic; however you want to think about it.\u201d<\/p>\n In his own life, he says he thinks of art merely as a spiritual practice. He terms a studio a \u201cbracketed space, a different place,\u201d saying he emotionally processes a lot in there: \u201cthe loss of my father, the loss of a relationship, all those things are figuring out how I\u2019m supposed to act. And I do it on a daily basis. So I\u2019m always in there and I\u2019m always thinking about what\u2019s going on in my life: what has tension, what doesn\u2019t have tension, it\u2019s kind of a meditation and a moving through.\u201d<\/p>\n He says organizing beforehand is central. \u201cYou can\u2019t stand there and mix a little blue, a little green . . . no, you can\u2019t do that. So I organize big vats of paint [he works in water-based paint and materials exclusively] so I don\u2019t have to do that when I\u2019m actually in the throes of the work.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd then when I\u2019m doing that, there\u2019s also that me that steps back and says I like that, I don\u2019t like that \u2013 just like we do in the world,\u201d he says with a smile. \u201cAnd I\u2019m going to get rid of that and I\u2019m going to hold on to that. So it\u2019s a history and a relationship of these multiple states. A kind of binary oppositional state that says \u2018this is good and this is bad\u2019 and a kind of much more emotional kind of unconscious state that says, \u2018I\u2019m on the train and I\u2019m riding it.\u2019<\/p>\n