OtherPeoplesPixels Blog

OtherPeoplesPixels: Portraiture is one of the very oldest genres of art. Why is it still relevant today?

Daniel Kornrumpf: Portraiture remains relevant for so many reasons. The human figure is a recognizable, universally relatable subject, no matter how realistic or minimally abstract the person is depicted. Through fashion and through the application of material, portraits can speak to the zeitgeist of a certain era. Portraits will continue to be relevant as long as they offer some record or document that speaks to the time period in which they were created. The most interesting portraits tell more about the artists who created them and their way of seeing than about the personality or likeness of the individual they’re depicting.

OPP: You paint portraits and embroider them. What's the distinction for you in terms of subject? Who becomes an embroidered portrait versus a painted one?

DK: I was trained as an observational painter, and I would ask friends of mine to come and sit in my studio to pose for a painting. As I eventually started to run out of friends, thoughts about other ways to represent the figure entered into my work. In my down time between models, I began drawing people’s portraits from their social media profile photos. I started to think about the ways in which people are connected online and felt that embroidery thread could be a powerful metaphor for this idea of connectedness. The thread of the portrait is the same as the thread of the linen that it is woven in to.

The portraits that I choose to embroider are from images that I have found through countless hours of viewing online profiles, saving photos of people I find attractive, humorous, overly vain or compelling to me in some subjective way. I have never met any of the people I have embroidered. They are all strangers. My desire to connect with these virtual people compels the act of making something physical, an object, developed over time where a different, internal connection has been formed from something intangible.

The people I choose to paint, however, are my close, personal friends and family members. The act of sitting in a room with someone, having conversations that take place over multiple sessions, all while building a painting, is an experience that forces me to slow down and be present, creating a state of awareness that I don’t reach in any other of my other daily experiences.

OPP: Could you talk about the ratio of image scale to canvas scale in the embroidered portraits?

DK: The choice to create small portraits floating in the centers of large stretched canvases was to give the viewer a bit of context as to where the images came from; that it was not only a photographic reference, but one that was appropriated from online. The heads float like computer icons in a non-space similar to that of the computer screen. I also wanted to call attention to the linen as a material, not simply as an armature but as a woven surface, made up of individual threads, similar to the portrait. In addition, the space around the heads help to pull the viewer in to the work, allowing a closer inspection of the more intimate details without the distractions of the edge or supporting wall. 



OPP: Empty space also shows up in your painted works. In pieces like Mr. David Lasley (2012), Tom (2007) and Dena with Arms Crossed (2007), the figures are not completely painted in. On the one hand, I think about your conscious decision as the painter to "not finish." But it also reads like the color has been drained from the person or that the figure is disappearing in some places. How do you think about the transparency in these pieces?

DK: The unpainted areas in the paintings do a few different things for me. For one, there is a “matter-of-factness” to some of the outcomes. For instance, in the painting Tom (2007), he could only pose for two hours, so what is shown is all I was able to get on the canvas in that window of time. I enjoy that element of urgency and spontaneity, and it showcases what I find to be priority in a portrait.

I also value artists that let you see their process in their paintings like Paul Cezanne, Alice Neel, or George Baselitz. The unpainted areas in my work allows the viewer to see the tricks or steps that go into creating an image: the evidence of drawing, the correcting or restating of a pose or gesture. They also create moments for visual rest or places to “breathe” in the painting. I find that when I make paintings that cover the entire surface, it not only hides my process but removes some of the life in the painting, zapping some of that spontaneous energy that I’m trying to preserve.

OPP: What's going on in your studio right now? Any new work in progress?

DK: I just completed an eight month fellowship at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts that ended in June. It was a very productive year and I was able to make new paintings and reconnect with friends that I haven’t seen in awhile. I have a few exhibitions in the works this winter, one at Simmons College in Boston and one in Cambridge, Massachusetts, both of which will be exhibiting some new embroideries that I have recently started. My work is represented through Blank Space Gallery in New York so if you are interested in owning one of my pieces please contact them and please check back soon for some new work on my website. And thank you to OPP for creating an easy to use, professional looking platform to showcase what I make!

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). Stacia recently completed an installation for Chicago Artists' Coalition's 2015 Starving Artist Benefit and is currently working towards a two-person show, also featuring the work of Aimée Beaubien, for O’Connor Art Gallery at Dominican University (River Forest, IL). The show will open on November 5, 2015.

FRANK ORITI paints psychologically and emotionally honest portraits of “blue-collar, middle-class individuals returning to the hometowns and neighborhoods that they originally attempted to escape.” The juxtaposition of meticulously-detailed figures with flat, hazy backgrounds conveys a sense of limbo and highlights a nuanced experience of conflicted resignation and bold confidence in the face of uncertainty. Frank received his BFA from Bowling Green State University (2006) and his MFA from Ohio University (2011). His solo exhibitions include Return (2011) at The Bonfoey Gallery in Cleveland and Homeland (2013) at Richard J. Demato Gallery in Sag Harbor, New York. In 2013, he was the recipient of the Cleveland Arts Prize Emerging Artist Award. From September 13, 2014 to January 4, 2015, his work will be included in the group show Get Real: New American Paintings at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Jacksonville, Florida. Frank lives in Cleveland, Ohio, where he was born and raised.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Many of your paintings are based on your friends and family. These paintings are portraits in the traditional sense. But the individuals can also be viewed as symbolic of the "psychological state of settling," which you identify as a major theme in your work. Did this theme emerge from the individuals you chose to paint or did you seek out subjects that embody the theme you were interested in exploring in your work?

Frank Oriti: Originally the theme came from my own realization of what it was like to return home. After I received my BFA from Bowling Green State University, I didn’t really have a plan for the next chapter in my life. Things just seemed very uncertain. Around the same time, I realized that a lot of friends and family had also returned home from college and the military. So naturally, I wondered if they were experiencing the same thoughts and feelings about this return that I was having. Because the theme was sparked by my own sentiments, I think of these paintings partially as self-portraits.

OPP: Your blue-collar background and the fact that you worked at Cleveland's American Tank and Fabricating between undergrad and grad school are often cited in the intro paragraphs of interviews and reviews of your work, and I'm obviously bringing it up, too. The return home is a theme in your work, so your personal biography is relevant. Do you think critics, collectors and viewers romanticize these details? Or is this just a reasonable reference to details that inform the content of your work?

FO: I don’t really think it’s my place to say whether or not my personal history is being romanticized. I think any time a writer is doing a piece, it’s up to them to write something that will hopefully entertain and keep a reader’s interest. All I can do on my end of interviews and in talking about my work is be honest and tell my story. I was taught that, as an art-maker, it’s important to be honest about where your work is coming from and why you’re making it. I DO think that my post-undergrad time at home really sparked something. The thoughts and feelings I had during that time became a great reference point for what I was trying to say in my work when I started these portraits in graduate school at Ohio University.

OPP: Now that viewing artwork online is so common, one of the details that sometimes gets lost is the impact of scale. I experience so much artwork contained within my computer screen that I can only imagine what my physical response to seeing the work in person would be. Could you talk about the significance of scale in your work?

FO: I originally made these portraits at a true-to-life scale. I wanted the viewer to be drawn in to the gaze of the subjects. It was important for the viewer to relate to them as actual people, as much as possible, just by looking. Since the beginning of this series, I’ve always made portraits that gave off the presence of an actual person—portraits that were more life-like than a photo but stayed true to my representation of the individual at that time the work was created. More recently, I’ve found that by changing up the size of the painting, I’m able to experiment and have more fun with the format as well as the actual application of the paint.

OPP: Clarity (2014), Uniform (2013) and Without (2013)—among others—stand out because the subjects are painted in profile, as opposed to confronting the viewer with their confident gazes. These immediately brought to mind mugshots, although nothing else about the subjects evokes criminality. Could you talk about your choice to paint these subjects this way?

FO: I’ve always loved looking at the way portraits have been depicted through history in painting, and I wanted that appreciation to show through. I was thinking about how the figures in this series previously had their backs turned to the whited-out houses that represented our suburban landscape. Painting them in profile reveals the position of uncertainty: they are neither heading towards the landscape nor heading towards the viewer.  

OPP: In 2013, you won the $10,000 Cleveland Arts Prize for Emerging Artist. What was your first reaction when you heard the news?

FO: It sounds extremely cliché to say I really did not expect to win, but. . . I REALLY DID NOT EXPECT TO WIN! It was only my second year submitting. After seeing winners from previous years, I understood the winners were chosen from a very wide selection of the different categories of arts in town. As someone who is constantly submitting to competitions, shows and magazines, I try not to get too worked up about entering these sorts of things. You have to do your part to enter and then forget about it and get back to work so that you’re not stressing over it. When I received the call last year that I had won, I was speechless. It was a great thing to be recognized by my peers, especially in my hometown. It’s overwhelming to be a part of such a prestigious group of past winners.

OPP: Practically speaking, how has this prize affected your art practice?

FO: When the art prize came along, I had just left my part-time job to concentrate on painting full time. I had also just moved into a studio space in Cleveland. So winning the prize was perfect timing. It helped out financially, allowing me to concentrate only on my painting as I was getting ready for my first solo show at Richard J. Demato Gallery in New York.

OPP: Now that you are a few years out of graduate school and many of the subjects of your paintings are also older, has the overall level of uncertainty shifted? Have you experienced anything new that might change the emotional nature of the portraits?

FO: I think now that I've become a little more settled in Cleveland and a little more comfortable with the work I'm creating, some of the issues I was dealing with when this work began have shifted slightly. I've gravitated more towards finding people I know who apply a blue collar work ethic to whatever it is that they do. I really enjoy connecting with hardworking people who know what it is like to put in a lot of time and effort into their jobs, even if they aren't the most glamorous jobs. It's that type of work ethic that I use daily in the studio, and I find it extremely inspiring.

To view more of Frank's work, please visit frankoritijr.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based, interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in her cross-stitch embroideries, remix video and collage installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Recent solo exhibitions include I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For (2013) at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) and Everything You Need is Already Here (2014) at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. Stacia is currently looking forward to creating a site-responsive collage installation in her hometown. NEXT: Emerging Virginia Artists opens on July 11, 2014 at the Peninsula Fine Arts Center in Newport News, VA.

GEOFFREY CHADSEY’s watercolor portraits on Mylar are amalgams of found images from chat rooms and hook-up sites geared toward men seeking men. His poignant and provocative drawings reveal both the specificity of their source material and the universality of donning plumage—in the form of performances of gender, race, persona and cultural affinity—to make ourselves more desirable and to communicate our availability to others. Geoffrey received his MFA from California College of Arts in 1996 and was awarded the prestigious Eureka Fleishhacker Fellowship in 1999. His numerous solo exhibitions include shows at James Harris Gallery (Seattle), Jack Shainman Gallery (New York) and The Contemporary Museum, now part of the Honolulu Museum of Art. His work will be included in the group show, Drawingroom, which opens March 7, 2014 at Galerie im Taxispalais in Innsbruck, Austria. The exhibition, curated by Peter Weiermair, will travel from Ursula Blickle Stiftung in Stuttgart, Germany, where it was shown in December 2013. Geoff lives and works in Brooklyn.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Do you consider these drawings to be portraits of individuals?

Geoff Chadsey: Each drawing is a portrait of individuals, plural. They are composites of photos taken from a number of social media sites—other peoples’ self-portraits (or should I say, Other People’s Pixels?)—that are further fleshed out with my own photo studies and images ripped from magazines. I spend so much time on them that they feel imbued with personhood. Frankenstein’s monster, but without the creator's god-complex or nature-challenging hubris?

OPP: The morphing of figures and the presence of multiple heads/arms/bodies is a richly compelling aspect of your drawings, and it seems to be used to different ends throughout your practice. Sometimes the extra body parts evoke potential motion, as with Reacher (2012) and Reacher, revisited (2013). In works like Vestigial Velasquez (2011) and Portrait (Pink Beak) (2011), I read the second face as representing a buried part of the personality trying to escape. Visually these remind me most of horror movie effects used when someone is possessed. Tinchy Klimt (2011) brings up the idea that our own personalities contain distinct elements of the surrounding culture, i.e. hip hop and fine art. I could go on and on—I haven't even mentioned Hindu deities! What does this hybridity of form and body mean to you?

GC: I have no grand narrative. I am no great revelator, although I enjoy and agree with your readings. I pursue the uncanny, but as a wary surrealist, who is suspicious of images that beg interpretation or that try to look weird or provocative. The multiple poses, limbs and faces—pentimenti—render indecision into full form. I read a review of a friend's show, which described her paintings as portraits of people who couldn’t make up their minds about who they wanted to be. That description of multiplicity, confusion, playfulness of identities delighted me. That's what the internet was supposed to be about when it became a popular medium. People were talking about how you could reinvent yourself in chat rooms and be whoever you wanted to be. It was supposed to be a post-identity space. Instead, people have become even more entrenched in their identifications of who they'd like to be—and who they'd like to be with.

The added limbs, faces and traces of previous poses also add distance between my drawings and the unseen source material of the screen and its frozen image. They add a physicality to the figure, as well as movement and the passage of time. Reacher, which quotes a Sports Illustrated basketball cover, and Marines, which evokes Leonardo da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man, both read like dance. Portrait (Pink Beak), a self-portrait, reminds me of spirit photography; the vulpine mask came from a moment of wanting to just SCRIBBLE. Tinchy Klimt is a melding of two common source materials for me: hip-hop and Klimt. There is no reason for it, other than those are images I am repeatedly drawn to: the riveting swagger, the rancid glamor, the spectre of murder. Theater, basically. Popular metaphor of the mask is about hiding, artifice, fakery. Popular psychology is about removing the mask, revealing the true self. But masks enable action. Giorgio Agamben writes that, “‘Persona’ originally means ‘mask’ and it is through the mask that the individual acquires a role and a social identity." He goes further to describe how, in the online era, this mask gets separated from the individual as a profile of online behavior, purchases and likes. Data mining companies collect this information in order to present further enticements or calls-to-action to the individual. You are what you “like.”

In online chat-rooms, you can see how men increasingly identify themselves with costumes that indicate a masculine archetype: the straight-acting (an overtly theatrical role that requires great skills in projecting illegibility), the jock, the leather-daddy, the preppy/ Abercrombie-and-Fitch collegiate, the scruffy urban-woodsman, the executive, the thugster, the punk. Each one calls out to other lovingly-detailed archetypes for a meeting of the masks. The hybridity in the drawings is about pursuing identities that aren't easily summarized as racial, gender, personality types.

OPP: I've read that many drawings are based on images from Grindr, an iPhone app for meeting "gay, bi, and curious guys" and other internet chat sites, although they aren't identified that way on your website. For me, knowing this source adds a distinct layer of longing to connect and to belong that might not be otherwise present in the drawings of single figures. Would these drawings be the same if you drew these figures from life? How important is the source material to you?

GC: “Curious”—isn’t that hopeful? Yes, Grindr is one source, Manhunt another. I have an archive of photographs from sites I have been collecting for over 10 years. I’ve been an active participant in these sites, by the way. These images are about longing and the self-presentation that goes into being longed-for. Men post themselves in an online bazaar to a fantasized other; it’s a peacock gallery. Maybe that’s the discomfort of these drawings. Here is a figure presenting himself to you. You are an implied part of the drawing. He is looking out at you, he is looking FOR you, but you are also not the original intended audience.

Someone asked me a few years ago if there was any empathy in these renderings. It’s complicated. While looking at so many beautiful men online, I find myself collecting the photographs where the performances are wonky. There’s some sort of excess that disrupts the aspiring hotness factor, like a bulging belly or an overenthusiastic hairdo. Empathy and delight enter in those moments. Popular gay iconography is all about desirability: beauty, youth, the fitness factor. I seek to capture a more disruptive figure, something you can’t take your eyes off of, something disorienting, alien, horrific like a movie monster that rivets the gaze. Let’s call it the aspirational abject.

OPP: All your drawings are watercolor pencil on Mylar. Why do you choose it? Is there anything about your work in this medium that doesn't translate well online? What are we missing as online viewers?

GC: The image ecology from screen to Mylar back to screen is largely how my work is seen these days. I joke that I am represented by the gallery called Facebook, and they give me a show whenever I want. It’s fun to gather "likes" and to see your work bounce around Tumblr. But the jpegs are pale ghosts of their originals—you miss the WORK involved in making it, the physicality of the line, the painterly goop of the melted scribbles, not to mention the size (some of these drawings are six feet tall). So then the question becomes: why draw? I have a Masters in photography, but I drew my thesis show. Call it digested photography, a reconstituted archive. Drawing is a sentimental attachment to the personal mark, to the mastery of the rendered copy and to the intimate privacy of mulling over images alone in my studio.

OPP: You are a 2013-2014 Mentor at Queer | Art | Mentorship, which is an organization dedicated to "pairing and supporting mentorship between queer working artists in New York City." Will you tell us a little about the program and why you decided to become a mentor?

GC: The program is about nurturing conversations between (roughly) two generations of participating gay male and female creatives. Because of homophobia, the closet and a generation lost to AIDS, these relationships have to be sought out, created and fostered outside of the university. This is my second year participating. Each generation of gay youth coming into their own has perhaps less baggage than the generation before. The generation before meanwhile has accrued experiences that might be summed up as wisdom—not just about being a thriving gay adult but about being a working artist in New York. The mentorship is about an exchange of ideas, readings, film recommendations, critiques. My participation comes from a desire to integrate my practice into a larger community, to share and receive new ideas about what it means to be queer today.

To view more of Geoffrey's work, please visit geoffreychadsey.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in her cross-stitch embroideries, remix video and collage installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibition I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) recently closed, and her solo exhibition Everything You Need is Already Here is on view at Heaven Gallery in Chicago until February 17, 2014.

LILY MARTINA LEE memorializes the forgotten, the discarded and the overlooked. She juxtaposes intimacy and anonymity in her embroidered and appliquéd memorials to unidentified human remains, her beaded scratch ticket medallions and her car hood portraits based on the tattoos of fugitives wanted for non-violent crimes. Lily received a BFA in Fibers (2008) and a BA in American Indian Studies (2009) from the University of Washington in Seattle. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon in Eugene (2012). Her work was recently included in Post-Racial U.S.? at the University Art Gallery at New Mexico State University (Las Cruces, New Mexico, 2013) and Across the Divide IV: The New Boondocks< at Center on Contemporary Art Georgetown Gallery (Seattle, 2012). She teaches Sculpture and Fiber Art at Truman State University. Lily lives and works in Kirksville, Missouri.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Your Fugitive Portraits (2011-2012) are based on the tattoos of wanted fugitives and the facts found in legal and news media documents. Some of the crimes the men committed are "escape from community custody," "burglary," “failure to appear: DUI," and "criminal endangerment." Was it a conceptual decision not to include fugitives for more violent crimes, like murder or rape? What makes you pick the fugitives you pick?


Lily Martina Lee: My decision to work with the narratives of fugitives wanted for non-violent crimes was a conscious one. Rather than sensationalize the criminal element, I wanted to make more intimate work, bringing attention to these individuals, where they come from, and the personal narratives and identities as constructed through their tattoos. Their stories may seem banal or even despondent, but they are also so evocative of our present day culture.

I initially researched most-wanted postings in the Inland Northwest region because that’s where I am from. But I also noticed a pattern in higher-profile, national stories: fugitives often seem to run to Idaho or are captured in this region. I always choose people who are wanted in jurisdictions outside of major metropolitan areas. I began to think of this body of work as cumulatively articulating a contemporary iteration of the romanticized west: anonymous and removed from authority.

In order for authorities to know and list tattoos in a Most Wanted posting, the fugitives must be a repeat offenders. These individuals often have lengthy histories of petty crimes. In pouring over the list of tattoos—information which is made public for the purpose of finding and capturing them—I couldn't help but imagine and try to understand the characters of the individuals who had made those specific choices. I read hundreds of cases, paying special attention to those fugitives who had enough tattoos listed so that I could create a formal composition. More importantly though, I became intrigued by the discursive combinations of tattoos, such as a pentagram and Tweety bird, as in Israel "Izzy" Rodrigues, Butte, Montana (Criminal Endangerment), or text in English and Spanish with a Thai name, as in Jimmy "Bam Bam" Rodriguez, Pasco, Washington (Escape from community custody).

Automotive decals and accessories share striking similarities with tattoos in both style and subject matter: flames, Chinese characters, tropical flowers, mythical creatures and religious symbols that are often cliché and rooted in cultural appropriation. Even as tattoos have become more mainstream, they retain their transgressive status, which the marketplace has capitalized on by generating a multitude of consumer products carrying these graphic styles. Despite the commercialization, individuals still permanently mark themselves with such graphics and attach personal meanings to these tattoos. I find this very beautiful; it transcends preconceptions of originality and meaning within a visual language.

OPP: You've used auto body materials like body filler, automotive enamel, fenders, chrome and tires in a number of sculptures, including Universal/Tramp Stamp Soldier (2011) and Nightbringer (2011). Did you have any experience working on cars before you started using their parts in your art practice? What's compelling to you about these materials?


LML: My experience with auto body materials was originally from an observational perspective. In college and during graduate school, I worked seasonally as a flagger at construction sites. I watched cars go by all day and naturally began to personify them as we occupied the same space. It’s a special situation to be clad in safety gear while standing out in a live lane of traffic, choreographing the movement of vehicles. To entertain myself, I began a list of the worst cars I saw each day, where I spotted them and who was driving. For instance, at an apartment complex in Renton, Washington, I saw a gold Nissan Pulsar wagon being driven by a young, Hispanic male.

When I began to use auto body products in my work, I was initially intrigued by the phenomenon of a cosmetic repair. In our society, it often seems like everything is produced for function and cost-effectiveness. However, the whole auto body industry is essentially aesthetic. It is this curious bastion of formalism practiced outside the context of fine art and is even endorsed by insurance companies. I wanted to explore and participate in this phenomenon by physically manipulating these materials to conceptual ends.

OPP: Could you explain the process of working with the body filler?

LML: I use resin colorants to dye body filler, and then apply these colored layers to the car hood. In some cases, I cover colored layers with a fleshy-colored layer (the default color of body filler when using a standard red cream hardener). I carve through the flesh-toned layer into the colored body filler using woodcut gouges and electric and air rotary tools. In other cases, I carve into a filled area of the flesh-toned body filler, and then fill it back in using body filler dyed to different colors. By repeating this process, I achieve a fairly high degree of detail and generate color gradations by controlling the direction in which I spread the body filler into the carved areas. An example is the rays coming out around the cross on Jimmy. I’ve also experimented with different solvents to thin the body filler in order to pour it into molds I make for casting forms like the masks on Izzy. In some cases, I achieve fine outlines by carefully carving the body filler, spraying on a black primer and then sanding it away to reveal the carved areas.

This methodology of inlaying is analogous to the process of tattooing and strengthens the connection between body and car; the body filler becomes flesh. I reaffirm the surface of the car hood by juxtaposing the inlayed imagery with decals, chrome emblems and fabricated steel components affixed to the surface or floating above it, such as the pentagram in Izzy or the numbers in Michael. I challenged myself to work completely with products and materials from the automotive industry. The body filler can be carved, thinned and dyed different colors, and it can be applied to itself or to the steel. The material affords me great flexibility in combining these techniques in each piece.

OPP: How did your Bachelors of Arts in American Indian Studies from the University of Washington inform your beaded work including Regalia, Skulls and Medallions, your series of beaded scratch tickets?

LML: I began doing beadwork long before college under the mentorship of the late Pauline Lilje, an artist of Chippewa descent, and my interest in beadwork partially led me to pursue a degree in American Indian Studies. I was very fortunate to study at a university that had such a department, and I was continuously surprised by the contemporary issues facing Native Americans. My understanding of our nation’s history was constantly challenged and reshaped during my coursework.

While I had done beadwork since a young age, it wasn’t until I became involved with the student group First Nations at the University of Washington that I started to make regalia for formalized events. During my first year in this group, I made a crown for the royalty contest at the annual First Nations Spring Powwow. Royalty are selected—primarily based on dancing, essays and interviews—to be role models in educational and career goals and for their strong connection to their tribal traditions and identity. The winners of royalty contests wear their crowns at all of the powwows they attend throughout the year they hold that title. It was a tremendous honor to make such a crown. Watching Carmen Selam, the winner of the first crown I made, wear it was rewarding far beyond any art-making experience I had previously had. I went on to make another powwow royalty crown and then began to make beaded medallions. At powwows, I often saw people wearing medallions as stand-ins for things that are typically printed on T-shirts, such as sports team logos. I decided to make metal band logo medallions like Slayer Medallion (2009) to function in a similar capacity.

I later referenced the form of the beaded medallion in Medallions. The series explores the relationship between decoration, value and labor, as well as the cliché themes—Gold Rush, Buck$ and Dough and Asian Riches, to name a few—of the scratch tickets. This work has a clear relationship to tribal gaming enterprises, but I’m most interested in drawing an analogy between the status of decoration and the status of Native Nations. Much in the way that American Indian and Alaska Native Tribes are legally defined as “domestic dependent nations” by the U.S. government, decoration exists on the surface of an object. It’s often defined within the context of its surface instead of being a thing unto itself. The analogy is in the struggle to define both tribes and decoration; neither is given full autonomy under the power structures of U.S. law and the art historical cannon. In many critical legal cases where tribal sovereignty has come into question, ambiguous phrases like "quasi-sovereign" or "semi-independent" become law. In conjunction with this body of work I wrote an imaginary court decision in which I use key language from historic cases in Federal Indian Policy that define the legal status of Tribes to talk about the status of decoration in fine art.


OPP: Unidentified is a relatively new series of embroidered and appliquéd memorials based on "police sketches and photos of unidentified remains." On your site, you say, "My designs are made using computer-generated graphics relating to grieving from social networking, such as Imikimis and Facebook cover photos." What are Imikimis?

LML: Imikimis are a brand of pre-made, photo frame graphics. There are a lot of sites out there where you can upload personal images into a computer-generated photo frame for posting on social networking sites. Most of these sites have collections of different themes such as holidays, romance, the seasons and “In memory of.” This paradox of “personalizing” a one-of-a kind photo with a pre-made, computer-generated graphic is intriguing. I have observed the use of these images in social media by individuals who are celebrating a relationship or mourning a loss. I am interested in how grieving through social networking forums can be impersonal but also enables people to have these public conversations about very personal and emotional topics.

OPP: How does the immediacy of grieving on social media relate the slowness of embroidery?

LML: The instantaneous nature of social networking, including the photo frames, makes it impersonal. I am using the slowness of embroidery to complicate that. I pair the police images of unidentified individuals with the computer-generated photo frames in a way that is almost camp. Then I recreate it with appliqué and embroidery to make this digital image physically tangible. The work is both deeply intimate, and yet the subjects remain anonymous. As an artist, I devote my time, labor and thought to these cases of unidentified remains and contextualize them within the historical tradition of memorial embroidery. I am fascinated by how a person could be deceased for decades yet still remain unidentified, especially since there is ample evidence such as what clothing they were wearing and what objects were found with them. I wonder how anonymous their lives were to leave them so unknown. I use embroidery to commemorate their lives, even if I’m the only person to take the time to think about them.

To see more of Lily's work, please visit lilymartinalee.com.

Featured Artist Interviews are conducted by Chicago-based interdisciplinary artist Stacia Yeapanis. When she’s not writing for OPP, Stacia explores the relationship between repetition, desire and impermanence in her cross-stitch embroideries, remix video and collage installations. She is an instructor in the Department of Fiber and Material Studies at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, where received her MFA in 2006, and was a 2012-2013 Mentor-in-Residence at BOLT in Chicago. Her solo exhibition I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For at Klemm Gallery, Siena Heights University (Adrian, Michigan) recently closed, and her solo exhibition titled Everything You Need is Already Here opens tomorrow night at Heaven Gallery in Chicago. The opening reception is from 7-11.

AMY ELKINS's photographic portraits question traditional assumptions about gender, identity and emotion, revealing vulnerability and fragility in the masculine experience. Her work has recently been seen at the 2012 International Young Photographers' Exhibition in S. Korea and The Bursa International Photo Festival in Turkey. Based in Portland, Oregon, Amy is currently an artist-in-residence at Villa Waldberta International Artist House in Munich, where her work is also on view in Next Generation: Contemporary American Photography at Amerika Haus.

OtherPeoplesPixels: Your work has some painterly references even though you are a photographer. What are your influences in terms of portraiture?

Amy Elkins: I think this is something that I do quite subconsciously. I studied painting, drawing, collage, printmaking and other forms of hand-to-paper art-making for years before taking my first photography class. While I fell in love with photography and the way that it could instantly transform or capture reality, I’ve always been drawn to painting. I remember the first time I walked through the Metropolitian Museum of Art and saw early Dutch and American paintings depicting people in dramatic light and lavish environments with rigid and elegant postures…that visual contrast resonated with me. 

I've been abroad in Munich at a residency for the past few months, and I constantly find myself in so many museums. I've easily spent hours/days just looking at the awkward qualities in these paintings—the gestures, expressions and environments.

Contemporary photographer Rineke Dijkstra’s series of young matadors had a huge impact on me, and I still believe they are incredibly compelling. I'm also influenced by Lise Sarfati and her portraits of young inmates in Europe, Fazal Sheikh’s daylight studios in refugee camps, Carl de Keyzer’s Siberian prison camp portraits and definitely the works of August Sander. 

Brendan, Brooklyn, NY
2008

OPP: In your statement for your ongoing series Wallflower, you say: "In a reversal of the traditional male gaze, the images confront some of the cultural grounds underlying gender, opting to focus on the beauty, sensitivity and vulnerabilities found in a sex that has long been held to masculine expectations and stereotypes." Can you define the notion of the female gaze in the same way the male gaze has been defined throughout art history? 

AE: I think the two types of gazes we are referring to can be seen very differently depending on the type of work we are connecting it with. Throughout art and photography history, the male gaze is used to explore and portray female sensuality, sexuality, beauty and vulnerability. This portrayal suggests to the audience that women should be seen this way. I am not trying to reverse the role of power that has been assumed by the male gaze. I am simply turning the gaze around a little and exploring the notion that females aren’t the only gender susceptible to fragility and vulnerability. Society looks at gender in very black and white terms, and those terms seem so far from the actual vast gradient of what makes up who we all are. In my image making, I ask the viewer to engage in questions regarding gender code and societal standards of masculinity and femininity. 

OPP: Two bodies of work, Black is the Day, Black is the Night and The Sunshine State, are ongoing explorations of inmates on death row. The pieces are portraits but not in a traditional sense. I'd like to hear more about both of these projects.

AE: I’ll talk about Black is the Day, Black is the Night first—it’s the catalyst for Sunshine State—and a project that isn’t currently on my website: Parting Words. Black is the Day, Black is the Night began through my correspondence with men who were and still are serving primarily death row sentences across the United States. It all began one rainy afternoon in Brooklyn when I came across a website for prisoners seeking pen pals. There were advanced search options for those who were serving life in prison and those serving on death row. Out of morbid curiosity, I clicked on the death option. What unraveled before me felt equal parts disgusting and mesmerizing. I saw hundreds of profiles staring back at me. After a lot of thought and recurring visits to this website, I decided to write several men serving death row sentences and two men serving life sentences who had entered prison as juveniles. I sent them letters introducing myself. I began my interactions with very simple questions about identity, memory, time and distance. I was curious about how being so far removed from society impacted their notions of self, of others and of home. I was curious about how facing life or death in prison as a result of acting out on a violent impulse brought them into a heightened mental state of stress and vulnerability.

I never thought any of these correspondences would turn into a photography project. Simply put, I was curious about their lives. I knew that this was a rare opportunity for me to be in touch first hand. I felt it deeply connected with the multifaceted exploration of masculinity I had already been working on. I never expected what ended up unfolding. There was such sincerity in the letters, and such a readiness for collaboration. So I began constructing images from the text they were sharing with me, and then I would send those images to them. They critiqued and sometimes decorated their cells with the images. This went on for years. These images were the only types of portrait that I could make of them. 

Of the seven men with whom I originally corresponded, I remain in touch with only one. He has been in solitary confinement since 1995 for a crime he committed at age 16. One man was released in 2010 at the age of 30 after 15 years in prison. Three men opted out of the correspondence. One man was executed in 2009, and another met the same fate in March 2012.  

OPP: How are your other two projects different from Black is the Day, Black is the Night?

AE: Sunshine State and Parting Words spurred off of Black is the Day, Black is the Night. That's when I became more involved in my research about the U.S. death penalty. Sunshine State encompasses every mug shot from one of the most populated prison death rows in the country. For every portrait, I remove all details of the original image until it becomes just spectrums of color and light. Through this process, I speak to the loss of self within such a massive prison population. I do this knowing full well that these experiences are just part of an even more massive, nationwide prison death row population.

In the forever ongoing project Parting Words, I combine mug shots from every inmate executed in the state of Texas with their last words. The new portrait is made entirely of text and gradiations. The portraits are recognizable and clear when seen from far away, but as the viewer approaches them they dissolve into text. These are the last vestiges of each man that still remain. This project began when one of my prison pen pals in Texas was executed. 

OPP: Can you expand on the underlying connection between violence and vulnerability in your work? It's present in both the inmate projects and Elegant Violence, which is an ongoing series of portraits of rugby players.

AE: This is a connection that I have been making only in my most recent work, but have wanted to explore for some time. In Wallflower, I look to male subject matter in a way that pushes and challenges gender stereotypes by placing both masculine and feminine together in one frame. Because the men are out of context—they are sitting bare and in a created/fictional environment that is neither mine nor theirs—the viewer is left to read simple body language and gesture against a floral paper backdrop. The subject's vulnerability comes through in the portrait, and the relationship between sitter and photographer. 

Recently I looked again at gender stereotypes. Rather than push against or challenge notions of gender, I examined the idea that men act on violent and competitive impulses. How do those impulses create vulnerability? The physical exertion, the rush of adrenaline, the injuries...these create a less guarded portrait of heightened vulnerability. The rugby athletes are not entirely focused on me and my camera but rather on what they have just experienced in the game. 

The letters and images I made with inmates over the years look at the vulnerabilities of living a life in infinite solitude, or of facing one's death as a result of acting out on violent impulses. The men I portray had already served 12-26 years in prison when I first contacted them. Time forced a break in their notions of self. Through our exchange of letters and art, we looked into memory collapse, changing notions of self and how infinite time impacts both. The act of violence is broken down in both projects, but that's mostly due to circumstances. I often look for that moment of vulnerability, that moment of being unguarded. That moment is when I feel compelled to make portraits.

Lucas, New York, NY
February 07, 2010

 OPP: I like the term "longitudinal portrait" that you use to describe your bodies of work Lucas and Gray, which are both portraits those individuals. What's it like to photograph the same person over a series of years, especially a young boy going through the process of adolescence and becoming an adult man?

AE: I love what unfolds before the camera when I make extended portraits. There’s a patience that has to exist because I know that the project(s) could go on for years; they could endlessly shift in direction, too. The only concrete elements are the subjects themselves. Their lives and environments may shift in numerous directions. I have no idea what future portrait sessions might be like. 

This is true for both Gray and Lucas. Gray had a serious medical condition that had the ability to shift the way he felt and the way his body, face and mood appeared before the camera. His body was physically altered through illness, surgery and recovery. I started photographing him when we lived together in 2004, and I've followed him ever since. The project is loose and flutters in and out of both of our lives.

The project with Lucas began when I met him at a friend's wedding. He was 12-years-old. He was at the wedding with his parents; I contacted them a few weeks later to ask if I could make his portrait. I didn’t necessarily think that I would photograph him for years to come, but here we are several years later and I'm still working with him. It happened organically. We both agree that this has to continue. Over the years, Lucas has literally grown up before the camera. There are so many subtle shifts I catch during these portrait sessions that would otherwise go unnoticed in the day-to-day. In this project, things are far more structured and formulaic; I photograph him every 3-4 months. The shifts are massive when look at the images in sequence. I find this fascinating.

OPP: Right now you are in residency in Germany, correct? Tell us about the residency. What will you be working on while you are there?

AE: Yes, I am currently a month into the Villa Waldberta International Artist Residency Program, which provides artists (writers, actors, poets, film makers, photographers, painters, sculptors, musicians) with a furnished apartment in an historic mansion. It's located in the countryside, an hour's train ride outside of Munich. Each artist receives a stipend. I am here for two months thanks to a nomination from Curator Stefan-Maria Mittendorf, who recently assembled an exhibition of American photographers (including Alec Soth, Doug Rickard and Laurel Nakadate, among others) called Next Generation: Contemporary American Photography. 

Given that the work environment is very different than my own fully equipped studio back home, I’ve learned to work in new ways. I’ve spent quite a lot of time editing images that I've taken in my past seven weeks abroad. I shot formal portraits for a new project that I worked on during my two-week stay in Copenhagen. I also shot informal, lo-fi images that I see as a response to being a foreigner traveling alone for an extended period of time. This is a new experience for me. I’ve been experimenting with printing these lo-fi images on various paper types. I played with sequencing them into several small books/zines, temporarily titled Whilst I am Drawing Breath, which is taken from a poem by Rose Ausländer. 

Both projects are too new to talk about in further detail. They are still very much evolving. I have a little under a month left here, and while I’ll continue to work on these projects I also plan on attending Paris Photo and visiting London and Salzburg before heading home. My trip back includes a four-day layover in Iceland where I will soak in geothermal pools, and another several days in NYC to work on Lucas. When I return to Portland, I'll shake off the jetlag and start making work prints. I’ll have been out of my regular reality for three-plus months, and will definitely be ready to jump back in. 

To view more of Amy's work, please visit amyelkins.com.