Product packaging, colored pencils adhesives, map tacks
BIANCA KOLONUSZ-PARTEE’s colorful, constructed drawings of industrial shipping ports are crafted from repurposed product packaging, directing the viewer’s attention to the tons of commercial goods for individual consumption that move through these oft-ignored, interstertial spaces everyday. Bianca received her MFA from Claremont Graduate University (Claremont, California) in 2007. She has exhibited widely throughout California, including solo exhibitions at Offramp Gallery (Pasadena) in 2012, and Byatt Claeyssens Gallery at the Sonoma Academy (Santa Rosa) in 2010. Having investigated major U.S. ports in New York, Los Angeles and San Francisco, Bianca now plans to visit various Asian ports to better understand issues surrounding global shipping. Her first stop will be the port of Colombo in Sri Lanka. She is currently raising funds for her trip with her project Sri Lanka or Bust. Bianca lives and works in Guerneville, California.
OtherPeoplesPixels: What fascinates you about ports and industrial landscapes?
Bianca Kolonusz-Partee: I grew up in northern California, and I learned to understand the landscape by traveling through it on the roads that intersected it. That we learn about something by basically breaking it apart is at the heart of my work. When I lived in San Francisco, I became intrigued by the container shipping port in Oakland and how ports are minimally-regulated global freeways that link us to the rest of the world. Later, as an MFA candidate at Claremont Graduate University, I experienced first hand the mega-port of Los Angeles. I began considering the effects of the pollution on the local population and the impact of this space on the global economy and environment. Our collective obsession with stuff became more serious for me.
OPP: When and why did you first start using repurposed product packaging as your dominant medium?
BKP: When I left graduate school in 2007, I was using fine Asian and architectural papers. It just didn't feel right. I began using product packaging because it is the debris of the goods that travel through these ports. I never include logos or names, but I love the connection that people have to the highly designed product packaging of our contemporary world. Bottom line: I feel most comfortable with fewer fine tools. I appreciate both high-end and low-end packaging and enjoy pulling the colors, patterns, textures I need out of the material. Nothing is left as is.
OPP: What's your collection/accumulation process like?
BKP: I initially thought it was very environmentally-friendly of me to reuse discarded packaging, but I don't actually accumulate a lot in my own life. I asked friends and family to collect it and send it my way. I quickly realized that I was unfortunately spending resources that negate the "greenness" of my efforts. Also, I’ve been inspired to try specific products out because my friends liked them. I’ve realized that I am just as tied into our consumer culture as anyone else.
OPP: Your work exists somewhere in the gray space between drawing and collage. Do you consider it more one or the other?
BKP:
I love this question because it is a real struggle for me. I don't
think of myself as a collage artist AT ALL. Collage talks about creating
an image out of found images in a historically surrealist way. I think
of my work as constructed drawings. I
work with the materials in the same way that I would draw or paint. I began in these media. I
still think of myself as a two-dimensional artist, but possibly I am a
hybrid. The fact that my constructed drawings are created directly on
gallery walls brings up the notion of installation. My favorite
contemporary work is installation art: Ernesto Neto, Christo &
Jeanne-Claude, Ann Hamilton, Richard Serra. Erwin Redl does these amazing installations with LED lights that make you feel like you are inside of Tron. I went to see his piece at LAMoCA’s Ecstasy: In and About Altered States (2005) several times and walked through the grid that he created in the room. It was truly amazing.
But
I have been most influenced by the great masters like Paul Cézanne.
When I was an art student, his two-dimensional work absolutely had a
physical impact on me. In my drawing class, we learned about figuring
out a landscape by the connection points where elements intersected, and
we looked at Cézanne. I drew like that for years: first landscapes,
then roads cutting through landscapes and then shipping ports. I eventually discovered others like Turner,
who documented the industrial seaport of his time. I often think of
myself as a new version of an old master using today's technology to observe and
document where we are right now.
OPP: Can you walk us through the process of drawing with these materials?
BKP: I work from a video of the port. I choose materials from three boxes of collected packaging organized into color groups: cool, warm, black/white/neutrals. My process is just like drawing a line or painting a section of color except that I am cutting out these shapes. I sketch a shape/area onto the packaging with colored pencils while looking at the video. Then I put double stick tape on the shape, cut it out with the yellow scissors—so as not to goo up my nice scissors—and place it on the piece. I am one of those people that has trouble drawing a straight line freehand. I allow my process to mimic my drawing ability by cutting out the straight lines and shaving it off piece by piece until I get it right. It is always about figuring out the space. As I revise, one area often becomes very built up with material. Sometimes I cut sections away with an even stronger pair of scissors. I might cover up an area if the color or pattern doesn't feel right or work to recreate the space. The dense sections of my work result more from my process than my subject matter.
OPP: One of the most
significant aspects of your work is the use of the map pins. Was your
decision to use them conceptual, formal or practical?
BKP: The pins began as a practical way to hold the work together. When I began working this way, each piece would be partially built and pinned together. Then I would finish building it into the space where I was exhibiting. Eventually, I decided that the pieces typically ended up being a set chunk on the wall, so I started to make sure the pieces were entirely connected before I installed. My largest piece Outward Inward 2, which is 15 feet long, is in three sections. I like the added random mark, which is why the tacks are multicolored, but they do hold the work to the wall. I use the tacks to make some structural pieces appear stronger and more stable on the wall. For example, if there is a big, heavy crane next to a tree, I don’t want the crane to be slipping around on the wall at all. But it’s okay if the tree moves a little.
OPP: Could you talk about the difference between the larger landscapes pinned directly to the gallery wall and the smaller pieces pinned inside frames?
BKP: The framed pieces are the same as those that are pinned
directly to the walls. I frame them on white backgrounds in white frames
in order to evoke the white cube gallery wall. When I sell them framed, I do provide instructions and a
container of map tacks to those who plan to install them on their walls. I prefer hanging the
work out of the square and transforming the gallery space into a mock
landscape where the walls become water and sky.
OPP: You've visited ports in Manhattan, New Jersey, San Francisco and Los Angeles. In 2011, you shifted focus to Asian ports in your series Countries of Origins (2011). Could you talk about this shift? Have you visited any Asian ports in person?
BKP: Most of the goods that move through the US ports
are made in and come from Asia. To see the full picture of consumerism
and its global impact, I needed to shift my gaze to those countries
providing inexpensive goods to the rest of the world. Countries of Origin, based on images from online videos, explores ports in Japan, Singapore, Hong Kong and Taiwan.
I
haven't been able to afford to travel to Asia yet, but I have been able to piece these places together remotely.
However, visiting the ports in person is a big part of my work. I have
decided to kick off that effort by traveling to Sri Lanka to visit the
port in Colombo. I am raising funds for my current project, Sri Lanka or Bust,
using my website and a Facebook page. I will sell the work that I make
before the trip from a series of images that I found on the internet to
pay for the trip. I am currently making drawings with elements of the
paper work in them. I have a dear friend from Sri Lanka who lives there
and will be able to introduce me to her home, which will make the trip
even more rich. Good or bad, we all make assumptions about foreign
places. I look forward to replacing those assumptions with a real
experience and to taking a look at shipping from a Sri Lankan
perspective. I'll use my own video, photographs and experience to make
work about the port in Colombo, Sri Lanka upon my return.
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.