Stan Shellabarger's endurance walk book

Ann Shafer

It is a truth universally acknowledged that performance art is difficult to collect. Just as with dance or music, when the performance is over, there remains nothing solid. Sure, there might be a recording or video, but the thing itself evaporates as soon as it is done. With performance art, often the tangible, collectible thing is some sort of documentation of it—usually photographs. Rarely does one find a work that is a product of the performance—an indexical work, if you will. When Tru Ludwig and I stumbled across Western Exhibitions’ booth at the Editions and Artists Books Fair (E/AB) in 2011, gallery owner Scott Speh had Stan Shellabarger’s book front and center.
 
Stan Shellabarger is known for extended, endurance performances, say walking in a circle for twelve hours, marking the earth and a moment in time. Taking the idea of creating a drawing on the ground further, Shellabarger also walks in shoes outfitted with graphite or sandpaper on the soles and performs an endurance walk on paper or wood. In this way, the artwork is not only the performance itself, but also the drawing created in the process. Like many before him, Shellabarger wanted to be able to create more than one object from a given performance, and, no surprise, he turned to printmaking.
 
The method Shellabarger came up with to record a performance is known as a reductive or suicide woodcut. In this method, a multi-color print is created using a single block by carving away more of the surface in between printing each color. After drawing the outline of the image on the woodblock, first any areas that are to remain the color of the paper are carved away and the first color is printed. It is critical to print more sheets than you think you will need for the planned edition because you will undoubtedly have several mishaps (that’s where the suicide part comes in). After the first color is printed and the block is cleaned, the artist carves away any area that will remain that first color. After printing the second color, the steps are repeated. In the final cutting, usually all that is left is the key or black line, which brings the whole composition together.
 
Shellabarger used the reduction method but in a slightly different way. The woodblock has the various layers of image cut away by the artist walking on it with sandpaper-soled shoes rather than by carving in the conventional manner. For this walking performance piece, there were multiple boards laid out on the floor and walked upon. After each board was printed, after every walking session and every different color printing, the prints pulled from each board were assembled into accordion-fold books. When fully opened and unfolded, the book reaches eighteen feet.
 
Before beginning to walk, Shellabarger took the boards to Spudnik Press, a cooperative printshop in Chicago, printed the first color, the dark red, ending up with a flat red on each sheet. After walking for a period of time (at least four hours), Shellabarger printed the second color, the dark blue. He repeated the process, wearing away more and more of the blocks by sanding them with his shuffle, and printed each successive layer: green, then medium blue, then finishing with light blue.
 
I included Shellabarger’s book in my exhibition at the BMA called On Paper: Spin, Crinkle, Pluck, which was on view April 19–September 20, 2015. Each of the objects in the exhibition was indexical, meaning the image was the product of its own making. The action verbs in the exhibition title refer to three of the works in the show: spin for Trisha Brown’s softground pirouettes in Untitled Set One, 2006 (BMA 2007.336–338, and the subject of an earlier post); crinkle for Tauba Auerbach’s Plate Distortion II, 2011 (BMA 2012.198); and pluck for Ann Hamilton’s warp & weft I, 2007–08 (BMA 2009.128). We lacked enough room in the gallery to install Shellabarger’s book on the floor, which would enable viewers to really grasp how it was made. Instead, we installed it running up the wall, which brought it into a very nice conversation with the Trisha Brown prints on the adjacent wall.
 
The museum made a video about the work for its 100th Anniversary celebration, BMA Voices. Here is the link to that video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OU4pAdE2z2Q.
 
Stan Shellabarger (American, born 1968)
Untitled, 2011
Accordion–bound volume of six–color reduction woodblock print
Book: 381 x 559 mm. (15 x 22 in.); sheet (unfolded): 381 x 5588 mm. (15 x 220 in.)
Baltimore Museum of Art: Print, Drawing & Photograph Society Fund, with proceeds derived from the 2012 Contemporary Print Fair, BMA 2012.190

Stan Shellabarger (American, born 1968), Untitled, 2011, accordion–bound volume of six–color reduction woodblock print, book: 381 x 559 mm. (15 x 22 in.); sheet (unfolded): 381 x 5588 mm. (15 x 220 in.), Baltimore Museum of Art: Print, Drawing & Photograph Society Fund, with proceeds derived from the 2012 Contemporary Print Fair, BMA 2012.190

Installation shot at BMA: Stan Shellabarger (American, born 1968), Untitled, 2011, accordion–bound volume of six–color reduction woodblock print, book: 381 x 559 mm. (15 x 22 in.); sheet (unfolded): 381 x 5588 mm. (15 x 220 in.), Baltimore Museum of Art: Print, Drawing & Photograph Society Fund, with proceeds derived from the 2012 Contemporary Print Fair, BMA 2012.190

Stan Shellabarger (American, born 1968), Untitled, 2011, accordion–bound volume of six–color reduction woodblock print, book: 381 x 559 mm. (15 x 22 in.); sheet (unfolded): 381 x 5588 mm. (15 x 220 in.), Western Exhibitions, Chicago

Stan Shellabarger, Untitled Performance (Autumnal Equinox 1994), Madison, WI. On the Autumnal Equinox Shellabarger paced east to west in a straight-line from sunrise to sunset on the lawn of a former astrological observatory. The twelve-hour performance left a narrow path of dead grass on the observatory’s lawn. This mark was visible until the following spring. Photo courtesy of Western Exhibitions.

Stan Shellabarger. Untitled Performance (Sanding 2002) Chicago, IL. Shellabarger paced on a wooden walkway thirty feet by two feet for approximately one hundred and twenty hours. The soles of his shoes were covered with sixty grit sandpaper so as he paced he eroded the surface of the walkway. Eventually he wore a depression over an inch deep into the surface of walkway. Photo courtesy of Western Exhibitions.

Stan Shellabarger. Untitled Performance (Sanding 2002) Chicago, IL. Shellabarger paced on a wooden walkway thirty feet by two feet for approximately one hundred and twenty hours. The soles of his shoes were covered with sixty grit sandpaper so as he paced he eroded the surface of the walkway. Eventually he wore a depression over an inch deep into the surface of walkway. Photo courtesy of Western Exhibitions.

Stan Shellabarger. Untitled (Walking Book 14, 2201 S. Union, 3rd Floor, Chicago, IL) 2008, graphite on archival paper, waxed MDF covers, 15 x 15 inches closed, 15 x 337 in. open. Photo courtesy of Western Exhibitions.