Artist of the Week: Annie Strachan
Annie Strachan lives and works in London. She earned a BA in Fine Art from the Chelsea College of Art and Design in 2011. Her work has been exhibited throughout the UK and in Vienna.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I’m an artist based in South East London with an interest in classic Hollywood cinema and post-war European design.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? In the past I’ve used a range of materials in my work from ceramics and self adhesive vinyl to found objects and fabric. However, I think the most prevalent has to be MDF. I sometimes describe my sculptures as totemic structures because of the way they are constructed. Although I often start from a sketch, most of the construction takes place through the instinctive stacking of objects on top of each other until I get the desired effect.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Well, I’ve really gotten into bakelite and 1980’s takes on Art Deco. Some of the earlier episodes of the David Suchet TV adaptation of Poirot, where the set design is noticeably very cheap and of its time, really interest me. I think I’d like to start working more with plastics and creating lighting.
How has your work developed within the past year? Over the past year I’ve been involved in so many different projects that I’ve had the chance to explore ways of working I’d probably not have otherwise gotten into so soon. For example, the series of ‘Fascist Table Centres’ I produced for the exhibition, This House is a Triadic Fascist and Made of Industry Glass, a one night event that merged art and design. Considering that my work is so heavily influenced by commercial design, it seems ironic that I’d never applied myself to making practical objects. However, the process of working to a design brief was really exciting and gave me a new perspective on my work.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? I suppose the exhibition that I’ve most enjoyed this year has to be Postmodernism: Style & Subversion 1970 – 1990 which gave me the opportunity to see a lot of the Memphis group’s designs in person rather than just in books or on someone’s Tumblr. On a smaller scale, I really enjoyed Ben Wheele’s exhibition, Antiquity Bonk at the Sunday Painter in Peckham and Alice Channer’s recent exhibition Out of Body at the South London Gallery.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work? Although an important part of my work is the research I undertake and the references to these influences found in my choice of materials and form, I don’t believe that it is essential to necessarily ‘get’ these in order to enjoy the work. For me the visual experience is the most important part of making work, I want people to enjoy viewing it regardless of whether or not they recognise that I’ve referenced the set design of a Douglas Sirk film.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? Luckily I haven’t experienced many negative reactions to my work, although I probably just wasn’t around to hear them. However, I have had my plinths used as drinks holders on occasion and at one show where I made centrepieces for the tables in a club, a person took my work off the table and left it on the floor.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? I’d like to visit Hollywood and take one of those famous film stars’ homes tours. Since coming across the BBC Arena documentary from the 1980s on Kenneth Anger’s series of Hollywood Babylon books, I’ve become really interested in the ironic glamour and tragedy of the stars of yesteryear.
What are you really excited about right now? I’m really excited about visiting the BA summer shows and seeing what this year’s graduates are up to. I’m also working on some exciting new projects that should be coming together in the next few months.
Artist of the Week: Matt Rich
Matt Rich lives and works in Boston, Massachusetts. He has had solo exhibitions at Project Row Houses in Houston, devening projects + editions in Chicago, the Suburban in Oak Park, IL, VOLTA/NY in New York and Samsøn in Boston, MA. Matt has received fellowships from the Massachusetts Cultural Council, the Terra Foundation for the Arts and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. His work has been reviewed by Artforum, Art Papers and the Boston Globe.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? My cut paper paintings get rid of the canvas and its hired muscle, the stretcher bar. Rolls of 70 lbs drawing paper, coated on two sides with latex and acrylic paint, constitute both image and structure. These sheets of paper are scattered around my studio accruing traces of their movement and use in that space: a kind of studio choreography. The surfaces of my work are built piece-by-piece, the compositions growing and contracting freely without structural restraint. Without a backing structure, individual colors and shapes are open to constant editing or exchange in procedures both deliberate and chance-based (as one example: in process pieces can be flipped to reveal “found” color schemes). My process generates a carefully constructed sense of fragility that is pointed, ultimately, toward an integrated, resolved whole—a whole that articulates this fragility in a sustained and systematic manner.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Emotional play and the significant impact of emotional structures within people, institutions, situations and embedded in interfaces of all kinds is what I find most interesting and powerful in the world. This is why I make the work that I do. While my work has many precedents in visual history, including Richard Tuttle, Ron Davis, Lynda Benglis and Ellsworth Kelly, to name just a few, I have been very influenced by the startling experiential charge in Alison Knowles’ Event Scores from 1961 and Michael Asher’s work, specifically a piece he did at Pomona College in 1970. These works test the audience’s creativity.
How has living in Boston affected your art practice? I grew up in Boston and live and work here now. I moved back here six years ago for a full-time teaching job. I have a studio at one end of my old neighborhood, the South End, and teach on the diagonally opposite end. Frequently, I bisect my old neighborhood, staying current on its comings and goings. There were times in the past that I felt as if I were fourteen years old, walking down the same damn street for the ten thousandth damn time, caught in a time and a place that I thought I had outgrown. Now I thoroughly enjoy these familiar spaces, finding in them an opportunity for a sort of hyper-intimate engagement that encourages attention to smaller and smaller details, allowing already familiar things to resonate more loudly and, in some way, differently.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? Currently I am working on a June solo at Halsey McKay Gallery in East Hampton, NY. Spring of 2013 I will have my second solo exhibition at devening projects + editions in Chicago.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? Teach, mostly. I helped create a class called Interactive Foundations a few years ago. It deals with social-, architectural-, device- and screen-based interactive experience. I was brought in to help build the social and architectural portions but within a semester was teaching the whole class. This was an unexpected and pleasurable challenge, one that has changed my thinking about many things. Basic game theory provided an early structure for describing to my students how everything in this world could be seen as existing within a system, including—our base model for interactivity in the class—ordinary conversation. Takeaways from this experience include: understanding how decisions made in the creation of open-ended systems carry no less specificity than decisions made about closed-systems, and the idea of making something that exists expressly to make something else—making a system in which a viewer/user (viewzer?) is meant to construct their own meaningful experience.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work? The warm glow of relief after effort or a crisis has been averted. An understanding that life will continue as before, but differently.
What are you really excited about right now? Parasites. Favorites include the Sacculina that, upon penetrating her body, makes a female crab care for its clump of larvae as if it were her own “brood pouch” and, after infecting a male crab, compels it to act exactly as the female, including radical physical and behavioral transformations. Also, the lancet fluke that gets ingested by a snail only to disagree with its digestive system and get puked out in a slimy substance that is particularly attractive to ants. After being ingested by a passing ant it compels the ant to walk to a high place at dusk—which is precisely when large mammals enjoy feeding on tall blades of grass. Once the blade of grass bearing the ant that is infected by the parasite is ingested, the parasite settles in the home that it desired from the beginning.
These stories are thrilling and unbelievable and yet seem totally inevitable. These processes are so loose as to appear random but bear the marks of a perfect, tested system. Like many people, I learned of the wonderful, complex world of parasites on one of the variations of a program put out by Radiolab on the topic and immediately ran out to purchase Parasite Rex by Carl Zimmer, a guest on the Radiolab program, which is the brilliant source for the stories retold above.
What were you like in high school? Goofy and fast. A mama’s boy. A hard but inefficient worker.
*All photos credit: Clements Photography & Design
Artist of the Week: Brian Kokoska
Brian Kokoska is an artist based in New York. He received his BFA from Emily Carr University of Art and Design. Publication and online projects by the artist consist of Chiclet Teeth (2011) and Atmosphere Shoulders (2012). Upcoming shows include A Sad Ballad, Preteen Gallery (Mexico City), Painting Bitten by a Man, Vox Populi (Philadelphia) and a solo project with Et Al Projects (New York).
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I’m an artist currently working in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn. Right now I’m making paintings as well as a new series of sculptures. Both of which are heavily involved in mask aesthetics, hairstyles, flowers and decoration.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I tend to use relatively traditional materials, but I like to mess things up. Like, for instance – the paintings are often oil on canvas – but I’m incorporating non-traditional application and imagery. The sculptures are much the same way – they begin with clay – but are taken to a different place by addition of industrial and beauty materials: paint, fabric, wire, hair, gold, eyelashes, etc.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I’m influenced by sensibilities of portraiture, masks, androgyny, youth and post-gender identity. Both historical and imaginary concepts of ritual, fetish and costume appear in my work. Mask history is of importance in terms of its roots in aboriginal, religious and ceremonial usage. I’m interested in ideas involving faces – their relationship to disguise, theatricality and beauty – and how these concepts translate to painting and sculpture.
What are some current projects you are working on? I’m about to fly to Mexico City. I have a show at Preteen Gallery opening May 19. It’s basically an exhibition of corresponding face paintings that deal with mask, fetish, beauty and disguise. There will be some fun little surprises in the show. I’m super excited: my first time in Mexico City.
What artists are you interested in right now? A$AP Rocky. I really have a thing for French braids, and he’s fulfilling that fetish for me at the moment.
What’s your favorite thing about New York? My favorite thing about New York is my own history here. The first experiences I had in this town as a teenager were kind of tragic in a way. I have all these crazy emotional memories. It’s sentimental for me. I feel so at home here but lost at the same time.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? Los Angeles. I went as a child, on my way to Disneyland. I have this craving for it now. That Hollywood sort of lifestyle really does it for me. Like just getting lost in the night.
What were you like in high school? I was shy. I was a big observer, and that’s how I learned a lot of things early on. I grew up in a small town and always knew that I wanted to be somewhere else.
If you had one wish what would it be? Fearlessness.
Any upcoming shows we should know about? Literally as soon as I get back from Mexico I have a show opening at Vox Populi Gallery in Philly. June 1st. It’s going to be a lot of fun. It’s a big one!
Suspended
Saturday, May 19, 2012 – Sunday, June 24, 2012
Suspended is a state, a moment, some kind of disbelief, a stalemated gesture frozen in its own established conditions. Richard Galling’s paintings deconstruct and utilize marks and gestures within a framework of abstraction, proposing a new system of painted signs. Daniel Shea’s objects and installations examine the mythologies and histories of the post-industrial ruin and a perceived material authenticity. Together their work offers an interplay between an aesthetic and conceptual modernism and industrial modernity. As one history implicates another, their work shown together suspends multiple moments in aesthetic and political lineages.
Opening Reception:
Saturday, May 19, 2012
6:00pm – 10:00pm
Artist of the Week: Ryan Travis Christian
Artist of the Week: Israel Lund
Israel Lund is an MFA candidate at Mason Gross School of Arts. He has shown at Ditch Projects in Springfield, Oregon, Galerie de l’Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Art de Nancy in Nancy, France, 12Mail Gallery in Paris, France and Gallery Steinsland Berliner in Stockholm Sweden. His books, Some But Not All of My Clothes and Thrasher Fanzine (co-edited with Sam Korman) were published by Publication Studio and his work has appeared in Clark Magazine, Weekday and the forthcoming edition of Bronze Age.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? Recently I’ve been making paintings using a truncated silk screen process on raw canvas. Instead of using a source image through which you would pull the ink through, as is in traditional screen printing, I burn an open rectangle into a screen and work within that. The final image is a result of manipulating the screen, the squeegee, the amount of ink I use, and the physical makeup of the canvas. Some of them end up looking like blown-up photocopies. For this interview I made a bunch of paintings where I literally photocopied some older paintings and then used a de facto CMYK screen print process to make these quasi copy paintings. Then I scanned them on the computer to get the image you see. There’s an R. H. Quaytman interview where she says she’d like to have “painting” in her materials list. I like that.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? E-40, the Internet, jokes, grad school, New York City, the Internet…
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? It really depends on if I’ve been drinking or not.
What artists are you interested in right now? Virginia Overton, Cam’ron, Thomas Pynchon, Alex Felton.
What are your plans for the next year? Hopefully finish grad school, travel to places I’ve never been to, and swim in the Atlantic Ocean. I haven’t done that yet since moving back to the east coast.
What were you like in high school? All I cared about was skateboarding. I had an obsession with trying to skate at every skatepark in New England, so suffice to say I had a one-track mind. I grew up in Vermont.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? Since I’m in an MFA program, and work for an artist in the city, if I’m not making art, thinking about it, reading about it, looking at it, touching it, getting interviewed about it, or making jokes about it, I’m most likely trying to sleep. Or drinking coffee.
If you hadn’t become and artist, what do you think you’d be doing? Since I was obsessed with skateboarding and becoming a professional skateboarder didn’t pan out, the only other thing I remember saying I wanted to be was an R&B singer, so most likely that.
What are you really excited about right now? Living on the east coast again.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? This may be an obvious answer considering my work but Print/Out at MoMA was really exciting to me. Martin Kippenbergers piece “Content On Tour” was awesome, and I really liked Kelley Walkers piece “Andy Warhol Doesn’t Play Second Base For The Chicago Cubs.” Dan Walsh, Trisha Donnelly, and Franz West also had really good pieces in that show. Downstairs at MoMA in the contemporary section Dieter Roth’s piece “Solo Scenes” was epic! Darren Bader: Images at PS1 is definitely worth seeing, and Frances Stark’s video “My Best Thing,” also at PS1, was great! I swear this isn’t a MoMA plug.
Artist of the Week: Stacy Fisher
Stacy Fisher lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Her work has been exhibited throughout the East Coast and in Florida, Michigan, Illinois and Tennessee.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I am sculptor and live and work in Brooklyn. My studio is just a block away from my apartment in Greenpoint and I get to walk down a beautiful historical street to get there. I made representational work for several years before switching to abstraction. This change was prompted by wanting to make smaller work, but also by wanting to let go of content as a knew it in search of something else. Now that I have been working abstractly for a few years, I can definitely say that I think more about content now than I ever did before. In trying to push it away, I discovered that sculptures take on roles and references regardless of their shape or size. Because of this, I pay extra attention to their shapes and sizes, and try to leave room for the viewer to fill in the blanks.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? I would separate my work into two different series. In one series, I make groupings of sculptures that appear to have some related purpose. They are similar in size to toasters or small lamps, and are often described as feeling mysteriously familiar. The other series is more abstract and more related to painting. These works consist of relatively flat shapes that hang on or lean against the wall, and incorporate the idea of frames and pedestals. They have a heaviness that is alleviated through their positioning and “found” color palette. Some people find my work to be cartoonish, and it’s okay if it makes you laugh.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? One thing that influences my work is word play. I did a text piece for Possible Press last year where I used a function for “predicted text” on my LG cell phone to write a poem. I liked the idea of limiting my communication to re-mixes of whatever I had said in the past. Over the past couple of years I have been working with key phrases in mind. Some of the phrases have become central to a series, like “irregular squares” or “black and white objects“. Others have just been hanging around, like “bring the party.” I think of that phrase when I feel like a piece needs a boost and I am at a loss. My big word right now is “bunches” so we’ll see where that goes.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I use Hydrocal (a type of plaster), burlap, mire mesh, salvaged/donated house paint, and wood. I rely heavily on drawings, even for the square-ish shapes on pedestals. I might even hold a drawing up next to a piece in progress to gauge the ratio between parts or get an angle right. It’s very bizarre to see a drawing come to life in three dimensions, it can feel spooky like déjà vu.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I am one of ten members of an artist collective called Art Book Club. We meet at a members’ studio every 6 weeks to discuss the book we’ve been assigned and then participate in a studio visit. It’s been a great way to expand my own interests, and even better to have a group of friends to learn from and talk about things with. We just hosted a public meeting as part of the exhibition “You, Me, We, She” at Fleisher Ollman gallery in Philadelphia, and hope to do more stuff like that in the future.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? It wasn’t necessarily an exhibition, but I loved Cleopatra’s room at the Dependent Art Fair. I’m also really mad at myself for missing the Bill Walton exhibition at James Fuentes, I didn’t know anything about him, and I guess I still don’t.
What’s your favorite thing about New York? New Yorkers.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I like to decompress by watching movies. I’m lucky enough to have one of the last, great independent video stores (Photoplay) in New York just around the corner from my apartment.
What are you really excited about right now? Zipcar. Besides it being the only way for me to get 50 pound bags of Hydrocal back to my studio, I really like to cruise around and see what places look like. It’s strange to live somewhere where you rely on underground transportation. The distance between point A and B can remain a total mystery even though you just came from there. You can miss out on some cool stuff if you don’t drive around, particularly in Brooklyn and Queens.
Any current or upcoming shows we should know about? I’m currently in a group show called “Grid List” at Allegra La Viola Gallery in the Lower East Side. I am scheduled to have a two-person show with painter Allison Miller at Weekend in L.A. in January of 2013.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? A non art-guy at an opening a couple years ago said my “Blue Sculpture on a Pedestal” reminded him of chicken parmigiana. We talked about it for a while, and in the end it made perfect sense to me. I thought it was great that he saw beyond how it was painted and the fact that it was in a gallery on a pedestal (not on a plate next to spaghetti).
k-now-here
Yes we are:
1542 N. Milwaukee Ave, 3rd Floor Chicago, Illinois 60622
LVL3 gallery + MRKT open Sundays 1:00-4:00pm
*Private viewings by appointment
info@lvl3gallery.com | (312) 469-0333
Artist of the Week: Steven Riddle
Steven Riddle is an artist living and working in Baltimore, Maryland. He is currently a graduate student at Towson University and is in the process of opening a contemporary art space called sophiajacob.
How did your interest in art begin? As a child, I lived across the street from my grandparents’ house and watched my grandfather, who was very crafty, making objects…such as pop bottle wind spinners and paintings of epic hunting scenes…imagine a polar bear attacking a trapper in the arctic. His son, my father is an excellent carpenter…he can build anything….custom-made fishing poles and decorative muzzle loading rifles. So, growing up watching them and honing my own skills as a child in school who’d rather create my own reality then focus on academics.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Teaching myself watercolor, 90s baseball, Netflix instant view and provisional painting.
What materials do you use and what is your process like? I make collages created from handmade materials, such as screen prints, monotypes, markers, acrylics, airbrush, and bleach. Through the actions of cutting and pasting paper, I activate a dialogue that speaks to material, process and performance. In my studio I have plastic bins filled with scraps and failed pieces from the past years. Each new piece is made using a number of failed work that I made over the years. This makes each new composition a living document of my own studio history.
What artists are you interested in right now? Benjamin Edmiston, Jockum Nordström, Michael Swaney, Alex Ebstein, Trenton Doyle Hancock, Devon Troy Strother, Gina Beavers, David Armacost, John Mcallister, Ariel Dill, Ted Gahl.
How long have you lived in Baltimore and what brought you there? I have lived in Baltimore for the past twelve years. I moved here initially to attend Maryland Institute College of Art.
What is your favorite thing about Baltimore? I’ve been in Baltimore a long time, so the majority of my friends are other artists living here as well. The arts community in the city itself is relatively small than other cities on the east coast.
What was the last exhibition that you saw that stuck to you? Nicholas Gottlund at Open Space. I really enjoyed the exhibition, partly because it was about rural Pennsylvania…which is where I am from.
If you had one wish, what would it be? To not have a day job and devote all my time to creating new bodies of work in my own studio on a yacht that sails around the world. Wouldn’t that be a wonderful dream?
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I am an adjunct professor and co-director of sophiajacob. At my leisure I enjoy watching movies.
If you weren’t an artist what would you be doing? Truthfully, I’ve always wanted to be an artist.
What were you like in high school? Well, I was really into the local hardcore music scene, which sadly doesn’t exist anymore, and my senior year I was voted most artistic and MVP of my track and field team.
Artist of the Week: Matthias Merkel Hess
Matthias Merkel Hess lives and works in Los Angeles. He received his MFA from UCLA in 2010 and has exhibited in New York, Texas and throughout California.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. For the last few years, I’ve been making a lot of “bucketry” pieces under the name Matthias Merkel Hess. These are plastic vessels made out of glazed ceramic, such as milk crates, trash cans, gas cans and 5 gallon buckets. I’ve also done a few different projects that are ink and watercolor on paper, and I hope to do more of that in the future. Watercolor is a process I really enjoy. I also make functional pottery under the name MerkelWare, which is by Matt Merkel-Hess. I’m also always playing with language, branding and the commodification of my work, but the root of everything I do is about looking at the world and then going into the studio and making something by hand.
How did your interest in art begin? I was always interested in making art, but it wasn’t until my early 20s that I had the confidence to pursue it as a career. This is also when I discovered the pottery wheel, which became an addiction. Now it’s more than 10 years later, and I feel like I’m just starting to
figure out what I want to say and do as an artist and potter.
What are some current projects you are working on? I’m preparing for a three-person ceramics show at the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Overland Park, Kansas, which will be with William O’Brien and Arlene Shechet and opens in late May. My contribution will be a sort of “Bucketry II,” which builds off my 2011 solo show “Bucketry” at ACME here in Los Angeles. For the Nerman show, I’m adding more of my ouevreday vessels, including a Roughneck Storage Tub, Igloo Playmate coolers and more gas cans. This July, I’m going to be in the Venice Boardwalk Biennial in Venice, Calif. It’s a three-day event curated by Ali Subotnick that’s going to be a mix of artists and performers from the contemporary art world mixed with the regular vendors and performers at the boardwalk. I’m making a collection of things such as Case Study Home incense burners, ceramic sunglasses, watercolor-on-paper beach towels and maybe some sort of pipe form. It’s going to be under the brand “Merkel Craft Art & Novelties.”
What kinds of things are influencing your work? My goal is always to make work that speaks to a contemporary art audience, but that might also appeal to a more casual viewer of art (and not just some average joe, but someone who has the interest to visit a gallery or museum). I use puns, one-liners and humor to get someone to stop and take a look, and hopefully there’s something else there to think about. For example, with the Merkel Craft Art & Novelties, I’m looking specifically at the Treasure Craft Pottery, which was a Los Angeles-based company that made a lot of tourist knick-knacks from the late 1940s until the mid 1990s. I’m combining that with the “fair ware” type of pieces that George Ohr made and sold in the late 1800s at the World’s Fair and other large events. I’m also interested in all the merchandise produced by artists ranging from Thomas Kinkade to Takashi Murakami. So I’m trying to make things that are worth looking at, collecting and hopefully also of interest as a commentary on how artists make and sell work.
How long have you lived in Los Angeles and what brought you there? I moved to the Los Angeles area in the fall of 2002. I followed my girlfriend (now my wife) who got into grad school here. Los Angeles was the last place I wanted to move; it seemed like it was all traffic and superficiality. But once I got here, I immediately loved it. You can be and do anything you want here. I grew up in Iowa, so I do miss the seasons, although LA is great when it rains. I’ve heard thunder only a few times out here, and I really miss those crazy, mid-summer moments in Iowa where the sky turns almost green, the birds go silent, and about 20 minutes later it just starts going insane with lightening, thunder and thick rainfall.
How has living in Los Angeles affected your art practice? I discovered pottery about a year and half before moving here, and feel lucky that I moved to a city that is so supportive and rich with ceramic history. Almost every community college has a ceramics program, and many of the universities do too. UCLA is rare as a top MFA program that also has a ceramics department. So that was my entry point to the art world, and then grad school was a launching pad where I had the time and space to experiment with a lot of things, talk to people about art and try to figure things out.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? There are a lot of places I want to go, mostly for the food. I want to go to Munich and drink beer and eat pretzels; I want to go to Lima, Peru and eat ceviche; I want to just walk across the border to Tijuana and eat tacos. Landscape-wise, there are some formative places from my childhood that I’d like to return to, including canoeing and camping in the Boundary Waters of Northern Minnesota; the Rochester Cemetery in Cedar County, Iowa, which is a rare example of the Oak Savannah that used to be found all over Iowa combined with old gravestones; and anywhere in New Mexico where the plains meet the Sangre de Christo mountains.
Favorite music? I’m addicted to having music on in the studio. I use Spotify to find new music, but it’s great because I also like listening to complete albums. As I write this, I’m listening to a “Shostakovich plays Shostakovich” album on Spotify, and the band Fun has been a guilty pleasure for the last week or so, even though I’ll probably hate them in about a month. I’ve also recently listened to the new Grimes album a few times. In the last six months, the album I’ve listened to most is “Actor-Caster” by the Generationals. An all-time favorite music collection would start with “Thunder Road” by Bonnie Prince Billie and Tortoise, “Icky Thump” by the White Stripes, “Four Sticks” by Led Zeppelin, “This is How We Walk on the Moon” by Arthur Rusell, “Ashes to Ashes” by David Bowie, “Everyday” by Buddy Holly, and just about anything that involves Dr. Dre.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I have a 1-year-old son, so now I’m basically always making art or being a dad. If I have the time, one of my favorite things to do is to bake bread. Last year, while I was a stay-at-home dad for about 8 months, I used “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart to really learn how to bake. I combined some of Reinhart’s techniques with a no-knead recipe for an easy, foolproof loaf that I just make over and over. In a way, baking bread is not that much different from making and firing something ceramic.
What are your plans for the next year? I’ve got a backlog of plans and ideas, so I’m always excited about opportunities to exhibit work. Probably most of the ideas are really bad—raisin sculptures? Self-portrait bread loaves? Moldy-drywall installations? But I usually don’t know if something is good or bad until it leaves the studio.
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Artist of the Week: Michael Dopp
Michael Dopp was born in Bloomington, Indiana in 1978. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and attended the New York Studio Program in 2005. He received his MFA in Painting and Drawing from the University of California Los Angeles in 2009. His most recent work is included in the show In the Making currently on view at Roberts & Tilton in Los Angeles. Dopp lives and works in Los Angeles, California.
How did your interest in art begin? It really began in my hometown of Bloomington, Indiana. The Chicago Imagist painter Robert Barnes lived down the street, and he represented a sort of freedom and eccentricity that cast a spell on me. He and his wife Nancy Barnes taught painting at Indiana University, and at their urging I started studying with them when I was 16 and I haven’t stopped painting since. I was also deeply affected by my parents’ neighbor, Miriam Gottfried. She had spent a good deal of her life traveling, and had collected books and art from all over the world. She had an incredible collection of prints. From the time I was very young I would go over to help her with chores, and would inevitably spend most of my time contemplating the ukiyo-e wood block prints she acquired in Japan and listening to her stories about traveling through Afghanistan (I think that my own desire to travel was seeded then as well). I have a 1st state etching of a Piranesi view of Rome that Miriam gave me when I moved to Los Angeles that I look at everyday.
What are some current projects you are working on? I currently am putting together a line of leather goods with some friends. We are making belts, wallets, and bracelets. It all began when my friend David Korty brought back this raw hide from a fishing trip in Montana, we started figuring out how to stamp it, and the next thing we knew we were hooked. Staying up all night tooling and dying and punching leather, watching ehow videos and visiting all the local leather shops and distributors.
How long have you lived in Los Angeles and what brought you there? I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 2006 to attend UCLA for graduate school. I came thinking I was going to move back to NYC as soon as I finished, alas I am still here.
How has living in Los Angeles affected your art practice? Los Angeles has a strange effect on my work, its almost ghostly, or barley there. Whereas other places I have lived, Chicago & New York, the city insists itself on the work, Los Angeles’s effect is transparent, like a windshield. There is a certain neutrality here, underscored by the horizontality, the constant blue sky, a sort of prozac-ian hum. This shifts my attention away from place, inward. In a sense LA is a deeply psychological city for me, and that is perhaps the effect on the paintings I make. A material search for encounter. The term ‘process’ is being bandied about a lot these days; its back in the zeitgeist of painting. Certainly those ideas are not LA centric. But perhaps my own relationship to process in painting is in part a result of being here.
What’s your favorite thing about Los Angeles? My favorite thing about LA right now is Guisados Tacos in Boyle Heights. It is a revelation. Apparently part of the secret is that the maize is milled freshly next door every night for the tortillas.
If you hadn’t become an artist what do you think you’d be doing? I would like to think that I’d be a wandering mendicant poet, kicking about the streets in some romantic city. But I would probably be working at a book store in southern Indiana.
Top 3 most visited websites and why? Huffington Post, New York Times, BBC News; because I enjoy being aware of events outside my vision and beyond my control.
What are you really excited about right now? I am excited about the people I know and what they are accomplishing. Los Angeles is a place where artists have a great sense of agency. I am continually inspired to see what is happening here. I’m excited about my buddy Mark’s project, and Matt’s blog, Korty’s paintings and Laura’s books, Whitney’s photos, my friends Davida and Mieke’s gallery, Lauren’s publications, Geoff’s blog, Victoria’s work and the up coming Nudes Painting Show!
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? I’d go back to Berlin in August at sunrise after another night of one too many. Because its beautiful to eat dinner at that hour and watch the city slowly waken as you drift to sleep.
Artist of the Week: Josh Reames
Josh Reames is an artist based in Chicago. He received his BFA from the University of North Texas and is currently finishing up his MFA in Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He is also the director of Manifest Exhibitions, a gallery located in a Logan Square basement, and a Chicago correspondent for New American Paintings’ blog.
How did your interest in art begin? Just like every other artist, I liked to draw as a kid. But it wasn’t until undergrad at the University of North Texas that I had any idea of the “art world”. After finishing my BFA I worked a soul-sucking corporate job for a couple of years. While I was there I realized how most working people have this huge life/work dichotomy, almost like a split personality; I never liked that. I realized that as an artist there is no difference between art, work, socializing, interests, etc. - it’s all rolled into one thing. This is incredibly appealing; there are very few lifestyles that are like this. Also, the level of criticality that exists in the art world is exciting; everything is constantly being questioned and re-evaluated - then given some sort of visual form. I’ve always thought of working as the thing you hate to do but have to just muscle your way through it, so the prospect of having a social-role that involves looking, thinking, making things, and drinking beer - I can’t imagine pursuing anything else!
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Tropical sunsets, the ideal vacation, perfect brush-marks, dry humor, bad taste, escapism
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? Lately I’ve been making paintings using a sort of collage-aesthetic that I’m pretty sure came from my background as a printmaker. It is a shallow surface but with the illusion of depth - almost like a pile of photographs all taken with different levels of focus spread out on a desk. When I first started painting I was making medium to large abstractions that were super labored and layered—they were very fussy. The stuff I’m doing now reflects on bits of the old paintings, except in an indirect way. So instead of painting a line, I am squeezing it out of the tube; instead of loading a brush and dragging it across the canvas for a brushstroke, I am meticulously masking the shape of the drippy brushstroke and palette-knifing the paint onto the surface. Or, instead of putting brush to canvas to make gestural marks, I’m using an airbrush to simulate that. It’s all about making a painting with a level of distance, or filter, between myself and the marks. Also, I recently started adding pieces of acrylic-transfered images into the paintings. It’s another spatial element getting thrown in the mix that I think is working pretty well.
What artists are you interested in right now? John Mcallister, Ron Ewert, Josh Smith, Ida Ekblad, Ruby Sky Stiler, Andrew Falkowski, Joshua Abelow, Noam Rappaport, Jose Lerma, etc. This list could go on and on.
What are your thoughts about the art scene in Chicago? Chicago has a great alternative-gallery scene; there are so many of them! I think the city is very dialogue-driven, instead of being driven by the market. This is a double-edged sword; on one hand it gives a lot of freedom for artists and spaces to get creative and ambitious, but on the other hand it makes it nearly impossible to make a living as an artist.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? Joshua Abelow at Devening Projects + Editions. I’m constantly blown away by Joshua’s paintings; his surfaces, color choices, the sense of humor and self-reflexivity, etc. Also, Andrew Falkowski’s solo show at Andrew Rafacz gallery was amazing.
What are your plans for the next year? Finish up with grad school, then hopefully move out to New York or Los Angeles…. we’ll see how that pans out.
If you had one wish what would it be? I wish bananas would stay in the perfect state of ripeness.
Any current or upcoming shows we should know about? I have a few coming up. This summer I’m going to have a piece in a show in San Diego that Ryan Travis Christian is curating, then in September I have a solo show at Autumn Space as well as some work in a group show at Peregrine Program.
If you hadn’t become an artist, what do you think you’d be doing? Working as a physicist in some remote part of the world, looking through a giant telescope. On the weekends I’d play poker with Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke.
Artist of the Week: Daniel Hojnacki
Daniel Hojnacki recently received his BA in photography from Columbia College. He lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. His work is currently on view in the group show Limits of Photography at the Museum of Contemporary Photography until March 25th.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger what would you say? Mixed-media photography-based work that incorporates a lot of painterly elements, and “I print on a lot of tape.”
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I use an obscene amount of tape that is digitally printed upon with the photographic process. With the masking tape I can use the image as a giant sticker pasting it to any surface. I can rework the ink while it sits on the plastic surface, using polyurethane and other spray mediums to print the image multiple times in variations of tonal ranges on multiple layers of scotch tape. Then being able to peel away the layers again to reveal what happens underneath. It becomes a very tedious process that has a lot of exciting elements to it that I’m still developing control of while relying a lot on chance and wishful pondering to push the work further.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I’ve been reading about and looking at a lot of abstract painting, sublime, monochrome works of Robert Ryman and Kazamiri Malevich, almost an opposite or distraction from photography. Right now the aspects of time are really influencing things right now. How things natural/unnatural decay, grow and can subtlety un-noticeably change. The nature of illusion in art through materials, I’m most drawn to work that has a magic trick-like process to it. Also a recent obsession with clouds and the movement of light.
How did your interest in art begin? Maybe a photography class in high school, and the books of Dan Eldon and David Hockney, but I can’t be all too sure where the interests began. Seems more like it came in many different forms through poetry, painting and music.
How has your work developed within the past year? It’s been a frustrating and exciting year figuring out my materials and why I find them so fascinating. My workflow is carried by one accident or happening which leads to another and another. Things that I want to try and control and it’s been that way for the last year or so. Taking it one step at a time in efforts to continue the development of some kind of body of work.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work? Probably the most satisfying thing is “How the hell is he doing that?” I love creating the illusion of what is physical and what is not. Also to give the viewer a sense of temporality in my work through the materials I choose to use. That the photographic process doesn’t need to be so permanent or fixed, and how that responds to my choice of imagery.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I am currently exploring a variety of new ways to work with my materials through experiments with the digital printing process of photography and painting. My latest works in progress are tending to maneuver away from the actual photographic image, into abstraction and formal studies of my materials. Also, continuing a project never posted on my website or anywhere outside of a botany class in college, I will be working with the Cumberland Gap National Historic Park in Tennessee this June to continue a documentary project on invasive plants and species I started in 2010.
What artists are you interested in right now? I’m always looking at Spencer Finch, and Anselm Kiefer, Gerhard Richter, the new work of Laura Letinsky, along with a recent interest in the beautiful work of Nazafarin Lotfi, who currently is exhibiting at Tony Wight Gallery here in Chicago.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? First thing that comes to mind was a large exhibition held for still life painter Giorgio Morandi I saw in Italy visiting my brother in February. He has a legacy in Italy, and I’d never saw his work before. It was an enormous collection of beautiful pieces, and it just made me realize how much I’ve yet to see and learn.
What’s your favorite thing about Chicago? My favorite thing about Chicago is the possibilities for artists here, and the large number of such eclectic arts organizations, big and small, that are willing to and want to promote, teach, and exhibit in the arts community at any level of their career.
