Going Strong for 7 Years: Andrew Scott Ross

Did you know the OPP blog just turned seven-years-old at the end of August 2018? In honor of our birthday and the artists we feature, we'll be sharing some blasts from the past throughout the year. In this post and throughout 2019, we'll share new work from Featured Artists interviewed in the first year of the blog. Today's artist is Andrew Scott Ross.

Ruins My Image (detail), 2018. Paper copies.

OPP: What's new in your practice, Andrew Scott Ross?

Andrew Scott Ross: I have dedicated the past seven years to the making of an encyclopedic museum—or more specifically a museum Omnia Temporaria—where all things, even the museum itself, is temporary. It’s an institution without a fixed location, and exists only as a collection of works; there are drawings, sculptures, videos, and installations. Many of these pieces mimic a diorama or traditional display of artifacts but are never considered complete. They transform each time they are presented and change in both form and intention.

Century Zoo IX, 2017. Weatherspoon Museum. Mud, paper, charcoal, paint, wood.

A good example is Century Zoo. This installation, produced when OPP first interviewed me in 2011, began with observational sketches within Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Greek and Roman Wing. I returned to the studio with all of these drawings, cut out parts, layered them, and covered them with ink, charcoal, and mud. Over the past seven years, I have exhibited this work eleven times, but have not once returned to the MET’s collection or observed their reproductions, denying myself the opportunity to reorient these representations to reflect the original forms.  

Century Zoo VII (installed at Gallery Protocol), 2016. Mud, Paper, Charcoal, Paint, Wood. Dimensions Variable.

Finally, the drawings of Attica pottery, Kouroi figurines, and marble busts are hardly recognizable, worn down by my studio process. The remaining forms and the way they are displayed in my installations only represent my fantasy of the originals. They are a collection of images corrupted by my imagination and the historical scholarship around this work that first influenced me. This evolving installation now represents my antiquities wing.

Dry Erase, 2017. Atlanta Contemporary Art Center. Styrofoam, Dry Erase Paint, Dry Erase Markers.

In 2014, I started playing with sterile materials found at Office Depot, like rubber bands, sticky notes, and bulletin boards. I wanted to combine these familiar products with distant prehistoric motifs that are beyond the grasp of our traditional systems of visual analysis. These experiments eventually morphed into Dry Erase: a sculptural work made of artificial boulders encased in whiteboard paint. These objects are arranged in formations that resemble Paleolithic rock art sites and are continually affected by the drawings made on their surfaces. I make all additional drawings and erasures on-site in the gallery, so the act of making and unmaking the work relates directly to the exhibition environment.

Ruins My Image (Installation View at the Hunter Museum of American Art), 2018.

I started Ruins My Image last year, and its first variation is currently on display at the Hunter Museum of American Art. This is an expanding group of drawings that originated from a single reproduction of prehistoric San rock art from the Matopo Hills of Zimbabwe. It all started from a small, beautiful, 3000-year-old yellow, ochre painting depicting an injured human. In my studio, it became the sole source of inspiration for the past last year. The results translated into an installation, which functions as a map of citations, a visual bibliography that charts where and why I have distorted the original prehistoric representation.

Songs (Abstract Cricket Boxes), 2014.

Like the Art Institute of Chicago, my fictive museum has a Modern Wing. The newest related work is sculptural and each piece doubles as a habitat for living animals. I created two Plexiglas geometric sculptures that act as aquariums for cold-water fish in 2012, and later, I made a series of sculptures that house crickets—you can hear them chirp as soon as you approach the objects.

Read our first interview with Andrew.

OtherPeoplesPixels Interviews Andrew Scott Ross

My century Zoo (Detail)
2011
Mud, Paper, Wood
18 x 10 x 12 feet

OtherPeoplesPixels: You have partitioned your practice into two ongoing series, Rocks and Rocks and Rocks which is is a mix of drawings and ephemeral sculptures and Bones and Bones and Bones which is a mix of short narrative videos, wildlife photography, and sculptural objects. Which themes that you address in your work are distinct to each series? How do the two series differ from one another aside from the media distinction you make and what do they have in common that may speak to overarching themes in your practice?
 
Andrew Scott Ross: The defining work for the Rocks and Rocks and Rocks series is Paper Caves and Habits is the primary piece for the Bones and Bones and Bones series. These two series originated with these works. The video Habits which depicts a bunch of scattered living earthworms slowly forming a perfect circle came from my interest in the incredible habits of blind animals and how they can be an interesting metaphor for the power of nature. While Paper Caves, the group of works where I make early human dioramas out of office paper, is about how human imagination was utilized in the formations of early cultures.

Somehow, everything I have made since these two works are built on these two pieces in a somewhat chronological fashion. For instance in Rocks and Rocks and Rocks I started with the Stone Age, then did some pieces about the Neolithic Era and just finished My Century Zoo which touched on themes of Archaic Greek culture. It has been a slow process and I am looking forward to make it to the French Revolution sometime in the next decade!

Stones and Rocks and Stones and Bones (Detail)
2009
Office Paper
Detail of installation at the Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)

OPP: Can you speak about your titling process for the pieces included in each series?

ASR: My titling process is really different for the two series. The titles for Rocks and Rocks and Rocks are deliberately vague, picked at random, or generic. I feel there is already plenty of information packed in these pieces—so I make the titles more atmospheric. In contrast the titles for Bones and Bones and Bones are more descriptive, as I want to steer the viewers attention to certain aspect of an animals behaviour or physical traits.

OPP: Your solo exhibition My Century Zoo, now on view at John Michael Kohler Arts Center, lists mud, paper, and wood as the materials used. You’ve used mud in your work before, but using it in My Century Zoo seems to lend to a slightly different look from your past installation work. How does My Century Zoo differ for your previous installations?

ASR: Yes, I keep coming back to mud! At first I just dipped things into it to give a uniform primordial aesthetic. Now, in my newest series, My Century Zoo mud is used as a glue for the paper, drawing material, and for its sculptural qualities. It has become both a central material and metaphor in my work. We walk on mud, make cities out of it, and can get buried in it. What I find the most interesting, is that as an art material, mud comes across as immensely fragile.

OPP: You often cut and crumble paper into small and incredibly delicate silhouettes of human and animal figures as well as into trees and other landscape elements. What's the hardest and easiest part of the process of making your sculptural paper work?

ASR: People often ask me why I do not use a laser cutter. They look as the process and all they see is tedious labor. Not only would using a laser effect the work aesthetically and conceptually, but it would take away a lot of pleasure. I really enjoy most of the detailed cutting and modeling process—actually I find it incredibly relaxing. In contrast, the hardest and most frustrating part of the process is having to start over again when messing up on a complex figure—and the easiest part would be the deinstallation. It is amazing how six months of work can be put in a box in 2 hours.

Stones and Rocks and Stones and Bones
2009
office paper
Installation at Museum of Arts and Design (MAD)

OPP: Do you listen to anything while you work on the delicate elements or does your process require silence?

ASR: I am always listing to music when working on my paper cutting, often film scores—they help me focus for long periods of time.  

OPP: What does a day in the studio look like for you? Do you “sketch” by drawing or does your process include other initial steps?

ASR: Lately my studio is overwhelmingly messy! It usually involves laying down tarps, filling cement mixing troughs with stained mud, putting on a Tyvek suit, and throwing mud at large sheets of paper. There are cleaner days, where I cut and manipulate the dried mud caked paper, or apply charcoal. I have not been sketching with my new work, I have been working directly on the final surface. 

OPP: What is next for you?

ASR: I have been working on some stand alone sculpture pieces made from mud and paper, and experimenting on video work with artist Vanessa Mayoraz.

In the next few months I will be moving to a larger studio space in Tennessee. The space is an old Eastman Co. research site and warehouse recently donated to East Tennessee State University (where I will be teaching this Fall). I am very excited about making some large scale pieces there.

To view more of Andrew Scott Ross’ work visit andrewscottross.com