OtherPeoplesPixels Blog

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020). Stacia is one of three 2021 Artists-in-Residence at Zócalo Apartments (Houston, TX). Follow her  @staciayeapanis to see what happens  @zocalo_air.

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

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

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

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

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

Big Halal Dreams (2017)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

SK: The text says: 

“Friendly Residentia Authority 

Undertaking development Inauguration 

By The Honorable Hands Of The Eminent Connoisseur 

Madam Saba Khan”

Monument and Other Follies (2019) Installation shot.

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

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

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

Monuments and Other Follies (2019) Installation shot.

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

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

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

Monument for an Undecided Event (2019)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020).

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

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

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

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

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

OPP: Who are your artistic ancestors? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yallah Sim Sim (2020) Video. 4 minutes.

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

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

Untitled (2019) from Chaos Comes and Goes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020).

Untitled, 2015. Acrylic on paper. 20.5" x 25.5"

LUIS ROMERO's dimensional, layered works confuse and capture the eye with overlapping, repeated marks. Somewhere between sculpture and collage, these accumulations of hand-drawn, layered canvas, paper and cardboard are often held together by staples, merging pure abstraction with mundane materials that keep the viewer grounded in the real world. Luis earned his Post Baccalaureate Certificate and MFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Recent exhibitions include solo show Who Says Words with My Mouth? Who Looks Out with My Eyes? (2018) at Adams and Ollman Gallery (Portland, OR) and Between Land and Sky (2019), curated by Nazafarin Lotfi, at Everybody Gallery (Chicago). In March, Luis's solo show at Museo de las Américas (San Juan, Puerto Rico) was put on hold due to the pandemic. Echolalia is now open and on view through January 23, 2021. You can see a video walkthrough of the exhibition here. Luis lives and works in Chicago, IL.

OtherPeoplesPixels: How do found materials show up in your work. In other words, tell us about the surfaces you are drawn to make marks on and the materials you use to make marks.

Luis Romero: In grad school I began covering found objects with marks all over. The idea was to envelop the object. I was using mostly pens and sharpies on things like brown paper bags and organic objects like leaves, branches, stones. In Home/Hypnosis (1999), I first started exploring a sort of camouflage effect on found objects within a limited palette of whites and grays. At a period when I felt the need to open up what I was doing, I started working with materials found in the street. This time it was the material rather than the object that interested me. I started constructing little fetish-like objects made of materials found around my neighborhood and downtown. I wanted the raw textures and the colors. (No organic materials this time.) It was easier for me to experiment with colors if I found them already existing in objects. Some have pen, others acrylic marks, but I used marks sparingly. The result, or one of the results of that period was the work Selected Fetish Drawings which I exhibited at the Drawing Center. Somebody asked me around that time if I was thinking of Schwitters when I did this, but actually it had more to do with the exercises that Josef Albers made Rauschenberg do when he was his teacher. (Off The Wall by Calvin Tomkins was very important for me. I think I did my first experiments with found objects around the time I read that work in Puerto Rico well before going to grad school.) Since then I’ve used found materials sparingly. Mutant Map of the United States for example, has some found trash from the street. I wanted it to have echoes from that fetish period. 

Untitled, 2010. Acrylic and pen on cardboard. 8.25" x 17.25"

OPP: What about cardboard specifically? Why is this a surface you return to again and again?

LR: The cardboard that I use nowadays is mostly found but that’s not what attracts me. I mean, I could very well work with cardboard that I’ve bought. What attracts me to cardboard is the warmth and the roughness, and that, like paper, the material also exists outside of the realm of art. The fact that the material is colloquial, is connected to everyday life, is more important to me. It is in fact very important for all I do. 

I'm Not That Innocent. 2015. Acrylic on paper and canvas. 17" x 27.25"

OPP:You were a 2010 3Arts Award recipient. In your intro video, you said, “My drawings are a surface, but they also want to suggest something that you cannot see.” What is the something we cannot see, for you?

LR: I should explain first that after college I began constructing drawings with layers of paper. I should explain first that after college I began constructing drawings with layers of paper. In some cases the layers suggest something very organic and in others something very architectural. They always reminded me of books too. All these constructions were very enveloping. Working with layers gives volume to the work and creates a relation between surfaces. In any case, my statement just means that works in that period were very interested in suggesting a space behind the surface, or between the surfaces, as something that was evidently there but that you could not see. Something unknowable and seductive. When things are not explicit, the mind of the viewer becomes more active. I wanted to activate a sense of wonder. The marks seem to begin from the invisible space, from the shadows. That’s why people often examine my work from different angles trying to see between the layers of paper. My works are constructed somewhat differently these days but I still try to suggest an area that is not seen. 

Home/ Hypnosis. 1999. Pen on found materials, plastic. 6.25" x 20" x 18"

OPP: What role does optical illusion play in our work?

LR: It’s a very useful tool. I’m referring specifically to the illusion or the visual confusion created by camouflage. When the mark is not contained within margins of a page but goes around it and seems to exist beyond the material, the objects with the same patterns blend. They loose individuality. They become less substantial. The mark is overpowers the object. The insight really goes back to that Home/Hypnosis work. But I do it now in different ways. Different surfaces can blend if they have similar patterns. In my studio I move things around just to make more space to work and often find random connections. Many pieces have started that way. Surfaces with similar patterns find each other by chance. They attach themselves visually. It's very weird. Very organic. 

Green Rectangle, Absolutely Baroque. 2017. Acrylic on paper and canvas. 20" x 16"

OPP: Do you think about abstraction as pure color, form, line and material? Or are these and the processes you use metaphors?

LR: I rarely know what the project is going to be about. I always think of my task as finding the organizing principle for each piece, the “as if.” Finding it is something that happens while working; in the act, not a priori. Often the processes I use carry echoes of other activities.

Some works have begun just because I want to see two particular colors together, or because a particular shape is interesting, without considering what it could mean or what it suggests. There have been cases where I use the same color scheme of a previous work because I’m trying to explore the way the work is constructed and don’t want to be too concerned with harmonizing colors. Sometimes I just happen to have left over pieces from a previous work. But all those elements (color, form, line and material) do carry associations that I eventually use in creating a work. I don’t think they could be “purified” from these associations. They are multiple, and fluid but they are central to the work. Using those associations is part of the fun. 

Space Fortress During Facial Devastation Stage. 2020. Acrylic on paper. 27.5" x 36.5"

OPP: Talk about your recent painted paper constructions. 

LR: Those works are very recent, and I speak somewhat tentatively because I’m still trying to understand them and what they can do. I guess I’d say that for a few years now I have been trying to create a kind of visual ambivalence in my drawings using layers and mark repetition. I use layers and camouflage to create confusion between the foreground and background. 

In-progress work in the studio

OPP: How are they both drawing and sculpture?

LR: With these new paper constructions I’m trying to use that visual ambivalence in space, not just on the wall. As with my 2D work, the eye blends the repetitive patterns, but they occur in separate pieces that stand separately and that occupy a space. In some of my experiments the constructions expand, in others they are closer. These days I’m figuring out how to use density. I am also trying to see how to use color. Some of the results have been very site specific. Artists like Jesus Rafael Soto and other Latin American Op Artists have been on my mind. Also Helio Oiticica and even Paul Klee and  Mondrian, who if I recall correctly was doing installations in his studio late in his career. 

It’s amusing because I arrived to these works in a way that was somewhat different for me. Kind of hard to explain but there was a little bit more deliberation than usual. I tried these constructions for all sorts of reasons that were not related to what I was doing at the moment. The change felt a bit abrupt in relation to the piece I was working on. As I have been writing this response I am realizing how related in fact these pieces are to my previous works. My paintings have been slowing becoming installations over the last year. With a piece like Landscape Showing Butt, I started to place small sections that were detached from the main area. My Own Private Summer Something is really something like an installation. There was a progression that I hadn’t noticed. In terms of my deliberations, well it turns out I wasn’t doing what I thought I was doing. That’s why a couple of years ago I titled a show “Who Says Words with My Mouth? Who Looks Out with My Eyes?” Art making sometimes feels that way. 

To see more of Luis' work, please visit www.romeroluis.com and check out his Instagram @total_romero.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020).

This Is Not A Sign, 2020. oil on carved birch plywood. 24" x 24"

RICKY ARMENDARIZ's bright-hued painted surfaces are inscribed with creatures from Native myth, famous figures from the Western painting cannon, tattoo imagery and references to car culture in the Southwest. Carved in clean, beveled lines and thin crosshatching, his imagery doesn't just sit on the surface, but is part of the surface. This physical quality is a metaphor for the entwined relationship between what we call traditional and what we call contemporary. Ricky earned his BFA at University of Texas at San Antonio and his MFA at University of Colorado at Boulder. He has been represented by Ruiz-Healy Art since 2012. You can see his work in their San Antonio gallery through October 31, 2020 in Manos (hands), a two-person show also featuring the work of Andres Ferrandis. At their Manhattan location, Ricky's work is on view through October 17, 2020 in the group show Con(Text). His solo exhibition Smoke Signals and Other Reliable Means of Communication just opened at Flatbed Press (Austin, TX) and runs through October 17, 2020. Ricky lives and works in San Antonio, Texas.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Tell us about the relationship between tradition and innovation in your work.

Ricky Armendariz: I grew up not understanding the difference between high and low art, self-taught and academic art forms. My walls were covered with folk art and traditional paintings. It’s that hybridity that has informed my aesthetic approach to art making. My work is a mix of both traditional and nontraditional techniques. The painting process is very traditional with oil glazes to create the skyscapes or landscapes. After several months of drying time, I use a large power tool to etch imagery into the surface of the painting. I enjoy being slightly irreverent with the painting process.

Juan de Pareja, 2016. oil on carved plywood. 37" x 48"

OPP: How does the process of adding paint and then carving it away in serve your conceptual concerns?

RA: The idea was to reference carved wood signs of the American Southwest. My initial intention was to subvert the Southwestern stereotype; originating in 50-60s American cinema. The carved mark, which is a marring of the surface, serves as a counter balance to the refinement of the painting process. I also believe the carved mark reinforces the significance of the imagery, due to its permanence. The burned drawings have a mark that underscores the graveness of that imagery. 

Cono de Fuego, 2018. oil on birch panel. 48" x 48"

OPP: Various animals show up again and again: coyote, jack rabbit, buffalo, snake, crow. In your work, are these animals characters, allegories, references to myth, or simply non-human beings living in the world? 

RA: American myth is very dogmatic; figures are good or bad. Native traditions have more nuanced characters in their myth. Much of my work is referential of myth and allegories found in classical works of art as well as my own oral tradition. I’m interested in the parallels between my own myths, the myths of other people and in that connectivity of these allegories.

Meet You On The Other Side, 2020. oil on carved birch plywood. 24" x 24"

OPP: Coyote is a trickster, right? How does he show up in your work? What does he do in your work that he doesn’t do in traditional indigenous myth?

RA: Yes, but it's more complex than that. In myth protagonists often are complex individuals. Characters are both good and bad and everything in-between especially within indigenous myths. I possess aspects of the coyote, I identify with him.  He is someone that has difficulty seeing the good in things. Depending on the story, he is an individual who is dissatisfied with the gifts he has been given. He consistently looks to the greener grass just outside his reach. 

Myth is a living thing. Characters change, stories change and the complexity of the characters evolve. I don’t use many known myths, I prefer to write the myths in-between the myths we are familiar with.  I actually write stories that I use as a guide for the work.

Last Ride of Juan Diego, 2018. oil on birch panel with lights. 24" x 48"

OPP: When did you first introduce light bulbs into your work? Are you creating new constellations based on contemporary culture?

RA: I did that back in graduate school as a way to reboot our traditional constellations. I also believe in fate and chance and how that shapes our lives. I am of Mexican decent, and we tend to live very closely with our superstitions and our belief in things that are hard to quantify.

Blown off Course, Guided by Spirits, 2020. oil on carved birch plywood. 48" x 48"

OPP: How has your art practice been impacted by the pandemic and the collective socio-political unrest of 2020? 

RA: I know this is a very serious and grave time in our world. I’m getting a lot done in the studio, I am thankful to have a flexible schedule. Sometimes my everyday life has greater complications as so many others would attest to. My work is informed by current cultural and political events. It seems we all are in a state of panic, fatigue and hopelessness. It’s hard to ignore the fires we are all experiencing, and for that to have no affect on the things we are making. I will say that sometimes it’s difficult to speak to this while you’re in it, but much of my work these days is flavored by anxiousness and a desperate desire to hold on to the positive things we have in our lives. 

To see more of Ricky's work, please visit www.rickyarmendariz.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020). 

Walnut Street, 2016. Gouache on paper. 15" x 30"

MARY HENDERSON's photorealistic oil paintings of crowded gatherings have taken on new meaning in the Covid-19 era, but she has been painting protests, political rallies, music festivals, outdoor concerts, conventions and sporting events since 2014. She strips the backgrounds away, emphasizing the physical gestures and facial expressions of the people. Viewed together, these works are an opportunity to contemplate the events that bring strangers together. Mary earned her BA in Fine Arts from Amherst College in Amherst, MA and her MFA in Painting from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, PA. In 2018, she was a finalist for The Bennett Prize and has been awarded several grants from the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. In 2019, her work was included in group shows at Foley Gallery (New York, NY), Thinkspace (Los Angeles, CA), Muskegon Museum of Art (Muskegon, MI) and Tiger Strikes Asteroid (Philadelphia, PA). Her work is represented by Lyons Wier Gallery (New York, NY), where she has an upcoming solo show in 2020. Mary lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.

OtherPeoplesPixels: How does the hyperrealism of your paintings support the content of the images? 

Mary Henderson: It’s my *hope* that it supports the content, but figuring out what degree of detail to include is always a trial and error process. Because I am interested in the specifics of gesture and body language, I feel like I have to be fairly precise about anatomy. At the same time, I don’t want the content of the work to be drowned out by the technique. So there’s a balance. Painting always involves abstraction and distillation, but I lean towards more detail as a way to draw the viewer in and invite more active participation in interpreting what’s going on.

Fervent, 2017. Oil on panel. 20" x 40"

OPP: Have you always painted this way?

MH: Some of my earlier paintings were actually a lot more intense in their level of hyperrealism — grains of sand, strands of hair, etc. Eventually that became less interesting for me to execute. I look at a lot of different kinds of work, but when it comes to the process of making a painting, there seems to be a sweet spot for the level of detail that I find engaging. Too much is… too much, but I love getting sucked into patterns and textures. I’ve tried to paint more abstractly and more gesturally in the past, but it hasn’t worked for me. That could always change, though.

Cups, 2017. Oil on panel. 30" x 60"

OPP: Are all your images sourced from social media? Do you set out looking for particular types of images? What kinds of images repeatedly draw you in?

MH: Right now, about half of my paintings are based on my own photographs, but I also draw from social media and image searches. It’s important to me not to paint spaces or groups that don’t feel familiar to me in some way, so I try to choose images based in part on that idea. I look for images that remind me of people that I know or experiences that I’ve had. I also try to make selections for a diversity of tones. Some of the images I work with feel very positive and joyful, while others are really off-putting. I try to balance those positive and negative associations. Finally, I try to avoid anything that is too current or too raw. I don’t want to exploit or sensationalize or “rip from the headlines.” Obviously the images that I’m using have connections to this moment, but they aren’t taken from this moment.

Winter Coats, 2017. Oil on panel. 12" x 24"

OPP: Crowds of people are the unifying factor in recent paintings of protest rallies, music festivals, parties—did I miss anything? Are all these paintings part of the same body of work?

MH: The images are taken from all sorts of events: the types you mentioned, as well as games, conventions, neighborhood events (I’m sure I’m also missing something). They’re all part of the same loose body of work, although the paintings have definitely shifted a bit since I began working with these images in 2014. This is the longest I’ve stuck with a series in the course of my career, so I guess it makes sense that the work would evolve. 

Climbers, 2016. Gouache on paper. 15" x 30"

OPP: Can you talk about your choice to pull the backgrounds out?

MH: I started removing the backgrounds because I wanted to focus on what people were doing versus who they were. I think the decontextualization slows down the reading of the image a little. I’m also interested in how we make judgements about activities and behaviors. We are so primed as humans to make quick decisions about people, and to assign in- and out-group status to people we encounter, based on very subtle cues. I’m trying to interrupt and interrogate that process a little. For the same reason, I take out most identifying details. Not to make a point (“don’t be so quick to judge!”), but more out of curiosity: how do people communicate shared identities in the absence of clear markers?

Listening, 2017. Oil on panel. 20" x 40"

OPP: Do you think of your paintings as critical, celebratory, neither or both?

MH: Definitely both! I am, by temperament, not much of a joiner. Becoming part of a large group is something I usually only do out of necessity, either practical or moral/political. So even the paintings that are mostly about joyful solidarity probably have some sense of discomfort running through them. At the same time, I want my paintings to feel humane, even when I have a negative reaction to my subjects.

OPP: It’s been almost three months since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. How are you coping? How has your studio practice been affected?

MH: I was doing a residency at Hambidge in Georgia when the pandemic hit. It’s so quiet and remote there, so I was a little removed from everything as it unfolded. I found out that my kids’ school was cancelled while I was there. Normally, I work from a studio outside my house, but I had to bring everything home and try to set up a makeshift studio where I could work while also homeschooling my first-grader. (I have a teenager, as well, but he’s fairly self-sufficient.) It’s been kind of a mess, but I’m still making work—just really slowly. 

Microphone, 2016. Oil on panel. 20" x 40"

OPP: Protests are happening everywhere, and they look different with most protesters wearing masks. Are you working on any new paintings in the context of protests to defund the police? What do you hope these paintings communicate to viewers?

MH: The pandemic and the current protests feel too fresh for me to approach directly! Obviously, current events have completely recontextualized my paintings. If I’m making paintings of crowds while my neighborhood is literally being tear-gassed, it’s going to affect the work in some way, and I’m certainly not trying to be apolitical as an artist. But I am trying to channel my immediate responses into political action, rather than into my work. I can’t control the context in which my paintings are viewed, and it’s been weird to find the ground shifting under me like that. But that’s fine and inevitable (even if I sometimes feel like I want to tell people that I started this series over half a decade ago!). I am sure there are artists who are making great paintings of people in masks right now, or making very profound work that directly addresses the current protests, but I don’t think I’m the right person for that job. When I think about images of protestors being beaten and tear-gassed, it feels hubristic for me to try and take something like that on. Those images stand on their own. 

To see more of Mary's work, please visit www.maryhenderson.net.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020). 

The Gatherer, 2019. Watercolor and acrylic on ceramic. 4.5" x 3" x 3.75"

Water, with its soft, flexible and incisive power, is a primary material in the work of LOREN ERDRICH. She surrenders to the fluidity of raw pigments and watercolor on silk, canvas and paper in figurative works that seek to blur the boundaries between inside and outside, self and other, pleasure and pain. Loren earned her BFA at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and her MFA at Burren College of Art, National University of Ireland. In 2020, her work has been included in Mirror Eye at Ortega y Gasset Projects and Spill Over at The Delaware Contemporary. Loren has been an artist-in-residence at Jentel Foundation (Wyoming), Santa Fe Art Institute (New Mexico), Art Farm (Nebraska) and Sculpture Space (New York). Loren lives and works in New York, New York.

OtherPeoplesPixels: In your artist statement, you wrote that water is “the ultimate disobeyer of boundaries.” Please tell our readers why water is such a dominant force in your practice.

Loren Erdrich: I have an innate attraction water—it’s figured large in my dream life since I was a child. I've always understood and respected its immense power. As a medium, I think the draw has to do with its resistance to control. When a medium is harder to control, I am forced to remain looser, which in turn allows space for the magic of unintentional movements to occur.  Its resistance of perfection, tightness and mastery is invaluable to me. I love how it can be both hard and powerful, and soft and giving, and that it is comfortable in that duality. 

Me And You At The End Of The World, 2019. Water and raw pigment on muslin. 20" x 24."

OPP: Can you talk about the balance of control and surrender when working with watercolor? This also seems to be content on your work.

LE: At some point in my practice I began to realize that the qualities I valued in a medium mirrored what I sought as content. People would ask me what my work was about and to answer I would launch into an explanation of the way raw pigments and dye behave when mixed just with water. I fell in love with how unstable it all seemed, how I would have to corral the water, pigment and dye and coax them into recognizable forms. And that even after hours of coaxing I always had to submit to the natural drying process that occurred and shaped the final product. I felt as though I continually straddled control and mayhem, that at any minute it could teeter one way or the other. This mirrored my content. I have always sought out that moment in a transition or a transformation, when instead of being one thing, or the other, you are both. And that space of both is often gorgeously wild and powerful. It's not a comfortable space. It's messy. It's a merging point. Instead of the either/or, it's the and. It's a space that has the power to topple a world of pre-fixed categories and societal rules.

Go Away, 2018. Raw pigment and acrylic on canvas. 12" x 16"

OPP: The facial expressions on your figures are ambiguous: they may be in the throws of orgasm or they may be in intense physical pain. What’s the relationship between sexuality and suffering in your work?

LE: There was a while when I searched for that ambiguous expression; I wanted to see in others what it looked like to teeter between control and mayhem. I found this expression most readily in images of orgasm and pain, but it also appears when you laugh so hard you cry, or even when you sleep. I was looking for moments of release, when for once you are not in control of yourself, because control is impossible. As for a relationship between sexuality and suffering, as a woman in my 20s and early 30s, sexual imagery was the best way to translate my internal experience onto a page. It encompassed all the pleasure, shame, and pain I felt growing up. To me the images were about power, conflict, a search for freedom and a space to let go. The work was always about an internal landscape, an emotional language that I hoped someone else would understand. At some point sexuality became less of a primary focus in my imagery. To be sure it is still present, but now the work appears less driven by one's relationship to another, and more about one's relationship to a larger environment. 

I Give Birth To Myself, 2018. Ceramics and string. 2.5" x 2.75" x 3.25"

OPP: Talk to us about your tiny ceramic sculptures. What do these sculptures do that the 2D works don’t?

LE: I think of the tiny sculptures as 3D paintings.  I do them when the 2D work seems momentarily impossible.  I often repeat imagery that already exists in a painting or drawing. The sculptures hold space differently. With them it is less about looking at something as a spectator, and more about living in its world. In this way I think they open up another doorway into my work. Their small size may make them more easily approachable, perhaps more accessible. I know for me, as the maker, the combination of material and size allows me to take them less seriously, which I view as a positive thing.  

Me, Myself, Pretending Not To See, 2019. water, raw pigment, dye, ink and watercolor on canvas. 48" x 36"

OPP: It’s been almost two months since the World Health Organization declared Covid-19 a pandemic. How are you coping? How is your studio practice being affected?

LE: I’m in NYC. A few days before the order to shelter in place came out I began carrying art supplies with me when I went home. I chose colored pencils, watercolor crayons, some ink and drawing paper—things that were mobile and light. Drawing isn't usually a regular part of my practice, but I began drawing. There was so much panic, so much unknown everywhere, that I was actually able to access a sense of freedom when I began to work. I didn't ask myself what it meant or how these drawings fit into the rest of my work; instead I focused on the pleasure of the material. Of course I've inevitably ended up working with my usual themes, though I've mostly returned to an internal emotional landscape. I live in Manhattan, and my studio is in Brooklyn so I can ride my bike to my studio. I'm incredibly grateful for this. For days that have been poor weather or that I have felt particularly affected by the world's situation, I have carved out a small area at home to work in. I've been calling the drawings Isolation Drawings. Of course I didn't think I'd be drawing for this long. As the months go on, and I continue to work with this medium I've begun to understand that this experience will have a permanent effect on my practice.  

To see more of Loren's work, please visit www.okloren.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018), Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019), and Finlandia University (Hancock, Michigan 2020). Under Illinois' Shelter-in-Place order, Stacia has returned to remix video as a relevant and accessible medium and will exhibit an updated version of Solace Supercut in the window of Riverside Arts Center FlexSpace. Towards Luminescence: Radiant Frisson | Solace Supercut: a two-part exhibition featuring work by Chicago artists Mayumi Lake and Stacia Yeapanis runs from  May 18 – June 26, 2020.

Forest Offering (3), 2019. Acrylic on canvas. 36" x 24."

EMILY KAELIN's paintings are deeply psychological. Her female subjects of weep black blood from their many eyes; they foam and spew noxious fluids from their indistinct mouths. These women are suffering but also learning and transforming. Images of disease and decay coexist with verdant growth, expressing the inherent contradictions of internal experience. Emily earned her BFA at Rocky Mountain College of Art and Design (Denver, Colorado) and her MFA at Burren College of Art (Ballyvaughan, Ireland). She has been an Artist-in-Residence at Hypatia-in-the-Woods (2019) in Shelton, WA and the Nes Artist Residency in Skagaströnd, Iceland. In 2019, she opened her solo show I am a Monster and curated Viscera: Experimental Performance of the Grotesque at Mockbee Gallery (Cincinnati, Ohio). Follow Emily @vvitchinheat to see new and in-progress works. She lives and works in Cincinnati, Ohio.

OtherPeoplesPixels: You’ve said all your works are self-portraiture. In what way?

Emily Kaelin: I’ve made intentional self-portraits since I was young. In art school I made it a habit to do these regularly alongside whatever other work I was doing. Self-portraits were particularly challenging—for me anyway—because it was impossible to look at my physical self objectively enough to render it in a way that felt accurate. Early on I abandoned the idea that my self-portraits had to be realistic. It became more important to accurately render my internal perception(s) of myself, and in doing so my style and imagery became more abstracted, expressionistic and surreal. 

The work that I’ve made in the past six or seven years didn’t begin as self-portraiture explicitly. The more that I made, the more I realized that it was always about me. Specifically, it was about trying to envision multiple versions of myself, on a psychic level, especially my shadow selves. These works are self-portraits in that their existence and my process of making them is a deliberate method of working towards a better understanding of myself.

I am Sublime Suffering, 2019. Acrylic on canvas. 36" x 48."

OPP: Who are the Rotting Queens? What are they queens of?

EK: I like dichotomies; beauty and decay, sacred and profane, the sublime and the abject. I’ve used these in my work, both in form and in content, long before I even knew what I was doing. I like the emotional alchemy—the simultaneous attraction and revulsion— that happens when these dualities are combined. The Rotting Queen figures are one of many extensions of this conceptually. I guess you could say they are all queens of abject matter or phenomena: sickness, blight, death, blood, wounds, mutilation, etc. Yet some of the sub-titles and much of the imagery are suggestive of more life-affirming natural forces—the moon, flowers, moss, venus—and there are elements of beauty and ornamentation. Some figures are more brutal looking than others, and there elements that suggest rot and beauty simultaneously: bloody pustules that could be rubies, glitter that is also blood. 

The Rotting Queens are facets of my shadow selves. Making this work may be an attempt to reconcile the darker and uglier sides of myself with my ideal self, but without my knee-jerk self-hatred and perfectionism. Rather I make those facets sacred and their disturbing nature precious, resplendent even.   

Rotting Queen (the empress), 2015. Acrylic and spray paint on canvas. 30" x 40."

OPP: Can you talk more broadly about Barbara Creed’s notion of the “Monstrous-Feminine” in your work?

EK: The Monstrous Feminine is yet another theme that existed in my work long before I was really aware of it, and the reasons for its ubiquity are both personal and political. Much of my personal attraction to beauty and revulsion comes from my own personal experiences of duality in life: pain, suffering, ecstasy, love, emptiness and abundance. These feelings are universally felt, eve if individually varied in experience. 

Pain is an inevitable and necessary part of living, but I meditate often on the unnecessary pain we inflict on ourselves and others when we happily or ignorantly collude in systems of oppression that cause suffering in the interest of preserving some ideal or some some specific privileged group. 

I think the female experience is an example of this, and there is specific suffering that comes with that experience. Patriarchy is an oppressive system that has been ubiquitous world-over for millennia, even though it is ENTIRELY a made-up construct. Patriarchy creates a duality in the condition of women: we are sacred, worshipped goddesses or vile, fearsome witches. Beauty is painful and female suffering or degradation is eroticized. Artist Wangechi Mutu says that “anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.” I like the female monster because she is subversive; she revels in what makes her despised because it is what makes her strong. Her strength is demonized precisely because it threatens those who would try to subdue her. 

On the one hand, my work is about my own reconciliation and reclamation of my inner ugliness and pain. On the other hand, it is a reclamation of what is culturally despised and ugly in women. This is recast as power, beauty and liberation.

Works from I don't want your love unless you know I am repulsive, and love me even as you know it. 2014. Watercolor on paper. 22" x 30."

OPP: Let’s talk about the mouths. They foam and weep like open wounds; they vomit noxious-looking fluids, and drip black blood. These images certainly evoke illness and disease, but I also read these as an expression of both silencing and vitriol. Like, if you hold anger in long enough, it erupts and spews in all directions. How do you think of the mouths?

EK: The mouths evoke a kind of leaking of internal darkness that can’t be helped or in some cases a complete eruption of that darkness. I use images of physical pain, illness and injury to suggest emotional or psychic pain and illness made manifest. My own experience with mental illness has happened most substantially on an internal level. It is difficult to confront pain that feels trapped inside of you and can’t be seen by others or felt tangibly. Perhaps the mouths are trying to hold in all the pain, but it leaks out anyway, an experience I certainly relate to :)

Nature Spirit (2), 2019. Watercolor on paper. 22" x 30."

OPP: Your most recent paintings from 2019-2020 have a new quality: hope. Where earlier works had both bleached and dark voids for backgrounds, these have thriving, growing plant life. What lead to the introduction of verdancy, which can be a metaphor for abundance?

EK: As I’ve continued to push my content further, I’ve further contemplated the dichotomies I work with and how I can expand and develop their complexity and nuance. Beauty becomes further enfleshed through fecundity, abundance and lushness. In my newest work, the counterpoint of decay and abjection is becoming more visceral. I’ve begun studies of carcasses and flayed flesh, exploring how to paint these elements in their own lush, rich way. I did an artist residency last fall in the forests of the Olympic peninsula of Washington, where I studied rendering the forest’s verdancy, lushness, darkness, and strangeness. I happened to find a gutted, skinned deer carcass on one of my walks, sans head and hooves, was the perfect foil for the more verdant foliage I’ve been working with lately. It was that image that inspired me to take my imagery to a more visceral place.

Forest Offering (1), 2019. Acrylic on canvas. 36" x 24."

OPP: We are in the midst of a global pandemic. Is Covid-19 changing your work right now?

EK: It is certainly affording me abundant time to devote to my own art practice! But as I am working on more “visceral” imagery at present, I am reminded again of inevitable cycles of pain and joy, emptiness and abundance, and all the ways that we amplify our pain unnecessarily as humans. I see that same drama playing out in our present pandemic scenario. There’s this mentality that we have to suffer to deserve anything in life, that we have to suffer for the sin of living, of existing. Maybe humans are masochists. I worry that I am a masochist. But I also believe in transcendence of pain. I believe in facing, embracing and transforming pain. It’s the only way to truly grow, and it is inherent in the cycles of life and death and rebirth. It’s why I make art. I feel powerless in the face of the suffering that exists in our world; so much of it is human made. But I can find power in what I can control, what I do with my own pain, how I transform it.

To see more of Emily's work, please visit www.emily-kaelin.com

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where she received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018) and Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019). Her work was recently included in the three-person show Manifestations at One After 909 (Chicago). Stacia's solo exhibition The Thin Line Between One Thing and Another was on view in January 2020 at Finlandia University.

The Watersports Tape (2018) Gouache on Paper. 11" x 14"

SETH GOODMAN's figurative drawings and paintings are fictional vignettes created in response to reported news. His subjects range from America's ruling class—politicians, business men, federal judges, heads of state—to unknown individuals from the lower class, highlighting income and power disparities. His masterful rendering adds gravity to his satirical humor. Seth earned his BFA at University of North Carolina at Asheville and his MFA from Towson University in Maryland. He has exhibited across the U.S. and in Berlin, Germany, where he was an Artist-in-Residence at Takt Artist Residency (2012). In 2019, he opened two solo exhibitions: Behind the Capital Curtain at Lock Haven University (PA) and Certitudes and Tittle-Tattle at Howard County Community College (Baltimore). Seth is an Associate Professor of Art at Lycoming College in Williamsport, Pennsylvania, where he lives. 

OtherPeoplesPixels: What’s the best language to describe your work: satire, parody, allegory? 

Seth Goodman: Depending on the specific piece, I think I’m comfortable with allegory or satire. But on a more personal level, my work is a result of me feeling an intense responsibility to be informed and involved with some of the most significant current happenings in our world. I want to insert my voice in the larger conversation. I’ve trained as a painter my entire adult life. Given my control and understanding of the medium, I choose to make paintings and drawings about these important topical events and influential people. I listen to the news and podcasts as much as I possibly can, sometimes for twelve or more hours on studio days. I am absolutely obsessed with everything happening in our world, especially events that intersect with politics and economic injustice.  

Barbara Bush at the Border (2019) Gouache on Paper. 11" x 14"

OPP: It doesn’t seem though that your work advocates for any partisan point of view, so they aren't politically dogmatic, which is a good thing.

SG: I have no real interest in making work that is simply a reflection of my political beliefs or leanings. I’d classify the narrative elements in my work as closer to a visual form of prose poetry that’s heavily embedded in the power of both scenario and the use of known celebrity figures as conceptual symbols. Mix in a creative penchant to use episodic structure that is both physically apparent with compartmentalized spaces and with episodic narrative structure, and that’s essentially my work. The omnipresent third person voice represented in the text exudes a distinctly banal tone. I hope this brevity adds to the satisfaction the viewer can gain when absorbing or deconstructing the work more as poetry with hidden meaning. 

The Florence Fiasco (2016) Graphite and Gouache on Paper. 11" x 14"

OPP: Walk us through the choices you make in a single piece.

SG: In the painting Florence Fiasco, Mitch McConnell and Jared Fogle meet by chance while vacationing in Italy. Right away, I’m asking the viewer to connect these two public figures as spokesmen who represent entities beyond themselves. Both have a dark cloud hiding behind them. Jared's darkness is no longer hidden given that he’s currently living in prison. But with Mitch, just throw a dart at his voting record and you’ll probably find something that has either hurt the interests of the American people, caused pain to some group of human beings abroad in the form of military action or sanctions, or enriched the wealthiest among us under the guise of supply-side economics. They’re dressed as the quintessential dorky tourists, complete with comfy sneaks, light backpacks, ball caps for sun protection and cargo pockets to fit the extra gear. They are unable to connect to this other land and culture. Using the Rick Steves’ guidebook, they decide to hitch up to engage in the most cliché of tourist activities in Florence. No offense to Rick Steves, but he also represents the “square” who attempts to, but largely fails at, engaging the outside world on an equal level. They’re the cursed Americans giving all of us a bad name. United States domestic and foreign policy represents every single American regardless of who we voted for. Rightfully so, the world sees us and judges us based on our policies and actions.

Young Scalia (2016) Gouache on Paper. 11" x 14"

OPP: I feel an uncomfortable sensation of pity for the people you represent. The speculation about their private moments humanizes them, evoking empathy, while simultaneously revealing their hypocrisy, evoking disdain. What are your thoughts on this response?

SG: I’m absolutely thrilled and fascinated to hear you say “an uncomfortable sensation of pity.” When representing public figures, I often think about how our thirst to worship celebrities contributes to the superhuman status of star power. There’s a whole lot about the ruling class that disgusts me, but I think there’s a lot of grey area in there. Even the Dick Cheneys or Vladimir Putins of the world are not pure evil. What events in their personal history led them to act the way they do now? Thinking about our elected representatives, is it really so obvious that lawmakers are beholden only to corporate interests? A left of center example could be Cory Booker, who voted in 2017 against allowing Americans to purchase cheaper pharmaceuticals from Canada, stepping predictably in line with his heavy Big Pharma ties in New Jersey and with his past campaign contributions. Does Booker really think that his constituents believe that Canadian drugs are less safe? How is that possible? One right of center example is Jeff Sessions. He was denied a federal judgeship in the 80s for being overtly racist only to be confirmed just a few short years ago as America’s top law enforcement officer. In May of 2017, Sessions announced families crossing our border illegally would be separated, partly in the hope of establishing a deterrent from crossing. He even attempted to use Christian doctrine as a defense of his actions. I think it’s pretty safe to say Jeff Sessions is worthy of our condemnation, but there has to be more to it than that. I’m sure he doesn’t go home from work every night only to burn ants with a magnifying glass or torture little puppies. I love imagining what makes these people tick and attempting to poetically toy with the hypocrisy that might escape a mainstream view. 

I also love that you mention the “speculation about their private moments." I think this sentiment plays nicely with the tension imbued in the work involving a truth/rumor dynamic. Some scenarios are very obviously invented, occasionally introduced like gossip but very clearly as fiction. With some of the other situations that I portray, I’m hoping the viewer might really believe that they are true events. Maybe it’s something obscure that actually occurred involving a particular public figure. This tension is exciting for me to contemplate, especially when a work is finished and installed. It becomes an interesting intersection with the fake/partisan news movement that’s so prevalent today.

Diane's Nightly Ritual (2019) Gouache on Paper. 14" x 11"

OPP: I’ve noticed the glaring absence of President Donald Trump. Why? Too easy?

SG: I have really tried to steer away from Trump-centered narratives for a few reasons. First, so many satirical works about Trump are already being broadcast on a variety of different platforms that it’s like trying to bake a gourmet cake and sell it at Sam’s Club. It’s too easy for my message to get drowned out or get dumbed-down. Next, it’s too easy in the sense that his despicable and foolish behavior is very public. If he were a nicer person, I would feel deeply embarrassed for him. Lastly, I have dozens or even hundreds of ideas for new works that I’m very excited to make that do not involve portraying Trump directly. I can largely avoid him without sacrificing anything. 

That said—because I absolutely could not resist—I have recently made two works that include Trump. The Episode of Rosanne that Never Aired portrays the Connor gang traveling by royal carriage in a foreign land. Along the way, they picked up a stray dog and a few disheveled orphan children. They eventually get to a great fortification, and the gate is manned by Trump. Will he let them pass? I thought this plot would have been a plausible future episode of Rosanne that also would’ve actually guest-starred Trump, if the show wasn’t cancelled. The other work depicting Trump needs to be properly photographed before posting to my website, but it’s about Trump’s Access Hollywood comments coming alive in a fictional version of his man cave. It also involves Ivanka and Trump’s need to “make great deals.”

Proletariat Parade Goer (2018) Oil and Gouache on Board. 20" x 18"

OPP: Tell me about the Proletariat works from 2018. In these paintings, unknown consumers, voters, protestors evoke zombies for me. Whose perspective is being represented here?

SG: This short series is mostly about the socioeconomic class convulsions in America. The protagonist certainly has zombie-like qualities, but he’s not a zombie. He originates from a 1980s American cult classic movie Robocop. There’s an infamous scene that shows the bad guy getting doused with toxic waste, then waddling around with his flesh melting off yelling “Help me! Help me!” Even if viewers don’t recognize the specific movie reference, I thought he would be a good form to represent the underclass as repulsive and damaged. 

The specific scenarios and accompanying text allow for a more nuanced exploration of class strata concerns. One work shows a shopper at Hobby Lobby uncontrollably salivating from sale prices, only to be considered freakish by the cashier. With this, I’m asking the viewer to recall the controversies about the hard-right, Christian-owned Hobby Lobby empire. One involved denying contraceptive options to employees and the other was about the illegal smuggling of countless, historically important, artifacts out of the Middle East into a personal collection. Within the painting, the packed store shelves may prompt connections to the object hoarding and the class separation of wealth while the salivation reference may speak more to the contraception angle with salivation being an uncontrollable biological action akin to sex drive. The reaction of disgust by the cashier is meant to speak to ideas of judgement. 

Another work in the series speaks more to the celebrity worship of the ruling or political class and how insignificant the commoners or proletariat-class can be considered. A crowd of sign-bearing supporters assembles, en masse, to see a glimpse of the passing presidential motorcade. My proletariat character pushes his way directly into the path of the motorcade procession. This is, in one respect, a nod to the demise of the Robocop character being smashed and subsequently liquefied by a fast moving car. It’s also meant to show the obscene lengths we will go to in order to view of the rich and famous. The motorcade protects the ruling class from outside threats, and in this instance, it also insulates them from our filthy and damaged bodies and our unbearable presence.  

Unsettled Proletariat (2018) Oil on Paper. 22" x 28"

OPP: Earlier works revolve around unrecognizable “common people” of America. I’m thinking of works like Coping with End Times (2014), Supporting the Troops Without a First Thought (American Edition) (2015) and Inside the Single Wide (2011). Are these based on actual individuals, or are these allegorical Americans? What is being critiqued in these earlier works?  

SG: I grew up in a low-income small town in Upstate New York that was located next to a very high-income town, Saratoga Springs. This shaped my perspective early on in life to be concerned with income and class disparities in America. Seeing the world through a lens based on class and wealth remains a noticeable component of my current work as well.

Economic inequality is arguably the most pressing issue of our day. My earlier work attempts to connect with these issues but from the bottom up. Much like Harmony Korine did with the movie, Gummo, I want to give a voice to America’s underclass but do it largely informed by my personal history. So, to answer your question more directly, some of the painted characters may reference myself, others might connect loosely to people that I’ve known in the past but have a likeness that is appropriated, while others are folks that I’ve actually come across or know intimately.

The Bet (2018) Gouache on Paper. 11" x 14"

OPP: Tell us about your most recent solo exhibition Behind the Capital Curtain, which opened in November 2019. What was the overall goal of this show?

SG: I’ve had an extremely productive period in the last three years or so. Behind the Capital Curtain was my second solo exhibition in 2019, and it contained a large group of the work that I made over that three-year period.  

More than anything, I’m hoping the viewer will become more interested in the movements of our political system and world events and the innate responsibility that we have to become an active part of it. I feel this is the most realistic “best case” to expect from the viewer. It’s highly doubtful that I will have the power to change a person’s political stance, especially considering the divisiveness of the times we live in.  There’s a ton of outstanding, relevant and original creative content out there that we can engage with and I need to feel that what I’m saying is worth the viewer’s time and effort. If I can spark an interest in people to think about some of these topics more deeply, then I’ve more than done my job.

To see more of Seth's work, please visit sethgoodman.net.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations.  She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018) and Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019). Her work was recently included in the three-person show Manifestations at One After 909 (Chicago). Stacia's solo exhibition The Thin Line Between One Thing and Another opened on January 16, 2020 at Finlandia University.

Woman in Stripes at the Beach, 2019. Oil, dye, canvas. 67 x 81"

ALEXIS BEUCLER (@liquidlandscape) investigates the landscape-figure relationship in paintings, soft sculpture and printmaking. The humans that populate her colorful, patterned landscapes float on inner tubes, frolic, fuck and lay about, seemingly carefree. But underneath the water, alligators lurk and decapitated heads decay. Alexis earned her BFA in Painting and Printmaking with a Minor in Art History at Florida State University. She has had two solo shows at Gallery E260 at the University of Iowa (Iowa City): Beyond the Mangroves (2019) and Razzle Dazzle Landscapes (2018). In 2019, she is an Artist-in-Residence for public art at the Grant Wood Art Colony in Iowa City. Alexis is currently pursuing her MFA in Painting and Drawing at University of Iowa, expected to graduate in 2020.

OtherPeoplesPixels: You’ve said in your artist statement that you “investigate a landscape-figure relationship.” How does the history of landscape painting inform your work?

Alexis Beucler: I’m drawn to the presence and absence of human figures within the history of landscape paintings. I am enamored by David Hockney’s patterned forests, Edvard Munch’s beaches, John Dilg’s quiet trees, Mark Messermith’s bright, urgent, anxious landscapes. These spaces make me wonder, when can a campfire speak as loudly as a group gathering? When can a mark of paint emphasize collective feelings? How can animals and plants be placeholders for figures?

Swampland Bacchanal, 2018. Oil on canvas

OPP: What other visuals influence your work?

AB: Over the past year I’ve been reflecting on my time in the Floridian landscape—a landscape I’ve taken for granted for the past two decades—the native plants, swamps, waterways, festivals, island gatherings, quiet explorations.

Seeking to expand the lands in my painted world and in search of specificity of a space, I’ve started traveling to landscapes such as the New Mexico with sprinkled green plants dotting the desert land, blooming midwestern prairies, and I’m hoping to travel to Hawaii soon.

Afternoon Swim, 2018. Gouache on Paper. 20" x 28"

OPP: Do you think of the figures in your landscapes as in sync with their environments or oblivious to them?

AB: The landscape and environments subconsciously affect their motivations and actions. Likewise, the landscape absorbs the energy from actions the figures present, so the figure-landscape relationship is more symbiotic than anything.

In nighttime environments, there’s an increasing sense of urgency: people gather around fires, parties go too far. During the day, I think about the aftermath or residue of what occurred in the darkness, and wonder, do the figures exploring the day world know what happened the previous night? Are they floating down the river on an inner tube of bliss? How long have the mysterious heads at the bottom of the swamp been there, and does anyone other than the landscape remember them? As I explore this painted world, questions such as these are my guide.

Submerged Secrets, 2018. Gouache on Paper. 20" x 28"

OPP: Many paintings—Submerged Secrets (2018), Swamplandia: Journey With the Birdman (2018), and  Pink Alligator Roaming the Lands (2019), to name a few—reveal what is hidden beneath the surface of the water. Talk about your intent with this recurring compositional strategy.

AB: I’m interested in the above and below, how landscape shifts and becomes more fluid beneath the water’s surface, and how the underwater landscape is relatively untouched.

I grew up in Florida, where I visited the Weeki Wachee underwater theater quite often. We’d watch “mermaids” perform underwater dance routines and dramas. I remember when the water level was low, you could see hints of landscape above the water and the depths of the spring below, separated by the wavy line. I knew the mermaids were figures slipped into costumes, but I let my mind explore the fantastic possibility of seeing them and believing in them. Above the surface they are like me; below, they can be anything! That was my first real taste of magical realism. 

Beyond the Mangroves, 2019. Installation view. 

OPP: In your most recent exhibition, Beyond the Mangroves, you’ve now introduced references to home decor through the inclusion of a painted “blanket,” stuffed frames and a string of painted pennants. How do these additions change the context of the paintings?

AB: I’m increasingly intrigued by magical realism in fiction. For example, in Murakami’s IQ84, everything is seemingly mundane until a character looks up and realizes two moons occupy the sky. It’s so real, they wonder if the moons have always been there, if others notice them, or if they have transcended into a new space? This moment—one that identifies a subtle shift within our reality—is reflected within the physical objects from Beyond the Mangroves.

The red and white striped blanket and colorful pennants are recurring images within my paintings. Bringing them into the viewer’s physical space takes the viewer one step closer to the painted world. The blanket becomes an area the viewer needs to walk around, see through, and is invited to sit on and gaze at the paintings. 

Frames take on soft undulating forms that are repeated within the paintings— they reference fingers, arms, leaves, clouds, bottles. Soft and moldable. Gradients of color. They hug the picture and seep into our space.

Luncheon, 2018. Gouache on Paper. 20" x 28"

OPP: You are halfway through your graduate studies in Painting & Drawing at the University of Iowa. I know grad school is a whirlwind, so I wanted to give you an opportunity to reflect. How’s it going so far? How has your work changed in the first year of pursuing your MFA?

AB: It has been quite the whirlwind. Since I’ve been at UIowa I’ve started focusing more on landscape, patterns, personal mythology and magical realism. There’s an increasing nuance in color play and physical connection between figures and landscape.

Rocky Shore, 2018. Lithography Bleed Print. 15" x 22"

OPP: Before grad school, you made soft sculpture and also worked in printmaking. The lithographs on your website are just as detailed as your paintings, but eschew color in favor of pattern. But it seems that painting is your primary focus. How do you choose which medium to work in on a given day? 

AB: With painting, I’m able to delve deep into the world. Figures emerge, I trek into new lands, and through color everything flows together. With lithography, I generally already have an idea of what the image will be and use drawing as a tool to find ways of maximizing space with dense patterns. Recently I’ve been using this process to approach painting with fresh eyes and apply the detailed patterns from my print world into the painted one.

I can’t make soft sculptures until I have a clear grasp on where the paintings are taking me. I’ve spent the past two years reevaluating the landscape and figures through painting and have recently felt like I can once again pull some recurring elements out into our physical space through soft sculpture.

To see more of Alexis' work, please visit alexisbeucler.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based artist  Stacia Yeapanis.  When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations.  She is an Adjunct Assistant Professor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006. Stacia was a 2011-2012 Artist-in-Residence at  BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include shows at Siena Heights University (Michigan, 2013), Heaven Gallery (Chicago 2014), Indianapolis Art Center (Indianapolis, 2017), Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery (Palos Hills, Illinois 2018) and Kent State Stark (North Canton, 2019). Her work is included in the three-person show Manifestations, which opens on June 14, 2019 at One After 909 (Chicago).