OtherPeoplesPixels Blog

BONNER SALE'S colorful and chaotic gouache paintings take place on the imaginary Cannabra Island. His cast of characters includes monsters like mummies, gigantic spiders, sea creatures and living skeletons, as well as magical cats, snakes and owls. Cannabra Island is a constant, swirling mess of battle scenes, danger and transformation, punctuated by occasional moments of somber stillness, usually spent honoring the fallen. Bonner has been featured on the curated, non-​​profit web jour­nal thestudiovisit.com (2010). He was Mr. August, 2014 for Centerfold Artist on tropmag.com and had work in the accompanying group exhibition Centerfold Artist at Project 4 in Washington D.C. He recently exhibited at (e)merge, a DC-based art fair with Transformer Gallery. His work is included in the permanent collection at the Katzen Art Museum at American University. Bonner lives and works in Wheaton, Maryland.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Some drawings instantly made me think of the cantina scene in Return of the Jedi. (I think I even saw Boba Fett, or someone like him, a few times.) Tell us about the inhabitants of the world in your drawings.

Bonner Sale: The Troubled Magic geographic island is a magical catharsis leprosy colony, where monsters are sent to learn particular lessons from their pasts. The stories are not limited to monsters though. There are three general types of characters: animals, monsters and heralds. Animals are mostly cats, owls and snakes. I have a fascination with cats and owls. I find them to be majestic creatures. My own cat is a big part of my life, so she is used as inspiration: adorable but ferocious, capable of magic and wisdom.

In the painting You have been bleeding every step of the way, the cats are battling the tyrannical Eypecolypse and his summoned fire snake. They have him surrounded him, and the human companions are all trapped in conjured, crystal prisons. Eyepocolypse a humanoid laden in eyeballs. His specific transformation-punishment is for him to see his errors. He is the most celebrated and explored of the monsters. I feel a kinship to his woe and enjoy telling and painting his story. Brutalized and cast out of his world for selling secrets, transformed and disfigured, he found himself on this Cannabra Island. He is constantly learning from his errors and, I hope, will find peace and maybe one day return to his home planet in his original form.

The heralds, ferrymen of the neither world, have always been depicted as lithe women. Almost like angels, they often spell out the morals of the story or are seen feeding and visiting the various prisoners on Cannabra Island. In the painting I am not sure if you are ready to return with so many lessons unlearned, the cloaked sentient holds the skull and spine, explaining to the dead that it is not ready to return, not ready for the sacrifice of change and transformation.

OPP: What visual artists inspire you?

BS: David Altmajd’s elaborate sculptures are just such a complex way of world-building. His unyielding use of materials is so brave and poetic. Continuing to tell the story of life and death and to find beauty in decay, I look at his work and aspire to create paintings as complex and defined as his sculptural work. Alan Brown is a painter that I love, love, love: his great, calm use of paint, wonderful concepts and a mature but expanding universe of characters and landscapes. Lastly, Brecht Vanderbroucke’s juxtaposition of live and online imagery is just dumbfounding and inspiring. Also his use of colors is bold yet organized. His playful depiction of the human very interesting.

OPP: You are a drawer through and through. Have you ever dabbled in other media?

BS: Yes, I love the process of drawing. Its very rewarding and automatic. It’s a method that doesn’t require physical objects or much space to perform. It seems so rudimentary, but there is still so much to explore. I have a lot of respect and devotion for drawing that has come before. My process is a little more rough and undisciplined than I want the outcome to represent, but the spontaneity and exploration into my imagination makes my paintings closer to an actual reflection of my soul rather than a formal, narrative painting. I usually work in sets of four to six paintings at a time, each painting made in response to the last.

When I dabble in other kinds of art-making, it’s more project driven, usually involving new media. I work with Brooklyn-based musician Adrian Varallyay, making video collage for some of his music. We mostly work with film stills from old exploitation films from the 1970s and 80s. Varallyay and I grew up together watching a lot of old movies and listening to records; this is just one of the facets of our combined creativity.

Zac Willis, Sam Scharf and I created a ceremonial event for Megatron, the leader of the Decepticons, who died in the third installment of Michael Bays’ Transformers. It included a video tribute to Megatron’s most important moments throughout Transformers history, several paintings depicting significant moments in his life and a handmade, wooden tomb for Megatron himself. The exhibition Megatron’s Dead also included an action figure graveyard, celebrating various fallen characters from film, TV cartoons and comic books. We buried over 80 action figures in little, toe-pincher coffins with little tombstones honoring each of the fallen characters. There was a companion book that identified each of the characters. It included pictures and small biographies that I had a great time writing.

OPP: What is your stylus of choice? What do you love about the tools you choose? What do you hate?

BS: I work in gauche and pencil. I mostly map out about four or five drawings at a time in pencil and then work them in with gouache paint. I like working with gouache, but sometimes I wish it was ink and acrylic or something more manageable. Since gouache is re-workable you cannot layer it without wetting the previous color, a lot of my painting time is spent making sure I do not paint over lines. Despite its drawbacks, I love the historic value of gouache, and the way it flows from the brush. There is a lot more for me to explore with the material, and working in gouache is kinda like being in a club with other gouache artists.

OPP: The Troubled Magic Circular Works reference Tondos but aren't traditional, in that they often break out of the circle. How are these drawings different from the Troubled Magic (Deluxe) drawings?

BS: Well, a wiser man than me once said, keep one foot grounded in the past while the other is headed for the future. At the beginning of this series,  I was drawing on large sheets of paper. There were isolated moments of character interaction with minimal background imagery. I wanted to start putting more detail and description into the narrative moments that I was creating. The circle was merely a tool to stop the painting at a point. In the newest deluxe drawings, the painting continues to the end of the paper. Each one still focuses on one event, but filling the page allows me to include more characters and elements for a larger narrative. The spirit and morals are the same but these take more time to finish.

OPP: Could you talk about the text written on many of the circular works? These short phrases often have the ring of prayers or eulogies. Some sound like lines of poetry and the lyrics to heavy metal songs.

BS: Much of the text emerges during the process of making work. The title is always a emotional insight or response to the narrative. It’s meant to clue the viewer into the work but not explain or depict the narrative. I listen to a lot of Smashing Pumpkins, so I am sure there are some direct correlations to the lyrical content to Billy Corgan’s writing. The painting My soul is so alive is totally in tribute to the song God and Country from the Zeitgeist album.

OPP: In an interview with TheStudioVisit.com, you said that don't want to give away the narratives in your drawings, that you want viewers to bring their own histories to the work and find their narratives. But, will you pick just one drawing and reveal the narrative you see?

BS: My wait is over but I am never satisfied captures a mutation going further than desired. In my world, magic always has setbacks, ultimately describing that there are consequences to all unnatural changes. The orange crystal represents the element of change, the outside setting makes it a public event and the victim was unprepared for the changes.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014. Beginning on November 7, 2014, Stacia will improvise When Things Fall Apart, an ongoing, collage installation in the Lillstreet Annex Gallery. Closing reception guests will be invited to help break down the piece by pulling pins out of the wall on December 5, 2014.

The stenciled text—most often rock music lyrics—in JOE WARDWELL's paintings alternatingly reads as aphorism, advertising, proverb, propaganda and cliché. Combining landscape painting and abstraction, he poetically echoes a persistent human struggle with longing and impermanence in the visual confusion between foreground and background. Joe earned a BA in Art History and a BFA in Painting from the University of Washington (Seattle) in 1996 and his MFA in Painting from Boston University in 1999. Boston-based LaMontagne Gallery, where he has had three solo exhibitions there—Die Young (2009), Big Disgrace (2012) and Party Over (2014)—will take his work to Pulse Miami in December 2015. Joe will have two upcoming solo exhibitions in 2015: at Heskin Contemporary in New York City and Giampietro Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. Joe is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachssettes where he lives.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Rock music has been a strong inspiration in your work for at least the last decade. What do you listen to while you work? Do you tend to listen to the same albums over and over again?


Joe Wardwell: I listen to music from all sorts of genres, from country swing to Norwegian Death Metal. While working, I listen less as source material for the individual pieces but more for the overall feel of the work and to get me into the right mental space to create the work in the first place. Most of that albums that get repeated are from my vinyl collection: Neil Young’s Live Rust and Boris with Merzbow’s Rock Dreams and Lightning Bolt’s Wonderful Rainbow. I tend to binge a bit more on digital music. Sometimes I will spend an entire day just listening to the Melvins, the Flaming Lips, Black Sabbath or Boris.

OPP: What is the relationship between rock music and landscape painting, as you see it?

JW: Landscape painting represents an American ideological orientation to wilderness and landscape that embodies a lot of similar yearnings, desires and attitudes I see expressed in rock music. There is something in that shared psyche that I am trying to tap into and tweak. But I am not solely looking for comparisons between the two or necessarily even looking to unify the painting from genre to concept to form. I see painting as a container that I am trying to fill up with many ideas and images that are struggling to get out. 

OPP: Early paintings like Masters of My Reality, Oblivion and Power Cord Serenade, all 2005, portray musicians and their entourages as heavenly flights of angels reclining on clouds. Others from 2004, such as Live Free Bird or Die, visually position the guitar as a portal through which we can enter another reality. But in 2007, you first introduced text, more specifically rock lyrics, into your paintings. What led to this development and how did it grow out of the earlier work?


JW: In 2007, I felt like I was on a gerbil wheel with the work, running round and round. It was too tongue and cheek and ultimately limited my expression. I didn’t see the heavenly rock figures going anywhere. The text and landscape combo has allowed me to be flippant, ironic, sentimental and political with the work. The work is a lot more versatile as a mode of expression for me now.

If you look at one of those earlier pieces and compare it to one of the first text and landscape pieces like Look West (2007), all of the same connections are still there though the representative form appears very different. The abstract, high chroma flames become the stylized text. The text is taken from song lyrics, and the fonts are derived from silkscreen rock posters. The heavenly cloudscapes are replaced with an idealized wilderness landscape, and the figures in the cloud still exist within the prepositions of the text. The implied Me, You, We or I in the text functions as the figure in the landscape.


OPP: More recently, the text has begun to completely take over the landscapes. Can you talk about this change formally and conceptually?


JW: Yes, earlier it was too polite. I still love those first paintings and stand by them, however it does seem to me now as if the text is too apologetic in its presence in the painting. It functions too much like an advertisement: first draw them in with beautiful landscape, then sneak in the message. I like the one to one relationship that occurs now.

Each painting has a stage in the process when it is a complete abstract painting and a complete landscape painting. Sometimes I paint the landscape first and sometimes I paint the abstraction first. However the painting starts, I work it until I wouldn’t paint over either the landscape or the abstract painting, and that’s how I know it is ready for the text stencil. It is a painfully destructive process but one that I feel imbues the paintings with a lot of energy. I love having these competing elements battle it out within the confines of the rectangle.

OPP: After recognizing some of the lyrics—like "And this bird you'll never change" from Free Bird, "a man and his will to survive" from Eye of the Tiger and "clowns to the left" from Stuck in the Middle with You—I unintentionally began to play a game as I viewed the work on your website. My initial experience as I looked at each of the text paintings became about trying to name that tune before I began to think about the relationship between the text and the image. I wonder if this is a common experience with your work . . . has anyone told you that? Is this kind of response a problem or an asset? 


JW: In short, yes, yes, and yes and no. I have heard that a lot, and it was certainly more common with the first paintings. Most of the lyrics I first chose were easily discernible to the reasonably musically inclined. I think that gave my audience a way into the work. As the paintings evolved, they tended to be more obscure and less obviously from a single source. My reliance on the music as source entry point into the work has faded. The lyric source for Choose Not To (2013), a mural at Rag and Bone in New York City, is taken from the punk band NoMeansNo. Nothing to Win, Nowhere to Go (2011), currently on view at Northeastern University, takes text from Ad Reinhardt’s writings about his black paintings.

In the beginning, I enjoyed it when people could recognize the songs, but now I don’t care as much. I feel confident that the recognition of the songs is no longer the central way an audience approaches the work, and I enjoy the greater freedom that provides. Lastly, I would add that often I am drawn to lyrics that evoke a visual sense that can’t really be felt in the music that they originate from, such as the pieces Untied We Stand (2011), Mankind is Unkind Man (2011) and Free to Be Evil, Free to Believe (2014).

OPP: Because they are presented out of context, the lyrics in your work sometimes read as ironic. Other times they have the ring of profound wisdom. Could you talk about lyrics as aphorism, as proverb, as spiritual teaching or as cliché . . . whatever most interests you?

JW: I certainly try not to be preachy, and a lot of what you describe really depends on the mood I am in and the mood of the piece. I want the work to be flexible and not easily pigeonholed. I am often very upset about the political situation and environmental degradation in this country, and that can drive the landscape and text in a piece. Other times, I feel impish, ironic and silly and make a piece that is quick and off-the-cuff to counterbalance the more serious pieces. Then there are other paintings that are more sentimental. A Big Commercial and On and On and On and On are heart-felt responses to the death of Beastie Boy Adam Yauch. Similarly, the recent painting Something Flickered for a Minute Then Vanished and was Gone (2014) connects both to my interest in environmental awareness and is a homage to the recently deceased Lou Reed.

In all the work, I try and convey an almost subliminal counter-culture, propaganda-like attitude. Through the use of the text, I tap into and twist the collective psyche I describe above. . . like chaotic advertising exposing our dystopia. I am deeply inspired by the painter Leon Golub. Much like him, I think of my paintings as warriors that set off into the world to change it one person at a time, slowly seeping into the minds of the viewers and irrevocably altering them.

EMILY BIONDO explores "the awkward interstices of language, presence and human relationships." Her interactive installations, which employ light, sound and touch, often require more than one viewer to activate them, while her audio sculptures crocheted from speaker wire allow the viewer to listen in on intimate, private conversations. Emily received her MFA from American University (2011), where she received the Mellon Grant and the Catharina Baart Biddle Art Award. She has exhibited widely in the Washington, DC metropolitan area, including exhibitions at the Arlington Arts Center, Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Blackrock Center for the Arts and The Athenaeum. Most recently, she exhibited in Gawker, a three-person show of interactive media at Harford Community College in Bel Air, Maryland, and Touch Me, a collaborative installation with Bradford Barr at Flashpoint Gallery, which included an artist talk at the Luce Foundation Center in the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Emily lives and works in Washington, DC.

Emily Biondo: Taste and smell certainly communicate, but they have more to do with memory than dialogue. When I constructed Proustian Fortunate Moment, I was obsessed with Proust's famous account of eating a madeleine and being immediately transported back to a vivid memory of his childhood. But that piece was more a visualization of his experience than a utilization of its sensory ideas. I'd LOVE to use taste and smell. I have always admired how Ernesto Neto uses fragrances to great effect in creating an experience, but I haven't yet exhausted the other senses in my work. When I do reach that point, however, smell will be the next sense I use.



OPP: When did you first learn to crochet and what associations did you bring to it?


EB: I associate it with my family, particularly the female members on my maternal side. I also think of the intersection of craft and comfort in the sense of doing something over and over again so familiarly that it is effortless. I learned to crochet from my great-grandmother when I was about nine. My very first crocheted piece was supposed to be a red square, and because of the erratic stitch length, ended up looking like a tiny mutilated bonnet. I learned that you could add to a crocheted piece anywhere and with any stitch, so I'd end up with elaborate free form pieces based upon my own whims. I'd end up with blankets, bikinis, cuffs, hats, etc. all without a pattern because it was easy to guess how a stitch would form a shape and layer stitches to create those forms. Years later in grad school, I'd practice layering by making complex shapes like coral, a wedding dress or a penis. Until my speaker wire pieces, the layering was used in a more utilitarian way than a visual metaphor. It helped sculpt the structure of the work.

OPP: When did you first begin to crochet with speaker wire? What are the practical challenges of this material?

EB: During grad school, I had a dream that I was back in undergrad and panicking at the end of the semester. I needed one more work to complete my portfolio. After much thought, I decided to make a large, crocheted wall hanging out of speaker wire AND a cyclone out of marbles. It was such a vivid dream and I was so confident in my ideas that when I woke up, I immediately got materials to make both pieces. The marble cyclone was a (slightly messy) disaster, but the speaker wire was a raging success.

Speaker wire is a great faux-yarn because plastic is not so different from certain polyester/acrylic blends. I use a wire gauge (thickness) that is similar in weight to a strand of thick yarn and usually crochet with a whole roll of wire at hand. Downsides include the exorbitant cost of my favorite clear-coated copper, the smell, the sometimes waxy coating used to keep the wire from sticking, the heavy weight of some pieces and the logistics of wiring 100-1000 feet of speaker wire to circuits.



OPP: How does crochet inform the audio components in sculptures like Bridal Shower (2010), Shrouded (Prayer Shawl) (2011) and Two Young Modern Women on a Car Trip (2010)?



EB: So for me, crochet was always an intricately layered web. As I got to college, I realized that my conception of communication had always been a palimpsest of words layered in one's mind. Crochet visually completes this metaphor. It is an actual example of the layering of words and phrases that travel in a circuitous strand to complete a monologue/dialogue, which ultimately completes the artwork.

My original plan was to simply crochet with nontraditional materials. But then I realized how speaker wire relates to text and communication, and I had to add audio into the works. Monologues/dialogues are not only metaphorically formed by the wire but electronically passed through the layered crocheted web.



OPP: Painful narratives are shared through interactive installations in What I Never Said (2011), Pick Up the Phone (2011) and Lift the Seat (2011). The video Wind up (2012) also gets at one-sidedness in relationships. For me, these pieces are about how technology sometimes aids and sometimes obstructs communication and connection between human beings. What are your thoughts on technology and communication?

EB: I believe that technology IS communication. Historically, humans have always used innovations to augment communication: horn blasts, carrier pigeons, mail systems, morse code, telephones, etc. These inventions and improvements shaped the way we see, talk to and understand one another. Technology shapes our culture and defines certain generational properties of dialogue (colloquialisms, length/number of pauses, touching/no touching, eye contact, MIScommunication). Those properties have always existed in communication—it just depends on the time period and technologies present to define exactly what they are. Because of this, I find technology and communication inextricably linked and will not produce artwork about communication without using and commenting on technology as well.



OPP: It's easy to blame new trends in communication technology—for example, texting, twitter and Facebook—for all that's wrong in the world: "kids today!" Your recent installation Headspace (2014) reveals both the disconnect and the continuity between the past and the present. Can you explain the piece to our readers?

EB: Headspace is one of my favorites. Like any creative work, books are a huge indicator of language and communication in any time period and culture. I like the idea that the millennial slang used today would be considered similar to the language used in classic literature at their respective time.

In Headspace, there is a glove attached to a pair of headphones. Each glove contains  an RFID reader and microcontroller used to “read” the book electronically. When participants swipe their hands across the classic literature installed on the wall, the headset reads an audio translation of a highlighted phrase into current 'millennial' language, including electronic slang, pop culture references and common phrases. Juxtaposing the two languages through technology relates even more how innovations can act as a bridge in communication.

I originally created this work for a show at a college campus because I wanted the audience to really understand and appreciate the translated language, particularly how it compares to works of literature that they probably are or have studied in school.

OPP: How did they college students respond? What about professors?

EB: The students loved it, and I loved watching them. They'd timidly try on the equipment, look around shyly, then swipe the first book. The look of surprise, dawning comprehension, laughter, then eager anticipation for the next all in a period of 30 seconds was a common and fantastic thing to witness. I liked seeing them finish the installation then grab one of their friends and make them experience it while they watched their expression. There's always a personal and a voyeuristic aspect to my work that I highly appreciate as artist and viewer.

As for the professors, they thought it was clever, but didn't really enjoy it as much as the students. I make works first for the experience, then for the analysis, so I assumed (rightly) that the students would glean the most from it.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014. Beginning on November 7, 2014, Stacia will improvise When Things Fall Apart, an ongoing, collage installation in the Lillstreet Annex Gallery. Closing reception guests will be invited to help break down the piece by pulling pins out of the wall on December 5, 2014.

Monstrously-large praying mantises, open-mouthed sharks hurling through the sky and docile, gigantic otters populate the allegorical paintings of CALEB BROWN. Influenced equally by the visual vernacular of internet meme culture, Creature Feature films and classical Flemish painting, his "ridiculous and implausible scenarios" reflect anxieties of contemporary life surrounding economic and environmental change, the mass media and the relationship between humans and animals. Caleb earned his BA from the University of Puget Sound (Tacoma, Washington) and MFA from Boston University. He is represented on the west coast by Merry Karnowsky Gallery, where he currently has work on view in the group show Parallel Universe through October 4, 2014. Caleb currently lives and works in New York City.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Tell us about your process of composing digitally and painting hyper-realistically.

Caleb Brown: I base my paintings on Photoshop collages that I create by combining and manipulating various found digital images. I use the resulting elastic and ephemeral digital collages as preliminary drawings and then translate them into the physical and permanent medium of oil paint. I look at contemporary pieces like Christian Marclay's The Clock and think about how he elevated the form of internet supercuts into “high” art. I try to see if I can do the same with the visual language of memes and Photoshop battles. I'm attempting to create pieces that marry the emerging modes of digital visual expression with classical composition and materials in order to make paintings that reflect the modern world in their methods of construction as well as their content. I think that hyperrealism can function as a demonstration of an artist's commitment to an idea (no matter how ridiculous the idea is) and forces the viewer to engage an image more actively as a result.

OPP: What’s your favorite internet meme?

CB: Although my work is inspired more by photoshop battle-style memes, I love the Doge meme. I’m fascinated at how it’s progressed from the original Doge meme, to the semi-ironic Dogecoin cryptocurrency, to the Dogecoin-sponsored NASCAR car. It’s like the internet meme manifested itself into our physical existence through sheer cuteness.

OPP: You mention in your statement that you are "inspired as much by the fledgling visual vernacular of internet meme culture as by the materials and composition of classical Flemish painting." but my first thought was disaster movies and Creature Features, like Godzilla, The Blob and Tarantula. Are you influenced by cinema?

CB: My work is very influenced by film. Most directly the Otter City paintings are a direct response to the Godzilla films. Godzilla is an allegory of the dangers of irresponsible nuclear testing, where the consequence of humankind's transgression against the natural world is sudden and disastrous. My otter paintings present a much more ambiguous view in which the natural world is changed in enormous and irrecoverable ways by the modern human world. The relationship between the two has evolved in strange and unforeseeable ways as well. One thing that I have complete faith in is our ability to accept and adapt to circumstances that seemed inconceivable or nightmarish just a generation earlier.

OPP: I have that faith, too, but what seems nightmarish to me at the moment is the collective inability to be in the present moment, physically and mentally, as represented in ubiquitous use of all our digital devices. Multitasking has its place in a work environment, but I think if we don’t all practice slowing down more and being right here, we are endangering our mental health. And yet, I totally support the creative, connective uses of new technology. This is one of the reasons that I enjoy your work. Representing those “modes of digital visual expression” in painting is great. Not because painting is a superior form, but because it’s imperative that we shift our brains out of virtual spaces more often. Thoughts on this?

CB: I admit, I have a kind of leery affection for both worlds. I suppose that my paintings represent a kind of extreme balance between the kind of manic, ephemeral digital world and the meditative, physical act of painting. The dichotomy between the impulsive nature of digital imagery and the stolid commitment of oil paint creates an interesting tension in my work. That tension works as a metaphor for the contradictions of modern life.

OPP: In Bug City 1 and 2, we view some of the action through the rear view mirror. In several of the Shark Drops, our view is from the safety of the inside of the plane, looking out the window. Could you talk about this repeated visual motif of the frame within a frame?

CB: I like to compose paintings that put the viewer in a very rigid and specific point of view in the hopes of involving them more completely in the world I'm creating. A lot of my paintings actually begin with a compositional idea. For instance, the Bug City paintings began with the idea of trying capture the feeling of having your life affected by a global crisis that is as incomprehensible in nature as it is in scope by creating an image that literally surrounds the viewer with chaos on all sides. I came up with the idea of the rear-view mirror as a device to situate the viewer in a very specific participatory position as it relates to the events in the painting. It’s also a method to describe the space behind as well as in front of the viewer, therefore depicting the their entire world. It's kind of an attempt at a visual representation of the inescapable and unfathomable forces that affect us all.

OPP: Your paintings certainly present a grim and terrifying world, and you speak of them as allegories for contemporary life. Are you deeply pessimistic about the future of the world we live in?

CB: I believe that the combination of severe and seemingly irreversible climate change and genetic engineering of crops and animals are evidence that we're entering an age in which the balance between humans and nature has been upset indefinitely. I don't want to sound overly pessimistic about the future (except for the climate change, that's obviously pretty terrible), but I think that the human manipulation of the natural world has crossed a rubicon and, whether good or bad, our world will soon look very different than it ever has.

While my paintings reflect my observations and opinions of modern life by exaggerating them into some pretty nightmarish scenarios, I try to inject the humor and excitement that I see in the modern world as well. My paintings usually capture an almost slapstick moment where a figure or the viewer suddenly locks eyes with a great white shark as it falls through the sky or a giant otter as it wanders through a hazy cityscape. It's usually a kind of stunned and uncertain meeting of the two worlds.

OPP: What gives you hope?

CB: The one thing that gives me the most hope for the future is the incredible human aptitude for innovation. Even though it can be terrifying to imagine what our world may become as a result of mankind’s interference with the natural world, it’s also kind of thrilling to imagine what solutions we might be capable of achieving.

OPP: Pick your favorite piece of your own work and tell us why it's your favorite.

CB: My favorite piece right now is Bug City 2. I think the composition works well in the way that it slices the space up and repeats the colors and forms throughout the painting. I was able to build a crisp, layered atmospheric space, using multiple framing devices to compose a pretty complicated yet coherent world for the viewer to explore. I definitely spent more time composing this piece prior to painting it than any of my other work.

OPP: And finally, Sharknado: yey or ney?

CB: It’s funny. I think Sharknado is actually reflecting some of the same notions of arbitrary fear (exaggerated to almost comic levels) that I had when conceptualizing my Shark Drop paintings—although, I have to admit to not having seen either Sharknado movie. Unfortunately, the cultural impact of Sharknado now overshadows any conversations I was hoping to provoke with my Shark Drop paintings, so I haven’t made any new ones since the movies came out. About six or seven years ago, I made a painting called Sports Explosion depicting our detached experience of the world through digital media in which several track & field athletes fly through the air with an over-idealized Hollywood explosion behind them—having just finished graduate school at Boston University, I included a Boston jersey-ed athlete. I don’t really know what to do with that painting now. I guess the viewing context for artwork is as fluid and unpredictable as the world we live in.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia recently created a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists runs until October 12, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014.

ERIC VALOSIN merges the digital and the analog, conflating cyber space and sacred space, in his exploration of the techno-sublime. He navigates the tenacious, long-historied relationship between mystical experience and art in his performances/meditations on the impossible pursuit of the perfect circle, in virtual stained glass windows that require the viewer's body to reveal themselves and in hand-drawn mandalas with QR codes at their center. Eric received his BA from Drew University and his MFA from Montclair State University in New Jersey. He recently exhibited work in See the Light at the Attleboro Arts Museum in Massachusetts (July 2014) and created a commissioned piece, As Above, So Below, at Trinity United Church in Warren, New Jersey. The installation was accompanied by an artist talk, a discussion forum and a contemplative service. His upcoming solo exhibition at Andover Newton Theological School's Sarly Gallery opens this fall (exact date TBA). In November 2014, Eric will be teaching a graduate continuing education seminar on worship and the arts at Drew Theological School in New Jersey. Eric lives and works in Montville, New Jersey.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Explain the term techno-sublime for our readers.

Eric Valosin: It’s something to which I aspire in my work, and it threads together my interests in mystical experience and its application to contemporary life. The term originally comes from the critic Hal Foster, who used it to describe the intensely-mediated spiritual immediacy he saw in Bill Viola’s video installations. Typically, traditional mystics spoke of the “unmediated immediacy” of their encounters with God. The techno-sublime asks if there can be a space for that immediacy in an era in which, allegedly, everything is mediated. It’s a meeting point between the 14th Century and the 21st, where old and new media collide and world-views come to a head, coalescing into something complex and truly ineffable.
 
In my art, I strive to co-opt traditional mystical strategies and push them through these heavy layers of mediation in an attempt to open new spaces for a sublime experience. According to Immanuel Kant, the sublime confounds—even overpowers—the viewer and yet is somehow recollected as a net gain rather than a loss. So experiences of the sublime are in line with descriptions of mystical experiences. I think the sublime is what gives all of the most powerful art that extra something on which you can’t quite put a finger. The techno-sublime is perhaps what happened to the sublime after it met Marshall McLuhan.

OPP: Circle (2013) is a "ritualized performance" in which you attempt to draw a perfect circle over and over again. The ritual is performed publicly during exhibitions and also practiced privately in your studio. How is the experience different for you when you are alone in your studio versus when there is an audience?
 
EV: I originally intended it solely to be a conventional performance, but as I started practicing, it began to feel disingenuous of me to put on airs and carry out this “meditative spiritual act” solely for show. So, I began documenting my practice and treating every run-through as a full performance, a dialogue between me and the medium itself. An audience became incidental. In many ways this helped me to grow more comfortable with the piece and connect with it, getting out of it something beyond the initial logistical anxiety and determination.
 
The entire project turns out to be a constant exercise in acceptance. As I attempt to draw the perfect circle, everything that happens on the paper is recorded, delayed 20 seconds, and then projected back onto that same paper. When my hand reaches the top of the first lap around the circle, I then begin trying to match my hand to the projected hand from the prior laps, synchronizing the physical and digital self. But a perfect circle is far too Platonic to be practical, and the looping synchronization ends up rehearsing, compiling and accentuating every inevitable flaw and eccentricity. Yet, eventually even these flaws amount to something really optically beautiful.

Furthermore, I decided that I wouldn’t discard any run-through as a failure. I learned to accept broken charcoal, technological glitches, and the like as just part of the performance. Once an audience member even interrupted the performance to ask me a question, I guess not knowing it had started. I decided to oblige her question and then continue on. I didn’t want to consider the performance so holy that I became inaccessible, nor those imperfections so unholy that they didn’t merit inclusion in the performance. It simply is what it is. Theologically this was very important to me, that my art acknowledge that our beautiful, ideal reality is comprised of messy, complex imperfections and interactions. That’s one of the big differences between the neoplatonic idealism of classical metaphysics and the relational way contemporary thought tends to see the world since postmodernism. My work ultimately seeks some sort of marriage of the two, a sort of relational metaphysics.

OPP: What goes through your mind? What does it feel like?

EV: It offers a gradual escape from thinking or feeling anything, really. Not in a numbing way, but in an emptying way. Eventually I step back from drawing and erasing the circle over and over and begin just watching the compiling footage play out on the paper in front of me. Gradually, even the slight projection hotspot becomes so accentuated that the whole image dissolves into this odd, luminous, blue/white, watery mush of compounded footage. I get a real sense of peace as I watch it all dissolve. The act of drawing is a time to dive deeply into a meditative, repetitive focus. Stepping back and watching it dissolve is an escape away from thoughts and from anything concrete.

OPP: In projection-based works like Hyalo 2 (Arch), Hyalo 2 (Rose), Triptych and Unknowledge, all (2013), the viewer's body is required to complete the experience of the piece. Without the body to block the projected light, the beauty of the sacred geometry is not available. What can you tell those of us who've only experienced these works online about how viewers interact with your projections?

EV: They hinge around that moment of discovery in which the viewers unwittingly walk in front of the projector and, to their surprise, reveal the imagery in their shadow instead of obscuring it. Or, in the case of the Hyalo projects, they discover that their optical experience changes dramatically depending on their position around the work. I love watching them play and exercise an almost child-like curiosity at what initially confounds their perceptual expectations. This is the moment of the techno-sublime I spoke of earlier, when the piece defies logic in a way that simultaneously stupefies and enlightens the viewing experience and causes viewers to second guess the way they see. It’s sadly true that this is something you can only fully get in person.
 
I used to devise ways to discourage viewers from making shadow puppets in my artwork, but soon I came to realize it was a somewhat inevitable occurrence. I went to the James Turrell retrospective at LACMA last year and watched adults give their friends bunny ears in his hallowed light-cube projection Afrum (White). Even the great Turrell is not immune to the shadow puppet! That sealed the deal for me; I decided to embrace interactivity as a valid urge within the viewer. The piece was in some way less complete if the viewer was taken out of the equation and expected to remain aloof as an observer.
 
All spiritual experiences are necessarily interactive, and as we enter an age of increasing technological interactivity and user-definability, the viewer’s body becomes more and more important. The philosopher Marcel Mauss—and to a certain extent Foucault as well—points out that “techne” refers not only to technology but to bodily techniques, which, Mauss says, underpin all our mystical states. It’s the reason we kneel to pray, do yoga, or practice zazen. It’s also the reason I’ve begun working more and more with interactive technologies and new media in my work. What might these mystical postures and movements look like in a hyper-connected, technological world in which the body is just as much virtual as it is physical?

OPP: Your hand-drawn Mandalas with QR codes at their center send the viewer to a different, random website every time they are scanned. I don't have a smartphone, so I haven't had the experience of "completing" this meditation, but I like the idea that you could end looking at art, merchandise, news, celebrity gossip, wikipedia or porn. It really echoes the Buddhist idea that the sacred is right here in the present moment, no matter what that moment contains. When you've scanned it, where have you ended up?
 
EV: Once I ended up at some photographer’s website. It was a strange experience to have my artwork catapult me to a meditation on someone else's. I’ve landed on a lot of merchandise websites and a couple very bizarre conspiracy theorist sites. I’ve also gotten my fair share of 404 Error messages. Many people at first don’t realize it’s randomized. This confusion is one of the weakest and strongest aspects of the piece. On one hand, they may end up thinking I’m intentionally supporting a given website’s agenda (which was particularly disconcerting to me the time a friend of mine ended up on a satanist website), but on the other hand it urges them to intentionally comb their destination for some spiritual content, assuming it must be “hidden in there somewhere.” In many cases, only upon rescanning and landing elsewhere a few times do the randomness and Buddhist implications you mention come to light.
 
Uncertainty is the only certain thing about faith. Uncertainty begins to dig into mystical “unknowing,” the apophatic “negative theology” that attempts to get at the unknowable by surpassing and negating all that’s knowable. Even the person who cannot scan the QR code is left with a similar open-endedness as the person who does scan it.

OPP: You have plenty of experience of bringing the spiritual into the gallery. What was it like to bring art into a religious space in your commissioned piece, As Above, So Below, at Trinity United Church in Warren, New Jersey? 
 
EV: It’s a really interesting challenge. I ended up creating an interactive projection piece mapped onto the slanted ceiling of the church’s chancel area. It used a hacked Microsoft Kinect sensor to integrate congregants into the video, and randomly recomposes itself every 50 minutes. I wanted to create something aesthetically pleasing, engagingly interactive and potentially meditative, but also to challenge the space’s implicit hierarchies and push people out of their artistic comfort zones. In the gallery, the struggle is to bring spiritual connotations into a traditionally secular setting without being didactic or polemicizing. In a church, however, those spiritual implications are inherent in the setting, and the challenge becomes making the art accessible without watering it down. I had to really refine the big questions driving my work in order to develop something I think is substantive enough to hold up in both arenas.

There’s a lot of historical baggage to trip over. Spirituality and art had walked hand in hand for millennia. But when Galileo came along and inadvertently told the church they might not have the market cornered on objective truth, a proud and dogmatic church shut its door on subjectivity. This was the first crack into the schism between the sacred and secular. The result was that art, which thrives on ambiguity and an earnest investigation of big questions, began shifting toward the more hospitable realm of secularity, where it had more room to breath. This was reinforced in the late Baroque by the emergence of non-religious patronage and a cultural appreciation of the real and mundane (as opposed to the ideal).
 
If the sacred-secular divide weren’t enough, a secondary rift developed within secularity itself. Mass media, which changed the way we process images, and the heavy hands of Clement Greenberg and others divided high art from accessible art. Throw into the mix the growing humanism in 19th/20th century philosophy, and you end up with a huge mess where almost nobody understands the “art world,” let alone the spiritual in art, least of all religious institutions, now twice removed (not to mention the argument that it’s all moot because “God is dead” anyway). There are certainly exceptions, but I have found that many religious institutions today are pretty impoverished in their use and understanding of art as a result.

OPP: Did you have an agenda related to the schism between the sacred and the secular in As Above, So Below?

EV: The events I held at Trinity United Church were about mending that rift. I wanted to afford people who may not know what to do with contemporary art a chance to really engage with it and to open a dialogue about how art really works when it’s working well. I wanted to encourage the church to embrace art as a relational tool for broaching challenging subjects and heightening the spiritual life of the church. After the contemplative service there was a time for discussion, and I was blown away. People first approached my installation with, “Great, so what does it mean?” and “What am I looking at here?” When given the dedicated time and permission to investigate it without fear of being wrong, they started to be able to read the work in real substantive ways (ways which I had to go to grad school to learn). Not only that, but they started to measure that experience against their own preconceptions and translate it into meaningful dialogue and even some spiritual epiphanies. 

It’s not about reclaiming art as a pawn in some dogmatic agenda, but about being comfortable enough—especially in churches—to trust the Spirit’s interactions amid those ambiguous, complex spaces where world-views collide and art is at its most powerful. It’s about learning how to use the artistic sublime, as it were, toward a greater church experience. It’s about urging the church to think like an artist, and even urging churches to become artists themselves. It’s about unknowing a lot of what we take for granted and reacquainting ourselves with mystery. Ultimately I believe this transcends even the religious/secular dualism and applies to the most fundamental ways in which we all experience the world and each other.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia recently created a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists runs until October 12, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014.

Van Gogh, Picasso and Andy Warhol meet family snapshots, Britney Spears and Mister Rogers in ANNA JENSEN's densely-patterned, psychological landscapes. Anna is deeply in touch with the Jungian shadow. She expertly balances humor and darkness, referencing her personal biography in a way that points to a universal, human vulnerability. Anna attended the University of Georgia in Athens and Agnes Scott College in Decatur, Georgia. Her work has been featured three times in Studio Visit Magazine and on The Jealous Curator. She has had solo exhibition at Honour Stewart Gallery (Asheville, North Carolina), Dockside Gallery (Atlanta) and, most recently, Nouvel Organon (Paris). Anna lives in Asheville, North Carolina.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Could you talk generally about the balance of funny and sad in your work? How do you know when you've got it right?

Anna Jensen: I generally start painting without any conscious intention. A painting can begin as a figure drawing or me riffing off of a family photograph that moves me at that moment. Or I will just start mark-making and finger painting to see what memories or feelings are evoked. I go from there. I was playing with paint loosely on top of a more tightly-rendered piece and had this flash of memory from an incident when I was a child on a road trip with my family. The yellow and white splotches I was compelled to add to the image in the present all of a sudden represented the mustard and mayonnaise that my father once smeared on my brother's face in an inappropriate attempt to reprimand him. So the innate actions of my hands and the paint brought about this unexpected connection that was personally significant to me, and so I decided to keep it. It's always comforting with paint to know that you CAN paint over something if you choose to. And I often do. I paint and repaint my surfaces an insane number of times until I stumble—often through great effort—onto that perfect balance of funny and sad. It's a gut thing when I know I've found it. There's no formula. It's both difficult to find and effortless. C'est la vie!

OPP: Tell us about your saddest piece.

AJ: They all break my heart and save me at the same time. I think life is so incredibly sad and yet SO amazing and wonderful. I love that paradox, although that in itself is gut wrenching. A Foreboding Shadow Befell Her So She Drowned Her Future Sorrows is, at first glance, happy and bright, familial. . . love filled. But, there is major sadness or doom waiting in there. A man looking at it in Paris said aloud, "this is like a knife in my heart." It was so touching to hear that he had such a strong response to the image. This piece is based on a found photograph of my mother holding my little sister in our childhood kitchen as I sit to the side morosely glugging a goblet of golden liquid. There is a double exposure creeping over the left side of the frame. It forebodes trouble to come. My eyes have dark circles around them, and I chose to accentuate the red-eye effect in my eyes while removing it from my sister and mom. There is also a spider hanging over my mother's head, likely a leftover Halloween decoration but also adding an eery sense of imminent danger.

My mom died suddenly when she was way too young. It was, of course, a terrible tragedy. It has been very difficult to accept living without her. I had some pretty serious issues with alcohol abuse as a teenager/young adult, so the photo was telling in many ways. I just had to make a painting from it. The patterns in my work most likely stem from these times in my life when I had a living Mom and a more traditional family situation. She decorated with many competing and/or complimentary patterns. At times, it felt very busy, but there was a certain flow and comfort in the partnering and placement. I'm definitely a nostalgia junky, so things like that really get to me. I can find the ugliest thing drop-dead gorgeous if it evokes a certain feeling. . . that feeling of heartbreak in the name of love.

OPP: Tell us about your funniest piece.

AJ: I think Finally I'm A Functional Alcoholic is pretty darn funny. The goofy, starry eyed look on her face while the fire burns behind her. The landing-strip pubic hair (as my eccentric friend coined it). Of course there's some sadness going on. She's perhaps blitzed in the face of impending doom. The flowers I painted flanking her were from a gardening book I found which belonged to my late mother. But, over all it is humorous somehow. . . at least for a moment.

AJ: I try to infuse whatever I do with some level of emotion. My dog Beulah is like my child, so I totally love and respect animals and want to convey that in the portraits. They really do have personalities. One little mark in the wrong place and it looks like a totally different creature and would be unsettling to the pet parent! Those were basically gifts. I am glad I did them, but I have decided to cut back on stuff like that because I really do need to eat!  And I can't seem to NOT put my all into whatever it is that I am working on, whether I am being payed for it or not. The Brando piece took me weeks for example. That wallpaper!

OPP: Do you have any rules about what kinds of commissions you will take?  

AJ: I'm doing a pet portrait for my uncle right now and a piece for a friend's family who lost their youngest son recently. After those, I think I might be done with commissions/trades/gifts for a while! I have a million ideas for paintings I NEED to realize. If I could crank out work really fast that would be one thing. . .  or if I was independently wealthy. But I can't, and I'm not. I recently spent ten days on a painting of a mummy for one of my sister's low-income students because in passing he said, "hey, could you draw me a mummy?"  and I said, "sure, kid!  I'll draw you a mummy!" Again, I don't regret doing those things and honestly it is unlikely that I will really stop. But, it is my plan to strictly focus on my personal vision for a good while starting soon.

OPP: Tell us about the Automobile Series, which you note on your website is "NEW work in progress." What's the inspiration for these new paintings?

AJ: Cars, especially older cars, are so structurally and energetically beautiful. They hold so many hopes and memories. . . from the mundane to the grandiose. It is about the physical aspects—color/shape/shine—as well as the nostalgia and personalities they evoke. I didn't think too much about it at first, but have since been flooded with all kinds of memories of the cars in my personal  history. My mom was a traveling saleswoman, so she always had a company car. As she moved up in her job, the cars got better and better. It was always so exciting when she would get a new one. . . that new car smell! And when she would pick me up, the air conditioning was such a relief from the Georgia heat. But, my dad always had junkers.  He is a mister fix-it type. . . he was an engineer, but circumstances landed him in home repairs/renovations. As a family we were never super well off, so my mom's company cars were a real luxury. My first car was a 1983 Volvo. It had been sitting in a field for years before I got it, so the inside was completely green with mold. Although I cleaned the heck out of it and smoked a million cigarettes in it with my friends, I don't think it ever lost all of that moldy smell.

I started the Automobile Series in an attempt to produce a bunch of work more quickly, less obsessively. But, they took on a life of their own, and now I am in over my head with all of the ideas I have for how to complete them. They are probably more involved and OCD-inducing than any before. There are a few more that I haven't added to my website yet because they are just TOO personal or not nearly ready for show. I just wanted to let people know that although I haven't presented finished new works in a while, I HAVE been busy. There is just never enough time in a day, as we all know.

OPP: You've just returned from Paris, where you had your first international solo show at gallery Nouvel Organon. Tell us about the show and your experience. Also, how do you decompress after a big solo show?

AJ: That show was an incredible experience. It involved so much risk, investment and hard work, but it was beyond worth it. I just can't say enough about it. I learned so much about the city and about myself. I made lifelong friends, which is priceless! I sold eight pieces—not too shabby! We had multiple events in the gallery to keep it creative and exciting. Spoken word, poetry and musical artists performed in the space. An amazing Butoh duo created a piece relating to my work, and they even had me paint their feet in the performance. The whole month was a beautiful time for everyone involved. That being said, I'm happy to be "home" and back in my studio.

OPP: How do you decompress after a big solo show?  

AJ: In the earlier days after a big show, I was so frazzled from all the build-up and hours of talking to strangers—immediately following the concentrated solitary time that went into creating the work—that I hightailed it to a Mexican restaurant to have a LITTLE food and a LOT of frozen margaritas. I found that I didn't leave there feeling much better. As I've become more seasoned, I have learned that some down time simply hanging with my dog is an immediate stabilizer. Exercise and, of course, more painting helps as well. The social and showing/talking part of this job always leaves me feeling a bit shell shocked. But, I'm so appreciative of the human connections I make on those occasions. I'm honored and grateful that people show up and make themselves vulnerable to speak up and share their response to the work. It's incredible. This is a mysterious and perplexing "job" to have, and I question it all the time. But, art has existed all this time for a reason. A BIG reason. So I always come back to realizing the value in staying on this path. However winding. . .

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia recently created a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists runs until October 12, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014.

The objects we collect and accumulate serve as vehicles to both cling to and let go of our identities and personal experiences. JACINDA RUSSELL reveals the nuances of this continuum in her photography, sculpture and installations.  Some collections are extensions of her own body—fingernail clippings, old swimsuits and a broken comb she used for 25.5 years—while others present the obsessions and fixations of others. Jacinda received her BFA from Boise State University in Studio Art and her MFA from the University of Arizona in Photography. Her work has been exhibited at Texas Gallery, DiverseWorks, Atlanta Contemporary Art Center, Houston Center for Photography and the Academy of Fine Art & Design in Wroclaw, Poland. Faux, also featuring the work of Alexis Pike, opens on September 5, 2014 at Boise State University Visual Arts Center in Idaho. She a member of the Board of Directors and participant in the Postcard Collective. Jacinda is an Associate Professor of Art at Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana.

OtherPeoplesPixels: You've said you come from a family of collectors. What kinds of collections did you witness as a child?

Jacinda Russell: Growing up, my father's major collection was balloon tire bicycles. At one time, there were nearly 200 inside the house, suspended from the ceilings or propped against any available wall space. He also accumulated soda bottles, porcelain signs, rusty toys, wheels, odd pieces of metal and wood, photographs and old advertising signage that he someday hoped to use in art projects.

OPP: Do you remember a favorite collection from childhood?

JR: My favorite collection as a child is so hard to answer! I owned a lot of small wooden boxes that contained pins, stamps,tiny toy animals like plastic elephants and old rings. I also saved artifacts from places I visited: shells, rocks and purple-tinted glass worn and shaped by waves. Those are the items I still remember and even have one representation in a display case in my living room today.

OPP: There are probably as many idiosyncratic collection practices and purposes as there are humans, but I see collections as falling into two primary categories: collections that can be completed and those that can't. Thoughts? Do you tend towards one or the other?

JR: That's an interesting question, and I've never thought about it in that manner. I can see how that pertains to a comic book collection where someone owns every single issue of a publication, however, my collections exist as finite units. No matter how many objects are accumulated, when I say it is done, that is it. For instance, I don't need all the teeth my brother and I lost as a child photographed on a white piece of cotton. I only use what I have, and that is fine.

OPP: How do you decide when it is done? Is it a strictly artistic decision or is it something else?

JR: I stop when a collection overwhelms me. The best example I can give is of a small series of photographs that I am currently working on that features every single list I saved from June 1, 2010 - May 31, 2013. I kept them as long as I could before the stack made me physically uncomfortable and took up too much space on the shelf. I am currently sorting these into categories and photographing each pile individually and in small groups. There are 1045 of them.

OPP: Your project A Tale of Two Obsessions: David C. Nolan & Marilyn Monroe and Arline Conradt & the Cat Scrapbook, 2011 - 2013 investigates the collections of two strangers. How did you first encounter these collections? How did they become part of your work as an artist?

JR: I've known about the David C. Nolan photographs of Marilyn Monroe for years. They have haunted me since I was a teenager. I never thought to make art about them until my father gave them to me. He has always been a great source of material, perhaps knowing better than I do that I will someday turn it into artwork. If you would have told me when he first gave me the cat scrapbook that I would make an installation featuring 7500+ cats as a serious art project, I would have scoffed at the idea. I love this series because it is a step away from myself, a look at two individuals from a different era that are not too dissimilar in the manner in which they organize and structure their collections. The source of their material is very different, and I feel connected to—and repulsed by—both.

OPP: In what ways are you a documentarian? In what ways are you not?

JR: I define documentary work as an objective viewpoint, and everything I do is subjective. I have always considered myself a pseudo-archivist rather than a documentarian. I fiddle too much with the truth, preferring to manipulate what I see rather than leave it alone. It is very difficult for me to take a photograph that is not staged in some manner and consider it artistic (although I appreciate documentary photographers like William Eggleston and Robert Adams).

OPP: You recently completed a summer residency, correct? Where did you go and what did you make?

JR: Since I finished Nine Fake Cakes and Nine Bodies of Water, I have often wondered if I were to redo it, how could it be better? The answer lies in the location. Although many of the bodies of water in that project had a purpose, they were not as meaningful as they could be. I started a series last summer based on my autobiography as told in water (the opening image on my website is the first photograph, but the series is in-progress and currently untitled, hence not referenced anywhere else yet). I have a list of 14 locations that I must document and collect materials from in order to finish this work. They range from locations important to my family history to destinations I have longed to visit because I thought they would change the way I perceive water and thus, my relationship to the world (the glacial melt of Lake Louise is an example of the latter).

I was invited to attend a residency at Surel's Place in Boise, Idaho, which is conveniently located next to five of the locations on my list. I spent the entire month of May revisiting many of the places where I vacationed as a child. I collected water samples, made sound and video recordings and took photographs. I am halfway done with the list and hope that I will have completed it in two years. I am still editing and thinking about the images I acquired. Some will exist as photographs while others will be featured in a mail art project, an artist book and a mixed media installation. I have always wanted my work to extend further into the third dimension, and I hope this series will be a breakthrough in that direction. 

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia recently created a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists runs until October 12, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA. Here|Now, a two-person exhibition curated by MK Meador and also featuring the work of Jason Uriah White, is on view at Design Cloud in Chicago from July 25 - October, 24, 2014.

OtherPeoples Pixels: Tell us about the work in Past Time, your most recent solo show at Packer-Schopf Gallery in Chicago.

Geoffry Smalley: For several years I've been exploring social and political issues related to American sports, and Past Time is the latest body of work. In my daily dealings as an art conservator, I think about the works I treat, their place in American art history and the nature of authenticity. I have to hide my hand when treating an art work, and because of that I began to think of ways I could use historical images for my own purposes. At the time, I was also reading about the rise of sports during the Industrial Revolution, which reflected America's progression into the modern age.

OPP: I'm especially interested in the sports vistas, in which you insert contemporary arenas and stadiums into romantic landscape paintings. 

GS: The vistas are reproductions of Hudson River School paintings onto which I have painted images of various sports arenas. Painters like Thomas Cole and Asher Durand held cautiously optimistic views of society's progress. They believed in the sublime, the closer-to-God power of untamed nature. They captured these unspoiled vistas at the very moment our country steamrolled west and grew into the industrial superpower it is now. Sports flourished in the same way. At a time when workers first began to have leisure time, baseball emerged from rural America. It was played at what was then considered a rapid pace, under the sun, during the growing season, affected by the elements. Football is industrial manufacturing plus military readiness: taking land by force, specialized individual moving parts choreographed to achieve a singular, larger goal. Basketball picked up football’s individualized machinations but added a more free-form individualism to the mix. As Americans left the rural landscape to congregate in cities, immigrants, settlers and native-born people tried to assimilate their variegated histories into an homogenous American identity. Sport offered a common site and a common language where that diversity could be bridged.

OPP: Team names and mascots are a jumping off point in many of your drawings on found images, as in Chief and Cowboy from 2014, as well as Seahawks, Orioles and Eagles from 2011. It seems like most professional sports team names are either history or animal references. Is this the case? Why do you think that is? Can you think of any exceptions?

GS: I believe team names are derived from the tradition of using animal totems as a way to harness the mythic powers, internalize the traits and externalize the characteristics of certain creatures. In football you have the Eagles, Lions, Panthers, Bears—all predatory, strong animals. Baseball gives you Cubs, Orioles, Cardinals and Blue Jays—not really striking fear into an opponent with those names. But there are also historical and social references—49ers, Cowboys, Brewers and Steelers—which reflect each team’s hometown industry/identity and blue collar fans. Of course you have the tradition of “honoring” Native Americans by making them mascots. From Chief Wahoo to Chief Noc-A-Homa to the tomahawk chop, there are racist slurs appropriated with great popularity across all sports. The traditional Thanksgiving NFL matchup of the Cowboys vs. Redskins is also indicative of historically entrenched nationalism and racism that still bubbles beneath the surface. Team names are meant to carry with them meaning and identity, and do so quite powerfully, sometimes with unintended consequences. There just a couple exceptions to the animal/historical references, where a team name actually invokes either more etherial or benign powers. The Heat, the Thunder, The Sox from Chicago and Boston. . . hard to take umbrage with the fact that Miami is hot or that Chicagoans wear socks.

OPP: Could you talk generally about the strategy of the cut-out in your work? You've used it in collage, drawing and sculpture, and it appears to be both a aesthetic and conceptual strategy.

GS: I have used the cut-out for about 15 years, originally as a way to isolate all or part of a specific image from the collage-like paintings I used to make. It began as an attempt to understand why I used a particular image, how re-contextualizing an image changed or added to its meaning. That isolation evolved to be more of a strategy of simultaneously concealing and revealing, taking images past straight representation and into a more mysterious place. The cut-out also acts as an interruption, a pause or glitch in the image a viewer is trying to decipher. Not being given the whole story at once allows for a slower absorption of information and keeps the question alive longer. It's always more interesting when you don't know the answer. On a base level, cutting and collaging is an extension of my drawing practice, a way to regroup and quickly realize thoughts.

OPP: I'm seeing a lot of forms that evoke the Fleur-de-lis and other coat-of-arms designs. Some examples include the graphite helmet designs in Starbury (2011), the decorative flourishes in Antique Sorrow (2008) and the cut-out gold foil in Dale Earnhardt Portrait Cartouche (2007). What do these flourishes mean to you? How has your use of them changed over time?

GS: Those forms mostly come from the Rococo. I was picking on NASCAR, talking about the spectacular, florid, over-the-top displays of eye candy that NASCAR embodies. The Rococo is often discounted as a movement entrenched in frivolity and poor taste, one of shallow and selfishly playful intent. Just beauty. I used the forms to create what I called “portrait cartouches” of NASCAR drivers, comprised of all the sponsors’ logos on their fire suits. As with the cut-out, decorative forms serve dual purposes. As aesthetic forms, they bring shape and content to an image. In Starbury and similar images from Past Time, I conflated athletic and military display, imagining athletes “in the trenches” or as modern-day gladiators and warriors. I began to think about contemporary athletes’ tattoos as parade armor worn by Medieval and Renaissance kings. That armor was never worn in battle. It was a narrative display of power.

OPP: How do you decompress after a solo show or the completion of a big project? Do you need a break before returning to the studio?


GS: I definitely need to take a break. I usually spend a little time away from the studio after a show, until my feet get too itchy to keep me away. I see an exhibition as an opportunity to get some perspective on where I am with my work in general. It’s good to see all the pieces out of the studio, having a dialogue together. I take that back to the studio with me. After cleaning and rearranging, I research, make drawings and listen to a lot of baseball on the radio to prepare for the next thing. 

OPP: And what's your next thing?

GS: While making work for Past Time, I had thoughts and ideas bouncing around that didn't fit with that show, so they got put on the back burner. But as I stated above, feet get itchy. I have been thinking about how the landscape/stadium idea relates to religion. Certain stadia and arenas are considered pilgrimage sites for fans. Naturally, inside those sites are relics, items imbued with the history and iconography of the residents housed within the building. I’m working on ideas for sculptural forms that play with sports reliquaries and trophies. . . nothing fully-formed yet. But I’m excited to get back to work.

DEANNA KRUEGER’s work sits at the intersection of sculpture, painting and textiles. Her wall-hung Shards, composed of ripped, angular pieces of acrylic monotypes on X-Ray/MRI film stapled together, reference quilting, Minimalist painting and primitive surgery. Deanna graduated Summa Cum Laude with a BFA from University of Michigan and received her MFA with Highest Honors from Eastern Michigan State. In 2014, her work was included in the group exhibitions Meditative Surfaces at the Fort Wayne Museum of Art (Indiana) and the Rockford Midwestern Biennial, on view until September 28, 2014, at the Rockford Art Museum (Illinois). She is currently preparing for a forthcoming solo exhibition at The Robert T. Wright Community Gallery of Art (College of Lake County, Grayslake, Illinois) titled Deanna Krueger: Shimmer. The exhibition opens on February 27, 2015. Deanna lives and works in Chicago.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Could you explain the different parts of the process of creating the works in your series Shards.

Deanna Krueger: I begin by printing acrylic monotypes onto recycled medical diagnostic film (X-Ray/MRI film). The film is then torn apart and the shards are reconnected into new configurations using thousands of staples. The process yields large wall-hanging pieces that are semi-translucent and slightly dimensional.

OPP: What's your favorite part? Least favorite part?

DK: The painting and printing is probably my favorite part. It always seems to happen too quickly, though I also really enjoy combining the various nuances of colors on the shards. Tearing the film creates quite a bit of noise. It sounds like I am taking out my aggression, but it just makes me laugh as that is usually not the case.

I assemble the pieces while seated on the floor of my studio, which is tile that I painted white so I can see the translucent colors. I set out the shards into little piles of color, much the way a painter lays out her palette. Then it is kind of like a game of seated Twister as I reach and staple, reach and staple. The repetition is meditative. At times I wish I could get my process off the floor to lessen the physical strain, but I always go back to that tile.

OPP: When did you first start working with recycled medical diagnostic film? Where do you get so much of it?

DK: In grad school I was experimenting with translucency on small discarded Mylar retail signs. My adviser saw what I was doing and mentioned that someone had dropped off some medical film years ago to the studio. She gave me about twenty sheets of 14” x 17” film. I instantly fell in love with the stuff. Acrylic won’t usually stick to plastic, but the film has a chemical substrate designed to absorb pigment. At that time, I was working as a preparator and assistant to the Visual Arts Coordinator at an arts program at the University of Michigan Health System. I made a lot of contacts with clinics and stockpiled the stuff. Most of what I got are clear “cleanup” sheets. They are run through the diagnostic machines between scans to clean off the print rollers, so when you go for your brain scan there are no accidental ink blobs on your results. Sometimes people give me their own personal X-Rays and MRIs, and I have also gotten some over-exposed film. I did some other things with the film for my MFA thesis show, but my Shards series started the year after I finished.

OPP: Tell us about your choice of staples as the connecting element for the Shards.

DK: In undergrad, I found a used, specialty hand-held stapler. I appreciated its elegance and simplicity. I am a bit obsessed with tools! After my MFA, the medical film and the staples came together. They seemed the perfect match. There is also the connection that staples are often used in surgery. The staples add an edge to the work. I welcome this bit of darkness. . . though they also add sparkle. So there is dark and there is light.

OPP: Let's talk about how practical concerns affect art-making. I imagine these works are difficult to transport. They seem like they might crack or break if rolled up. How do you move this work from one space to another? Has it ever affected where you exhibit or the scale of your work?

DK: Though the pieces look quite delicate, they are actually very sturdy. The film is .7mil BoPET (Biaxially-oriented polyethylene terephthalate). I roll the work up and make long narrow boxes for shipping. Unlike paper or other plastics, it pops right back to flat when unrolled. They have safely shipped to numerous states and to Rome and Berlin. I once shipped eight pieces to Florida all in one box. My largest pieces so far were 75” x 75.” Even those were less than two pounds each. When I am pressed for time, UPS makes the boxes for me. I love to work large. I am disqualified from a lot of shows for it, but I don’t care. I have recently made some at 36” x 36,” but I think the larger ones have more impact. In my current studio I could probably make something as wide as 14 feet. I am waiting for that commission to roll in! Work has only been damaged once. A bunch of rowdy children were running around and yanked on it. It was torn beyond repair. The force required would probably have punctured a typical canvas as well. Thank goodness the venue had insurance.



OPP: Although your Shards are hard and sharp and don't have the same associations of comfort and care, I see quilts when I look at them. Like quilters, you break apart and recombine materials that could be thrown away. And there are embedded stories that aren't legible to the viewer. Are you influenced by quilting or its history?

DK: Yes. I had a duel major in undergrad: Drawing/Painting and Fibers. My MFA was in Textiles. A lot of viewers have mentioned the similarities to quilts and also to stained glass. I like the fact that peoples’ histories are embedded in the material. I am transforming what may have been a negative experience into a more positive thing.

I describe these pieces as sculptural paintings. Unfortunately, I think work in fiber still often has the stigma of being crafty women’s work. I pulled my own little Guerrilla Girl stunt the first time I entered Shards in a juried exhibition. A postcard produced for a show during undergrad had a typo in my name. They spelled it Dean. I got to thinking that the gay, male juror might like a Dean better than a Deanna, so I entered as Dean. I got in and won best in show. I would like to think it would not have mattered. I dropped that charade after the gallery took me into their stable and gave me a solo show. 



OPP: The surfaces of the two-dimensional works in Liminal have an amazing, scale-shifting effect. I switch back and forth between seeing relief maps of landforms and microscopic views of ice crystals. Could you talk about the relationship of the very large and the very small in this work? How does this relate to your overall interests in making art?

DK: Geology, fossils, crystalline structures, growth patterns and topographical maps all inspire and fascinate me. In fact, a Swiss friend of mine calls me Map Girl, because when traveling I must know at all times know where we are on the map.

I enjoy creating the fluctuation of micro and macro. That is one common thread between the Liminal and Shards pieces. I love it when people say the work looks so different from far away than it does close up. More intimate observation reveals the layers of intricacy.