ERIN WASHINGTON uses imagery, text and fugitive materials to evoke a long history of human inquiry into the form and meaning of the universe we live in. Perception and permanence are called into question. Theoretical Physics mingles with tangible objects from antiquity. Art historical references are balanced by philosophical ones. Erin received a BA in Studio Art from University of Colorado at Boulder in 2005. She went on to earn a Post-Baccalaureate Certificate in Painting and Drawing (2008) and an MFA (2011) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Erin's 2016 exhibitions in Chicago include solo show Useful Knowledge at Zolla Lieberman, two-person show Hand of Mouth at Roots & Culture and group show Chicago and Vicinity at Shane Campbell Gallery. She was named a 2016 Chicago Breakout Artist by New City Art. Erin lives and works in Chicago.
OtherPeoplesPixels:
I think of art, philosophy, myth and science all as modes of inquiry,
which should be balanced, but not privileged over one another. What do
you think?
Erin Washington: Oh of course! By no means do I
propose that one mode of inquiry supersedes another. . . if anything, I
am looking at these modes of inquiry as different languages attempting
to ask the same question. Some languages are better at capturing
different nuances to the question; some languages elicit a different
type of response or forefront a different type of preoccupation. One
language may be more lyrical or poetic, emphasizing romance and pleasure
while a different language may be better at discussing facts and
figures and analytics, using statistics to describe an agreed upon
reality. My hope is to flatten any perceived hierarchy. . . screaming
into the void unintelligibly, waiting for an answer from where I do not
know. . .
OPP:
Many of your two-dimensional works are chalk on acrylic on panel. I’m
curious about the permanence or impermanence of the chalk: is it fixed?
Either way, the implication of erasure and accumulation of meaning is
still there.
EW: Another instance in which the question
might be more important than the answer! One of my favorite drawings is
Robert Rauschenberg’s Erased de Kooning Drawing. A very young Rauschenberg obtained an original drawing by Willem de Kooning and spent weeks erasing it. Erased de Kooning Drawing
is powerful because of the story and because of the action. . .
conservationists have taken digital photographs of the piece, and now we
can Google image search and find out what the actual de Kooning drawing looked like
before Rauschenberg labored over its erasure. But it's not satisfying
to look at the imagery of what the drawing looked like before it became
what it is now. It's satisfying to see the ghost of its former self and
to think of the actions of both artists involved.
OPP: Do you think of your chalk works as palimpsests?
EW: My fondness for Erased de Kooning Drawing
should imply that yes, I do think of my work as palimpsests. I like
that every mark, whether preparatory or finalized, is present and
available to the viewer. Some marks clearly describe a thinking mind,
while others are purely in existence for the moment and only remain as
ghosts of themselves. Those ghosts might not be immediately available,
but as trace rewards to the careful and attentive viewer.
Perhaps
another way of thinking about it could be illustrated in this anecdote:
very often painters will keep rags in their studios to wipe their
brushes clean between marks; this helps keeps the paint “pure” and
unmuddied from pigment picked up by other pigments on the wet canvas.
This is common in drawing, too. The drawer will have a scrap piece of
paper handy to “wipe off” the pencil/pen, or to keep the tip at a
certain sharpness or degree of angle. A friend in school started wiping
off his brushes at the bottom of his painting, so he had these
interesting perceptual paintings for three-quarters of the canvas and
then what amounted to an abstract expressionist painting at the bottom
quarter. When I asked him about why he decided to do that, he referred
to the bottom quarter of the painting as “the basement.” It was his way
of acknowledging that those “cleaning the brush” marks were just as
important to the painting as the mannered and controlled perceptual
painting marks.
OPP:
In earlier works, you use other fugitive materials—saliva, moss, tea,
and the juice from beets, pomegranates, blackberries, cranberries and
raspberries—to make marks. These works tend to be more abstract,
foregrounding the materials themselves. When and why did you first start
working with these organic materials?
EW: My natural inclination is to be drawn to the materiality of media. I would look at artists like Dieter Roth or Wolfgang Laib
and vibrate with excitement. If you want them to, materials can help
dictate meaning and form and change the context in which a viewer
engages with the work.
The contextual issues we discussed have been of interest to me for a
long time. There came a point in exploring these ideas when I began to
question the materials that I was using—at the time I was using oil
paints. After all, if you’re dealing in inquiry of perception and
permanence, eventually you turn that lens on not only Art History but
inward as well. . . onto your supports and materials and eventually onto
yourself. In other words, it felt weird to try to make work about these
ideas using the immutable tools of Painting. While in graduate school
at SAIC, one of my advisors picked up on my interest in the passage of
time and permanence and suggested that I pick up The Art Forger’s Handbook
to study methods and techniques for mimicking aged work. The secret
spells and analysis of pigments and supports really tickled the witchy
part of my heart, so I started expanding my scope of materials.
OPP: How are these materials connected to your cosmology references?
EW:
When looking at natural pigments, I think of their very early uses,
cave paintings and rituals, for example. Using spit and burnt wood and
bones and rocks and earth, humans made marks to say we are/were here
and to make sense of their world. To figure out how the world began and
why we are here. . . that’s one of the most basic definitions of
cosmology! The pairing lined up nicely.
And yes, you are correct,
the earlier work was much more abstract for a couple of reasons. I was
really interested in figuring out how these materials could work, but I
was also a little distrustful of imagery at the time. I was wary that
images could shut down nuance. I want the artwork to operate with
multiple layers of meaning. In retrospect, I think that binary is
over-simplified and has flawed logic.
OPP: In eternal return (2015) and eternal return too
(2016), you use the repeated image of the ouroboros, a serpent eating
its own tail. The symbol shows up in numerous ancient cultures and has
associations in several philosophical, mystical and psychological
systems of thought. What does it mean to you in the context of
contemporary culture?
EW: Supposedly the concept of the
ouroboros is represented in some shape or form in most ancient cultures
to symbolize cyclical recreations, introspection and self-reflexivity.
In earlier drawings, I diagrammed Shapes of the Universe and Shapes of an Expanding Universe because I am fascinated with the Oscillating Universe Theory,
in which an expanding universe eventually falls apart, but then
provides energy/fuel for a subsequent big-bang. This means that all
matter and space is forever expanding, collapsing and expanding again
(and answering that tricky question “what was there before the big
bang?”). I think it has been disproved or isn’t popular among
scientists, but it’s such a comforting metaphor. It’s another example of
a language of inquiry stumbling upon the poetic. The ouroboros is a
visual representation of an eternal return. When I started drawing them,
I wound up personifying them, wondering how does it feel for them to
eat their own tails? Are they terrified? Are they excited? Are they
gagging?
OPP: Tell us about your recent show at Roots & Culture in Chicago.
EW: The show was a two-person show with myself and former Chicago artist Ron Ewert
(now Brooklyn-based). We both reference and source imagery from other
contexts within our paintings/drawings, and we also both have an
interest in sculpture and installation as a meta-context/narrative to
prop these two-dimensional objects upon. Ron, for example, creates
stripped-down wall frames without drywall, often painting these naked
two-by-fours bright colors and hanging his work on the wall-skeletons.
We
had a couple of Skype studio-visits and realized that we both like
using a sort of lateral-thinking/oblique strategy method of generating
ideas. We were collecting images and realizing that a lot of them
featured hands or mouths or hands with mouths. That’s how we settled on
the title of the show Hand of Mouth, and I think that weird phrase influenced a couple of pieces for both of us.
Dimensions variable.
2016.
Also on view, Ron Ewert painting.
OPP: What new work did you present?
EW: I
featured more of my collage-based work, as well as some new
metal-point drawings. About a year ago, a friend gave me some
metal-point tips with the challenge, “you like drawing and weird
materials, try these: they’re the Olympics of drawing!” Metal-point
pre-dates graphite and lead. When you’re drawing, you’re embedding metal
deposits into the surface of the support, which means you cannot erase
your marks.
As mentioned earlier, Ron and I both have an
interest in installation acting as a meta-context for our two
dimensional work. To this end, I created a mock Holodeck
to hang paintings in. It’s an installation I’ve wanted to make for a
while, and I was fortunate that Roots & Culture allowed me to do
that. Anyway: Faith in Fakes (holodeck) makes reference to Star Trek The Next Generation
(a show of great importance to a handful of dear friends in my life).
It’s a room that creates virtual reality for the crew on Star Trek, and
it’s a conceit that was always confusing to me. Here is a crew of
people, essentially in a utopian society in which all races are treated
equally and peacefully getting along. (The original Star Trek was
one of the first network television shows to feature a racially diverse
cast.) They are actively bringing PEACE to the galaxy. . . and yet,
they need a virtual reality room to escape utopia every now and then?
Furthermore: not only are they already in utopia, they’re astronauts
(every child’s secret wish)! It’s often how I feel about my studio. I
get to exist in this world. . . and yet I still need to escape into my
studio to sit in a room alone and make drawings. . .
Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan), Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery (Chicago) and When Things Fall Apart, a durational, collage installation in the Annex Gallery at Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago). Form Unbound, a two-person show, also featuring the work of Aimée Beaubien, closed in December 2015 at Dominican University's O’Connor Art Gallery (River Forest, IL). Most recently, Stacia created a brand new site-responsive installation for SENTIENCE, a group show at The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art in March 2016.