If you live in Atlanta, chances are you’ve encountered the work of Lauri Stallings. There aren’t many contemporary choreographers, or many cities, one could say this about—a testament to the complicated, synergistic, multi-platform relationship that Stallings has with Atlanta.

Stallings first began choreographing work late in her career as a dancer with Ballet BC and Hubbard Street Dance Chicago. After a three-year stint as choreographer-in-residence at the Atlanta Ballet, Stallings remained in Atlanta where she founded the company gloATL in 2009. Through the company’s numerous public performances, Stallings has sought to engage the city in all of its aspects—its most central, trafficked and familiar places as well as its tucked away, odd, and hidden pockets. Whether in a busy shopping mall, an empty public pool, the High Museum’s central plaza, or an odd drainage gulley of Piedmont Park, Stallings’ work utilizes an intriguing gestural and visual language that encompasses everything from the erotic and the absurd to the grotesque and the unabashedly beautiful, drawing in an ever-widening circle of viewers, participants, and collaborators.

 ANDREW ALEXANDER: How does new work begin for you? I imagine it’s somewhat different each time, but is there some way to generalize?

 LAURI STALLINGS: There’s something that I sort of allow to happen. I guess the best word would be ‘intuition.’ Surprisingly, it’s a mindful one: It’s mental. I’m not saying I’m always aware of it, but it is something that happens. I never know when, but it is prior to getting in the studio, the literal process of generating material as a choreographer. The consistent thing is: I’m always surprised at what comes to me first. That’s what can’t be generalized. But intuition is the one thing I don’t second-guess, and I think that comes from my parents. They kept telling us over and over again, “All you have are your instincts.” I’m very grateful they kept telling me that.

gloATL performs Float, 2011, Photo: Karley Sullivan

AA: Do you have a clear picture from the beginning what a work will look like? Or is it more a matter of putting the various materials together and then seeing what you have? For instance, your work “Search for the Exceptional” (2012) involved a lot of very different elements—a defunct public swimming pool in an economically disadvantaged neighborhood, projected film by Micah Stansell, dancers, music.

LS: “Search for the Exceptional” was genuinely a public work. The public as in: the neighborhood, the city Department of Parks and Recreation, the Boys’ and Girls’ Club across the street, the landscape company that took care of the park while we were there, our volunteers. They informed the work. I went into that space with a team of individuals who were invested in refurbishing the pool, opening its doors back to the community. That, in turn, became as much a part of the work as the sound design, the filmmaker’s materials. That’s process. That’s public process, the artists and the army allowing the process to inform the dialogue that’s interpreted through artistic mediums. In that case, it was gesture and sound and film, a bit of theatricality and imagery.

You ask me could I see it before? I could see because of the womb of the pool, the literal shape of it. It was a literal ‘L’ and the sense of depth, the craters and erosion that had happened over time. Those were my early informants. That’s what remained with me throughout the process. It didn’t really morph or change with the end result. It’s what I entered the space evaluating and connecting with. As we left I was still evaluating and connecting with the space in a very similar way.

AA: Some of what you do is studio-based work for the proscenium stage. That must feel like a very different process. Or does it?

LS: The proscenium stage is all I knew up until four years ago. Really, it’s what I grew up with, it’s where my experiences as a performing artist existed and thrived, and where I acquired knowledge of conversation and dialogue with a public. I think it’s essentially where I got to know myself and my own needs, where I communicated from. But the proscenium stage tends to be in the shape of a box. I think I just am responding to the planet as a round surface: It’s curvy, it’s soft. It likes waves and wind and things that move. Fundamentally, it’s trying to get human beings to respond in that way. I just remember thinking, “What if this space were softer, what if this space weren’t so finite, what if there was only one wall, maybe there’s just a ceiling and no walls, or maybe the lid was off.” When I started thinking about that, I realized that most of the time when I was performing, when I was on stage with Hubbard Street, I was sort of using everything. That included my eyelashes and my tongue and—

AA: Is this something choreographers were telling you to do?

LS: [laughs] No. Oftentimes, they would say, “Could you not use that?!” But my body had its interest in letting things in. It goes back to my childhood; my parents allowed many creatures into the house. Just a real sense of fluidity, a welcoming sense. My intrigue with letting people in would become something I was invested in finding through an art form. When I’m free of stage aesthetics and conventions, it enables me to take greater risks and be more receptive to my surroundings. Particularly in the migratory works—as an artist—I am exposed, completely vulnerable. I become honest; armed with only my body and philosophies. 

But I also take those philosophies with me into a studio. And I think those philosophies allow the dancer who feels safer with that fixed point of view to at least open up to possibilities that there are other ways of reaching the public. There are other ways of expressing themselves. The public doesn’t always see how those philosophies that happen in a public space could also be current on the more traditional proscenium stage. These philosophies have little to do with dance and more to do with the contemporary individual, that person who is curious, the person who is allowing unexpectedness into their eyes, their ears.

gloATL performs Liquid Culture, 2011, Photo: Andrew Alexander

AA: Is there a way to measure success or failure with a work? Would you ever sit down and say, “This work was more successful than that one—”

LS: I’m human. My heart breaks. But no matter the critical response, as long as the team I’m working with can collectively identify genuine threads that have informed us as we move forward, that to me is success. Other ways to measure success are more personal. Others have to do with things I’m very passionate about for the city of Atlanta, for the entire city. I have a responsibility–we all do–to promote dialogue and to find ways to support it. At some point in my existence here, I became just as passionate and invested and interested in the entire city itself, well beyond just my work.

AA: Would you feel that way about wherever you settle?

LS: It’s just Atlanta.

AA: That’s interesting to me, because I think Atlanta has been a bit ‘off the map’ when it comes to contemporary art, certainly when it comes to contemporary dance. That’s not an assessment of the work being done here, just my thought on what the perception is from outside. If you stopped someone on the street in New York or Chicago–certainly if you did this ten years ago–and asked them ‘What’s happening in Atlanta?’ they probably wouldn’t have known, or even have cared to know.

LS: I don’t think so either. And that’s inspiring, right? That’s one reason for the whole of Atlanta to be understood and recognized as a place, as a home for sensitivity, for curiosity, for genuine courage to respond to themes in the current world. It inspired me. That’s partly one of the reasons I stayed here and began gloATL. I just thought ‘There has to be this export.’

The last few years, everyone’s efforts and investment has started to change the direction of the city. I can feel that. It’s very exciting. I can at least feel the faces starting to turn to look towards Atlanta. Some are turned all the way around, like ‘What the hell is going on?’ There’s so much progress and achievement on everyone’s part. But we need to find ways to include everyone in the dialogue. Everyone in Atlanta has the time and the resources to be included in this conversation because ultimately this conversation is about the city of Atlanta. It’s worthy of that. It’s definitely the reason I’m here. It’s such a deep passion, and it’s so inspiring here. The artist almost gets lost in the potential for Atlanta as a place for conversation. We start to lose ourselves. The mission of the city starts to be my mission as an artist. That’s the beauty of Atlanta. It asks that much of you. The level of investment it asks of you, it almost becomes a drug. 

gloATL performs Liquid Culture, 2011, Photo: Andrew Alexander

AA: You’ve created a lot of different platforms for work here. There’s gloATL, a dance season, a biennial dance event, public works, installations, ticketed events, works for the stage, collaborations, discussions, workshops, etc. Would it be possible to identify a parallel aim to all of these things? Are they all leading to the same end?

LS: I’m fascinated with this time, this moment right now—all things contemporary. I think all the works have that in common. What else they have in common is that they’re ambitious—near arrogant—with the belief that dance, universal gesture, is the center of the universe. It’s our catalyst. It has been since the beginning of time, well before we could have common language. That’s what ties them all together. I don’t know what it’s called—it’s beyond a “belief”—but I’ve always thought that my movement and my gestures were impactful and meaningful. I am invested in empowering the viewer and the artist with that sense of ownership of their physical being, of the choices that they can make in expressing themselves with their entire body. I’m one of many artists proposing to the world these types of experiences. I think thus far it’s unclear where they belong because everyone’s so interested in the rock, the permanent. We actually thrive in the fact that this is ephemeral; that this moment will not exist again. We like that. We are embracing fluidity. All of the works have that.

AA: But don’t you ever get frustrated with ephemerality? If someone asks you, ‘What was “Livers” like?’ I suppose there’s video and photography to show them, but the thing itself, all of your work, is gone. It’s not like a sculpture or a painting.

gloATL performs Physical Suites on a Theme of Non-Fiction, at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, 2011, Photo: Andrew Alexander

LS:  But there’s always still that one question ‘Why are we here?’ I haven’t found anyone who knows the answer. This is just the best way I know to ask that question, through contemporary performance. That’s the loveliest thing about making dances. You have that dialogue with something that always has a feeling, and always can respond. The human, that flesh interest, is by far the deepest investment. And the process does something to you. That’s the point of process. It’s such a gift to get to spend my life in process, so close to those things that turn us on and off, that break our heart and mend it … Something tells me that the mystery of life, that one question that still remains, “Why are we here?” is inside of us: A complex, but not complicated, daily voyage. It’s a dialogue between us and the places we inhabit.

Andrew Alexander is an Atlanta-based arts writer. His work appears in Art Papers, Burnaway, ArtsATL, Creative Loafing, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and on his blog andrewalexanderwriter.com.

 
Presented in partnership with BOMB Magazine—the artist’s voice since 1981.

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Installation view, Jackie Saccoccio, Portraits, Eleven Rivington, NY, 2012.

Jackie Saccoccio was born in Providence, RI, and received her MFA from The Art Institute of Chicago in 1988. She is currently living and working at the American Academy in Rome, along with her husband and current Fellow Carl D’Alvia. She was a Rome Prize recipient in 2005 and was awarded a Guggenheim in 2000. She had a highly regarded 2012 show, Portraits, at Eleven Rivington, New York, and has forthcoming shows at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City later this spring, and the Museo d’Arte Contemporanea in Genova, Italy in 2014.

The following is our correspondence about her process, recent shifts, influences, and working in Rome.

Ridley Howard: As a viewer, it’s almost impossible to retrace your steps. For starters, how do you go about making your paintings? They can feel so disorienting, difficult to pin down visually.

Jackie Saccoccio: I use paint in varying degrees of liquidity and apply layer upon layer, with anywhere from 10-50+ passes. It’s an additive occupation. I mean, I cover things, but I rarely edit or wipe off. I want the canvas to record the entire passage of the painting experience, including whatever self-doubt and bravado that went into its making. I guess that’s my nod to Malcolm Morley. Using the trope of photo-realist gridding, he executed such tremendous temporal evocations, with each grid reflecting the gestural experience of the moment, so that the end product is as much a painting of a ship as it is a record of the daily shifts in expression/execution—a psychological form of cubism lain out in a grid form.

The disorientation may be initiated by my approaching the canvasses as sculptures. When making One to One (a site-specific 15’ painting at Eleven Rivington in 2010), I recognized a shift in my attitude towards the mark-making. I wasn’t developing passages toward a visually penetrable space, but building an object—a wall in that case. Despite using paint and linen, that adjustment in my intent altered the end result considerably. 


In the Portraits series (beginning in 2011), the presence of the object, the canvas, continues to override pictorial space. Its amplified by the big central mass. And now in Rome with its abundance of sculpture, it’s being reinforced ten-fold. Odd, as I mean the sculpture has always been here, but my eyes weren’t open to it.

Installation view, Addison Museum of American Art, Open Windows: Keltie Ferris, Jackie Saccoccio, Billy Sullivan, Alexi Worth, curated by Carroll Dunham, 2012.

RH: There appeared to be a shift in how you think about painting space in around 2009… and maybe a transformation of material and canvas. Like alchemy or magic. Do you see the space of your recent work as being more experiential, virtual, and illusionistic?

JS: Yea, you’re right. That’s when the interest in alchemy began. After the Interrupted Grid show, the marks became larger. I was more interested in what was happening within the space of the mark, than relating it to other marks, like zooming in. That led to more and more experimentation with traditional materials, which also coincided with moving my studio to the country. There I had room to set up the studio more like a laboratory, to push the alchemical. Sounds benign, but my studio in Harlem was a small box, so I was limited to one large painting at a time. I couldn’t let paintings percolate. I don’t know—besides the space issue, the patience required to make these works is not something I could find in when I was working in NYC.

RH: You called most of your recent paintings ‘Portraits.’ They do at times have central head-like shapes, but the reference to portraiture is more expansive, perhaps. Do you think about specific people, moods, psychologies? It wouldn’t surprise me if you were interested in the electricity of the brain or ideas of the self via string-theory.

JS: Hah— I don’t think reading Tuesday’s science section qualifies as knowledge about the brain, but it is interesting. As a starting point, I focus on portrait painting, mostly works from the 1500-1600’s. The original impetus was going through the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum in Madrid. The presence elicited by some of those portraits—Holbein, Correggio and Ghirlandaio in particular—just got under my skin. So initially, I make notes about their paintings and then try to translate them into an abstract language with color and liquidity. Once I get painting though, its improvisational. The portraits are like one mark zooming way in, and then through to another space, unrestricted and untethered. Maybe celestial or spiritual, definitely transcendent. By making them more material, they become more psychological.

Jackie Saccoccio, Portrait: Beast, 2013, 106 x 79 inches, courtesy the artist and Eleven Rivington, NY.

RH: I love how unabashedly beautiful your work is, especially at a time when so much young abstraction deals in the language of the abject. It feels so joyous. The opulence delivers. I know you’ve used words like ‘rapture’ in recent titles. I’m curious about your thoughts on transcendence in painting, either visual or spiritual. It seems to go further than a play with painting traditions.

JS: Great questions, and interesting that you ask these together. I love these naughty issues of beauty, opulence and transcendence. Like the young painters that you mention, I went through great pains to eliminate traces of beauty in my painting, so as not to obfuscate the ‘serious’ nature of my work, or so I thought… The result was that I sent all the wrong messages, and the response was disheartening. Now, as I’m more accepting of this beauty thing seeping into the paintings, it’s not only not an issue, but viewers are more likely to bring up transcendence or ephemeral references, which has been my aim. The odd thing is, in those early years, I was making paintings with literal references to these. Now, in these portraits, with their mass and weight, they elicit ideas about impermanence.

In regards to seductive opulence in my painting, I am reminded of a point that Shakespeare scholar Stephen Greenblatt made at a lecture recently. He posited that the sheer beauty of the language in Lucretius’ On the Nature of Things, may have been responsible for the poem’s clandestine survival throughout the centuries while it was publicly banned. It reappeared in 1417 on humanist Poggio Bracciolini’s bookshelf, going on to inspire many. One such mellifluous phrase from Lucretius (via Greenblatt) that continues to run through my mind: “Honey smeared on the lip of a cup to make bitter medicine go down.” I’d like to think that opulence could have such a noble purpose.

RH: It’s really interesting that your work engages Ab-Ex romanticism and post-mark ideas about material/drips as image and emblem. The two impulses melt into something else altogether. Vast swaths of color become shifting planes, drips like extensive and drawn circuits, a collaging of space that almost feels digital. David Reed and Frankenthaler both feel like antecedents…or Richter and Rothko…or Lichtenstein and Turner—you cross a lot of wires.

JS: I sway more towards Polke than Richter, but Lichtenstein and Turner…YES! Crossing wires does make for strange and delightful bedfellows. I think I’ve learned the most about Ab-Ex mark-making by studying Johns’ Green Target, and Hudson River School painting through Pollack and Charles Burchfield. It sounds generic when I list a lot of artists whose work influences, but it’s like mixing up some disparate—you never know what can happen—nothing or everything. Last month it was Laurie Simmons and Ghirlandaio. Next week, Courbet and Rosemarie Trockel?

Jackie Saccoccio, Portrait: Circus, 2013, 79 x 79 inches, courtesy the artist and Eleven Rivington, NY.

RH: The issue of control seems important to your work—how to maintain and lose it. The paintings are ecstatic, but also orchestrated. It was perhaps more clearly present in early work from Interrupted Grid. I know you curated a traveling show called Collision. Can you talk about your interest in this idea? How do you navigate the construction of the paintings?

JS: Agreed. With works from Interrupted Grid, it was more about a hyper-mark, and examining the mark based on its relative placement. I assumed a lot more control. In the current paintings, I rely on alchemy to do a large amount of the organizing of information. I guide the drips and decide on colors, but once dry, which can take awhile, each congeals differently. The process continues long after I’ve walked away, and then I have to deal with that or not. Development like this is mostly a two steps forward, one step backward trajectory. Frustrating at times, but mostly exciting. Improvisation is no longer incidental, but imperative. 


Curating additive exhibitions like Blue Balls and Collision were eye-opening and, in retrospect, I realize they allowed me to break down my own working method. Inviting artists to works on-site, to consider the architecture as the first participant in the show, make or install as they pleased, gave permission to work atop or aside others’ works, to see each contribution as part of a whole.

RH: I know you’ve spent a lot of time in Rome throughout your life, and are there working now. I remember standing on the Gianicolo and marveling at the incomprehensibility of the city. It’s like an enormous, sublime god-brain. I wonder if Rome itself, being there, has influenced the nature of your work.

JS: Oh my god, yes! I assumed at the beginning of this year’s term that I understood all that was Rome, but I was so wrong. My fascination was initially architecture, and trying to decipher how architects, Borromini, in particular, could create objects that shift into space, like Tony Smith’s Moondog, as if the air is sucking them into a vortex landscape upward. I know that’s not as clear as it could be, but I bring it up as a counterpoint to how this city appears to me now; all these chunks of solidity, the walls, the sculpture, humanity as opposed to something very ethereal. The room of Roman busts in the Capitoline Museum sort of defines it all.

RH: We both share a love for Italian Painting. I see links to Mannerists like Pontormo or even Michelangelo’s Last Judgment. Are there artists you find yourself consistently looking at there? Anything you’ve discovered or were surprised by during this stay?

JS: Well, its not Italian, but I had Velasquez’s painting of Pope Innocence X as a screen saver for the longest time until Carl noted that Innocence was the spitting image of my father. That ruined it for me as a desktop image; but that painting, in the Doria Pamphilj Gallery, is the piece I’ve visited more than any other, even with the paternal weight. As for Italians, Annibale Caracci is a favorite. After years of taking in the buoyancy of light and clever plays of space along the ceiling and walls of Palazzo Farnese, I discovered its righteous narrative humor of this matrimonial commemoration, as in the pair of paintings depicting the fierce Polyphemus making a pass for Galatea on one side and going into a rage when he is refused on the other.

I don’t keep many books in my studio. The two there are Polke’s Three Lies of Painting and a Velasquez monograph. One serves as a reminder of not taking oneself too seriously and the other of how deep one can go into the alchemy of paint and its disconnect to imagery.  I forget which one serves which purpose, but both are astute reminders of a non-hermetic art making approach—synthesizing science, philosophy, history, social awareness and technology of the moment within painting.  Both are exemplary of artists leaving structure.  Velasquez painted light as it bounced over figures, a departure from his forbearers who relied on solidity and form.  Likewise, Polke took no twentieth century visual cues for granted and dissected all: pop iconography, historical painting, alchemy and advertising.  His end products were debouched evidence of the strength of intent, mangled and harsh.   His autobiographical musings from Early Influences, Later Consequences are enlightening, ironic, contradictory and poignant.   They belie the power of his images, seemingly incidental and flip, but oddly close to the heart.

When I return to the States, I’ll add Titian to those titans. He’s my new love this year. The Scuderie mounted a show that left me speechless. I’ve been bowled over by the Danae before, but the breadth of his ability to capture the most fleeting of psychological moments is staggering, especially given the opportunity to view works from early and late years. His techniques are extravagantly varied, from one period to the next, and convey such piercing evaluations of pathos all along and with such clarity.

Studio view, Rome, courtesy the artist.

RH: Cy Twombly lived in Rome for years. I wouldn’t immediately think of him in relation to your work, but maybe there is a connection? A vastness of space, opulence of paint, enveloping scale…

JS: Twombly has been an enormous influence and inspiration. Seeing his red Bacchus paintings at Gagosian blew me away—definitely one of my top experiences with contemporary art. He is remembered for his connection to the ancient world and literature, but I value him for his contribution of channeling that with recent art history in a manner so eloquent and definitive. With very personal hand-painted marks he nods to gargantuan proportion (Rosenquist), repetition (Warhol, Johns), text without words (Wool), performative remnants (Yves Klein, Beuys), the sublime (Rothko), mark-making (Mitchell). In those red monsters, the movements become epic, wrist scrawl on steroids, initially dancing quietly and methodically on one side of the room, slowly culminating into an operatic frenzy by the last dense painting. Including the accumulated drip evidence of the canvas that was on the floor while painting (later stretched to include the floor portion) was the cherry on the top, forcing the viewer to think about the maker, perhaps wobbling on a ladder to get that statement out. Individually they were strong, but together, the entire room was electrified.


RH: In the age of art fairs and jpegs, the spaces where we experience paintings have become less of a consideration, or less controllable. I loved the way your work functioned in the gallery at Eleven Rivington last year. Is that something you think about from the outset? The workings of site-specificity are crucial to so much Italian art.

JS: Thank you, and yes, definitely. If it’s for a one-person show, I can make those considerations from the onset with the proportion of canvasses, quantity and order of paintings for the space. Otherwise I have pretty specific recommendations about installation.

RH: Most importantly, what’s your favorite place to get gelato?

JS: Favorite gelato? The list is long. My daughter has been relentless in her research throughout Italy.  Her top prize goes to Caffe’ Sicilia in Noto, Sicily.  For Rome, her fave is La Gelateria del Pigneto, a little artisanal hole in the wall with flavors like violet, rose and mango peach.  For chocolate – Venchi on via del Croce. 

Ridley Howard was born in Atlanta and is now based in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA from the University of Georgia, and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has received awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is represented in New York by Leo Koenig Inc.

Note: An abridged version of this interview appears in Huffington Post.

Christina Price Washington, Grass, 2009, 40×30 inches each, lambda prints, courtesy the artist.

On Tuesday, March 26, 2013 3:02 PM Meg Aubrey wrote:

Christina, I just went by Hagedorn and saw your show. So glad I did, the size and quality of your pictures demands seeing them in person. I especially connected with the grass and tree images. Meg

On Fri, Mar 29, 2013 at 10:56 AM Christina Price Washington wrote:

Meg, good morning. sorry for the late response…Well, the grass is very significant in terms of finishing the construction of a home here in the USA; to obtain a permit to reside in the home, the grass gets rolled out like a carpet. Visitors from other countries always laugh, that the grass does not have to grow; it is being produced, bought and installed. The idea of “organic” has shifted from what ought to be natural to look natural. Afterwards the idea of maintenance of it is more the idea of control. Perhaps this is reflected in the photographs of the grass. Your work looks as if you look to photography that allows you then to isolate the monotonous components of the landscape of suburbia. Also, I respond to the women, shall I say the perfect women, in the perfect suburban landscape—hair, body, accessories, a kind of uniform of sorts that depicts style, fashion and the agreement of values and mores through appearance? C

On Saturday, March 30, 2013 9:26 AM Meg Aubrey wrote:

Christina, The extreme close range at which you view the grass in your photographs force the view to confront what the green expanse represents in suburbia. Grass has always been one of the most important elements in my paintings. I live in suburbia and see the grass as an outward sign of what the owner wants to project to the outside world. If their grass is perfect, then the life they are leading must be perfect as well. I portray the grass as flat expanses of color without any imperfections. Those whose grass is exceedingly pleasing to look at feel a sense of superiority and control over their environment.
Meg

Meg Aubrey, Queen of the Cul de Sac, 2012, 36×57 inches, oil on canvas, courtesy the artist and Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta.

On Sat, Mar 30, 2013 at 5:59 PM Christina Price Washington wrote:

meg, I believe that this is derived out of the image of organization, a Fordism/ Taylorism that was constructed in the early 19th century, a model to demonstrate labor control practices that served to strengthen and reinforced the laborer in his position in the American economic structure. The green grass during the cold war era has transformed into a symbol that displayed the laborer’s success through accumulation of (consumer) goods. This makes me think about Richard Yates’ Revolutionary Road…

How is your grass? Does it reflect your sense of control? It was pointed out to me that the grass in my work is not superior grass…I live by a very well-manicured golf course, and have done many photographic studies on how to formally play with all the green. But you also have the female in your work; is she, like the grass, on display? Is the green grass a display of masculinity?
C

On Monday, April 1, 2013 8:55 AM Meg Aubrey wrote:

The green grass is not a display of masculinity; it is control and perceived perfection. My personal grass is acceptable but is not one of the lawns that is highly admired. We do make sure to keep the grass at an acceptable level with the neighborhood standard, if not we would be in violation of community rules! As for the females in my work they are the vehicle from which I view the entire community. They are shown without their husbands or children as they navigate the controlled environment in which they have chosen to live. Like the grass, how these women look (clothes, hair, etc) become the uniform of suburbia and express to the world that they belong in the environment. The TV series WEEDS is a good example of the suburban facade that hides the true reality of a person’s life. I hope that my figures create those kinds of questions in the viewers’s minds.

Both of us avoid using the actual “house” in our work and describe the environment through alternative symbolic elements, can you discuss this?
Meg

Meg Aubrey, Bunny, 2010, 8×6 inches, oil on canvas, courtesy the artist and Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta.

On Mon, Apr 1, 2013 at 10:12 PM Christina Price Washington ‪wrote:‬

Interesting; the work at the Hagedorn Foundation Gallery was created at the end of 2009. It was however the forerunner of what ultimately became the body of work called Studies from Home. With that I was investigating what home meant. Studies from Home does not show the house either. It was important to me to think of home in terms of the significance of it, how it is created and how that then is manifested …through living in it, our rituals, and our living patterns. There was a time where I shot videos and photographs inside the home of living patterns and fixtures, but I covered the walls and windows with huge amounts of muslin, so the actual walls would not be in view. Perhaps the actual manifestation of the house, its walls, would connote or represent too much of a lifestyle, and this is not what the work was about. I am not interested to make work that represents anything of me. The essence is what constitutes the home, not how the home is represented. What it the reason for you to avoid the actual home? C

Christina Price Washington, Window, 2009, 40×30 inches each, lambda prints, courtesy the artist.

On Apr 6, 2013, at 10:11 AM Meg Aubrey wrote:

Christina,
I am commenting on the suburbs as an insider but I have placed myself in a position as participant and critic. My work does represent who I am and helps me come to terms with many of the decisions I have made in my life. I do not show the actual homes because the architecture holds no importance, it could be anyone’s home in any suburb in North America. I only need to show the identical trash cans and mailboxes for the viewer to understand the houses are all essentially the same. They are dwellings that have been designed for the masses and those who live in them fool themselves that they have chosen a custom existence. I use the outside environment to present the rituals and living patterns of the women who live there.
Meg

On Wed, Apr 10, 2013 at 5:29 PM Christina Washington wrote:

Meg, I am the biggest fool, trying to fit in a neighborhood…. It is amusing since I am actively sitting at the gate to fly “home” to Germany. The grass is a kind of boundary crossing, as if to enter someone’s space but you have not quite reached it. It is this curious space “in between,” as are the photographs of the glass of the home. Considering that in order to articulate the home I choose objects that join or define the premise, in this case the idea of home. To be able to know where you belong (as in society or, what kind of neighborhood…) would defeat the idea to illustrate the boundary because one has chosen a where to belong and occupies that specific space. It is my attempt to keep that space lively …meaning to keep the idea of the home flexible. I have to board now. I will be in between homes, not on the ground, in the air.

As a last thought, I look to understand how the idea of home is changing; not only in terms of Suburbia and the framework of community, but how the idea of home is a dynamic force. Locale of home is changing; economic forces are catalyst for change, children move on. Suburbia denotes a demographic for a certain point of time. What is left is the framework of suburban houses and their communities. My interest is to understand the margin and it’s appearance. C

Meg Aubrey has a MFA from Savannah College of Art and Design and a BFA from Rhode Island School of Design. She has been awarded the Hambidge Residency Award from the Fulton County Arts Council, the Encore Series Award from Savannah College of Art and Design and was selected as a finalist for the Forward Arts Emerging Artist Award for 2011. Meg is an adjunct professor of Foundations Studies at Savannah College of Art and Design in Atlanta. She is represented by Whitespace Gallery, Atlanta.

Christina Price Washington lives and works in Atlanta since 1986; she received BFA from the Atlanta C0llege of Art in 1993, and a MFA in photography from Georgia State University in 2012. She is currently working on MA in Art History.

Lyle Ashton Harris, Untitled (Blue Cell/Blue Christ), from the Erasure series, 2010, courtesy the artist and CRG Gallery, New York.

Lyle Ashton Harris has spent the last seven years living in both Accra, Ghana and New York City, creating and teaching on both respective New York University campus locations. Through his observations and experiences in both cities, Harris is able to explore and share not only the history but also the modern-day settings of such separate cultures.

Accra My Love, Lyle Ashton Harris’s exhibition at the Fine Arts Gallery at Kennesaw State University, showcases historical and contemporary imagery from Ghana through blown up collages and the incorporation of past works such as The Jamestown Prison Erasure series and Untitled (Black Power) [March 14-April 24, 2013]. Through images of historical figures, landscapes, and references to popular culture, Harris documents the history and current state of Ghanaian culture. The relationships between the images allow a necessary dialogue not only on inevitable globalization, but also on the specific histories and traditions behind some of the images and how they allow for multiple interpretations. Harris and I met in person during his visit to Atlanta to discuss how his time spent in Ghana influences his works and how both contemporary and traditional aspects of the culture function together.

Lyle Ashton Harris and KSU student, Terri Jester Hamilton, installing Accra My Love II

Claire Maxwell: First, let’s talk about the KSU exhibition, Accra My Love. You simultaneously examine history as well as contemporary experiences, mostly through collage. Is that right?

Lyle Ashton Harris: A main part of this exhibition is the installation that was in Accra My Love II. The first iteration was for a 20-year survey exhibition at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art [Scottsdale, AZ] in 2008. But a lot of the work was drawn from a show I did at CRG in 2010 called Ghana. In that exhibition, I premiered the Jamestown Prison collages as well as the Untitled (Black Power) piece, which takes its title from Richard Wright’s seminal, global, controversial book Black Power.

Lyle Ashton Harris, Untitled (Jamestown #6), 2008, courtesy the artist and CRG Gallery, New York.

CM: You split your time equally between New York and Ghana?

LH: Yes. For the last seven years, I’ve been spending several months in Ghana each year teaching at NYU’s global Accra campus as well as maintaining a studio there.

CM: How do you bring back and compare your experiences in Ghana to those in New York City?

LH: I recently returned to New York, and I’ll be here for the next couple of years to reorient myself back into New York. This exhibition—which was commissioned by the Zuckerman Museum—is a confluence of a multiplicity of things. I would definitely say it suggests the tension of occupying both spaces, both locations, with the shared histories—the dimensions of tradition and how one may rub up against the other, including the force that’s actually occupying both spaces.

CM: How does your creative process work and how do you feel it’s changed over the years, if at all?

LH: For the last twenty years, I’ve been exploring various types of photographic practices. As far as photographic practices, I have done a range of studio-based portraiture, self-portraiture, and some editorial work for some publications such as New York Times Magazine. And I was known for several bodies of work in which issues of race, sexuality, and gender were represented. The shift in my practice came around 2004 when a fellow artist, Jim Hodges, came in my studio soon before I was about to travel for this exhibition in Chicago, and he could see I was struggling in trying to take some of the energy that was happening in the studio and the collages on the wall and actually bring the energy outside of the studio. (Because I would do collages in the studio just by nature or thought process.) On occasion they would be photographed and made into a montage like The Watering Hole series from 1996 or Memoirs of Hadrian from 2002, but what was distinctive about this particular shift in 2004 is that I took the actual collages that were being made in the studio and brought all that material into an art context.

Lyle Ashton Harris, The Watering Hole, installation view, Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art, 2008, courtesy the artist and CRG Gallery, New York.

It’s interesting to me what has happened between 2008 and 2013 with Accra My Love—the first iteration and now, the one commissioned at the Zuckerman Museum. What I like about this opportunity is that I’m able to revisit some of those themes that were initially addressed or suggested in Accra My Love I and really to wrestle with what has happened since then. For example, in this particular iteration, there is an element of melancholy, images from the funeral of my partner’s father, as well as multiple references to Ghanaian funerary practices, and my own personal loss and grief associated with my return to the U.S. This is the first installation that I’ve altered the funerary fabric by cutting, inserting this pattern onto the wall.

CM: Let’s talk about Blow Up. How do you feel like the current Accra My Love draws from that and any of the themes? A lot of imagery references gender assumptions and ethnicity.

Lyle Ashton Harris, Blow Up IV (Sevilla), 2006, courtesy the artist and CRG Gallery, New York.

LH: What I find fascinating about that question in relationship to collage is that out of the hundreds of images in Accra My Love II, the majority are sourced from Ghana—acquired either from or while I was in Ghana. It is a culture that has a deep respect for tradition, imagery that alludes to this in Accra My Love II include funerary practices and a reverence for family… simultaneously rubbing up against modernity and a culture in transition. There are images in Accra My Love II that are clearly sourced from Ghana, i.e. newsprints, but there are also images that might suggest a western influence–let’s say same-sex desire, for example– that are also sourced from Ghana and speak to the complexity of this dialogue.

CM: Do find larger scale collages carry more audience impact than individual stand-alone photographs or portraits?

LH: I think both are of interest. I think it depends on the audience. I think what happens in the context of a collage such as this, is the use of the mirrors—the mirroring incorporates and engages the viewer in mise-en-scéne. I think the collage opens up possibilities. But, with that said, I do believe in the power of the images to be able to be a distilled exploration of family, etc.

CM: I’m glad to see older works included in the exhibition at Kennesaw. Were you planning on including these older works like the ones from Jamestown Prison Erasure series and Untitled (Black Power)?

LH: Absolutely. This particular installation right here—it was essential that we have those even though the [collage] dominates. There’s something quite alive about it.

Lyle Ashton Harris, Accra My Love II (detail), 2013, mixed media, dimensions variable, courtesy the artist and the Zuckerman Museum of Art, Kennesaw State University.

CM: How do you utilize your teaching experiences in Ghana, as well as in New York City, in your practice? Do you feel like the NYU program in Ghana is beneficial for students?

LH: I think it’s an amazing thing for students to be able to have the opportunity to travel. I think most of the students I teach would have traveled abroad in high school—most likely Europe, on occasion Asia, and on occasion Latin America. But Africa…very few, in my experience, have traveled there. It’s a wonderful opportunity to be involved and able to share knowledge. In this situation I’m able to grow on my knowledge and be able to share that and to challenge. As far as my own work is concerned, I love teaching because it keeps me young and keeps me on my toes.

CM: I really enjoy coming in and being immersed with all these images that I’m not typically exposed to.

LH: Anything that you would experience here in terms of ideas of class, ethnicity, or culture is actually embodied in this particular collage itself. For example, the [magazine page] that says ‘Special Help: The City Beckons.’ The [BBC] has a series of contemporary magazines exploring Africa. Now, when they say ‘the city beckons’ they’re talking about the new cosmopolitism. So in this particular collage I’m actually injecting the fact that the idea of gender difference is part of ‘the city beckons.’ In a certain sense, it’s giving elasticity or expanding what that particular title might actually suggest. In a way, it’s allowing the imagery and the text to work in a dialogic relationship with each other.

CM: Do you have any other projects or collaborations going on right now?

LH: Right now I’m back in the studio with a couple of books I’d like to work on as well.

CM: Do you think it’s important that art has varying levels of accessibility?

LH: I remember when I showed Blow Up in Seville [Spain], it was amazing what people who were there could identify because it was material that they found pleasurable and interesting. And one of the important gifts is that people can have multiple entry points.

Accra My Love is on view at the Fine Arts Gallery at Kennesaw State University through April 24.

Heather Hart, The Eastern Oracle: We Will Tear The Roof Off The Mother, 2012,
rooftop, paint, brass, gold, 30 x 26 x 9.5 feet, exterior. Photo by Rebecca Reeve, courtesy the artist.

It’s been nearly seven months now since Heather Hart and I came to the Fine Arts Work Center as Visual Arts Fellows. And seven months since we initially had the privilege of meeting Janelle Iglesias, artist and visual arts coordinator at FAWC. Same amount of time spent producing, thinking about, talking about, and looking at each other’s work. Approaching the end of our stay here, we’ve found it increasingly pertinent to get one of these conversations down on tape. The following is a conversation from Janelle’s studio discussing some central ideas driving her work.

Mike Calway-Fagen: Janelle, The book I gave you to check out, Vibrant Matter, has a very particular and important relationship to your art work. Can you talk a little about the book and your work?

Janelle Iglesias: I just started reading it, but it made me think of something I read somewhere else recently and now have up on my studio wall… one of the hieroglyphs for the word for sculpture in ancient Egyptian translates as someone who “makes something live”…I think my work is most successful when it begins with play and actually activates something inside a material/object.

MCF: That’s really interesting because Vibrant Matter makes a very potent semantic distinction between what an object is and what a thing is and to label something an object is to laminate, sterilize, and attempt to control it. To talk about a thing is to really disrupt the traditional hierarchal subject-object relationship and to think about things as not static, as heaving, streaming, and unsettled—having a potential.

JI: I’m not only confronting objects but these things confront me as well.

Heather Hart: So things have identities is what you’re saying? Bill Brown’s essay Thing Theory, describes the personality of things.

JI: I want to read that. Things totally have identities…I’m constantly learning and thinking about this… In the very beginning of Vibrant Matter, Jane Bennett quotes W.J.T Mitchell defining this distinction:

“…Things, on the other hand,…[signal] the moment when an object becomes the other, when the sardine can looks back, when the mute idol speaks, when the subject experiences the object as uncanny and feels the need for what Foucault calls “the metaphysics of the object” or, more exactly, a metaphysics of that never objectifiable depth that objects rise up from toward our superficial knowledge.”

MCF: To reference the uncanny as a concept that you have a relationship with, but feel completely unfamiliar to, essentially says that you can never completely control something.

JI: I think both of us [Mike and Janelle] have a huge relationship to playing with objects in a way that make super familiar things unfamiliar, and uncanny experience is a major part of that.

Panorama of Janelle Iglesia’s studio, courtesy the artist.

HH: A part of the scaffold underpinning what makes a thing controllable is frame of reference—a necessity of framing and need to shift one thing onto something already absorbed into consciousness. We think we understand the new thing because it’s already held and digested…but we’re wrong.

MCF: The shift that involves our attempt to corral and control. Things defy our need for the human echo. These things are outside of us and have an empowered identity that is completely self contained, that is within itself and unreachable (and unbreachable) to us. Instead of something that we project onto the object, the object speaks for itself and has an internal and essential agency.

JI: There’s also a sense that the things we are surrounded by continue to be more and more disposable, less and less valuable, more and more controlled—and for this reason I think the discipline of sculpture is extremely timely. Sculpture infuses materials and things with a kind of vibrancy that really is cause for pause. To wait and see. To consider.

My mom grew up in a hand-built farmhouse where so many things were handmade. So much of the clothing she wore was hand-knit. I’m so curious about having this kind of relationship to things around you, rather than the environment I grew up in, where so much was mass-produced. There were a ton of 99-cent stores within a 10 block radius.

Janelle Iglesias, Bolt, 2012, cymbal, silver foil on branch, sinkers, rock, courtesy the artist and Larissa Goldston Gallery.

MCF: Recognizing that things are involved in infinitely expansive cycles that you’re complicit with but are also out of reach. Things have stopping points: For instance, a material is acquired, processed, used to manufacture something, used, passed on, thrown away, and enters another cycle, etc. But its life doesn’t stop even after you’ve lost all physical touch with it. So objects are constantly involved in this stream of things and artist(s) pop up to intimately, albeit briefly, involve themselves in a temporary fate that will eventually fade into the same entropic process.

Janelle, can you talk about these cycles and a sense of cause and effect in your work? There is a kind of chronological progression that seems to give your work an unsettled animation. It feels like your work is positively unresolved…in the sense that they’re dynamic and moving, but are definitely finished works.

JI: A lot of my work deals with momentary motion and the quiet gesturing of objects, materials, and activities towards each other. I have two branches of work. One utilizes installation strategies with specific arrangements of things in relation to each other, how they fit together and create senses of motion, and the other direction is discrete objects that feel more like bodies rather than mechanized systems, energies, or ecosystems. The installations are treated more as micro-environments and the singular sculptures occupy space similarly to a body in frozen animation which is heightened by simple material additions where one object is asked to lean towards another. It’s a bit of an experiment in object behavior. Through these slight interventions, a sculpture can become friendly, aggressive, lazy, or erect. It’s basic, but I think sculpture is so effective and provocative because it evokes such a strong affective space.

HH: That’s intriguing particularly because my practice utilizes a social or relational platform to formulate affective space. Can you clarify some of the language you are using, particularly the question of whether the work makes the viewer feel a certain way versus the work is that way? In other words, what presence does sculpture have? Does it have an identity wholly separate, equal to, or maybe even greater than that of its beholder?

Heather Hart, The Eastern Oracle: We Will Tear The Roof Off The Mother, 2012,
rooftop, paint, brass, gold, 30x26x9.5 feet, interior. Photo by Rebecca Reeve, courtesy the artist.

JI: I go back and forth asking myself the same question. I vacillate between trying to evoke new meanings through alteration or attempting to magnify a pre-existing and fundamental quality of a material. Either way, the outcome extends beyond its physical boundaries so I do believe that the sculptures are nearly (if not actually) conscious, approaching a sort of vibrancy.

MCF: That’s why considering the work as bodies or characters makes a lot of sense. It’s almost like dressing a child for school.

JI: Yes, these outer qualities and postures communicate so much to a viewer.

HH: There is a kind of magnetism of personalities and a vibrational exchange that happens between the human body and the sculptural body.

JI: It’s communication without language, and empathy through sight and spacial relationships.Then with the installation work or micro-environments, I want to create networks where they didn’t previously exist. It’s a lot like composing music with layers of drumbeats and vocals; the way they align, diverge, and disintegrate creates a composition. So essentially I’m searching for a harmonics of objects.

MCF: Object harmonics is a lovely and poignant thing to bring up in the larger context of relationship development and empathic space that you’ve been talking about—being able, as a viewer, to live simultaneously in your own body, in the body of others, and in the bodies of things and space.

…Would y’all mind if I played a song?

JI and HH: Wow! What is that?

HH: Mike, you’ve forgotten that that’s actually a question we were wanting to discuss: Is there particular music you might align your practice with?

JI: I’ve always envied how immediately music affects us and have always driven at a visual language that’s equally as transformative. I have a crush on the way music can do that.

MCF: Maybe we’re all just failed musicians. My brother is an especially amazing musician. He’s a self-taught banjo, guitar, harmonica player, and song writer.

HH: So what was that music?

MCF: It’s called Sacred Harp which is a traditional style of Southern devotional music. The harmony results from the tenor’s efforts which, and I’m speculating here, is unique to music because most harmony’s are based on the higher and lower tones. The music never really seems to quite resolve itself, as there’s a particular unsettled cadence and breathing pattern and rhythm.

Janelle, are you aware of Duende?

JI: I was first introduced to Garcia Lorca’s concept of Duende in grad school. It describes a specific but ineffable quality that was originally talked about in reference to Flamenco Dancing. It is transformative. It’s a sparking passion, an oomph, that particular beyond-human but bodily series of sensations that one has the potential to be moved to. I think that maybe as artists that may be a central drive.

MCF: I don’t think so! I think that only good artists are trying to achieve such a lofty goal. I think attempting to achieve Duende is as much a point of departure as it is a destination. I think it goes back to things and objects and the kind of middleness of the subject-object relationship—a liminal state.

I feel like a good deal of our conversation has danced around this topic. It’s the same way people try and describe “soul.” Duende can be clunkily described as goosebump inducing, physiological and emotional responses to phenomena that are virtually indescribable. For my own practice, search(ing) has become a central driving force. And I’m thinking about the titles used to distinguish or characterize an artist’s art making. I refer to my own work as a kind of Search Based Practice that could be described as trying to touch that feeling.

There is a strong current in contemporary art to engage research strategies, and while I think this is vital to understand the complexities and interrelated nature of all issues, it makes little sense as a designation for particular art expressions or practices that result in the curation and exhibition of information. To distinguish Research Practices seems like a misdirected attempt to over-organize, and arrogant swats at control. I realize this is a pretty divisive statement and recognize that it isn’t at all correct but I do feel like it underscores the general hubris of human animals.

Mike Calway-Fagen, seventy eight inches tall, 2012, steel, t-shirts, wooden beads, screwdriver, crow bar, handkerchiefs, shillelagh, 78 inches tall, courtesy the artist.

JI: You can have an analytical research-motivated process that weaves in and out of your practice. That’s where it fits in for me at least. It’s a challenge to move from one direction of research to another with the physical projects amounting to the questions between. It also makes me think of a puppet show I did at Skowhegan where we started it off using the preface to Anne Carson’s Eros the Bittersweet. She wrties about Kafka’s short story, The Top. In the story, there is a philosopher captivated by watching children spinning tops. He has this belief that if he is able to understand how it works he will then be able to understand all things… But when he picks the top up in mid-spin and as it lays lifeless in his hand, he realizes that the delight is in this sort of suspended hope of understanding.

HH: And play is absolutely vital to expansive thought and formulating new possibilities. It’s ultimately less about winning or solutions but about variations and unthought-of questions.

MCF: Janelle, you started out as a ceramicist, can you tell us a bit about your progression?

JI: Working with ceramics allowed for unlimited possibilities. It is this most basic material and your hands, and it can become anything. You have a choice to work with how the clay behaves, how to dance with it, or to control it and manipulate it through sheer force.

MCF: Like tenderizing meat?

JI: Sure. It’s a material that responds to body language that accepts the forces you impart on it. It captures every insecurity and hesitation as well. There are also so many clichés associated with ceramics that I had a working list of. This list became an immediate Darwinian test for things I could not make. So therein lies the beauty with clay; it is a material that is so expansive but is exceedingly difficult to navigate the world of cliché.

HH: Strange all the crossovers—I’m constantly thinking about conceptual limitations and clichés in thinking about identity politics.

MCF: What about humor? Some of your titles are funny, they’re pseudo serious—

JI: Kitsch is part of the sculptural canon, particularly when you’re looking at found objects and cultural artifacts. I think also that play and absurdity go hand in hand and that exploring the absurd can be revelatory of truth.

MCF: Sure. Humor has been a strategy to digest grief and trauma across many cultures.

HH: What tools or materials you find yourself going back to or planning production around?

JI: I keep going back to things that fold because, practically, they are easier to transport and are adaptable for installations. They are also animated in that they physically expand and contract giving them actual movement or the potential for movement. Umbrellas are a prime example. I love the sophistication of the mechanism but I also love their usage in Surrealism as symbols and just how the same design has been employed for centuries. I’m also really drawn to shells. My early ceramic work dealt with making objects that resonated the same way that shells did…now they turn up now in installations paired with other objects. I think of them as these portals into a sort of beautiful wonder. They are poetic space within themselves.

MCF: The shell is a bivalve and symmetrical in its construction and function, similar to the umbrella that has the same qualities. They both vibrate with potential energy as the umbrella and clamshell could spring open and into action at any moment. So “potential” is similar to “speculative” in that they are both about almosts.

HH: Which goes back to what I was saying earlier about identity.

MCF: Yeah, which makes me wonder about fantasy as another kind of almost that resonates within your work. I guess I’m not necessarily thinking about fantasy as fantastical but fantasy as projecting into the unknown and the queer slippages you utilize between the natural and unnatural.

For instance, in Knismesis & Gargalisis, the elements stretch out to virtually touch one another. There is an instability and unresolved nature that seems solidified and frozen in time.

Janelle Iglesias, Knismesis & Gargalesis, 2012, foam found on the shore of the East River, seashell, plaster, broomsticks, wood, Christmas tree, cooler, sawhorse, sticks, feathers and paint
70 x 105 x 33 inches,
courtesy the artist and Larissa Goldston Gallery.

JI: There are often touches or rubs or elements reaching. They’re thinking about connecting and maybe even tickling each other or waiting to push off. There is also an exchange between natural and unnatural processes whether it’s a hunk of foam that’s been sculpted by ebbing tides or a branch I’ve sawed into bits. I’m constantly collecting things and placing them around my studio, noticing new potentials for arrangements and relationships with each new addition or alteration. I’m watching for the rawness or cooked-ness of objects, that unnatural and natural become so close at times.

Objecthood has a kind of equilibrium: All things human-made or natural have the same internal stuffs and are connected in some way. This means there are no hierarchies and each thing is inextricably woven into the next in a vast network of relationships. Jeanette Winterson talks about how a good deal of wrongs stem from people believing they’re not connected to others or the world around them. The more distance that’s created from this web the more harm is perpetrated. She says that being a creative is so vital because it involves an imaginative force that invents connections that weren’t previously recognized and defies learned separative habits.

Mike Calway-Fagen hails from Nashville, Tennessee and received a BFA from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville and an MFA from the University of California in San Diego. He has attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture, residencies at Sculpture Space in Utica, NY and the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art in Omaha, NE among others. He has received awards from the Joan Mitchell Foundation, The Hamiltonian Fellowship, and the state of Tennessee. His work has been reviewed in publications including Art Papers and World Sculpture Magazine. He also curates and has put together exhibitions in Miami, FL, San Diego, CA, Nashville, TN, and Athens, GA. Mike has exhibited in solo and group shows at museums, galleries, and project spaces here in the states and abroad and is represented by Gazelli Art in London, UK.

Janelle Iglesias was born in New York City. She received her BA in Cultural Anthropology from Emory University in 2002, an MFA from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2006, and was a resident of Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2009. Janelle maintains an individual practice as well as a frequent collaboration with her sister, Lisa, as Las Hermanas Iglesias. Her individual work has been featured in group shows at El Museo del Barrio, The Queens Museum, Socrates Sculpture Park and SmackMellon. She is currently represented by Larissa Goldston Gallery in New York. Janelle is the recipient of Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant, a NYFA Fellowship in Sculpture and a Jerome Foundation Travel Grant through which she will be traveling to Western Papua to research Bowerbirds later this year. She has been an artist in residence at the Bemis Center for Contemporary Art, Vermont Studio Center, Sculpture Space, Smack Mellon and LMCC’s Workspace program. A former Fine Arts Work Center Fellow, Iglesias currently lives and works in Provincetown, MA.

Born in Seattle, Heather Hart was an artist in residence at Skowhegan, Robert Blackburn Printmaking Workshop, Santa Fe Art Institute, and the Whitney ISP. She received grants from Harvestworks, the Jerome Foundation, and a fellowship from NYFA. Her work has been included in a variety of publications and exhibited worldwide including at Socrates Sculpture Park; the Studio Museum in Harlem; Art in General; Rush Arts Gallery; the Museum of Arts and Crafts, in Japan; Portland Art Center; and the Brooklyn Museum. She studied at Cornish College of the Arts and Princeton University and received an MFA from Rutgers University. She lives in Brooklyn and is currently a Visual Arts Fellow at the Fine Arts Work Center in Provincetown, MA.

Andy Cherewick’s studio in Athens, GA. Courtesy the artist.

Andy Cherewick is a prolific artist who has lived and worked in Athens, GA for almost two decades. He is a painter’s painter who is diligent in his studio, and consequently a great role model. Cherewick is intelligent, well-read, and a true conversationalist.  I recently had the pleasure to talk with him in his studio, where we touched on the realities and challenges of working in the studio, discipline, fear, inspiration, and the process of decision making.

Rusty Wallace: Could you talk about your average workday?

Andy Cherewick: Oh that’s pretty straightforward. Anywhere between 7 and 5. Not anywhere, almost exactly 7 to 5. Up until this year, I never even had weekends, but I really wanted to make sure I keep my girlfriend. So now I have weekends! She has a straightforward Monday-Friday job; so I observe weekends and make it happen.

For me, when I do stop for shows or travel, and a break goes longer than two weeks, it’s actually really hard to get back in. So just out of fear and avoidance of pain and misery, it’s easier to just work everyday because of deterioration of mechanics of a picture. Like if you get away from it, all of sudden, what do I do with this? I don’t even see it. Me and Jeffrey [Whittle] used to talk about it all the time. Specifically, I’m very jealous of writers because that pattern of working, to me, seems way more humane. That’s what I want to do, that’s my ideal rhythm. The one I have for painting is kind of imposed of me, not the other way around. In order to stay on the horse, I have to do it. I’d rather not.

RW: That’s the reality of discipline. Discipline isn’t fun, but it’s necessary.

AC: I’m glad it’s not the other way. I would much rather not have those feelings of anxiety. And when you work everyday, there’s not any question about that behavior— you’re in the mess, you’re in the thick of it. And you’re just working on five different levels of problem solving. Climbing back on the greased pig, once you’re thrown off, is really anxiety inducing to try and figure out how to re-manage.

RW: You maintain that dialogue and that immersion, and things just kind of form.

AC: Yeah, and if you’re just huffing the fumes all the time, then there’s really no concern about on or off. And that was always a big deal when I was younger. When things start to lose the plot, I could use that for long periods of time. The work becomes not just impotent…

RW: Scattered?

AC: Yea, and nothing. And no work. Whereas here, I can feel the slack in the line every day. If it goes bad, I know exactly which way it went bad and exactly how. Which is probably an over-elaborate way of having a control problem—making sure you have absolute control.

RW: I think there’s something to the necessity of tension in any kind of creative pursuit. And a lot of my fellow artist friends say the same thing. Balancing their creative work with their life…all those facets of the day to day experience. When they feel that that tension is lessening, it’s a scary thing because that is connected to urgency. It’s connected to your motivation, your daily motivation.

AC: And your work could go scarecrow at that point.

RW: One day you walk in your studio, and you’re like “what am I doing?”

AC: And once again the spirits left. And I don’t really believe in the idea of the muses or the spirits, but it’s useful language for very palpable experience. Whether you call it tension or angles of deflection. I can’t imagine it ever becoming more complicated than that.

Andy Cherewick, Last First Homemade Butterfly, 38×40 inches, mixed media on panel, courtesy the artist.

RW: The reality is you have to get accustomed to the fear of going into the unknown. You go into the unknown on purpose. If you’re sincere about wanting to do something vital and meaningful, you have to take that step. Fear is always going to be there.

AC: And the key that is so important is that it’s yours, not the world’s. Everything you see in art magazines as artists that are addressing art world fears are boring. They’re absolutely pathetic. It’s bad.

RW: Incestuous.

AC: Every single person that’s ever played with stuff knows the difference like night and day when they’re afraid. And not afraid of failure, just afraid. And to put it poorly, I think that’s the moral component in art making. That level. And people that don’t have that are making decorations.

RW: Superficial.

AC: When you get to a place where you’re presenting your work and you’re looking at the work individually, are these guys doing something together? Are there little things going on inside them? What’s their relationship? Do they have enough to survive on their own when they get split up, sent to different places? Can each one transmit the story of whatever it is you’re telling in some way, shape, or form? Are you making sure each one of your works is doing that? For me, that’s the hardest thing to see and control and understand. And that is what is happening to your work versus what is happening in the world with your work.

More times than not, when I have a good day it’s because I did something really good for my work. And I think this is going to be great to put into the world, and the next day I realize “oh no, that was for me.” That’s not good enough for a piece, but it was good that I did it. That was a very short term good. And that’s my biggest allergy, fear, concern. When I see the work doing good and I start to realize that it’s doing good for me in a very vain way of showing me that I’ve learned something new. It’s good to do that, but I’ve got to be better to see the difference between that versus “this is actually going to be good to go out in the world and compete with things they should be able to compete with.”

RW: When you stop and try to think about it objectively, it doesn’t make any sense.

AC: And more times than not, it will slow down the work. It’s happened to me. You can fall into that. I am definitely a big fan of overthinking things, and it kills work. So I have developed really strict rules and guidelines to not fall into that trap.

RW: If you want to call that pragmatism, you can put that against its obvious counterpart—beauty. Beauty, when you stop and think about it, doesn’t make any sense. But that’s what’s amazing about it. In the same way, then art is amazing in any form: music, theatre, visual. We all have situations where we can get stuck. And I think that’s the great thing about art; it helps us go into new places, go into the unknown. But also to think about and to reimagine.

AC: What’s interesting to me is there’s seems to be a real dangerous difference between what this stuff is for us as ‘makers of stuff’ versus what this ‘stuff’ is for people that don’t make this stuff. And that’s a weird thing that I think I am hesitant to even think about too much. Simply because I’m in such a jam job in working all the time anyway, that I don’t want to take on that line of thinking right now.

Andy Cherewick, Invisible Diving Board, 38×40 inches, mixed media on panel, courtesy the artist.

RW: It really has nothing to do with artist involvement anyway.

AC: But it does inform me, or at least throws up some cautionary signs that almost help me in another way of what I am recording or taking note of. If there is a strange resource pattern, is there something that I am doing to help shift that in a better or worse way? Or is that something for the generals to worry about and I’m just a foot soldier?

RW: Going back to mentioning the muse…I don’t particularly subscribe to that, or at least the modern day use of that word. But I do find the original, older idea interesting, which wasn’t so much the feminine helper or deliverer of inspiration. It was more a kind of acknowledging that there are ideas in circulation and those ideas can’t do it own their own.

AC: Ideas coming through is more on the logos side. There’s like five or six holy demarcated different groups of aesthetics in Japanese thinking—I remember this from years ago. My favorite is yūgen, and that is the idea of things coming in and out of our world, or our immediate feeling. So it’s like this palpable human feeling that all humans share. But I love that one group of people put a name on it. Every culture has their own little thing, everybody has it. The idea of the muse is just another facet of the state of being conscious and what that means. With my daily work routine, I always feel that is the best way to beat the old idea of the muse. If you show up all the time, where is the muse going to hide? Whereas if you try to play this game with them, you will lose. You will always lose.

RW: You can’t wait for inspiration.

AC: And to me, inspiration is just another name for the slack in the rope that you weren’t working. So I am not inspired, I work ten hours a day. How can I have time to be inspired? Except I mean that in the most beautiful way, that time couldn’t be richer. But there’s no inspiration, it’s just going to work. I figured that out really quickly because all my friends were musicians. And they were all doing that feast and famine thing of working three months at a time, getting a chunk of change, and then recording for three weeks. And I couldn’t handle watching them do it. That seems like misery. The small, relatively regular way makes more sense to me.

RW: An obvious question for someone who sees your work, how do you feel about painting? Because the paintings are very “painterly.” Process of the making, constructing your images is very evident in your work. Do you think about that in terms of formal painting ideas?

AC: No. If anything, it’s kind of embarrassing to me that the thickness of them is just a problem I’ve always had. And it’s just because 85% of my marks are wasted, and ruined, and bad.

RW: It’s going into the unknown and finding the images—

AC: I am such a bad decision maker that one of my ways to compensate it is that I just paint all the time. That way the ratio just stays. But it’s true, I can just get lost so easily about a piece. So I will endlessly change parts of it over and over over and again. And end up right where I started. I no longer beat myself up about that, but the texture of the work is completely based on how much painting is going on. My dream painting? Super thin. Thin as the canvas. I looked at it; I did it, one take. That has never happened. I think I came really close maybe four or five years ago. Something happened, and I almost, almost finished something like that. I’m not even really sure I see what it is. When I look at my paintings, and what I identify them about me is maybe just the way the structure of the painting where paint is applied is handled so coarsely that the level of drawing and color choices. I consider to be this total husband and wife team—drawing is the husband, and color is the wife. They are married in a sense. And there’s this wonderful bridging and mutual rising.

I think one thing I’m most concerned about in the coming six months is for the work to expand a little bit. The goal is to finish a painting inside a month. The way my methods have sort of grown has been terrible. And I’m completely against all of it. I work on several things at once, and it takes several months. So I won’t finish a painting for four or five months, and then I finish eight. For whatever reason, I hate it. It drives me nuts. I want to sit down, spend two weeks, and boom, that’s a painting.

Andy Cherewick, Rabbit Trap, 38×40 inches, mixed media on panel, courtesy the artist.

RW: It’s interesting you talk about your painting process and also reference your ideal process being more akin to a writer’s. In your eyes, you see this as “I’m just making mistakes. It’s just this big mess.” But as a viewer I wonder, “How could these not be this way?”

AC: And it gets into this nasty, murky water essentially that you’re never going to be enjoying the sound of your own voice.

RW: It’s a hard thing for artists. We always have these aspirations for the work, for ourselves, for the process. Making it better, making it easier, making faster. That’s a great thing, but if you let that run wild, it drives you crazy.

AC: I love being able to put yourself into somebody’s work against your own wishes to sniff it out, to smell the spices, to figure out what’s going on. And it’s always amazing what you can pull out of it: listening to music you don’t like, reading books you don’t like. Specifically if you hate them, which is usually more telling. Which is why it’s probably good for artists to have friends across mediums.

RW: When I have a strong reaction against a work, I learned a long time ago to stop and ask myself why do I hate this work? I go explore it, investigate it, get into the ideas, making sure I’m not making this rash judgment that might be completely wrong and ill-informed.

AC: I find that I allow people a lot of slack in music, in writing, and in film that I do not allow in painting. I will let stuff go in those realms; whereas if it’s in painting, I won’t. And this is not wise or something I’m proud of. But it is a pattern that I notice. It is interesting that when things come inside your real house that you’ll allow maybe more catty reaction to them. In that way, that’s how we educate ourselves. I only like things that can handle my kind of play. And I blame painting for that. It’s the slowest, deepest, expanse to play in, and it makes a lot of the other ones just seem smaller, or shorter, or temporal. Especially movies. I’ve never been able to get over the fact that people will go look at a painting for eight seconds, good paintings at galleries, but they’ll sit down and watch Carrot Top for an hour and a half. That is exponentially unforgivable.

Andy Cherewick (b. 1971, Detroit) is an artist currently living and working in Athens, GA.

Rusty Wallace is a self-employed visual artist living in Athens, GA. He taught college art and has been a visiting artist at several colleges and universities over the past decade. Wallace is passionate about the empowering potential of education. He also enjoys training and racing his mountain bike throughout the southeast.

Still from Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux, 2012, 115 minutes. Screening at the High Museum on Saturday April 27th at 8pm.

Post Tenebras Lux, like Reygadas’s earlier films, walks a fascinating, provocative line between traditional narrative and dreamlike lyricism. The director often leaves it intriguingly unclear if we’re looking at the past or the future, memory or fantasy, dream or nightmare. You’re bound to leave his films with more questions than answers.

I spoke via Skype with the artist at his home in the small rural town of Morelos, Mexico (one of the primary settings for the new film) to ask a few questions in advance of his Atlanta visit.

Andrew Alexander: What do you have planned for your visit to Atlanta? Is there anything you’re particularly excited to tell audiences here?


Carlos Reygadas: To be honest, I’ve never been to the South, but I really want to see that part of the US that I don’t know at all. I don’t know much about Georgia, but I’ve always liked the countryside wherever I go. I like to see how the farms are organized and how people live there. And of course, talking to an audience is not very usual for me.

AA: I imagine your films don’t necessarily have a typical script. Do you begin with an image? A situation? A character? How does a new film begin for you?


CR: I do actually work with a very precise screenplay, actually like a Hitchcockian screenplay where everything is described. Basically it all comes from experience, from life. For example, this last film, Post Tenebras Lux, I had just finished my previous film; then, I had children and started building my house in the countryside. Of course, a lot of ideas and feelings developed. I tried to put all of those together in a form—that, in this case, certainly seems to be a strange form—but actually it has its own logic. It does make its own sense. Then I just build it up quite rapidly. I write my screenplays in two or three days. But I think about the films for a year or more. There are certain things, particular images—I want to be there, and I try to make a world for them. I write a screenplay that’s shot by shot, not a story. I write shots. I’m trying to visualize it, and then we go out and shoot the film. It’s a materialization process. For me, it’s as if the film already existed the moment I write it.

AA: For Post Tenebras Lux, you even designed a special lens that gave the edge of each shot a dreamlike haze. Could you talk about that? Why was a special lens necessary?


CR: I really wanted something that gave great definition in the center, but I didn’t want to have something that gave full definition all over the place, because that made me think of this kind of digital image we’re looking at now [Skype video call]. These digital images are so defined it’s like the curvy aspect of vision has been completely withdrawn, so I wanted something that would be blurred on the sides. When we were mounting the lens on the camera, we found by accident there would be this double image, like a bevel, at the edge. I just realized that it was a reinterpretation of images. If you want to see how things look really, you can look at them with your own eyes, but if you’re ready to see a film or a painting—or to paint something or film something—you might as well reinterpret those images to make them more relative, to make them convey something different than that which we’re so used to associating them with. This will always remind us that things aren’t necessarily as they seem.

AA: You talk about reinterpreting images, and I imagine that kind of approach also leads to the unusual pacing and story-telling in your films, as well. Sometimes we see something happen, and we’re not sure if it’s a dream, if it’s the past or present—perhaps it’s the future or even an imagined future. It’s all a very different sort of filmmaking, even from other sorts of art-house films audiences might be used to.


CR: For me, the source of inspiration to make a film is life, rather than other films. I don’t think films should be made in any one particular way. In many ways, films can be done like books or paintings or music. But film, being an industry, has to be done one particular way. Very often, the way we experience life, we really don’t know what’s going on in the present tense. And it doesn’t always make sense in the future either. If you walk out of your house and you see a corpse in the middle of the countryside, you just see a corpse. You don’t where it comes from, why it’s there, who this man was. Then maybe you talk to your neighbors, there’s something in the newspapers, and eventually everything makes sense. Or maybe it doesn’t. But in cinema and television, we want things to be explained immediately and for everything to make sense. But in reality, I think life is much closer to the way I make films than to what most films are like.

Still from Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux, 2012, 115 minutes. Screening at the High Museum on Saturday April 27th at 8pm.

AA: Are you bored by conventional films?


CR: I have to say that, to a large extent, yes. Some conventional films can be so deep at the level of capturing beautiful moments or the harmony of particular things. Even though they’re conventional there can still be a lot of power in them, and that’s fine. But very often, this process of normalization or reducing everything to a minimum common denominator…in the end it’s boring. For many people, it’s just entertainment, but each of us wants to be entertained in his own way.

AA: You’ve spoken in interviews before about your fascination with the Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. Do you remember the first time you saw his films and can you describe their impact on you?


CR: I didn’t see many films when I was a child, and I didn’t see television. Not particularly because my parents weren’t very keen on it, but just because the TV broke down and they didn’t care much about TV, so there wasn’t any television in the house. When I was about 15 or 16, my father probably felt bad about that so he bought a television with a VCR and lot of classic films. About a thousand films. Just by accident one of the first films I saw was a film by Tarkovsky called Nostalgia, and then I saw the rest. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. I couldn’t believe cinema could be like that. The only films I’d seen were like Superman or Star Wars. With Tarkovsky, I was seeing something made from reality itself, reality was transformed into a form of beauty, conveying so much feeling. I realized cinema could be as strong as music. It could even go further. You would be seeing real people doing real things, but all could be transfigured by the act of artistic creation. Since that moment, I decided I would like to make films.

AA: Were your parents artists?


CR: No. My mother is an anthropologist and psychologist, and my father is a public accountant. But my grandfather and many people in my father’s family were architects, and they all liked to paint, so I have always have been close to painting. And my father loves music. Since I was little I always listened to a lot of music.

AA: I was interested to read that your background isn’t actually in film. You trained to be a lawyer in the realm of armed conflict resolution. Did you ever resolve any armed conflicts?


CR: I didn’t resolve an armed conflict, but I did specialize in armed conflict law. I was involved in the first criminal trial of the war criminals in former Yugoslavia, like checking dossiers and files, forming legal opinions on those subjects. And I also worked for the Mexican Foreign Ministry while the international criminal court was being established at the UN in New York.

AA: How and why did you finally make the switch to filmmaking?


CR: I really liked the job I did, but I didn’t like the lifestyle if you know what I mean. I wanted to have a different life, but I didn’t know how I could do that. But, then I thought that I had watched films since I was 15, and I paid a lot of attention to the way films are made. Every time I would watch a film with someone it was annoying for them because I would always be pressing on the control going back and forth, seeing how things were made. I was just naturally keen to know. To be honest, film was the pretext, or the way I could change my life. That’s what really mattered to me. I started doing short films in Belgium where I was living at the time. I did four short films in less than a year. I did them all with a group of friends. With those same people, none of them had any experience in feature film, they were all students, they came to Mexico and they helped me make Japón without being paid or anything like that. Then I thought I could probably continue making films and I learned how to finance them, and this is the way I continued.

AA: Is Mexico a good place to make films?


CR: Nowhere in the world is an easy place to be a filmmaker. It’s hard, but I have to say that we’re pretty lucky in Mexico. There are funds, there’s a lot of subject matter, it’s not difficult to deal with authorities, and they’re supportive. It can always be better, but it’s better than average.

AA: Your visit to the High coincides with a major exhibition of the work of Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. As an artist originally from Mexico City, do you feel a strong relationship to their lives and work? Do you think of them as influences?


CR: Well, I don’t think there’s any particular influence from them but I do feel particular places in the world influence people in those places very much. And this is the case of a place like Mexico City, or even Mexico, in the countryside. In certain people, it really plays a strong role and there are a lot of similarities around the way we perceive those things; so the way they come out can appear as though artists are influencing each other, but it’s more the same place influencing the people. I have to tell you I love Diego’s painting. I think he’s a magnificent painter. I like Frida’s too, but there is just something in Diego’s work that is so precise and so insightful. Rationally insightful, but emotionally insightful, too. Frida’s work is more brutal in a way. But I like them both very much.

Carlos Reygadas’s Post Tenebras Lux screens at the High Museum on Saturday, April 27, at 8 p.m. followed by discussion and Q&A with the filmmaker. In addition, the High screens his short film Este es mi reino (This is my kingdom) as part of the anthology of ten short films Revolución (Revolution) on Saturday, April 20, 8 p.m.

Chelsea Rathburn.

Chelsea Rathburn has experienced a lot in the last eight years. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Shifting Line, won the 2005 Richard Wilbur Award and she was awarded a fellowship in poetry from the National Endowment for the Arts, which took her on a research and writing trip through Europe. Her newest full-length release, A Raft of Grief, is a powerful and poignant collection of poems. Breaking away from her usual formal style, Rathburn successully employs an innovative and unique approach to her subjects. Through email, I spoke with Rathburn about her fellowship, poetic style and her new collection.

Scott Daughtridge: You received a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship after the release of The Shifting Line. How much did the NEA fellowship impact A Raft of Grief? How do you think it would have been different without it?

Chelsea Rathburn: The NEA fellowship was life-changing on several levels. At the time, I was broke. A fellowship is not enough to live on, but it gave me some relief from my most serious financial worries and provided me with time to write. Many of my poems are inspired by travel, and several of the poems in A Raft of Grief were either written during or inspired by a research and writing trip to France and Poland in 2009, a trip that I couldn’t have taken without the fellowship. Perhaps most importantly, the NEA offers validation. So much of the time, poets are writing in a vacuum, not sure if the work that they are doing matters to anyone else. Getting the recognition of an NEA fellowship is pretty huge.

SD: Can you talk a little about your poetic style? Who influenced you and how you think it stands apart from other poets?

CR: As a poet, I am most interested in exploring relationships: the relationships between people, between the self and the world, between the self and the self, but also the relationships between memory and fact, and between form and content. (I’m interested in the frictions that occur when things rub up against each other.) My earlier work was primarily formal, that is, employing meter and rhyme, but my more recent writing has moved away from so much visible form—I suppose because I like to challenge myself, and sonnets were becoming a little too easy for me. I looked for new ways to introduce tensions in the poems beyond the constraints of working within a particular form. That’s not to say there aren’t sonnets or strictly metrical poems in the new book; there are, but I think the poems are driven primarily by subject rather than form. I suppose one thing that stands apart is that I have a facility for rhyme and meter, but I use it only when it suits the poem at hand.

My influences are pretty varied, but a few of the poets I return to again and again are Robert Frost, Robert Hass, Louise Glück, and Marie Howe.

SD: I love the idea of the “Travel Eclogues” in your new release. What inspired those poems?

CR: My first marriage ended in 2007, and the initial poems I was writing during and just after the disintegration of that relationship were pretty raw and angry. I published a few of them here and there, but ultimately decided that they didn’t really represent me. At the same time, I’ve always been interested in writing about relationships and there were some dynamics that I still wanted to explore. In 2008, I came across a poem that I’d started years earlier (I keep folders of poems that don’t get off the ground for various reasons) about a strange experience my ex-husband and I had had on a trip to Paris, and I had the idea to cast it as a story being told by a couple to a silent listener—sort of a “what I did on my summer vacation” moment. After I’d written the first poem, Eclogue with Paris and Prayer, I was hooked on the eclogue form and the couple I’d created, so I put them in various situations and essentially eavesdropped on their conversations. They’ve had some experiences that I’ve had, but beyond that they don’t bear much resemblance to me or anyone I know. I found the eclogue form really exhilarating because it allowed for multiple, shifting perspectives and self-implication—things that the typical poem written in the first person can’t do.

SD: You found success with your first book, winning the Richard Wilbur Award. Did you feel pressure when you were writing the poems for your follow-up collection?

CR: I think that any time artists are between projects, there is pressure. How do you create something new while remaining true to your own voice? I certainly don’t want to repeat myself. I’m feeling that pressure again now that A Raft of Grief is out in the world.

SD: What do you think you would be doing professionally if you weren’t a poet?

CR: Well, I certainly don’t make a living off my poetry, so I can tell you what I have done professionally—teaching and writing marketing and advertising materials. In college, I flirted with the idea of double-majoring in meteorology, but that would have required me to take calculus.

From Rathburn’s new collection, A Raft of Grief:


What Was Left
 
The headboard to the guest room bed,
its mattress gone, the buckled frame 
still joined to one unyielding bolt. 
Three pairs of wrinkled dress pants 
wadded at the bottom of the hamper,
six black t-shirts, an IBM
circa nineteen-eighty-six.
A snorkel, mask, and fins, white socks, 
loose change, a broken film projector, 
the television. Restaurant matchbooks,
tax records and old license plates, 
boxes and bags of photographs—
Venice, Vienna, Cadaques—
the way that they once lived, the notes 
and valentines sporting forever 
and always, a jar of sauerkraut.

Installation view of Rachel Herrick’s exhibition: The Museum For Obeast Conservation Studies, Flanders Gallery, March 1-30, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist.

When you live in Maine, springtime never arrives quickly enough. The doldrums of mid-March often propel the residents of this summertime Vacationland to jump in our cars and drive south—anywhere south. My recent trip snaked through New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and then down to the three-city triangle of North Carolina to work with a Maine expat, Rachel Herrick. From the moment I saw Rachel’s MFA thesis exhibition at the Maine College of Art, I knew that I wanted to work with her again, and, two years later I had the good fortune of doing so on her new Publication Studio Portland (other) book: Obeast: A Natural & Unnatural History. Luckily, the book launch coincided with her most recent solo exhibition at Raleigh’s Flanders Gallery, The Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies [March1-30, 2013]. After the book release, we had a chance to chat about the book, her work, and being a working artist in North Carolina.

Daniel Fuller: Your project, The Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies (MOCS), which was recently at Flanders Gallery in Raleigh, mimics museological practices and the experience of visiting a museum whose collections combine scientific, artistic, cultural, and historical artifacts. How does the authoritative voice of the museum lend credence to the fictional obeast? Is MOCS a theatrical space, a fantastical satire of traditional institutions, or is it a site for serious education and exchange?

Rachel Herrick: Yes. All of the above. The blurry and fractal boundaries between each of these modes are part of the work. I’m not sure it’s useful or even possible to separate them.

The MOCS project’s mimicry of museological practices satirizes the ways in which ideas are unconsciously and automatically legitimized through institutions like museums and science. Ideas are assumed to be factual if they possess the correct visual signifiers; my goal is to identify those visual signifiers and use them to create an absurd narrative that seems almost plausible. The dissonance created for viewers by this real/unreal narrative is appealing and important to me.

Obesity is a timely and personally relevant foil for these ideas. In light of the “obesity epidemic,” American culture has a fear and loathing of fat that is disproportionate to the actual scientific data on the subject. Alarming sound bites get dolled up in legitimizing visual cues on the evening news, and voila!—feeling gets disguised as thinking. It’s almost magic. In MOCS I satirize this dynamic by using the same legitimizing tropes to authenticate the obeast as are used to perpetuate fat bias. 


DF: With a project that some might consider controversial, you must continuously be aware of the power of language to either facilitate or thwart an audience’s experience with your art. How aware are you at all times of how you frame the questions, answers, and ways you speak about the obeast?

RH: I am aware that language has a huge impact on audiences, but also that language is subjective and amorphous in ways I can’t control. I try to be thoughtful about things I say or write, but this project has taught me that there is absolutely no way to phrase or explain this work that will resonate with everyone. Someone will inevitably be offended, and usually it has less to do with my message delivery than how that person filters what I said through his/her experiences and biases. Miscommunication is normal and fascinating, so I try not to sweat it much.

Installation view of Rachel Herrick’s exhibition: The Museum For Obeast Conservation Studies, Flanders Gallery, March 1-30, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist.

DF: Who do you identify as your audience, how do you attract and engage them, and how do you try to diversify and build new audiences? How, if at all, do you see your role as an artist changing when you show in commercial gallery, museum, or alternative space?

RH: My audience seems to change somewhat depending on where the work is being shown. For example, I didn’t previously think that kids were part of my audience until I had a show in Lawrence, MA, in a space that organized after school programs. To my delight and surprise, the students really got into the work and asked open and honest questions about the parts they didn’t understand. I’ve learned that this work resonates with a lot of different people, and given that I’m not pushing an agenda about the “right” reading of my work, I think that makes my audience pretty broad. I also think it helps that the array of media MOCS incorporates is so diverse and interactive. There’s something for everyone: videos, sound, animation, games, didactic signage, as well as more straightforward ‘arty’ components.

Although my aesthetic goals remain pretty consistent, my role as the artist does change with the type of venue the work is in, because each prepares the audience in a different way. Visitors to a museum enter the space prepared to see art that might challenge them—in fact they might come seeking that engagement with ideas. So, museum-goers tend to spend a little longer with the work trying to figure it out. Community-oriented spaces (like the one in Lawrence) tend to require the most from me as an envoy for the work, but I try to resist the urge to dictate and instead facilitate community conversations when possible. Commercial gallery audiences can be sometimes be conservative with their willingness to engage with ideas, but it’s fun how enthusiastic collectors can be once they’ve invested in the project (emotionally as well as financially). I guess in a way, my role as artist changes not so much in the type of things I say about the work, but in the number of times I have to say them.

Now let’s chat about the book!

DF: I have always seen your work as extremely intellectual (besides being very aesthetically developed), but I can also understand where your installations might cause confusion from the gallery viewers. As an artist, you seldom want to prescribe meaning to the content of your work, but I wonder about your role as an ambassador or artistic interpreter of your own work. The aim of the second book in the set is place your work in a scholarly context. How important do you find it to convince viewers of the seriousness of satire?

Installation view of Rachel Herrick’s exhibition: The Museum For Obeast Conservation Studies, Flanders Gallery, March 1-30, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist.

RH: I don’t find it important to convince anyone of anything. That’s a futile endeavor, as far as I tell. The Obeast project can be accessed at different levels, and I think all of them are fine (or I wouldn’t have made them that way). This project pokes (ruthlessly at times) at some personal and often unexamined issues, so people mentally approach this work from an infinity of places and all take away something different. I think that’s great. I would find it counterproductive to dictate an agenda; my favorite art asks questions rather than provides answers.

With the Obeast project, there are a number of ways to engage with the work: There are of course the Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies (MOCS) installations themselves, which incorporate several media formats with varying levels of didacticism about the obeast narrative—everything from museum signage to interactive games. Within these spaces, there is absolutely nothing outside the narrative arc of the project (not even my name), but should viewers want to engage more with the context and ideas behind the work, there is usually a binder at the gallery with information. Further, the MOCS brochure that they take with them from the exhibit can lead them to the MOCS website where they can learn more about obeasts and become members of the museum or fans on Facebook. Should they want even further engagement, a quick google search can lead them to my artist website or to other online discussions/resources. And now there is the book set, which elaborates on both the obeast narrative (book one) and the social and academic discourse that is happening about the work (book two).

So, the succinct answer is that I’m more like a facilitator than an ambassador. To my mind, I am just creating more engagement options, not requirements.

DF: For this two-book set, you truly enlisted a tour-de-force cast of scholarly contributors. As a result of their insightfulness and their distinctive interpretations, have you learned anything about your own practice from what they have written?

RH: I did. I learned something from every article. It’s always revealing to see what parts of the project people choose to focus on and the connections they make between what I’m up to and pop culture/politics/ theory. For example, art historian Stefanie Snider wrote a stellar piece that contextualizes MOCS in terms of both fat studies and contemporary art history. This article was informative for me because although I was familiar with the other artists and written references she discusses, I hadn’t compiled all these connections and inspirations together into one cohesive picture to examine side by side with my own work. It prompted me to reexamine how my art functions compared to that of great artists like Fred Wilson, Guillermo Gomez-Pena, and Jimmie Durham—specifically the similarities and differences in the controversies surrounding their work compared to my own. Fat is still not widely considered an identity, but rather as a personal failing that deserves to be stigmatized. It’s no wonder then that folks sometimes get cranky about my suggestion that stigmatizing a common physical feature is foolish and counterproductive to the goal of healthy living that we all share.

Writer and comedian Jenny Hagel’s essay on the role of comedy in activism is a fun romp through an idea that I’m very interested in. My own research on hoax and satire had led me to the classics like Jonathan Swift, P. T. Barnum, and Andre Breton, but I hadn’t thought as much about how important humor is for information dispersion in today’s news. As Jenny suggests, satire delivered to a wide enough audience has the power to derail presidential campaigns.

And finally, historian Carl Dyke’s essay on the dynamics of meta-activism was really interesting to me because he doesn’t see my work landing squarely in any activist camp, but rather kind of dancing around making fun of the way people anxietize their lives in general. For the record, I’m married to Carl, but he surprised me with some of the connections he made between the obeast work and my earlier work on lifeguarding techniques and mynah bird handling. His essay suggests that my problem is problems. I hadn’t thought of it like that before.

DF: Between creating the book and creating the work in your current exhibition, there are divergent attitudes about presenting and producing—stepping aside and maintaining a secondary role in relation to the writers versus actually creating projects for the gallery. Can you discuss the idea of having to be ‘hands off’ while allowing the writers to do what they do best?

RH: That hands on/hands off collaborative dynamic is actually present throughout this project and is one of my favorite parts of it. With collaborative studio projects, I’ve found it works best to recruit talented people and just let them do what they do. I give them only enough direction to feel comfortable participating, because I want them to bring their ideas to the project, not just try to execute mine. In the case of the obeast tagging video, for example, the actors and I had a conversation over dinner a couple days before the shoot where we talked about obeast tagging as if it was a real scientific study they were doing. On the day of, we just got into character and stayed there. With video, this improvisational technique can require some creative editing on the back end, but the work turns out so much better and is much more fun to do. Although I tend to be pretty meticulous—controlling, if I’m being honest—working alone in the studio, I think it’s important not to be a dick to the people you work with, and giving people space is my way of doing that.

This was my approach to the second book as well: Recruit smart, articulate people, give them a broad prompt and let them go to town. In this case, I asked them to write from the places where the obeast project intersected with whatever they were thinking about/interested in at the time. I was available to talk through ideas or to provide more background on the project if they needed it, but only in a supporting role. I was surprised and not at all surprised by the quality of thought and writing that was produced. That’s part of the fun of working like this.

Installation view of Rachel Herrick’s exhibition: The Museum For Obeast Conservation Studies, Flanders Gallery, March 1-30, 2013. Image courtesy of the artist.

DF: Can you talk about finding your cultural niche within Raleigh? I know that you work in the Bonded Llama Studios, which houses a number of interesting folks. Have you found conceptual allies who can help you confront the challenging ideas behind your work?

RH: Raleigh is an interesting place to be an artist because the art scene feels like it doubles in size every two years. There are a lot of talented artists from many different backgrounds in terms of geography and artistic practices. Everyone brings something unique to the local art community. As far as conceptual allies, there are always people happy to chat about art over beer and hushpuppies. One of the challenges facing Triangle artists (and therefore the local art scene) is that many of us are focused on showing our work outside of this area and maybe don’t have as much time to develop local partnerships as we might like. We’re working on this though. There are a lot of alternative spaces here (empty relics from the tobacco industry, for example) that are begging for artistic projects.

As far as my studio goes, Bonded Llama is a 1920s warehouse office building surrounded by kudzu. It’s not glamorous, but it’s home to eight artists working in media ranging from paper-making to painting, photography, installation and sculpture. My studio mates keep things fun and are good sports about occasionally getting jumped by an obeast.

DF: What are the advantages of working in the sprawl of the Research Triangle? Do the three cities (Raleigh, Durham, and Chapel Hill) provide something that one “local” community cannot?

RH: History and industry have shaped each point of the Triangle as well as the areas in between. The region has class and racial complexity, as well as rural/urban and town/gown splits, which is a usefully complicating context for an artist interested in stigma and identity like I am. I’m not from this area originally, but in the ten years I’ve been here I’ve noticed the tone of this place influencing my work. I think the Triangle’s sprawl is part of that; there’s kind of no quick way to get where you’re going, so eventually you accept that and mellow.

Since you ask, the advantages of the sprawl are subtle, but here are some that pop to mind: cheap studio rent, a lowered sense of competition between artists (because we’re not all on top of each other), and plenty of long drives to think deep thoughts. An incidental perk about the way this area is laid out: Each city is just far enough away from the others to have a vibe that is uniquely its own, but close enough that it’s not an ordeal to navigate between them.

DF: Each of these cities is inexplicitly tied to their large universities and, basketball aside, the universities are represented by their respective art museums (Raleigh has NC State’s Contemporary Art Museum; Durham has Duke’s Nasher Museum, and Chapel Hill has UNC’s Ackland Museum). It is quite unique to have this many regional art institutions tied to colleges. Can you talk about how this informs the area’s art scene?

RH: As representatives of their respective universities, these museums enrich the Triangle with ambitious, conceptually driven exhibition programming. Sometimes the larger Art World can feel a bit removed from North Carolina, but these museums continually infuse the area with fresh, intellectually-rigorous work by artists from a diversity of backgrounds. It prevents the local art scene from getting too insular or self-referential. This is not to say, however, that NC culture is not valued or represented by these universities. Apart from the Nasher, Duke also has its Center for Documentary Studies, which regularly hosts exhibitions of documentary work (often, in my experience, with an NC focus). NC State’s Gregg Museum of Art & Design collects and exhibits work relevant to the studies of the students and to the local community as a whole.

As a final note: beyond the museums themselves, the universities you named (as well as Meredith College, Peace University, and Shaw University, etc., which are also here) also contribute to the local scene by staffing their art programs with talented faculty who bring a lot to the local art conversations.

DF: And, lastly, you have a show coming up in Atlanta?

RH: Yes! The Museum for Obeast Conservation Studies is coming to Atlanta in April as part of Something in Particular: A Review of Today’s Southern Artist in the L1 Gallery at the Telephone Factory Lofts. The opening reception is April 27. The show is set in a 9000 square-foot space and will have work by ten contemporary artists from all around the South. The talent in this group is really exciting and inspiring. I can’t wait.

Daniel Fuller is the Director of the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art and is the co-Director of Publication Studio Portland (other) in Portland,ME. Fuller came to Maine from the Philadelphia Exhibitions Initiative, a program of The Pew Center for Arts & Heritage, where he worked as the Senior Program Specialist. Fuller holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Painting from Towson University and a Master’s Degree in museum studies from Syracuse University. He has contributed writing to Art in America, Art:21, Afterall, ArtAsiaPacific, and Art on Paper.

Shara’s painting/home studio. Photo by Rachel Reese.

In 2008, Shara Hughes returned to her hometown Atlanta after graduating from RISD in 2004 and living in New York and Denmark for a few years in between. Not only has she embraced the extra studio space to make her work—or mental space to process it—but Hughes has also actively asserted herself into the Atlanta art community while remaining internationally connected and actively exhibiting in New York at American Contemporary (her most recent solo exhibition, See Me Seeing Me, was in Fall 2012). In Atlanta, Hughes operates SEEK ATL— a studio visit group that meets monthly in an artists’ studio for conversation and critique—along with founding partner Ben Steele. Hughes opens her first Atlanta solo exhibition, Don’t Tell Anyone But…, at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center this month [April 19-June 15, 2013] and will also have a solo exhibition next spring 2014 at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Georgia as she is the recipient of the 2012/2103 MOCA GA Working Artist Project fellowship. 

I spent a day with Shara to visit both her home studio—where she consistently produces her paintings—and her sculpture studio—a temporary space at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center’s Studios provided to produce new sculptural works specifically for this exhibition. The conversation that follows weaves a thread between the dualities that are at play in Hughes’s practice:  Balancing abstraction and representation, labor and spontaneity, difficulty and ease through two-dimensional and three-dimensional forms exemplifies the ‘flip’ she consistently refers to as a necessary and dynamic part of her visual practice.

Rachel Reese: Maybe a good place to start talking about your work would be to back up. What did your work look like coming out of RISD?

Shara Hughes: I was making like a lot of minimal paintings about dead animals, but used as furniture. So, for example, bear skin rugs and heads on walls and stuff, which then I think turned into some larger kind of weird trend. Generally you don’t see much of anymore. But I remember a while people were making that kind of work.

And those were based on my parents getting divorced and how I felt. There were all these ‘dead’ things at home so I latched onto the idea of interiors because I was always trying to create some other kind of home, in a way. Whereas my space—the one that I’ve always known—has been broken.

RR: So the interior has carried throughout your work over the past several years? Specifically, using the idea of the interior as maybe a rubric that you could lay your either your style or your imagery on top of?

SH: Yea, so I think that’s when I first started doing interiors—it always felt like the best resolution to everything for me. Within an interior, you can make a landscape through a window or you can make another person’s painting within the painting, or you can paint figures or not. I never really started doing figures until now. And they’re still broken up and pieces of things.

I remember in college I made a painting that looked exactly like a Joan Mitchell painting, because I really loved her. My professor said,  “This is nice to look at, but what’s the difference? Besides…she did it, and she was way better.” And I realized why it’s so important to make my own work. I wanted to paint like everybody. Interiors became the foundation where I could lay all different artists who have come before me into and onto the painting. So I could paint a really detailed Renaissance painting inside of, on top of, a Bridgette Riley-esque type wallpaper thing. It opened up access for me to flow between everything I wanted to do, that I couldn’t do, because “that looks like this” or “that looks like that.”

RR: Creating this ‘formula’ or visual language shifted your work from adoringly appropriating to purposely referencing those things in the paintings?

SH: I would also look back in art history and see what kind of symbolism artists were using. For example, dogs are a symbol of protection. So, I would put a dog in my painting to talk about protection of myself, or some birds, or several other traditional symbols. And then I began to remove them, and I would bring in my own symbolism—broken trees or rocks that have been cut halfway. I continually create my own alphabet from my own symbols as my work progresses.

RR: Ultimately your own individual visual language developed out of it. Is there a symbol that’s carried you throughout your work? I see a lot of socks.

SH: Socks have started to come in, and lots of bodily limbs, arms and legs. I don’t think I’m so heavy on it as much now as I used to be. Now I’ll begin painting one object and then it will transform into something else.

Detail of Shara’s painting studio. Photo by Rachel Reese.

RR: So you’re allowing more chance or evolution to happen organically than before?

SH: And that way I can be more connected with the piece. But it eventually does turn into something that is going on in my life. Like my painting here called Boo Hoo! I’m In Love. I just got in this relationship and it’s terrifying because I’m in love with this person like I’ve never been with anyone before! My fears manifest on the outside. And, if you see here, there is a girl who is eating her face and there’s a naked little thing on the side and this person who is sort-of chair-like, holding the girl down like everything will be ok. So this painting is about gluttony and fears, but it’s also a lusting—it’s the beginning of the relationship, but it’s terrifying and there’s a way out.

Shara Hughes, Boo Hoo! I’m In Love, 2013, 62 x 58 inches, oil, enamel, acrylic, spray paint on canvas, courtesy of the artist.

RR: I’m reminded of Dana Schutz’s oversized painting, How we cured the plague, from her 2007 show Stand By Earth Man at Zach Feuer. That painting is epic—you seem to share similar sensibilities. Where do you find balance between abstraction and figuration/representation?

SH: Well…I haven’t—my work never involved figures at all until the past six months or so. I like the representational play between this is and isn’t something at the same time. I can paint a glob and it can be just a glob, or, it can represent a vase; or it can flip between the two. And I like the play that the viewer can have at the same time.

RR: Are you starting with a vague idea of how a painting is going to be laid out in your mind? And where do you start? By laying down background color and working from there, or—

SH: Yes, somewhat. But it’s different with each piece. I knew with Get It, Got It, Good, I wanted an aerial view, and that I wanted it square. But I didn’t know what was going to be on it at all, and it went through different phases. It resolved itself as (sort of) a picnic made from a bunch of things that make up a person.

A lot of times when I see a blank canvas, I say, “Ok, where do I go with this?” Because I don’t want my other work to influence it that much. I don’t want it to be too heavy on something because then I feel like it gets too tight or cold. The process needs to remain somewhat open.

So I give myself something to hold on to, but I don’t need to hold on to it, if that makes sense. The process is just free enough for me to tell the paintings what to do.

Shara Hughes, Get It Got It Good, 2013, 58 x 52 inches, oil, enamel, acrylic, spray paint on canvas, courtesy of the artist.

RR: So when do you know when a painting is finished? And do you feel satisfied when that happens?

SH: Yes, I do. It’s an intuitive thing. For instance, when I do something over and over, I get a sense of if the balance is good, and then there’s nothing I feel awkward about. Or, if there is something off balance, then I wonder if it should be consciously awkward. Finishing is not as hard as starting.

RR: Some of your works rely on all-over compositional devices, with heavy use of patterning. Can you talk about organized chaos, pattern and texture?

SH: I think, for me, that’s a conversation about painting and paint. And the love of painting.

RR: The physicality and language of it?

SH: Both—the language and where it’s come from. It’s also just really fun for me. It’s a lot of formal things, and it’s also about engaging the painting enough so that you don’t have to rely on what it is. So you can look at a painting and respond to how it’s painted or because of the imagery or formal qualities. And for me, the responses can flip, and I’m ok with that. 

RR: Are you the type of painter who sticks to a specific brand of oil paint? Are you a big paint mixer or do you like using the color from the bottle?

SH: I use so many different things, but the process is done and layered properly. If there’s a fancy oil bar that’s really juicy, that’s what I’ll splurge on. But I don’t mix my palette beforehand.

RR: You mix as you go?

SH: Yea, as I go. Or I just literally squeeze it out on the canvas. I use my fingers a lot to paint, too. I like the smoothness and I know that by using my finger I can pick up something from underneath and mix it.

RR: So it wasn’t because a brush couldn’t resolve the situation… It’s because you are making a choice to use your finger—

SH: I want to do it!

Works in progress on a wall at Shara’s painting studio. Photo by Rachel Reese.

RR: Do you like working with really wet paint?

SH: It’s different with each painting. I know each surface and what would be good super wet. Like the background here—I knew I wanted the light to come from behind, within. So I knew I had to do something really washy and wet. But I knew I wanted something more opaque to sit on top of it, which needs to be super thick. I know the material so well that I know how to manipulate what I need. 

RR: This really feels like a Guston.

SH: Yea, it does! It does!

RR: Let’s talk about the dismembered bodies, like the floating leg with the sock?

SH: It’s kind of how you see yourself. You can’t see all of yourself at the same time. Or maybe it’s my inability to think of myself as a whole without seeing everything around me.

RR: Would you consider the figures to be self-portraits?

SH: I guess they’re all based on my life, so I guess—

—but I’m not going to sit down and make a self-portrait. I just want to make paintings. And I want to base them off of honesty and what’s going on with me. And the best way to do that is by working from yourself.

RR: What are your source materials or what are you looking at when you’re painting? Or are you painting from total imagination with these interiors? That’s the inside of a medicine cabinet—

SH: Yea, the inside of a cabinet. I am painting from my imagination.

RR: What’s the significance of your titles? 

SH: A lot of them like start with a title first, but sometimes not. Like this one [Boo! Hoo I’m In Love] started with a title.

I haven’t been in a relationship in a while. And I was thinking, “This is hard.” And then I said to myself, “Boo hoo, I’m in love!” So I wondered how to make a painting about it…

RR: Looking forward—let’s say 100 years from now—someone analyzing your work is going to say this was your relationship period…. 

SH: It’s funny because I’ve never made any work about love before! But something that has always been evident in my work is both a darkness and happiness at the same time. I made this painting called The Sweets Are Too Sweet. This guy had a crush on me, but he was way too nice. So I made this fluffy, frilly party painting of piñatas throwing up candy—kind of too gross. There’s a fine line between the good and the bad.

Shara Hughes, It’s Safe Because We Make The Rules, 2013, 50 x 56 inches, oil, enamel, acrylic, spray paint on canvas, courtesy of the artist.

RR: They’re a little bit difficult for someone to come in and read them. Your paintings are not a window for us to escape someplace else; you definitely have to bring other things to them. We need to figure out and place ourselves in relation to them. I might read these completely different from you or from someone else, and maybe that’s because the palette is really dark or maybe its because they do feel really emotionally tense. My really strong reaction is to feel that difficulty.

SH: I agree, especially with the new work. Projecting my feelings and emotions in them is different than how I worked before. Going back to my previous use of symbols—like “this is the symbol of stability, this is the symbol of protection…” I would paint that way previously but not now.

RR: Well, maybe you don’t have an answer anymore.

SH: I feel like now I’m now painting my insides. In a lot of these, you’ll see the inside of people, of bones. I’m literally painting my insides and like painting how I feel inside.

RR: Let’s talk about your sculptures, which are new to your practice. Do you see them as your paintings coming to three-dimensional form?

SH: It took me a while to realize that my sculpture studio became a physical manifestation of my paintings. I’ll work on one sculpture for a while, and then I’ll turn around and work on another. Whereas in a painting, I’m working up, down, side to side, on the same work.

RR: Each painting is within its own physical frame. So all of these sculptural elements might exist in the same frame for you?

SH: Yes, somewhat.

RR: So these aren’t completely autonomous? Do they feel interdependent?

SH: No, I don’t think that…I think that my ideas are somewhat formed holistically. I’m shifting and moving things constantly until they’re in the right places. Sometimes that’s fast—yesterday something happened in ten minutes. And you wonder how you can work and work on something for four weeks and it still not feel as resolved. So that spontaneity is just as important as something that is really labored over. And that applies in painting as well. It doesn’t have to be so hard, but it’s nice that things are hard also. 

Shara Hughes’s sculpture studio at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Photo by Rachel Reese.

RR: Maybe it takes both of those moments, something feeling really difficult and something that just happens quickly and resolves itself. They need to be there together. 

SH: Yes, completely.

RR: With the sculptures are you getting back to more of the symbolism from your earlier painting?

SH: Somewhat— but a lot of the things are just pure invention of material. That grilled cheese-like form can be its own thing; those columns can be on their own, and so on… 

As with my paintings, I’ll start with an idea, but then it won’t necessarily work out, so I keep myself open enough to see the invention within itself. I don’t hold close to something that I have already decided is fixed, because the execution is completely different.

RR: Are you working with the idea of prop?

SH: Because I work with interiors and these are all furniture-like and within human scale, it’s understandable that they’re going to read as prop. I don’t really want them to be stage-like; I don’t want it feel I’m in some person’s house. I do want them to be able to slip in and out of its being something and not being something, sort of how the paintings are.

RR: And there’s something with this sculptural work that relates to tension. There are tense moments where the parts are coming into or out of one another, or, for example, this element being held up by a thin cord—

SH: Weight is something I have been thinking about. How to balance a really skinny column, or how to navigate the heaviness of this punching bag thing. It is something I am conscious of because it’s physically tricky. I’ve never done sculpture—

RR: Do you think that’s coming from working with space and gravity for the first time in this way?

SH: A lot this is myself literally just trying to figure out how to make it. But I also think that allows myself to be really playful.

RR: It’s very playful.

SH: These rocks are made out of tin foil. So this creates the same flip that I like in the paintings. Where a brushstroke can be just a brushstroke and also a light bulb. Having the viewer also be able to think that they could read its form or create its story, like a choose-your-own adventure novel.

RR: You’re not really talking much about the language of appropriation or the language of the ready-made. Most everything is handmade—very obviously touched and formed by you. I’m connecting this to painting with your fingers. You are the medium.

SH: That makes sense!

RR: You could have easily balanced a real banana here, so why didn’t you?

SH: I think that’s too easy. If I’m taking actual elements, I am turning them into something else. This is a blow-up mattress.

RR: Inside the basketball hoop? Where do you find these materials?

SH: I literally find these every day in the building where I live—they have these give away piles. I go ‘shopping’ every day before I leave for the studio! I don’t know what I’m going to do with most of the stuff, but I bring it here and it answers itself. Like, “Of course, it’s a moon.”  I’m enjoying reinventing.

I’m literally painting everything too, so I still feel like a painter. Because I still have to maintain control over how it looks.

RR: That’s definitely an important connection to the rest of your work. Continuing that visual language. The ones that are installed really closely remind me of Keith Tyson’s Large Field Array from 2007. Each sculpture related to everything that was directly around it, but one removed. The installation went from the floor all the way up on the walls. It was chaotic, but you were in this world. When I walked over to this corner of your studio and had to maneuver between yours, his exhibition came to mind.

SH: I like how they are human scale. As if you walk up to this thing that you can talk to. To me, these are people. And a lot of those are friends. How sad does that sound? That these are my friends?

RR: It’s a good connection to the figure. They become stand-ins. But they’re really playful; they’re not difficult like the paintings can be.

SH: In a recent frustration, I told someone that my paintings were hard; working on them in the painting studio was becoming hard. And I said, “I just want to go to my sculpture studio, because I don’t care.” But I do care, and I’ll laugh because it’s also funny, how dumb this can be sometimes. I’m picking up trash and turning it into stuff. It’s awesome.

RR: That’s a nice balance. Both of your separate, but simultaneous, practices working together in tandem. Where do you see your sculptural practice moving forward?

SH: I started making the sculptures with this [ACAC] exhibition in mind, but I feel like this makes sense for me. And it’s really fun, and its just another avenue that I’ve found I can do. But if I do continue, I have to do it somewhere that has a purpose. Because I can’t do these in my apartment!

 
Presented in partnership with BOMB Magazine—the artist’s voice since 1981.

Ben Steele makes a point during Caldas’ SEEK visit. Photograph by Joshua Gwyn.

Each month, SEEK ATL visits an artist’s studio for an informal critique, drinks, and comraderie.  The founders of SEEK are Shara Hughes and Ben Steele, both widely exhibited artists who are based in Atlanta.  They have curated and guided the program over the last two years.  It’s the first group of it’s kind in Atlanta, and was inspired in part by POST, the Philadelphia Open Studio Tour.   On a balmy Spring day I sat down with them for a mellow chat over margaritas.  Jessica Caldas joins us, who most recently hosted the March 2013 SEEK group to her studio in the Goat Farm Art Center.

Karley Sullivan: So, what’s up with SEEK?  Do you have any new initiatives or directions for the group?

Shara Hughes: A brewery (laughs).

KS:  (laughing) I can actually see ya’ll doing that.

SH:  It’s not out of the question (serious).

Ben Steele:  Since the last time we talked to anyone about it, it’s really taken off; we have a good 80-100 people on the mailing list, and many of those people regularly exhibit and get press. That means we’re not going to run out of artists to visit.  Now, we want to focus on finding artists who are doing excellent work, but aren’t necessarily in the spotlight.

SH:  It’s been great so far, but we want more people to come to the visits, and its actually people who aren’t the art world people that we want to join us. That’s our goal, to bring out the people. We want people to come out and experience something they wouldn’t have gotten a chance to see otherwise.  We’re hoping that the community gathers enough strength to realize that it’s not an opportunity to get into a famous artist’s “cool” studio, but that it’s a discussion and an exploration.

BS: We also have more events in the works like theArtDrive that we put together with BURNAWAY and WonderRoot last November.  We all know that Atlanta is fragmented, and we talk a lot about how everyone drives around in separate cars to the galleries.  That’s how we came up with the idea of renting a bus so that our group could visit BeepBeep, Hagedorn Foundation Gallery, Poem 88, and Souls Grown Deep all together, without having to take 20 different vehicles.  We also visited Sarah Hobbs Peck in December when she worked with Solomon Projects to do a three-room installation at the W Hotel.  So, we’re working on a gallery visit group to compliment the studio visits.

SH: Seriously, it’s like, “Hey, we all do this, why don’t we do it together!”  It’s not like I have a group that always comes with me to openings.  Often, I go to a gallery, and it’s awkward to be there alone, surrounded with people you barely know, and no one to comfortably discuss the art with because most people are there to drink and socialize.  I think most people who go to galleries can identify with that feeling.  We want to bring the group to galleries to talk about the work, and have a good time.

BS: Another great thing is that artists who are new to Atlanta can come to SEEK and instantly gain a serious, thoughtful creative community.  I can identify with that because that was me a few years ago.  Now we’re trying to be the medium where artists can connect with each other instantly.

Seek ATL visits Carl Rainey’s warehouse studio. Photographs courtesy of Ben Steele.

SH:  Yeah, there are solid crit groups, where it’s like five people, and that’s their CRIT GROUP, and it feels cliquey and exclusive.  We want to be inclusive, to encourage an informal environment, and we need a certain critical mass to make that happen.  That’s why even though we already  have a large mailing list, we want it to keep expanding.

KS: So if you guys are interested in artists who aren’t well-known or who operate on the periphery, how do you plan to garner interest in the visit? 

SH:  We keep in touch with our mailing list, keep a facebook page, and include links to the artist’s websites so people can take a look before they come.  Also, Ben and I choose artists who are doing interesting work.  An artist doesn’t have to be getting a bunch of public attention to be making work that matters.  That’s why we are so into this idea.  Atlanta has more going on than we know about, and we want to seek it out.

KS: And how will you maintain a certain level of discourse so that an artist, at any phase of their practice, can take something valuable away?

BS: Even when we’re visiting someone who isn’t in the spotlight, there are always highly informed artists attending.  Also, we curate our host artists, so even if you haven’t heard of them, they will be making work that’s worth talking about.  Artists at every level recognize the value of a community dialogue about their practice, and that’s what‘s really at the heart of it.  We want to sustain that, so it’s a community that stays together and shares these experiences. I’ve been to each and every visit, and they’ve all been valuable.  It’s an opportunity for conversations, and a chance to talk to an artist about their work outside of the gallery setting.  It’s a chance to really dig into the method and the meaning of it.  The host artist gets something out of it, and so does everyone else.

KS:  Yes, and that’s the great thing about critique, when you realize that it’s not just for the artist, but also for all the people contributing.

Jessica Caldas gets a visit from SEEK ATL as she prepares for a solo show at BeepBeep Gallery. Photograph by Joshua Gwyn.

SH: Right, and it’s not about having an exhibition up in your studio for us to see; it’s a chance to see the process.  Plus, there are fun things that happen, like when you see some strange doodle on the floor and you can say to the artist, “Hey, what’s that?  It’s interesting and it works with the things that you’re doing,” and they hadn’t thought of that before.  It’s a chance for an artist to get fresh input for their practice.

BS:  It’s also about artists not presenting themselves as bulletproof.  It’s a chance to talk about the process of art-making.  It’s about what they’re doing, and to so some degree that’s so much more powerful than a finished product.

SH:  And it takes guts for an artist to open up like that, but if you’re going to be doing this, you have to be able to do just that.  Not getting defensive means that the artist can open themselves to suggestions that they may or may not have considered on their own.  Also, you have to be able to take the criticism that’s valuable to you, and let go of what doesn’t help your process.

KS: Yes, not getting defensive is key, also acknowledging that critique isn’t just for the host artist, but also allows the group to focus and talk about art in a constructive and critical way.  It can be as much about listening as speaking.

Do you give the host artist any suggestions before they have the group to their studios?

BS: Well, we don’t have any set guidelines—

SH: Except that we start at 2:30 (laughing).

BS:  We have consistently encouraged our host artists to not give an entire artist statement at first.  That means that, to some extent, they get to decide how much they want to say, and the conversation emerges because of what people see and what they want to know.  Usually we get to hit all the points that someone would have said in a statement.

SH:  Yeah, I think sometimes we envision critique almost like a performance, but it really should be a conversation.  We want interactions where the artists trust the group to honestly talk to them about their works in progress as well as their practice.

KS:  Let’s switch gears a little and find out what it feels like to get a visit from SEEK.  Jessica, only an hour ago you hosted us in your studio. How do you feel? What did you think of the visit?

Diptych of Jessica Caldas during her SEEK critique. Photographs by Joshua Gwyn.

Jessica Caldas: I was nervous, but excited, and it was all beneficial. I didn’t get much “crit culture” in undergrad, and I haven’t been to graduate school so I haven’t had many experiences where other artists really give you directed feedback.  I was worried that I didn’t have the right education or vocabulary, but it was a close group, and felt comfortable.  

I definitely got a lot out of the visit, even with feeling shy and not knowing if I’m going to say the “right thing” or not.  People were hitting on things that I was already thinking about, and that was reinforcement that the group saw and responded to what I’m doing.  It made me want to keep pushing further.  It was really exciting to have so many artists come to talk about my work.

SH:  Do you get a different experience from having artist friends visit your studio than something like today?  (Now, I’m the interviewer!)

JC:  The funny thing is, I don’t feel like I have many super-close artist friends.  I do know a lot of artists, like we all do, but we don’t often talk specifically about the work.  Now, I DO have a lot of people who aren’t artists who come to my studio to hang out or study while I work, and I really respect their input because they have an audience’s perspective.  It’s different to have a bunch of artists come in to talk about my work.

BS:  I thought that the group was looking at your work in a really intense way; it was still informal, but people were really mining and trying to investigate it.  I would say that’s rare for almost any experience.  In your studio, there was a collection of people there that have a lot of insight into many different areas.  So one comment would elicit a question from another person that they wouldn’t have thought of on his or her own.  It’s a cross-pollination that wouldn’t have happened without the various individuals present.

JC:  Yeah, through the Leap Year program, we have people come to our studios for one-on-one crits. Debbie Michaud, the editor at Creative Loafing, visited me recently, and her questions were more about my entire practice rather than specifics.  I’ve got Cinque Hicks coming next, and I wonder what he’ll be asking about.

KS:  So, was there anything that struck you as immediately valuable for preparing your solo show at BeepBeep Gallery?

The floor in Jessica Caldas’s studio. Photograph by Karley Sullivan.

JC:  Ben mentioned repetition, which I have thought a lot about.  It’s funny—although I am a print-maker, I often feel like I work more as a painter, with mono-type single-runs and messiness all around.  I always imagine printmakers as very neat, without fingerprints on the borders (laughing), but printing doesn’t have to be like that at all.  If I choose to repeat an image, they don’t have to be exact reproductions.  Also, I’m thinking about ways to bring the stories of the domestic violence victims that I advocate for into the work while still respecting their privacy.

KS: So, you have been to previous SEEK visits, how was it being a group member?

JS: When I go to someone else’s SEEK, I like to just listen. I think that even if you do feel shy, there’s value in just listening to the conversations in the room even before and after the actual crit.

The next SEEK gathering is tomorrow, Saturday, April 6^th, with a visit to Nathan Sharratt’s studio.  Email seek.atl.group@gmail.com to join the mailing list or check out the SEEK ATL facebook page.

Molly Brodak.

Molly Brodak is the author of the chapbooks, Instructions for a Painting and The Flood, and the full length collection, A Little Middle of the Night, winner of the 2009 Iowa Poetry Prize. She is currently a Creative Writing Fellow in Poetry at Emory University.

Her newest release, Essays on Parts of Day (Horse Less Press), takes the reader through the different moods and situations that arise at various parts of the day. From Darkness to Before Clouds to Day and beyond. There is an undercurrent of danger in the book, like something is lurking the shadows that never reveals itself. There is also a sober sense of love, like love is present, but the rug won’t get swept out from under the feet of experience again. I talked with Molly through email about her new book and her fellowship at Emory.

Scott Daughtridge: I’m fascinated by people’s biographies. When did you start writing poetry and when did you decide you wanted to be a poet? When was the first time someone said they wanted to publish your work and what was that like for you?

Molly Brodak: I had been writing poems since I was a child, I just didn’t know what they were. I didn’t take it seriously until I was in college—I first went to art school and studied Illustration, but then took a poetry class and decided I really would rather write. I transferred to Oakland University I started really looking at what I had been doing this whole time.

I don’t remember the first place that accepted a poem of mine for publication—it was around that time in college—but it definitely was exciting. I distinctly remember the day I found out I won the Iowa Poetry Prize for my first book. I was cleaning the house and I got a phone call from an unknown number and was really annoyed. When I picked up, I really thought someone was messing with me, so I got even more irritated and told the editor of the Iowa Press to go to hell. She called me back later and I couldn’t believe it was real, and I felt so bad for yelling at her. She was very understanding though.

SD: You are from Michigan, you got your BA from Oakland University, MFA from West Virginia University, you taught at Augusta State University and now you’re a Fellow at Emory. To some people, that is a lot of relocating. Does your location play a role in your poetry? If so, how has Atlanta influenced your work? If not, how do you keep a sense of consistency in different environments?

MB: I did relocate a lot because I am used to relocating I think—I grew up moving around a lot. In fact, I have never lived anywhere for more than 4 years. Location definitely influences my work. I think about my surroundings a lot, and I often feel like the edge of my self extends beyond the boundary of my body and into the places I am, so I feel like I am living not in a location but as part of one.

I often don’t write directly about a place until after I have left it though. I feel like I need that distance of reflection. I really love Atlanta and have made a commitment to stay here for a while. I like the size and scope of it, and I love all the parks. It has influenced me in the sense that it has made me pleased to live in a city again. Living in Augusta, or Savannah, or West Virginia, or even Detroit, sometimes you get the feeling that people hate you and don’t want you there, in their city or place. I don’t feel that way here. I’ve never been made to feel like an outsider in Atlanta. I have to admit too that I love the city’s official emblem, the phoenix—I feel personally akin to that symbol.

SD: Your newest work, Essays on Parts of Day, was released in January. Qualitatively, how does writing a chapbook compare to writing full-length books?

MB: Writing a chapbook feels different from a book. The mood of it is hard to explain, but I would say it’s kind of sweeter. There’s less pressure, since it feels like a chapbook will not come to define you like a book would. It’s freeing and more intimate somehow, the smallness of it.

Molly Brodak’s Essay on Parts of Day, Horse Less Press, courtesy of the author.

SD: I love the shifting of moods in your new book, from subtle danger to a subdued sense of love and delight. Can you talk about how the poems in this collection relate to the title? 

MB: Thank you for describing the moods like that, I think that is a really good description! This chapbook is sort of odd in how it was made. I had these three long, unrelated poems that I suddenly decided went together. They were written at very different times, but because they are all long poems, they have camaraderie. In the same way a short strip of metal is very stiff but a long strip of the same metal is flexible, long poems can’t help but have range and variety in feeling, just because there is more to them. It can be hard to “do” anything with a long poem because they can be hard to get published in journals, and they sometimes stick out in manuscripts, so I am happy to have them together in this chapbook. 

The title poem was written at a time when I was routinely trespassing in an abandoned house in Augusta where I used to live. I used to go there and just look around, even though it was sort of unsafe. I like ruins because there’s something honest about them. They tell their story in a way that a maintained place can’t. I wrote that poem at different points during the day, reflecting on the mood of the moment. 

SD: I’m interested in your role as a professor as well as a poet. How do you approach the work of your students? Are you more hands on in shaping their voices or do you let them figure it out on their own?

MB: Mostly you have to get out of the way of your students. When I started teaching, I realize now, I was overteaching. I was just so happy to be doing it—I really love teaching and I get so excited about sharing ideas and praising good writing or offering criticism. Now I realize that often saying less allows them to have the experience of learning something by figuring it out—not by being told. I like to work one-on-one throughout the semester with my students, often giving them “private” assignments or assigning them poets to research on their own. Learning, really, when you get right down to it, is always private. You can learn in a group but no one really learns “as” a group. I try to encourage my students to really use the class, to see it as their own class, and not get sucked into groupthink that can water down radical creativity in workshop situations. I feel very grateful to be teaching—it allows me to learn constantly and I love learning. It’s the best job I can imagine for me.

Installation image, Jim Lee, Please Be Clean When You Do It, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, March 1-31, 2013, image courtesy Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York.

Jim Lee was born in Berrien Springs, Michigan and received his MFA from the University of Delaware in 1996. His current show in New York at Nicelle Beauchene runs until March 31^st. We met and became good friends in early 2001, shortly after moving to the city. We recently caught up to discuss his ever-evolving work, interests, and life outside of the studio.

Ridley Howard: I’ve known you and your work for over 10 years now—can you talk about how the language of your paintings has developed? In terms of early interests, minor and major shifts that have led you to where you are now.

Jim Lee: As you know, I have a pretty manic personality. The work seems to feed off of that. I’m rarely content and that moves the paint around. Early on, the work was heavily oriented towards the structure. Even the drawings were in relief. Cardboard assembled in a quasi-haphazard fashion. The work was small-ish in scale and I labored over a lot of minute details. At times, I felt like I had an idea of what each piece would look like before it was finished and I really didn’t want that to be the situation.

I need to work and not really know that I am making anything in particular. I guess that’s why I work on multiple pieces at the same time. It allows me to keep moving without focusing so much on the act of painting—in the end, I just want to make things. There shouldn’t be any hierarchy in my process. Oil paint is no more important than latex, and linen is no more important than a piece of plywood. When I paint in this manner, the pieces become more interesting to me…I lose track of what is actually occurring.

Now it seems my painting is more traditional in terms of structure. Flat, lots of stretcher bars, canvas and linen. It’s like the sanctity of the rectangle has won me over. All of this said, the work has basically remained about the same since the mid 90′s. Looking back, I like what I was doing 10 years ago. It was a bit uglier, nastier, and meaner.

RH: You sort of mentioned this, but the structure and architecture of the paintings seems primary—structure as image/abstraction, structure of paint surface and stretcher, the architecture and space of the room. It all crumbles and materializes simultaneously.

JL: For me, it’s about staying engaged. The structure helps me to remain locked in. I try to slow people down…I want the viewer to discover things slowly; to have the paintings unveil themselves in a manner that takes time. I guess that’s all part of it. The surface, stretcher, the environment—I want it all to be a factor. I imagine it being like when an athlete talks about the game slowing down… it’s as if everything is functioning on the same level. I imagine it has more to do with confidence in one’s approach.

Jim Lee’s studio. Image courtesy the artist.

RH: Do you see your process as a kind of intervention? I’ve always thought about a Kelly-like elegance in tension with another disruptive energy.

JL: That’s funny. I like the term intervention when referring to my painting process. Sure, I guess there is a sort of intervention occurring. I just try to react off of things…marks on the painted surface, purposely warping a stretcher bar, cutting something then putting it back together. I want to create a scenario in which I have to fix something. In the end, I try to make a painting out of the happenstance that is part of the studio. And, over the years, I have tried to pare down the tools that I use. Having fewer tools forces me to make those decisions out of necessity. For a time, it felt like I was relying on the tools to inform what I would do next, and that seemed to inhibit my process. I had a big table saw that I would drag around with me from studio to studio. I built a giant table for it so I could roll it around, and it could easily rip a four by eight foot sheet of one-inch baltic birch. But in the end, I would be setting up all these jigs to make one or two cuts, and I would lose contact with the reality of the situation and it was like I was trying to make furniture. So, about 6 years ago, I just gave it away. I said to this guy I ran into in the neighborhood, if you can pick it up it’s yours. He thought I was crazy, but was super excited to get it.

RH: Does your limited, but charged, use of color relate to that?

JL: Color has been strange for me. I love to use it, but it really has to fit with me just right. I love to mix colors when I teach my students, but in the studio I hate to mix color…it slows me down. I just want that immediacy. I think that’s why I use a lot of industrial paints like oil-based enamels and such. I go to the store, tell them what colors I want…its ready to go. Just open up the can. I like to shop at the mom-and-pop hardware stores in the neighborhood. They always have some paints that are going out of stock, or they have decided to go with another brand and are selling cheap. I bought an industrial paint sprayer a few years ago—that provided a way to get color down really fast. It allows for some chance to occur at the same time it allows me to create a beautifully flat and nearly-dead surface. In the end, I believe that is something that I strive to achieve…a surface that is barely there…almost dead. I want to try to get the painting to be still for just a moment…it seems that the paintings are always moving too fast in my mind. I want them to slow down and not be all over the place.

RH: You’ve recently done shows in Europe where you showed up with materials and made work on the spot. How is that process different than working exclusively in your studio?

JL: I don’t need a proper studio to do my work. I’ll work anywhere, and I love to travel (although I hate to fly). So, it is always an option for the foreign gallery. It’s usually much cheaper for them in the long run. I integrate fairly easily. I don’t speak any languages, and, heck, I can barely speak English. But I usually find all the really quirky industrial product stores that I need in the first day or two. I walk around taking in the new environment, locate the small bars within walking distance, and I set up shop. I like to bring my own staple guns and paper so I can get started immediately. I did this last during January 2012. My gallery in Brussels, Vidal Cuglietta, brought me over for the month. They let me use the gallery as my studio. They had to work a few days a week and I worked in the gallery beside them. If it got too cramped in there, I’d take a walk or grab a drink. I like to have music on when I work, so I had to use headphones when the owners were there. One time I was working on a painting—and I guess I got ticked off by something—and with headphones on you don’t realize how loud your voice can be—well, apparently I said motherfucker a bit too loud. They didn’t immediately show up, but within about 15 minutes, Barbara and Lilou stepped into the space as I was looking at the painting and they said, “Is this the motherfucker?”

Jim Lee, Untitled (Modern Myth), 2013, oil enamel, charcoal and staples over canvas, 88 1/2 x 54 inches, courtesy of the artist and Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York.

RH: Speaking of mf’ers, I recently heard you refer to your work as ‘scruffy.’ You seem to frame a certain attitude through process. I know it relates to a lot of music you love, and maybe sports teams you follow.

JL: Well, I try not to take myself too seriously, so if I use a word like ‘scruffy’ to describe my paintings, it is a way for me to keep everything grounded. As for the music that I listen to…it’s all over the place, but the least amount of production sounds best to me. As for the teams I follow, I’m really loyal to the Philadelphia teams since about 1977. Philly teams seem to go through a lot of hardship. I get so excited for the people that live in Philly if the teams are doing well, which for some reason isn’t all that often. I’ve experienced 3 championships in my lifetime, the 1983 Sixers, 1980 and 2008 Phillies. I guess that’s pretty good. Still waiting for the Birds and Flyers.

RH: Is there a concert or album that stands out to you in the way that Schwitters does?

JL: That’s a great question, but I doubt I have a fantastic answer. My recall ability is really poor. Many things are jumbled up in my mind. Band names, songs, titles to paintings, box scores, grocery lists…its endless. But a few weeks ago I had a visitor to the studio, and we were just sitting there shooting the shit and TV Eye by the Stooges came on the stereo. And I said, I wish I could make a painting look like this sounds. I listened to TV Eye on repeat for an entire day. I do that with a lot of songs…Brother James by Sonic Youth is a good one for that, same for Bowie’s Life on Mars?…go figure. It gets super strange after about nine or 10 hours of listening to the same song over and over. Maybe it’s a way for me to deprive myself of information and it forces me to break rules I normally wouldn’t attempt to break.

Installation image, Jim Lee, Please Be Clean When You Do It, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, March 1-31, 2013, image courtesy Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York.

RH: Your first show in New York was such an anomaly at the time—a breath of fresh air. You were one of only a few young artists invested in the work of Imi Knoebel, Richard Tuttle, and Franz West. What is often called ‘Provisional Painting’ is now quite pervasive in young galleries and top MFA programs. Though your voice is distinct and work only distantly related, I am curious how you feel about the current landscape.

JL: You know, I’ve not heard of that term Provisional Painting…I’ve got to look that up. In the past, I’ve called my work fugitive… so I guess that’s related. I’m really happy to hear that any show of mine could be viewed as an anomaly—I wish more shows could be considered that way. When I was in grad school I got a lot of shit for making the work that I did. I was the odd ball. It seemed that everyone was using a projector and layering images looking for some sort of oblique narrative to arrive. I liked the work that everyone was making, but I just thought it looked timely. I was, and still am, trying to make something that looks more timeless. I’ve always felt like a modernist that was born about 70 years too late. And the climate of the art world is what it is. Who knows what will become the next trend? I know that I enjoy looking at the galleries and seeing what everyone is up to. There are a lot of good young artists out there making solid work. I know that when this ‘provisional painting’ has run its course, I’ll still be making the same stuff I’ve been making for the past 20 years or so. As I think about this question, I think I sort of liked being the odd ball.

RH: I am always interested in how artists use the theatricality of scale. Is that part of what you think about?

JL: Scale is always in play. Size means nothing to me…its all about scale. I think that is the thing that I struggle with the most—that, and making a horizontal composition. For my current show at Nicelle Beauchene, I used sound to mess with the scale and space. I made a giant diddley bow for people to play. It makes a low rumble–really sludgy and I believe that helps to humble the work.

Installation image, Jim Lee, Please Be Clean When You Do It, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, March 1-31, 2013, image courtesy Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York.

RH: I have always admired your devotion to your work and studio life. It is constant and completely separate from any exhibition schedule. Do you give your students advice about the road ahead? Did anyone give you advice about being an artist that stuck?

JL: Someone said to me, Jim, you make good looking paintings—can you make a bad looking painting? I always found that funny.

I always tell my students, “Stay as young as you can for as long as you can.” Everyone wants to get hooked up with a gallery. I say, just make the work. That is the only thing that you can control. Doesn’t matter if you are the next hot thing or sitting in anonymity—the only thing that is of true importance is to get in the studio and make the work that is relevant to you. I love to be in the studio, I also love to hate being in the studio…that goes back to my manic personality.

Installation image, Jim Lee, Please Be Clean When You Do It, Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, March 1-31, 2013, image courtesy Nicelle Beauchene Gallery, New York.

RH: I know you’re spending a little time working upstate these days, and you and Jenny just welcomed a daughter into the world. Have the shifts in your life offered new energy or perspective?

JL: Yeah, I had to grow up fast. I just mentioned to somebody the other day that I was living like an asshole for 40 some years, and then in a period of one month, I had a baby, a house and a car. Holy shit, all of a sudden I’m my dad?! That was a lot to handle. I love my life; I don’t know how this sitcom can end. And having a daughter has been a true blessing. She is the best thing I’ve ever had a part in making.

But yeah, the work must be shifting or shall I say that I am shifting. I just opened my show, and I must say the past few months have been a real tough time for me. I’m still digesting the work, so not sure what to say about it yet. I just want it to challenge me.

Ridley Howard was born in Atlanta and is now based in Brooklyn, NY. He received a BFA from the University of Georgia, and an MFA from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. He has received awards from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, and the New York Foundation for the Arts. He is represented in New York by Leo Koenig Inc.

Note: An abridged version of this interview appears in Huffington Post.

Atlanta-based photographer Sheila Pree Bright is known for her series of portraits and images that capture the changing, diversifying faces of modern America. In the new project she�s developing, 1960 Who?, Bright reflects on the American epistemic shift that was initiated by the Civil Rights movement. By reminding viewers that it was ordinary people that joined together to create exceptional change, she keeps her camera squarely aimed at contemporary social struggles.

Using her body�s movements as a magnifying glass, choreographer and dancer Helen Hale will demonstrate the symbiotic forces of psychology and soma that give humans the ability to orient and reorient themselves through unceasing environ-mental changes. Having danced from pre-school through high school, and subsequently completed my graduate work in the area of religion and early 20th century ballet, I was naturally curious about Hale�s choreographic interpretation of everyday rituals in Sanity Ceremonies. Her description of the observances that ease us from one cognitive state to another, such as brewing coffee or tea each morning, reminds us that they are essentially kinetic. In this interpretation, it is impossible to compartmentalize body and mind.

Marcia Vaitsman and Seana Reilly are working together to create a large-scale installation, Heisenberg Boulevard. In many ways, this project will address similar themes that Vaitsman and Reilly explore in their solo work: as a duo, the themes of (im)materiality, foreign psychologies and landscapes, and arbitrary boundaries are even more prominent. �There is a way of approaching�scientific thought that is more�intuition-based,� they say, �which speaks to a different kind of intelligence… an intuitive way of living in alignment with what naturally happens in the physical and societal domains.� Together, they speak to the confluence of energies that is required in acts of creation, and to the production of knowledge that is the result of play, chance, discovery.

Sheila Pree Bright, 1960 Who?

Sarah Levine:� Your grant from idea Capital is going toward a new portrait series 1960 Who?, which is inspired by the Freedom Riders. The title suggests that the project hopes to answer a question. What is that question?

Sheila Pree Bright: The project will be a collection of�photographic portraits about ordinary and grassroots people who placed their lives on the line during the civil rights movement. They were the youth of the 1960�s who were cooks, wives, husbands, laborers, and students who�believed whole heartily in a cause for social injustice; they were the nameless who the world has seen in history books,�waving signs, being hosed down and beaten by police and national guards. 1960 Who will look into these�soldiers� roles in the Civil Rights Movement and ask them what it means to be American, both now and then.

SL: Who will be featured in the portraits? Why them?

SPB: I�m using the youth of�the civil rights movement as the source that was fighting for human rights.�I expect this body of work to expose the motivations and ultimately the hearts of youth from the sixties from the civil rights movement, but also the present day youth, who use their voices for social change around the world.

SL: How do you see this project fitting into your larger body of work? 1960 Who? seems like a natural step after Young Americans, but I’m also fascinated by the retrospective shift you’ve taken by looking to a specific moment in U.S. history in order to suggest a direction for the global future.

Sheila Pree Bright, Tyranne, from the Young American series, 2006, copyright and courtesy the artist.

SPB: I’m looking at the sixties because it�was a time where the old secure framework was not going to work anymore and change was imminent�civil rights for African Americans, youth culture, new feminism, counter culture, and anti-war culture. The youth cultures of the 60s demanded revolutionary change by protest and rebellion, and I see these same attributes being played out by today�s youth�civil disobedience has become a global model for change for present-day youth.

SL: Your work is shown all over the country, so what keeps you in Atlanta?

SPB: I’m an Army brat and I’m fascinated with the history of Atlanta, the birth place of my parents…my evolution in the South has not come to a end yet, but eventually I will head West.

Helen Hale, Sanity Ceremonies

Sarah Levine: Based only on anecdotal evidence, I�ve found that many people consider dance to be one of the more inaccessible arts, especially in comparison to visual art, music and even theater. Have you had similar experiences? Movement is one of the most primal forms of human communication and expression, but I sense that the general public is often uncomfortable with dance as an art form.

Helen Hale: I have had a similar experience and I think it is due to a number of different things, some of which have to do with the form and some of which have to do with our culture and time.

The very fact that movement is a primal form of expression is one of the reasons that the public is made uncomfortable by it.� Western society does not laud primal instincts and urges.� We live in a society that at least on the surface makes attempts to be �civilized� in a mode rooted in Puritan tradition that encourages us to button the top button, maintain our personal space bubbles, and not make spectacles of ourselves. Thus, I think we have in some way been taught as a society to view that which is primal as that which is other than ourselves.� What is other is often perceived as both uncomfortable and inaccessible.�

In a similar vein we often perceive our bodies as other than ourselves�in dance we have to reckon with the body, which is charged in all kinds of ways.� It is inherently powerful, intelligent, personal, sexual, political, symbolic, and, therefore�incredible. But human beings can be very uncomfortable with all of this.

Dance can be uncomfortable because art can be uncomfortable. All art.� Art often pushes boundaries and intentionally shakes things up. In dance�especially contemporary dance�you�re taking the foundational discomfort of Art, and combining it with the charged nature of the body�a body that might be used to push a boundary or shake something up�and presenting it to an audience who is commonly expected to watch it in its entirety even though they don�t really know what�s coming.� Anything could happen!� These encounters present a lot of risk and require significant trust from the audience.� Not everybody is up for this.

Also, in today�s culture, we are training ourselves to view things in quick bursts. There�s a sense that if it doesn�t hit you in the first 20 seconds then it�s not designed to make an impact.� Dance asks you to experience something in time, to wade in the water for a while as a piece unfolds and builds.� One of my concerns is that we are conditioning ourselves to equate slow with boring, and consider work that is not frenetic to be inaccessible in a brand new way.

Helen Hale. Photo credit: Dayna Thacker

SL: The history of dance has a few larger than life characters whose popularity catapulted them to stardom: Isadora Duncan, Mikhail Baryshnikov, Alvin Ailey, and Fred Astaire are just a few in the Western canon. At the same time, of course, there are hundreds of dancers whose influence is less well recognized. Are there any choreographers or performers whose work has especially inspired your own?

HH: The Akram Khan Company, Ronald K. Brown/Evidence, and Urban Bush Women are companies that I went to see and was hit by a huge inner YES in response to their work.� Kun-Yang Lin and Meri�n Soto are enormous influences in my approach to dance and performance.

I am also very inspired by a community of physical theater and dance makers I encountered in Philadelphia, many of whom work in concert with one another�Headlong Dance Theater, Nicole Canuso Dance Company, and Team Sunshine Corporation.� Each of those groups produces distinct work that I find consistently on point in its presentation and creative genius. I encounter them as deeply compelling and refreshing for their real-ness, and what they reveal to me about people and about the world.

I will be forever influenced in my dance making by the work of Moving in the Spirit and Lelavision.� Their founders, Dana Lupton and Leah Mann, introduced me to dance as a tiny child, and I am still inspired by the work they do in the studio and in the community.

SL: Idea Capital has awarded you a grant that goes toward your creation of a performance that examines everyday human rituals. What’s the impetus and inspiration? Is the piece interested in placing a value-judgment on those rituals?

HH: Yes, Idea Capital has very generously granted me support for my project, Sanity Ceremonies, an autobiographical foray into being both off-kilter and in-stride using a tea ceremony as its initial point of reference.� The piece springs from my own questions:� Where do I come from?� How do I orient myself?� Of what metal am I made?� What are my modes of navigating the chaotic and absurd?� The tea ceremony aspect stems from my rote morning �ceremony� of making tea or coffee to help align my psyche in the liminal space after sleep.

I tend to find that the more personal a work is the more easily it can be translated into a personal experience for the viewer.� So, rather than doing broad research on human ritual, I am examining my own personal rituals and those of the people and cultures of my ancestry. I am fascinated by ritual and ceremony because I find it interesting to think about why we do the things we do. My observation is that people, sometimes consciously and often unconsciously, perform ceremonies all the time; we develop and enact very specific ways of relating to our belongings, spaces, bodies, and daily tasks. At its core, Sanity Ceremonies is about how people navigate life, using my life and myself as the primary territory of research.

No, the piece is not interested in placing a value-judgment on these rituals. I am more interested in showing and sharing what is, and what could be, as a way of opening a door into a realm of thought or experience.� I would like to leave an audience with questions that invite them to ponder how they feel about something rather than to leave them with what I feel about it.� The work, while made in very close collaboration with my creative team (costume designer Amanda Baumgardner, and filmmaker, Mike Boutt�) will be performed solely by me.� Thus, I am pushing myself to share in pretty real ways about my own life.� So far, building the piece is requiring a lot of self-compassion, gentleness, and humor and less judgment of any sort!

Marcia Vaitsman & Seana Reilly, Heisenberg Boulevard

Marcia Vaitsman, Planetarium, 2012, courtesy of the artist.

Sarah Levine: In your individual work, you both are comfortable with using interdisciplinary ideas with a variety of media. Why collaborate for this new piece, Heisenberg Boulevard? What made you want to work with each other? What does creative partnership bring to the process?

Marcia Vaitsman & Seana Reilly: We have helped each other for a while now, loaning help for this or that. A year ago we came together to develop two project proposals, and we felt that there was a moment in our conversations that the thoughts merged, when one was about to say something and the other was already answering. This probably happens because we have been sharing a massive amount of information, talking a lot about our own studio works in very deep and frank ways, and we traveled together to Brazil and Miami last year. We are both researchers by nature: curious, critical, and analytical.

We wanted to go beyond the idea of collaboration as “I make the video and you make the installation��for now we have roles defined that are technical roles�and guess what, these roles started to shift, too. The concept and the vision have been developed together in long loose talks with no specific aim�and of course we document everything. Seana is still more the brain and hands for the material world, when math meets physics, and Marcia is more the time and wave brain, how things are timed, how they pulse.

SL: The scope of the installation�both in terms of its size and its theoretical underpinnings�seems substantial. Can you tell me about the materials you�ll use to realize the vision?

MV & SR: The main materials are immaterial: light and sound. The installation in the space will bring some surprises because we will probably use 4 video channels and many audio channels. One of the great things about the Idea Capital grants is that they capture the projects in very early phases, giving the artists the possibility to experiment. That is where we are now, beginning to play with the space that will host the audiovisual channels, we are about to start to build the real models. One thing for sure is that we want to give the public the opportunity to sit down and relax while engaging with the installation. We want people to stay as long as they want, so we are studying possibilities of having inflatable cushions or similar comfortable seating. It is very important to be able to “feel” such works with your body too.

Seana Reilly, Schematic 129 (DisseminatingMoon), Graphite on Dibond, 30 x 48 inches, courtesy of the artist.

SL: That’s interesting�the ‘feeling’ bit, because what I find most engaging about the project’s proposal is the gesture you make towards the anti-romantic tone you’ll be taking: you describe the installation as one that will �untether viewers� from a nostalgic, fearful, and romantic conception of Earth�s natural processes; that definitely speaks to the research-driven and analytical portion of your identities. At the same time, you’re engaged in this intense, collaborative, and creative experience with each other, with your materials, and eventually, with viewers. In school, I was always a little baffled by what I thought was the odd coupling in the College of Arts and Sciences. What’s the relationship between the two in your minds?

MV & SR: There is a way to make scientific thought very approachable through the arts. It taps into a place that is more than analytical�it is integrative, not extrapolative.�We both consider ourselves to be researchers, but to talk about the research in a visual way requires something other than equations, charts, and diagrams.�There is a way of approaching�scientific thought that is more�intuition-based, which speaks to a different kind of intelligence�an intuitive way of living in alignment with what naturally happens in the physical and societal domains, without having to wrap your head around abstract�symbol�systems.

There is a normal confusion between science (acquiring knowledge) and modern science. Modern science is not much older than a couple hundred years. It is a slow way to acquire knowledge because the methods to establish the truth (or even only certainty) are very complicated and in most of the times very bureaucratic. It is still the only way today to validate academic research outcomes and their practical applications. However, we have obviously been human beings for many thousands of years before modern science existed. The complexity of knowledge that allowed us to become intelligent beings derives from different ways to perceive the universe, even the mystical and intuitive experiences have shaped us. We could navigate before we had a telescope. Chinese medicine and Ayurveda, for instance, are extremely elaborated cure/health systems and yet modern science is still struggling to analyze how they work. Many of these systems include the idea of learning through the body, which is still an experience-based knowledge. If you look at the roots of the word intuition you will find that it means: �to consider�, �to look at.� One could even say that intuition is the very first motivation towards science.

There is a lot of intuition in this project because there is a lot of risk: when we do not know exactly the path, when we have not done it before, we research and follow some mental connections telling where to go. When art meets science (also religions and ancient knowledge) things make more sense, even if you cannot prove it scientifically. We have the freedom as artists to work in this hybrid arena. We both think that art is a mental process as well as science is a mental process�each one with its modus operandi.