Artist of the Week: Olivia Locher
Olivia Locher was born 22 years ago in the woods of Johnstown, Pennsylvania and currently resides in Manhattan. She received her BFA in Photography in 2013 from the School of Visual Arts. Olivia’s art is grounded in dreamlands and consciousness, while Olivia herself is generally dreaming. She breathes carefully and dances very rarely.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. My name is Olivia Locher and I was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania twenty-two years ago. For the past four years I have been living and working in New York City. I make photographs.
How did your interest in art begin? I started making photographs when I was seventeen years old, I began by photographing people I found interesting. A year later I decided to go to art school to study the medium.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? The pop art movement, experimental films, stock photography.
How has living in New York affected your art practice? Living in NYC has been ideal for my studio practice. Everything you could possibly need is practically right at your finger tips, not much of an effort needs to be made for getting supplies and materials. I created a home studio because I’ve found not having separation from work and home to be extremely fruitful for my process.
What artists are you interested in right now? Kenneth Anger, John Baldessari, Matthew Barney, Wolfgang TIllmans, Asger Carlsen.
Favorite music? Arthur Russell and Harry Nilsson.
Artist of the Week: Ryan Lauderdale
Ryan Lauderdale lives and works in New York, NY. He received his BFA from the University of Texas in Austin and is currently pursuing his MFA at Hunter College. He was born in Cushing, Oklahoma.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I grew up in Oklahoma then moved to Austin, Texas when I was about 19. Spent several years trying to make music but eventually fell into the visual side of art. I’ve lived in Brooklyn for about 2 1/2 years. I study at Hunter College, work as a graphic designer (my main skill is powerpoint) and I also make sculptures.
How has living in New York affected your art practice? A lot. New York has something about it that I think affects all people working here. The place is on visual steroids, which is both an inspiration and also something that you desperately want to get free from…sounds like the Internet.
Growing up out in the country, cities were always alien-like. Architecture felt spiritual and the cleanliness of mall spaces and the suburbs felt like a possible future. In a way, no city could compete with the outlandish dreams I had about them as a kid. NYC comes pretty close though.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Furniture design is huge… Karl Springer, Mario Botta, Milo Baughman. Interiors. Bruce Goff architecture. Chrome. Brass. Malls. Object Oriented Ontology…reading Levi Bryant today. Star Trek NG. David Lynch. William Eggleston. Haim Steinbach. Music. Meditation. Henri Bergson. The Internet.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I just finished a show at Sadie Halie Projects in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.
I have a few things coming up this fall, the biggest one being my thesis exhibition at Hunter. So this summer I’m hunkering down and trying to get most of the production complete so I can start figuring out the arrangement aspects.
Tell us about your work process and how it develops? It is usually some other form that acts as the jumping off point into sculpture.
This past summer I was heavily obsessed with late 70s jazz-fusion and the almost clown-like synthetic sounds of Weather Report. I was also falling deeply in love with furniture from the same era. I started thinking of creating physical pieces that would be a vestige of these two things, mutated furniture haunted with those sounds.
As things get created, new interests and information floating around in the headspace can’t help but be grafted into the production of the work. You’re left with a Deleuzian assemblage of, by this point, completely abstracted references. It’s a half-intuitive, half-semantic process that grows the body of work.
Lately, I just came off a trip back to Oklahoma where I took a lot of 35mm photos of Oral Roberts University, a space-aged Christian utopia in the Tulsa suburbs. This stuff is all in the same spiritual spectrum as Weather Report or Aphex Twin or Pierre Cardin furniture or glass shelving at Home Depot…at least to me. I’m attracted to things that seem to have some sort of unspoken connection. The work aspires to be like a residue of these connections.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work? I’m a big believer in what David Lynch has to say about meaning. It’s always been my hope to create a space/image in which a viewer can easily slip into. My ideas are there and I think they are somewhat direct, but I want the viewer to have the freedom to mesh with the work and insert his or her ideas and feelings into it. The goal, I think, is that the mood surrounding my work begins to interact with the viewer’s and they walk away with an intuitive knowledge of the work. Words can often pollute an art experience, so having meaning be more fluid and conversational is key.
Describe your current studio or workspace. Hunter has been blessed with a lot of space in Manhattan so right now I have a very large studio and part of another room that I use as a photography area. Most of my work is built with what I call “jpg-consciousness” where a work is conceived with its online life in mind. This allows things to be in flux in the studio, modular pieces get rearranged and mutated into newer work. Having a clean space free of visual noise to set up arrangements and periodically photograph them has become increasingly important.
I also use a shared wood shop to fabricate my work, and am looking forward to the day where this is totally integrated into my own space and no longer two floors away.
What artists are you interested in right now? I am a big fan of Ian Pedigo. I’m really interested in the intuitive nature of his arrangements and the sort of “thing-logic” that goes along with them. He seems directly tapped into his materials. It’s almost as if he is more of a conduit for some deeper intuitive process than the one calling the shots. The objects seem to know where they want to go within a piece and the pieces know where they want to go in a room.
I’m also in love with Oneohtronix Point Never and some of the other kraut-like synth stuff coming out these last few years in the music world. Grouper, Emeralds, Steve Hauschildt are all sound-tracking my life at the moment.
Top 3 favorite or most visited websites and why? I feel like I stay in the same really predictable online spaces. I remember when I was a kid in the 90s having these moments where you would travel way out to progressively weirder and weirder sites online. You would start on one subject and surf through a stream of consciousness from site to site eventually arriving on what felt like a different planet. Now it seems more about traveling within the territory of social media sites to find other users/content creators.
I’d say I look at Tumblr the most. I have my portfolio there and keep a sketchbook/blog. I like the jogging a lot and lately have been opening up Vince Mckelvie’s tumblr pretty often to bliss out on his gifs. I also, like most people, frequent facebook often. Nick Faust’s facebook feed has replaced all my art-blog needs. It is a constant flood of forgotten and under appreciated artists. Other than that, I google a lot of furniture.
What were you like in high school? I was a hippie.
Greetings friends! With summer around the corner we are excited to close the gallery for a few weeks to travel, explore, and see new art. Our summer break has always been a vital time for LVL3 to rethink and plan new ways for expanding our programing in order to better promote the artists whom we take pride in featuring. With new seasons comes new changes. It is with positive vibes that we are announcing the departure of longtime devoted team member and Associate Director Allison Kilberg. Our lifetime friend, Allison has played a significant role in the development of LVL3 throughout the past three years and we wish her well as she continues on to pursue new endeavors. The current duties will now be operated by founding Director Vincent Uribe, Director’s Assistant Anna Mort, and Gallery Assistant Reed Landin. We sincerely hope your summer looks as bright as ours and hope you stay in touch with our fresh, new calendar of events coming up as well as the continued Artist of the Week post. HAPPY SUMMER!
Sincerely,
LVL3
Artist of the Week: Daniel G. Baird
Daniel G. Baird was born in 1984 in New Jersey. He is currently living and working in Chicago, IL. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and his MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011. He recommends everyone skydive at least once in their life.
How did your interest in art begin? My interest in art began sometime in middle school after my family got our first computer. I became fascinated by 3D modeling programs and taught myself how to use them to make things. I would model objects and render them in the modeling program’s default renderer. To take these things out of the contour lines that showed its shape, the program would place the object as if it was in a totally black room with a single spotlight above it.
When I was in high school I made paintings. I began to paint images that were of subjects in a room with a spotlight above them that faded into a black background. I only recently realized this connection between the 3D modeling program and the paintings I had made after a visit home for the holidays. I think I could say that it was in these that I began to make works that I could call my own and that were not reproductions of other masterworks. I suspect it was also this experience of making virtual objects that has led me to working in sculpture as I do now.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? My process is rooted in research. I am interested in the history of objects and the tethered meanings that come by way of their use. Experimentation also plays an important role in my work. I try to work against my initial impulses for how things should look and twist it in an unexpected way.
I like to reference the idea of an object through reproducing how it is constructed. This generally consists of using direct references of scale and proportion of already existing structures and things. Physically, I like to use specific materials for the direct historical ideas and meanings that come attached to them. The use of the Vehicle Assembly Building’s structure, its scaled down nature, the clad faux-marble facade and its title after the Greek mythological character Endymion are all different materials to me. I consider the description of a “material” to be a slippery one.
3D scanners, marble dust, colored plastic, a rock from Frank Lloyd Wright’s Unity Temple, bird wings, 3D renderings, clay, broken computers, airplane parts, silica desiccant, or iridescent diffracting foil used to deter birds are some of the materials that interest me currently.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? The Lascaux Cave replicas, taxidermied birds, Pareidolia, touchscreens, contrails, mythology, bird feeders, future artifacts, the form of capsules, Felicity, CA, the feeling of spring approaching, disembodied airplane wings, anything broken that is produced by Apple, scaffolding, skateboarding deterrents, 3D printing, 3D scanning, Oriented Strand Board, light stands, the pantheon, sun tunnels, thrift stores, kid drawings, Acanthus plants, Yucca Mountain, hardware, the future.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I am currently working on a large series of pieces that I have been referring to as “pulls.” They are plaster works that I mold then cast in a white Carrara marble dust and resin or have 3D scanned into a computer. They are created by making very simple hand gestures into a malleable material and vary in proportions from the size of a hand to the length of a body (roughly 71”). They are very surreal and almost primordial.
I have been collaborating with my good friend Haseeb Ahmed for the past couple of years on a project we initiated in Maastricht, the Netherlands at the Jan van Eyck Academie. It is called Has the World Already Been Made? and is a diverse project that culls together 1:1 molds of architecture and objects from around the world, physical fragments of historically significant works of art and simultaneous performances to produce site-specific installations. I feel that this project as a whole embodies the description, “dimensions variable.”
Any current or upcoming shows we should know about? I currently have a show up at the Institute of Jamais Vu in London and a show of a collaborative project between me and Haseeb Ahmed that recently closed at Roots and Culture here in Chicago.
Haseeb and I have quite a few shows lined up in the next year in New York, Maastricht, Leipzig, Leeds and Paris with our collaborative project.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? IRL - Ben Schumacher at Bortolami was one of the most compelling shows I have seen in a very long time. Other ones of note were Nick Bastisat the Hills Esthetic Center, Paul Nelson at Julius Caesar and Charles Harlan at JTT. I also just saw the Heidelberg Project in Detroit and that was absolutely otherworldly.
Internet – Bailey Hikawa at Important Projects, Alex Mackin Dolan at Generation Works, Kris Martin at Kestner Gesellschaft.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I try to skateboard as much as I can. Go on adventures to seek out obscure places, camp, hang out. I internet a lot. And I try to read often.
If you hadn’t become an artist what do you think you’d be doing? I was a pretty dedicated baseball player when I was younger. If not art, I think I may have tried to pursue baseball for as far as it would have taken me.
What’s your absolute favorite place in the city/the world to be? The otherworldlyness of the gypsum deposits in the White Sands National Monument outside of Alamagordo, NM has a special place in my heart. Other places of note would be anywhere around Joshua Tree, a particular backyard in Miami, FL, and in my studio on a rainy day.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? Astronauts speak of this feeling of understanding the wholeness of the world and the interconnectedness of everything after the experience of seeing the world as an object that could fit between your fingertips. This “overview effect” is something I would like to feel physically by way of seeing the earth as a small marble.
Artist of the Week: Lauren Clay
Lauren Clay grew up in the suburbs of Atlanta. She received her BFA in painting from Savanah College of Art and Design and her MFA in painting and print making from Virginia Commonwealth University. After graduating VCU, she moved to New York in 2007.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. My work utilizes the mythology of modernist form and thought as a vehicle for exploring matters of the psyche, metaphysics, perception, and alternate realities. The traditional forms of modernism (such as monochrome painting, the plinth, and the grid) become like characters that play out my personal anxieties and quandaries—both art-historical and existential. By utilizing these forms I am also addressing the trappings of historical context.
How did your interest in art begin? I come from a family of artists, obsessive craftspeople, and do-it-yourself-ers. Just in my immediate family alone you will find a photographer, a musician, a potter, a flint-knapper, a seamstress, a conceptual artist, a soap maker, a couple of carpenters, a stained glass artist, and a spoon carver. We like to make stuff. When I was growing up, our house was full of projects and I’ve always felt very comfortable making things. Early on I began to lean towards drawing and painting. I went on to get both my BFA and MFA in painting.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Lately I’ve been making a series of large wall pieces. I’ve been thinking of them as big fat shaped monochromes. They are dimensional and have a very layered, textured surface— further confusing and questioning the support’s ability to exist as both object and image.
In these works I’ve been exploring the idea of the painting support as a non-image, and the surface as non-painting. They are all about transformation, and flatness versus physicality. Paintings in an existential crisis.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? Right now I am preparing for a small solo show at Grounds for Sculpture, a sculpture park outside of New York. The show is part of a series of exhibitions featuring emerging artists. For the show I am making a body of work based on David Smith’s Cubi series.
How has your work developed within the past year? Lately my work has changed a lot. My past work consisted mostly of sculptures assembled from smaller objects. Currently I’ve been making work that has a more focused dialogue with painting, and drawing less on outside references for imagery. I am more interested in pattern, texture, and faux surfaces.
What artists are you interested in right now? Ken Price, Franz West, Imi Knoebel.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? Zach Harris at Zach Feuer Gallery that just opened this month.
What are you really excited about right now? Recently I discovered through a friend’s recommendation the writings of Carlos Castaneda. I am totally fascinated with his descriptions of altered states of reality through the use of shamanistic practices and plant-based hallucinogens, as taught to him by a native Mexican man of the Yaqui tribe. There is a lot of skepticism and mystery surrounding his writings. Whether it’s fiction or fact, doesn’t really interest me, as there is so much truth and symbolism to be gleaned from his writing.
If you hadn’t become an artist what do you think you’d be doing? If I didn’t make visual art I would probably write fiction…
Favorite music? 60’s acid rock, and folk. Lately lots of Grateful Dead, The Zombies, T.Rex, 13th Floor Elevators, Neil Young, Joni Mitchel. Etc…
Artist of the Week: Austin Lee
Austin Lee was born in Las Vegas, NV. He is a graduate of Tyler School of Art and is currently studying at Yale School of Art in New Haven, CT. He showed his paintings in New York City for the first time last year in the “Virgins Show” curated by Marilyn Minter at Family Business Gallery.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I took a digital animation class with Johannes DeYoung last year and it helped me become more comfortable with 3D modeling. I thought it would help with my painting but I ended up making a lot of sculptures instead. I love when new tools and techniques can take you in a direction you weren’t planning.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I usually start with a digital drawing on my iPad. I think of it as an infinite sketchbook. If the drawing is worth exploring further I will make a painting with the drawing as the starting point. I mostly use acrylic paint but I try to use whatever the painting insists on. If it goes well something magical happens during the translation and I end up with something worth looking at.
How has your work developed within the past year? I have started to embrace my mistakes. Accidents can become “eurekas” and get me to places I couldn’t think of.
How did your interest in art begin? One of my earliest memories is drawing a horse in grade school. I remember the other kids liked it and that made me feel good. Since one of my most recent memories is painting a horse in grad school I guess things haven’t changed too much.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? The best and worst reaction was the same instance. I had an artwork vandalized but I thought it was great because it proved that at least one person saw it. It happened during an alumni sculpture show for my undergraduate college. My proposal was to make unplanned work during the installation responding to the gallery space. One of the things I made was a tiny painting that I put into a dark corner. I liked the idea of sneaking a painting into the sculpture show. It was hard to even see the painting so I was surprised when I stopped by the gallery and noticed someone had written on the piece. I made a little sign letting people know that the words were added and put it next to it. The artwork in the show was insured but I didn’t get any insurance money because I initially wrote priceless as the value. Before the opening and before the piece was vandalized I was contacted by the school because “priceless” is not an acceptable response. They asked me to change it. Together we decided the work I had not yet made was worth 0 dollars.
What artists are you interested in right now? Recently: Laura Owens, Jeff Elrod, Llyn Foulkes, Anoka Faruqee, Deb Kass, Stephen Powers, Wendy White, Jacob Lawrence, Always: Stanley Whitney, David Humphrey, Marilyn Minter, John Wesley, Frank Bramblett, Dona Nelson, David Hockney, Matisse Inspiring Friends: Paul DeMuro, Andrew Brischler, Dustin Metz, Kati Gegenheimer, Mark Gibson, Katrina Mortorff, John Szlasa
How has living in New Haven affected your art practice? I moved to New Haven for school and it has been an amazing place to focus on painting. I have met a lot of people here that I know will be lifelong friends and met many of my painting heroes.
What’s your favorite thing about your city? Whenever someone visits, we go to the Beinecke rare book library, Yale Art Museum and then Frank Pepe’s pizza. Having great art so close by has allowed me to spend time with specific pieces and get to know them. One of my favorite artworks that I found here is a sculpture called Last Gasp by Robert Arneson.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I try and fail to play music. The problem I seem to be having is that it takes a lot of dedication and painting always seems to win that battle.
Favorite music? I love all types of music and I am always looking for new things to listen to. If anyone has any suggestions go to my spotify account.
Thanks for the shout out @timeoutchicago #LVL3
Artist of the Week: Dmitri Obergfell
Dmitri Obergfell is an artist based in Denver, Colorado. He earned his BFA from the Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design in 2010. His currently has a solo exhibition at Galleria Upp in Venice.
How did your interest in art begin? Art making is something I have always been bound to and it has changed and developed with me as I grow.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? The idea generally determines the material I use. The most consistant part of my process is my obedience to the idea over the material. Rather than trying to make the materials conform to my idea, I try to find the most suitable material to express the idea. This concept-driven process often creates variation in material and form. As a result my work ranges in materials from things like graphite to inflatable balloons.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work? I would like the viewer to have an experience that temporarily removes them from their ego and lets them consider a broader sense of being. Our egos are such a finite thing in relation to everything else and I would like to provide scenarios that illustrate that.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? Right now I have a solo exhibition titled The Visigoths at Galleria Upp in Venice, Italy. The Visigoths exhibition is an exploration of concepts around the transition of culture. The works are Greco-Roman busts made of plaster and graphite. The busts are used as drawing tools to make marks on the gallery walls. In the performance of the piece the busts wear down as the graphite transitions into a drawing on the wall; the finished work, thus, is always erasing itself. Also, in August, I will have a residency at Vertigo Gallery in Denver that will end with a solo exhibition in the space. The title of the exhibition is By Hook or Crook. The work will revolve around acts of delinquency and question the motives of these types of acts.
What are you really excited about right now? I am working on a new work that investigates the relationship between natural and human-made materials. I am essentially generating crystal patterns into rectilinear picture planes that will be 3D printed and mounted to the wall. I am working with NW Rapid Mfg in Portland to do the 3D printing. The 3D printed objects will ultimately become chrome-plated pieces that will appear to hover off of the wall. This is my first experience using 3D printing to execute a concept, I see a lot of potential projects that could develop from this process.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? I saw Alberto Scodro’s exhibition at Via Farini in Milan. It was a very poetic exhibition about nature being used to destroy itself. I also recently saw James Turrel’s new Skyspace at Rice University and the Rothko Chapel in tandem in Houston. My brother, Darius, had just passed so it was a very emotional and cathartic experience.
What are your thoughts about the art scene in Denver? From my perspective, Denver has its ups and downs in relation to contemporary art. It is a cheap place to live and work with an amazing community of artists. I have a hard time imagining a more supportive community than Denver. Unfortunately, Denver artists don’t have much support outside of each other and it creates a glass ceiling. The city often feels like it is on the verge of turning into a special place for contemporary art but the infrastructure is not there to support the growth. My hope is that Denver will develop a more sophiscated collector base and institutions that will allow artists to grow and support themselves through their practice.
If you hadn’t become an artist what do you think you’d be doing? I grew up on horse racing tracks in the western United States because my mother trains racehorses. My estranged father once told me he hoped that I would become a jockey. I don’t think I am built to be a jockey, but if things were different maybe I would be more involved with horse racing in some way.
Favorite music? My “favorite” music changes, but UGK is consistently in my rotation. Right now I am listening to several things from DJ ipodammo’s Trill City mix to Real Magic’s recent release, Deep Breathing. The most inspiring thing I have been listening to lately is Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers. I’m not Christian, but I don’t know if there is anything better than listening to Sam Cooke sing about god.
Transposed Planes
Saturday, April 13 , 2013 – Sunday, May 18, 2013
Seth Adelsberger
Stacy Fisher
Peter Shear
LVL3 presents Transposed Planes a group exhibition featuring work by Seth Adelsberger, Stacy Fisher, and Peter Shear. Seth challenges the gestural frame of painting, referencing abstract expressionism and its history. Stacy works within series to confront the irregularity of the form as seen as a misfit model in display. Peter addresses the relationship between audience and object, creating abstractions on the verge of hybrid forms. Exploring the functionality of the picture plane, these artists conduct a dialogue that calls on various orders of structure.
Opening Reception:
Saturday, April 13, 2013
6:00pm – 10:00pm
Artist of the Week: Justin Witte
Justin Witte was born and raised in Grand Rapids, Michigan and currently lives in Chicago. He earned his BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design and his MFA at University of Illinois at Chicago.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Having to make work in my office. My daughter. Thinking about the edges and backs of paintings. I am also always learning and stealing amazing ideas from my wife Olivia Schreiner.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? Most recently I have been painting on board, linen, foam-core, cardboard, aluminum, insulation foam and unprimed luan. I usually have three or four larger pieces going on at once that I develop over several months and then at the same time I am always making smaller quick pieces that are usually finished in one sitting. The small pieces allow me to do a lot of material exploration and keep the larger works honest.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are workingon? I currently have an exhibition of my work up at Moraine Valley Community College and am organizing a group painting show that will open in September at the Glass Curtain Gallery. I am really excited about that show because it will have work from painters like Magalie Guérin, Tim Nickodemus and Emiliano Cerna-Rios who are all fantastic. I am also getting ready to launch the second part of my POST project this summer.
What artists are you interested in right now? There are so many! I am really interested in Selina Trepp’s photos, she is doing something crazy wonderful that I don’t see anywhere else. I also really love Keiler Roberts Powdered Milk comics.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? I really enjoyed Paul Cowan’s recent show at the MCA. I actually went to the show expecting to dislike it, but the work was smart and surprisingly seductive. It helped that there was also a newly purchased Charline Von Heyl just down the stairs from his show. It was great to walk from her painting, which is just an amazing capital P painting, to his lures and urinal dividers.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I am a dad. I teach in the Art and Design Department at Columbia College Chicago. I am an exhibition coordinator. I am in the 3rd year of a home renovation. When I am not busy I try to watch as much baseball as I can.
What are you really excited about right now? I am excited about my work, the upcoming birth of my second daughter and Spring.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? I have a hard time thinking of a destination but I always think about types of journeys I would like to take. For instance I have always wanted to take an epically long sailing trip or ride my bike across the country. Seeing as I don’t know how to sail I probably stand a better chance of going on the bike trip.
What were you like in high school? See below
Most embarrassing moment? See above
ONLY A FEW MORE HOURS FOR ADVANCED ONLINE BIDDING! silent auction continues tonight followed by our benefit raffle. Don’t miss out!
Artist of the Week: Sabina Ott
Sabina Ott lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. She earned both her BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Exhibiting since 1985, Ott has participated in over 100 solo and group exhibitions.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I grew up in Los Angeles with New York parents. I am a coastal hybrid. I have been working as an artist and educator (officially) since 1985. I have endurance. Making art and teaching are the only things I have ever done or wanted to do.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Godard films – Two or Three Things I Know about Her in particular. I’ve been watching and re- watching it. Also, see the answer to “How has living in Chicago affected your art practice?”
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I have been using Styrofoam, spray foam, canvas, oil, lamp fixtures, clocks and mirrors. I am working on a series of paintings that are sculptures that are furniture and that are ornamental.
How has your work developed within the past year? I have really gone full on into making sculptural object/paintings using building and craft materials. I am also working on a series of mirror paintings. It’s my way of making a two-dimensional work that is actually not flat but a deep space, functional and decorative at the same time.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work? Laughter? Confusion? Pleasure? Those are three responses I have to my own work.
How long have you lived in Chicago and what brought you there? I have lived in Oak Park since 2005 and moved to Chicago area to head up the Art and Design Department at Columbia College Chicago. Now I have the privilege of teaching full time and making artwork.
How has living in Chicago affected your art practice? I love Chicago. When I moved here I felt as though my history had been erased, which is liberating. Chicago encourages my impulse to be home and neighborhood centered, and I have focused on what my friend Chris Kraus calls “Radical Localism.” I have leaned into that idea by making functional domestic objects – lamps, clocks, planters, tables and mirrors – and making my home a public art site.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? Lots of things. Michelle Grabners show at Shane Campbells made me feel like I could die happy right then and there. Painting the Void at the MCA was memorable, as was the current exhibition at Document; Christopher Meerdo>Anthology. I love that space and what Aron Gent is doing there. The exhibition at the Elmhurst Museum that Stacie Boris curated, Open House, is a solid show. Alison Ruttan at the Hyde Park Art Center is very good work. The abstraction show at MOMA was perfect. I am making a trip to New York soon to see my most favorite influential artist Jay DeFeo at the Whitney.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? Teach, run Terrain, spend way too much time on Facebook, play with my dog Alice and my husband John. Try to read all the books written on and by Giles Deleuze; that’s a tough one, I’ve made very little progress.
What are you really excited about right now? My work in the studio and Terrain Exhibitions, the project space in my front yard. Its been running since October 2011. Terrain is producing a Biennial this coming September that will take on several sites on my block with at least five artists projects. A block party will serve as the opening event.
Any current or upcoming shows we should know about? I will be showing new work at the Riverside Cultural Center in May along with the work of artists who are important to me for various reasons in the show - Phyllis Bramson, Michelle Grabner, Dan Gunn, Anna Kunz, Michelle Wasson and Joe Jeffers. I am also working towards an exhibition in the Chicago Rooms of the Chicago Cultural Center slated for September 2014 – fingers crossed!
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? I don’t know if this is the best or the worst, but I made an installation at the Museum of Contemporary Art Cleveland and I had painted horizontal stripes circling the walls, floor to ceiling and installed a painting, some sculptures and several video monitors. A patron complemented me on fitting my work in so nicely with the decorated walls. She made a lot of assumptions I found interesting.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? I’ve traveled a lot, but I have never been to the Grand Canyon. I want to go to the Grand Canyon. I would also like to go back to live in Alice Springs, Australia for a while. Or Joshua Tree, CA. I am fixated on the desert for some reason lately. I would also like to spend the summer in Paris and make daily pilgrimages to the Louvre.
Favorite music? Hindu devotional chants, old school punk like the Ramones, Dead Kennedy’s and the Dils. Eric Satie and Claude Dubussy. Devendra Banhart. Bjork. Frank Sinatra. I’ve been listening to I Fink You Freaky by Die Antwoord a lot.
What were you like in high school? Sad and disassociated, like the character in Joan Didion’s Play It as It Lays. I grew up in Los Angeles and spent a lot of time on drugs, at the beach and making drawings and sculptures.
Most embarrassing moment? I refuse to feel embarrassed.
LVL3 presents our 4th annual silent art auction and benefit raffle
Saturday, April 6, 2013
6:00pm – 10:30pm
Portion of proceeds benefitting local not-for-profit Better Boys Foundation
All bidding ends at 9:30pm 4/06/13.
Raffle immediately following auction
Featuring work by: Alika Cooper | Allison Wade | Andrew Holmquist | Andrey Bogush | Anna Kunz| Brian Kokoska | Brian Sensebe | Daniel Shea | Easton Miller | Emre Kocagil | Israel Lund | Jerome Acks | Josh Reames | Kaylee Wyant | Leslie Baum | Liz Nielsen | Magalie Guerin | Michael and Alan Fleming | Paul Kenneth | Rachel de Joode | Richard Galling | Ryan Feeney | Sabina Ott | Timothy Bergstrom | Wyatt Grant
Advance preview and bidding at http://lvl3gallery.com/auction/
→ All artwork starts at $30
→ Bids can be made in $10 increments
→ Cash, credit and check accepted
→ Raffle tickets: 1 for $3 or 2 for $5
Artist of the Week: Jordan Tull
Jordan Tull lives and works in Portland, Oregon. He earned his BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute in 2003. Tull has produced site-specific sculpture responding to architectural settings throughout Portland, OR.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I create sculpture and installations that explore perceptual and experiential phenomena. Sometimes my work is a response to architecture, but often my work is a reaction to imaginary conditions imposed upon it. My current job designing retail fixtures and environments informs much of my current artwork. My background in metal fabrication seems to thread through everything I create in some form or another.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? Have you ever felt self-conscious being in a space or while experiencing an object? My work is designed to evoke meta-physical participation. It’s neo-baroque-tech.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I work with modern fabrication techniques and materials for my job so this feeds into my art naturally. I’m also saturated daily with industrial design and retail environment design initiatives. I inspire from anything interesting or edgy happening in architecture and fashion that I find on the internet. I also try to influence myself by challenging my own conventions - trying to make something never-before-seen.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I use computer aided drafting programs to plan the visual events that require industrial fabrication processes to execute. I work with aluminum, steel, wood, wood composites, rigid paper products, lacquer based paints and acrylic enamels, acrylic, vinyl, polystyrene, polyethylene and CNC technology.
How has your work developed within the past year? In the last year working with the challenge of occupying larger spaces has been key to expanding the language of my work.
How did your interest in art begin? Without knowing that it would translate into an art practice - my interest in art began with making wooden structures - building decks with my father. He taught me the concept of what’s square, plumb and flush when I was 6 years old. I’ve always thought that my early sculptures possess a resulting utilitarian aesthetic.
What artists are you interested in right now? I’m really excited about Xavier Vielhan, Sarah Oppenheimer, and Nick Hornby.
What is one of the bigger challenges you’re struggling with these days and how do you see it developing? Overcoming resistance to making art daily is a huge challenge for me. This is especially hard because I have a day-job that requires me to be creative.
How has living in Portland affected your art practice? I’m not represented by a gallery in Portland so this has prompted me to move away from making object-based work. I thrive making site-based installations. I love having the option to refresh and recycle the physical components of my work. I’ve abandoned the idea of having a studio (for now) where I’m storing materials and art-objects. I consider my current art practice in Portland to be “post-studio.” My current work is computer driven - I’m currently sitting in a cafe writing this.
What’s your favorite thing about Portland? The food scene in Portland is absolutely stellar.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I’m exploring 3D print technology and digital animation which is an exiting change of pace from doing large-scale installations.
