OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews AC Wilson

2013
Photograph, chair with permanent impression

AC WILSON’s arrangements of found objects—clippings from newspapers, beds, taxidermy animals, magician's tools—evoke absence, tragedy and loss. He uses these objects as props, barely manipulating them, except through their placement, allowing ambiguous narratives to emerge. AC received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Tennessee in 2012 and attended the Summer Studio Program at Virginia Commonwealth University in 2013. He has exhibited at University of Tennessee Downtown Gallery, Flourescent Gallery, Knoxville Museum of Art and Virginia Commonwealth University. In December 2014, he exhibited in the group show Fresh Punch at the artist-run Era VI VII VI in Queens, New York. AC lives and works in Richmond, Virginia.

OtherPeoplesPixels: In your artist statement, you say, ""My work deals with tragedy, failure, and fate. The work speaks softly, under the guise of familiar objects and simple or clichéd symbolism. Under that surface lies a violent undercurrent of doubt, regret, and confusion." Could you talk generally about cliché and how you use it to address these themes?

AC Wilson: A majority of my work is influenced by my mother’s death from leukemia in 2010. At the time, I had two more years at the University of Tennessee and decided it would be healthy to make work about what I was going through. Tragedy is closely tied to failure—the failure to prevent it or the idea that life has failed or cheated you in some way. My personal tragedy was difficult in that there was no one I could blame. Fate had prescribed this tragedy on a genetic level I cannot understand, and I have nothing but gratitude for the incredible medical care that attempted to stop it. This left me with some anger and nowhere to direct it. The whole ordeal was and still is confusing to me.

There is a danger of alienating the audience in making work that is too specifically personal. I want my audience to be able to relate to the work whether or not they have experienced something similar. In order to bridge this gap, I use familiar objects and simple metaphors in my arrangements. It allows the work to be more approachable and less daunting to investigate. This is where cliché becomes a tool. It allows me to use a vocabulary of metaphor and meaning in objects that has already been well established. For instance, in Rut (2012), I am working off of the cliché of ducklings following their mother in a line. I’m able to subvert this however by removing the maternal figure and looping the line into a circle. Then, the work can have a more complicated discussion about personal loss and loss in direction without my having to explain what the objects mean. 

Rut
2012
Taxidermy ducklings

OPP: The dominant characteristic in your work is evocative simplicity in the arrangement of found objects. What's your process like? Do pieces come to you like fully-formed visions or do you move things around until they make sense?

ACW: Early on in school, I was drawn to the clean aesthetic of artists like Tom Friedman, Damien Hirst and Jason Dodge. There was something about their tone that seemed unattainable and supernatural to me.

With a clear standard in mind, I began working methodically to bring these elements into my own work. I wanted to use a light touch and to do the most with the least. Using objects that already exist affords me that ability. I simply compose objects and allow the relationships between them to be the basis of the expression. The nature of our everyday material surroundings allows one to understand and relate better to the physical presence of an object rather than a drawing or other iteration of the same object. Titling a work is also an important opportunity to influence the relationship between object and idea.

I began to put other limitations—to only use objects a child could understand or to use no more than two or three basic components—on myself, which propelled my work to a new level. At the time, I would spend a considerable amount of time with an idea, generally only working through sketches. When I thought it was ready, I would execute it, knowing how I wanted it to look.

While this may have created more succinct, confident work, I realized the potential for missed opportunities with this approach. These limitations began to inhibit my possibilities at a certain point. More and more, I’m allowing accidents and experimentation to happen, sketching with physical objects and materials. I’m surrounding myself with things I want to work with and getting out of my comfort zone, allowing uncertainty to be involved. 

2014
Newspaper clippings of Carina Dolcino, senior class president at Concord High School, before and after the Challenger space shuttle explosion; display case

OPP: You've made several recent pieces using clips from the 1986 Challenger Space Shuttle explosion, including Aftermath (2013). It's been almost 20 years. Do you remember the day the shuttle exploded? Why use such a distant tragedy, when there are so many recent tragedies—I'm thinking of all the school shootings in recent years?

ACW: The Challenger Space Shuttle explosion occurred three years before I was born. There are multiple reasons I use this event as a vehicle to talk about tragedy. First, it is difficult to find a tragedy on such a grand scale that doesn't involve a clear villain or carry other baggage. A tragedy such as a school shooting prompts conversations about gun control, the state of mental health care and the media’s coverage of the shooters. The Challenger Space Shuttle explosion is unique in that is boils down to an accident. While NASA is to blame for their incompetence regarding the faulty design of the O-Rings, they were under an immense amount of pressure to expedite an already delayed launch. In addition to that, flawed judgement doesn’t not come from a place of malice. It really was just a terrible accident.

What compounds this tragedy is the involvement of Christa McAuliffe, an American school teacher who was the first to be selected as a part of the NASA Teacher in Space program. Due to her involvement, the shuttle launch was broadcast in classrooms all over America. For many young people, this was an introduction to tragedy and loss, a loss of innocence.

What happens when you die
2011
Taxidermy fawn, bed, cremation tag

OPP: I'm curious about your series Impossible Objects (2010)—are these photographs or installations?

ACW: The Impossible Objects are actual physical installations inspired by a few sources. Most notably, they are tied to the concept of an impossible bottle. These can range from the classic ship in a bottle to more complex feats, such as the work of Harry Eng. What fascinates me about these bottles is their ability to maintain a real sense of curiosity without relying on any movement whatsoever.

I come from a background in illusionary magic, which relates to the idea of a puzzle, but is not the same. While a puzzle requires a solution to a problem, the strength of magic relies more on wondering, “How is it done?” Knowing how a trick is performed removes all of its power. In this series, I mainly focused on the illusion of penetration or “solid-through-solid.” Tire on Pole, for example, is basically a variation on the linking ring illusion.  

Lastly, the series references the absurd nature of pranks, namely, the Cornell University’s Pumpkin Prank of 1998, in which a pumpkin was inexplicable placed atop Cornell’s 173-foot McGraw tower. Like the Cornell pumpkin prank, the installations were easy to overlook, but hidden in plain sight. However, once noticed or pointed out, their nonsensical and sometimes daring execution elicits humor. A nice tension exists between a dismissive “Why would someone do that?” and an impressed “How did someone do that?”

Donut on pole
2010
Donut, from the series Impossible Objects

OPP: You earned your BFA in 2012 from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville and went on to do the Summer Studio Program at Virginia Commonwealth University on 2013. Tell us a little bit about that program and why you decided to go. How has it affected your practice?

ACW: I had an incredible experience working toward my BFA at the University of Tennessee. After graduation, as many artists can attest, it can be  difficult to maintain momentum and balance a studio practice and real life responsibilities. School offers a real sounding board by way of critiques, visiting artists and faculty mentorship. Not having that can foster some insecurities about the direction of your work.

Having worked full-time during school and after, I needed some time to sort things out. As a part of the visiting artist program at UT, I had a studio visit with Michael Jones McKean, an Associate Professor at VCU. The visit was productive. When I heard about the VCU Summer Studio program, I was looking forward to working with him again. The VCU Summer Studio program offered a great opportunity to spend eight weeks focusing on my work, surrounded by a group of talented artists who were at similar points in their careers. It was an extremely motivating experience.

Being in a new environment, I felt permission to bend some of my own rules and make decisions I might not have otherwise. A good example of this is Mother and child. The piece involves two parts: an enlarged photograph of my mother nursing me right after my birth and a black folding chair with a permanent impression in the seat. Both of these parts are fabricated or modified. While the photograph wasn’t manipulated, it was enlarged for formal reasons. The chair was modified by soaking the seat cushion in plaster, re-upholstering it, and sitting on it until it hardened. While normally I try not to modify objects, my goals for this piece couldn't have been realized without doing so. That being said, I tried to involve my hand as little as possible, to retain a sense of honesty in material. This has led to more possibilities for me, including collage and other forms of fabrication. I have more creative freedom as a result of the program; now I just have to decide where to go with it.

To see more of AC's work, please visit ac-wilson.com.

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. Recent exhibitions include solo shows I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago, as well as Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, at Design Cloud in Chicago (2014). Most recently, Stacia created When Things Fall Apart, a durational, collage installation in the Annex Gallery at Lillstreet Art Center. Closing reception guests were invited to help break down the piece by pulling pins out of the wall.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Sabina Ott

here and there pink melon joy (purgatory)
2014
Installation view
Styrofoam, spray foam, astroturf, artificial and real plants, mirror, canvas, water, pump, plastic, clocks

Vulgarity, beauty and contemplation meet in the materially-driven practice of artist and educator SABINA OTT. Hanging, body-sized sculptures sport light fixtures, clocks and mirrors. Carved slabs of styrofoam, embellished with faux house plants, rest on flat, astroturf rugs/pedestals. The bizarre scene creates a compelling hybrid: part home decor, part monument. Sabina earned both her BFA and MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute. Having exhibited extensively since 1985, her most recent solo shows include to perceive the invisible in you (2012) at St. Xavier University (Chicago), Ornament (2013) at Riverside Art Center (Riverside, Illinois) and here and there pink melon joy, which is currently on view at the Chicago Cultural Center until January 4, 2015. In 2011, Sabina founded Terrain Exhibitions, which converted her suburban front yard into a home a site-specific project space for emerging as well as established artists. In 2014, she was awarded a Propeller Fund grant to produce the 2nd Terrain Biennial and to create Virtual Terrain, an web project that facilitates public arts in residential neighborhoods internationally. Sabina lives and works in Oak Park, Illinois.

OtherPeoplesPixels: I relish the texture and materiality of your work. Even videos like hope is the thing with feathers (2011) and the animated text in installations like to perceive the invisible in you (2012) appear tactile rather than digital. Could you talk generally about texture and your chosen materials—styrofoam, glitter, spray paint and paper mache, expandable spray foam, to name a few?

Sabina Ott: I have always worked with heavily textured materials, be it oil paint (sometimes directly out of the can) or encaustic or plaster or polystyrene. Highly textured surfaces demand the eye to slow down and travel into nooks and crannies. Texture offers the possibility of touch as well as the experience of haptic space. In Throwing Like a Girl and Other Essays (1990), Iris Marion Young states: “Touch immerses the subject in fluid continuity with the object, and for the touching subject the object reciprocates the touching, blurring the border between self and other.” But these are artworks and cannot be touched by the viewer, and so desire is stimulated and frustrated. But experiencing frustration brings desire (to touch) to the fore, and the experience of the border between self and other becomes a subject of the work.

believing that something is something
2014
Styrofoam, clocks, spray foam and enamel, plaster, mirror
144" x 15" x 12"

OPP: Over the last few years, you've introduced more domestic objects as material in your sculptures and installations. Clocks, lamps and light bulbs, house plants and AstroTurf seem to be the contained or tamed, home-decor versions of Time and Light and Nature, complex entities which are simultaneously constructs, loaded symbols and actual, tangible experiences. How do you think about these materials?

SO: I use those materials—easily-purchased, ready made clocks, lamps and carpets—because they are all the things you describe in your question. Simultaneously, I choose to use the Home Depot variety of those objects because, in their vulgarity, they offer a critique of good taste and “pertain to the ordinary people in a society” as stated in the definition of the word. The alterations I make to the objects unleash them, un-tame them, make them an impossible fit into home décor. So they hover between being useful and useless—a lamp or a sculpture, homey or sublime—and therefore bring a lofty contemplation of “Time and Light and Nature” down to earth, making it more experiential.

Rainbow Eye
2009
Mixed media collage
15" x 17"

OPP: What about the repeated visual motif of the eye? When and why did you first use this image? Has the way you think about its meaning shifted over time?

SO: I had a period in which I found it really difficult to make artwork. I had gone through two near-death experiences which resulted in two complicated surgeries. My desire to play with the image of eyes is simple. I wanted to go back to my very first influence—surrealism—while somehow referencing the physical extremes I had just experienced. The eye is a complex, loaded symbol. One thinks of surveillance, portraiture, the desiring gaze or the omnipotent eye. I began making collages and then animations that I then projected onto sculptures in site-specific installations.

here and there pink melon joy (paradise)
2014
4 channel video, sound, subwoofer, drums, cymbal and bench
Variable installation

OPP: You currently have a fantastic show titled here and there pink melon joy on view at the Chicago Cultural Center until January 4, 2015. I rarely get to physically experience the work I'm looking at online for this blog, so it was a treat to experience the darkened room where the four-channel video animation to perceive the invisible in you (2012) was accompanied by a soundtrack by Joe Jeffers. As I sat on the bench encircling a tower of drums, I was immersed in an environment of text and sound. I started off trying to read the text, discern its meaning and identify its source. But I quickly surrendered to a less intellectual, more sensual experience of the rhythm and motion. My mind kept trying to latch onto the words, but whatever they said was never as interesting as that feeling of surrender. It sort of embodied the experience of meditation when it is most enjoyable. I assume, as the artist, you must have a very different relationship to the text itself. Could you talk about that?

SO: The text is comprised of snippets from various poets on ecstasy, love, God and death. I could not find the perfect poem to use. None of the poems I studied quite got at what I wanted, so I embraced that fact and just took sections from many different poems. Again, experiencing thwarted desire (to read the text), similar to the desire stimulated by wanting to touch all the sculptures and paintings, is essential to surrender, and surrender is necessary to the experience of paradise. The rhythmic sound element in the piece takes over, changes over time from agitated to soothing as one transitions from wanting to make sense of the text to experiencing the vibration, sound, moving light and reflections.

OPP: I see the intellect and the senses as complimentary, but distinct modes of gathering knowledge. What are your thoughts on how these modes interact when making art?

SO: The moment that intellect and the senses meet could be called intuition. Intuition comes into play when what you know matches what you are experiencing. Intuition comes with training, study and practice.

beautiful beautiful beautiful beautiful
2011
Polystyrene, ink jet print on paper mounted on sintra, spray enamel, flashe, mirror and spider plant
49"H x 48" W x 14" D

OPP: Aside from your thriving art practice—not to mention running the exhibition space Terrain out of your Oak Park home—you've been an educator for more than 20 years, including stints as the Director of Graduate Studies at Washington University and San Francisco Art Institute and the Chair of the Department of Art and Design at Columbia College in Chicago. How have you balanced teaching and your studio practice throughout your career?

SO: I love teaching, and I have been teaching as long as I have been working professionally as an artist. But I never intended to become a professor of art. A friend asked me to teach a class of hers because she was too busy. I did and began my teaching career at Art Center College of Design in Pasadena. I have taught in many places, but at Art Center I had the best of both worlds. I only taught one day a week and spent all my other time in the studio while teaching alongside extraordinary artists. It was ideal.

My interaction with students stimulates my studio work, and I learn from them and from my colleagues. Teaching brings out the best in me and in my studio practice, and the two have always been interdependent.

In the beginning, like many young artists, I lived cheaply enough to be able to support myself on adjunct positions, something that is, admittedly, a lot more difficult now. Plus, I was selling a lot of artwork. I understood that if I wanted a full time position, I might have to move away from Los Angeles, my hometown, and I decided to pursue a role in academia. I had built my resume up so that I was competitive and took a tenured position in St. Louis. It was difficult, not because of the university. I had plenty of time to work, but I was away from a coast and felt like a cultural alien. But that was the price I had to pay to have that kind of position. I ended up working in administration for 10 years in the positions you describe. Schools are often looking for faculty who can also be administrators. I don’t recommend doing that if you don’t love spread sheets and long meetings. And I didn’t love spreadsheets and long meetings. I am very grateful to be back in the classroom.

OPP: What’s the most common mistake you see young artists making in how they approach art-making while in school? Can you offer any advice about how to get the most out of art school?

SO: Students often think that they have to make a "master work" in school, but it's most productive to develop one's capacity to embrace and learn from failure. Be a proactive student. Seek extra advice from your faculty, organize events with your fellow students, do extra research and reach out to faculty and students from other disciplines. I recently heard someone say this: it's easy to be a young artist, but the trick is becoming an old artist. I wish that for all my students. . . become an old artist!

To see more of Sabina's work, please visit sabinaott.com.

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. Recent exhibitions include solo shows I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago, as well as Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, at Design Cloud in Chicago (2014). Most recently, Stacia created When Things Fall Apart, a durational, collage installation in the Annex Gallery at Lillstreet Art Center. Closing reception guests were invited to help break down the piece by pulling pins out of the wall.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Dickson Bou

Untitled
2013
Foamcore, contact paper, artificial wood veneer, wood

Illusions of material, weight and balance are precariously at play in DICKSON BOU's angular, faceted sculptures, which  obliquely reference architecture, airplane wreckage and paper airplanes. Working intuitively, he first familiarizes himself with the inherent qualities of his chosen materials—white foam core, wood grain contact paper and textured floor underlay, to name a few— then allows the outcome of each conscious decision in his process to lead to the next. Dickson earned his BFA at the University of Western Ontario in 2009) and his MFA at the University of Victoria, British Columbia in 2011. He has exhibited in The Windsor Biennial (2011) at the Art Gallery of Windsor, Firstness (2012) at the defunct Tumble Contemporary Art in Winnipeg, Manitoba and Bracket(ed) (2013), a two person show also featuring the work of Thomas Chisholm. Dickson recently opened N+1 Cycle, a vintage bicycle shop, with Jason Hallows in London, Ontario, where he lives and works.

OtherPeoplesPixels: What role does materiality play in your work? What are your favorite materials? Have you ever worked with a once-loved material that you ended up hating after creating art with it?


Dickson Bou: I've always described my work as “materially driven.” Every piece starts with a material that I've been obsessing over in the studio. I experiment with it, figure out what I can and can't do with the material and go from there. My favorite materials are the types that allows me to make work that seems more substantial than it actually is. The more recent white, angular sculptures are good examples. They are foam core made to look like welded steel. It was important for that work to be able to shift back and forth between substantial and fragile. I would never hate a material I once loved, but I usually exhaust materials like you would exhaust a song or record by playing it one too many times.

Fall Inside a Winter
2010
Detail

OPP: I know what you mean about overplay. But sometimes, after enough time has passed and the context has shifted, I rediscover a song that I had grown tired of in the past. It sounds both familiar and refreshed. Has that ever happened with a favorite material?

DB: I haven't used this material in a while, but I do really like the red and white floor underlay, and I would like to use it again in the future. It's very other worldly, strange and full of possibilities.

OPP: In The Delicious One, Fall Inside a Winter and Poppy, and the Natural Satellite series, all from 2010, surface treatment and texture take center stage and overall design assumes a supporting role, although they are definitely working together. Recent works made of white foam core and woodgrain contact paper, yield much quieter surfaces, allowing angles, line and balance to be the dominant features. Was this a conscious shift?



DB: It was a conscious swift. In 2010 I wanted my work to be limitless. At the time, the only way I knew how to go about that was to keep adding and adding, layering and layering, whether it be another type of material or another idea. This was how I approached art making until I made the piece The Twins. After that piece, I felt I had exhausted that way of working and the materials I had been using. I had gotten too comfortable and needed a change. I thought the best way to this was to totally go the opposite direction and turn the volume down.

Wood & White
2011
Installation shot
Foam core, wood, artificial wood veneer, silicone, nylon string

OPP: The hard angles, lines and sense of balance in your free-standing sculptures makes me think a lot about architecture, design and planning. But I read in a review/blog post that your process is more intuitive than I expected. Tell us a little about your working process.

DB: There's not much planing before the making. There's a bit, but really the second step is determined by the first and third is determine by the outcome of the first and second. I do have a lot of interest in architecture and design but not really in how things are planned and laid out. I think if I was to get hung up on that side of things, the work would be very different. I wouldn't enjoy the process as much. There is something really valuable and organic about paying attention to the outcome of each step in your process and using it to steer the outcome of the finished piece.

It's funny you ask about planning and architecture. I'm currently working on an art project in collaboration with my friend Jamil Afana, who is an architect. When we first started talking about working together, I explained to him how I don't draw things out, that there's no drawn plan to go by. It kinda blew his mind to work in this way, and I asked him if he was sure he wanted to do this. He replied with, “I think it's going to be a challenge, but also very fun.” I thought that was pretty funny. We're still experimenting in the studio with forms and materials, but we’ll be building a structure together. It's a slow process. Both of us have busy schedules. Jamil is a PhD candidate in Hispanic Studies at Western University, and I work a day job and run a vintage bicycle shop. It's always a challenge to work with another person; it takes more time, patience and lots of communication.

Parkhead
2008

OPP: Early works Parkhead (2008) and From Faraway (2009), a series of small-scale sculptures, are reminiscent of architectural models for city planning. They are like plans for public parks that couldn't exist in reality: imagined, self-contained environments holding self-contained, ambiguous narratives. There appears to be a shift away from narrative and towards material and spatial exploration around 2010. Is this true? Do you imagine a narrative in any more recent works?


DB: There was a swift away from small-scale models but not away from narratives. I noticed that people really latched onto the models, maybe more so to narratives presented by the models. I was more interested in the shift between scales than the actual narratives the scale models presented. With Parkhead, the safety pin is the one thing that occupied both scales. If you look at the piece in 1:1 scale, it's a head with a safety pin on top of it. But in 1:148 scale (or N scale in the model train world), it's a Claes Oldenburg sculpture in a park. I was interested in how Parkhead can bring you in and out of worlds (or scales) depending on your perception. The models became too literal and too easy for people to get hung up on. They became distracting, and I wanted to explore new territory.

With Wood & White, my 2011 MFA Thesis show, I wanted the viewer to experience the narrative more directly. I wanted viewers to feel like they were walking through a plane crash or navigating around icebergs or sinking ships. Each piece in Wood & White keeps the narrative moving. I'm more interested in putting viewers inside the story than giving them one to look at.

Cherry Blossom Shipwreck
2013
Foamcore, wood, acrylic silicone

OPP: Could you talk about Cherry Blossom Shipwreck (2013), in which you hung four sculptures in the atrium at the University Community Center (UCC) on University of Western Ontario's campus? The pieces could be viewed from all three floors of the UCC. Many of the pieces resemble the work from Wood & White. The forms are very similar, but the installation completely alters their nature. On the ground, the sculptures remind me of airplane wreckage. In the air, they evoke paper airplanes and origami cranes.

DB: I made Wood & White knowing that viewers would walk around each piece and work their way through the exhibit. It's different with Cherry Blossom Shipwreck; you can't go through and around each piece, but you can view them from under and above. I related this way of viewing to outer space. Since Wood & White resembled airplane wreckage so much, I decided to look into spaceship wreckage. One of the pieces is inspired by the nose of the Millennium Falcon. At that time, I had also just moved back to London, Ontario from Victoria, British Columbia and was thinking about the cherry blossoms there and how pretty it was when the flowers floated through the wind.

OPP: What are you working on right now?

DB: I'm kind of on hiatus right now. I recently opened up a vintage bicycle shop with my friend Jason Hallows called N+1 Cycle here in London, Ontario. The summer was busy—which is great—but I'm looking forward to the down time over the winter to focus on my artwork. I've been playing around with metal, which I use to think it was too heavy and cold. But I met Dan Bernyk in my MFA program at the University of Victoria. I was blown away by how he was able to bring out metal’s light and warm side. I also started fixing old steel bicycles and really got into custom Randonneur bicycles hand-built by the French in the 1940s-70s.Their craftsmanship and innovation is very inspiring. Beauty and form through function have been on my mind a lot lately, so we'll see if it will work it's way into my future projects.

To see more of Dickson's work, please visit dicksonbou.com.

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. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014. Beginning on November 7, 2014, Stacia will improvise When Things Fall Apart, an ongoing, collage installation in the Lillstreet Annex Gallery. Closing reception guests will be invited to help break down the piece by pulling pins out of the wall on December 5, 2014.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Anne Lemanski

Oracle
2014
Copper rod, ink on paper, leather, epoxy.
11 1/2 x 26 x 16 inches

ANNE LEMANSKI's sculptures—stretched "skins" sewn onto welded, copper-rod skeletons—alternatively evoke such practices as taxidermy, trophy hunting and skinning for fashion. Her menagerie of animals includes snakes whose skin appears to be made of butterfly wings, a fox "tattooed" in constellations, a coyote with Mexican Serape "fur" and a slew of birds decked out in various vintage papers. The skins entice visually; some beg to be touched. This honesty about sense pleasure hints at the complicated, problematic nature of the human habit of treating animals as objects. Anne has exhibited widely, including group shows at the Kohler Center for the Arts (2012), The Portland Museum of Art (2011) and the North Carolina Museum of Art (2013), where her work is included in the permanent collection. She has had solo exhibitions at the Imperial Centre for the Arts (2010) in Rocky Mount, Blue Spiral 1 (2011) in Asheville and the Penland Gallery at Penland School of Crafts (2014).  In the winter of 2015, she will be the Windgate Artist-in-Residence at the McColl Center for Art + Innovation in Charlotte, North Carolina. Her work is included in the forthcoming book The Contemporary Art of Nature: Mammals and will be featured in the Danish magazine Textiel Plus in December, 2014. Anne lives in Spruce Pine, North Carolina, where she is building a studio constructed from recycled shipping containers.

OtherPeoplesPixels: What role does materiality play in your practice?

Anne Lemanski: Working the way I do allows me to take any material I want and turn it into a sculptural piece. I am a long time lover and collector of vintage paper ephemera. I love the look of old graphics and colors. For a number of my early pieces, I utilized original, vintage paper as the skin. In more recent work, I find myself using more contemporary materials like plastic and fabrics because they speak to the content of the pieces. The little songbirds are the exception; they are vehicles for pure eye-candy, vintage paper. I become obsessed with materials. Whether I just happen to come across material and stash it for future use or if I’m looking for a something specific, I love the hunt of tracking it down. The best example of the cross section of materials I use is my piece titled A Century of Hair, 1900-1990. I used silk, acetate, rawhide, vintage linoleum, etc. Solving the challenges that present themselves when I’m manipulating an unusual material is where all the fun is.

A Century of Hair, 1900-1990
Mixed media on wood stands
Variable dimensions

OPP: Tell us about some of your stashed material that you haven’t found a use for yet.

AL: I seem to have a lot of vintage coloring books and children’s activity books— like “dot to dot"— good bit of paper-doll clothes, stamp collections, these little trading cards that used to come in packs of cigarettes and tea, tons of old maps, and drawers full of vintage photographs. The paper targets I used on a recent piece Camoufleur  had been sitting in my flat file for at least 15 years. I’m glad I didn’t use those on anything else, they were meant for that barn owl.

OPP: Any regular hunting grounds for your materials?

AL: I went to Paris last year and came back with a nice haul of paper goodies. I wish I could go there every year just to buy vintage paper. I found a few stores, and vendors at flea markets that were overwhelming. . . and expensive! And of course they only took cash, so that put a real damper on my spending spree! Ebay has become my favorite hunting ground. It is truly amazing what you can find there. I do still enjoy random junk shops, estate sales and auctions, but because I live in a rural area, those shops and sales are limited. I also like to get a good deal on stuff, it makes it that much better! I’m always looking. Friends keep an eye out for me, too.

Off Duty
2006
Copper rod, embroidery on pantyhose, thread
Life size

OPP: Your process has two distinct parts: building of the copper rod skeletons and creating the skins. Are these processes more alike than we think? Do you always already know what the skin is going to be when you begin to build the skeleton?

AL: The two processes go hand in hand. The building of the copper rod framework dictates how the finished piece will look. I gather images of the animal or object I want to make and visually break it down into line and pattern. Once the skeleton is complete, I then make patterns from the form that will be transferred directly to my final material. I do not always know what material the skin will be, but it certainly helps. Knowing the character of the final skin will dictate how I build the skeleton. Every material responds differently to the contours of the framework; paper differs greatly from plastic, leather or wood veneer. The work I enjoy most is deciding what the skin will be and putting it together. That’s when things really start to take shape, and there is always a surprise in the way the material transforms once it is sewn onto the skeleton.

Monkey Goes to Bollywood
2008
Copper rod, Bollywood lobby cards, artificial sinew
19 x 18.5 x 24 inches

OPP: Monkey Goes to Bollywood (2008) stands out as drastically different from the other animals. Tell us about the choice to use images of human beings on the monkey.

AL: Monkey Goes to Bollywood is the result of an article I read about a man in New Delhi, India, who was sitting on his terrace when four monkeys appeared. The man brandished a stick to fend off the monkeys, lost his balance and fell off the terrace to his death. The monkey represents the Hindu god Hanuman, and Hindu tradition calls for feeding the monkeys on Tuesdays and Saturdays. The feeding of and encroachment on the monkey’s wild habitat, has created an overwhelming and aggressive population of monkeys in New Delhi. This is a case that perfectly illustrates the domino effect that occurs when humans exploit animals to satisfy their needs. The exploitation of an animal species usually results in a decrease of population for that species. . . but the opposite is happening in Delhi.

The skin on the monkey is made up of Bollywood—the Hindi film industry in India—lobby cards that I purchased on Ebay from someone in New Delhi (I remember they came rolled up in a white piece of fabric, that was hand sewn shut on each end with red thread). Lobby cards are promotional materials for films, that are displayed in movie theater lobbies. I have seen about a dozen Bollywood films. They are crazy and colorful! I don’t always have a clear-cut reason for using what I do for the skin. I go with my instinct, which is smarter than my actual being. The imagery I used for the monkey just seemed like the perfect fit.

Responsible Spiller
2010
Copper rod, vinyl, artificial sinew.
16 x 23 x 12 inches

OPP: What do you most hope viewers will feel when looking at your menagerie of creatures? Are you disappointed if viewers simply marvel at your technique and humor and don’t walk away thinking about the impact of humans on these species?

AL: I love it when people get the humor! They often don’t. I’m not making work to beat people over the heads with my ideas and opinions, which are certainly present. But I try to keep the work subtle and layered. Along with the content, I still believe in making a beautifully crafted, sculptural object. I’m drawn to formal aesthetics of line, color and pattern. It is usually my construction technique that initially draws people in. Then they take a longer look. It has taken me years to hone my construction skills, so I’m glad when someone appreciates it. Everyone brings their own emotions and politics to a piece, and a connection can happen at many different levels.

Queen Alexandra’s Flight
2014
Digital prints adhered to wood backing, aluminum discs.
150 square feet (as installed in the Penland Gallery)

OPP: Tell us about your recent installation Queen Alexandra’s Flight at Penland Gallery? What made you shift from discreet sculptures to this narrative interaction of creatures?

AL: Queen Alexandra’s Flightdepicts a battlefield, which is the stage for the age-old story of survival. Queen Alexandra’s Birdwing is the largest butterfly in the world, and it is endangered. I created an army of butterflies and moths to aid her in flight from the attack of insect-eating birds. All of the imagery is digitally scanned and printed, and adhered to a wood backing. Everything was cut out by hand. There are 600 individual pieces in this installation. I have a desire to work on a large scale, and my usual building technique of copper rod skeleton and hand stitched skin prevents me from doing that because of the time-consuming labor. I can’t work fast enough to keep up with the pace of my ideas. So when I’m presented with an opportunity to do something large scale, it gives me the chance to work with different materials and techniques. This particular installation came at a time when I needed a mental break from the usual. Queen Alexandra’s Flight gave me new insight into my work; it will definitely lead to other pieces similar in nature.

To see more of Anne's work, please visit annelemanski.com.

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. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia recently created a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists runs until October 12, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Tamara Kostianovsky

Bound
2008
Clothing belonging to the artist, meat hooks, chains
61 x 39 x 15 inches
Photo Credit: Sol Aramendi

Jerusalem-born, Argentinian-raised TAMARA KOSTIANOVSKY "cannibalizes" her own clothing for raw materials, using the body as a site of connection between the violence perpetrated against humans and against animals. Drawing on her history as a painter, she expertly layers fabric to simulate flesh, ligaments and bone in soft sculptures of butchered meat and three-dimensional recreations of masterworks containing slaughtered animal carcasses. Tamara earned her BFA from the Escuela Nacional de Bellas Artes “Prilidiano Pueyrredón” in Buenos Aires, Argentina (1998) and her MFA from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia (2003). She has been the recipient of numerous grants, including a Pollock Krasner Foundation Award (2012), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (2010) and a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship (2009). Apocryphal Times, a group show organized by Tamara and Thorsten Albertz, for Friedman Benda Gallery (New York) opens October 30, 2014. In two upcoming solo shows, The Still Lives will be exhibited at the Nevada Museum of Fine Art in Reno (January - July 2015) and then at El Museo del Barrio (January 2016) in New York City, where Tamara lives and works.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Most of your work employs both simulated and real butchered meat. But this work doesn't appear to be about vegetarianism or animal rights. They aren't sculptures of whole, slaughtered animal carcasses; they are butchered and ready for consumption. Could you talk generally about your interest and associations with the image of the slabs of meat?

Tamara Kostianovsky: Most of my work came about as a result of my experience working at a surgeon’s office, where veins exploded into waterfalls, cut ligaments set free the muscles they once contained, and chunks of fat poured over tissues of various colors and textures. An ambivalent fascination with these encounters put the torn body at the center of my work, over time allowing me to reflect on history, politics and the needs of the body.

These works are about violence; they express my frustration with senseless destruction, which of course applies to animals, but more so to humans. The recent history of South America and the violence associated with the military dictatorships of the 1970s was in my mind when I started working on the series of butchered cows.

War Map 1810
2012
C-Print mounted on Sintra
52.5 x 36 inches

OPP: The photographic War Maps (2012) and the sculptural maps made from cured meat both explore historical conflicts over land boundaries. Why are the butchered bodies of animals the perfect medium to explore this theme?

TK: I was inspired to print maps onto fresh slabs of meat as a result of my interest in the depiction of the goddess Pachamama (usually translated as “Mother Earth”) that was developed by the South American people of the Andes during the 17th Century. In response to the enforcement of Christianity and its imagery, the native Americans rendered their ancient deity as the Virgin Mary with the body of a mountain: half-human, half-land. Playing on this proposition, I too decided to give a body to the land, printing maps onto fresh slabs of meat that later turned into entire meat continents that I cured in my studio. The series includes maps and pseudo-architectural models that speculate about possible futures for our lives.

OPP: The pieces in Actus Reus are amazing recreations of butchered meat that expertly avoid looking like cute stuffed animals, despite their soft, textile materials. How did you accomplish this? Did you work from images or from "life?"



TK: I work in an artisanal way. . . totally low-tech. Pretty much everything in my work is hand-made. I use discarded materials, primarily my own clothing. I often use photography as source material, but I actually work in a very traditional sculptural way: building forms, working and reworking the images until I am satisfied with their final form.

I usually spend a few of months on each piece. The first phase involves translating the image that inspired the piece into a three-dimensional form so that it feels simultaneously accurate and sculpturally interesting. Then I focus on the detail, paying attention to specific areas of the sculpture to create a sense of realism—which is mostly fictional. I put a lot of effort into exaggerating areas of each piece to make them look bloody, torn and freshly severed. Interestingly, it is the details that come from my imagination that look most realistic.

Still Life I (detail)
2014
40 x 20 x 23 inches

OPP: Before you began using your own wardrobe for material to make art, what were your sculptures like?



TK: I actually did very little sculpture before the introduction of clothing in my work. I was trained as a painter. My paintings were all about color, usually referencing something figurative like landscapes or still lifes. Color was key to me at the time, and I didn’t shy away from strong contrast and high saturation. Those experiences with color live on my current work. I often find myself fighting with painters’ problems such as balance, saturation and hue. I very much enjoy layering tones, especially in the  flesh, which I create by juxtaposing fabrics of diverse transparency levels.

OPP: That painting history makes a lot of sense now, considering The Still Lives, which reference several masterworks by Durer, Goya, Bruñuel, Aertsen and Carracci. Could you talk about this shift towards such well-known art historical references in your work?

TK: De Kooning famously said “Flesh was the reason oil paint was invented.” There are many examples throughout the history of Painting that point to the strong desire of artists to capture the richness of the flesh. The series exists in between realism and illusion. Often based on the experiments of Master Painters, the works play on the idea of recreating two-dimensional images in three-dimensions, which is the opposite of what painters have been doing for centuries.

After Goya (detail)
2013
Articles of clothing belonging to the artist, fabric, wood
101 x 104.4 x 24 inches

OPP: You often cite your predominant material as "clothing belonging to the artist" and you've used the term "cannibalize" to describe how you mine your own wardrobe for material. The term cannibalize really foregrounds the violence you are interested in, but it's such a different way of saying reuse or recycle, which foregrounds a mode of living which is the opposite of violent. Thoughts on this?



TK: Violence is the central theme of this body of work. There is something “sacrificial” about the appropriation of my own clothes. I use clothing to bridge the gap between human and animal violence. I strive to transform fabric into flayed flesh, gristle and bone. The manipulation of this material allows for me to unveil the architecture of violence that starts in the foods we eat and takes over our continents, our history, ourselves.

To see more of Tamara's work, please visit tamarakostianovsky.com.

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. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia recently created a site-responsive, collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists runs until October 12, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Dyan Green

Hook
2012
Bailing Hook, muslin and ball pins
6" x 8" x 5"

DYAN GREEN's sculptures are augmented found objects from the early 20th century. They include rusted farming tools—a bailing hook, a muzzle, a harness—and domestic tools—an antique sewing machine, a milk basket and ice hooks. Her signature white, ball-headed pins simultaneously evoke the human decorative impulse and the organic growth of mold, dust and cobwebs that signal the passage of time. Dyan holds a BFA from Kansas State University, a MFA from Southern Illinois University Carbondale and a M.Ed. from Texas State University.  In 2013, she had two solo exhibitions in San Antonio, Texas: Colonies at the Clamp Light Gallery and Rust and White at Equinox Gallery. Dyan teaches 3D Arts and Art History at Saint Mary's Hall in San Antonio, Texas, where she lives.

OtherPeoplesPixels: You have a BFA in Ceramics, but your current work involves modifying found objects with muslin and ball-headed pins. Does your background in Ceramics influence this work or is this a break from the past?

Dyan Green: The aesthetic vernacular of ceramics and the craft world in general are still very much a part of my work. The internal dialogue that I turn to when creating is often the voice of a ceramicist. Ultimately, I am an object maker. My work is still about the relationship between our hands and the tactile nature of material.  

Early in graduate school at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, I realized I needed to explore materials other than clay. I was so entrenched in the ceramics world that it felt like a betrayal at first. But, in leaving ceramics, I realized something really important about being an artist: you have to follow the work and not force it to follow you. I followed my work through all kinds of craziness (laugh), but really all that experimentation was important to my creative growth.

Clay will always be my home base. When I get lost, when I’m seeking direction, I work with clay for a while. These ceramic pieces rarely turn into show pieces, but they always guide me to something. Before I did my most recent body of work, I made a few thousand clay beads. Just rolling clay balls and poking a hole through them. I liked to make them and run my hand through piles of them. Then I started playing with ball pins.

Hive
2012
Ceramics

OPP:
What was the first work you made with the white, ball-headed pin as a staple material?

DG: I did a series of works on pillowed canvases that used ball pins and loads of other smaller items. Most of the works in that series were explosive in color, but I did a couple just in white, including Drift (2011). I fell in love with the white ones. I liked the quietness of them. So I committed to just working with white pins for a while.

OPP: I want to hear more about the “craziness” you mentioned. Can you give me an example?

DG: Well, I did a lot of experiential art in graduate school. I had a show that took place in a swamp and involved a man in a tiger suit and a canoe—that was pretty crazy! I did installations with swings and also invited people to apply make-up to reproductions of Botticelli’s Venus. These kinds of works were intermingled with more labor-intensive works including a piece where I glued several thousands of sheets of paper together and another where I chewed scores of gumdrops and spit them out into medicine bottles. Surprisingly, more people comment that the work I do now is "crazy. They imagine that the physical act of pushing pins for hours must be so tedious and maddening. However, I find a kind of peace in the process of doing it.

Drill
2013
Found object, muslin and ball pins

OPP: Could you speak generally about your interest in artifacts? Are you a collector beyond your art practice? If so, what else do you collect?

DG: Well, I grew up around artifacts. As an only child, I spent my summers at my grandparents’ farm in Kansas. It’s been in the family for many generations. I would go exploring in the barns, the old carriage house, the woods and the creek beds. My grandmother made me wear a whistle in case I fell and broke something while gallivanting around on my own.

The farm was like an archeological site in some ways. I still recall seeing that place with a child’s eyes. I pretended the junk-packed barns were museums of ancient treasures. I saw the giant pieces of antique farming equipment protruding from the creek bed as dinosaur bones. 

I never was much of a collector of things, more of a collector of experiences. It is my grandmother who is the collector and really all of the items in my work are hers. She thoroughly inspected my excavations before giving me permission to use them in my art. When I first picked them out, I wasn’t sure how I’d use them, I just knew I liked them for all of the history they held and for their disintegrating beauty. 


Domestic
2012
Antique Sewing Machine, muslin and ball pins

OPP: The found objects you work with are clearly of a bygone era. But these objects aren't just old. They represent various forms of labor that no longer exist in the same form: the farmer, the milkman, the housewife who sews all textiles for the family, the ice delivery man. How does your meticulous, artistic labor relate to these occupations that have all been rendered unnecessary by electricity and mechanization?


DG: There is something innately somber in the work. For me, each piece is not just an old object. It is something a family member of mine used. So, there is a personal history there, as well as a collective one. For example, the horse muzzle in Muzzle was made from wire by my great, great grandfather. In other objects I used, I could feel where the handles were worn from work. I could see where the buckles have pierced through the leather a thousand times. I am drawn to this evidence of labor and the work of hands. 

My process with the pins is derived from women’s handicraft, but I wanted to invent my own handicraft. I was looking for some way of making that would be all my own.The pins were a natural solution. They are not only tools of labor but a measurement of the labor itself. 

It became clear as I was making, that these weren’t simply sculptures. They are collaborations with the past. Each piece is an intimate dialogue spoken through the language of objects. My work is quite literally built on the work of others. I labor on their labor. I exist because they existed. We are, because they were.

Milk Basket
2012
Antique milk basket, muslin and ball pins
12" x 16" x 9"

OPP: When you talk about rolling all those beads, I think of rosaries and meditation. One thing that gets overlooked about handicraft in general—because the final product is often a decorative object—is the ritual of it. I see handicraft as a practice that engages aesthetics and labor, but is ultimately spiritual in nature. Thoughts?

DG: I always liked Harold Rosenberg’s essay “The American Action Painters.” He described a canvas as an “arena in which to act.” I ask myself these questions a lot: What is my act? What is its purpose? Clearly what has emerged from my action is a sort of ritual. I think this idea of ritual through repetition has been a mainstay in my work for a long time now. Focusing all my energy into the placement of a pin somehow relieves the chaos of everything else. Sometimes my pieces are work. Sometimes they are meditations. Sometimes they are like voodoo dolls absorbing negativity. It’s also important to mention that I think quite a bit about “flow” when working. I want my pieces to have a fluid, oozing quality which does tie into a spiritual metaphor for me. This underlying spiritual essence is also the main reason I prefer to stick to white. I love color, but it seems I keep coming back to white for its simplistic power.

To view more of Dyan's work, please visit dyangreen.com.

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. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia recently created a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists runs until October 12, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, opens on July 25, 2014 at Design Cloud in Chicago.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Noelle Allen

Saturn's Shepherd (Green) (detail)
2013
Resin, clay, plaster, wax, acrylic
30" around

Surface texture and color are major players in NOELLE ALLEN's cast sculptures, comprised of wax, resin, plaster, ceramics and foraged organic material. She expertly achieves a variety of familiar, terrestrial surfaces—various types of rock, moss, coral, wood and dirt—while her soft color palette evokes the otherworldly. Repeated use of the orb as a form in both drawings and sculptures reminds us of the natural connection between the earth and the cosmos. Noelle attended Wesleyan University and Smith College for undergrad and received her MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2004. She teaches full-time at Domincan University in River Forest, Illinois and was a 2012-2013 HATCH Projects resident at the  Chicago Artists’ Coalition. With four upcoming solo exhibitions, the end of 2014 will be tremendously busy for Noelle. Thistle, an outdoor installation at Terrain South (Oak Park, Illinois) opens tomorrow (July 4th) and runs until August 1. Trellis at Furman University in Greenville, South Carolina and Sender Channel Receiver Feedback at the Marquette Cultural Center on the Upper Peninsula of Michigan both run from August to October 2014. A currently-untitled show at Comfort Station in Chicago opens in November 2014. Noelle lives in Oak Park, Illinois.

OtherPeoplesPixels: What's a stronger influence for you: the earth or the cosmos?

Noelle Allen: In 2012, my family and I moved into a bungalow in Oak Park with an overgrown garden that spills into the parkways. Before relocating, we lived in Chicago for 10 years, and my work drew inspiration from fossils, cellular and skeletal structures I studied in books and at the Field Museum. However, once we had our own place, I had an opportunity to use materials that were close at hand, materials that I live with. I was hoping to better integrate my life with my practice.

Now, my work incorporates all of the natural fauna and organic materials found in my own garden, both directly and indirectly. I like to garden with my sons. We gather roots, branches, leaves, weeds, tomatoes, flowers, abandoned birds nests and materials my boys scrounge up from the dirt or compost.

Although I draw immediate inspiration from the earth and my surroundings, the work also invokes celestial forms and structures. The visual patterns and recurring shapes and symmetries found in organic materials, like fractals and tessellations, also reflect larger structures in the universe. Hopefully, my work can invoke that bridge between the terrestrial and the celestial.

My childhood has also played a prominent role in my work. I grew up surrounded by farmland in the Sacramento Valley. In the fall, you could smell the rice fields burning. In the summer, there were lemons, plums, peaches and strawberries. My mother is also an artist, and she always had a drawing studio in our house. My earliest memory of her work is of very meticulous graphite rendering of a ball of boobs!

Astral Layer (Evanston)
2014
Resin, wax, concrete, and ceramic
9' x 26'

OPP: I'd like to see that piece! Could you talk about the use of organic materials such as mushrooms, twigs, branches, thorns and driftwood, both in the final product and in the process of creating your work?

NA: I use a variety of materials and methods to directly and indirectly translate organic material into my work. An artist friend, John Harmon, has also given me many found objects: dragon’s claw seedpods, an entire half of a bovine skeleton and some roots and plant matter. I photograph and even photogram my materials, but never for a final product. Instead, the photographs become an alternative means of viewing or translating my sources.

For the larger installation and sculpture work, many of my methods have roots in traditional sculpture and ceramic techniques. However, I have developed some of my own mold-making techniques that I use with materials like sand, graphite, seaweed and latex. The positives are pulled in porcelain, concrete, wax, resin and plaster. Recently, I have begun flooding my molds with water, which ends up imprinting the surfaces of my materials with details that are both familiar and unknowable. For example, in the recent installation of Astral Layer at the Evanston Art Center, the sheets of resin, which I covered with water during the cure stage, were cast directly onto the floor of my studio, where they picked up years of clay, paint, dirt and plaster.

Iridophore (Green)
2013
Resin and felt
30" around

OPP: My personal favorite pieces are the Iridophores, a series of colorful, globe-like sculptures made from resin and felt. Can you explain the title of the series, the process of creating these sculptures and why you choose to exhibit them sitting directly on the floor?

NA: The title refers to a type of iridescent cell found in some sea creatures and amphibians that allows the squid, for example, to reflect light and alter the color and contrast of the animal. Scientists call it “electric skin.” The mold is created from a tangle of roots and branches. This organic material, along with the introduction of water into the mother mold, a plaster shell, create the negative spaces in the resin and felt.The Iridophores are made with a marine grade resin and are intended to be both indoor and outdoor pieces. For the Osmia exhibit at Riverside Art Center, I placed four of them in the sculpture garden and over the course of the show, the colors shifted from the sun. 

I am reluctant to use a pedestal, which would add another sculptural element to the installation. I would rather have the work appear organically on the floor.

Sender Channel Receiver Feedback (Yellow and Cerulean)
2013
Resin, felt and concrete

OPP: Thistle opens tomorrow (July 4, 2014) at Terrain, an outdoor exhibition space in a residential neighborhood in Oak Park, Illinois. Will you give us a preview of what you are planning? What's exciting and what's challenging about creating work for this environment?

NA: Sabina Ott, an amazing artist and the curator behind Terrain, asked me to do an installation in the Terrain South site, which is basically an empty, grassy lot between two residential homes that sits directly across from a grade school. It was important to me to carefully develop an outdoor, durable piece that children could run through but not climb on or get hurt by, if anything were to fall over. I also had to consider visual impact from the street. Since I do so much mold-making, I decided to create an installation of crazy multiples.

With the assistance of ceramicist Kate Pszotka, I am turning rebar, an industrial building material found in foundations, into an eggshell structure in porcelain. There will be a field of over 100 six-foot-tall, curved rebar “weeds,” bridging the gap between an overgrown lot and the possibility of construction.

In the process, the rust from the rebar has transferred onto the porcelain, so we have played with the color and glazes in response to both that transition and the summertime sun and grass. The color will catch the sun to create a horizon line at the top, where the porcelain shifts into clear resin.

Osmia
2014
Resin, wax, concrete, and ceramic
Each 56" x 17" x 17"
Installation view, Design Cloud (Chicago)

OPP: You made a global shift in your color palate around 2013. Before that, your work was almost exclusively on the grayscale. What led to this change?

NA: Yes, this is true. It mostly boils down to fun. I wanted to have more fun with my work. I was craving some levity and lightness in the studio. Perhaps also happiness? I have been a much happier—albeit more stressed—person since my children were born in 2009 and 2011.

OPP: Speaking of stress, you teach full-time at Dominican University, you have two children, and you have four upcoming solo exhibitions, not to mention several group shows. You’ve mentioned that your boys help you gather materials for your work. How else do you balance your roles of artist, teacher and mother? Can you offer some practical advice for first-time mothers who are trying to maintain their art practices?

NA: When my second son Zeke was born pretty quickly after Henry's arrival, I realized I needed more help. In order to manage, I had to build and maintain a solid support structure to handle all the different parts of my life. My husband Tim is incredibly supportive of my studio time and as my children get older, they can be more involved. Henry, who is very opinionated about my work, likes to come to my studio. He helps me unload kilns and operate the slab roller. I have also had wonderful part time studio help—hi, Tess and Andrew!—through a grant program at Dominican University. Do not try to do it all alone!

Also, some quality acupuncture goes a long way.

To see more of Noelle's work, please visit noelleallen.com.

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 her cross-stitch embroideries, remix video and collage 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. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia is currently looking forward to creating a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists opens on July 11, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Jason Judd

True North
2013
Digital print (Installation view)
16" x 20"
Photograph always depicting the flight of geese as flying north in the gallery

Subtlety is a strategy in JASON JUDD's photographs, videos and sculptural arrangements. Using the contemplative space of the white cube as a context, his quiet gestures revolve around the "boring, infuriating, troublesome" experience of a natural, human longing to stop life from moving, to hold on to this moment, even as it passes away. In 2013, Jason had three solo exhibitions: Adjustments: One Through Five at Open Gallery (Nasvhille), Essays in Navigation, Baltimore at Lease Agreement (Baltimore) and Example: Compass Deviations at Gallery 215 (DeKalb, Illinois). Jason is a Co-Director of the Chicago-based art and contemporary practices website Make-Space.net and Art Editor for BITE Magazine. Along with artist Iga Puchalska, he has recently launched Public Practice, an new initiative aimed at expanding engaging art programming in Rockford, Illinois, where Jason lives and works.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Could talk about framing nature inside the gallery in works like Shooting Star, Horizon Series and True North? Are these works about the sublime?

Jason Judd: I think my work is more about the finite world than the sublime. I have read a lot on the sublime and existentialism, only to find myself knowing nothing more about it. We have many experiences in our lifetime: the sublime is probably not one of them. I am looking at the limitations of our everyday. They are boring, infuriating, troublesome and can provide a different kind of poetics than speculation of the grand.

A Roland Barthes quote in Camera Lucida has always resonated with me: “I was like that friend who turned to Photography only because it allowed him to photograph his son.” I find myself, as an artist, in the role of that friend—sharing a desperation and urgency to capture something—the metaphor of the son is, at the same time, growing closer and farther away from us. I am not skilled enough in any particular medium to make something that is “beautiful”—by beautiful, I mean capturing the essence of the subject through heightened skill of a medium—nor am I interested in being skilled. Like the friend, my skill is born only out of necessity.

The gallery is one of the few places where technical skill is not a requisite factor for judgment of quality. And yes, quality is a strange word to use while describing a sense of de-skilling of an object. But the conventions of the gallery offer a contemplative space where quality is malleable and the viewer is asked to participate. It is a place where I can say, I have personally spent some time with these images or objects, and these are the conclusions I have come to.

Genesis (a haunting)
2012
Looping video

OPP: You've used yourself and your family members as a subjects in several video works like Genesis (a haunting) (2012), Acts of Consciousness and Other Longings (2011) and Into the Son (2012), all of which emphasize the familial. More recent works involving sculpture, installation and photography center around experiences of nature in the gallery. What led to the shift in focus and means? How are these works more connected than might be assumed upon first glance?



JJ: Both bodies of work are based on the tension between longing and the tangible. In other words, what does longing look like? The videos involving me and my family were becoming very theatrical. I decided I did not want to personify my metaphor. I wanted the medium to be just as important in the metaphor as the subject and the subject not to be overtly autobiographical. If there were to be any theatrics in the new body of work, I wanted it to be made in the gallery. 

In Horizon Series, for example, I confront the space where the mountains meet the sky as metaphor for longing. I force the horizon line to be tangible by cutting it out of the large photograph. The image and medium become one entity. The image dictates the shape of the thin cuts, and the cut line reveals the tangibility of an otherwise romanticized and unattainable visual cue. With these cut pieces, I make physical and abstract decisions about how to deal with them as objects. When they are installed around the gallery, the scale is initially obscured. At first, the viewer experiences the line forming the cube at a one-to-one scale. Upon closer investigation, the immensity of what the thin line represents is revealed. The act of forming a cube with the lines is a physical manifestation of the idea of a three-dimensional illusion. The horizon line is actually something we can experience and understand only in the abstract, just as we experience a drawn cube.

Horizon Line (detail)
2012
Cut digital print of a landscape that is cut where the mountains meet the sky and installed around the gallery wall
Variable dimensions

OPP: You have your hands in a lot of pots. Aside from being a maker, you work at the Rockford Art Museum in Rockford, Illinois, you are Co-Director of and a regular contributor to Make-Space.net, as well as Art Editor for BITE Magazine. How do you balance so many different roles?

JJ: Balancing all these roles can be time consuming, but they allow me to maintain a productive and creative frame of mind. They keep me thinking rigorously and critically. Collaboration acts as motivation—others are depending on you as much as you are depending on them. It takes a lot of mutual respect, patience and vision to sustain a productive collaboration.

My other two co-directors from Make Space, Etta Sandry and Lynnette Miranda, are two of the hardest working people I know. I can truly say that I look up to both of them in many different ways. BITE is a great experimental, online collaboration because I have never met my Features Editor, Daniel Griffiths—or any of the other editors, for that matter. They live across the globe, spanning New York, London and Singapore. The Rockford Art Museum is a comfortable place for me because it is a collaborative atmosphere with passionate people. Everyone at the museum has welcomed my ideas, skills and experience that have came from these other roles. But how do I really balance all of these roles? Barely.

Movements
2014
Road brick, plaster casts of road brick
Bricks set in new formation at each exhibition

OPP: And how do these other roles relate to or inform your studio practice?


JJ: I have thought about the relationship between the projects I am involved in and my studio practice many times. Sometimes I throw up my hands in frustration and say, “I guess all of it is my practice!” But that’s not true. That is too easy—it is a simple way to avoid being critical about my interests and myself as a person.

Honestly, I believe the most important aspect of the relationship between the roles and my studio practice is the tension and flux. The very thing that inspires me is the thing that keeps me away from the studio. Visiting other artists’ studios is wonderful. Afterwards, I feel like I not only understand the artists’ work on a personal level, but it also reveals a strength or weakness in my own work. That fact is, I have learned more about what art is and what making means through conversations, interviews and studio visits than I ever have in academia.

Bird, Boat, Now (Detail)
2014
Photograph, cigarette burn
9 x 12 inches

OPP: What’s your favorite piece of your own work?

JJ: I think Boat, Bird, Now is my favorite piece, probably because it is still fresh to me. It tackles a lot of the same issues that Horizon Series does, but in a more compact, poetic way. The cigarette burn forces a connection between the boat and the bird while intersecting the horizon line. I am trying to control a beautiful image or moment in a physical way, or trying to relate to a moment that has passed but has been captured.

OPP: You've also recently launched a new initiative called Public Practice. What's your mission?

JJ: My wife Iga Puchalska and I moved to Rockford in July 2013. We immediately saw a need for more contemporary art and programming. Rockford is pigeonholed as one of the most “dangerous” or “miserable” cities in America, but it is gaining a lot of energy from creative people who are starting from the ground up.

Public Practice is not a physical site; rather it is a collection of culturally relevant, interdisciplinary projects. Our mission is to provide smart, engaging, challenging art programming to the Rockford community and beyond. These projects materialize through the collaboration between Public Practice and other organizations, spaces, businesses and artists. Each collaborator utilizes its own strengths and resources to formulate a project that is aimed at exposing the public to contemporary art with the goal of developing new social perspectives while expanding dialog between Rockford’s community and contemporary art practices.

We aim to be an educational entity, to the public as well as to the collaborators and ourselves. We invite the public to work with us, not as a means to an end, but in order to emphasize the practice of exchanging ideas through creative foundation. Iga and I are approaching Public Practice with a sense of sincerity, experimentation and resourcefulness. We are very excited because this project can have a very real impact on the community.

Parade
2013

OPP: Do you have any projects lined up yet?

JJ: We just had our first successful project called Parade on June 13, 2014. In the spirit of collaboration and public engagement in the arts, we organized an art exhibition with artist Jesus Correa and Rockford Art Deli. We considered the parade as an art medium and the floats as art objects. Parade started in the public and invited the public to participate. Local and regional artists were invited to create "floats" to accompany them during the parade, which ended at an art exhibition at Rockford Art Deli. Along with the artists, the public was encouraged to join our sidewalk parade—which they did in great numbers! We had well over 100 people in the parade, representing the very diverse Rockford community. We hope to make this a yearly occurrence.

We are also teaming up with Conveyor, a space for live storytelling, to create a programming-heavy exhibition series. Because the aim of the project is to approach the artist’s practice as transparent, invited artists will be asked to create an alternative approach to programming. This programming will act as a springboard to demystify or intensify contexts within the work that is being exhibited. We are happy to have James T. Green as our first artist!

To view more of Jason's work, please visit jasonajudd.com.

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 her cross-stitch embroideries, remix video and collage 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. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia is currently looking forward to creating a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists opens on July 11, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Joell Baxter

Magic Carpet, detail
2013
Screenprinted paper, glue
5 x 96 x 96 inches

JOELL BAXTER's practice combines screenprinting, weaving, sculpture and color theory in an exploration of visual perception and physical response. The placement of her multicolored, paper weavings-turned-sculptures on the floor evokes minimalist sculpture and interior design staples like carpets and couches, while the simplicity of the weave structure brings to mind grade school craft projects. Beginning in September, she will be an Artist-in-Residence in The Space Program at Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation. Her solo project Coverer will be on view at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut until June 27, 2014. Then it travels to Greensboro, North Carolina to be part of the group exhibition Art on Paper 2014 at Weatherspoon Art Museum from September 27-December 21, 2014. Joell lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Tell us a little about your trajectory as an artist and your influences.

Joell Baxter: I studied painting as an undergraduate, and I still think about what I do in relation to that tradition. But I have always made work that sits between disciplines and actively engages the viewer in different modes of looking. All of my work strongly references minimalism, in terms of its approach to space and to creating a one-on-one relationship between the viewer and the work. I use very basic processes and forms that are reminiscent of grade school arts and crafts projects like weaving potholders. I want to evoke an immediate sense of familiarity, almost a muscle memory of how the work was made. But after that initial response, I hope that what at first seemed familiar becomes strange and more complex.

My most important art historical influences include: Sol LeWitt’s visually complex works created from seemingly simple ideas; Agnes Martin’s meditative focus; Josef Albers’ articulation of the relative nature of color; and Anni Albers’ writings on the historical importance of textiles as a kind of portable architecture.

Untitled (Rolled)
2011
Screenprinted paper, hand cut and woven; glue
5 x 17 x 40 inches

OPP: All the paper that you work with is screenprinted, but most of it is solid-colored paper. Is it significant that you don't purchase existing colored paper for use in your sculptures? 



JB: My decision to print all of my own paper is largely practical. I use a carefully calibrated pallet of 12 hues in 8 different degrees of saturation. It would be hard to find these 96 exact colors in a commercial paper. In more recent works—Magic Carpet and Coverer—I have been printing blends of complimentary colors, so the color isn’t solid anymore. After printing full sheets, the paper is cut down, glued into long strips and woven by hand.

I also really love the process of screenprinting. Printing flats and color-blends in particular is a very meditative act, and I find the repetitive action of flooding the screen and pulling the ink to be extremely conducive to thinking through ideas. I like the fact that, as a technology, screenprinting sits in this strange spot between handmade and mechanical. The screen and squeegee are mediating the application of color to the paper, but it still requires a very physical, human action.

Stack Overflow (detail)
2011
Screenprinted paper, hand torn and stacked; tape
1 x 72 x 72 inches

OPP: Is the color distribution in your work more influenced by color theory or intuition? Is this planned in advance of beginning a piece?



JB: I am interested in understanding how light and visual perception work together to create an experience of color. My basic mode of using color is very systematic. As much as anything, it comes from the basic color theory one learns in elementary school: the color wheel, mixing secondary colors from primary colors and mixing compliments.

In planning my work, everything is extremely orderly and can be diagrammed as a set of instructions. I typically use colors in the order of the visible spectrum, so red follows orange follows yellow, and so on. But by weaving these colors together, they start to interact and become harder to name and distinguish. This is due to the inherent nature of weaving, where color relationships are constantly alternating through the pattern of over and under. So there is a kind of glitch introduced into the plans, forcing me to let go of absolute control over the results.

Endless Day, Endless Night (for g.m.b.)
2011
Screenprinted paper, hand cut and woven; glue
2 parts, 5 x 46 x 46 inches each

OPP: Could you talk about the woven, pillow-like form you have repeatedly executed in paper and your choice to exhibit it on the floor?



JB: The pillow pieces are human in scale, about the right size to sit in comfortably, and the sunken void in the middle seems to invite the viewer in. Placed directly on the floor, they share real space with the viewer and could almost be functional. But then the opticality of the work and the fragility of the paper take over, and they become more like paintings or drawings that are holding themselves up in space. So you move between a very empathetic and physical response to the work, and a very visual one, without ever settling on one or the other.

Coverer, detail
2014
Screenprinted paper, hand-cut and woven; glue; push pins
8 x 25 x 25 feet

OPP: Tell us about Coverer, your first solo exhibition, which is on view at Real Art Ways in Hartford, Connecticut until June 27, 2014.

JB: The installation at Real Art Ways is the first opportunity I’ve been given to use an entire room, so the work has really taken advantage of that. I began with the premise creating a visual experience of color in space that viewers could enter and explore and that makes use of the architecture. 

I use the same screenprinting and weaving process as the earlier pillows, but this piece is comprised of a modular series of flat, mesh panels laid directly onto the floor and walls in an intersecting pattern. Because of the gridded structure, the work functions as a kind of marking system that measures and diagrams the room. The diagramming is destabilized by an illusion injected into the color pattern of the woven panels; the edges blur and the colors fade as they move across the space. On close inspection, it becomes clear that the color is printed onto the woven paper. But when perceived as a whole, the weaves seem almost prismatic, as if they are catching and dispersing the light or, alternatively, as if the color is emanating from them, like a digital screen. So on the one hand the work clarifies and maps the physical space, but on the other it confuses and destabilizes the viewer’s perception. I am interested in this kind of toggling back and forth between visually grounding yourself and then losing your way again.

The viewer can actually walk into the work, stepping into the voids between the woven panels. In doing so, your view is reframed with every step. While I felt that it was conceptually important to be able to enter the piece, I was surprised by how active the work feels from a distance. The work is almost cubist in the way it constructs space. Just the act of moving your eyes around makes you aware of the way the images in your mind are constantly shifting and recombining. There is a bench in the room, and when you sit still, this constant shifting takes on a filmic quality. The piece seems to keep moving, and the light seems to flicker. So a viewer can move between active and passive modes of looking or watching the piece.

The last aspect of the work that felt important and new for me was its mutability and portability. The piece conforms absolutely to the architecture, while simultaneously affecting the experience of the space. But if the site changes, the piece can adapt and the conform to its new site in a modular way, and it can repeat this process indefinitely. I will be reinstalling Coverer in the fall at the Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. The floors there are a different color and material, and there is natural light. It will be part of a group show, so the way that the work interacts with the space will be completely different and I am looking forward to seeing how that changes the piece.

To view more of Joell's work, please visit joellbaxter.com.

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 her cross-stitch embroideries, remix video and collage 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. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia is currently looking forward to creating a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists opens on July 11, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA.


OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Courtney Puckett

Sea Lady
2012
Metal, wire, wood, string
20 x 60 x 18 inches

COURTNEY PUCKETT’s work is an exciting collision of color, pattern and texture. Drawing on the history of the Fiber Art Movement, she employs traditional techniques such as wrapping, coiling and sewing to transform cast-off elements from furniture and domestic decoration—frames, fans, coat racks, table cloths—into unexpected abstractions. Courtney earned her BFA from Maryland Institute College of Art (2002) and her MFA from Hunter College (2007). She is a recipient of several National Endowment for the Arts project grants and has been an Artist-in-Residence at Vermont Studio Center, Buffalo National River in Arkansas and the Byrdcliffe Arts Colony in Woodstock, New York. Solo exhibitions include Mountain High (2011) at Central Utah Art Center in Ephraim, Utah and Recycled, Wrapped and Sewn (2010) at Valencia Community College’s Anita Wooten Gallery in Orlando, Florida. Courtney lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Your sculptures oscillate between formal abstraction—for example, Bug (2011) or Snail Potion (2012)—and "useful" objects, as in the walking sticks and lassos. But in both cases, textile materials and the traditional fiber techniques of coiling and wrapping are center stage. Could you talk generally about your interest in these techniques?



Courtney Puckett: Before I knew about the Fiber Art movement, I studied painting. As an undergraduate, I had reached a technical level of realistic painting that no longer interested me. I could have continued in this vein and found subjects to paint or forced myself towards abstraction. But instead I made a discovery that permanently subordinated paint as a medium for me. While experimenting with alternative painting surfaces, I came across a large, ripped, black duffel bag. With the intention of painting on it, I cut it up and sewed it back together flat. But when I hung it on the wall, I knew it didn’t need paint. The form and physical material already had everything in it that I was searching for. It satisfied my desire to find an alternative approach to painting and to align myself with women artists, particularly those in the 60s and 70s who challenged the (predominantly-masculine) rules of painting. What began as an intuitive gravitational pull toward soft materials has become a intentional reframing of techniques associated with “women’s work” in order to disrupt hierarchical and categorical divisions within art.

Lasso 32
2012
Miscellaneous fabric scraps, string, yarn
19 x 10 x 2.5 inches

OPP: Could you talk specifically about your Lasso Series (2004-ongoing) Is your attraction to this form conceptual or formal? What does the lasso as a form mean to you?



CP: I began the Lasso Series in 2004 while living in New Mexico. I recycled scraps of unused fabric and discarded components from sculptures into long, coiled ropes and hung them in groups on the wall. The lasso is a metaphor for our persistent attempts to acquire, achieve, control, fulfill, capture. But often we fail. These aren’t Wonder Woman’s Golden Lasso.

OPP: Looking at all the lassos together reminds me of Sheila Hicks' amazing book Weaving as Metaphor, in that she has a daily practice of exploring the aesthetics of one simple form—for her, the handheld loom. The variety is astounding. Sheila Hicks is probably the most well known artist who uses coiling and wrapping as a technique. Is she an influence for you?



CP: It is exciting that Sheila Hicks is receiving so much attention right now. I went straight to her work at the Whitney Biennial. However, I only found out about her work about five or six years ago. I took a bus to the Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia to see her 2011 retrospective, which was the first time I saw her work in person. I was totally jazzed. At that moment, I felt very proud to make the work I make. Her work gave me the permission—that for years I thought I needed—to work primarily with fabric and textile techniques. People have suggested to me a more mixed media approach, so as to not get labeled or pigeonholed. But Sheila Hicks’s work is powerful in its embrace of fiber mediums and disregard of categorization.

Back Yard Boogie Woogie 1
2014
Fabric, wire, wood, yarn
94 x 14 x 19 inches

OPP: What role does time-tracking play in your work?

CP: The act of recording time is not an objective. My goal is more to lose track of time and enter a meditative, quiet, contemplative zone, often with nothing to listen to but the sounds outside my studio window. Time is obviously quite evident in the process; the labor evident in the work. This is more a result of the kind of intuitive physical relationship I have with the materials and processes—cutting, pasting, ripping, knotting—than as a subject itself. I like that the viewer has access to this intimate space that rewards slower reading.

OPP: Could you talk about your drawings on graph paper? Many of them are titled “Study for . . . .” Are the drawings just plans for the sculptures or something else?

CP: The drawings are like epilogues of the sculptures; they only reveal segments of the story. Typically, I do not begin with drawing. When I get lost or am not sure what move to make while working on the sculptures, I draw. It either sends me off in a new direction or helps me find my way back to the original logic of a piece. I think two-dimensionally like a painter, and drawing really helps to flatten things out. Recently, graph paper has been the most useful blank page for working out patterns and formal systems.

Cricket Comb (detail)
2011
Fabric, wire, wood, yarn
108 x 28 x 15 inches

OPP: Materiality is clearly a driving force in your practice. You incorporate fabric, thread, wood, wire, yarn and found textiles like table cloths and men's ties. Are you more of a hunter, seeking out specific materials for your work, or a gather, saving whatever comes your way until you have a use for it?


CP: Both roles as you describe them appeal to me. I have been scavenging thrift stores for cast-off gems since the age of twelve before vintage stores popped up everywhere. It is still one of my favorite things to do when traveling to new places. Red, White & Blue Thrift outside of Trenton, New Jersey, where I teach, is one of the best I have ever been to. I have fantasies about supermarket sweeps there. I hunt cast-offs (usually textiles) that have aesthetic value and character that can play into one of my pieces. Often, I take in the trashed furniture parts from the alleys around my live/work space in Brooklyn. It is important for me to have plentiful fabric and furniture scraps on hand for spur of the moment re-workings. I’m not a hoarder though, and I do take time to toss things back to the curb.

OPP: Could you speak generally about this reworking of cast-offs you’ve mentioned? It’s more than a practical way to get materials or a clever way to recycle. How does this relate to the “reframing of techniques associated with ‘women’s work’”?

CP: I am drawn to art that recycles waste, that makes something extraordinary out of something ordinary, that examines the detritus of everyday life and, in particular, of domestic life. One early influence for me was Art Povera. I will never forget, while studying in the south of France, seeing Dieter Roth’s boiled-over stove at a museum. This was around the time I stopped painting and started using the refuse around me. Another important influence has been my mother, an interior designer, and the home I grew up in, which was an evolving experiment in the decorative arts. There was little distinction between material object and aesthetic experience. Her resourcefulness and creativity built a colorful living space for our family and special, meaningful objects that held a kind of magic. With sculpture you can use the physical, tactile energy of things. You can also transform them. In my work, I try to reconcile the perceived inferiority of fiber and craft materials with the assumed superiority of paint, concrete, steel and the still-hyper-masculine disciplines of painting and sculpture.

To view more of Courtney's work, please visit courtneypuckett.com.

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 her cross-stitch embroideries, remix video and collage 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. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia is currently looking forward to creating a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists opens on July 11, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA.