OtherPeoplesPixels Blog

La Balena (2017) Fiberglass reinforced plaster, wicker, paint. 19.75 x 11.5 x 16.375

JED MORFIT deconstructs and reconstructs—sometimes literally—classical sculptural forms like the bust and the bas relief. With an extensive tool belt that ranges from age-old mold-making techniques to 3D-printing and laser-cutting, he explores the changing expressions of fashion alongside the universal impulse to adorn oneself. The titles of recent works hint at the relationship between evolution in nature (e.g. Gills: Grow a Pair) and in culture (e.g. Deepfake National Monument). Jed received his MFA in Sculpture from the Rhode Island School of Design. He was a Fellow at the Center For Emerging Visual Artists from 2007-2009 and received a New Jersey Council On the Arts Fellowship in 2009. His numerous awards include the Louise Kahn Award for Sculpture (2006) and the Dexter Jones Award from the National Sculpture Society (2011 and 2012). You can virtually view his 2020 solo exhibition Adapting to Change at Paradigm Gallery here. His work will be included in Paste and Cut: Contemporary Sculpture in Plaster, which opens August 31, 2021 at the Lauren Rogers Museum of Art in Laurel, Mississippi. Jed lives and works in New Jersey.

OtherPeoplesPixels: A recurring form in your work is the bust. Older works—Vane (Natal Plums)(2017) or The Oyster (2017), for example—appear to be based on real living people. Is that the case?

Jed Morfit: I am a professor of sculpture at Stockton University, and my teaching practice has always had a big impact on my personal work. I assign projects I am interested in, and inevitably end up wanting to participate in the process. Around 2016, I had a class of upper level students create self portraits. In the process of helping them, I spent a lot of time staring at their faces in the unique way you do when you are creating a portrait. Anemone, The Oyster, and La Balena are all modeled on students from that class. 

At the time, I was interested in contemporary fashion’s relationship to sculpture and imagining how busts—which always reflect the fashion of their time—might look in fashions inspired by artists like Alexander McQueen, Philip Treacy, or John Galliano.

Anemone (2017) Fiberglass reinforced plaster, zip ties, paint. 22.5 x 11.5 x 9.75

OPP: In your most recent work, the busts look like modified neoclassical sculptures. What led to the shift in subject matter?

JM: While I was happy with this series, I ended up feeling like I had not pushed the relationship between the figures and the fashion far enough. The figures in that series were almost like mannequins, modeling imagined “fashion” that could, theoretically, be worn. That felt a little timid to me. These are sculptures, not people. Why not let the “fashion” go beyond skin deep? 

Thinking it over, I realized that I was too invested in my relationship to the subject and quality of the likeness to make real change. In my recent work, I attempted to mediate these attachments by restricting myself to working with 3D scans I could find online. Working digitally with “found” source material made it possible for me to maintain some emotional distance, to start modifying the form at the start of the process, and to make more dramatic changes to the figure along the way.

Paved With Good Intentions (2012) Urethane plastic, wood, nails, paint. 61 x 42 x 5"

OPP: You mixed contemporary and art historical imagery in earlier bas relief sculptures like You Wish and Paved With Good Intentions, both from 2012. Could you pick one of these all-over compositions and tell us about the imagery you’ve juxtaposed?

JM: I wish I could say there was a coherent rationale behind the imagery for this work, but if there was a logic behind those decisions, it was largely hidden from me. I knew I would need a lot of material to make this project work, and time is always a factor, so I couldn’t really allow myself to overthink the imagery (always a danger for me). My memory of this process mostly involves rolling out little slabs of Super Sculpey and free associating. 

Paved With Good Intentions is probably the piece from this series that makes the clearest reference to art history: the giant figures striding across the landscape are based on the central figure in Brughel’s Dulle Griet. At the time, I was a junior faculty member, perennially worried about tenure, with two small children and a house in the suburbs. I spent a lot of time feeling overwhelmed and anxious, and trying (in vain) to get some distance from the chaos of my daily life. I can’t remember exactly what inspired me to include Mad Meg in this series, but she looks like the kind of desperate, harried, and opportunistic scavenger I could relate to at that moment. 

Parting Lines (2020) Plaster, paint, yarn, adhesive. 23 x 14 x 37.75”

OPP: What materials do you return to again and again and why? 

JM: I am currently pulling together work for an exhibition at the Laurel Rogers Museum of Art organized around plaster, and I suppose if there is a material I return to again and again, that would be it. It’s such a generous and versatile material, and I really appreciate how humble it is. It’s strong, and it has definitely played a role in the history of the genre, but it’s not bronze, or marble. It’s not a good material for anyone who intends to make a statement across millennia, and that’s fine with me.

Deepfake National Monument (2020). 32" x 11" x 27”

OPP: Adapting to Change (2020), your recent show at Paradigm Gallery in Philadelphia, includes some shifts in terms of process and form, correct?

JM: Adapting To Change represented a huge change for me, and I’m still trying to process what it meant, or how to think about it going forward. I wanted that body of work to throw everything I knew into question—and it did—but it was hard. It’s probably not surprising, but making big shifts to the way you think is confusing and uncomfortable.  

Material diagram for The Good Sister (2020) Sculptamold, plaster, urethane foam, thermoplastic, wood, metal. 9.5 x 11.25 x 25”

OPP: How do these shifts relate to the content of the work?

JM: This body of work emerged from the desire to incorporate digital technology in a way that felt authentic and integral to the process. At the time I felt (and still feel) like most sculptures involving digital tools looked as though fabrication was the last step—the equivalent of hitting the “print” button. I wanted to make work that was informed by this technology at every step of the process. 

For example, The Good Sister started with a scan I found online and modified using 3D modeling software. The shape of the armature was extracted from the final 3D model, and a CNC router was used to cut it out of thin sheets of insulating foam. The face was 3D printed, then molded, finally and cast in tinted plaster. The armature was covered in a plaster-based material, modeled by hand, and then carved and sanded to reveal the underlying structure. The red “mask” is  actually 3D printer filament, anchored to the form by laser cut guides. 

Learning these new techniques and working out they might interact and influence one another made for a very slow, very challenging process, and ended up reflecting the larger theme of the show which was, (as the title suggests) about the difficulties of adapting to change.

Gills: Grow A Pair (2020) Plaster, paint, paper, beads, urethane foam, thermoplastic, wire, glue. 11 x 11 x 33.5”

OPP: The addition of bright colors and embellishments made me think of the relatively recent art-historical revelation that classical sculpture from antiquity was not originally as marble-white as neoclassicists thought. Is this body of work a response to this discovery?

JM: While I would say that seeing the Like Life exhibition at the Met Breuer in 2018 had a profound impact on me, I would have to say I was less influenced by the chromatic history of sculpture than I was by the sculptural qualities of fashion. Since color is such an important aspect of fashion, it felt important to incorporate it into this series. 

What really made a dramatic difference were a couple of studio visits with friends to look at what I thought was finished work. They encouraged me to think about the qualities of color inherent to material, rather than simply painted surfaces. Those conversations fundamentally changed the way I thought about the work and probably added a year to the process. 

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020). Stacia is one of three 2021 Artists-in-Residence at Zócalo Apartments (Houston, TX). Follow her  @staciayeapanis to see what happens  @zocalo_air.

Get Messy (2018) Mop Cotton, Fabric Paint, Pine Frame. 21" x 44.5" x 2.5"

Informed by the history of abstraction in Painting, LAUREN SALAZAR turned to weaving as a method to create her own canvases and to explore the sculpture aspects of paintings. She is more driven by the raw material of canvas and frame than by image. But color, line and negative space still play starring role in both her framed works and her site-responsive installations. Lauren earned her BFA with a Painting Concentration from University of North Carolina at Greensboro and her MFA in Studio Art from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2019, she was a Visiting Artist at the Textiles Department at Kent State University (Ohio) and was featured in the Emerging Voices section of Surface Design Magazine (Vol 42 Number 2). Her work was included in the group show Nuestras Realidad (2019) at Hooks Epstein Galleries (Houston), where she previously had two solo exhibitions: Ties That Bind (2018) and Togetherness Undone (2016). Lauren lives and works in Davidson, North Carolina.

I'll Braid (2018) Mop Cotton, Fabric Paint, Pine Frame. 38.5" x 23.5" x 2.5"

OtherPeoplesPixels: Your work can be discussed in relation to the disciplines of Weaving, Painting or Sculpture but each of these fields has different history of abstraction. Is one of those fields more influential in your history as an artist?

Lauren Salazar:  Painting is the traditional fine art medium that has had the largest impact on my development and thought-process as an artist. I was a painting major when earning my BFA from the University of North Carolina Greensboro. I was drawn most strongly to abstract paintings, specifically those that acknowledge the grid. I found such inspiration in the confident and innovative formal decisions made be greats like Agnes Martin, Richard Diebenkorn, Eva Hessa, Richard Ryman and Frank Stella. Their works have a reverence for material usually explored through repeated and often meticulous formal decisions.  

I quickly realized when making my own paintings that I am most drawn to the sculptural and woven aspects of painting. The frame is three-dimensional, something to be explored within and around. I use painting canvas as subject and line. Through weaving, I have the ability to incorporate hue and texture. I began and continue to make work that relates to the elements of abstract painting that I love through the use of woven and sculptural explorations.     

Innards (2017) Mop Cotton, Thread, Fabric Paint, Pine Frame. 22.5" x 22.5" x 2.5"

OPP: The most important distinction for me between painting and weaving is that the painted image—whether abstract or representational—sits on the surface, whereas the woven image is the surface. Your Thoughts?

LS: I had a professor in undergrad tell me that it wasn’t enough to just make a frame and prime a canvas, that I needed to paint something on it. And every time I did paint on one of my stretched canvases, I thought “I liked it better before.”  Not that I don’t like “the hand” in art work, quite the contrary in fact. I just have such an affection for raw material; I didn’t want to paint an image on top of the material beauty that was this primed and stretched canvas. When I started working with fiber, it felt like a way to get closer to the piece than I could with paint. Weaving became a way to physically build my own canvas.  

So yes, weaving as surface and subject in one is an idea that I wholeheartedly embrace, including the historical and personal relationship I have with weaving as an art form unto itself. Weaving as abstraction and as a gridded system that forms a strong design and cloth. Weaving as historically women’s work. Weaving as something my Aunts and Great Grandmothers did in their spare time, an act that they thought little of, that even perhaps, little was thought of. I embrace it all, accept it all, and hopefully celebrate it and its complexities in my work.  

Umbilical (2019) Cottolin, Cotton Twine, Mason Line, Pine Frame, Spray Paint. 24” x 23” x 2.5”

OPP: How do your framed works both respect and subvert the rectangle?

LS: It is my hope that my works first and foremost acknowledge the rectangle, the traditional frame, as an integral part of paintings. Many paintings simply use a frame as structural support for a painting on top.  But I love an empty frame. I think the wood, its strength, simplicity, physical depth is something to be seen, delved into, dealt with. What does the side of a painting look like, the inside, the bottom and top?  How is it attached to the frame? Frame can and should interact with the other formal decisions made in a piece. My pieces exist and are derived solely from the dimensions of the frame they inhabit. Even when my weavings spill out of a frame, it is still the frame to which they are attached. I don’t think frame or weaving, stretcher or canvas take precedence in my work. I more hope to reveal their utter codependence on one another.

Relation (2021) Cotton, Cottolin, Linen, Pine Frame, Spray Paint, Copper Nails. 43” x 36” x 2.5”

OPP: How much of your process is play and how much is plan?  Tell us a bit about how an individual work evolves.

LS: It is a lot of planning, it is tedious and repetitive.  For anyone who has ever wound a warp, dressed a loom, followed a draft. . . there is a lot of planning and precision to be had.  But I can honestly say that as clearly as I can imagine any work of mine turning out, never has one actually ended up the way I initially envisioned it would, and therein lies the play.  

All of my pieces start with the frame. Even in the installations, the room or space acts as the frame. I then have the dimensions I need to work within and can decide the size and type of weaving I want to inhabit that space. Sometimes I want the weaving to be larger than the frame with the ability to wrap around it or hang over it. Other times I make smaller weavings that interact with other weavings running in different directions. Sometimes I leave both warp and weft threads unbound, so that I can then install these loose-hanging threads within the frame or room in a variety of ways. 

Heaven Couldn't Wait IV You (2016) Handwoven Cotton, Maple Frame, Paint. 35" x 35" x 2"

I typically choose simple weaving patterns—traditional ones like tabby, lace, twills, overshot—that you can often see in many household textiles. And I use an assortment of fibers from Swedish cottolin, to hardware twine, to butchers twine, to wool, typically with a stronger focus on hue and texture than on the type of fiber itself.  

Once the weavings are woven/canvases finished, I then figure out how to best bring them to life on the frame. I drill holes, manipulate the wood and thread the many, many loose weaving ends in order to attach the weavings to the frames. This is how the weavings exist on all sides and locations of the work. This tedious process is a constant grind, but throughout I find myself tweaking my initial idea for a piece—changing colors, changing layout, turning over, undoing and redoing. So while weaving as a practice is incredibly planned, I certainly find room in all of my work for play, failure and surprises.  

No More I Love Yous (2013) Cottolin. Dimensions Variable.

OPP: You mentioned the installations. What do they do that the small, framed works can’t and vice versa?

LS: The installations are more of an homage to weaving whereas the framed pieces fall easier into a painting dialogue. In a large space, it is easy to convey the complexities, beauty and strength I find in even the simplest of weavings. I take a modest, everyday weaving, the size of a dishcloth or smaller, and I leave many yards of unwoven warp threads loose to be installed in large, tall and overarching spaces. The pieces reveal that even in small cloths, there are hundreds of threads. There is work, effort, design, artistry. Look at the magic within this practice, within this craft, amongst the women who traditionally have woven. The process of the installations requires a lot of planning, a lot of thread, a quick weave, and then a couple of sleepless days to install. Thread by thread, I walk each one across the span of the room from weaving to wall to create installations that are bigger than the viewer. For example, [insert title and year] was a 15 foot arch made of thread that viewers could stand beneath and look up at. In the installations, the viewers can exist within the frame, whereas  the framed pieces which are viewed more traditionally from the outside.   

To see more of Lauren's work, please visit www.laurenlsalazar.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020). Stacia is one of three 2021 Artists-in-Residence at Zócalo Apartments (Houston, TX). Follow her  @staciayeapanis to see what happens  @zocalo_air.

Unsteady (Tough Love Remix) Tower (2018)

WADE SCHAMING's sculptures are more like occurrences than objects. His temporary assemblages are precariously balanced towers of discarded objects (e.g. vintage tupperware, a metal bed frame, plastic milk crates) that offer viewers the opportunity to contemplate impermanence and to see the beauty in our trash. Wade earned his MFA at School of Visual Arts and his BA at University of Pittsburgh. He has been an Artist-in-Residence at Art & History Museums – Maitland (2020), Jentel Foundation (2018), Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (2017) Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts (2017) and Yaddo (2016), to name a few. In 2019 his work was included in the group show The Heart is a Lonely Hunter at Equity Gallery (New York), where he is also in an upcoming show. Rapture: A Queer Taste for Color, Texture and Decorative Pattern opens on April 28, 2021 and runs through May 22. Wade lives and works in New York City.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Your sculptures are made entirely of stacked, balanced found objects. How did you arrive at this process? What is the relationship between precariousness and balance in your work? 

Wade Schaming: I imagine my comfortability with using found materials is rooted in my experience growing up in the home of a hoarder.  My mother kept anything and everything: from disposable cups to outgrown clothes to the daily mail. Her collected and accumulated things formed piles on top of piles of junk throughout the home, all of which were placed and held together by balance. I think my processes were learned through this early experience, and my sculptural work is a response to her method.

Orange Crown Tower (2019)

OPP: I imagine this process is a constant interplay of form and function—or composition and physics. Does either of these drive you more than the other? Do you ever sacrifice formal concerns in favor of stability or vice versa?

WS: I definitely limit my options by not fastening anything together. It has been disappointing when an object—something so perfect—would look so good within a piece I am working on, but it is either not stackable or too heavy to place on top of what I already have assembled.

Don't Know Why Tower (2020)

OPP: What does the process of stacking and balancing FEEL like? 

WS: Stacking unrelated objects on top of each other feels like pure magic when the right combination fits together, creating something that seems to appear like it was always meant to be arranged that way. That’s what I’m after. I bring together old disparate things and place them into a new format, finding purpose in an object’s afterlife through pairing.

But You Said You Love Me Tower (2020)

OPP: Tell us about your collection process. Are you more hunter or gather?

WS: It is probably equal parts of both and depends on the circumstance. I would say I’m constantly in a gathering state, open to finding things for the studio or accepting an object that is given to me if it is stackable. When I am doing an artist residency outside of New York, where I live, I immediately start hunting for materials to use upon arrival.

Bed Bug Tower (2018)

OPP: What are some examples of some residency experiences where you went hunting and discovered materials and objects that were unique to the location? 

WS: For Somethin' 'Bout You Tower (2017), I borrowed snow stakes—used for their extreme winters—from a shed at Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts in Ithaca, New York. Wild Sack Tower (2018), which I made at Jentel Foundation in Banner, Wyoming, includes a deer skull—a decorative motif synonymous with the West—from the land. Orlando, Florida Tower (2020) includes a palm frond and Spanish moss from the residency grounds at Art & History Museums Maitland in Maitland, Florida.

Unending Volley Of Whys Tower (2017)

OPP: Does storage and organization of the objects in your studio play a role in thinking creatively? 

WS: Definitely! When an arrangement of objects isn’t working, I’ll put it aside or disassemble it and put everything back in the pile with the other randoms to marinate. Sometimes an assemblage comes together so quickly that it feels almost too easy and leads me to doubt its potency. But other times, I’ll have materials in my studio for years without ever using them. Usually, if it makes it into my studio, I’m going to use it. It just requires patience and for me to be around them, day after day, for an arrangement to click in my head. Also, putting things away that aren’t working is an act of playing—which I have learned is so important to continue doing—and it gets the material in my hands and has me practicing order without the more formal mode or official act of “I am making art.”

Luv Cuff Tower (2018)

OPP: In your statement, you write,”From discarded and forgotten objects, which memorialize hope, the assembled forms aspire to return dignity to the bearer and evoke empathy in the viewer.” Could you talk more about hope and dignity in the work?

WS: The materials I am most attracted to are quotidian but discarded or forgotten. When I create a new sculpture out of found and collected objects, I am giving the materials within the artwork purpose again. If the objects were personified, they would have hope. 

Brown Madonna Tower (2016)

OPP: Would you pick a favorite work and talk us through what you love about it. 

WS: I made Brown Madonna Tower (2016) at Yaddo in Saratoga Springs, New York. It includes a hula hoop I that I think I found in the rec room, a crate from the garden and a rolled wire netting or fence that was extremely heavy. I found it caked into the ground, under a tree, and it appeared to be abandoned on the residency grounds. I think I love this piece because of its ephemerality. I did not clean the netting/fencing wire and let the soil and leaves remain. After I successfully dragged the rolled wire into my studio, it stood upright on its own, as if it was always meant to be that way.

To see more of Wade's work, please visit www.wadeschaming.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020). Stacia is one of three 2021 Artists-in-Residence at Zócalo Apartments (Houston, TX). Follow her @staciayeapanis to see what happens @zocalo_air.

Deconstructed Portraiture (2016) Silicone, Acrylic, Fiber Glass, Steel, Leather. 6' x 4' x 3'

Informed by a career in Anaplastology, artist ANDREW ETHERIDGE seamlessly mashes human body parts together to evoke a visceral response and reflection. An eyeball is nestled inside an ear that is attached to a toe. A shin leads not to the expected foot, but rather ends with pursed lips and a chin. These grotesquely beautiful sculptures show us the human body in a way we have never seen it before. Andrew earned a BA from the University of North Carolina at Wilmington and an MFA in Fine Arts at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He was a 2018-2019 North Carolina Arts Council Artist Fellowship recipient. He received a Durham Arts Council Emerging Artist Grant in 2016 and the Da Vinci award for presentation of exemplary case results at the International Anaplastology Association conference in 2018. Andrew lives and works in Durham, NC.

OtherPeoplesPixels: When I first saw your work, I was expecting to find out you had a wage job in the movie industry, but you actually work in Anaplastology. Tell our readers what that is and how you came to work in that field.

Andrew Etheridge: That is a great observation. I was always interested in the film industry as it relates to special effects. Towards the end of grad school, I knew I wanted to get into prosthetics, more specifically medical prosthetics. It was a long road, but I worked my way into the industry, went back for more education and became increasingly specialized leading to my current position at The Anaplastology Clinic. My colleague and owner of the clinic actually spent 17 years in special effects makeup working for the team that was the first to develop silicone prosthetic appliances for film. Anaplastology is a very specialized form of medical prosthetics mainly focused in facial, ocular (eye), somato/ body (hand/finger, foot, toe, breast), and other custom devices. In this form of prosthetic care, we provide function and realistic medical devices to individuals suffering from disease, trauma, or congenital defects. As anaplastologists, we are healthcare clinicians as well as technical fabricators, a perfect blend of art, medicine, and science. I feel privileged every day to be able to use my art to help others in need.

Primary Specimen Cyanoptypes (2015) Cyanotype on watercolor. Each print around 24" x 30"

OPP: Has your artwork always revolved around the body? What was the work like when you were in grad school? I’m imagining that you were not yet so skilled in prosthetics, but correct me if I’m wrong.

AE: Yes, my work has mainly concentrated around the body. In grad school I was very experimental. My work ranged from video, sound, figurative sculpture, and performance to wearable and interactive prosthetics. 

Awkward Machine was literally a machine that I wore in public. It pulled my face in various directions based on the motor and pulley system, and a speaker distorted my voice. Another work titled New Skin Glove was the first time I worked with silicone with the purpose of creating something meant to more realistically mimic the body in appearance. This wearable glove looked like skin—as much as I could have it so at the time—and had microphones in the tips of the fingers that amplified the sound of any objects touched. A tiny camera in the dorsum of the new skin captured the wearer’s experience and projected it into the gallery in real-time.

While completing my thesis, I fell in love with prosthetics and hyperrealism as an art form. In my recent work, it’s as if the concepts behind pieces from graduate school combined and then leapt forward with my new technical skill sets honed by my medical career.

Primary Specimen (2014)

OPP: I see both the grotesque and the beautiful in your sculptures. What do you see?

AE: My hope is that beauty outshines, or at the very least is found in, the grotesque aspects. I am very careful to walk the fine line between the distorted and gore. I never intend to cross that line as I believe the intent and questions presented by the work will then be lost. Lastly, thoughtfulness and humor are underling messages injected as a counterbalance to the visuals one is confronted with.

OPP: You mention the questions presented by the work. What questions do you ask yourself before, during and after making your work?

AE: The conception of every artwork is different. Smaller works usually start with one intent or concept. Larger bodies of work or bigger scale pieces take lots of planning and are usually more complex. All the work focuses on the Body: is it an ethereal vessel or object? What do we consider normal? How are we confronted with it? What about the body is beautiful and what is ugly? I also try to confront our humanity by portraying emotion or a mental state of being. Lastly, I look to Art History, the sciences, and organic forms in finding references. I do not necessarily ask myself direct questions while creating the work, rather often I have abstract thoughts during my process. I allow the process of making the work to be fluid which in turn gives me more freedom with decision making and creativity. When a piece is finished, I reflect on my initial concepts and compare/contrast this with how it presents. Truly, I try to remain vague with how I describe my work. I don’t want to overshadow a person’s own interpretation of the work. 

Epithesis II (2017) Silicone, Acrylic, Plastic, Foam, Fabric.

OPP: Your work is disconcerting, to say the least. I definitely feel physical discomfort when looking at these works online, so I can only imagine what I would feel in person. What kinds of responses have you heard from in-person viewers?

AE: “Love it” or “hate it” are most of the responses. The hyper-realism evokes an initial visceral reaction. At that point people are confronted with those feelings and either continue to explore the work further or immediately shy away.

Vanitas 2020 (2020) Mixed Media.

OPP: Disfigurement and deformity are real experiences for some human beings. It appears you side-step making bodies that might actually exist in favor of very extreme displacements; e.g. an eyeball inside a foot, for example. But are there any ethical concerns that influence your sculptures in terms of representing non-normative human bodies?

AE: I would never want to exploit people or their afflictions. My profession allows me access into the lives of many individuals who are suffering from the most devastating of diseases or traumas one could endure, so yes, I could not help but draw inspiration through empathy but never exploitation.  I wish to question the Body, to present the Body as object, and reflect the mental space. The intent of the work is to question how our physical selves relate to our humanity.

So This Is Life, Memento Mori (2020) Silicone, Acrylic, Hair, Fabric.

OPP: In your most recent work, you make a huge departure into self portraiture. What precipitated that shift?

AE: I could argue that all my previous work was a kind of self-portrait, but I understand what you mean. The piece So this is life, Memento Mori not only departs stylistically from past work but it elicits different questions. This sculpture is a hyper-realistic self-portrait illustrating one’s contemplation of impermanence portrayed as a memento mori but with modern influences. During creation of this piece, the global pandemic (Covid-19) was happening, forcing us all to confront our mortality. This event fundamentally altered the direction in which the narrative was finalized. The work encourages the viewer to examine their own physical, social, and psychological journey through 2020. My personal intent in creation of this piece was questioning self in the present, reflecting on mortality, and placing one’s self in society at large.

To see more of Andrew's work, please visit www.andrewetheridgeart.com and follow him @andrewetheridge.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020). Stacia is one of three 2021 Artists-in-Residence at Zócalo Apartments (Houston, TX).

Closed Beginning Opens the End (2018) Materials: eggshells, rice paper, milk paint, epoxy resin, mirror. Detail.

MAMI KATO makes elegant, material-driven sculptures with egg shells, fabric and rice stalk. Some works are architectural in scale, while others can be held in two hands. Whatever the scale, Mami's craftsmanship and responsiveness to her materials is impeccable. Mami has a BFA in Painting from Musashino University of Arts (Tokyo, Japan) and a BFA in Sculpture from Philadelphia College of the Arts (Philadelphia, PA, USA). Her work is included in the public collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Wu Tung Art Museum in Shanghai, China. Her recent three-person exhibition Over Time (2020-2021) just closed at Wexler Gallery in New York. But you can see a virtual version of the show at Artsy. Mami lives and works in Philadelphia, PA. 

OPP: Do you have a favorite piece by another artist? How has this piece or this artist influenced you and the way you think about your own work?

MK: I would say that my favorite piece by another artist is Iso-Daich (which means “Phase-Mother Earth” in Japanese) by the artist Sekine, Nobuo. This work is the most famous piece from Mono-ha, which is the art movement in 1960s Japan.

I only saw this piece in a picture in some art magazine when I was living in my rural hometown in Japan. During that time I was hoping to proceed my art making practice and I was still very young and needing some guidance, but I couldn’t find any artwork/artist that I could admire around me. There was, of course, no internet, and I was surrounded by very traditional or unoriginal modern style art. When I saw the picture of this piece, I thought “This is it.” This piece gave me the hope and direction I needed at that time.

Ascending Filament (2014) jute fiber. dimensions variable.

OPP: What is your favorite piece of your own work?

MK: I don’t have only one piece that stands out as my favorite, but I would say, at this time, I’m excited about Ascending Filament and my works made of eggshells

I feel that Ascending Filament is unfinished work, which gives me inspiration as to what I would do with it. It is made of teased rope fibers, so it’s very light weight, as you can imagine. This fluffed up thread can be fit in various forms of spaces and squished down when you move or store it and you can fluff it back up when you use it. It still needs some improvement to get right (texture, color and etc) for me, but because of this flexibility and logistical benefit, I feel that it will open up options to make a different group of work from others of mine.

How Not to Be Small and Silent (2017) Installation view. 

SABA KHAN's multimedia work traffics in the language of memorial, monument and public art. From lush beaded paintings of cakes to miniature dioramas of a bureaucrat's boring office; from flashing LED signs of stereotyped "Islamic Art" to embellished textile banners honoring the mundane generator, she balances grandeur, artifice and satire in order to explore the cracks in the facade of life in her native Lahore, Pakistan. Saba holds a BFA from National College of Arts, Lahore and an MFA from Boston University, on Fulbright Scholarship. Her work was included in the 2018 Karachi Biennale and the 2020 Lahore Biennale. Her solo exhibitions include ONE (2019) at Contemporary and Modern Art Museum and Making a Contemporary Landscape (2018) at O Art Space. In 2014, she founded Murree Museum Artist Residency, an artist-led initiative in a British colonial hill-station, and in 2020 the satirical artist collective Pak Khawateen Painting Club was born. Saba lives in Lahore, Pakistan. 

OtherPeoplesPixels: Tell us briefly about your artistic path. Have you always been an artist?

Saba Khan: I think it is hard to say when one turns into an artist. It is usually declared by others, a title that one earns over time and with experience. 

I continued producing work after my undergrad. In Pakistan we are art educators during the day and artists by night. It is understood that most of us artists would pursue jobs in academia, where art colleges—rather than art galleries or art districts— become centers of contact and spark development of ideas and networks. However, teaching takes away a large chunk of the day and also slows down one’s practice. But both have been hand in hand throughout my career.

Big Halal Dreams (2017)

OPP: Satire and simulation are dominant strategies in your work. Tell us why? How do you use these strategies aid your conceptual agenda?

SK: Living in Pakistan is living amidst chaos. Although an outsider may view it as a monolithic, conservative, Muslim country but it is more complex and varied. With a 4000-year-old culture, while also being a young country, it intertwines and weaves many rituals, traditions and contradictions. Each day is a lived experience of navigating into the city, which is broken up into medieval, colonial, modern and new-town sections, as a time traveler through Lahore’s maze of concrete with patches of old trees and greenery. 

The country also has stark contrasts between the rich and poor. These strange experiences, interesting yet frustrating, are sometimes best translated into satirical imagery with tongue in cheek humor, rather than being didactic and self-righteous in ones’ work. 

Contemporary Islamic Art (2017) LED lights on flex print with gilded frame. 36 x 24 in

OPP: How do you use beads, crystals and flashing lights to emphasize un-flashy truths? I’m thinking about Contemporary Islamic Art (2017) and The Generator Series (2010), among others.

SK: My work took a significant turn once I came back from a two-year Master’s stint in Boston. I came back to materials which I missed and did not have access to in the USA. We have large complexes of bazaars that are a dizzying labyrinth of shops of artisans who are practicing their craft for a variety of clients. They range from electricians working on custom made LED signboards to embroiderers embellishing wedding outfits. I missed the qualities of the hand-made in the products of the west. The slight errors and unexpected malfunctions or the misread drawings/ instructions become part of the work.

Contemporary Islamic Art, a buzzing, flashy LED sign, was a commentary on the hype—or buzz—of what western art dealers would call ‘traditional’ or ’meditative’ art from the middle east and south Asia. These tropes, circulating out of context, are used to attract and sell the exoticized and faux images of art from this part of the world. Without any knowledge or research, these works are distributed in art markets as oriental pieces of fetishized ornaments.

The generator series was made on the types of generators observed around the city that were used as an alternate to frequent power cuts. During the time these tapestries were made, we were experiencing up to 18 hours without electricity from the grid. The commercial neighborhood I lived in would light up with a cacophony of generators emitting noise greater than the prescribed range in industrial zones, with smoke incessantly puffing out. Now with solar power and better government arrangements, things are not as bad.

More Prosperity (2010) Thread and buttons on fabric. 60" x 58"

OPP: Could you translate the Urdu text that hangs on the wall, highlighted by those luxurious drapes in Monuments and other Follies (2019)? 

SK: The text says: 

“Friendly Residentia Authority 

Undertaking development Inauguration 

By The Honorable Hands Of The Eminent Connoisseur 

Madam Saba Khan”

Monument and Other Follies (2019) Installation shot.

OPP: What drew you to the form of the plaque with curtains?

SK: There are hundreds of plaques around the city erected on footpaths and intersections, commemorating road constructions by local politicians. Plaques with curtains being drawn open is a regular site on the news with politicians opening mega projects or private housing schemes. The ceremonies are almost comical, because they are a repeat performance with different actors every time launching white elephant projects. Strongest commodities are the private housing schemes which are an answer to the government’s problem to housing. Large chunks of agricultural land are sanctioned over ‘for the public good’ and turned into plotted, pieces of private land by real estate tycoons, many of them falter or turn out to be fraudulent leaving behind hundreds of disgruntled and deceived civilians that fall into litigation suits for decades.

I went to a colonial bazaar to get this curtain made because I was told there was a curtain shop that specializes in ceremonial drawstring curtains. The young man helped me with the design, dimensions and also picked the official color.

Monuments and Other Follies (2019) Installation shot.

OPP: What are you choosing to memorialize/monumentalize in this body of work?

SK: The series of files in the project mimic government files; thick, rough, recycled cardboard with papers stuffed inside and tied together with a shoe-string. There are numerous monuments and decorative structures in every town commemorating unknown heroes and events or are a way to ‘beautify’ city corners. The low budget reliefs of dead men look like caricatures making the events even more unworthy of remembering. My fictional bureau for the project proposes monument-making for major, yet embarrassing historical events.

Other than the files, I constructed one monument in MDF with faux marble pattern painted on top, mimicking actual monuments that use ceramic tiles with faux marble pattern. A large folly, two adjoining staircases leading to nowhere. 

Monument for an Undecided Event (2019)

OPP: Tell us about Pak Khawateen Painting Club, a satirical collective of female artists. There doesn’t seem to be any painting in your recent exhibition of the same name.

SK: We don’t particularly paint. Instead we subvert the notion of a female artist by building large machines which don’t produce anything but generate information on power, electricity and water. 

Painting has always been a past time for upper middle-class women. In the pre-Partition era (before Pakistan separated with India), established artists would setup studios and teach women painting on the side as a means of a steady income. The stereotypical image of the ‘woman artist’ has been embedded in the collective psyche as an upper middle-class housewife painting on an easel inside her drawing room. Painting is seen as a hobby particularly for women as a pastime that doubles as a means to help decorate the walls of her husband’s home.

Pak is a short for Pakistan and also means pure (as women should be). These not so pure women of our collective, venture out into expeditions—women traveling without male chaperons is considered unsafe—entering into spaces where men make decisions for the nation on water and power. 

Pak Khawateen Painting Club: Indus Water Machines. New commission: Between the Sun and the Moon, Lahore Biennale 02, 2020

OPP: Alongside your active studio practice, you also founded the Murree Museum Artist Residency. Tell us about the residency and its location. How has the pandemic impacted the residency?

To see more of Saba's work, please visit www.sabakhan.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020).

PBR and Coke (2018) Red clay, colored underglaze. L18"x W13"x H20"

JESSICA BRANDL's narrative ceramic works use the landscape of the American Midwest as a backdrop. Animated skeletons lounge on abandoned sofas and drink from crushed beer cans while farm houses burn. Her hand-built vessels and commemorative plates act as contemporary memento moris, while referring to the dark underbelly of American history. Jessica earned her BFA in Ceramics and Art History at Kansas City Art Institute and her MFA at Ohio State University (Columbus, OH). She was the 2018-2019 Taunt Fellow and the 2019-2020 Joan Lincoln Fellow at the Archie Bray Foundation for the Ceramic Arts (Helena, MT). Jessica won the 2017 Zanesville Prize for Contemporary Ceramics and was a 2015 McKnight Fellow at Northern Clay Center in Minneapolis, MN. Notable exhibitions include her solo show Hazard (2018) at  Belger Crane Yard Gallery in Kansas City, MO and the Unconventional Clay: Engaged in Change, the NCECA Invitational at Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art (Kansas City, MO). In 2014, he created 500 plates for Salad Days, the Watershed Center for Ceramic Arts fundraising celebration (Newcastle, ME). Jessica lives and works in Helena, Montana.

To see more of Jessica's work, please visit jessicabrandl.com and follow her on Instagram @jessicabrandl.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020).

Robot Versus Labor: Labor's Revenge (2018) Screenprint. 23" x 37" on 26" x 40" sheet.

NATHAN MELTZ combines printmaking, animation and music to create narrative works about technology’s infiltration of every aspect of contemporary life. He tells stories that encourage empathy with robotic life forms collaged from industrial machine parts (i.e. nuts and bolts), which he views as stand-ins for newer technologies like nanotechnology and genetic modification. Nathan holds a BS in Art Education and an MA from University of Wisconsin-Madison, as well as an MFA from State University of New York Albany. In 2020, his work was exhibited at the 6th Graphic Art Biennial of Szeklerland at Transylvanian Art Centre, Four Rivers Print Biennial (Carbondale, IL) and Multiple Ones: Contemporary Perspectives in PrintMedia at the Museum of Contemporary Art (Jacksonville, FL). In 2019, he was a Visiting Artist at the Institute for Electronic Arts at Alfred University. In June 2021, several works will be included in the upcoming Biennale Internationale D’estampe Contemporaine de Trois-Rivières (Trois-Rivières, Quebec, Canada). Nathan lives and works in Troy, NY.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Your work merges music, animation and printmaking into one practice. Tell us about how your artistic background led you to work across these media.

Nathan Meltz: I spent most of my twenties playing in pretty good bands, producing decent screenprinted posters, and making bad comics. I started a printmaking-heavy grad program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and I started flirting with music and visual art happenings as part of an under-documented art/music/craft collective called the Wisconsin Pop Explosion. By my thirties, I had gotten better at printmaking and relocated to upstate New York with my wife, where we started a family. At that point, I definitely had distinct and separate bodies of creative work: a printmaking-heavy practice and a musical output. Feeling constrained by these limitations, I started another grad program at the University of New York at Albany, which heavily encouraged breaking down these creative silos, and I started merging elements of printmaking, sound, and bringing in video and animation. I really credit the SUNY Albany MFA program for promoting an anything-goes approach when it came to techniques and media. Ever since, I haven’t identified so much as a “printmaker,” or “musician,” or “animator,” but simply as an artist, using a variety of media to express myself.

Unknown Soldier (2017) Screenprint

OPP: I would describe your aesthetic as “retro-futuristic.” It looks like what people in the 1950s might have expected the future to look like. How does this aesthetic serve your conceptual agenda?

NM: I can definitely be accused of enjoying the nostalgia that comes from collage. When I create figures and environments out of collaged machine images, I am using those machines as metaphors for other technologies, whether it be nanotechnology, fossil fuel extraction technologies, or agricultural technologies. So for me, the machine images are stand-ins for something else. It just so happens that all of these contemporary technologies get filtered through my personal visual vocabulary before they become prints, animations, or sculptures.

Teddy Ruxpin Music Video (2020)

OPP: In your statement, you talk of the “not so subtle ways technology is sneaking into our lives and prepares them to resist this inevitable robot invasion.” But your work seems less a critique of the dangers of technology and more a critique of humanity. The problems the robots face seem to be very human problems. Your thoughts?

NM: It’s definitely both. Technologies are tools that have the potential to help, or harm, depending on how they are used. I hope my work gets the viewer to consider how we use these technologies, to be more critical of their applications. 

Many of my robot characters are stand-ins for us humans. All of my narrative work is about trying to foster some empathy for those impacted by malevolent technologies. Technology plays a clear role in some of the biggest challenges of the day, from war to inequality to climate change. We don’t have a chance of meeting these challenges unless we can engage with narratives that draw us closer to the actors involved and build some empathy for them.

quit job. press play (2013) Animation. Running time: 9:23 minutes.

OPP: I have to ask, are you a Battlestar Galactica fan? I’ve been thinking a lot about Cylons while looking at your work. Whatever the answer, what films, movies and texts have influenced the way you think about humans’ relationship to technology?

NM: I know a lot of people who are involved in critical discourse around science and technology. While no one cites Battlestar as an overt source or reference, we all dig it. Science fiction in general plays a big role in my art. I was lucky enough to be of the right age to work at a VHS video rental store in Madison, WI called Four Star Video Heaven, which was very much responsible for my film education. Early film depictions of robots—from Fritz Lang’s Metropolis to Gort in The Day the Earth Stood Still—were really important. The droll made-for-tv movie The Day After (1983), which depicts nuclear holocaust in Lawrence, Kansas, continues to fascinate me. As do performers like Devo, Gary Numan and George Clinton. And then there is academic work, like David Noble’s Forces of Production, which identifies the role of technology in promoting inequality in labor. The Atari 2600 video games of my youth—particularly the atomic dystopia Missile Command—are also lasting influences because they display a combination of 8-bit design beauty and total technological-based destruction.

Collapse (2020) Screenprint on 36 feet of 1980s dot-matrix paper. Detail.

OPP: Tell us about Collapse (2020), a screenprint on 36 feet of 1980s dot-matrix paper.

NM: Collapse is a uniquely pandemic-influenced work. I started this hybrid work of printmaking and sculpture, which is essentially an accordion book-form, in April 2020. I very much had the itch to express how I was feeling during these early stages of the pandemic, as well as reflect the general global pandemic chaos. However, my regular work-flow was disrupted with the closure of my school/work-based facilities at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. I was lucky enough to have a fairly well-stocked printmaking studio at my home, and I decided to take a stab at a project, limiting myself to whatever materials I happened to have in my studio at the time. I didn’t want to even have to order the delivery of supplies because at that early time of the pandemic, I worried about putting delivery drivers at risk. 

So, I started taking old screenprint-positives from previous projects, and exposing them to screens in a collage-like manner. Without any high-quality rag paper in stock, I decided to use the only paper I had in my studio: a ream of 1980’s dot-matrix paper. For those not raised on the early days of inkjet printing, this is the paper that has the perforated edge of punched-out dots to feed the paper through a 1980s printer. Of course, this paper in itself has meaning, as a manifestation of technological obsolesces. The paper is literally in a state of destruction, as it threatens to fall apart in your hands (its very materiality is held together by the layers and layers of acrylic screenprint ink, sizing the paper). Then, the paper is covered with images of conflict and images of destruction. I did my best to work up lots of color harmonies, essentially going for a balance of pretty destruction.

To see more of Nathan's work, please visit nathanmeltz.com and follow him @nathan_meltz on Instagram.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020).

It Means Desert, Desert (2020). Installation view. Photo credit: Vivian Doering

JACKIE MILAD thinks of her layered, mixed media works as time-based art. She employs layering as a strategy to protect, hide and transform recurring symbols like eye, snake, brick wall, and breast. She cuts and draws and paints and sews, cannibalizing previously-exhibited works to make new works. A part of one piece becomes the beginning of another. This ongoing, ever-evolving process of creation refuses the notion of artworks as static, archival objects. Jackie earned her BFA at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts and her MFA from Towson University. In 2019, she was named a Janet & Walter Sondheim Prize Finalist and a Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Ruby Grantee. Recent solo exhibitions include: Chaos Comes and Goes (2019) at C. Grimaldis Gallery (Baltimore), Portate Bien (2020) at Langer Over Dickie (Chicago) and It Means Desert, Desert (2020) at Julio Fine Arts Gallery (Loyola University, Maryland). Only three days left to see her work in Re-Materialize at Arthur Ross Gallery at the University of Pennsylvania (Philadelphia). It closes on December 20, 2020. Jackie lives and works in Baltimore City, Maryland.

OtherPeoplesPixels: When I say the word layers, where does your mind go?

Jackie Milad: History. Ancestors. Information. Hidden. Protected. Removable or changeable.

Nope, No Way (2019) Mixed Media Collage on Paper. Photo credit: Vivian Doering

OPP: Who are your artistic ancestors? 

JM: It was during undergrad at SMFA where I was first introduced to Performance Art and was really inspired by the work of women performance artists of the 60s and 70s and in particular: Yoko Ono, Adrian Piper, Joan Joanas and Valie Export. It was their fearlessness and vulnerability I was drawn to and how they used their bodies to examine and critique the politics of othering and to deconstruct power structures such as white supremacy and patriarchy. Other influences include Howardena Pindell and Jack Whitten for their textural mixed media works and their processes. 

I love maximalist audio and visual experiences, it's hard to narrow it down because there is so much out there from mainstream pop culture to experimental work—however, my absolute favorite movie is Dario Argento's 1977 Suspiria, for its garish lighting and beautiful compositions. I also really love the synchronized dance sequences in Busby Berkley films of the 1930s for the extravagance of it all.

Chaos Eyes Redux (2020) Mixed media. 72" x 72"

OPP: You use recurring formal strategies like transparency, overlapping and reusing parts of old work to make new work. How do these serve your conceptual interests?

JM: Layering is a vital element in my work. Every layer shows a new choice; it’s a record of my decisions. History is a complicated thing; it is almost always told from the perspective of the dominant power. Showing the history of my hand is a way to tell my own story, my own history. I also dig back into the layers or cut and paste older works to reveal the past. My work is personal, and some of the layerings are meant to reveal and later protect or hide information. 

Additionally, I think a lot about how works of art are read. There is a general expectation that the work will be broken down into basic and understandable codes, whether by the artist themselves a writer, or by a curator. I like to defy this expectation by stacking layers, mixing up multiple signals, codes, and even languages. I rarely give it away. I want people to understand and accept that not everything has to be for them, not all symbols have to be revealed and explained—and sometimes it can be confusing and left a mystery.

The Flood Six - Hyena (2018) Acrylic, flashe, marker and collage on paper. 50" x 42"

OPP: Do you think of your mixed media collage works as representing some kind of space, be it physical, mental or social?

JM: I think of them as representing all of the above, or more accurately a record of time within the physical, mental, and social-political spaces. It takes time for me to layer the works, the pieces do not have an endpoint or finish point—they are more of an ongoing ever-changing, malleable record of my hand, my decisions, and of my observations of those things outside of my control. Ideally, in my studio, I am cutting from one piece to add to another in a fluid ongoing intuitive process. I compare them to doing performance art or time-based work.

OPP: How do you think about the works that you’ve sold or gifted in terms of being ongoing?

JM: Once the works leave my studio, they become out of reach or off-limits for obvious reasons. In a way, the objects become something else, they become more of a document or remnant of the performance/process. It would be amazing to one day collaborate with a collector to have work returned to my studio so that a piece could have another life yet again... and again and so on.

Yallah Sim Sim (2020) Video. 4 minutes.

OPP: You use a pastiche of found and created imagery in Yallah Sim Sim (2020), a digital animation with the feel of a sacred dance party. Many symbols have been accumulating meaning for most of human history—pyramid, eye, snake, tear drop—and you use them in a way that is completely idiosyncratic. Tell us about the combinations of images and sound in this work.

JM: I did this video in collaboration with my spouse, Tom Boram. We worked on this video after a research trip to my father’s homeland of Egypt in January. Going from ancient site to ancient site, and seeing a repetition of pharaonic symbols, but more importantly, the confluence of many cultures and epochs on one surface was very inspiring. The video recreates the experience of seeing the layers of Egyptian history competing with wayward touristic signs, a far-off Pizza Hut sign, or a booming car stereo playing mahraganat (Egyptian electronic dance music). This is really on point with what I’m getting at in my own 2D works In this video piece— information collapses onto itself in a chaotic pop kind of way. The writing is literally on the wall of tombs built for ancient pharaohs, turned Coptic monasteries, turned mosques, turned touristic sites. One fascinating architectural example is the pharaonic Luxor Temple which the Romans converted and renovated to be a church, and then later Arabs literally built a mosque (still in use) on top of the ruins of both the church and temple.

Untitled (2019) from Chaos Comes and Goes

OPP: Can you talk about the untitled golden necklaces works from 2019? The composition and palette in these predominately black works is so paired down compared to most of your recent work.

JM: This piece and the other work in this series were done as a counter to the larger collage works. I have several works in which I single out one pattern or theme. I like the idea that a viewer can get a very unfiltered view of a symbol that is repeated and layered throughout my larger dense pieces. I think of the series as a map key to the other work.

Quarantine One-a-Day Drawings (2020) 7" x 7." Photo credit: Vivian Doering

OPP: Tell us about your quarantine experience. It included making a drawing a day. How were these works generated by the early days of the pandemic.

JM: Ah, quarantine. Well, I live with my husband, two dogs, and my nine-year-old son. At the start of the lockdown with schools closing and our jobs going entirely online, there was no time or energy to work in the ways I did pre-Covid. Going to my studio seemed impossible, so to maintain momentum and some mental stability I cut up some small 7” square paper and started drawing, but of course, was regularly interrupted, so what I thought would be these quick simple sketches turned out to take all day to make. This slowing down of my process was important to do at the time. I needed to slow down and be okay with it. I’m not actively doing the quarantine drawings anymore, I’m back in my studio, but I do have plans to go back to making them at some point.    

Gold Bars (2020) Mixed Media Collage on Hand-Dyed Canvas.

OPP: What are you currently most excited about in your studio?

JM: These days in my studio, I've been using the time to think and experiment with materials. Just yesterday I cut up a canvas piece that I've shown in an exhibition recently and started to reconfigure it by sewing other remnants and painting over it with a palette of colors I rarely use. The pandemic and the general stress of this year have made it hard to be consistently productive, so I am taking small steps to find a way forward—and sometimes that means a dance break in my studio or lying on the floor for a different perspective. 

To see more of Jackie's work, please visit www.jackiemilad.com and follow her on Instagram @_jackie_milad_.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020).

ACTIVATE (Gay Liberation Front). White Line Woodcut with Toner Transfer. 14.5" x 20.5" (37 x 52.4 cm). Photo credit: Stephen Petegorsky

Printmaker ANNIE BISSETT explores the visual symbols and verbal cliches associated with various belief systems: from the religious to the political to the economic to the prophetic. Working primarily in moku hanga, she has tackled religious relics and spiritual cliche, the historical struggle for gay liberation and the idiomatic expressions associated with wealth and poverty in capitalist America. Annie's numerous solo exhibitions include: Playing with Fire (2018) at Oxbow Gallery (Northampton MA), Past/Present/Now (2016) at Charles Krause Reporting (Washington DC) and I Was a 20th Century Lesbian at Hosmer Gallery (Northampton MA.) Her work is in the permanent collections of notable institutions like New York Public Library, Boston Public Library, Portland Museum of Art, and Hood Museum of Art at Dartmouth College. You can purchase Annie's four self-published books here. Annie lives and works in Providence, Rhode Island.

Other Peoples Pixels: Can you explain moku hanga for the non-printmakers among us?

Annie Bissett: Moku hanga, which means “wood print,” is a centuries-old Japanese way of printing that uses waterborne pigments, brushes instead of rollers, and a hand-held printing device called a baren instead of a mechanical press. Woodblock printing was brought to Japan in the 8th century by Buddhists from China and was first used to reproduce religious texts. After a time colors began to be added by hand and then, as woodblock printing became the primary form of commercial printing in Japan, printers began to carve blocks for each color. Japanese woodblock prints, also called ukiyo-e, are known especially for their intense use of color. 

CLASS PICTURE. Japanese woodblock (mokuhanga). 14.5" x 20.5" (37 x 52.4 cm). Photo credit: Stephen Petegorsky

OPP: How long have you been using this method?

AB: In the early 2000s, after spending about 20 years working digitally as a commercial artist/illustrator, I found myself longing to make work for myself instead of clients and to work with my hands instead of on the computer. I tried painting and failed, tried collage but didn’t enjoy the search for source materials, and then I tried making drawings that I scanned and colored in Photoshop. That felt right, except that I was still at the computer. A friend noted that my drawings looked like Japanese woodblock prints and, serendipitously, I heard of a workshop being offered near my home by a New Hampshire printmaker named Matt Brown. I took that three-day workshop and fell in love with the method.

Selections from Secret Codewords of the NSA, each 6" x 6." Photo credit: Stephen Petegorsky

OPP: What keeps you returning to moku hanga? What do you love about the process?

AB: Although I’m a great admirer of Japanese art and aesthetics, I didn’t start working with moku hanga because of an interest traditional Japanese art. I took up moku hanga because it’s an artistic medium that is neither toxic nor messy, and it’s compact and portable enough to do on the side in my small home-based studio while I continue to serve my freelance digital commercial illustration clients. It’s also a beautiful method—wood, water, natural pigments, brushes, hand-held carving tools and handmade paper are the simple materials that make the method a pleasure to work with. And after my long career as a commercial artist working with four-color offset print technology, the transparent color overlays inherent in woodblock printing make intuitive sense to me.

Because the Japanese brought this art form to unimaginable heights of perfection, working with moku hanga can be a difficult burden to bear. Not many 21st-century western artists could hope to achieve the degree of perfection attained by the great 17th- and 18th-century ukiyo-e masters, but unfortunately that type of work is what many people think of when you say "Japanese woodblock.” I try to avoid this silent standard in people’s minds by calling what I do moku hanga or watercolor woodblock print—a term I especially like. Even though the method does come with a lot of cultural weight, I try to take the support of the beauty and elegance and history of the method without letting go of my own voice and my American concerns and identity. 

I LOVE YOU. Japanese woodblock (mokuhanga). 14.5" x 20.5" (37 x 52.4 cm). Photo credit: Stephen Petegorsky

OPP: What role does text play in your work?

AB: My major in college was English literature. That, plus my decades as an illustrator, where my job was essentially to read a document and then make pictures to go with it, predisposes me to work with words and text. 

Language is totally weird. It’s a mystery that we rarely treat with the awe and respect it deserves. If we were to spend just five minutes watching ourselves speak we would know this. Where do our words come from? Do we really know what we’re about to say before we say it, or do the ideas form simultaneously with the words? Are the movements of our tongue and lips conscious or unconscious? When I look at these questions I find language to be a strange fluid blending of conscious and unconscious, of mental and emotional, of controlled and uncontrollable. And I believe that we reveal ourselves and our innermost states in a brutally honest way through our speech.

MIXED FEELINGS (full set). Japanese Woodblock Print with transfer drawing. Each print is 12.5" x 19." Photo credit: Stephen Petegorsky

OPP: Printmaking—the origins of reproducibility of image and text—is the perfect media to address cliche. I’m thinking of the spiritual cliches on the banners from Relics (2016) and the economic cliches in Loaded (2012). Do you use cliche with sincerity or irony?

AB: To me, cliches appear to be ossified or “frozen” bits of language that we use either as shorthand or as meaningless filler in our speech. I guess the question I’m asking when I work with cliche is, what happens if you soften or “melt” a cliche? Does meaning return? Is there something to discover there? I think yes. 

So to answer your question, I’m 100% sincere in my use of cliches, although the results are often very humorous and/or full of irony, because people are funny.

A REAL FAKE: THIS IS NOT MUHAMMED. Watercolor woodblock print with gold mica, rubber stamp, and removable printed veil. Photo credit: Stephen Petegorsky

OPP: I also see a scholarly interest in the iconography and stories from all the major world spiritual traditions. Is this purely scholarly interest?

AB: I’ve always been a seeker—it seems to be a baked-in part of my personality. As a young child I was interested in my friends’ beliefs, religions and traditions and was invited to their churches, temples, mosques and celebrations. I was raised mainstream Protestant, I got “born again” in high school, and then, accompanied by a lot of pain, I lost my religion when I realized I was gay in my freshman year of college. But even in my post-Christianity period I continued to study various spiritual traditions, and I’ve practiced a number of them. 

Religion, as is true of all human constructs, can be a force for good or for evil. Religious power can easily be warped and manipulated to rationalize all manner of cruelty and bigotry. But at their best, the various religions are repositories of human wisdom, aspiration and spiritual technology that come to us from our ancestors, through centuries of history, and sometimes at great cost. I think there’s much of value to be found there.

DEFY (ACT UP). White Line Woodcut and Rubber Stamping. 14.5" x 20.5" (37 x 52.4 cm) Photo credit: Stephen Petegorsky

OPP: Tell us about the prints from the ongoing series I Was a 20th Century Lesbian that I’m reading as “flags” for various activist organizations that played a role in the history of gay liberation. Are these flag prints based on real flags from these groups?

AB: That group of prints, which I call Counterspells, uses a printmaking method called “white line woodcut” that was developed in the early 20th century in the gay mecca of Provincetown, Massachusetts. As in moku hanga, white line woodcut uses watercolor as ink, but instead of multiple blocks a single block (matrix) is incised with a line drawing and colors are painted by hand, one small area at a time. Although the matrix can be re-used, each white line print is a monoprint (one of a kind). 

Using the white line method allowed me to use a single matrix—a simple grid of equilateral triangles—for all the prints. I chose the triangle to reference the downward-pointing pink triangle that was sewn on the uniforms of imprisoned gay men and other sexual offenders in Nazi concentration camps. In the 1970s, the gay community reclaimed the pink triangle as an international symbol of gay pride.

Many of the gay liberation organizations I depicted were short lived, but they built on one another, so to use the same matrix for all of them let me express this in a tangible way. On the other hand, it was quite a limiting format, having to express the essence of each organization through this grid of triangles. I think you’re right that they do read as flags, but I invented them.

Selected images from Woodblock Dreams Tarot (in progress), 2018-2020. Photo credit: Stephen Petegorsky

OPP: What’s cooking in your studio right now?

AB: I’ve been working on a woodblock tarot deck for 2 years. For the four tarot suits (56 cards) I created woodblock backgrounds, textures, and illustrated elements which I then scanned and collaged in Photoshop. Thus, those digitally-collaged woodblock prints only exist digitally. There are 21 additional cards in the tarot called the Major Arcana, and I’m creating those as fully developed woodblock prints in very small editions (four of each). Each of those prints is scanned, reduced in size, and type is added digitally. For the sake of time, treasure and sanity, it’s the only way I could imagine making an affordable tarot deck that I could complete in my lifetime.The deck is called Woodblock Dreams Tarot, and I expect to have it ready for the printer by the spring 2021. It’s been a good project for the Time of COVID.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based 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 Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020).