Cody Tracy

First Year Review - Cody Tracy - SIUC MFA MCMA - Spring 2020’ 

This page contains works that I have completed over the course of my first year at SIU in the MFA MCMA program. The themes of these works are driven from a life of a laborer/working class artist. In these pieces I invoke gestures, glimpses, and representations of a labor life. To me, it is essential that laborers and specifically labor artists gain more recognition within the tradition of the major art institutions such as a University, gallery, film festival, publishing, etc.. Labor has been the key function to my life whether it be the economic prosperity that IronWorking gave my grandfather, the years of dishwashing, print shop worker, fast food employee, and more. This is why I exemplify such stories, images, and attempts at narrowing in on what it means to labor in this new century. I have decided deliberately and with large intent to exercise these themes in as many mediums as I could find. The power of an MFA program such as SIU’s is that I am able to cross examine many different mediums and have access to many different studio spaces. In this portfolio of work you will see video works, printmaking work, installation work, and an artist who is narrowing in on what it means to be a laborer, a working class person, and to be an artist at the same time.

Video Works -

These works are one of the main reasons I found myself applying to MFA programs in Media Arts. My combined academic past of Media arts practice and Creative Writing have begun to collide in a manifestation of poetry, prose, writing, and film making. The seemingly crudeness of these images are intentional in examining the purpose of production film, documentary, and the more narrow viewership of the filmmaker. In these films I am attempting to prosper more conversation out of what cinema is capable of doing with imagery, voice, and sound.

Printmaking - Gum Bichromate

Nearly half of my working life has been in some way involved with print shops. I was a printmaker in t-shirt based shops under miserable and clearly unsafe conditions. Although, I enjoyed the job, I never felt that I had the proper relationship with printmaking. This is why I took on fine art printmaking within my first year to explore the differences of the two worlds and mostly to explore images themselves in a slower process. Within film making (especially digital) I find that I can be rushing through images without considering each individual frame within the footage. This investigation of printing has helped me examine more specifically towards an image and what it has to say. The themes of these images are an investigation within the language of working hands.

“A Map Of Our Lives, So Far” - Creative Cartography

This piece is a creative “map” of sorts that combines poetry, imagery, and naturally made materials I found in Carbondale. The ink is made from a process of reducing walnuts over many days. As I was navigating through my first weeks at SIU I wanted to make a mark, or memory about where I was. So I created this all in one memory-map-poem.

The Last of The 21st Century Dishwashers - An Interactive Video Installation (In collaboration with Andrew Beyke)

This installation was an exploration on changing the intersection between art gallery and working space. I was attempting to create a situation where rather than simply showing an image of a dishwasher I wanted to incorporate physical elements of an industrial dishwashing space. The installation was set up in a room with a narrow doorway. When viewers walked through the doorway they triggered a system that would turn the video and audio on illuminating the dishes hanging from the ceiling, in an otherwise blacked out room. Each video lasted exactly 21 seconds and viewers were given no instruction on whether to stay or leave the space. This was not a site specific installation but rather an attempt to use the environments available to us.

Long Exposure Photography

These long exposures were created by projecting images on to a wall and then setting the shutter speed way down. I then walked into frame to create these strange pieces. With this work I am again considering the position of the artist within the work itself.