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72
2002
wooden board, polaroid
Travis Lee had stated in his speech after 72 that “People spend so much time during their day thinking what they are going to do, they are lost in this moment. Everywhere they go they are somewhere else.” Thus was one of the themes of 72. Travis Lee for 5.5 days quit eating and for 72 hours contained himself in a three foot by six foot by 4 foot wooden box. He wore eye and ear protection to be in complete isolation. “I thought going in that I would be able to think. To be in the moment. But the longer it went on, the less I had to think about. I realized that most of the things I thought about were what I was going to do, or thought in reaction to my environment. In a void of space, I had exactly that to react to--nothing.”
72 was an early project that started to explore themes that Travis Lee would revisit- themes such as isolation, discipline, and self-determination.
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Scott's Folly
2002
wooden board, polaroid
During the end of Travis Lee’s senior year in college his painting professor had an accident involving a saw blade. Later the next week, after a trip to the hospital and recovery time, Travis Lee helped his professor Scott Anderson cut the rest of the frames he was making for his wife. The first board he grabbed was the one latent with his own blood. Scott paused for a moment as he was about to put the board into the saw blade. He couldn’t do it. Scott said “It’s bad karma to cut this board,” while looking at the object intensely.
Travis Lee instantly asked if he could have the board. Special objects are a significant concept in Travis Lee’s work. “There is that story that when the first astronauts came back from space they carried back rocks that were in space with them. These rocks became valuables because of a place and time they occupied. They were atomically the same. I find something very interesting about this kind of nostalgic thinking, for I attach nostalgia to most of the objects around me, whether I like it or not.”
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Very Strong Feelings
2002
30 photographs in frame, each 4” x 6”
painting 8’ x 10’
Very Strong Feelings is a good example of a conglomeration of the many different kinds of processes that Travis Lee uses. The photographs are a documentation of the painting. “I had learned very early that most of art seemed to be just as much about documentation and the way this documentation was presented. Most of an artist’s artwork will get seen more in a different medium such as in a photograph rather than in the flesh....At the time I painted this, I thought art was about the process, and to show the viewer the final outcome of the process--I thought this took away some of the magic. I wanted to show them the decision I made at stages of the paintings, to include them in the loop.”
This started out as a very emotional painting. Travis Lee has used art as an outlet for his emotions. At the time he painted the first phrase, he became so saddened by what he had let out, he had to leave. He came back days later and intellectually painted what he had went through: “Very Strong Feelings.”
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My First Cigarette
2001-2003
collage resting on wall 30" x 40"
6 polaroid photos of Travis's first cigarette
pedestal (which he stood on for the performance) with cigarette butt
Travis smokes his first cigarette, the performancepart of My First Cigarette
April 30th, 2003 performance
Mitchell Place Gallery
Muncie Indiana.
Growing up, Travis's parents smoked cigarettes. Travis never tried it because he saw all the ill effects--coughing in middle of the night, everything in the home smelling like smoke (even your hair and skin), yellowing of everything in the house, etc. But the mistique of smoking always wanted to make Travis smoke. The packaging always was appealing. For 2 years he collected cigarette packettes and assembled this collage.
Travis Lee’s first solo professional exhibition (T.I.W.R.M.L.T.S.W.M.H.I.B.D.) came three days before he graduated college. On April 30th, 2003, the day of the show opening, Travis Lee smoked his first cigarette as part of the cigarette piece. He coughed 3 times and everyone had a good time laughing at him and with him.
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Rascist Band-Aid Series
2001
five canvases 30” x 40”
Travis Lee was putting on a Band-Aid one day after a small accident and was paying attention to how the color of the Band-Aid did not match
his hand. “I thought about Band-Aids covering up blemishes but on a person with a dark skin tone the blemish would stick out.” After some
research Travis Lee found out that Band-Aids were invented in the early 1900’s . The Band-Aid color is symbolic of racial equality in the world, for now, Band Aid makes different color and clear band-aids.
The process of coming up with this idea illustrates that ideas can come from any source, if looked at in the right light.
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Sophistication of Taste
2002
cookies and milk, ingredients on dishes
A lot of Travis Lee’s work revolves around the idea of judgement and personal taste. In this project he took the idea head on and made some cookies. There were 7 ingredients in the cookies and each was displayed on dishes in the same proportion that was in the cookies.
“Taste is such a wierd thing. And not just about taste in food, but taste in clothes, or style or in artwork. In this project I thought that, you know, we take all these separate ingredients and we put them together and it tastes good. But what if we were to try all these ingredients separately? I think food taste is the same for style, it is a certain formula or conglomeration of things that made ‘good’ style. And doing this, judging these separate elements and putting them together to say something was good or bad is very sophisticated.”
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Thoughts of Her While She’s Away (in London)
2001
semen on paper
18” x 24”
A work part object/part performance.
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installation at Mitchell Place |
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Mirror For Girls, Mirror For Boys
2002
two mirrors
“I had just finished using the John one day and I was staring at myself in the mirror. then became aware of myself in this mirror in this bathroom. I imagined myself in this space standing close to a reflection of myself and I became very awkward. How weird is it that after I go to the bathroom I look in the mirror. I didn’t say take a drink of water and look in the mirror. This looking seemed to be exclusively in the bathroom and nowhere else and it seems so seperate. What did going to the bathroom have to do with looking in the mirror? How much time had I wasted looking in the mirror in my lifetime watching myself age and grow older? I notice that most of the time I only look at my face in the mirror. I thought of some of the girlfriends I had had and how they used to look at themself full length at the contours of their body. They were much more aware of their body than I was. The concept for Mirror For Girls, Mirror For Boys hit me like a bolt of lightning.”
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Washington Street betweenMcKinley and Calvert
(Muncie Pothole Series)
2002
plaster
2.5’ diamter
Muncie, a town in central Indiana is known for its terrible roads. |
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[squares]
2003-on going
mixed media
5” x 5”
Travis Lee is perhaps if anything a collector. He had collecting tiny little composition and scraps and didn’t have anything to do with them. He
stumbled accross a small 5 inch white square one day and placed the Heinz ketchup packet on it. “That used ketchup packet really started
that project. It was a way to use a similar size but to apply everything to it--a pattern, a phrase, junk.”
Perhaps Travis Lee likes to do the squares because he can explore a variety of issues with the format--from ideas to composition to language, from nonsensical to witty to completely serious.
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I will be an honest and nice person
2003-2004
pen on paper
8.5" x 11" notepad
Part nostalgism for childhood/Part romance for being the best you can be--without achievement for either.
?=Are you an honest and nice person after completing this project?
t.lee=Actually the words honest and nice are subject to interpretation.
The sentence was written a total of 5051 times.
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Cheese Barbie
2000
acrylic, wax, carboard, acetate
“I was thinking of celebrities. How they were just used and only for a certain time in their life. People like Britney Spears or Mandy Moore--they are used and then dropped. They are like cheese--they have a good time frame for being good, but if left out too long in the heat decompose and are seen as garbage. Many people see the woman in our society as a Cheese Barbie.” |
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Happy-Go-Lucky Photography Series
2003
polariod transferred photographs, envelopes
This project is one of Travis Lee favorites. He liked the way he was able to combine his writing with images in a format that would interest the viewer. The project is honest, containing all the information that Travis could think about each picture. And it also is entertaining, which is something that Travis Lee thinks art should do.
“I really hate how art demanded people’s attention. It didn’t earn its keep. It didn’t meet the viewer halfway and sympathize with the viewer.”
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eleven exclamation points
zines, stickers
2003 - present
Eleven exclamation points had many names over the years: Achieving Absurdity, Humor Art Movement, XXX, but it always got down to one basic principle: Combining serious things with the absurd. It was a way to experiement with design and idea, and have something really meaningful right next to something that was completely meaningless. !!!!!!!!!!! explored context, breaking visual and design rules, as well as a host of other themes.
As a sticker, it was placed in situtuations that would brink attention to an ad, a broken egg on the floor, a used condom, anything.
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HATE
2004
HATE was a campaign to show how illogical hate is. You can hate someone for anything. HATE was sent as a package to many people to remind themselves, it doesn't matter what people think of you!
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And...Senior Thesis
interview of Travis Lee by
Jonathon Rothstein
Thursday, April, 24th, 2003
20 pages
This is a digital version of Travis Lee’s Senior Project and Honors College Thesis for Ball State University.
Travis Lee’s thesis setup was an interview. “The first page has a list of words. I tried to clarify my philosophy in such a way that it could be read in a more formal pattern, but everything I was trying to communicate was so intertwined and so diverse that it was impossible for me to do it. I really stressed out about it. I took all my writing and put it into catagories, but that didn’t work either. The catagories, after my mentor made me realize it, was what my work was about. I set the bulk of the paper up as an interview because a conversation creates a narrative.”
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