Artist of the Week: Helmut Smits
Helmut Smits lives and works in Rotterdam, the Netherlands. His work has been shown throughout Europe and in the US.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? Check my website.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? First I have an idea, then I search for the right medium for that idea.
What artists are you interested in right now? Martin Creed, Max Lamb.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? At the moment I’m building a new house and studio.
What are your plans for the next year? Finish the build and make a lot of new work.
What were you like in high school? Bored, I didn’t finish high school and started working when I was 17. When I got bored with that I went to art school, one of the best decisions in my life.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? In November an outdoor sculpture of mine will be placed in a city park in Enschede, the Netherlands. The park is an Arboretum. The idea is to plant a Tree Family—every tree is a different species, but part of the same tree family (I chose the Rose Family). They are going to be arranged as family photos are, grown-ups in the back and children in the front.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? Some years ago there was this item about me and my work on Dutch television. I received an email from a guy who wanted to know where I bought my coat as he also wanted one just like that. I thought that was really funny.
Artist of the Week: Calvin Ross Carl
Calvin Ross Carl is an artist and designer in Portland, Oregon. He grew up in the Pacific Northwest and graduated with a BFA from the Pacific Northwest College of Art in 2008.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? Oh, this is always a tough one. I usually mention my love of simple geometric shapes with bright, flat colors, abstracted landscapes, and my interest in the myth of the worker and the materials we use in our workplaces.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I most often use enamel paint on canvas, paper, MDF, or some other type of wood. I always tend to have lots of long wooden dowel rods sitting around the studio for all the pole sculptures I do. Plaster and plastics also make occasional appearances.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I am a designer by day to pay the bills, so I have been thinking a lot more about design and how it plays a role in the typically austere nature of my work. Trying to bridge the gap between Judd’s amazingly simple chair designs, and how they can exist in the same world as Jig-a-Patch, an oddly named construction material.
When did your interest in art begin? As long ago as I can remember. From the days when I was a little kid, trying my best to draw Bart Simpson, I knew I had no other choice than being an artist. My father is a really impressive woodworker, and I think that instilled an aesthetic eye in me from a very young age.
How has your work developed within the past year? I’m definitely moving a little bit away from sculpture, and more towards a painting practice. My work is becoming a little less narrative than it already was, and I am focusing on simplifying my compositions, and reducing them to just thinking about how colors and shapes interact with each other.
How has living in Portland affected your art practice? Growing up on the West Coast in general has affected the way I think about space. In the area around Portland, we have a great mixture of huge open fields sitting next to large snowy mountains. Not to forget the overwhelming amount of green landscape we have around here. My wife, Ashley Sloan, who is also an artist, grew up just south of Portland in the “Grass Seed Capital of the World” It’s likely most can see the colors and shapes of our skylines influencing my work a lot.
What is one the bigger challenges you and/or other artists are struggling with these days, and how do you see it developing? In Portland, a huge population of amazing artists have arrived in the city, but the money has yet to fully show up. So there are lots of artists working for scraps, but this is slowly changing. It has bred a really volatile scene with a good independent streak. On a more national scale, I think displacement of the arts in culture has to be at the forefront of everyone’s thinking. The very fact I am in Portland right now, while you are in Chicago, because you originally discovered my work online is mind-boggling. We can hardly understand what it means to be having our work viewed so easily across such a huge swath of land, because we are still too close in history to truly understand it. Artists are still trying to understand what it means to be a part of representing our own self-interests and our own views on culture at a global scale.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? In a heartbeat, Berlin. I went a few months ago during my honeymoon, and I have thought about the city every day since I came back home. The clash of clean Modernist architecture and a sordid past makes it such an interesting place to experience. Also, the landscape and sense of space feels very similar to Oregon, so it oddly feels like home.
What artists are you interested in right now? I’ve been thinking about Franz West the past few weeks, largely because my wife has been looking at his work a lot. His large, frumpy sculptures still appeal to me in the way they reintroduce some character and poke fun into Modernist ideals. They also have some sincerity which appeals to me since they seem like they are made by the human hand. I also saw a big show of Alex Katz paintings recently, and I am still amazed at how much he can accomplish with relatively few painterly strokes and some flat shapes. So, I guess I have been looking at some oldies but goodies.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? I had a solo show titled Split Shift a couple years ago. A group of jock-ish guys came in to the opening. They were visibly displeased with the show, and obviously weren’t aware I was standing there watching them. When they were walking out of the show, one of the guys walked up to the window where the show’s title was displayed in vinyl letters. He covered up the “F ”in the word “shift”with his finger and said, “More like Split Shit.”
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I just recently sent some steel sculptures down to Houston for a show titled Southern/Pacific at the Lawndale Art Center. They were somewhat of a culmination of a series of drawings and paintings I have been working on for a little while. The show is traveling to Marfa, TX early next year. Otherwise, after a few years of really focusing on sculptural work, I have somewhat fallen back in love with painting and other more 2D focused work.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? The Cy Twombly collection at Museum Brandhorst in Munich blew my mind. It’s basically a huge exhibition of the best examples of the merging of formalist shapes and gestural marks, and how they can translate between painting and sculpture.
Artist of the Week: Matthew Northridge
Matthew Northridge is a visual artist living in Brooklyn, NY. He received his BA from Boston College and his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has shown his work internationally and has an upcoming solo show at KANSAS in New York City.
How did your interest in art begin? When I was a kid growing up in New Hampshire, my father would bring me along with him to flea markets and antique shows. I remember being fixated on mysterious objects and ephemera, particularly in large variety and quantities. I didn’t distinguish between these things and something that would be viewed specifically as art. Albums of photos, baseball cards and coins, as well as tins of buttons and stacks of letters come to mind. These are some of my earliest memories of being drawn to a particular aesthetic.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? The foundation of my process is collage. I have a large, ever-growing collection of mostly old reference books that I thumb through and cut from. Each collage, though being its own autonomous piece, also provides the occasion to realize some ideas for sculpture and installation. The materials I use are often simple and pared down, consisting most often of pre-existing material, paper and wood.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Old school commercial design and product packaging, maps of all kinds, and, in the larger world: faded signs, billboards, and architecture (particularly in disrepair). I also regularly search through racks of used books. All these things, through no particular effort, seem to provide a sense of cumulative history.
How long have you lived in New York and what brought you there? I’ve been in New York for twelve years now. I was part of an exodus of graduates leaving Chicago after I finished the MFA program at SAIC in 1999. The move seemed, more or less, instinctual.
What’s your favorite thing about New York? My neighborhood in Brooklyn. I’ve lived and worked here since moving to New York in 1999. Whether I’m returning from a long trip or from an afternoon in Manhattan, it always feels good to get back home. Though its one of the most densely populated areas in the country, it seems small and familiar.
What artists are you interested in right now? This list could have been current anytime in the past several years: Öyvind Fahlström, Joseph Cornell, Gordon Matta Clark, Donald Judd, and H.C. Westermann.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? Last year’s National Design Triennial: Why Design Now? at the Cooper Hewitt. This exhibition is always a highlight for me.
Any current or upcoming shows we should know about? I have a solo show, Pictures by Wire and Wireless, running from November 5 through December 17 at KANSAS, a gallery that recently opened in Tribeca.
Artist of the Week: Olaf Breuning
Originally from Schaffhausen, Switzerland, Olaf Breuning currently lives and works in New York City. He works in a wide range of media and his work has been exhibited internationally. His show Art Freaks is currently up at Metro Pictures until October 29th.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I am a normal human who tries to get along in this life.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I use whatever I can find and whatever fits to the works I want to do…but there are no limits.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Our time. The restless internet, mobile phones…just the fact the we change our perspective on things like we do our underpants.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? …It has humor and colors and is strange.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? Home 3 will be my new movie. Finish next spring.
If you had one wish what would it be? …that I could have many more wishes…(I know that is the most stereotypical answer to this question)
What artists are you interested in right now? I am not interested in artists (artists, please don’t take that personally).
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? The Arsenale at the Venice Biennial. I could not believe my eyes how boring that was.
Top 3 favorite or most visited websites and why? Spiegel Online….can’t get rid of my Swiss German background, red.com…can’t wait until the next camera comes out, me.com…to check my agenda.
How long have you lived in New York and what brought you there? 11 years. The city of Zurich gave me a scholarship for one year in New York. And I stayed.
What’s your absolute favorite place to be? My studio.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of you work? I planned to shoot a photo in Easter Island and asked a woman at a travel agency from there to help me. After hearing my plans (trying to put some ears on the Moais) she said: “don’t come to Easter Island, we don’t need people like you here…” Anyway, I went there without her help and shot a nice photo.
Most embarrassing moment? In earlier times, no film in the camera. Current, forgetting to press the record button.
Artist of the Week: Michael Bussell
Michael Bussell is an artist living and working in Baltimore, MD. He is currently pursuing his BFA in photography at the Maryland Institute College of Art and is a committee member of the Wilgus Gallery.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? I hate answering this question—I would probably try to start explaining, then just show them my work.
How did your interest in art begin? I was encouraged to do art growing up—I didn’t start thinking of myself as an artist until I started educating myself about contemporary artists when I was in high school. I would be in the photo lab printing and next door there was an art history class—I would go work in there and overhear the lectures.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? Most of what I do centers around photography or some kind of photographic process, but it’s interdisciplinary: photographs, digital images, drawings, animations, sound, virtual environments. I try to think more in terms of ideas than separating things by medium.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? The internet, light, how little we know about everything.
What artists are you interested in right now? John Houck, Cy Twombly, Leah Cooper, Lucas Blalock, Aram Bartholl, Tabor Robak—too many to name. I use delicious.com to manage my bookmarks which are almost completely artists websites now.
How has your work developed within the past year? My thinking about art and why I make it has changed. I think my work is more true to myself now, less self conscious. Being in the kind of environment where everyone is making work all the time is inspiring, it creates a kind of self-imposed pressure to keep up and be motivated.
What are your thoughts about the art scene in Baltimore? I’m still new here, but the feeling I get is a very inclusive, collaborative and humble art community. Most of the work I see outside of MICA is in alternative spaces, and it’s just nice that they can be so successful in this environment. The caliber of work is very high and I think the relaxed attitude has something to do with it.
If you hadn’t become an artist, what do you think you’d be doing? I have no idea. I’d be very, very bored.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of you work? Before I had a community of artists to rely on for critiques, I would take to the internet. I learned my lesson one day when my work garnered me a response which at the time upset me and now makes me laugh uncontrollably. I’ll share it with the internet again, in full: “I am very active in a few different art circles where I live, and I am seriously not saying this to shit in your sundae. I pay attention to the work I see, and especially to the work I see selling. Photography, in general, is this huge sinkhole of mediocrity but once in a great while you run into things that really are on a different level from everyone else. Go to some museums, go to some galleries, and think about the amount of time and training that goes into some of the things you see on display there—especially the photos. Just think exclusively about time, and how much you put into it, versus the others.” Flawed logic and subjective opinions aside—pretty funny, right?
Artist of the Week: Jade Walker
Jade Walker is an artist living and working in Austin, Texas. She received her BFA from the University of Florida and her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been exhibited throughout Texas and the southeast.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. My wonderful day job is as director of the Visual Arts Center in the Department of Art + Art History at the University of Texas at Austin. The gallery promotes contemporary art by hosting over 18 exhibitions annually, lots of public programs, and an artist residency. What a lucky lady I am to love my job, which allows so much interaction with artists that I find interesting and projects that are so dynamic. I also have a rigorous studio practice that keeps me busy. I recently built a new studio and the work is expanding with the extra space. My husband is an artist as well and we just gave birth to our first little artist baby (August Hawkins Boland) on 9/10/11. Add yoga, fiction reading, and lots of travel and that is me.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? My practice is a mixture between an exploration of materials (fabric, rubber, found objects, crusty old paints, tool-dip and whatever else I can get my hands on) and my desire to reproduce the human body. I am interested in the mechanics of gender both physically and symbolically and that interest patinas the work as well.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? Materials are the catalyst in so many of my works. Many times, a found or recycled object is the first material. I love to reconstruct this first piece by adding a new skin of fabric, fur, leather, or paint. This reworking of a slightly recognizable piece is then the central form that I build around. I adhere to a set of parameters in the process as well, such as using each and every part of the initial object or limiting my palette to a specific set of tones. I like the process or rethinking each nut and bolt and how to recreate them to fit the piece.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I very recently gave birth to our first child with a midwife at home and have found a new application for my body. In my work, I have always been intrigued by the female body and am inspired by my new sense of understanding around its capabilities.
I am also recently home from three long trips to Japan and am still pumped about the landscape, culture and textiles from those visits. So many small tokens of Japanese traditions have found their way into the new work.
At the gallery, we are working on a project with artist Diana Al-Hadid and visits with her here in Austin and in her studio in NY have been on my mind in the studio as well.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I completed an installation for the Texas Biennial at Blue Star Contemporary Art in San Antonio, titled Quadripoise, a few months ago that has fed into a large installation I am constructing for an exhibition in January 2012 called CONTACT at the Lawndale Art Center in Houston. The exhibition will include several new works that are inspired by physical repercussions on the body resulting from sports as well as the natural process of aging. I am excited about the intersection.
Can you share one of the best or worst reactions you have gotten as a result of your work? Last year I had a piece in a very public area of a municipal building. As I was de-installing it, a woman that worked in a nearby office told me that she hated the work. It was offensive to her as it wore a neck brace and was constructed from a set of crutches. She herself had suffered a neck injury that year and she felt that the work mocked her. We sat for over an hour discussing the work and I explained to her my desire to evolve empathy and not mockery. It was the most real and raw reaction I have ever been fortunate enough to receive about the work. I was so grateful to hear her opinion and although not my intended reaction, grateful to know the work had impact. I think about our discussion every time I am in the studio.
What artists are you interested in right now? I love Margaret Meehan. Her work is so riveting and visceral….she is brave and I am glad. I have a constant love affair with the work of Sarah Lucas and find myself referring to her along with Matthew Barney and Louise Bourgeois, my staples. These days I am thinking a lot about the work of outsider artist Judith Scott as well.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? This may be a three-way tie…. Each intrigued me in different ways. Charles LeDray: workworkworkworkwork at the Museum of Fine Arts in Houston, Stan VanDerBeek: The Culture Intercom at the Contemporary Art Museum Houston, Lynette Yiadom-Boakye: Any Number of Preoccupations at the Studio Museum Harlem.
If you hadn’t become an artist, what do you think you’d be doing? When I was young, I spent many hours cutting up fabric of all sorts to fashion a wardrobe for myself and any one in the neighborhood that would allow me to adorn them with hairpieces, hats, and make-shift punk rock attire. The greatest gift was my mother’s wedding dress, prime for reconstruction. I find that my studio practice does satisfy my desire to build in this manner, but if I were not making sculpture, I would be making clothing lines. I guess this is still being an artist, huh?
Artist of the Week: Chris Bradley
Chris Bradley was born in northeast New Jersey and currently lives in Chicago, IL. He received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010. Chris has an upcoming solo exhibition at Hungryman San Francisco opening October 8th.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? Dumb, but knows a little more about you than you do it.
When and where did your interest in art begin? 1990s, North Jersey. I owe it all to my family, friends, and marijuana. Throughout my childhood, my mom had us doing all sorts of creative projects. She celebrated whatever we did. The power of encouragement is not to be doubted. My dad had us building all sorts of shit around the house and yard. He taught me the value of hard work. My brother is my biggest hero. He and I spent endless hours making things together and along side each other. He was my first art community, and still remains a big part of the conversation. High school was a shit show. I didn’t know how to do anything but yardwork, artwork, skate, and blaze. Not much has changed.
How has living/working in Chicago affected your art practice? Chicago’s been a good place for me. I moved here from Brooklyn, where I was drinking heavily and having trouble figuring out where I stood as a maker of things. Chicago provided an upgrade in many ways. I went from using my stovetop as a studio and taking photos of turds, to a seat in grad school at SAIC. I then had spacein which to think and work. I learn best by doing, and prefer action over words. Chicago’s given me numerous opportunities to experiment and figure out what it is that I do. It’s given me a chance to get the ideas out into form. NYC is a wonderful beast that I will always call home. I aim to be back there soon enough, but for the time being Chicago’s a good place to lay low and get some work done.
What is one of the bigger challenges you and/or other artists are struggling with these days, and how do you see it developing? Don’t ask me, I just got here.
If you had one wish what would it be? Maybe to be anything but white.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? You may have realized, I think a lot about food (I was a fat kid). Being in a city that offers very little in the way of authentic, affordable, quick eats, I long for good pizza. I have quality-slice separation anxiety disorder, which involuntarily has me making work on the subject of pizza and its box… Other stuff, too, of course.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? David Adamo at Untitled over the summer or whenever that was.
What are your plans for the next year? 2011’s been a good pal, one I’ll never forget. I owe him many a drink. But I have a good feeling about 2012. I have some shows lined up that I’m working towards, and some collaborative plans to execute. I’m not one to calculate my time. Scheduling brings me down. I can’t say where I’ll be, but I assure you things will get done.
What’s your absolute favorite place in the city/the world to be? The Bloomingdale trail is the only place I’ve found in Chicago that allows for a slight escape. When I’m up there I feel like I could be anywhere. In the distance, I’d have to say Cape Cod. I grew up going there to visit my grandparents. The terrain is like nowhere else. Every now and again I see something that reminds me of it and I smile.
If you hadn’t become an artist, what do you think you’d be doing? Drinking.
Artist of the Week: Alika Cooper
Born in Agana, Guam, Alika Cooper currently lives and works in Los Angeles, California. She received her MFA from California College of the Arts in 2006. Alika’s work has been exhibited in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and throughout the U.S.
How did your interest in art begin?
I took an after school class in 4th grade in San Diego, an oil painting still life class. We set up avocados and oranges in a pile. I remember really engaging with the problems of painting. Depicting an object in front of another object. And what color is an orange really? You cant just paint it orange and call it good. I got into how cruddy the paint quality of oil paint can get. Really dense and defiant and yucky and wet. i liked all the immediate contradictions in trying to depict something. You determine the space based on fact or fiction or both. It’s very disturbing.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I’m looking at a lot of books of European photographers from the 1930s-40s, nudes, and early fashion photography, Helmut Newton, Heinz Hajek-Halke, Yva Else Simon, Brassaii and starting to collect some books on American quilting and related crafts like “quilting for the home.”
What artists are you interested in right now? This summer I’ve enjoyed looking at Tom Wesselmann paintings from the early eighties, especially the ones that are cropped out negative spaces of nudes and isolated on a canvas.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? I really enjoyed the current exhibition that is up at Cherry and Martin in Los Angeles, which re-stages curator Peter Bunnellʼs landmark 1970 exhibition, Photography into Sculpture, as a part of the Getty Museum citywide initiative, “Pacific Standard Time.”
Any current or upcoming shows we should know about? I have an upcoming solo exhibition this coming week at Eleanor Harwood Gallery in San Francisco. I’ve been working up to this show for a year now, and very happy to be finally installing this week. The opening is Saturday, September 17th. I will be showing works in a new medium: fabrics collaged on fabric, stretched on stretcher bars.
Artist of the Week: Rachel Niffenegger
Rachel Niffenegger lives and works in Chicago, Illinois. She is currently pursuing her MFA from Northwestern University. Niffenegger recently had a two-person exhibition with Paul Nudd at Western Exhibitions.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I received my BFA from SAIC in 2008 and am currently working on my MFA in Art Theory and Practice at Northwestern University in Evanston, IL.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? In addition to painting materials such as paper, paint, fabric and tape, I use materials from a collected pile of sawdust, concrete, ash, hair, teeth and torn up and discarded work. Each piece has part of the pile in it, mixed in with acrylic medium as a sort of magic dust that gives them life and a connection to each other.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Shrouds, auras, effigies, doppelgangers, ghosts, mummies, rituals, mutilation, formlessness.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I’m currently working on a Lithograph with Anchor Graphics in Chicago. It is a new process for me and has allowed me to really focus on the act of drawing and simplify during a time when I have been using excessive layering. I will be beginning my thesis work soon for the Spring of 2012.
How has your work developed within the past year? I have been working on doing site specific installations that haven’t been shown yet where I make work on a tarp or ground where it is meant to be shown. Instead of making polished objects I have been trying to show some of the process because the way each piece is created, destroyed and transformed is important to me. The sculptures are dragged and busted as they are made and it creates this mark making on the ground which further ties together my interest of where painting and sculpture intersect.
What artists are you interested in right now? Huma Bhabha, Lynda Benglis, Daniel Gordon, Paul Thek, Nathalie Djurberg, Agathe Snow.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? Dan Gunn’s 12x12 at the MCA.
Favorite music? Anything sad and folksy, Bill Callahan, Silver Jews etc. But I do really love the new Girl Talk album for working in the studio.
What were you like as a kid? I owned the entire Goosebumps collection, traced the drawings in Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark and my favorite toy was “Dr. Dreadful’s Squeemy Snack Lab” where you could make candy skin, brains and boogers.
Any upcoming shows we should know about? I’m showing a collaboration in Ryan Travis Christian’s show at Western Exhibitions opening October 21st. I’ll have some paintings at Domy Books in Austin in October as part of Monster 6 and the Northwestern Thesis Show at the Block Museum in May 2012. Not everything in 2012 is ready to announce just yet so keep your eye peeled.
*Portrait via Joseph Rynkiewicz.
Artist of the Week: Hayley Aviva Silverman
Hayley Aviva Silverman is a visual artist living in New York City. She received her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art in Interdisciplinary Sculptural Studies. Silverman has recently shown at the Queens Museum of Art, The Art Foundation- Athens, and the Venice Biennial.
How long have you lived in New York and what brought you there? I was born in NYC and have returned to live here twice since. I keep ping-ponging between Berlin and Chinatown and often visit Providence and Baltimore. I am aspiring towards a good-feeling long term city soon. I have spent the last year working for artists and reality TV.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? I have been most taken with my work for Arakawa and Gins, formerly called the Containers of the Mind, then called Architectural Body Foundation, and now referred to as Reversible Destiny. I process information for them- parsing through books and sussing out relevant information in regards to their architectural work. I most recently read Aristophanes and some other ancient Greek comedy that is amazingly clever and absurd.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I have been busy building furniture that uses canes and other kinds of assistance objects. I also finished two drawings entitled Mother and Father. The rest of my projects are left in this sprawling waiting room of text files and email correspondences. I am hoping to collaborate with an Air-trekker for a new video—getting a hold of one has been puzzling!
What is one the bigger challenges you and other artists are struggling with these days, and how do you see it developing? A big question is: When are we going to start living our fantasies? Some challenges are direct-speak, omnipresence (ambient-intimacy), spirituality in the age of abstract materialism, and a steadfast hold on individual freedom. The later challenge may be re-re-claimed through land ownership or/by metaphorically going West.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? I’d like to go to the Atacama Desert in Chile, known for being the driest place on Earth. It’s one of the best places to look up and houses the Very Large Telescope (VLT).
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I attend sci-fi book club where we are currently reading Oryx and Crake, Margaret Atwood’s post-apocalyptic novel from 2003 that touches on biotechnologies, pornography, hacking, class anxiety, and sex trafficking. I am also building a lecture on the topic of Animals in Transhumanist Literature.
If you hadn’t become an artist, what do you think you’d be doing? I have many interests outside of art that involve materials science, ecology, and genetics. At the moment, I can see another alternative reality through my younger brother. He stayed close to where we grew up and is now sharing a mansion (owned by a russian ice skating champion) with five other friends, a sort of neo-commune. I think there is an undefined potential in suburbia.
What were you like in high school? I had cornrows and a glued curl that wrapped around my cheek.
Artist of the Week: Clay Hickson
Clay Hickson is a printmaker and illustrator living in Montreal, Canada. He received his BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2010.
How did your interest in art begin? My interest in art began with my parents. My father was an airbrush illustrator in the 70’s and 80’s and my mother is an art therapist. But it wasn’t until high school, when my older brother introduced me to graffiti, that I took a real interest in art.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? I usually start with something like, “Oh jeez… I don’t know…” Then if the person is still looking at me expectantly, I say something like, “I draw pictures of wacky stuff like smiling fruits and floating shapes.” Then I change the subject. I’ve never been very good at explaining art.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I work mostly with a pencil and almost exclusively on paper. My process is simple: I draw in my sketchbook everyday, and when I draw something that I find particularly striking, I draw it again on big, nice paper. Sometimes I turn it into a screen print.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? The Memphis Group, Ancient Greek mythology, Bauhaus, hippies.
What do you want a viewer to walk away with after seeing your work? A good laugh.
What are you really excited about right now? Papier mâché. I’m looking forward to getting more 3-dimensional.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? At the moment I’m working on starting up a small publishing company, Tan & Loose Press, which should be up and running in the next month or so. I also have a couple of collaborative zines in the works as well as a series of posters.
What artists are you interested in right now? Michael Willis, Jiro Bevis, and Tim Lahan are my current favorites. And I’ll always have a special place for Courtney Reagor.
What’s your favorite thing about Montreal? The Poutine at Double A Diner and “The Creation” sandwich at The Famous Cosmos.
Top 3 favorite or most visited websites and why?
1. Reference Library because Andy Beach has the best taste on the internet.
2. Panther Club because they’re publishing the coolest stuff.
3. Craigslist because I am a scavenger of cheap and free things.
What’s your absolute favorite place to be? The Field Museum, Chicago. Most magical place on Earth.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I like riding my bike and figuring out new ways to sneak into movies. I also spend a lot of time at the library (second most favorite place in the world).
Artist of the Week: Leslie Baum
Leslie Baum is a painter living in Chicago, IL. She received her BA from the University of Vermont and studied at the Glasgow School of Art. Leslie recently had a solo exhibition at Devening Projects + Editions.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? I make paintings, sometimes on paper, sometimes on canvas. Either way, the work is grounded in paint’s materiality and rummages through its history. I’d also say that it’s animated by my own fallibility.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I am pretty old school. I use oil paint on canvas. I also work a lot on paper with watercolor and gouache. I like to rework an image, painting it multiple times; each new version is based on the prior iteration. Lately, I have been cutting up the works on paper, sometimes leaving them as fragments and other times collaging them into new compositions.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? Anasazi pottery shards, the Book of Esther, Wiener Werkstaette textiles, and crappy printouts of post-war American painting.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I am starting two collaborations. Collaborating is a new thing for me and super exciting. My pal and local renaissance man Frederick Wells and I are working on a stop motion animation. We’re using a beast of an old copy stand and some fancy software to animate my watercolor fragments. I am also working on a collaboration with the Los Angeles painter Portia Hein. This is a mail project, where we each work on the same watercolors/collages and send them back and forth, adding and subtracting as we go.
How has living in Chicago affected your art practice? Chicago is my kind of town. I like the pace of life here. Having time to think, be with friends and work in the studio adds up to me making better paintings. Being a little on the periphery also has it’s advantages, not quite like a monk in the monastery, but living in Chicago gives me the space to be less impacted by ever shifting trends and to stay focused on my own investigations.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? Most recently, Alexander McQueen at the Met. Bill O’Brien at the Renaissance Society. But the stickiest exhibition of the last few years was the Charles Burchfield show at the Hammer curated by Robert Gober.
How did your interest in art begin? I grew up in a household that was infused with art. My parents were both amateur makers, my mom a painter and ceramist, my dad a photographer. My mom was also a docent at the High Museum of Art in Atlanta. When I was a kid she would bring me along on her shifts. I would spend hours exploring on my
own. The whole museum felt like my private play world.
What are you really excited about right now? Lobster rolls, hot springs, sitting still for ten minutes a day, and Jung’s red book.
If you hadn’t become an artist, what do you think you’d be doing? Bird watching.
Top 3 favorite or most visited websites and why? Two Coats of Paint, I really appreciate the solid writing and the focus on painters/painting. The Sartorialist, because fashion is my Achilles heel. The Met’s online collection for my daily fix of everything from ancient Minoan painting to Korean ceramics.
Artist of the Week: William Sieruta
William Sieruta is a painter from Amherst, Massachusetts. He is currently an MFA candidate at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I’m Will. I’m a painter and I make pictures. Some friends and I have a side project called Murdertown, which is an “alternative space” in Logan Square that organizes exhibitions, hosts weird quasi-art related events and puts out publications.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I paint from my memory and imagination with oil paint. The paintings usually start out from a simple idea about a shape or a group of colors, but at the beginning my conception of the end product is vague. I like to keep it open and active, that way I can change my mind at any point and not really feel like I’ve lost anything. I’m more interested in making pictures I discover through the process of painting rather than just converting or translating images that already exist into paintings, which seems pointless.
What are some recent, upcoming or current projects you are working on? I recently did a show with Autumn Space Gallery called “An Extraordinary Ordinariness.” I installed sixteen paintings that I made this spring. Since then I’ve been working on a new series of these hybrid “painted-sculpture paintings”. I’m excited about the project because it’s sort of getting out of control and really silly. I’m beginning to have no idea where it’s going, which could be a good thing. It’s hard to explain verbally because I’m figuring out what I want do with these things and I can’t determine exactly what they are or how I want them to exist. I’ll show them in Chicago in the winter or spring.
How did your interest in art begin? When I was a kid, my brother and I would tape together a dozen sheets of copy paper and draw huge panoramic pictures of robots, monsters, baseball players, our friends, etc. in giant war scenarios. We basically combined everything that we really liked (or really hated) into one impossible image. So I think pretty early on I knew art was a way i could improve reality or at least try to circumvent it. Since then I’ve sat through a lot of lectures and my conception of art has “developed,” but the part I like best is fundamentally still that basic. The time I spend making pictures is better than most of the other stuff.
What are your thoughts about the art scene in Chicago? I’m not an expert, so can only comment on my impression of Chicago’s art scene. The city is huge, but the “art scene” actually seems really small, and I like that. The stakes are low, so people are more free to try out whatever stupid idea they might have. What is there to lose? Sometimes it leads to something interesting. Other times it leads to more art.
What was the last exhibition you saw that stuck out to you? I loved the Jim Nutt retrospective and its sideshow at the MCA. Definitely the funnest painting show I’ve seen in a museum. I also really enjoyed seeing Mark Grotjahn’s new work up close at Shane Campbell. You can’t go wrong with radical monsterface vortex butterflies.
What’s your favorite thing about Chicago? 355 days a year the weather here is fucking horrible, but those ten non-terrible days are priceless.
What do you do when you’re not working on art? I like to cook Indian food, make terrible music and take long walks on the peach.
If you had one wish what would it be? My wishes are pretty humble. All I really want is to have a decent studio and enough time to make my work. Either that or a solid gold house and a rocket car.
If you hadn’t become an artist, what do you think you’d be doing? Well, I have a degree in finance, but I gave all that up to pursue the things that I am really passionate about. Now, if I really couldn’t live off my art, I would probably work with food. I really like to cook, so I’d imagine I’d really love to be a chef. I’ve never worked in a restaurant so that fantasy is based more on what I’ve seen on Top Chef than on any experience or skill I actually have. Still, chef is probably my best option in terms of a marketable skill that I enjoy doing. I’d either do that or be bank robber.
![vcentu:
Cool
Chicago students started the art galleries LVL3, HungryMan and Carousel Space Project
Robin Juan, Vincent Uribe and Robin Kang explain how to balance schoolwork with exhibitions
By Lauren Weinberg
Though Medicine Cabinet, a project space housed in a Bridgeport bathroom, is on hiatus, “alternative” galleries—many only slightly less bizarre—thrive in Chicago, and have for several years. Often run by artists, these galleries range from extra bedrooms one noise complaint away from a police shutdown to legitimate live/work spaces. While their missions differ, these venues tend to support avant-garde art that’s harder to sell than conventional gallery fare—and several were founded by students.
“There’d be no way I could do this in New York,” SAIC student Vincent Uribe told me earlier this year, when I visited him at LVL3 (1542 N Milwaukee Ave, third floor; 312-469-0333). The Los Angeles native opened the Wicker Park gallery in 2009, just after he finished his freshman year. A roommate had been hosting exhibitions in the live/work space; when he moved out, Uribe took over, spending two months installing adequate lighting and painting it a standard white. Now aided by associate director Allison Kilberg, a classmate, Uribe has maintained a regular schedule of group shows ever since, and exhibited at Chicago’s NEXT and MDW art fairs.
Uribe and Kilberg want LVL3 to maintain professional standards. Rather than showing work by their friends—a common pitfall—they make sure to highlight artists from outside Chicago, some of whom they find online. “I take a lot of arts administration classes,” Uribe tells me. “We do proper agreement forms. I do [publicity] postcards.” Because he funded the gallery alone for a long time, budgeting was his biggest headache. Sometimes he had to decide whether to advertise shows or buy groceries.
SAIC alum Robin Juan, who cofounded Logan Square’s HungryMan Gallery (2135 N Rockwell St) when she was a student in 2008, experienced similar conundrums. “I’d buy snacks for the gallery on my food stamps,” she admits, “but it’s not like that any more.”
HungryMan has done well enough to allow Juan to open a sister gallery in her hometown, San Francisco. But “when we first started, it was really an experiment,” she recalls. At first, Juan says, HungryMan’s staff would simply tell artists, “Oh, you want to have a show? Cool.” Now, the gallery’s management does extensive research and preparation before every exhibition, conducting two studio visits. It always had a clear mission, however: “We wanted to create a space that…gave artists a lot of freedom. We also thought this would be a great way to create community.”
A desire for community also inspires Robin Kang, who opened Carousel Space Project(1310 N Hoyne Ave) in Wicker Park when she moved to Chicago from Brooklyn earlier this year to pursue an M.F.A. at SAIC. “I thought it would be a great way to meet other students, and begin a dialogue across different media and departments at my school,” says Kang, who encourages her classmates to propose exhibitions. “The first opening had some performance art, and there was a sound installation in the shower.”
Alternative galleries don’t have to last forever. Kang, who wants to focus on her own artistic practice, isn’t sure running Carousel will ever be her primary job. But Juan’s and Uribe’s ventures are shaping their careers. Uribe recommends Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber’s book ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career (Free Press, $16.95) to would-be gallerists. “It goes through really basic things from consigning works to pricing to studio visits,” he says. Still, “There’s a lot of things you have to learn by doing: paperwork, getting artists to ship you things, and dealing with customs.… Having to get something shipped from Canada without being stopped by the border patrol. That was a weird challenge.”](http://24.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_lpxyro4Ug91qzg4fvo1_400.png)
Cool
Chicago students started the art galleries LVL3, HungryMan and Carousel Space Project
Robin Juan, Vincent Uribe and Robin Kang explain how to balance schoolwork with exhibitions
By Lauren Weinberg
Though Medicine Cabinet, a project space housed in a Bridgeport bathroom, is on hiatus, “alternative” galleries—many only slightly less bizarre—thrive in Chicago, and have for several years. Often run by artists, these galleries range from extra bedrooms one noise complaint away from a police shutdown to legitimate live/work spaces. While their missions differ, these venues tend to support avant-garde art that’s harder to sell than conventional gallery fare—and several were founded by students.
“There’d be no way I could do this in New York,” SAIC student Vincent Uribe told me earlier this year, when I visited him at LVL3 (1542 N Milwaukee Ave, third floor; 312-469-0333). The Los Angeles native opened the Wicker Park gallery in 2009, just after he finished his freshman year. A roommate had been hosting exhibitions in the live/work space; when he moved out, Uribe took over, spending two months installing adequate lighting and painting it a standard white. Now aided by associate director Allison Kilberg, a classmate, Uribe has maintained a regular schedule of group shows ever since, and exhibited at Chicago’s NEXT and MDW art fairs.
Uribe and Kilberg want LVL3 to maintain professional standards. Rather than showing work by their friends—a common pitfall—they make sure to highlight artists from outside Chicago, some of whom they find online. “I take a lot of arts administration classes,” Uribe tells me. “We do proper agreement forms. I do [publicity] postcards.” Because he funded the gallery alone for a long time, budgeting was his biggest headache. Sometimes he had to decide whether to advertise shows or buy groceries.
SAIC alum Robin Juan, who cofounded Logan Square’s HungryMan Gallery (2135 N Rockwell St) when she was a student in 2008, experienced similar conundrums. “I’d buy snacks for the gallery on my food stamps,” she admits, “but it’s not like that any more.”
HungryMan has done well enough to allow Juan to open a sister gallery in her hometown, San Francisco. But “when we first started, it was really an experiment,” she recalls. At first, Juan says, HungryMan’s staff would simply tell artists, “Oh, you want to have a show? Cool.” Now, the gallery’s management does extensive research and preparation before every exhibition, conducting two studio visits. It always had a clear mission, however: “We wanted to create a space that…gave artists a lot of freedom. We also thought this would be a great way to create community.”
A desire for community also inspires Robin Kang, who opened Carousel Space Project(1310 N Hoyne Ave) in Wicker Park when she moved to Chicago from Brooklyn earlier this year to pursue an M.F.A. at SAIC. “I thought it would be a great way to meet other students, and begin a dialogue across different media and departments at my school,” says Kang, who encourages her classmates to propose exhibitions. “The first opening had some performance art, and there was a sound installation in the shower.”
Alternative galleries don’t have to last forever. Kang, who wants to focus on her own artistic practice, isn’t sure running Carousel will ever be her primary job. But Juan’s and Uribe’s ventures are shaping their careers. Uribe recommends Heather Darcy Bhandari and Jonathan Melber’s book ART/WORK: Everything You Need to Know (and Do) As You Pursue Your Art Career (Free Press, $16.95) to would-be gallerists. “It goes through really basic things from consigning works to pricing to studio visits,” he says. Still, “There’s a lot of things you have to learn by doing: paperwork, getting artists to ship you things, and dealing with customs.… Having to get something shipped from Canada without being stopped by the border patrol. That was a weird challenge.”
Artist of the Week: Samara Scott
Samara Scott is currently pursuing her MA in Communication Art and Design at the Royal College of Art. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at Crate Gallery in London.
Tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do. I think about it as a sort of liquidy making, where naive absent-minded processes direct material - leftovers, scum, scraps that I surround myself with - and trickle it through all sorts of ranges. This might be anything from an interiors range, a fashion range or a range of encyclopedic volumes. As the mediums are filtered and exchanged photographs slip towards film, props migrate into sculptures. My latest work, my summer collection! is a range of furnishings – ‘dramatic centerpieces for every occasion’. Processes are similar to simple domestic luxury activity modes, say ‘shopping’ or traveling or daydreaming - tourist stuff. I use these visitations of fantasy style processes and accelerate them into sloppy forms of making. I’m serious about sexy textures, juicy garnishes, stained carpets, glittery waterfalls and silhouettes kissing against sunsets.
If you had to explain your work to a stranger, what would you say? At the moment something glossy with a conference centre feel. I think the idea of slinky jargon is steamy, pretty funny but evasive too! So something like tiered seductive experience merges with high impact visual language: ripe for slipping into new scenarios.
What materials do you use in your work and what is your process like? I’ve been told I follow a patchy logic; it’s so twisty, alchemous, vaporous and shortcutting. I have described it before as a ‘field trip’ or a ‘tropical safari;’ and I feel there are parts of the making that venture into the characters of the explorer or the scientist – considering the expansive geology of the universe/web alongside another local corrosion and mixture - the voyage of substance - pairing and mingling from sloppy yet precise whimsical motives.
What kinds of things are influencing your work right now? At this point I’m deep in a hybrid of Memphis, John Soane’s Museum, Marc Camille Chaimowicz, therapeutic/amateur interior design, Virgin Atlantic, Baroque churches, John Divola, Helen Marten, this book on Eskimo costume, early scientific geology writing and 17th century flambé glazed ceramics. I also still haven’t got over the idea of Nature as an emotional branding tool; in all its manmade melodramatic glamour. I just wrote a piece called The Promise of Paradise about Modern religious flyers - which seem to ceaselessly use landscape as universal screen-savers, I’m wowed by these clichéd dramatic backdrops - they are myths. Also - I had this really vivid memory of when I was a teenager cleaning this clarinet and I had this fluffy wand that you had to poke inside it and it all smelt of your own spit but was kind of clammy and cold. I have been really thinking about that - I really want to find a way for people to experience those really lucid sensory things, where the pleasure is really confusing. That’s why I like jelly and sauce with bits in, and wrinkly paper - they are like processed bodies. I like materials that yield, denting, perforations, air bubbles, scratching, gooey shapes, foam and juice, vats, ooze, foliage.
What is one the bigger challenges you and other artists are struggling with these days, and how do you see it developing? I think it’s all to do with the simultaneous beauty and trauma of the Internet. A vast, vast choice of choices in one way makes your practice able to become so exciting and rapid, and I’m interested in that rate of consumption and those shortcuts that it offers, all this transportation, over and over and I need to keep reminding myself of the virtuality of it all. With that thrill I also get sensations of this desert of possibility, the tangle of wanting everything, the restless desire to taste everything. Its nauseous, giddy and also vacant, and I think it makes choosing hard, and focusing tricky. It’s the tragedy of options I guess.
Best, worst, or favorite reaction someone has had toward your work? ‘Its like glory and vomit at the same time.’ That was perfect. My friend Ed also said that the work kind of has sounds in it, like little moans or squashy noises.
What do you do when you re not working on art? Swimming, eating, talking-I talk a lot. I love swimming, I’m a really big long distance wild swimmer, I’ve swum across the east river ny and we swim a lot in the sea in winter. I’ve just started a synchronised swimming class too.
If you could go anywhere in the world where would you go and why? At this moment my great desire is to go on a cruise ship package, one of those really classy ones that are themselves suspended over-patterned islands, thick with dated flamboyance. I would choose a Mediterranean cruise or a Caribbean tour - an island visiting other islands. I want the whole whammy, headsets, golf courses, buffets, seafood platters, and fountains, mock-baroque paintings that custom-match the wallpaper. I want to go alone on one of those things and make this film that I have had in my mind for a long time. I’m interested in that yellowing corporate gloss, the postclassical odors.
Favorite music? Well my playlist on studiomusic.fm is just about to be launched, it’s playlists of what artists listen to in their studios. I’ve made a double sided mix tape of my favorite crush classics, Italian opera, r&b.
What are you really excited about right now? I designed a canapé and cocktail bar, Cafe Chateau, almost entirely - even the napkins and complimentary chocolates! I used a lot of new materials - I made these wobbly island shaped table-tops out of glass - and built up the layers of texture into Memphis inspired furnishings. The menus were themed such as ‘spanish passion’ or ‘oriental mirage.’ We served marbled eggs, coconuts, pastel refreshments, layered jellies, and crème caramels in scallop shells. It was a complete holiday to product design and hospitality! And by that visitation I was able to have a casualness in the way I expressed ideas. It’s a space full of prototypes, and even like this you are able to theatrically control audience experience of a textured space. I got all my overlapping surfaces and ideas I could wish for. I’m also working on something coming up for Lucky PDF.
