OtherPeoplesPixels Blog

44" x 52"

CLINT JUKKALA's color-saturated doorways, windows, and unidentifiable creatures with humongous eye-portals are either goofily mesmerizing or mezmerizingly goofy. In either case, they captivate the eye and speak to the transportive power of looking, being seen and seeing in a new way. Clint earned his BFA from University of Washington in 1995 and his MFA from Yale University School of Art in 1998. Solo exhibitions include Lenses, Portals and Escape Plans at Finalndia University (Hancock, Michigan, 2014), Cosmic Trigger at Bravin Lee Programs (New York, 2014) and Off Course at Fred Giampietro Gallery (New Haven, 2013). Clint’s work was recently included in the group exhibitions HeadSpace (2016) at Morris Warren Gallery and Receptive Fields (2015) at Edward Thorp Gallery, both in New York City, and a two-person show with John Newman (2015) at Fred Giampietro Gallery in New Haven, Connecticut. Clint lives and works in Philadelphia.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Are your portals just for looking through or are they also for moving through? What do you imagine on the other side?

I've always been drawn to the window-like qualities of painting, and paintings that have spaces you can imagine entering. Certain Sienese paintings, like Sasetta, or De Chirico's Piazza paintings really have that quality for me. They are not perspectivally correct and aren't entirely rational, but they are fully convincing worlds that create a sense of place the viewer can mentally project into. I hope my paintings have a little bit of that. I want them to suggest the possibility of a place to transport to. It's less a physical space than a psychological one. What's on the other side is a different way of seeing.

OPP: In recent years, what used to look more like doorways and windows seem to have morphed into eyes or goggles or view finders on the faces of humanoid aliens, muppets or robots like Number 5 from Short Circuit (1986). Whatever they are, they’re staring back at me, and I’m looking through them to some other space. Thoughts?

CJ: That evolution happened unintentionally. I was painting window like forms and one day I doubled them. All of the sudden I saw something staring back at me—it freaked me out! At first the images felt so goofy, and I wasn't sure what to make of them. They were exciting to me though, so I just went with it. I liked that they didn't take themselves too seriously and they had an unnameable thing-like quality about them. I'm interested in that dual situation of the paintings looking back at you while you look at them. I hope they make the viewer more aware of their own seeing.

OPP: Earlier paintings from 2005-2007 evoke computer glitches, digital noise and Atari graphics—I’m thinking of Space Invaders and Berzerk. Were you thinking of the digital realm or video games as portals? Or is this work doing something else entirely?

CJ: Atari was very much on my mind! Those paintings evolved out of grid paintings I was making. I was interested in squares, pixels, textiles and simple building blocks used to make more complex images. Early video games were interesting because you saw the pixel structure that made the images and I've always been drawn to simple systems of image making. I wasn't thinking of those paintings as portals really, but I was interested in screens and I think it was screen space that led me to exploring windows and portals. I was also thinking a lot about the additive light of screens versus the subtractive light of paintings. Screens are lit from within and emit light. That may have been the beginning of thinking about the paintings facing out toward the viewer. 

OPP: A year ago, you were appointed Dean at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts after having served as the Chair of Graduate Programs at PAFA since fall 2013. How does academic administration affect your painting practice? Any advise for artists with other demanding jobs?

CJ: Teaching and running a program can be wonderfully creative experiences. While I currently have less time to paint, there is so much exciting stuff going on at PAFA that I've been happy to focus some of my creative energies there. Luckily for me, my administrative work extends beyond my office to the classroom and our museum. I'm around art and artists all the time so I get a lot of energy from that. From student work to my favorite paintings in our collection (like those by Horace Pippin!) I'm constantly seeing great stuff. PAFA's historic building, designed by Frank Furness blows me away. It is an incredible space full of amazing ornament. I'm sure it's going to seep into future paintings. I also walk through our cast hall almost daily and see students painting. I don't have as much time to work right now, but when I do get into the studio I have a lot to draw on. Most artists need to have multiple practices to build a sustainable creative life. The key is to find a good balance of different practices that complement each other.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan), Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery (Chicago) and When Things Fall Apart, a durational, collage installation in the Annex Gallery at Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago). Form Unbound, a two-person show, also featuring the work of Aimée Beaubien, closed in December 2015 at Dominican University's O’Connor Art Gallery (River Forest, IL). Most recently, Stacia created a brand new site-responsive installation for SENTIENCE, a group show at The Ukrainian Institute of Modern Art until March 2016.

OPP: Before 2013, you were using more found materials in your work—fabric, pieces of jewelry, sequins, corks and a glass eye—as well as plaster and clay. Since 2014, it appears that you are working exclusively with wood and paint. Earlier work seems more bodily with lots of gloppy textures, fabric folds and curved lines, while newer work feels more architectural with straight lines, angles and hard edges. Was this a conscious shift? How has this evolved over time?

RP: Found and scrap materials have always been attractive to me. I collected the corks for The Wise Will Have Passage (2008) while working in a restaurant. Sometimes I encounter things on the walk to my studio, as in Bigger There (2013). Broken pieces of jewelry or worn out clothes might find their way into sculptures, as in the belt used in Chicken Skin (2011) or the material in (E)West (2011). Working with found or accumulated materials is rich in possibilities for additive practices. It is how I innately approach art making, and is a very improvisational and reactive process. It’s a very animistic way of working. As I am creating, there is some direction from the work itself.

The shift occurred as a result of a desire to look beneath surface as my primary focus and define space in a more subtle, energetic way. The work from 2014-15 still uses that method of using units and accumulation, but employs the most basic unit: the line. I am interested in defining space that is at once structured and permeable—the cell wall, for example—or describing radiation physically. The shadows cast by these pieces both push them out and away from the wall as well as accentuate their materiality. 

OPP: The forms of your most recent sculptures (2014-2015) evoke a multiplicity of images: stained glass windows, shields, talismans, spider webs. The forms radiate from a central point, sometimes concave and sometimes convex. How do these forms relate to your interest in energetic transmutation?

RP: The radiant form is associated with many ideas, from the big bang to human auras to descriptions of heat or light. Heat and light are difficult to sculpt, but may be suggested, and a number of the evocations you bring up are three dimensional objects that exist primarily in a language of line. Transmutation is a transformation of material or element into another state or form. This body of work explores transformation in several ways: of energy into vector, vector into line, line into delineator of spatial boundary and skeletal structure into architecture. The same thing happens as the form casts its shadow, transforming back into something intangible but still visible. The concave versus convex aspects close off or open up the ends of the work, similar to a closed versus open circuit. Many of these pieces, such as both Radiation Gray/Gold and Radiation Yellow/Gray have central hanging elements that spin in accordance with the currents in the room, a transformation of motion occurring as a physical demonstration of time.

OPP: One could view your work through a purely formal, material, or aesthetic lens. But your statement—and the links you include on your website—makes it clear that you view your work through a spiritual lens. . . something which the contemporary art world is slightly uncomfortable with, but curious about. How has your spiritually-driven work been received?

RP: I would say it works on all these levels, but would use the word metaphysical over spiritual. Metaphysics is a philosophical investigation of that which is beyond sense perception whereas spiritual speaks more to an experiential self-exploration. For the current series of work, studying the Medicine Wheel has been formally and conceptually important. It uses the four directions to correspond to various elemental, animal, human, earth and cosmic states. Through these associations one can describe existence, tell the story of time and creation, as well as achieve personal growth. It is a simple coded system loaded with symbolic information: lines, circles, spirals, vectors and colors that become increasingly complex as one's understanding of their corresponding connections deepens. This system is used in many cultures worldwide with slight variations. Another influential source was Jack Schwarz's book, Human Energy Systems, for what the form of energy might look like. Similarly Bernini's treatment of The Holy Spirit as not only beams of light but spears of gold in The Ecstasy of St. Theresa informed my ideas about representing light and energy in dimensional form. I don't see the work as dependent on these sources, though. I've had very positive response to this body of work, with and without commentary.

OPP: Here's a slightly strange, practical question. . . there's another Rebecca Potts, who is an artist. Her work is very different from yours, and her website pops up when I google your name. Have people ever confused the two of you in a professional context? Any advice for other artists with the same problem?

RP: I am aware of her and I'm sure she is aware of me, though our paths have not yet crossed. We have never been confused in a professional context that I know of. I would say that duplicate names in professions are not unheard of, and as far as advice would go, I would say it is a very individual choice in how one approaches it. I know people who have changed their names to deal with this very problem, and at least one other person who has not. I think Rebecca Potts just sounds like a sculptor's name, right?

OPP: If I were to walk into your studio right now, what would I see?

RP: You would see a lot of things in progress. I tend to work on anywhere from three to five things at once, so as not to be slowed down by paint or glue needing to dry. It also helps me to work on an idea in more than one way, to see what works. Sometimes I come up with something on the fly that I want to try, and that becomes its own thing. The new pieces as a whole are more trapezoidal in nature than the works discussed above, although they still have the four directional points represented. They also are beginning to fill in a bit more with solid fields on the inner and outer planes. Though they are not finished, I am moving towards reincorporating some materials (fabric and grill cloth) that I have used before. I seem to be circling back to some previous ideas, while still remaining conceptually in the same world. It's a spiral progression, rather than a linear one!

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in cross-stitch embroideries, remix video, collage and impermanent installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan), Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery (Chicago) and When Things Fall Apart, a durational, collage installation in the Annex Gallery at Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago). Form Unbound, a two-person show, also featuring the work of Aimée Beaubien, closed last month at Dominican University's O’Connor Art Gallery (River Forest, IL).