A trio of Northeast Florida artists offers a public viewing of recent works with an “Open Casket”

On Saturday, Feb. 9, Ryan Strasser, Dat Nguyen and Philip Cozma unveil their group show “Open Casket” at CoRK in the Riverside district. While these three artists have their own distinct and signature styles, they also seem to share some similarities in regards to delivering somewhat cryptic, or at least otherworldly, works of art that touch on the personal, political and playfully absurd.

In a near self-destructive feat of editorial peacockery, the quasi-journalistic consortium currently self-branding as STAREHOUSE attempted to e-mail out questions to the participating artists and then have the answers and images posted in less than 48 hours – hoping to have this online before the day of the opening reception. In that regard, we have succeeded. However, whether or not the story is a success is once again contingent on you, our much-loved reader. We would also like to thank the artists for both participating in the interview, as well as agreeing to the highly abbreviated deadline.

Below is a transcription of the Q & A with Strasser, Nguyen and Cozma.

Ryan Strasser

["Fixation Fluctuation" by Ryan Strasser; 38" x 20" x 2"; mixed media (found objects, photo collage, copper dry point etching, and silver gel print.)]

Ryan Strasser: Forward momentum.

S.: What type (i.e. paintings/sculptures, etc…) and how many pieces are you presenting in show?

R.S.: I will be showing 8 to 10 collages displayed in shallow shadow boxes

S.: The press release for the show states that collectively, your work will “explore the dichotomous themes of life and death, waking and dreaming and freedom and captivity” – could you please elaborate on how your own work will explore those themes?

R.S.: There’s an infinite amount of things that can do an infinite amount of things to or because of an infinite amount of things. “To or because of” or “because of to” is the quad-chotomy… lol.

S.: What are some of the characteristics that you admire about the work of your fellow “Open Casket” artists?

R.S.: Dat keeps the content light while pinpointing tension. He paints two oscillating fans in a corner and you look at them and see his wonderful line quality and color pallet and then wonder why he painted two freaking fans in the corner and if you’re like me any number of narratives could come. There are two kids that must not be at home, this is the broken fan pile, no one came to the meeting, and it must be pleasant in Dat’s room cuz the fans aren’t on…

Philip has massive technical skill, canvases and subjects to match. He has an unmatched ability to enter your personal space with a monolithic battle god.

S.: I know you of you primarily as a painter, yet you are apparently also displaying shadow boxes in this particular show. What compelled you to explore that medium?

R.S.: I collect what I consider significant objects. And these collages give me a chance to show how they are significant. Included in this collection are piles of old prints, photos, drawings, paintings… that I have made. Doing this kind of work gets me in touch with the progressing narratives of my work.

S.: I kind of know you more as a figurative/portraiture or at least representational painter. How did you reconcile that approach or history with the creation of these shadow boxes?

R.S.: I disregarded it completely and loved doing so!

S.: The statement for the show also states that these new assemblage shadow boxes “which open a window to an instant in some reality neither real nor fantasy but grounded in tactile experience.” Could you elaborate on that concept? What do you mean by a reality that is “neither real nor fantasy”? Could you give me an example, possibly as an anecdote from your own life that would illustrate that occurring?

R.S.: One time I saw a man about 30 years old with cerebral palsy go to the ATM. Was my feeling of waste, uselessness, unfairness and regret in that moment real or did I dream it up as an epithetical response to what I perceived to be his plight? I didn’t have any interaction with this person. I think the best way to describe my reaction is as being neither real or fantasy but it was some sort of tactile experience.

S.: What are you currently working on? What is the status of  [Strasser’s indie rock band] “After the Bomb, Baby!”  – is the band still an active entity or on permanent hiatus?

R.S.: I want to put together this performance piece for One Spark but it’s going to cost around $5,000.00 to pull off. Maybe I’ll make some cash at this show … LOL. Everything will be priced as usual … Free if I like you. More than you’ll pay otherwise.  I have started collecting discarded bed box springs. I am going to stretch bed sheets on them and paint bed scenes. ATBB is alive. We have a show for Void coming up I think in March and a show at Sun-Ray Cinema in early April.

Dat Nguyen

["Goofy" by Dat Nguyen; 4 x 6 feet; oil on canvas.]

Dat Nguyen: I’ve known Philip and Ryan for a long time but we haven’t done any show together. We always interested in each other’s works and we all think that this is the right time for us to show that progress and more importantly to have a reason to hang out.

 S.: What type (i.e. paintings/sculptures, etc…) and how many pieces are you presenting in show?

D.N.: I’m showing 7 paintings.

S.: The press release for the show states that collectively, your work will “explore the dichotomous themes of life and death, waking and dreaming and freedom and captivity” – could you please elaborate on how your own work will explore those themes?

D.N.: That’s a lie.

S.: What are some of the characteristics that you admire about the work of your fellow “Open Casket” artists?

D.N.: Philip and me shared somewhat similar childhood experience in Romania and Vietnam, we both got brainwashed with communist ideology and witnessed the transition of black and white television to color-television. I admired his determination to revisit the past and his grand works are quite impressive. Ryan’s works, whether it’s collage, drawing or paintings, are always funny, nimble, and wondrous.

S.: The release for this show also explains that your work consists of “dreamy pieces evoke partially remembered déjà vu realism.”  Could you elaborate on that description?

D.N.: Actually that phrase was coined by Taylor, Ryan’s brother. It’s pretty good isn’t it? I think it’s reasonable descriptive about the works, which consisted of banal happenings yet the space seems to be non-Euclidean, the light source is unclear, the anatomy is not precise, the colors are indecisive, and the viewer’s perspective is somewhere midair.

S.: Looking at older work, it seems like your pieces run the gamut from the surreal (such as “What Is to Be Done?”) to the cryptic (“Yellow India”) to more traditional cityscapes. I guess I am curious as to where you feel like your work is heading now. The image that you sent me of a piece to be featured in “Open Casket” shows an image of a figure lifting weights as what appears to be a child wearing a “Goofy” mask stands in the doorway. What is the inspiration behind this? Is there a direct narrative or is it more of an “open door” for the viewer to explore?

D.N.: My way of creating is impulsive. I have no plan or system. If I witness or read something that moves me in some way I’ll create something to respond to it. For this particular piece “Goofy”, I saw a young guy doing weightlifting in a decaying theater that belonged to the French colonial time, and the image, for me, illuminated a part of life in the modern Vietnam. As I finishing the painting, my two nieces, who are avid Disney fans, insisted me to include a Disney character. I laughed it off but I reconsider and think that the kids are absolutely right. After a civilized negotiation, we agree to include Goofy. The kids didn’t get Cinderella as they wanted but they’re happy that their opinion mattered.  I think adding Goofy, an American, makes the concept behind it way more interesting.

S.: You recently returned back to Northeast Florida from an extended visit to Vietnam. I’m wondering if you would share some notable impressions from that journey and also equally curious how that experience might have “shown up” in the work to be featured in this show.

D.N.: I met an expatriate in Saigon who complained that when he’s in the U.S. he’d miss the warmth and friendliness of the Vietnamese and the chaos of city, and when he’s in Vietnam he’d miss the sterile city and  the country where everyone just wants everyone to be as far away from each other as possible. I felt the same way too as I lived there for a year. For this show I’m showing a series of highway images. These series express that odd feeling of isolation and freedom.

S.: What are you currently working on?

D.N.:  Nothing much, but i think i need to find myself a job first.

Philip Cozma

[Untitled by Philip Cozma; 4 x 6 feet; oil on canvas.]

Philip Cozma: My contribution to the show is shedding light on an, often times, glorified masculine identity aided by advanced scientific development that becomes an extension of modern man’s idealism. It is this intoxicating fascination with things mechanical and complex technology, as a whole.

S.: What type (i.e. paintings/sculptures, etc…) and how many pieces are you presenting in show?

P.C.:  I have six oil paintings in the show.

S.: The press release for the show states that collectively, your work will “explore the dichotomous themes of life and death, waking and dreaming and freedom and captivity” – could you please elaborate on how your own work will explore those themes?

P.C.:  My work delivers the Freedom and Captivity theme by investigating the relationship between man and the suit he must wear to become one with the machine. It is the race for progress that keeps us free to dream and escape along the x and y axis yet captive within that technology and at a dangerous disconnect with the natural environment.

S.: What are some of the characteristics that you admire about the work of your fellow “Open Casket” artists?

P.C.:  Ryan’s work has a certain fearlessness to it that allows him to approach subject matter from an entirely new perspective. He reflects the possibilities of an innate human nature that demands and challenges the viewer to a certain self-evaluation. Dat’s experimental color pallet and alternate perspective gives his work a captivating mystery, and in turn, opens the viewer’s perception to a lost subliminal truth.

S.: The press release for this show also states that your “tightly controlled propaganda pieces plunge the viewer into a totalitarian nightmare.” Could you please elaborate on that comment? It also seems as if your work might be the most overtly “political” of the three featured artists. Would you agree with that observation?

P.C.:  . I think powerful nations, throughout history, had to master some technology that allowed them to achieve their respective culmination. When I investigate this subject matter I look to capture man’s relentless quest for power through technology. I’m not trying to make my work political; it only comes across that way through subtle visual cues.

S.: The image that you sent me for “Open Casket” features what appears to be of two fighter pilots. A few pieces on your site feature similar combat or aggressive imagery; other pieces, particularly the “CCCP” piece featuring the Cosmonaut figure in space (ostensibly titled “Yuri Gagarin, First Man in Space”) also seem to touch on propaganda-style and war-like imagery. What compels you to utilize these ideas or motifs?

P.C.:  I grew up collecting stamps from across the world. A lot of them were Bauhaus-styled, propaganda themed imagery of an idealized Space Age society with an abundance of geometry and color. It was my dominant source for visual inspiration and nurtured my drive for making art as a child. It carried through over the years which I still make evident in some of my work today.

S.: I know that you (along with Ryan) are also a designer. Of the three artists featured in “Open Casket” your work seems to have more overt or direct design elements, especially in your use of iconic/futuristic images. Do you agree with that observation? Also, what is your apparent fascination with these almost anachronistic images/motifs of sci-fi figures and robots?

P.C.:  That is a fair observation. Both Ryan and I did study graphic design. I feel it’s only natural that it would influence our personal styles as we develop further. I have always been fascinated by the look of industrial machines and vehicles. As a child I always dreamt about utopian, “Jetsonian” worlds with flying cars and talking robots. I was always fascinated by futuristic and aerodynamic things and looked to design and illustrate my own dream machines.

S.: What else are you currently working on?

P.C.:  Right now I continue to elaborate on the same subject matter.

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Photographer Masha Sardari reveals a realm of allegory and dream

["with a bear by the hearth," 2013]

In these darkly-tinted images, the effect is visceral and immediate, placing the viewer in an ambiguous position. Are we a witness or intruder? Combining her innate sense of imagination with a solid use of digital photography methods, the work of Sardari reads like a story that can be as directly provocative as it is freely encouraging of interpretation by the audience.

While still in her late teens, the self-taught Sardari has already been featured in media outlets such as Juxtapoz Magazine, Visual News, and was most recently featured in a Kid’s TEDTalk held in Dallas, Texas last year.

Sardari I agreed to speak with Starehouse on the evening of Wednesday, Feb. 27. Below is a transcription of highlights from our conversation.

Starehouse: First off, congratulations on being featured in a TED Talk. How did that come about?

Masha Sardari: Well, the organizer actually contacted me after seeing my work on a website called The Visual News. And she actually thought it was spam and she doesn’t usually open those e-mails and ignored them most of the time and for some reason she decided to open the one that I was featured in. And that’s how she discovered my work. So she was interested and e-mailed me and asked me if I would be cool with coming out to Texas and being part of a talk for the kids’ TED talk.

S: Awesome. Did they also help you get out there or was it just an open invitation and you had to figure out how to get there?

M.S.: No, they actually funded everything; they paid for the hotel and the ticket.

S: Fantastic. Now this was in November of last year?

M.S.: Yes. November 30^th.

S: In the talk [Sardari is featured here roughly between 3:36:40-3:42:10], you mention other forms of art that you pursued before kind of finding your niche in photography; you mention everything from painting and sketching to playing music and even running. But what do you think was the ultimate thing that kind of pulled you towards photography?

M.S.: I think it was that I was always interested in art and I always wanted to be involved with it, buy I never really had enough time to devote to it – or even thought about devoting that time to it. But it wasn’t until a couple years ago when I found a camera at our house. It was one of those ridiculous mega pixels ones that everybody has (laughs) but I had never really messed with it before. So I decided to go outside and see what it could do. I was pretty intrigued by it but then I kind of put it aside and forgot about it. But my mom noticed that I had an interest in it so she decided to see if she could push me to develop that interest a little more. So really it’s thanks to her that I got into it.

S: Now is she an artist as well or creatively-minded?

M.S.: No, she’s not at all (laughs). She works in accounting so I think it’s the furthest from her mind!

S: Right, right … but hey, she’s got discerning taste! Her intuition about your skills was correct.

M.S.: Yeah.

S: So you’re in Ponte Vedra Beach?

M.S.: Yeah and I go to high school here.

S: How old are you now?

M.S.: I’m 18.

S: I’m curious about your origins. On your Flickr account, it says you are from “Jura a village in” – and forgive me if I pronounce all of these incorrectly (laughs) – Transnistria” which is in Moldova. I guess I’m wondering when you moved here and how did you wind up in Northeast Florida?

M.S.: Well, I was born in Moldova, which is an Eastern European country and it’s very small and poor, and when I was around five years old my Mom had an opportunity to move to the U.S. to work here as an immigrant worker. And after a year of having a visa to work here, she really liked it so she decided to see if she could get my entire family to move here. Meanwhile, I was living in the capital city of Moldova, called Chisinau, and I lived there with my Grandma and went to school. And my mom applied for a green card and in 2006 they approved it and then I was actually allowed to move here and finally see her because that entire time I hadn’t seen her, from when I was five years old until I was 12.

S: Wow.

M.S.: Yeah, so I had lived with my Grandma during that time and she basically took care of me. In 2006, my sister and I moved to Orlando, because that’s where my Mom initially lived and then we moved up to Ponte Vedra. That’s basically it. (laughs)

S: I know that Moldova formed after the fall of the Soviet Union and there’s been some unrest there but I’m sure there’s an interesting culture there like any other place. What are some of your more resonant memories of your childhood there?

M.S.: That’s where a lot of my art is related to: just my experiences as a child in the villages because it was very a rural lifestyle and we had cows and farm animals, land that we farmed and a country house. We lived right by the river and there was a giant forest. It was just my experiences as a kid; all I knew was nature. I wasn’t exposed to the modern day things that everybody else, especially in the industrialized countries, was exposed to. So that’s all I was connected to and I would be outside from morning ‘til night (laughs) my Mom would have to call me to come inside.

S: Right, you were like a country kid.

M.S.: Yeah.

S: Did you ever feel any kind of longing to go to big cities or did you even care?

M.S.: I was pretty young so it was basically all I knew.

S: And this explains why you use nature so much in your images and some of them are overtly based on fairy tales, like the newer series. But I’m wondering too if any of that might have come from stories or the oral traditions of your homeland.

M.S.: Oh yeah. I’m really intrigued by that. I’m actually reading the original Grimms’ Fairy Tales; I want to read the real stories and not the fun, Disney-type (laughs) versions! Nobody gets rolled down a hill in a barrel!

S: Right. They’re pretty dark and intense stories.

["the twists of a protective mind," 2012]

S: Yeah. When I was a kid and was bad, my Grandma used to say that the devil was going to come get me in a wisp of blue smoke. There’s one to grow on.

M.S.: (laughs)

S: Yeah! “Sweet dreams and good night!” And I would lay there in terror waiting for the devil to show up (…) I want to go back to the talk where you say that you wanted to find something where you could express yourself without words. You say you were shy as a child but in that talk you speak really eloquently and with a kind of humble authority on what you’re doing.

M.S.: Thank you.

S: But do you think it was shyness that led you to this? You didn’t pick singing or spoken word or poetry which is verbal; you still picked this nonverbal expression. Do you think that choice was based on shyness?

M.S.: I think it was part of that because as a child I was always by myself and in nature. I had a couple of friends but most of the time it was kind of a solitary lifestyle. So I wasn’t used to being around a lot of people and having to communicate with them. So when I moved to the city, it was pretty tough for me because I was used to knowing just a small group of people and being comfortable with them. So when I moved, my Grandma tried to get me to be more social so she pushed me to go and start dancing. And I didn’t agree for a couple of years before I finally decided to try it because I was terrified of going into a huge group of people and having to interact with all of them. And so I kind of needed some sort of way to ease myself into it and that’s how dance helped me with that. Because it was a social thing and at the same time I had to feel it internally and use the movements to tell stories; whenever we did any dances they were based on some sort of story and trying to convey that to an audience. That’s what got me used to using forms other than language to express myself. So it was only natural for me to move on to something else that worked in the same way. And that’s why I chose art.

S: I guess to a large degree, dancing and now photography brought you out of that shyness. I mean, you just spoke in front of thousands in person and technically millions of people online at the TED talk!

M.S.: (laughs) Yeah, but I was terrified the entire time!

S: Were you? I would be equally terrified.

M.S.: That was one of the toughest things I’ve ever had to do. I don’t even remember everything that I said when I got up there. I just remember bright lights and a lot of people, me just saying something, and then leaving (laughs).

S: You did well though.

M.S.: Thank you.

S: During the talk you are showing slides of your work and you talk about kind of the painterly influence on your photography. And I think your work surely has a sense of that, the approach of a painter. Who do you think are some of the painters that have had the greatest influence on what you do?

M.S.: I actually started photography before I even knew that much about all of these painters. So at first it was kind of experimental and last year I actually took an art history course at my school and I got to actually go through all of the art that I had basically resisted before (laughs) and I was really drawn towards Renaissance and Baroque artists like Caravaggio. I really like his art since it is really dark and psychological and that’s kind of what I like. And I like the intensity of Peter Paul Rubens and he definitely uses a lot of reds in his work, too. And I do, especially in my latest series where I’m trying to connect it with that red color. Actually, when I edit now I pull up some of the paintings he [Rubens] has done and just draw the colors out of that to influence what I’m making.

S: Right. Are you seeing more and more that you’re becoming aware of this? It is like “water seeks its own level” in the sense that you are finding these like-minded artists and things. I guess I am wondering since in visual arts people will kind of, uh, honor the masters by recreating poses or reinterpreting something, like a placement in composition. Have you explored anything like that in your work?

M.S.: Yeah, I have done a piece called “decaying venus” that was inspired by a painting by Agnolo Bronzino called “Venus, Cupid, Folly, and Time.” I was intrigued by the shape of her body. I took it from above and the model is lying on a branch and she’s holding apples in her hand.

["decaying venus," 2012]

S: So there are things like Renaissance paintings and Rubens that you identify with. I think your work also has a quality that wouldn’t be out of place in Symbolism. Have you ever checked out any Symbolist art or were aware of it?

M.S.: No. What time period is that?

S: Like 19^th century. You can say no. I don’t want to misdirect you and taint your skills!

M.S.: (laughs)

S: Your first project was the 365 days thing on Flickr and it seems out of the gate the whole vibe was fairly dark and you used the word “psychological.” And when you did the 52 Weeks series and had more time to kind of think about this and ruminate, the subject matter is just increasingly dark. Why do you think that is?

M.S.: I don’t know. I’m naturally a really bright person and people are shocked when they meet me and that my art doesn’t really match my personality. But I feel like it’s an outlet for me and that’s why I am a happy person otherwise. Because I am able to express anything that bothers me emotionally and I can fuel that into my art. And at the same time I really like how darker emotions have more weight to them and they create mystery and all of these stories that make you think. Likewise, happy things are kind of superficial and don’t make you think too much. You see a bright photo and you smile maybe but that’s where it ends. You don’t have that state of mind for too long and then you move on to something else.

S: Sure.

M.S.: But when it’s darker stuff, I really try to make connections with people that way, where they may be able to relate to it somehow. Because everyone has struggled in life, for whatever reason; when they see a piece of art, maybe they’ll remember that and relate to it in somehow.

S: Absolutely. I agree and it’s profound that things like depression and loss will always be universal. When I look at something of yours like the “No Human Contact” series, I get a sense that these young women might have been somehow abandoned and then at the same time I feel like I am almost intruding on their world (laughs). Does that make sense? I guess I’m wondering what your impetus is behind that. I know you use things like nature and fairy tales but I guess I’m wondering how you create a narrative. Are you going for just a profound image or are you trying to tell us an overt story?

M.S.: Well a lot of my ideas come subconsciously. I don’t always sit for hours and try to come up with something to do. I usually get this image in my head and I know that I have to create it. It usually happens when I’m just hanging around or about to fall asleep and I have to get up and write it down just to remember what I imagined. And I don’t really don’t know where it comes from. But after creating the image I think about it more and make connections and realize things. It’s all specific to each photo but sometimes I can understand why I came up with something. Sometimes it is life experiences I had and other times it is things that have influenced me, even when other people have told me how they had experienced something. So it could even come from outside sources. Otherwise, I like to focus on one person and highlight that person. And even though it’s not what they are experiencing in real life, and they are playing a role and really acting, it is kind of a representation of other people in my life or of myself that I put into it. So that’s kind of the narrative build-up is about.

S: In the “Three hundred and sixty five” series, you were your own model and subject. And I noticed in many or your images you use the same environments, like the woods or nature, the same colors like the reds and even the same models. What’s the advantage of using models in your work instead of just posing yourself?

M.S.: A lot of it is about a variety of appearances, so just like when you would pick an actor for a role, you’d want them to fit that role. You have an image in your head of how you’d want them to act. And it’s the same way with my work, where I want them to fit that role that I imagined. And it is not always myself. It’s more convenient to use someone else because I have more control over how they’re positioned or what they’re wearing and even how their hair might look. But when I am by myself I have to double-check and constantly run back and see how it looks on my camera. Sometimes I can’t always convey exactly what I want the model to do. They’re not in my mind so they can’t see it like I see it. So I have to sit down and explain what I want from them. That’s why I try to use the same model most of the time because I have built a relationship with her and we are good friends and she knows me.

S: And she does this well, too. It seems like she is a good vehicle for your ideas.

M.S.: Yeah, definitely. I don’t have to give her too much direction.

S: And her name is Bethany Rand?

M.S.: Yes.

S: She’s local too?

M.S.: Yeah, she goes to UNF.

S: Right on. You use different environments and I want to talk about the one called “missing soul” where [in the TED talk] you describe how you just found this fish and use that -

M.S.: (laughs) Yeah.

S: – so she is pretty agreeable to take direction like “Sit in the water and hold this dead fish!” She’s a good sport about this.

M.S.: (laughs) Yeah, that’s a pretty funny story since I went to New York City, to the Hamptons, and Bethany came to visit me so she just decided to come out for the weekend and meet my family and spend some time there. I knew I wanted to do some kind of shoots while we were out there because it is so beautiful and natural. And I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do and then I saw this dead fish on the side of the road and I (laughs) knew for sure that I had to somehow use it.

S: Sure (laughs): “I can’t ignore this perfectly good rotting, dead fish on the side of the road.”

M.S.: (laughs) Yeah! I can’t miss an opportunity.

S: Exactly.

M.S.: And Bethany knows me pretty well, so when she saw it (laughs) she knew exactly what was going to happen.

S: Right, and she now probably tries to keep road kill away from you as much as possible.

M.S.: (laughs) Yes!

["missing soul," 2012]

M.S.: Yeah, basically except for a few instances, most of it is done here. That one fish photo is in New York and usually I shoot in Long Island, here, or in Moldova. That’s basically the only places I’ve ever done anything in.

S: So you still go back to Moldova fairly regularly?

M.S.: Yeah, I do periodically and I’m hoping this summer that I’ll get to go again; because the nature is really beautiful there.

S: I want to talk about this because you’re only 18 but you’ve done a lot in a short time. So you started taking pictures in 2010; that’s when you first picked up the camera, right?

M.S.: Yeah.

S: In such a short time you’ve really pushed yourself technically, because you are essentially self-taught – which is great. But then even physically, where you did the underwater image of “a still storm,” you pushed yourself. What do you think drives you? It seems like you are really self-driven to do this.

M.S.: I think it’s always been within me, it just never got realized. I have periods of time where I can’t shoot for whatever reasons. Maybe my model is busy or I’m swamped with stuff from school and I don’t have time. But for some reason I have this physical and emotional need where I have to go out and shoot and create something. And sometimes if I go for two to three weeks without doing this, I’m almost like someone addicted to drugs or something (laughs) and I realize I have to do this.

S: Sure. Art stabilizes mood. I understand.

["nothing but trouble and worry in this world," 2012]

S: But you have done so much in such a short time, have you learned any hard or humbling lessons on your own limits and exerting yourself too much at once in such a way?

M.S.: I think that it’s important to experiment and that’s why I’ve learned this way. I don’t think I actually know as much (laughs) as you think I do!

S: Well, that’s alright. You present the illusion in the same way (laughs) that I am barely a writer! Fake it ‘til you make it!

M.S.: (laughs) It might appear that I’m technically knowledgeable but when I edit, it is very simple. I stitch them together and basically take different pieces from the frame and put them together in Photoshop to create the entire photograph.

S: Keeping in mind that I am completely ignorant of all photography, can I ask about what kind of equipment that you use?

M.S.: I started out with a semi-professional camera: it was a Canon PowerShot SX10; it didn’t have interchangeable lenses or anything and was pretty simple. And then I worked with a Canon Rebel. And now, luckily, I never thought I’d be able to afford a nice, quality camera because I don’t work right now, but luckily I was able to sell enough artwork to purchase the one I own now, and it’s a Canon 5D Mk II. And it’s a full format so it’s a better level but not really one of those hi tech ones they would use for magazine shoots, but it does the job really well.

S: You mentioned selling work. You have a large following on both Facebook, Flickr, have been featured on a TED Talk and even had a picture on Times Square. Have you had any local exposure or gallery representation?

M.S.: No, I have not. I’ve been on the search (laughs) but not yet.

S: Do you find it frustrating that you’re not showing locally – or do you even care? Hopefully, my interview won’t hurt your chances (laughs)

M.S.: (laughs) No, no. I think I’m a little bit frustrated because I think that some of the galleries here are looking more for traditional art and so they’re used to maybe selling more traditional, kind of tourist-based ideas of what some art in Florida might be. It’s pretty difficult to have them take a chance on a new, young artist.

S: Well, there are some sharper places around here that might show your stuff. You have a good sense of what you are doing and want to do. And don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re 18 years old for God sake, so give yourself a break.

M.S.: (laughs) I know.

S: But the work has a professional look where it could be a fashion shoot, but it looks like a fashion shoot from Grimms’ Fairy Tales. Not that you would even have to choose, but I am curious if you have any inclinations towards working as a commercial artist or would you rather be presented purely as a fine arts photographer?

M.S.: I think as long as I get to do what I love and stay true to who I am and show the ideas I want to show, I would be okay with doing commercial work. I wouldn’t really deviate too much from my core style. So only if I was able to somehow flip the fine arts into that place of commercial art. Otherwise, I’d just want to stick with what I am doing because I feel like this is the truest representation of who I am.

[Sardari poses in "white winter deer," 2011]

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Chip Southworth continues his lifelong exploration of art with faithful strokes

["Anxiety," mixed media on panel, 59 x 72]

This entire STAREHOUSE experiment was based on a few very encouraging conversations with people I had either known from my past or had the good fortune to encounter during my brief tenure as the Arts and Entertainment Editor at Folio Weekly. After amicably resigning from the paper, folks like Staci Bu Shea, Tony Rodrigues and Rob DePiazza in particular were supportive to the point of demanding that I at least attempt to aim my writing directly into the blogosphere and I am publicly indebted to these three, as well as others who pushed me forward during a weird transition in my life. A short list of local artists I had wanted to write about soon became a longer list and I am as grateful for the small audience that reads these pieces as I am for the gleeful sense of freedom in handpicking who I wish to feature. And that list, penciled in a spiral bound notebook, thankfully continues to grow. The fact that they have let me and my questions into their studios, homes and humored me with some oppressively long phone conversations says as much about their generosity of spirit as it does about my own skills at lock-picking the hearts and minds of artists.

I say all this as a possibly overwrought disclaimer that my lack of neutrality in writing about Chip Southworth is indicative as much of my affection for the person and his art as it is my certain admission that I am still and forever not a journalist; just another person who loves art.

I have interviewed Chip a total of three times, in successive features for Folio Weekly; one for last year’s retrospective at DVA, a second time for a story that chronicled a dozen individuals working in the art scene of Northeast Florida and most recently in a piece that previews his upcoming show at space:eight gallery in St. Augustine. For the sake of brevity and to avoid any redundant information, I would direct the reader to reading the stories available on those links.

I originally became aware of Chip’s work in an awkward way; by originally declining to write about it. This was due more to space content in the paper than any dislike of what he had sent me via e-mail. In fact, I was intrigued by what I saw: paintings of stark figures on backgrounds of color, a study of bridges that I originally considered odd but then began to gradually appreciate, and then a growing and engaging approach in his work that began to colorfully scrutinize the universal model – the human form. After meeting Chip in person, a bond was formed and I found his openness towards any subject, including his life story, honesty of influence and candor in talking about his beliefs in Orthodox Christianity, refreshing and disarming, especially when meeting someone in the sometimes clinically-cool scene of visual art. I guess I found another comrade in self-disclosure and in that I am always grateful.

The biggest development in Chip’s recent life that has affected his work, family and life has been the health of his wife and muse, Rikki. In October of last year, Rikki was diagnosed with breast cancer. She has undergone two successful surgeries and is readying herself for the next wave of additional treatment. The prognosis so far seems optimistic and Rikki and Chip’s spirits are high. While they are currently uninsured, the couple has walked hand-in-hand through this experience with much faith and love for each other as well as being surrounded by the support by the local community, a remarkably spontaneous and swift movement of affection and financial support that speaks volumes about the protectiveness of this area between artists and non-artists alike. A website has been set up to accept the much-appreciated (and as you will read) much-needed donations to help the family during this time.

The opening reception for Chip’s latest show, “Deeper: New Works Art Exhibit to Benefit Rikki” is held on Friday, April 5 from 5-11 p.m. at space:eight gallery, 228 W. King St., in St. Augustine. All proceeds from the show will go directly to Rikki’s medical fund. The show is on display through May 24.

A few weeks back I visited Chip and Rikki at their home in St John to interview them for the last FW piece. While I had plenty of source material that I could have culled from that recording, I decided to speak to Chip once again. What follows is the result of a subsequent phone conversation.

Neutrality and distance, as ever, be damned.

Starehouse: I gotta warn you that today my phone is being bombarded with images by [space:eight gallery owner] Rob DePiazza. He sent me a picture of some person in a gas mask from a heavy metal album cover and he just now sent me a picture of some polka band. I think he is in Nashville. I hope he’s in a record store; otherwise he has finally cracked completely. We might be interrupted.

Chip Southworth: (laughs) oh man.

S: How are you doing?

C.S.: I’m good. I’m exhausted. I’ve been working my ass off – all of those new paintings that I sent you, with the gray backgrounds, I finished the “Fetal” one and finished ten of these. Only nine will make the cut. I did four of the square ones and I did five of the tall ones.

S: Jesus, man. You seem to work pretty intently. Did you naturally go into a kind of heightened state to do that or is that an energy you need to somehow conjure up?

C.S.: Yeah, when I’m working, I work hard and I do it for 15, 16 hours on end.

S: Do you crash and burn after that? Do you get like a “painting hangover”? I mean, you have a regular day gig freelancing, too.

C.S.: Yeah, I have kind of a painting hangover right now and I just did two long nights of photo shoots (laughs) so I am beat as fuck right now.

S: Well, stagger along with me here. I’ll try and be mindful of that. I want to get right to the roots with this interview. I’m into the roots trip. You know Ray McKelvey [famed singer and frontman of punk legends Stevie Stiletto and The Switchblades] just passed away.

C.S.: Oh no.

S: Yeah, Stevie Stiletto has left the building. We spoke about some of this before, and you were a 730 Club [former punk club operated by McKelvey in the mid-1980s] kid. How did you get into that punk trip?

C.S.: Oh, the 730 club was just a good old punk club, man. I had lived in South Carolina for a little bit with my Dad and had come back here to live with my Mom. They were just trying to figure out what to do with me because they were not happy (laughs) with me being a punk rocker.

S: Right. Now was this pre-military school?

C.S.: Yeah.

S: Military School: the great American antidote to hardcore punk.

C.S.: Yeah, I went a couple of times [to 730 Club] when I was in military school but then it closed and I guess it re-opened a little bit later down the road.

S: Why did it close? Was there a “Taps”-like incident? A coup d’état?

C.S.: I don’t know. It was a crazy scene. I told Rikki how you used to walk in the door and there’d be a bag of mushrooms there, right where you paid. You could pay to get in and grab a handful of mushrooms basically.

S: Oh, the club.

C.S.: And it was constantly like that, you know?

S: (laughs) I guess this isn’t the military school, this is the 730 Club!

C.S.: (laughs) right. It was a cool little scene. It was a tight, small club. The parking lot across the street was an awesome place for a 13 year old kid to be. It was awesome (laughs).

S: Yeah. Now, when you were in your teens you were already helping work on billboards and design things. Did you Dad own a company or was he a freelancer?

C.S.: Yeah, my Dad owned a billboard company pretty much most of my life and from the time I was like, ten years old, I started setting type on a giant photo typography machine.

S: Now was this something that you were into or did he see glimmers of pre-punk rock so he was trying to keep you out of trouble?

C.S.: No, it was just a way for me to make money. You know? That’s all it was.

S: Some kids had a lemonade stand; you were adjusting fonts. You know what’s weird is that [Northeast Florida-based artist] Eric Gillyard also grew up in that business. His dad worked on billboards.

C.S.: Yeah. His dad worked for Clear Channel the entire time. My dad worked there when it was Lamar Dean and I think David [Gillyard] worked there when my dad worked there, too. He’s one of the two or three people that knew my dad, whenever I worked there.

S: Eric was also a punk rocker. I’m discovering now that some of the 21^st century art scene was at one point fueled by billboard companies and hardcore punk. It’s apparent.

C.S.: (laughs) very.

S: We had talked at one point and you told me that you had been into “Star Wars” and all of that stuff, 1970s whatever…science fiction, “Conan” action…

C.S.: But for me, I think skateboarding was the impetus to punk rock, that’s where it all came from.

S: It’s the gateway drug.

C.S.: Yeah, I started skateboarding when I was eight and a half. I was into BMX actually, I was racing BMX bikes and I used to ride to the races with The Cyclery, the BMX shop.

S: Did you go to Kona [Skate Park in Arlington]?

C.S.: Yeah. I went to Kona to get a pair of Vans [eternally coveted skate shoes]. I called the company in California and they were like “Kona is the only place in North Florida you can get ‘em.” So my Mom took me out there and I can remember walking through that door and it was like I was entering a fucking dream world (laughs)…it was amazing. It’s still amazing to me. Whenever I go there today that whole scene amazes me.

S: Now it’s become like a spiritual homeland. It has been well documented, but that is such a visually exciting scene. There are no bland skaters.

C.S.: Dude if you look on the third cover of Thrasher Magazine from 1978, [actually the cover of the Sept. 1981 issue] I’m in that picture right below Steve Caballero. I’m standing below him at the base of the Kona ramp, looking at him.

[At the feet of a master: a young Chip Southworth checks out Steve Caballero's skate moves at Kona Skate Park, circa 1981. Cover courtesy of Thrasher Magazine.]

C.S.: I guess because I wasn’t surrounded by modern art when I was growing up; like my kids are now. My mom had a crazy mix of like American country, dime store print stuff basically, and some post-Renaissance type stuff. Big, marble, togas (laughs)…

S: But at least there was art in the house.

C.S.: Yeah, there was, and my room was covered in “Star Wars” posters (…) when I was really young it was The Bee Gees, “Star Wars” and then whatever I was into kind of covered my walls. We talked about this before, but “Star Wars” kind of started it all. They guy, Ralph McQuarrie, he did all of the “Star Wars” conceptual art [McQuarrie, who died in March of last year, was the designer and illustrator who designed the original Star Wars trilogy] I would say he had a major influence on me.

S: What do you mean? In what way?

C.S.: My mom bought me a book called “The Art of Star Wars.” It was funny, the only “Star Wars” book I could find was at that old mall, I think it was called Market Square near the end, but there was a bookstore in that mall and my mom went there all of the time. And I’d always look for “Star Wars” books but they were always novels. And this art book was the first one that I had even seen that was nothing but pictures. And then later on I got a full set of lithographs of scenes from “The Empire Strikes Back” and you know, I would get my hands on as much of that McQuarrie stuff as possible.

S: Do you think you liked it because it was so overtly “painterly” and was more like fine art?

C.S.: It is: it’s painterly; it’s abstract in a way that I now abstract my own work. But it has pieces of drawing in there (…) it’s loose but it’s also very exciting. And I would look at those pictures and think, “man, those movies come from these paintings” and I was blown away by his imagination and ability. It has a big influence on me.

S: Plus someone like he or Frank Frazetta and Richard Corben, they were more reverent about that whole realm. You know, when we were kids everything was inundated with “Star Wars” imagery. You had “Star Wars” Band-Aids; it didn’t really matter. “Star Wars Septic Cleaner” with a Jawa on it. But when you saw these more “fine art” type painters, was it so affecting because it was an alien trip? You had art in your house, art in your room, but someone like Rauschenberg …

C.S.: Yeah, well I guess it just comes down to seeing something and you know you like it. Abstract Expressionism is something that I’ve always really liked. I have always liked looking at it, I’ve always liked doing it.

S: So you were probably in your late teens at this point? When you saw the abstract stuff?

C.S.: Yeah. I was in high school.

S: Then you did this kind of serpentine path of going to college and ultimately it was in Panama City where you met (artist and instructor) Roland Hockett?

C.S.: Yeah.

S: And you had told me that he was the person that directed you towards what you described as “foundational concepts”? Were you painting by this time?

C.S.: I was drawing a lot. Hockett started me painting. I was a big drawer and I was really, really interested in line. I guess that is what I mainly did in high school, you know? High school art is a litany of projects that everybody did in high school art, you know what I mean? You do the grid and the three dimensional projects …

S: The “line drawing.”

C.S.: Yeah. Everybody does a city scene where you’re learning perspective. And I enjoyed that stuff but it wasn’t really until I got to college (…) one of the assignments was we had to pick something and at the time you didn’t know it, but you started drawing this item (…) I picked a shoe. But I never would have picked that damn shoe if I knew that I was going to have to do 50 different types of drawings over the next semester (laughs) but it was always constant exploration. It didn’t really matter what we were drawing; it was exploring texture and line. It got to be around that time where my drawing was getting pretty wild because there was so much line and abstraction and negative space. If you were looking at the drawing you might not really know what it was. It was really very much Abstract Expressionist drawing. That was my real “coming out” period and discovering the versatility of it all. And then I started painting and man, I really loved painting.

S: So do you think someone like Hockett was really crucial because he helped kind of “bring it on home.” You know, in the way that self-taught artists might continue to do the same thing without growth but someone like Hockett comes along and opens you up to things the like the value of line. Besides getting you into painting, do you think he might have also showed you the value of something like texture; he also helped you become more aware of something like intention?

C.S.: Oh yeah, all of it.

["Fetal," mixed media on panel 72 x 80‏]

C.S.: Jenny Saville; seeing her work in real life and “in person.”

S: Your work was already figurative. They just weren’t as fleshed out. The figures seemed more like they were in the background and suddenly they popped out. I like the fact that you are so straight up honest about her influence, but what is it about Saville that was so affecting?

C.S.: I think that in my work, before I saw Saville’s work, is that the figures were important but they were more like an element. The background, the whole painting would be much more abstract and it was still a study of paint but in a much broader scale. Big space would be filled in with color blocks (…) and I think that these recent paintings I did are like a real melding of the two. The illustrative quality of having the drawing left in and the paint being applied very freely with the ink and the burning (…) and the color just blocking in around all of it. I guess prior to seeing Saville’s work, I was putting more emphasis on the background and less on the figure and now it’s the other way around. But I think the application of my style and my little signature line things that I do. It’s all there; it’s just working in a different direction.

S: Yeah and the things you showed me at your house (…) it’s very decisive and mapped out. It isn’t like you throw paint on the canvas and then “pull out” a figure from there. It’s not like a Rorschach test. These works you sent me. I can see the burns and the masking lines.

C.S.: Yeah the burning is very deliberate.

S: And they are getting bigger and bigger. It seems like the only thing inhibiting you from going even bigger is getting them through your door and out of the house.

C.S.: (laughs) yeah.

S: Is that where you’d like to go; just as large as possible?

C.S.: I dunno (…) I guess time and sales would dictate. I like large scale and I think large scale in itself is kind of powerful and shocking in some ways. And to incorporate the imagery into it and have that kind of freedom and be able to move the paint around like I do (…) it’s fun and I am really enjoying it (…) but these recent pieces I knocked out are pretty small in comparison.

S: Well, that could have been as much your time constraints.

C.S.: I also wanted to knock out those pieces almost as a kind of study and see how I could transition them into what I am doing right now. And they’re still pretty free, you know? I think that they’re pretty much a miniature version of what I do. They’re just not as freeing; the brushes are a lot smaller so you can’t get too crazy. But I think it is very much like the rest of my work.

S: I noticed too that you usually use a single model or person. You don’t really use several people or a crowd. Why is that?

[Artist Crystal Floyd is immortalized in the large scale piece, "Crystal,' mixed media on panel, 72 x 108]

S: Right, because another relationship now happens inside of the piece.

C.S.: Yeah. So it goes down a whole other road. This show is about that kind of solitude we go looking for, so they were all going to be individual models. But going forward, I think I’m going to take a few months off after this show and work on some, I think I had mentioned to you, small religious paintings.

S: Some of these new ones, at least in title and seemingly content as well, are overtly religious. I know in the show you have the piece that you showed me, “Forsaken,” but even the ones you sent me today touch on that both in title and in the positions of the models. So is that already happening?

C.S.: Yeah. I purposely have the models do these crucifix-style poses.

S: I want to talk about this because you and I have talked many times about faith and beliefs (…) I mean, are you cool talking about this?

C.S.: Yeah.

S: I know that you and Rikki are both into Orthodox Christianity. I thought that she had turned you on to that; or did you kind of get into this together.

C.S.: I was always really anti-religious.

S: Amen.

C.S.: (laughs) I had grown up going to a lot of Protestant churches and my Christianity was really judgmental and shitty, you know? It wasn’t Christ-like at all. And at the time I was working with this friend of mine, Bill Birchfield, and he was converting to Orthodoxy. And this guy would come into the office, who was an old friend of his, and was kind of an older gentleman and a First Baptist-type person, and he would argue with Bill. And I would listen to their arguments and Bill was always really good about (…) this other guy’s arguments were pretty much my preconceived notions (…) and Bill would either talk about what the Orthodox thought was on the subject or he would actually go research this, get an answer and come back. It was interesting because the answers Bill was getting were the answers I always wanted to hear (laughs) you know?

S: Yeah, I do (laughs).

C.S.: Just a kind of Christianity that I think is ideal. It is based on love instead of judgment.

S: It seems like Orthodox Christianity is also inherently surrounded in this strongly mystical idea of direct experience of Christ and God, a bit like Gnosticism or something. I know that some of the Orthodox writers or saints (…) it’s imbued with that personal experience of God.

C.S.: Yeah. I mean, unlike Gnosticism, it’s all out in the open but the early Christian church (…) the way they do things now isn’t like the way they did it in the year 300 A.D. but that’s not to say there aren’t good contemporary churches. I’m friends with some people who are involved with modern churches (…) but with Orthodoxy I am just blown away by their (…) holiness, I guess; you know?

["Christ," mixed media on panel, 18 x 18]

C.S.: I’ve done some before, like iconography and I’ve dabbled in that. I’m not an expert and never have done any major things in the church but I have done quite a bit of restoration and helped out with some big stuff. It’s pretty cool; it [icons] is very rigid, very flat and very prescribed. But you know, I went to Turkey and got to see some things from the Byzantine times, before The Ottoman Empire ransacked Constantinople, iconography was progressing quite a bit there. Everything had stopped in its tracks, everything went underground and the iconographers had gone from doing these massive ceilings and walls to doing these small little boards and tiles. And because the way the church works, it has never progressed since then, you know? There’s been a couple of monks on the island of Patmos, which is where one of the icons I have is from, and there they went a little “outside the box” as far as materials, and they also have some other ones I like which are abstract; but I haven’t been able to afford any of those. And that’s somewhat that I’d like to do; and mix that in with Buddhist imagery. There’s so much similarity in the imagery and surely those to faiths as well.

S: Yeah, there are some heavy corollaries there. It’s weird too how the Christian and Buddhist higher mystics kind of meet in the same place. It’s kind of old hat, but if you read some of the Rhineland mystics they sound like some of the Buddhist mystics of the same era.

C.S.: Oh yeah.

S: During this experience that you and Rikki are going through, have you ever gone through any “dark night of the soul” type moments?

C.S.: Hmmm – elaborate here.

S: Well, I personally don’t believe that I am tested by some spiritual force but have you had to find a way where your faith has been more malleable or tempered and changed through this?

C.S.: You know, I don’t think it ever shook my faith but everything is (…) I don’t want to say that everything happens for a reason but it seems like there’s some order to it all. Just as your tested by all of that, all of your friends just show up and show you how fucking amazing they are.

["Rikki," mixed media on panel, 18 x 18]

C.S.: Yeah, you know so aside from the initial shock of it all, it hasn’t been that hard because everyone has been so great. It’s crazy. I would have never, ever, thought of something like that in a million years.

S: And the art community in particular stepped up immediately.

C.S.: It was amazing; I sent out an e-mail the night after we found out that we wouldn’t have any money and would be facing this without any help and everyone just responded with such love and energy.

S: So what has happened now? Where are you at now? Didn’t you tell me you were approved for Medicaid?

C.S.: Yeah. What sucks is that Mayo doesn’t even take Medicaid after all of this [the Southworths were denied charity care assistance from The Mayo Clinic] but we’re going to meet Dr. Perez so we’re going to just pay like a $5,000 deposit just to get in with her. She’s one of the best cancer doctors in the world; she’s friends with Donna Deegan and Donna hooked us up with her.

S: It is money well spent.

C.S.: Hell yeah it is. I tell you what, we basically paid about $12,000 so far and we owe about $20,000 and most of that took place in two hours; almost $30,000 for two hours.

S: It’s staggering, really.

C.S.: In retrospect, (laughs) spending the $5,000 is an amazing deal. It’s been a crazy experience.

S: You were already working on this new show and Rikki’s diagnosis changed your lives but it also kind of changed the whole direction of this show.

C.S.: Well, a little bit. I had already done two studies and was working on a couple of portraits. I start every show with my own portrait, just because you know your own face so well. And I’m able to not really worry about imagery and just kind of tack it, you know? So I had done those and I started on the portrait and then we got the diagnosis. I didn’t do a lot of actual work because we were just so slammed with medical visits. I didn’t really work for about six weeks. Then we went to Art Basel [Miami Beach] again and down there you just get kind of re-motivated and energized. You come back and get ready to start working. But also, I was having a hard time just getting my models lined up and getting it all shot.

S: These models, is the criteria people you know or is it more that they have a certain look? Are they friends of yours?

C.S.: Yeah, they are. Holly is a good friend of Rikki’s. Ashley is a sister of an old friend. But she’s cool. We like them. I was going to use Carolyn but it didn’t work it in time.

S: [Local photographer] Carolyn Brass?

C.S.: Yeah. I’ve got a couple of other people that said they were down to model.

S: You primarily use female models, other than any self-portraits.

C.S.: Yeah. Personally, I think the female figure is more beautiful and exciting. It’s just softer and prettier to me; I don’t know. It’s not to say I don’t want to paint men. I’ve made some overtures; it’s just that nobody has taken me up on me.

S: (laughs) Really? Maybe men are too coy or something.

C.S.: It’s weird asking people to model. It’s getting easier.

S: I did notice in these newer pieces and works in progress that there was more noticeable action in the interior, in the model, rather than in the background, like “Suffer Well” and “Fetal” – there’s more going inside the figure. Would you agree?

C.S.: Yeah. It’s interesting, out of these pieces, which have happened over several months, there have been subtle changes; and for me every painting is a study of some sort, you know? It’s a journey and an exercise in pushing yourself with paint. At least that’s what I want it to be. And so I think some of these pieces you might see black outlines on some and no outline on others; that is just me exploring where I am going. But I’m enjoying it and want to keep doing it. But there is a level of what I call “creative anxiety” that comes with this.

["Standing Ashley," mixed media on panel, 12 x 30]

C.S.: It’s having a deadline on a show and knowing how many pieces you have to roughly produce. It’s not a drag, because now I have over 20 pieces I can pick from. But these smaller pieces also should be more affordable, something that an average person can take back to their house, you know?

S: What do you think will be the final count for the show?

C.S.: Probably around 18.

S: Plus, there will be prints as well?

C.S.: Yeah, there will be.

S: So you mentioned that you’re going to take some time off, but you are also being featured in Jefree Shalev’s upcoming show, which is being presented at the Cummer, which is fucking awesome. Can you talk about that? The premise is that they’re inspired by family films from his childhood and family, right? [Shalev is commissioning 25 Northeast Florida artists to render an interpretation of a film still taken from a collection of his family’s home movies. The exhibit, to be titled either “Our Shared Past” or “Under Two Seconds,” is slated to open at the Stein Gallery at the Cummer Museum and Gardens with a soft opening on Dec. 17 of this year and will run through May 2014. STAREHOUSE intends to post an interview with Shalev prior to the show’s opening.]

C.S.: The one I am painting is an image of Jefree’s mother on her wedding day, putting on a bustier; it is awesome.

S: So did you pick that image or did he kind of assign images?

C.S.: No, no we [the artists] pick them.

S: And that’s also going to be a large scale piece, right?

C.S.: Yeah. It’s going to be giant (laughs) and awesome. I envision it as being my best piece yet. I’m going to put my “special juice” on that (laughs).

S: (laughs) right on.

C.S.: I already did a study of it and took it to Jeff around Christmas time. And he was pretty excited. The original image is so great and I know I’ll do it justice.

S: Well, you have a cool patron there in Jefree. He’s all over it.

C.S.: Yeah, he’s a great guy and it’s a great idea.

S: It’s a cool project since it is bringing together all of these artists but it has such a uniquely personal thing behind it.

C.S.: Yeah, he’s someone who really knows the arts and he has taken the time to know these artists and know them as people. He’s beyond a collector. I mean, he’s an awesome collector and an integral part of the art scene and everything else but he takes it one step beyond. This show is going to be really special. There are some great artists in the show and I’m excited to be part of it.

S: Yeah man. So the benefit concert went well? [On March 22, local writer and all around good dude Jon Bosworth had arranged a second benefit concert at the venue Kala that featured bands including SUNBEARS! and Juicy Pony with all proceeds going towards Rikki’s medical expenses.]

C.S.: Yeah, all of those went well. We are so grateful for that.

S: It’s cool that Rikki has been so candid and open in all of this. That is a powerful approach.

C.S.: Yeah. You know, Rikki and I go everywhere together. We are an inseparable little team.

[Flower Children: Chip and Rikki Southworth at home, March 11, 2013.]

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Jim Draper reflects on the experience of “Feast of Flowers”

[“Ogeechee Lime,” 72 x 109, oil on canvas. Photographed by Doug Eng.]

Jim Draper is right on time. Meeting me in the Stein Gallery at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens on our agreed upon appointment of 1:30 p.m., Draper strolls into the large space where his multi-disciplinary project “Feast of Flowers,” has been on display since mid-December of last year. “Sorry I’m late,” he says. After I assure him that he is right on the money, we sit in two black leather chairs that face his recent work while also providing us with a fitting view of the museum’s award-winning gardens and the St. Johns River. It is an ideal setting to speak with Draper, as his twin loves – painting and the outdoors – are both within sight of one another. Two iPads are placed on the table between us and a collection of hard-shell binders are stacked upright against the wall. The tablet computers contain copies of the digital publication which coincides with the exhibit; the spiral bound books feature dozens of photographs that Draper took during his many excursions into the natural world, the very source and place that feeds his work. The 25 recent paintings in the exhibit are large-scale oils that both celebrate the flora and fauna of Florida while also warning of their possible passing. The title “Feast of Flowers” is a translation of the Spanish “Pascua de Florida,” the name chosen by Ponce De Leon in 1513 when he and his fellow explorer-conquistadors “discovered” the very much already-inhabited land that became known as Florida. On this 500^th anniversary of Ponce De Leon’s arrival, Draper explores these ideas of “feasting,” devouring, conquest and commodification throughout the exhibit.

Draper talks in an easygoing manner that speaks as much of his Mississippi roots as it does the overall mellow, open and inclusive vibe he emanates. In conversation, he describes ideas in a non-linear yet engaging way, touching on topics like art and nature while never holding back when lambasting the political systems and seemingly-indoctrinated ignorance that threaten those very two things he finds to be sacrosanct. Yet Draper is hardly a good old boy watching from the sidelines but rather a humble visionary and informed radical in the worst possible way; he galvanizes people and he gets things done. In the past two decades, the now 59 year old Draper has been a constant in the Northeast Florida visual art scene. As an artist, gallery owner, teacher and surely a kind of reluctant pater familias to the subsequent generations of local artists, Draper has loudly championed the arts in an area that only in the past decade-plus has really found the ears to listen. Yet his ongoing creative endeavors are rivaled only by his love of our state’s wetlands and natural realms. Consequently, Draper uses his greatest implement, his art, to try and draw greater attention to the ongoing destruction of countless acreage of the wilderness of Florida.

Over the course of the exhibit’s run, which closed on April 7th, there have been notable locally published articles about the paintings and environmentally-conscious themed events, including two pieces by Jon Bosworth, as well as an essay by Dr. Debra Murphy and a Folio Weekly cover feature by Kara Pound. However, STAREHOUSE chose to explore the accompanying digital publication, a 214 page, collaborative document that now reads like a “living” continuation of the exhibit and features pieces ranging from essays and photographs to films and soundscapes. Draper hand-picked each contributor and it is an impressive roster that includes Karen Ahlers, Neil Armingeon, Bill Belleville, Jon Bosworth, Staci Bu Shea, Jeremy Chandler, Eric Hawes, Jake Ingram, Jeremiah Johnson, Holly Keris, Dr. Hans-Herbert Kögler, Lily Kuonen, David Montgomery, Dr. Debra Murphy, Daniel Newman, Katrina Zoe Norbom, Cári Sanchez-Potter, Bob Self, Margaret Ross Tolbert and Dr. Quinton White. At the end of the publication, readers can also enjoy images of the 25 paintings that were featured at the Cummer, all photographed by Doug Eng. The physical copy of the digital publication is housed in a glass jar package that was designed by artist Crystal Floyd and is available for purchase at the gift shop in the Cummer Museum. It is also available online as a download at Draper’s site.

What follows are some highlights of our conversation at the Cummer.

Starehouse: So this all seems like it has been an unequivocal success. Do you agree?

Jim Draper: I think it was

S.: Well, how do you feel after all of this? How has it changed you?

J.D.: You know, I don’t know – you get an idea and you do it. Then it’s over; it’s not really “over” but you do it and it works. It’s a little weird because I think you’ve been taught to not trust your ideas for so long; you know, as artists you’re actually taught not to. It’s kind of a little bit unnerving when you realize that when you’re thoughtful about an idea and do it, and you see that it actually does work, it kind of makes you feel strange about all those years when you have kept having ideas and everyone just kind of rolled their eyes at you.

S.: All of the ideas you ignored.

J.D.: Yeah. You know, you’re marginalized for the most part. I think people put artists in that side slot that they need them in.

S.: A comfortable ghetto or niche or whatever?

J.D.: Yeah, yeah. It’s okay to go sneak out and spend the night with them every couple of months but you don’t want to take them with you to church (laughs).

S.: (laughs) Right, right. So when you say these “big ideas” do you mean … obviously this one [“Feast of Flowers”] was a home run … but do you mean maybe all of the times that you may have ignored that kind of monkey chatter in your mind, or …

J.D.: No, I mean a lot of times you actually wouldn’t ignore it, you’d actually write it up, do it, try to convince somebody to do it and then (…) the city of Jacksonville for instance is historic for this. You’d have an idea and then you got talk to them and then they’ll milk the idea out of you and then they will hire a consultant, pay ‘em hundreds of thousands of dollars to have them come and tell them the same thing – and then still not do it. I mean, it’s just kind of bad (laughs).

S.: Have you had a taste of that with the city?

J.D.: Oh my God, yes! (laughs)

S.: Can you mention specifics?

J.D.: Well, I think the whole “Off the Grid” program is a good example of it. I mean, it was a good idea; originally it was an idea that I had and talked to some people (…) it was just really never done in the way (…) you have the idea and it gets turned into something else. It was never really about getting galleries downtown it was about getting artists on the streets – which would have worked but between the landlords and everything else but it always turns into this desire to be something else.

[“Nana,” 48 x 60, oil on canvas. Photographed by Doug Eng.]

J.D.: Yeah, yeah, there are always systems in place that have a tendency to eat up these kinds of programs. One time I compared Jacksonville to an alligator; it kind of lies around in the sun and looks big and bad, but it doesn’t really do too much until it is backed into a corner. But it has this tendency to eat its young (laughs).

S.: Yeah, plus the city has such a deliberate history of destroying its own history.

J.D.: Yeah, this show really came out of the response to that because of this idea of the 500 year anniversary of the discovery of Florida – but discovering what? It was densely populated 500 years ago by people who just didn’t happen to have gunpowder.

S.: We should call it what it really was – the conquest of Florida.

J.D.: It was really was an invasion; even the people who mounted it called it an invasion and then we call it something else. History is really written and stories are written by whoever has the ability to write.

S.: And who won.

J.D.: And who won and whoever owns the language.

S.: Can you give me a sense of chronology? This particular project started in October of 2011?

J.D.: Yeah, sure. I think it actually started before. I don’t know when it actually started (…) I had the actual idea for a while but man, I am horrible with dates. I pitched it to the museum in 2011 but I started thinking about it in ’10 and it was actually in ’11 when I started formalizing it; it was about two years ago in April or so when I formally pitched it to Hope [McMath, director of the Cummer].

S.: Were these paintings…

J.D.: The paintings were done after that; the paintings were done after that then we came up with a date.

S.: So all of these were made for this project?

J.D.: Yeah, all of the paintings were done in the last two years.

S.: Did that schedule have you working 16 hour days, or…

J.D.: Not really, I paint very quickly. I had to also do a lot of traveling for this but I work very quickly. I could have done a lot more paintings. And meanwhile we did the book, which was probably more work.

S.: I want to kind of focus on this and I think in my correspondence with Staci [Bu Shea, local curator and Jim’s assistant] she had said you wanted to talk about that as well. I’m curious too about the crowdsourcing approach, which is a relatively new idea. How was that experience?

J.D.: It was really good. I think it was probably the right time for crowdsourcing, I think that it was (…) it’s like anything else, now it’s like there’s a little too much of that – I wouldn’t do another one now.

S.: Why?

J.D.: There’s too many of ‘em; it’s just too much. I think that it’s become (…) it’s like anything else, it worked for a while but now it might be dead in the water.

S.: It seems like with bands there can be almost a novelty aspect where it almost diminishes the whole trip; you know $100 and “Get a lock of Ringo’s hair.”

J.D.: Yeah, yeah. It does become a little cheesy. I’ve also got a little (…) the whole idea of being popular, popularity on some level in general. I mean, being popular – is that really what you want? There are a lot of ways to be popular if you want to be popular. I think that significantly meaningful is an acquired taste and I think it is a form of elitism which I kind of like; I like the idea that you have to have a certain (…) capacity in order to understand significant meaning.

S.: I agree. I don’t think discernment is necessarily a natural thing; it comes with wisdom. It might not be a popular sentiment or thing to admit but fuck it.

J.D.: Yeah, I think that probably for funding in the future I will be more interested in finding a partner, ally and somebody who is really interested in particular ideas or projects and is willing to invest in it. I think that becomes more interesting. I don’t wanna sound like Mr. Smarty Pants, take-the-money-and-run kind of thing (laughs)…

S.: No, I don’t think you are and I appreciate your candor.

J.D.: It worked well for this because also in the midst of crowdfunding there’s also a significant marketing/PR component so you are actually informing as you go along. So I think that in this particular project it probably worked better than some others might have. This project, as good as it was – and it has been well received and people have been wonderful about it and embraced it; and that’s good – I don’t know if I have it in me, and again this might sound like a stupid thing to say, but I don’t know that I have the capacity to be popular (laughs) it just takes a lot out of you.

S.: You mean just the weirdness of having the attention?

J.D.: Yeah. If I could just figure out how to cover the light bill, I’d like to slip into a little bit of quiet for a while.

S.: The “Greta Garbo”-era of Jim Draper.

J.D.: Yeah, yeah; except if I come down the stairs in chiffon, call somebody (laughs).

S.: Now was the crowdsourcing for the painting or the digital deal?

J.D.: It was primarily to finance the book and that’s pretty much what it took. We wound up raising around $14,000; we started with ten.

S.: It happened pretty quickly; I guess spoke with you on the phone right before that kicked off.

J.D.: We did it in a month; we did it the month of February 2012. Staci and I worked on it, mainly Staci really, for three months setting it up and understanding what you’re doing and what you’re doing is you’re appealing to your families. So the first thing you do is identify your families. I mean, I’ve been very popular and involved and done stuff over the years so I do have some really good friends and a significant family; so there’s your core. You don’t really (…) I think that you think you’re gonna make new friends and it’s gonna go viral in Seattle, Washington and be all over but you’re not.

S.: So it’s really your home ground.

J.D.: Yeah. Out of all the contributors, I would say a huge portion of them were friends. I would say that 80% were already friends.

S.: I’m wondering, and you gotta forgive me if this is already in the works, but when you say “book” is there a tactile, actual book of this?

J.D.: No, the book is just digital. The reason there isn’t a tactile book, because I wanted to do one, but it’s expensive. I mean it was $60,000. So you go “really?” (laughs) And realistically I could have probably looked for someone to publish it and have underwritten it and they probably would have been smart to because it has been very well-received. So what we did, there was a lot of expense involved in doing the digital publication (…)

S.: It’s a lot of material.

J.D.: It’s a behemoth and a tremendous anthology.

S.: So do you still, and Staci and I had spoken about this very thing, but do you like that tactile, physical experience of “having a book” or do you even care?

J.D.: I’ve actually had several people ask me from around the world who have been really interested in this. I talked to someone from Georgia Press who is fascinated with the idea of publishing a coffee table book in the form of a digital publication, something that should be published in the form of a coffee table art book. And it’s kind of a (…) I’m not trying to flatter myself here (laughs) but I think that it’s kind of ahead of its time as far as general acceptance, because it’s unusual. People look at you and they go (makes a quizzical expression) because they want something to flip through instead of just having this (points to iPad on table).

S.: Yeah, well I surely do. I like the book form.

J.D.: I probably do too. It’s also interesting because you start realizing in those coffee table books, picture books and monographs and art books how little of them you read. I’ll look at all mine and think, “Yeah, I read some of it. I read the captions.” But I really just look at the pictures. So I think that’s interesting and I think reading a digital text kind of makes you kind of understand that this is kind of an incredible piece because there’s a ton of information with a lot of different voices saying a lot of different things.

S.: Yeah, it’s pretty exhaustive. So did you always have an idea to do this (digital publication) kind of parallel with the paintings?

J.D.: Yeah. My original idea was to do a picture book (…) I originally wanted to do paintings in a six foot by nine foot size and I had a kind of obligatory number of 60 or something, I couldn’t remember how many there were, and then I wanted to have them represent specific ecosystems and then I would have another voice, like Bill Belleville who did a piece on the “Scrub,” do a piece about that particular ecosystem. And again, that’s a cool project idea but you’re talking about something ten years in the making to get it done and up and on the wall and something that was exhibit-able with a publication within a year. And getting the paintings done in two years (…) it was impossible.

S.: It’s funny because when I talked to you a few years back about this, I thought “Wow, he’s really pitching this far ahead” but now I see that it was just the right amount of time. There was a lot in play with this and to get it together.

J.D.: Yeah. Well, originally I had this idea about opening on this past Tuesday [April 2], which would been the actual date of whatever happened with Ponce De Leon, because we are really not sure of what, or when or where or who and all that stuff (…) but it could be that the date was April 2^nd, 1513 which was Easter Sunday which probably was the date that something happened in relationship between Ponce De Leon and Florida. But that didn’t work out but it didn’t really matter; the 500^th anniversary happened and nobody noticed.

S.: Nobody is really clicking their heels about his arrival.

J.D.: I don’t think so. The whole thing is really kind of conjecture and the whole thing is probably wrong. There are maps that were drawn of the Florida peninsula before 1513 (…) so somebody was here. I think that the state got it down to the point of the 500^th anniversary of the naming of Florida.

[“Gulf Sturgeon,” 72 x 36, oil on canvas. Photographed by Doug Eng.]

J.D.: No, I don’t think I had. I surely could have but I don’t know of any specific (…) I’ve never seen anything like this, but I think that if I had seen something that was really like this I wouldn’t have done it. This theme was a perfect theme for me to hang some ideas on so it worked well for me thematically; because there’s not a lot of moving parts, it didn’t wax kitschy or cheeky, but it also has some amusing elements and some ways that you can kind of surf through it; there’s certainly an intellectual component, there’s some social issues and environmental issues that can be raised in it. There are some issues about the image that can be raised and have some discussions about things (…) it’s a good thing to hang ideas on and that’s how I really look at it, as places to hang things on. I’m not particularly a historian. I think 99% of history is bullshit. History is what people want it to be.

S.: You have a healthy (…) agenda with this; you’re not telling a history of anything. Quite frankly, the more I delved into this (points to iPad) publication it seems fairly angry in a healthy way. It’s a protest.

J.D.: It is a protest. What I think it really is (…) is a manifestation of frustration. I think that the older I get, the more I watch – especially in Florida – you watch the goose that’s laying the golden egg be systematically tortured and killed and you just go “What in the world? What are these people thinking?” This (…) incredible, incredible government we have now and wherever this governor (Florida Governor Rick Scott) came from (…) you feel like the conquest of Florida is still going on. None of them seem to have a clue about what’s valuable. I don’t think they’re stupid people but I think they are extremely mean; but I don’t think they are stupid. Unfortunately (…) I wish they were. I think that (Former Florida Lt. Gov.) Jennifer Carroll was stupid in that she got busted. I think that with all of this you have to develop a cultural shift. You can’t have a bunch of environmental people sitting around and just talking to each other and telling each other how good you’re doing. I mean, we’re all doing good but you got to be in the culture. You got to get into the place where the majority of the people are offended when you go down Riverside Avenue and you see 500 year old oak trees that are cleared and hauled off – illegally – before anybody questions it. It’s gotta be as offensive as – as horrible as this is – as offensive as someone going into a school and killing a bunch of first graders. You’ve got to be offended at everything. All of those things are offensive; but there can’t be any difference. It has got to be in your culture so that people respond to egregious acts of violence against nature; which is all of us, I think.

S.: So how do you think people can sustain and direct that kind of outrage?

J.D.: I don’t know. Of course you have got a lot of groups that are actually doing a lot of good and then you have people that are saying a lot of good things but you have got to get people into (…) I mean, that was my idea of getting people into art museums. I mean that you bring it into a place where you have a larger audience, where you can get converts from the world, you know? I mean, a lot of what we say and a lot of what we do, we’re not going to go to a city council meeting and win any friends. So you gotta get friends somewhere else, and broaden outside of your circle.

S.: It seems like you are actually more vocal about these things than you were in the past.

J.D.: I think so, I think so. And I don’t really know (…) I think that I am getting to the point that “ideas are ideas.” All of this segmenting things into “art” and “science” and “biology” and “medicine” and “politics” and all that (…) I think that we have a tendency to make all of these divisions and segments and talk about things as separate entities when really they are not. And I think that’s what, in a lot of ways, I feel almost as rabid about the ideas of art and the things of making art, teaching art, showing art (…) I don’t think there’s any difference in that or attitudes toward your place in the natural order. I think it’s all the same thing.

S.: I know you grew up in Mississippi, but did you grow up around nature?

J.D.: Kind of – but I was in town. Certainly by today’s standards I probably was, but yeah, I wouldn’t have been called a “nature boy” when I was growing up.

S.: So when did this change within you happen? Was it a series of things where you started camping or kayaking and started having these kinds of epiphanies or experiences with nature?

J.D.: You know, I think it was a series of things. One thing I’ve always done is that being trained as an artist is that you are taught to be observant. That’s one thing with drawing and painting from life, you are taught to look at something and burn that image into your head. And most people aren’t trained to see anything; everything is just kind of a blur. And most of their perceptions revolve around social situations. People have a tendency to talk about things with groups of people in social settings. I think that as an artist you are taught to slow down and look beyond and you start to have almost a social dialogue with inanimate objects.

S.: It’s an interior experience, a meditation.

J.D.: Yeah, yeah, because you watch the way that the cool light moves and how the warm light comes over and you actually start having a visual conversation with this thing in your head. I think that probably for me, just as an inadvertent observer, you go to a place that was significantly beautiful then two years later you would go back; it was diminished. Two years later you go back; it was diminished. Five years later you go back and it’s gone. This happens over and over and over (…) then everything about Florida, which is where most of this happened, you start talking about everything “as it was.” You start describing everything as “this was.”

S.: Sometimes I think how people who are fairly new to this area cannot imagine how Northeast Florida has changed in the past 20, 25 years. And I mean change as in mass destruction of old buildings and the natural environment.

J.D.: We took somebody, Casey James that visiting artist who was here from New York, some friends and I took him around and were going through town and found ourselves describing Jacksonville as “well, this was a really cool spot” because of all of these warehouses and spots and we were going down by the Prime Osborn Convention Center and saying “this used to be great” and “this used to be” and he was like, “Well what is it now?” And we’d say, “Well, we don’t know (laughs) – but I guess this what it is now.” So everything becomes referred to in a description of the past.

S.: It’s like rapid history. Something that really intrigued me, and I don’t know if this was deliberate, but in reading the title card of the piece “Wild Hibiscus” you talk about this kind of accidental realization as you were looking at this plant, where you noticed that the aphids were there. I guess that card was describing a kind of interconnectedness. But it seems like when we deliberately enter the natural world, whether it’s hiking or camping, it’s an exclusive experience. You might simply look at a tree and then (quickly snaps fingers) you have all of these spontaneous, free associations and it jogs all of these memories. And I believe it really only happens when we “go into” nature. Do you have a sense of that? Do you believe that might bring you back and make you return to nature? I mean beauty notwithstanding.

J.D.: Yeah, you know I went into this place on the Santa Fe River, and I don’t know if this is what you are asking, but I think this is kind of like that. I was there about this time last year and the place was blanketed with these Atamasco Lilies, these little white lilies, as far as you could see. They call them “rain lilies.” And there were hundreds of thousands of them. And so, the same time this year, I go back and because of a storm or whatever they were beaten down – different year, different time – but instead you find these incredible clumps of this other plant called Senecio, which is a yellow (…) kind of looks like wild mustard but it stands real tall; so it was a same type of experience but also a total different experience. Climactic changes, big difference from year to year, made it a different experience (…) interestingly valid; different. But from observation you understand the significance. I think that’s kind of interesting about seeing and how you look for things, you start getting interested at looking for holes in the leaves and then you get excited about looking for caterpillars.

S.: It’s a sequence; it leads to the next thing …

J.D.: It leads to the next thing. And then I start getting really sad if I see leaves that don’t have holes in them because I know that something is not eating. It sounds counterintuitive but you almost have to swallow all of the bait if you’re going to go there. And then you start to go full circle with it.

S.: Right, right. Lemme veer back to the publication because I want to keep on point with this. It’s 214 pages long and runs the gamut from video art, photos, essays, soundscapes (…) what were the criteria for you in hand-picking these contributors?

J.D.: Well, it started with [Northeast Florida writer and activist] Jon Bosworth. Thematically, in my head a lot of my ideas weren’t linear and they weren’t necessarily founded. They were just ideas. I had this general idea about activism, like historical activism and Florida activism, and I wanted to have at least some kind of reference to three people that I have known who were activists; one being Stetson Kennedy, another MaVynee Betsch and then David [Thundershield] Queen. MaVynee not so much a good friend but I admired her certainly, Stetson was a pretty good friend and David was a real good friend, all three dead now. But all three kind of just didn’t care and threw themselves into the activism and all three created this character that became them. David went through the passage and became “Thundershield” and reinvented himself as the activist for environmental and Native American issues.

[“Wild Hibiscus,” oil on canvas, 48 x 18, photographed by Doug Eng.]

J.D.: Right. MaVynee became “The Beach Lady” and Stetson, you know, created himself as “Stetson Kennedy.” So Jon was Stetson’s last intern and was working with him when he [Stetson] died, so I wanted him to pay homage to those people in that intro [Bosworth contributed the short story entitled “Sing Nana Sing”] and I wanted kind of a fiction piece. I picked him for that because he’s a great writer (…)

S.: Yeah, and that’s an excellent, funky piece to kick it off with.

J.D.: And I thought that was a good way to start, because it set the tone, I needed this kind of bizarre tone that allows the rest of the anthology to come about. I chose Neil Armingeon and Karen Ahlers [contributed the piece “500 Years of Florida: God, Greed, Guts, Glory”] because of their level of work with environmental issues; I thought that piece they did on the Ocklawaha River, which is a hot button issue of mine, was a good mix. Bill Belleville [contributed the essay “Scrub/Sandhill”]; you know I think he is just the consummate Florida writer. I think that he delivered an incredible piece. Hans-Herbert Kögler did that incredible piece [the essay, “Art as Dialogue: The Rediscovery of Nature After Modernism”] that I didn’t see coming, that kind of blindsided me. We talked and had some conversations about (…) you know, being a regionalist, naturalist you always have a tendency (…) I always feel inferior. I always pigeonhole myself as, “He’s just a guy who paints Florida landscapes.”

S.: Why is that? Do you think it’s humility or doubt?

J.D.: I don’t think it’s humility. I think it’s just real to a certain degree. You’re not going to waltz into the Gagosian [acclaimed international chain of gallery spaces] with some Florida landscape paintings; they’ll laugh you out the door. I mean, of course. And they should, probably. But that was really exciting to me to see what he [Kögler] wrote about that (…) it took me four or five times to read it but, you know, do you need to be validated? Well, yeah I think you do at some point need to be validated. I mean, you hope you will be. But I do think if you seek validation all of the time you become kind of a bore. I didn’t necessarily choose him to be validated. But he did. And I think Debra Murphy did the same [Dr. Debra Murphy contributed the essay “Context & Meaning: Jim Draper’s Feast of Flowers”], I mean, I read both of those pieces and to have somebody write something about you with footnotes is kind of, uh (…) you know, I’m not in academia, I’m not in that world.

S.: Well (laughs) you are now.

J.D.: I teach but I’ve never been in that. It could have been I was just never hirable. Nobody wanted to hire me because I’m such a wild card and loose cannon. I would be great because I love teaching.

S.: Are you teaching now?

J.D.: No, I’m still on the list. I don’t know, it just gets so frustrating. I love teaching, I love having students around. I would do it for free. It’s offensive how little they pay. But I would do it for free; but I’d almost rather be asked to do it free than be asked for the little amount that they pay adjuncts (laughs)

S.: Dignity tax?

J.D.: Yeah (laughs) I’d just give them the money.

S.: So Bosworth kind of set the tone and his piece dips into the surreal. So what, did you pick these people or did they come to you?

J.D.: No, I picked them all.

S.: It seems like mostly friends, contemporaries (…)

J.D.: Yeah, they’re all friends.

S.: You think you hurt anybody’s feelings by not picking them?

J.D.: I don’t think so. And I specifically didn’t pick any painters. I did that intentionally because I didn’t want to (…) I have a lot of really close friends who I certainly would have asked but I just wasn’t picking painters. Because I (…) for whatever reason, I wanted to be the only painter.

S.: Sure, man. Well, it is your show.

J.D.: Yeah and I think it clouds the issues if you show other paintings. Part of the thing I wanted to say with the publication was: “I paint; painting is a valid way of doing this. Other people do these things. Is there a difference? I don’t think so.”

S.: It seems like even some of the people that you picked like (experimental filmmaker) David Montgomery, (photographer) Daniel Newman, they have a real painterly vibe (…) even the one guy, who did the sketch, the landscape architect dude?

J.D.: Jake Ingram

S.: Yeah, immediately I saw how that could be a cartoon for a painting. So that element is still threaded through there and kind of tethers it to your painting. I want to talk about this as well were it seems like you were very mindful of creating this sensorial experience where you have Jeremiah Johnson providing soundscapes, the piece with the couple picking wild fruit, [Katrina Zoe Norbom and Eric Hawes’ “A Bright Orange Afternoon,” an essay on wild harvesting/picking and eating fresh persimmon] and Cári Sanchez-Potter is talking about the actual feast and the act of devouring [the interview “Eating & Feasting”] (…) you have every sense addressed in this.

J.D.: Well, you think about the word feast and you just think of it as being like an onion and you think about all of these different things and layers of metaphor and skin and juice and all of that stuff (…) it’s the way you (…) I think that there’s ways of looking at ideas and that’s the way you have got to look at it. You know? You’ve just got to chew on it and tear it apart and think about every way in which you can think about it. That’s what I think is so beautiful about the “Feast of Flowers” thing; the title. That was just a total gift. That was just a given. You can talk about bugs eating plants. You can talk about Western ideas of possession and consumption. And, I didn’t, but you can talk about Native American ideas of consumption. You can talk about attitude towards place. You can talk about layer and layer. You can talk about sensual, the sexy act of eating. I mean eating is putting stuff in an orifice for pleasure. It’s about as core of our animalness as you can get.

S.: Feast is celebratory and gluttony, nourishing and destroying.

J.D.: It goes through all of those places, all of these different voices and attitudes and music and sound (…) it talks about all of those things by looking at this thing from all of these different angles. But not specifically, not “take a portion of this and write about this.” I was not instructive at all (laughs).

S.: Did you give them any kind of direction?

J.D.: Not really.

S.: You have these three sections within the publication [“Discovery,” “Conquest” and “Poison Arrow”] which could be viewed like a corollary to a visual triptych; a form you use in your painting. Did you have those in place or was that an afterthought?

J.D.: Those were post-scripted. My original idea was to have it divided up into eParks and ecosystems and have it be about, you know, wetlands, Upland sand, scrub, all marginal (…) maritime forests, all these different things (…) and it just became really exhaustive (…) it became too many categories. So we kind of developed those three ideas as just kind of arbitrary but almost like a plot; you know when you’re developing a plot there’s the set-up, the climax and then the final outcome. So in a weird way it’s kind of a novel plot development. I don’t know that much about plot development but it’s really kind of a device to hang all of this stuff in there and get some sense. Taken separately, it was hard to (…) I guess the only unifying thread, other than the name of the pieces, was me. I was kind of what tied them all together. As a whole, it makes sense.

S.: When I was going through the publication and thinking about this devouring concept, I had kind of thought about this, something that I had read probably twenty five years ago. Are you familiar with J.G. Ballard? He’s probably mistaken for a science fiction writer but he was just a fucking visionary novelist.

J.D.: No, I don’t know.

S.: He wrote the memoir “Empire of the Sun.”

J.D.: Yeah, I do know that.

S.: He had this novel called “The Drowned World.” It’s basically a story of how the ice caps melt and flood the world and the protagonist loves it (laughs). But Ballard addresses this idea of how our primal being is really coded by nature (…) how things like being afraid of lightning or even certain animals are programmed in our DNA or along or vertebrae through evolution. I guess I’m wondering, do you think this “feasting” (…) in spite of the best efforts of awareness and activism, do you think this is an inherent, devouring nature that humans as a species might have?

J.D.: I think it’s cultural. I think that our culture allows us to think that we deserve it. I think that our culture allows us to think that it’s ours for the taking. I think that other cultures that evolved in other places probably weren’t allowed to (…) well, take The Roman Empire. The Romans felt that if it existed, it was theirs for the taking. I think we are still The Roman Empire. I think when Constantine led the charge to develop the Christian church in 325 A.D. at the Nicene Conference, I think he had to get control of the empire and charge the writers and people who put the bible together, with the idea of developing a system that would allow for Roman ideals to move forward. And I think that was the perfect (…)

S.: It kind of spun on the gears of conquest.

J.D.: Yeah and it was in selecting things in the bible like “Go forth and multiply to the ends of the earth.” I mean, that’s ingrained in our culture. There’s no reason for us to do that. That’s a pretty rude idea (laughs) and I think that other cultures are just as content to go down to the river and catch fish and eat. So how do you develop a cultural shift? I don’t know. I don’t know how that changes. I think it’s going to inevitably play out the way it plays out.

S.: Well, I think when you have things succeeding like this (the exhibit and publication) it plays out in the form of an incrementally won battle. It seems like the money and power flow usually doesn’t work in favor of the artists. How do you not become cynical when you personally return to your favorite places in Florida and they are torn down?

J.D.: I don’t know. How do you remain hopeful? I guess it’s hard not to be cynical.

S.: But you know some people have actually stopped shopping at Wal-Mart. It’s a slow wave.

J.D.: Yeah. And when does that become self-flagellation? At what point do you cross the line where you start enjoying yourself that actually denies the rest of the world? I don’t know. Those are all questions and I don’t know the answers. I think that you end with a lot more questions than you do answers.

[JIm Draper at The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens, April 4, 2013. iPhone photo by Walter Coker]

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Upcoming three day exhibit at Flagler College presents inventive new work from students

The Oldest City continues to offer some great, new art. And much of that sustained and ongoing creative force is being produced by the art and design students at Flagler College. The Crisp-Ellert Art Museum presents the school’s latest collection of work by both senior B.F.A. and B.A. students over the course of three days. The opening reception is held on Thursday, April 18 from 5-9 p.m.; the show is also on display on Friday, April 19 from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and on Saturday, April 20 from 11 a.m. – 4 p.m. at 48 Sevilla St. in St. Augustine. Thursday’s opening night reception also features a performance by local musical act Queen Beef. The contact number for the museum is 826-8530.

Since September of 2010, SoCal transplant Julie Dickover has been director for the CEAM. During her tenure, she has overseen the exhibition of shows ranging from cutting edge video art to historical collections. She is also directly involved in presenting the semi-annual portfolio exhibits. Both exhibitions include works in media including paintings, drawings, sculpture, textiles, video, photography and mixed media.

Part of this wave of quality work is surely due to the experience and vision of the faculty of the school’s Art & Design Department. Don Martin, Laura Mongiovi, Patrick Moser, Sara Pedigo and Leslie Robison are but a few of the talented individuals who are instructors at the school, some of who are also alumni. “All of these professors are amazing and each brings important strengths to the department,” says Dickover. Yet the greatest credit certainly goes to the student artists themselves, who work the array of aforementioned media while simultaneously creating provocative and memorable work.

The B.F.A. group features works by Audrey Bernhardt, Maya de Ceano-Vivas, Rachel De Cuba, Jolene DuBray, Johanna Falzone, Chryssha Guidry, Megan Kovak, Kristen Matulewicz, Matthew Meinhardt, Sofi Schissel, and Katelynn Willink. The B.A. candidates include Brianna Angelakis, Kelly Austin, Matthew Batty, Mattie Bush, Kelly Crabtree, Sean Cusick, Tyler Fieldhouse, Kirsten Glowacki, Chantel Harding, Jake Heckman, Gabrielle Hekhuis, Brittany Higgins, Rachael Horne, Brielle Jenkins, Courtney Kirk, Ryan Kunsch, Julian Miller, Callie Myatt, Christie Reuther, and Katie Vidan.

Starehouse asked that Dickover select four artists from this year’s roster of up-and-coming talent. Questions were e-mailed to the director and the chosen artists. What follows are their responses.

Julie Dickover

Starehouse: How many portfolio shows are exhibited each year and what does the selection process entail?

Julie Dickover: We have two portfolio exhibitions a year, one during the Fall and Spring semesters. The B.F.A. students who have applied and been accepted into the B.F.A. program based on their portfolios are allowed to include whatever work they choose. Because the B.A. program has expanded over the past few years, we have experimented with the process. Some semesters each student is given a certain amount of space, and they can include as much or as little as they like. This semester, because there are a record number of B.A. students, professor Laura Mongiovi and I decided to treat it as more of a juried exhibition. Each student submitted a group of works for consideration, and we selected what we felt best represented of their bodies of work.

S: It seems that the Flagler College Department of Art & Design consistently fosters young artists and designers who produce interesting work who also go on to pursue creative careers and endeavors. What do you think are some of the collective strengths of both the faculty and the curriculum at the school?

J.D.: This is a really great question. Because I’m not a faculty member, I can’t really speak about the curriculum’s specifics. What I do know is that the foundations are all encompassing in that they explore both materials and concepts; painting, drawings, 2-D and 3-D design, etc. as well as more non-traditional art making. What I see within the context of the portfolio exhibitions is the end result of this interdisciplinary approach. Each student has a very solid basis from which they are allowed the freedom to make work in a huge variety of mediums. Of course the art and design faculty have everything to do with this. They all have thriving practices that include painting and printmaking, to video, installation and performance, and all of this has a hugely positive influence on the students.

S: During your tenure as director of the museum, have you noticed any trends in content, themes or media used by the students?

J.D.: This is sort of an extension of the previous question. When I first started here in 2010 the B.A. class was made up primarily of students who made paintings and works on paper. We still have a number of spectacular painters, no doubt because we have such great painting professors here. But what I have noticed is that there is a lot more site-specific work, installation, and video art in these portfolio exhibitions. It’s really exciting to see such a great variety of work.

Maya de Ceano-Vivas

[A self-portrait bust from Maya de Ceano-Vivas' "Question" and "Answer" sculptures, clay, 2013]

Starehouse: What piece(s) are you exhibiting at the show?

Maya de Ceano-Vivas: I will be displaying two slightly larger than life size self-portrait busts, of which I have officially named, “Question” and “Answer”. While on display, I have arranged the pieces to be exactly my height, and have positioned them to be facing each other directly, with enough room in between them for a viewer to pass through. If one were to stand in between them and look into one of their faces, there will always be the other staring at the back of the viewers’ head.

S:  Your artist statement explains that your work is very connected to the medium; in your case, clay. You then continue to make the connection between the organic nature of both clay and the human form. Why are you drawn to these ideas of “organic” materials/concepts?

M.D.C.: I have always been drawn to things that are organic; even in my 2-D work. I am fascinated with the complexities and subtleties of the natural. I enjoy the process of “rebirthing” one organic object with the materials of another.

S: In your work, you use what you call your “strong connections” to classical Greek sculpture to address ideas of female objectification and “strive to ask questions about how women are still perceived as objects of desire in our ‘modern age’.” Considering the centuries that have followed, what is it specifically about these classical sculpture forms that made you choose that style in lieu of other more modern or contemporary imagery?

M.D.C.: I suppose it comes down to a point that The Gorilla Girls made long ago: ”Do women have to be naked to get into The Metropolitan Museum of Art?” Historically, the most celebrated artists have been overwhelmingly male. And the most celebrated pieces contain female subjects. The subjects are widely not in a position of power and authority, but one of passiveness. They are objects of beauty, and provide no fuel for thought on their own. Rather, they say “look how beautiful I am. Isn’t my creator talented?” I feel that there is also an element of racial awareness. As a person of color in art school, I have almost never seen the work of artists of color taught in my Art History classes. Art work made from the hands of people of color is not viewed as “Classical Art” – it is viewed as “Ethnic Art”. It is not taught as a “need to know basic” in modern academics but as an “other” or specialty class. This, I feel, needs to change. I see my sculptures in a way as rewriting history. I am an artist, woman of color, sculpting a woman of color, in a position of direct questioning and directly addressing the viewer.

S: Reading your statement and seeing the work, it seems as if your work is ultimately about female empowerment. Do you feel that your work is fueled by your own personal experiences and observations as much as it is by deeper feminist thought regarding things like gender inequality, sexism, woman-as-object, “male gaze,” etc…?

M.D.C.: Both!

S: Why did you render a piece that was a self-portrait? Was that to create a more personalized piece i.e. using self as model or was it more a matter of convenience? Is your apparently somber expression possibly another message conveyed in this particular piece?

M.D.C.: As stated in my previous answer, the choice to render myself had much to do with me being an artist who happens to be a woman of color. I view sculpture as a very cis [Latin, meaning “on the same side”] white male dominated medium with cis white female subjects. I want to change that. While I was making these sculptures I also came across something unexpected. As a result of sculpting myself, I was forced to look at my body for three months straight. It became more personal than I had intended. Through making these sculptures, I came to feel as though my body were more my own. Even though I am presenting the viewer with a nude representation of myself, it is on my own terms. My pieces make direct eye contact with the viewer and engage them in a personal way, rather than being an object for consumption.

[Right side of Maya de Ceano-Vivas' sculpture.]

M.D.C.: Exactly!

S: You state that your sculptures “are not meant to address the viewer confrontationally, but in a questioning way.” I’m curious if you could ever see your work forgoing that inviting sense of inquiry but rather becoming increasingly confrontational over time?

M.D.C.: Even though I strive for these pieces to be non-confrontational, I am sure there will be those who would consider these pieces somewhat aggressive. As far as becoming increasingly confrontational over time, it would really depend on what ideas I’m trying to communicate. In this case, I am asking a question.

S: After graduating, what are your plans? Do you plan on staying in Northeast Florida or are you setting your sights elsewhere?

M.D.C.: I plan on traveling as much as humanly possible. There are so many people and places with which to draw inspiration and I want to consume them all into my being. For the time being, I will continue making work with my partner, Christopher. Together we have collaborated and created Ten Squared Ceramics. On our website you can find our blog that we update regularly with new works and happenings.

Rachel De Cuba

[“If I Ever Get Back to Florida, I'm Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground," fabric, photo transfer and thread, 2013.

Rachel De Cuba: “If I Ever Get Back to Florida, I’m Gonna Nail My Feet to the Ground,” which is my quilt of St. Augustine history, as well as a pair of large photo transfers on fabric that have embroidery over them called “Oranjestad 1950 (The de Cubas)” and “Aroostook 1957 (The Kilcollins)”; these works are created with my grandparents on their wedding days as the main imagery. The last piece will be “The Andrews House,” a structure built around the history of the previous use of the land that Ponce is on.

S: In your artist statement, you explain that you utilize textile-based techniques and forms such as quilting, embroidery to create works seemingly driven by what you describe as “the traditional matriarchal aspect of textiles and embroidery” as a form of female empowerment. When did you decide to kind of reconcile these ideas and tactile forms into that singular vision?

R.D.C.:  There was a lot behind working with these traditional crafts but my major notice while attending college was that as a female in my family I was raised in, there was the traditional idea of having a role as a wife and mother. However, even though my grandmothers crafted and my mother knew how to do basics of crafting, I was never taught. I had the natural instinct to create these works, I saw these traditions as a rich part of a woman’s upbringing and role, the power and freedom to create; but why was it not passed down within my family?  I was fortunate enough to have strong females within my life who gave me the influences to decide that crafting in a traditional way is rich and worthwhile. So I began to teach myself in my sophomore year how to do the crafts I was attracted to. The ability and acceptance of working with my hands to create is something I connect to my grandmothers with, even if I never got the chance to share the tradition with them.

S: When did you originally begin working with quilts and textile work? How long does it take you to finish a piece?

R.D.C.: I began embroidering and sewing on works about two years ago. I was inspired a lot by Ghada Amer, a woman who incorporates the practice of embroidery; after seeing her work I taught myself how to embroider. The quilt I will be displaying is the first quilt I have made and it took me about a month to complete. I taught myself how to create it by using an old country wisdom book and through trial and error.

S: You also acknowledge that you use both family photographs as well as found prints from the Florida State Archives for your quilts. I am wondering what criteria you use to select both the images and actual cloth material to tell the stories that you call “fractured narratives”?

R.D.C.:  The images that I chose to use for my quilt were based on what I, as a Floridian, saw as parts of my history that impact our area. I wanted to give clues to all parts of life in the area, the positive and the negative. Images that, if shown to a person present at the time, would hold significant meaning or a story that we cannot see but can imagine or piece together. When I was making my other works with family photos, I looked for images that could be ones that were the roots of the family stories that I have been told since I was a child. The fabrics that I select are influenced by the feeling or memories that I connect with the imagery or narrative. The quilt has fabric that is used in traditional southern or country quilts which often have a number of patterns on the fabric and colors that reflect Florida.

[Detail from De Cuba's work.]

R.D.C.: One example is images of Native Americans imprisoned within the Fort [The Castillo de San Marcos]; these can be seen close to, or alongside of, images of actresses posing in Indian costumes for press photos in front of the Fort for a film opening in St. Augustine. While we may attract tourists to a rich history of the Fort, we lack perspective of the reality of what it was used for. As well, these images or narratives can be seen as shameful or soothing or to be hidden, but they are presented on bright, colorful cloth that looks comforting. There is a large amount of this situation, of lack of perspective or collective history, that begins to be addressed within many of the stories present in the quilt.

S: You allow that ultimately, you would like the audience to “decide what can be celebrated, inglorious, or forgotten by our generation.” Since you actually work in forms that could be deemed old-fashioned or even anachronistic, I now turn that same choice towards you: what do you personally believe are some of the things that should be both celebrated and forgotten?

R.D.C.: I have a deep love for working with my hands, especially with textiles; I think for myself I wish to celebrate that. I feel that our generation looks to mass production instead of passing down traditions of handcrafting practices and, like stories, whether obsolete or unused, crafting has a rich history that should be carried between generations. I wish to celebrate the way that history is layered, with the wonderful and shameful; family history is something that I see within this. A family can be broken and mended many times, each story told, whether as a lesson of ill decisions or example of great success is a layer to who one is; the past is constantly relevant. Celebrating these stories can educate and enrich one’s life. I think that is something to celebrate.

S: After graduating, what are your plans? Do you plan on staying in Northeast Florida or are you setting your sights elsewhere?

R.D.C.: I plan to stay in St. Augustine until the Fall of 2014, at which time I hope to attend graduate school.

Jolene DuBray

[ Detail from Jolene DuBray's “ALCHEMY: Dissection, Reconstruction, Installation,” an installation of chained money, 2013.

Jolene DuBray: “ALCHEMY: Duplication, Incineration, Documentation” is one of several performance videos I made this semester. I projected the video onto a screen I made from photocopied US Currency. “ALCHEMY: Dissection, Reconstruction, Installation” is an installation made from a paper chain of play money. And finally, “ALCHEMY: Disintegration, Experimentation, Transformation,” cast paper sculptures made from shredded U.S. currency.

S: In your artist statement, you explain that your current work “explores the most powerful and divisive symbol prevalent in our culture” – which you state as money/currency. What compelled you to use money as your overall idea?

J.D.: Money is something we all have to participate in, whether we want to or not. Most of us spend a great deal of our time working, doing something we would not be doing if we did not have to. Money seems to promote greed and corruption. The value constantly fluctuates and decreases. I have been thinking about doing something like this for a little over a year now. If you look at nature, human beings are the only beings inhabiting the earth who pay for food and housing. Money is magic. Fancy symbols printed on linen paper become portion control for power.

S: You cite the following as part of process: duplication, incineration, dissection, disintegration, experimentation, reconstruction, transformation, and documentation. I am curious how you specifically utilized some or all of these in the work featuring shredded American dollar bills converted into paper chains.

J.D.: All of the work is about the process. The titles reflect the techniques I used for each piece, mentioned in my artist statement. I felt as if I was doing a performance while creating the work. The artwork itself is evidence of these performances.

S: How do you describe your work; sculpture, assemblages, or something else? In the actual assembling of your work, do you use authentic currency or fake money?

J.D.: I think mixed media would be a good description. I began by using toy money. Then I began photocopying real money. I got a little paranoid at one point and decided to burn the photocopies. I had to record this of course, and that is how I started making videos. I then found out you can order shredded currency from the U.S. Treasury, so I figured out how to recycle it. All of these are included in the show.

S: You state that your goal is to transform currency/money into something of greater or (more stable) value than it already has. Do you wonder if people have so many associations, attachments and even prejudices towards money that they might dismiss your work on the basis of those kinds of almost unconscious and ingrained responses?

J.D.: I cannot say that I have thought about that. Pleasing people really is not what the work is about. I hope that the work makes people ask questions.

[Detail from DuBray's “ALCHEMY: Disintegration, Experimentation, Transformation,” cast paper sculptures made from shredded U.S. currency, 2013.

J.D.: One of my favorite quotes is by Oscar Wilde, “If you want to tell people the truth, make them laugh, otherwise they will kill you.” It is definitely important for me to keep it light. There is some serious oppression in the world, but who wants to see that? I think there are better ways to call attention to such problems. I prefer to focus on the source of the inequality. I am calling to question the actual value and fragile nature of the material.

S: After graduating, what are your plans? Do you plan on staying in Northeast Florida or are you setting your sights elsewhere?

J.D.: I plan on sticking around for a while. I have a seven-year-old daughter named Bradleigh, who I will be spending more time with. I want to continue making art every day, get my work out there, and see if I can succeed in inspiring thought by doing so. When Bradleigh gets older, I want to continue my education in graduate school and never stop learning.

Chryssha Guidry

[An image from Chryssha Guidry's"Empty" series, long exposure photograph, 2013.]

Starehouse: What piece(s) are you exhibiting at the show?

Chryssha Guidry: I will be showing a selected group of photographs from the “Bed” series.

S: Could you describe the actual process of long exposure photography for the uninitiated and what compelled you to explore that technique?

C.G.: Long exposure Photography involves using a long-duration shutter speed. This means that the aperture of the camera is open for an extended period of time capturing any movement or paths of light that occur. To successfully capture the path of motion or light, I shot in complete darkness. I set my camera at a 25 second exposure, using only my phone as the light source. With this set-up, I shot my bed and the happenings within it for the past three months.

S: The piece “Empty” features an empty bed with disheveled sheets. Your artist statement offers the ideas of the bed can be identified with universal things like relaxation, sleeping and sex, etc… but then goes onto describe your own personal views of bed as altar, a bed as a body with the sheets views as its clothes, etc…The April 7, 2013 entry on your blog “In Between the Shadow and the Soul,” seems to also explore this idea. Why do you seemingly imprint inanimate objects with this same dynamic of the mundane/mystical?

C.G.: I hadn’t even noticed that I did until you mentioned it. I feel this may happen due to the way I view how the universe operates. Despite the diversity we perceive around us, I feel that the universe consists of one single all pervasive substance which is the common source of each property that defines the word we live in. Space, time, matter, virtually all objects and events are manifestations of this fundamental ground field of indestructible vitality. This is the unity of creation. When speaking of the dynamic between the human realm and the objects within it, I apply this holistic view that personifies these inanimate objects that I define.

S: Your statement describes how “continuous exposure combines multiple perspectives, each one making the last more obscure.” I am wondering, what is your ultimate desired result of gradually disintegrating or altering previous perspectives/moments? Are you seeking a kind of complete abstraction or maybe a more personal message through all of those “alterations”?

C.G.: Is life not a result of gradually disintegrating or altering previous perspectives/moments?  I feel that this creates the reality within the piece. The human recollection is not perfect; it is nothing but a perception. I feel memories are a blur of obscurity in which our minds try to recreate the missing gaps. Through this, I feel that maybe the message is more personal.

S: While your statement explains that your images are representations of your own sexuality, you also follow that with admission this: “Information is being obscured rather than revealed.” On your blog entries from Feb. and March, 2013, the “Empty” series seems to follow the “Bed” series; the latter images are seemingly the actions that preceded the former, with phantom-like nude figures captured in various positions and movements. What compelled you to explore your sexuality with this particular approach?

C.G.:  I explored this approach because I questioned the idea of the self. I looked at sexuality and its relation to human nature. Human’s traditionally set up a place in which to engage in relaxation, sleep, and sex. I feel this happens due to the necessary factors of staying alive and continuing to evolve. I question the idea of relationship and sexuality that I feel the phantom objects portray. Supporting this view the empty bed represents the self. This is the marking that life imprints on us; the folds in the bed sheets are the memories and what were left with as we end these engagements.

S: After graduating, what are your plans? Do you plan on staying in Northeast Florida or are you setting your sights elsewhere?

C.G.: I am setting myself elsewhere. Although, I love my surroundings and they helped me produce personal growth, I do not feel that there is enough opportunity in my location. I am keeping my options very open due to learning life can be disappointing when over planned. I am going to work to save money and produce a bigger body of work until the end of the summer from which I am leaving to pursue a different location and continue onto Grad school. I feel very inspired at this point and want to let it all out without having the tie downs of school.

Special thanks to all of the participants who agreed to the 24-hour turnaround on this piece!

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Lily Kuonen forges a hybrid breed of multimedia ideas with her “Playntings”

["Want" by Lily Kuonen.]

The Arkansas-born Kuonen is an arts educator as well as artist. After garnering a B.F.A. in painting from the University of Central Arkansas in 2006, she completed the Savannah College of Art and Design’s M.F.A. program (also in painting) four years later. Since then, she has worked as an Assistant Professor of Foundations and Drawing at Jacksonville University. Kuonen’s work has also been featured in two dozen group shows, solo exhibits and she is also becoming a regular in speaking at colleges throughout the east coast on topics such as art foundation and studio disciplines.

Kuonen, Tiffany Whitfield Leach and Savannah-based guest artist Rachel Evans will be exhibiting new work at the “Clay and Canvas Open Studio” night on Saturday, April 27 from 5-8 p.m. at 2642-6 Rosselle St., in Riverside. That same day from noon-8 p.m. CoRK Arts District is also featuring their open studio event, while a stone’s throw away Jeff Whipple and Liz Gibson will also be opening the doors of their MetaCusp Studios.

I spoke to Kuonen on the evening of Tuesday, April 23^rd. What follows is a transcription of highlights from our talk.

Starehouse:  What’s going on? Are you preparing for you show on Saturday?

Lily Kuonen: Mmmm-hmmm.

S: So that’s going to be you, Tiffany and Rachel Evans?

L.K.: Yes.

S: Is she [Evans] a cohort from SCAD?

L.K.: Yeah, I knew Rachel from SCAD; originally she was at SCAD Atlanta and she wound up transferring down to Savannah during my last year there. She goes there and also works at the museum of art, at the SCAD Museum of Art now. I’m not exactly sure what her title is.

S: She’s bona fide, as they say.

L.K.: (laughs) Yes.

S: Is there a collective theme to this show or is it new works by all three of you?

L.K.: Yeah, it’s new works. We are doing these bi-annual, open studio nights to kind of split the year. Also, since we are academics it is kind of easy to split a year in November and December, at the end of that fall semester for our students, and at April-May also ends a semester for our students. We are doing two shows a year, here, and it’s always showcasing new work and we’re also bringing people in to feature them. The first time we ever did this it was just Tiffany and I and the second time we featured Mark Creegan and following that we had Eric Adams and Jessie Gilmartin. And now we will feature Rachel and this is the first person that we’ve had outside of Jacksonville. There are a couple reasons for that: one, we are trying to flip flop back and forth between “works on the wall” versus “works on the pedestal” or involving artists that use both somehow. Like Mark, an installation artist where they can do something specific with the space. But any rate, everybody coming to mind that we asked to do it just had a show recently or is going to be in a show with either Tiffany or me very soon (laughs) so for the sake of not trying to be redundant we thought “why don’t we reach outside of that?” Also, I originally thought of Rachel as an option because the name of our studio is “Clay and Canvas Studio” and Rachel, or at least what I know of her work and if it is still fairly consistent, has been involved in both painting and ceramic work or mold-making. So she is also kind of a hybrid between “on the wall” and “on the pedestal.” I think she is having three wall pieces and two sculptures? I can’t really remember right now (laughs) but she’s kind of a natural selection in that she already is kind of involved (laughs) in the actual title of our space.

S: She’s the ideal guest.

L.K.: Right.

S: How many pieces will each artist have at this show?

L.K.: I’m not exactly sure. I know that Tiffany has four, new large sculptures and also several new smaller sculptures. And she has a mix between non-functional and functional ceramic work. And some things that appear functional but it’s more sculptural (laughs) and kind of a hybrid between that. She’s also doing, and this is something that I learned from her, ceramic artists will do what they call “seconds” where it’s work they might have had for a while or had been in other shows and they’ll do, for lack of a better word, a kind of discount (laughs).

S: Sure. That’s actually quite smart. It’s a pragmatic idea.

L.K.: It’s kind of cool. She’s going to have a tent outside that will feature the “seconds” and the featured work will be inside, so that’s also a way for her to move some stuff out and showcase the newer works inside. She also balances between having work here and she has a steady gallery in North Carolina. I guess I would say for Tiffany, there are lots of smaller things but there are also four, new large sculptures.

S: What are you bringing to the show? You’re in the studio right now so are you kind of at the eleventh hour of finishing things up?

L.K.: Yeah (laughs) and my studio time has been divided up in a strange way this semester. And I don’t know why, but whenever we do this, the April-May show in particular, I always have several other things going on.

S: You have a lot going on right now, oh, and before I forget, belated congratulations on being featured in “Studio Visit” magazine.

L.K.: Oh, thank you, yeah!

S: That’s a cool thing. Now how did that come about? Did they come to you or what’s the deal?

L.K.:  Well, I received an e-mail for a call for submissions and it’s a juried selected process. I think I submitted maybe five images to one of those online servers, and like most submissions, you pay something (laughs).

S: Sure, sure. A lot of those things are like that, “Who’s Who in Art?” or whatever…

L.K.: Right, so it was a juried process and then they have a curator for the magazine who selected the handful of artists and they picked the work. So that’s how you get in. But it’s very cool because it goes out to something like 2,000 galleries all around the nation and it’s published by Open Studios Press which also publishes “New American Paintings.”

S: Yeah, yeah I love that magazine. It’s a fucking beast!

L.K.: Yeah (laughs) it’s one of those art magazines that is actually well known (laughs).

S: That’s a real feather in your cap. So your show is also kind of running concurrent with the CoRK Arts District Open Studio event [also on April 27], true?

L.K.: Right and that was kind of an interesting thing. We had already picked our date and planned to have it and had Rachel lined up for our bi-annual event and I got an e-mail from, Noli, at CoRK?

S: Yeah, [illustrator] Noli Novak.

L.K.: Yeah, and she mentioned that they were doing an open studio event earlier in April and unfortunately I was going to be away speaking at a conference at the time and Tiffany also had another function in North Carolina … at any rate, we weren’t available. So I wrote her back with our sincerest apologies that we would not be able to do it and then she wrote me back surprisingly and said “We’re going to move our event to match yours.” So that was kind of a happy accident. This will be the first time that everyone in this area is doing something like this, where CoRK proper with all of the artists there, as well as Jeff Whipple and Liz Gibson’s studio [MetaCusp] along with our studio. So we will all be in cahoots with this (laughs).

S: All on Saturday.

L.K.: Yeah, all on Saturday but there’s [CoRK] is longer; there’s takes place from noon until 8 p.m. and our time had already been in place and we didn’t change it due to things like the artists involved and donations coming in but ours does end at the same time as theirs.

S: Did your studio’s location kind of precede the CoRK studios showing up there?

L.K.: Well, I think CoRK is kind of a dominant force in the area and I don’t mean that in a bad way, I mean it in a good way (laughs).

S: Yeah, yeah I know what you mean. “But do not look CoRK directly in the eyes.”

L.K.: (laughs) I think that just by the nature of proximity we are automatically associated with them to the greater public.

S: But it seems like when I was still at Folio Weekly you were sending me notices for your shows before they [CoRK] were really up and running. I can remember you trying to explain to me where you were located and I was wondering “Why are they over in that barren land”…or at least you didn’t tell me “We are over across from CoRK!” as a reference point.

L.K.: (laughs) We’ve actually been here roughly the same time that CoRK started when they had the first space open, which I think was CoRK West or something like that … they were moving in getting all set up that same summer that we moved in here. I actually spoke with Dolf about renting a space in the new renovation area but it just wasn’t going to work out, timing-wise for us, which is why Tiffany and I found this space here. And then CoRK kind of blew up and became a really wonderful thing so I think we both consequently benefited from the close proximity, I think that it could eventually be something much more interesting and inspiring, you know?

["Balance Set" is featured in the upcoming "Clay and Canvas Open Studio" show.]

L.K.: (laughs) I mean, as far as being their neighbor, it’s fine. Our last open studio was actually the first time lots of CoRKers (laughs) came out for it which was really great. Because we’ve been to a lot of shows over there it was nice to have that reciprocation and we both visited Jeff and Liz’s studio as well, because they’re also kind of our immediate neighbors. Actually a new artist just moved into our building, so now there are three of us over here.

S: It seems like an observation I have about CoRK, and I want to ask your opinion about this and I might just sound like a big asshole saying it or be misconstrued, but it seems like there are so many shows happening there every week or every two weeks that it is hard to keep up with them. Now I think this is part of the deal that if you rent a space you can have a show every year, so this could be the sheer math playing out to fulfill that agreement and put those shows up. But it seems like the shows are really based on the event of the opening reception. But if those shows were up for maybe a month, people could really have a chance to digest it and absorb what is being exhibited.  I acknowledge that it could just be me and I am really slow, I mean, I like listening to 20 minute John Coltrane songs too, but do you know what I mean? Do you have any thoughts on that?

L.K.: You think that the shows are kind of short-lived?

S: Well, it seems like they happen so quickly, I wonder if it is just the contemporary mentality towards faster information and…

L.K.: Right, there are so many. I know that every artist involved there can put in a bid to have a show and there are some really beautiful spaces for the work to be seen and now they have the visiting artist program (…) but I think that it’s a lot of (…) competition that we’re not necessarily interested in (laughs).

S: And I don’t think anyone is in competition but it seems like with most galleries a show will last a month, six weeks, just for the work to be up.

L.K.:  Yeah, I don’t know about timing-wise but maybe it is, kind of like you were saying, a reaction to our society where everything is kind of streaming (laughs) at us and we are constantly reloading all of the time.

S: Well, that is my thought exactly, reload and refresh your mind. But it’s okay. I’m not out to solve anything in this interview (laughs) I just value your opinion and wondered what you think.

L.K.: For us it is really just that idea that for this show we are opening our studio, we are opening our space, it’s about being hospitable, about being a good neighbor, that kind of thing. We really want it to be a relaxed setting. Our studio is really humble and we have a quote “art gallery area” that only has white walls, that is what makes it gallery-like (laughs) but I really think that makes for a much more relaxed setting for people to really experience the work and feel more comfortable. Sometimes something that is very dignified, like going to a show at The Cummer, might be harder to actually get into the work (…)

S: Due to the actual space that it is presented in?

L.K.: Yeah.

S: Absolutely. Some things I would only want to experience in a museum like The Cummer while others would seem odd if placed in that same environment. And your work, too, seems really contingent on having that certain space. When I interviewed you last year, we talked about this; how your work can even blur the lines between installation, environment, paintings and sculpture (…) do you have a rough idea of how many pieces you will have at this?

L.K.: Ummm, well I made this new series of single pieces and there are ten in that series and then I have a series of drawings (…) there’s probably going to be, ten (…)

S: Are the drawings kind of a return to that form for you?

L.K.: Well, I’ve been playing a lot with these kinds of text-based drawings (…) I guess the impetus of it was for “The Highway Gallery Project,” when I did that for the Florida Mining Gallery. Text and wordplay have always been a part of my work, even the fact that I made up a word (laughs) to describe my work [“Playntings”] so it’s always been an underlying kind of intellectual exercise of my work, but I hadn’t really explored it to this extent since that moment. And since that time I’ve done a larger series of about ten, text-based drawings and I’ve done a couple of smaller, text-based paintings and I have about three more text-pieces that are going to be in this show. And then some drawings are just exploratory drawings that are preparatory sketches; I call my drawings either “primary” or “preliminary” and so “preliminary” means that they are going to lead to dimensional work and “primary” means that they are a stand-alone piece.  So there will be a mix of those and I’m also thinking for the sake of my own mental exercise that I need to pull out a bunch of drawings that I’ve been doing over the past year, so there might be an installation of those drawings, too. We’ll see if I get there or not (laughs). And I have a cinderblock piece.

S: Is that the piece, “Want”?

L.K.: Yeah, “Want.”

S: Boy, I love that; that is fantastic.

L.K.: Thanks, that’s the one that is going to go down to Boca Raton to the Boca Raton Museum of Art.

S: Congratulations. Before I take us even further off-track, let’s talk again about some of the things you have going on, You have this show [“Clay and Canvas Open Studio”], you have the group show, “The Apartment” [a collaborative effort between Kuonen, Thony Aiuppy, Staci Bu Shea, Sterling Cox and Edison William being presented at an Avondale apartment]. Is that still happening?

L.K.: Right, that’s still happening. We are having our open house for “The Apartment” on May 10^th from 5-8 p.m. and that’s going to be the kick-off event. But it’s really modeled after an actual open house or if you were interested in looking at a property, similar to that. And then we are hosting several different kinds of programming as we occupy the space for a month.

S: So did the plans for everyone to live together “Brady Bunch”-style or, rather, “Brady Bunch-meets- Joseph Beuys”-style kind of fall through?

L.K.: (laughs) Maybe that’s a good way to put it. We are occupying the space, we are not necessarily living there together, there are proposals for us to maybe stay a few nights and have some sleepovers and things like that, we have cooked there and that kind of thing so we are occupying it in the terms of utilizing it so the exhibit is “home-like.” So that is definitely part of it. And then the programming that will be going is a variety of events that we as occupants will host for the public to experience. We’re pretty much using Craigslist exclusively for advertising.

[The drawing "From Here to There" is also featured in the upcoming show.]

L.K.: Yeah, pretty cool.

S: I wonder what some hopeful tenant will think when they show up to rent this apartment?

L.K.: Well, we are kind of interested in that, if that might happen (laughs). And we are borrowing from the language that is being used to advertise and apartment.  So that’s happening in May. I had work selected for the Northeast Florida Sculptor’s show that will open, I don’t have my calendar in front of me but I think it’s May 3^rd, and I think the show is at Ethan Allen Home Center in the St. Johns Town Center [The opening reception for the show “In Situ” is held from 6-8:30 p.m. on Friday, May 3^rd at the Ethan Allen Design Center, located in the St. Johns Town Center at 4939 Big Island Drive, on the Southside of Jacksonville. The show is on display through June 7]. The idea for the show was to showcase how artwork can be viewed within the home setting as well, if that makes sense?

S: Absolutely.

L.K.: So the works will be interspersed among the showroom, so it will be kind of like almost a mock-installation of things (laughs) and I have two pieces but I consider them one. And actually, one part of it was a piece that was at the Cummer [during last year’s Folio Weekly Invitational Artist Exhibition held at The Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens] so I kind of broke that piece apart to make this newer work. And then sending the cinder-block piece down to Boca Raton for the All Florida Juried Exhibition and that opens beginning of May as well.

S: Please tell me that you are showing “Shitty Grid” at Ethan Allen. I love that piece but admittedly like the idea of the words “Shitty Grid” being uttered over and over in a furniture store.

L.K.: (laughs) No, not that one.

S: Oh come on. You sold out.

L.K.: (laughs) It was too large for their specifications.

S: So it was “Stunted”?

L.K.: Yeah, “Stunted” is one and there’s a piece called “Seamless” that goes with it and they’re kind of a male/female duo. So “The Apartment,” the Boca Raton show, Ethan Allen and this show, all in this month.

S: That’s a lot of activity for sure. I want to shift gears here and talk about you in your studio and what you do. When I interviewed you last August, you told me that when you were a child your Dad began adding-on to your family home, and I guess he is still doing this, the house is still changing.

L.K.: Mmmm-hmmm.

S: And you described this as “the sentiment, the motivation of the ‘continuous project’ that resonates in my studio process.” Could you elaborate on that mentality?

L.K.: Well, for one thing there is this idea that when I embark on a “set” piece, whatever that’s going to be, I really don’t usually know what the actual outcome is going to be or what the resolution will be, how it will actually resolve itself.

S: So even though you might even have a “Preliminary” sketch, you have no idea what the end result will be?

L.K.: I will sketch and plan but I usually don’t know because I’m doing such strange things with the materials sometimes (laughs) that it’s really a learning process. You know, I just had a bunch of stuff fall apart on me the other day and I thought “Man!” (laughs) so I’m looking for how hard I can push against something or how things work together, too. It’s not always a contradictory kind of feeling but it’s also how things can become sympathetic or supportive for each other in terms of materials and forms and things like that. But the sort of resolution is unknown. I might have a concept of what I think it might be but I really don’t know until I get to that point. And so some people ask me, “Well, how do you know when you’re finished” and it usually has to do with (…) one, I kind of argue that it’s never really finished (laughs) but also, two, I am – and I don’t want to sound like a whisperer or something (laughs) – but I am paying attention to the materials and maybe something dries up, or falls apart, or there’s a point of tension or balance that it reaches and it’s kind of like “Oh, that’s the moment” where it is going to remain suspended for a little while (laughs) and then I also tend to “repurpose” a lot of things, which is also why things are never exactly finished, they tend to kind of keep regurgitating (laughs). That’s actually something that I’m going to be exploring for an upcoming show at the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum.

S: Oh great. When is that happening?

L.K.: That is going to be in Spring 2014; so, a year from now. I’m having a solo show there and the proposal that I pitched to Julie [Dickover, CEAM director] after she asked me to do it was exploring the kind of genealogy that I’m creating by doing this, of how works are tied to other works.

S: At the end of your statement, it says how your work can “only be completed through this sense of renewal.” So you are perpetually taking older works and converting them into new pieces, correct?

L.K.: Yeah, I’m breaking it down, pretty much.

S: So do you have any older work, a kind of finite set of surviving works?

L.K.: (laughs) Yeah, I never really have more than what’s in my studio. Because they are either just destroyed or they go on to be something else (laughs).

S: They evolve.

L.K.: Yeah, they evolve and sometimes there’s a very specific material-link, where you could say “Okay, I saw that material used in this way and now here it is again” or I will physically break something down into waste and use that waste as a filler or something like that. And also there are links that occur almost as these little families emerging, like these are the things that respond to this idea. And so there are also these genealogies that are occurring based on that.

S: Well, I can see it looking at your work online, I see the same colors and little fragmentary things (…) is it possible to kind of verbally walk me through the process of making a piece? I mean, you have cinder block and wood is it like (…) I’m sure that now you have a methodology but is there like a (…) ritual starting point with this?

L.K.: I definitely start by drawing a lot. Drawing is a huge impetus for what I make and also staring a lot (laughs) …

S: Yeah, yeah! That’s an ancient tool of the artist.

L.K.:  I tell my students that sometimes just being the studio counts. You’re punching the clock, you are there.

S: Totally. It’s like meditation, you just show up on the cushion.

L.K.: Yeah. And so in the drawing process sometimes it is just weird lines that make sense to me and then I’ll use those as almost a kind of armature to build. Sometimes I think about forms that I’ve already made and what they could lead to next (…) I think an underlying theme, too, is really about balance and tension and power structures that emerge in that and also supportive structures (…) these kind of reciprocal, balancing feelings. And so, as far as the drawing, the “staring” can be all over the place, it can be in the studio, out riding my bike, it can be weird, quirky things that I see, and those things that just kind of eat at you (laughs) after a while and you think “Why was that important, why do I remember that?” like an image of the sprinklers overflowing on the sidewalk, or whatever it is. And that really can come from anything. I take a lot of cues from structures, obviously, with buildings and things like that, but it’s also just other strange things that just happen in our world (…) things that get piled up for a long time and something happens to them by chance.

S: And it seems as if your work has physicality, where there is a basic challenge to literally make them stand up and cooperate. Is that a common thing where the house of cards falls or the dominoes all fall when you weren’t ready?

L.K.:  That’s a common thing; I get hurt a lot.

S: Do you, as in physically, literally?

L.K.: Physically and emotionally (laughs). I like the fight. I like the fight that I am not the only thing in play. I think that humans, so many times, like to think that we are on top and I like the idea that I am humbled by it. I like the idea that I don’t know when it is going to snap and pop me in the face (laughs) or fall over on top of me at 2 a.m. or whatever (…) because I am taking something out of that.

S: You mean, other than black eyes?

L.K.: (laughs) Yes and I really like that kind of exchange. How I am very much just another equation in the mix.

S: You are just another material in the piece.

L.K.: Right, definitely.

S: And if you’re lucky the other materials might let you come and hang out. When we talked last year, you also told me how your work is very “exposed” through these materials but you said you still “are very much enamored with painting.” So you started out as a traditional painter, as in paint on canvas or panel, right?

L.K.: Right.

S: So how do you think you still directly bring that painterly sensibility to what you are doing?

L.K.: Well, a good painter (…) I shouldn’t say a “good painter” (laughs)…

S: You can say a “good painter”; you are totally qualified to qualify that (laughs) …

L.K.: Well, a good painter has a specific color palette maybe or types of colors or brands of paint that they really like to use (…) or if it’s an oil painter, maybe it is a combination of mediums that they really like beyond just linseed oil or turpenoid or whatever (…) and all of them do different things to a painting and this is hard to teach some students because some students want a kit and “this is how you make it” (…) but once you’ve really familiarized yourself with those materials (…) Jim Draper was recently speaking with my students and he explained how he had switched to a different medium because he didn’t like the cloudy, milky effect, he wanted it to be clearer and warmer. So knowing what that does when you make that switch (…) so that was something that I had coming into this, that kind of sensibility and sensitivity of materials.

S: It’s intimate.

L.K.: Yeah, it’s very intimate. So that kind of quality is very much a part of what I do now at least in the form of principle or philosophy. And then other things that might tie it into a painterly approach is that I’m still very much involving a lot of the materials of painting but I am looking at them in a different way. It’s not that I think that it’s limited; it’s really about pushing against it as hard as I can.

S: Well, by your own definition, your “Playntings” are a “synthesis of painting with additional forms and actions” so your very creation kind of jumped out of this search.

L.K.: Yeah, it’s like what is the integrity of painting and what is it when you add something else to it and then add something else to that?  Maybe it’s a form, so maybe it’s no longer a rectangle on the wall anymore maybe it’s a different type of form? Or maybe it is a rectangle with other forms added to it, or other materials. But all of the materials I use really “source” my studio so even like, for example, the cinder blocks; they are something that I use in my studio so it “comes out” of that same kind of process. It’s like a good cook who would throw something in that was just on the counter.

S: I noticed that in some of the pieces from 2012 on your site have the stencils of these vises and then presumably those same vises are featured in other works with pieces of wood. So the vise is laying there and it eventually becomes a “color” on your palette.

L.K.: Exactly.

S: You know what I noticed too, and I don’t know if this is just from the images being captured by a camera, but it seems as if the shadows that develop from your pieces become another form of negative space on a canvas. Are you mindful of that?

L.K.: I try to be and it has definitely inspired a lot of components in pieces, too. When I was living in Charleston, I had a friend of mine cut off these bottoms of milk crates for me and when I had them leaning against the wall in different ways with their shadows (laughs) they became like drawings. And like you say, they engage that negative space (…) and I am interested in the space kind of “in and around” you when things come obviously out from the wall quite a bit. They usually have some kind of relationship to the wall to some degree, like a painting would, so when the viewer engages that space, things like shadow surely become the negative space as well. One time I had a piece that I really only liked for the shadows that it made; I didn’t really like the piece itself (laughs).

S: In your work, I still see how they almost refer back to the body, the human body. Is that deliberate or just my read on this?

L.K.: Yeah, definitely. Because my body is how I experience the world. Even the fact that I am six feet tall with a certain kind of frame has altered my experience to the world. In fact, when I shifted from traditional painting, I had been painting figures. It was much more in the category of “figure” and it has now shifted to “body,” which is different where it also addresses internal structures and life cycles.

S: So much of it is tied into repurposing and reconfiguring them over time, but do you feel like you work is based on any overt sense of story-telling or narrative?

L.K.: Well, that’s kind of what I am curious about and want to produce for the Crisp-Ellert show, with that genealogy structure I am kind of making. I only use that word because I can’t think of another way to describe it, but I would argue that it has some kind of narrative if only by connecting the dots between pieces, or a thought process between things. I like to sit down and just kind of look through works to kind of see that progression, myself. And like I said, I draw a lot and there’s so many things that I’ve never made so I will flip through my sketchbooks and wonder “What was I thinking at that time?” and why did that emerge at that particular time? So I think any artist probably has a narrative as far as the story of their work.

S: In your case, the work is telling the story over time and changing that story in front of us.

L.K.:  It is literally making the story.  And in some cases, the materials become used up and become exhausted.

S: They go to the studio graveyard.

L.K.: Yeah, but actually I don’t throw a lot away. But I think we only throw out the trash before an opening (laughs) and after an opening.

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Sarah Emerson explores the darker ground in her engaging landscapes

["The Overlook," 48 x 60, acrylic and rhinestones on canvas.]

Before his death in 1889 at the age of 44, the British poet Gerard Manley Hopkins had devoted his short life to traversing what he called the “outscape” and “inscape” of being, celebrating the natural world around him while traveling deep into the shifting lands of his own interior terrain and recording the experience of those collective journeys.

In his poem “Nondum” (Latin for “not yet”), Hopkins ruminates on a world that is eternally in creation while seemingly frozen in its own lifelessness, a landscape both mystifying as it is morbid:

“We see the glories of the earth

But not the hand that wrought them all:

Night to a myriad worlds give birth,

Yet like a lighted empty hall

Where stands no host at door or hearth

Vacant creation’s lamps appal.”

Over the course of nine verses, Hopkins describes a place of seasons with changeful moods, “chaotic floods,” where voices moan among the reeds and “prayer seems lost in desert ways.” It is a world of shadow taunting light, where faith and direction are swallowed up like sunlight hitting the moon. Throughout the poem, Hopkins calls out to a creator who has long since ignored his creation, while drawing us a map of a boundary-less land, a ghost town now vacant of even its phantoms.

The landscape paintings of Sarah Emerson seem born of a similar seed. Inspired by natural and man-made disasters, now-barren battlefields and places like the alleged haunted forest of Aokigahara in Japan, Emerson has created an emptied world which she calls “Underland” a kind of fallen Eden that exists between the cracks of our own world. Emerson delivers a kind of environmental eschatology, an end of the world scenario played out in a fierce display of acrylic paint that features foreboding, static landscapes inhabited by withered trees, rock-like skulls, slithering black streams and horizons that seem to collapse into the earth. Contrasting dark colors and motifs with lighter tones and oddly playful signifiers like rainbows, Emerson’s limbo world invites the psychological mindset of the audience to step close to the edge; it is up to the individual viewer as to whether or not they will accept this offer to stroll through this alluringly macabre place.

The 38 year old Emerson has been featured in over 85 group and solo exhibits in the U.S. and abroad, including such notable venues as New York’s White Columns, Cosmic Galerie in Paris, Belgium’s Tache-Levy gallery and an invitation to appear at the 2010 Quebec City Biennial. Emerson graduated with a BFA from the Atlanta College of Art in 1998; two years later she garnered her MFA from Goldsmiths College in London, England. She currently teaches Painting and Drawing at Emory University in Atlanta.

Emerson is currently the featured artist at Museum of Contemporary Art’s “Project Atrium Series.” Her mural “Black Sea of Trees” is on display through July 7 at 333 N. Laura St. in downtown Jacksonville, 366-6911.

St. Augustine’s space:eight gallery presents the opening reception for Emerson’s exhibit “Dog Days” on June 7 from 5-11 p.m. at 224 W. King St., 829-2838. Emerson will be appearing at the reception and the show will be on display through July 26.

Sarah Emerson agreed to speak with me on the afternoon of Thursday, May 2^nd. What follows is a transcription of our talk.

Starehouse: Hey now, Sarah. Can you talk?

Sarah Emerson: Yes I can and I’m sorry I had to reschedule.

S: It’s all good.

S.E.: It’s crazy right now this week. It’s just mental. I have little kids and they’re finishing up school so it’s just all over my calendar (laughs)! Anyway, hello!

S: How old are they?

S.E.: I have a nine year old and a four year old.

S: Wow. That’s like the eye of the hurricane.

S.E.: Yeah (laughs). I was trying to talk to you on an afternoon that they were at school and that just wasn’t working out so they may interrupt but hopefully not.

S: It’s all good. I have nineteen feasible questions written out but that’s just me trying to sound smart. I’ll be mindful of your time. Where are you originally from?

S.E.: I was born in Port Huron, Michigan. It’s like a small harbor town outside of Detroit.

S: Your press statement from MOCA says that you had kind of a “nomadic childhood”; why was that?

S.E.: (laughs) I know. It’s so bizarre because I talked to Carl Holman [MOCA Media Relations] at MOCA for a really long time, over a couple of days and he was very frank and he asked me all kinds of personal questions and usually I don’t talk much about any of that stuff and he included that in the writing. But yeah my childhood was really nomadic. My parents were kind of unsettled, that’s probably the best way to describe them. My dad is an accountant but it just never really came natural for him, he wanted to be an artist and musician. So he was never really settled so he was always trying out new things. My parents met in high school and married right out of high school in the seventies. They were born and raised in Port Huron so they had me there so after seven years, we moved down to Louisiana after my dad’s job took us there. And we stayed there for a while and he did a bunch of different kinds of jobs and then we ended up in Florida and lived in different places there for other kinds of jobs (laughs). You know, it was interesting (…) it was kind of crazy when I look back on it now and I think about how (…) I haven’t moved anywhere in a few years and when I think about it, it seems a little nuts, but my parents were fun and a little wild. Port Huron is a really small town but then, my first memory actually was (…) my Grandmother’s house was kind of on the water and then my dad moved us out to a farm, he wanted to have a farm (laughs) and we had chickens and all kinds of crazy things and then we moved down to the suburbs of Louisiana .

S: Were they like quasi-hippie types or were they just kind of figuring it out as they went? They were pretty young, right?

S.E.: They were pretty young and I think “quasi-hippie types” is a pretty good way to describe them. They definitely experimented with things like that. They were just really unsettled, you know? I think just since they were one of the first generations that had been stuck with “the way things had always been” and it wasn’t okay that things were like that. The “norm” wasn’t really adequate and it wasn’t good enough. It’s funny because in the eighties, people think about economic downturn now, but in the eighties it was just like that. I remember it being really difficult and for my dad, who was actually a pretty white-collar kind of guy for a while, I don’t know (…) he just never fit in with that. I don’t know if it was his upbringing or whatever. It never really suited him. So he kept trying new things, new businesses and new places. I think they thought that each place would bring a different story. And you know it never does; the same problems come with you.

S: This proves my theory that Richard Brautigan paperbacks corrupted a generation.

S.E.: (laughs) Ha ha! Right!

S: So where was the longest place that you lived?

S.E.: I suppose, honestly, I never really thought about it. The longest place I’ve lived is probably where I am now (laughs). But growing up, probably Louisiana (…) I spent about the same amount of time in every place that I ever lived, like three or four years, a year here or there. I left home when I was really young.

S: You were tired of all those damn moving trucks.

S.E.: (laughs) Yeah, when I was about 16 I left. I was in Miami and I went and lived with a friend of mine’s family.

S: Did you got to art school right out of high school?

S.E.: Pretty much. I worked for a year and then came up to Atlanta with a friend of mine. As far as a city, Atlanta was probably one of the biggest cities I had really lived in, other than maybe Miami. It never really felt like I was connected to Miami. Being there during my junior and senior years of high school, it was very urban, very crazy (…) and it was not necessarily the best times of my life (laughs) to be down there. When I came up to Atlanta, I thought that it was such a pretty city and there were so many cool things going on. So I applied for school here. I guess I am a little nomadic myself because after a few years, I went to a program in Boston during my undergrad years. I took a semester off and then did grad school in London. And I moved around to all kinds of places since then.

["Devil's Den," 48 x 60, acrylic and rhinestones on canvas.]

S.E.: I’m very restless! This is the longest my husband and I have lived anywhere. We’ve been here since 2006 so we’re going on six or seven years, it’s a pretty big deal.

S: The terror of stability.

S.E.: Yeah (laughs). But for the right job offer I might leave. But I like the idea of my kids being in one place and it’s really nice to see them make connections with people. Even though I make friends easily, the kind of connections they have made (…) they’ve been here for as long as they can remember, so it’s nice to see that.

S: You mentioned like the memory of your Grandmother’s house and the childhood farm – and I’m not trying to psychoanalyze you by the way (laughs) – but I’m curious…

S.E.: Oh, there’s a lot there I’m sure (laughs).

S: But you do make these landscapes and I guess I’m wondering if when you were moving from town to town as a child, did you find solace or stability in being in nature?

S.E.: A little bit. I think I liked exploring. Did you move a lot when you were growing up?

S: No. We moved from Louisville to Jacksonville when I was a kid.

S.E.: How old were you?

S: I was eight. It was completely jarring to my psyche. At the time, it was like moving to Mars, like 1980-era Florida.

S.E.: (laughs) It is like moving to Mars. You see, you were eight and my daughter is nine; that’s a very, very delicate age. It’s an age where you’re actually making real friends.

S: Right.

S.E.: So each time we left it was really jarring to me and it was like that – you feel like an alien. I think my parents were pretty good about trying to move during the summer and you know how summers seem really long and you can explore and hike through different places. And I remember a lot of times like that, just sort of being on the edge and not really being (…) involved in the way things were, but just kind of exploring. But yeah, I found a little solace in nature but I think that my memories growing up are associated with the places that I (…) most people have attachments to people and friends (…) it seems like it’s easy for people to figure out milestones based on the people that they knew in their life, when they were friends with so-and-so, when their relatives passed away (…) those kinds of landmarks, I never had those. I had places and people were associated with specific places so that I would remember who my friends were based on places.

S: So were you a kind of nature child? I mean, some kids never want to come in after dark; they’re still out trying to catch that last firefly.

S.E.: I never wanted to come in after dark. They definitely had to yell louder for me. I mean, how old are you?

S: I’m a broke down 41.

S.E.: (laughs) Well, I’m sure you remember before all of the sprawl, or when the eighties suburban sprawl was just beginning, the thing that I remembered about a lot of the neighborhoods we lived in was that they were always in the midst of another phase that was being developed. So you could ride your bike to the edge of a neighborhood and there would be these streets to nowhere. And they were still wooded, so there would be these crazy cul-de-sacs that went nowhere and were just really wild. We were always waiting on the rest of this massive development and I remember that is how a lot of neighborhoods seemed to look. And the place we lived, that were mostly suburban areas, they were in the midst of a massive sprawl (laughs) of development.

S: I’m from the same sprawl. Remember the movie [1979 coming-of-age and youth in revolt classic] “Over the Edge” with Matt Dillon?

S.E.: I haven’t seen that. I have to watch it! (laughs)

S: Oh yeah, it’s great. The kids are fed up and they take over. It has a heavy Cheap Trick soundtrack. The kids are fed up with suburban sprawl and their neglect from their parents so they burn down the school.

S.E.: Oh shit, I know that movie (laughs) I totally know that movie.

S: It’s like hardcore punk 101.The kids kind of loiter at the rec center and one kid famously has a bad acid trip in class.

S.E.: Yes! This is my life, actually.

S: I don’t know if it was made as a cautionary tale or a call to revolution.

S.E.: But that movie is a pretty good description of what it was like.

S: Yeah, totally.

S.E.: And each place that I lived, and I was kind of a do-gooder, and each time you moved to a different place you get more and more disconnected and it becomes harder and harder to fit in, so each place we moved to, I moved further and further to the outskirts from the good kids.

S: Stacking the Alienation of Sarah Emerson.

S.E.: Well, (laughs) you get closer and closer to drinking Peach Schnapps and hanging out in the yard at three in the morning.

S: I noticed that humans are conspicuously absent in seemingly all of your work. Is that deliberate?

S.E.: Well yes and no, to a degree. I’ve never really explored figurative painting (…) I’ve actually done a few where there are girls in there but generally they’re very fantastical and they almost seem like they have dropped there by accident or they’re not real in some way. Basically the idea that people have been absorbed by the landscape or eaten up by the landscape is a big part of my work. I always thought of a landscape as sort of being figurative anyway; I mean it’s metaphoric in many ways and the animals had always represented sort of human behavior when I used to put a lot of animals in them. But now they’re kind of barren, it’s like they have eaten the people.

S: On your site, in your earlier work, you had things like animals and your current work seems excited purely about the landscape, so it seems like you shifted (…) from the “fauna” to just the “flora.”

S.E.: Well, I wanted to make the landscape more personified and look more animated. I do occasionally have a few paintings here and there that still have the “fauna” (laughs) but I just wanted these quiet, empty spaces. And what happened was I was looking into (…) if you think of places that are barren, where there are no animals any more, there’s nothing there for them, so you think of a landscape that is not appropriate for any kind of life other than the one that it has had to adapt to. Does that make sense?

S: Absolutely.

S.E.: You know, if you think about places like Chernobyl, I think they have done studies where there are some animals there still (…) so I ‘ve tried to imagine these landscapes and places where the animals wouldn’t go, that’s how scary it was, or maybe that’s just how mysterious it was, maybe “scary” is the wrong word. But it’s a place just outside of that.

S: On “Black Sea of Trees” you have these predominant colors of browns and grays and these skull motifs, but then you have flecks of pink and light blue and these rainbows…

S.E.: Well, I’m a girl (laughs).

S: (laughs) There’s my answer (…) but it seems like this decay and death is forced side by side with motion and life. With that mural it’s pretty jarring, but why do you like contrasting these things, or toggling menacing and playful in the same composition?

S.E.: I always have answered this question in kind of the same way…

S: (laughs) Gee, thanks.

S.E.: (laughs) No, you know what I mean (…) but I like to have tension between the darkness and the beauty and blah blah blah (…) but as a mother now, which is something that has consumed me for the last nine years, I can say that really how I look at this work now (…) it’s really about trying to be careful with the truth. I think in many ways it’s about taking something that’s really ugly and knowing that there is a lot of ugliness and darkness and having to find a way to try and make sense of all of that; and keep going. I know it’s kind of jarring and I know that they’re kind of girly, I mean I am a girl and I’m kind of girly in some ways, they have these adolescent, girly qualities to them a lot of the time. And mostly it is about trying to make sense of all of the darkness and how to be careful with the truth and understand the truth and the real nature of the world; and what to do with that. And you know, this whole idea of being “safe and sound” [the text “safe and sound” is featured on the mural at MOCA], you’re never really “safe and sound,” something could happen at any time (…) but we still have to think about things in a more beautiful and hopeful way; this idea that there is despair and hope at the same time. They don’t exist outside of each other.

["Flood Remains," 56 x 58, acrylic on canvas.]

S.E.: Oh yeah, it’s horrible (laughs) because they have a very simple and innocent way of looking at the world. They’ll ask you about something they heard on the news, like the bombing recently in Boston. The kids now talk and they hear about everything. My daughter comes home from school and asks, “Why did they do that?” And I try to explain, “Well, they were confused and kind of mean …” you just try to give them the answer that they can handle. And then you get the “why” again (…) like Louis C.K.: “Why do kids say ‘why’ every time you say something?” (laughs) and each time you want to tell them how things really are. But the truth is they do understand – it’s just that we forget sometimes to simply ask ourselves “Why do we continue to do this if it is not good?” So a lot of my work is about trying to capture that innocence, which is where I think a lot of the adolescent, fantastical things come in. This sounds really cheesy (laughs) and not to say there’s a little kid in all of us, but there’s a person in us somewhere that wants to know “why” there is all of this darkness in the world, why is something bad happening? You know?

S: Sure. I know what you’re saying. My inner child is like Walter Matthau. So it’s a problem for me. It’s been a longtime issue for me. He’s got a little cigar butt and he just cusses.

S.E.: (Speaking in a fairly decent Matthau-impersonation) “Well, fuck it!”(laughs)

S: That’s it! That’s what he says! He’s beyond the “why” stage of life. Let me ask you about some of this local work here. So the MOCA mural “Black Sea of Trees” and the accompanying pieces are part of an ongoing series called “Underland,” correct?

S.E.: Yes, and actually this kind of goes towards that whole idea of personifying a place. “Underland” has become kind of this crazy gateway (…) how would I describe that (…) I guess it would be an amusement park in purgatory.

S: Right. So it’s like a shadow world or tertiary or transitory realm between places?

S.E.: Yes. It’s sort of really (…) that’s just nonsense for me really saying it’s a place where I can make shit up about whatever world I want to make. “Underland” is my make-believe place and it’s inspired by a real place, which I am sure you read about, the Japanese forest Aokigahara [A 14 square mile forest located at the base of Mount Fuji, Aokigahara has a mythological history of being home to demons and is also a notoriously popular destination for suicides].

S: So people go there to die, basically?

S.E.: They go there not to come out. It’s a very ancient forest so the canopy of trees is really dense so you can’t see where the sun is, you can’t find your direction out (…) it’s very disorienting and very still and quiet …

S: It’s like Southeast Georgia.

S.E.: Yes (laughs) exactly! You go and you can’t get out. So it’s a real place and it’s a morbid place because so many people go there to die. But I’m very fascinated with landscapes that carry with them the history of the events that happened there so battlefields, places like that which actually contain human history within the land.

S: I want to ask you about this, because in this video interview with Charles Fox you spoke about “reappropriating” the Civil War landscapes and you refer to this “realm of myth” and the concept of viewing a place not through direct experience but rather seeing it through the idea of the mythic or storied. So what compels you to choose Aokigahara forest or Civil War battlefields? You already have your own realm of “Underland.” What compels you to look for these stories in these landscapes?

S.E.: Well, because I think that these stories are part of our every day, kind of common place idea of how we see the world around us. Obviously something like Aokigahara forest is very far away but certainly the areas we preserve in our own landscapes in the South. And these are places, for instance where I live, I’m less than a mile away from a mill that burned down where they were making [Civil War-era] uniforms (…) basically the landscape I live on right now has a whole host of memories coming out of history. And I kind of seek out the stories because I think they’re relatable. And I’m really just trying to investigate my own place in the world that we live in and I can only hope that you will relate and I think that part is relatable. I think the part where I make them fantastical, well that’s a little harder (…) talking about what it means to make art or paintings about it; that’s a little different. But I like talking about the stories because that’s the part I feel like everyone can get involved into and feel a part of. Then the psychological aspect of the landscape can be something that can be introduced as you get into the story.

S: You use the term psychological but when you get into “storied places” and even ideas of dark and light, when you delve into the fantastical, does your interest dip into the supernatural quality of these places as well?

S.E.: Yes and no. I always thought that I would think more about (…) for instance, the little skulls that are in the work, I thought people would ask more about them being ghosts in the forest or in the landscape, about it being more spiritual (…) but it’s interesting; I’ve kept them very simplified because I guess I am not really talking about the ghosts that are there; they are more about the reflections of the viewer, like where you see yourself (…) kind of keeping them simplified. It’s about putting you in that space, it’s not about necessarily seeing something else, like something spiritual there or whatever. But yeah, I like the idea that anything could happen. Something that always amazed me about Aokigahara (…) and now they’ve kind of become part of the whole battlefield landscapes, too, those kinds of studies of the forest, they’re all kind of part of the same thing because they’re all part of “Underland” (…) but this idea that you could go into a place and a compass wouldn’t work. That is very mystical; “spiritual” is not the word but it’s very mystical and it’s horrifying to me that you could go in, change your fucking mind, and not be able to get out. And that’s the part that really drew me to it. So yeah, I guess in a way it’s more of a mystical idea that you’re not in control of your own destiny all of the time. You think you are. And certainly in the case of entering Aokigahara, you’re making a choice at that moment that you think you’re kind of in charge of your own destiny but what if you choose to get out of that? Well, there’s this other force, which I guess would be natural or spiritual in some way that is now in charge and is not going to let you out.

S: Is that true of that place, do they think that compasses don’t work there?

S.E.: Yeah, because of the ancient volcanic activity, a lot of the rock there is magnetized and interferes with the use of a compass and due to the density of the trees you can’t see the sun to figure out how to get out.

S: Jesus (…) cue Theremin music for the interview.

S.E.: Exactly. So yeah, there is an aspect of the spiritual in my work to a degree and I’m very interested in Milton’s “Paradise Lost,” the fall of Satan and those kinds of stories that really speak to this idea of the loss of innocence and what that means. But I really relate that back to nature and I guess I would use nature and spirituality in similar ways, because nature is (…) we kind of understand it but at any moment we can experience something like an earthquake (…) I mean, shit, in Florida the earth is swallowing people.

S: Yeah, that’s probably some heavy karma when the earth eats you.

S.E.: In the very early work that is mostly what I would talk about and this natural phenomenon – that we think we are in charge and are at the top of the food chain – but at any time a tsunami can come and just take out 300,000 people.

S: Do you think your work points to this kind of “end of the world” scenario but in a case where Mother Earth kind of buckles and caves in on us? Is that in your work?

S.E.: Well, I like to think of it more like a purgatory, you know? Not necessarily in an apocalyptic vision but more of a place in between and a possibility of things becoming. It’s like that choice that you make to enter the woods (…) what you do when you enter the woods, which would be the unknown I guess, to a degree (…) what you do, what choices you make and how you can take control of that. It’s more about that (…) yeah, that’s the best I can say that. I think if anything they become post-apocalyptic, because there are all of these tiny apocalypses that have happened all around us, we have Chernobyl, the earthquake in Haiti, the tsunami in Indonesia, Japan, which was unbelievable (…) these are small apocalypses that are happening because they’re actually, when you look up the word, it means “to reveal something that is hidden” so they’re actually revealing something about us, those big events are about humanity, they reveal something about humanity that maybe we didn’t know before it happened. So yes the work is about apocalypse, to a degree, but not necessarily in the way that mainstream thinks about apocalypses. I think about it in the true sense of what the word means. If you’re at the edge of the cul-de-sac and you’re looking at the woods, what might be beyond that? What are the woods, exactly? And it’s different for everybody, that’s why I think it’s interesting to have a lot of black spaces in the work because it’s non-specific, so everybody kind of comes with their own reflective darkness in there and people say weird things to me about what they think they see in the work – and I didn’t expect that. I thought that I was being much more direct with my new landscapes than I had been previously (laughs), little did I know.

S: Looking at your work, I’m reminded of everything from naturalism and even someone like Max Ernst, in the sense that everything seems just barely tethered to the natural order of things but then even the perspective seems malleable and these identifiable things like trees morph into these unreal colors (…) I mean, compositionally and when you are making the work, how do you achieve what seems like a precarious balance?

S.E.: I make a lot of mistakes (laughs). I know now when I am starting out the kind of effect I would like to achieve, for instance, the “Underland” paintings if I were ideally to have them one day together in a room, I’d use some repetitive colors, some very bright colors from one to another, so hopefully when you’re standing in the room, your eye will go from one to another, in a way that you can’t look at one without looking at another. And hopefully the colors would vibrate where they create this kind of motion. The idea is that it is shifting all of the time, that there is no real horizon line, the ground and the sky are constantly trading places. It doesn’t always work. I make a lot of mistakes and paint over things but really I try and create that feeling with color. Compositionally, I’m using a lot of colors next to each other that don’t quite seem like they should make sense, so hopefully that would make another one pop in another place.

S: How did you get into these mural installations?

S.E.: Well, it was sort of an accident.

S: Well, how did it come about? Was this an interest you had or was it something that you were offered?

S.E.: Well I had done murals before in conjunction with my paintings but not like super-large scale and I was asked to do something awhile back. I kind of consider myself a project based painter (…) I don’t look at them in a series necessarily but I kind of think about each show, like I think about Rob’s show[“Dog Days], I think of it as one thing. And then I try to think about which elements are going to make sense in that story. If somebody asks me to take a space and do something with it, I just try to think of it like that. Each space has different demands and I need to figure out what kind of work I want to make in that space, because I want to apply what I want to do to it. But each place has a specific personality (…) I don’t just go in and hang the paintings because sometimes that doesn’t work with the specific place. And I’m lucky that I’ve been able to work with some adventurous people in some pretty adventurous ways over the years.

S: How did you get involved with MOCA here in Jacksonville? How did that come about?

S.E.: Rob [DePiazza, space:eight gallery owner] was actually talking with Ben [Thompson, MOCA curator] and recommended that he look at my work. Of course, that doesn’t guarantee that they’re going to be interested but he was interested and we talked. But really, Rob hooked me up with Ben.

S: What did you think of that space [in the MOCA Atrium]? It’s a pretty big space.

S.E.: (laughs) It’s huge! But it’s great and it’s kind of isolated so it was easy to work on because it was this nice, clean wall space. It was gigantic and I just wanted to do something (…) I wanted to do the space justice. Like I said, I don’t want to go in and just hang something that doesn’t really work with the space. The space tells the story with the work.

S: Did you come down here before and kind of physically check out the space?

S.E.: Yeah. I went down, I photographed the space, and I did scale drawings of the space and kind of worked out what I really wanted to do. Of course when you get there (…) I kind of go into murals with the idea that it’s not always going to go as planned; I always sort of expect that because you just never know. It’s funny because I usually just have my husband helping, but Ben has an entire staff (laughs) and there were all of these people kind of saying “What can I do to help you?” and it’s so hard to say “I don’t fucking know what I’m going to do with that line yet! (laughs) So be cool and don’t touch anything!” Once I got everything on the wall, it was great because I had a lot of help.

S: How big was the crew? I know you had Tony Rodrigues helping you and he’s a great painter so that was probably a benefit.

S.E.: I had like four or five people. Yeah, Tony’s great and I had all-in-all a great group of people.

S: Rob DePiazza and Christy Brown came down to lend their skills.

S.E.: Yeah, Rob and Christy came down for a day. It was very nice. I had a lot of help and had three or four people at any given time helping.

S: So this MOCA mural “Black Sea of Trees” is part of this “Underland”?

S.E.: Yes.

S: I’m curious, because when you speak about “Underland” it seems like it is part of one giant story in a way? Is that true?

S.E.: I guess the way that I’m looking at it now, and maybe it’s new for me to be thinking about it like this, I sort of now see that everything I have been working on has kind of existed in this fantastical place. I’m not a realistic painter. I want things to be sort of fluid. I kind of now see “Underland” as part of a bigger story. Now I’m trying to imagine what would populate a place like this other realm? This story of looking in the distance and there it is. What would be in there? So it really just gives me the freedom to sample from things that are real and imagine how I would re-imagine that. How would I re-do that? What else could be in there?

S: Is “Underland” a place that is evolving or is it a static realm?

S.E.: I would like to think that it’s evolving, like it’s just like any other place. Things will develop, things will grow there. What kind of things will grow there? I don’t know. A lot of times I quote the “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost because I sort of imagine that, for myself, it’s sort of like standing between what is civil and what is wild. So “Underland” sort of represents the wild of the things that we know. It’s our innocent nature but at the same time it’s a dangerous place to be.

S: So this upcoming show at space:eight, “Dog Days,” is another chapter in the “Underland” mythos? Do you mind if I use the word “mythos”? (laughs)

S.E.: Yeah (laughs) and it’s basically that I’m bringing some drawings, I’m bringing some of the Civil War paintings; I haven’t hung those anywhere yet. I have some of the forest paintings and a bunch of drawings that connect all of those things together. I’m sure you know the song about how “dog days are over” well I don’t think that the dog days are over. We are kind of in the midst of dog days and really “Underland” is sort of about that. What kinds of things would be happening, bubbling up to the surface and beyond? I’m kind of curious as to how Rob’s space is set up; I know it’s broken up into a couple of spaces, so I’m not sure how I’m going to do it yet.

S: It’s a cool space. There are areas where you could highlight certain things. Do you have an estimate of how many pieces you’ll bring?

S.E.: Six or seven big things (…) you know, I don’t really know yet (laughs) I might keep the forest scenes separate from the battlefields. I’m not really sure yet of how I might do that. I’m trying to think how I could keep them separate like chapters in a graphic novel.

S: In the mural at MOCA it seems like the BP Oil Spill is referenced in the imagery and it seems like you are definitely protective of nature in the sense that it is your main focus and inspiration (…) are you personally involved with any environmental groups or do you feel like you live your life according to these principles of awareness and conservation?

S.E.: Actually, I think that my work is more about the shortcomings of that. I don’t really think that I live in the way like you would need to (…) to be protecting these things.

S: What do you mean by “shortcomings”?

S.E.: I would like to; in my life, my own shortcomings. It’s always been a big part of what I made work about. I was interested first in what areas we preserve and how we handled those areas that we preserved. A lot of times we would preserve hunting grounds and take good care of that landscape and not develop on that. Then there’s this whole weird narrative with that where we sort of raise things for years and years and then we kill them to make a trophy. So there’s this weird narrative with the way we are civilized but still want to be a part of nature.

[Sarah Emerson stands in front of her mural "Black Sea of Trees," which is on display at MOCA Jacksonville through July 7.]

starehouse@gmail.com

Tony Rodrigues and Mark George join forces for an upcoming show

The friendship of Tony Rodrigues and Mark George was initially formed over the bond of making visual art. The two met in 1991while still in their late teens and early twenties, creating collages and assemblages that were fueled by their shared love of the DIY ethos of art-fueled entities like punk rock and Dadaism. Since then, Rodrigues and George have each enjoyed respective success by exploring their highly individual approaches. Rodrigues reappropriates found imagery of the past century and creates canvases by juxtaposing those same signifiers into a highly personal visual vocabulary that can be disturbing and playful, sometimes in the same composition. Along with spouse Wendy C. Lovejoy, Rodrigues has also created the popular line of TACT apparel that brings his eye-engaging sense of design to the world of fashion. Using greenhouse roofing material as his de facto canvas, George paints haunting, Neo-Pop art portraits in acrylics; his pieces can resemble road signs from a bygone era or surveillance snapshots that give the audience the sense of being voyeurs and witnesses to secretive, intimate exchanges. Yet despite their separate endeavors over the years, Rodrigues and George have invariably taken the time to work in cooperation and share ideas. These opportunities have been a chance for the two old friends to blow off steam, encourage one another and chart their growth from two art-enthralled teenaged punk rockers into bona fide, well-respected visual artists.

Over twenty years after their initial collaborations, the pair has been working together once again. Last November they presented the show “Teeny-Tiny! Big-Time!” at Rodrigues and Lovejoy’s TACT shop in Riverside. While that exhibit featured a small set of works, the two continued working together at a feverish pace, blending Rodrigues’ seemingly-infinite arsenal of imagery with George’s instantly-recognizable comic book faces in the form of mixed-media works on plexiglass. Since that first show, Rodrigues and George have been posting images of their ongoing work on Facebook to much positive response. Now they are readying for the opening reception for “Mistaken & Deluded,” their upcoming show at Atlanta’s ABV Gallery. The statement for the show describes it as being a kind of celebration and criticism of our “plastic society and the sleek, shiny things that inhabit it.” The opening reception for “Mistaken & Deluded” is held from 7-11 p.m. on Saturday, May 18 at ABV Gallery, 659 Auburn Ave. NE #504, in Atlanta. The show is on display through June 16. (213) 915-6448.

While they were admittedly busy in preparing for their show, Rodrigues and George agreed to answer a few questions via e-mail.

Starehouse: Tell me about this upcoming show, “Mistaken & Deluded.” How many pieces will be in the exhibit?

Tony Rodrigues: The show title is from a small collage piece that I did back in the last century. It was an image of a good-looking couple in formal wear from a cigarette ad. I paired it with the text “You are utterly mistaken and deluded” (from a religious tract, I believe). I reproduced it as a screen print years later. Mark remembered it and suggested we use it for the show title. There are 19 pieces that are 24″ x 18” and one that is 42” x 60″. I also included three 24″ x 18″ pieces that aren’t collaborations with Mark, but are done in the same format. They are all done on plexiglass, reverse drawn, painted and printed, some with a little printing on the front side as well.

Mark George: 20 pieces total.

S.: The statement for “Mistaken & Deluded” describes how the show is both “an elegy and celebration for a golden age that exists only in the selective memories of artifacts of a bankrupt, artificial culture.” What do you think are some of the factors that guide or create those very same “selective memories” in our pop consciousness or culture?

T.R.: So much of our pop culture’s history was written by marketing/advertising campaigns that it’s inextricable from the rest of our culture. If people only bought what they really needed, our economy and way of life would crumble. We are constantly bombarded by advertising and it has been a part of my landscape for my entire life. We are constantly told that the “Good Life” is right there for us to buy if we are savvy enough to recognize the products that will make us beautiful and sexy and happy. The imagery I’m using in the collaboration are from a series I have been working on titled “Opulence!/Golden Age”. It’s an exploration of our past and present ideas of the good life, status symbols, and our ideas of success and taste.  It’s tongue-in-cheek, but also a bit sincere and kind of sad. The images Mark appropriates bring added drama and a feeling that things aren’t as swell as they seem. The crying young women and sneering dudes are beautiful and flawed and, obviously, bring to mind the original Pop movement. Warhol and Lichtenstein works are now, themselves, ultimate Pop status symbols. And on and on it goes.

M.G.: Coffee and LSD has mostly guided my selective memories.

S.: I know that the two of you have been intermittently collaborating for over two decades now. But in the past year you have really ramped up your activity in working together; what do you think has sustained this sort of concentrated activity? Is this the longest duration that the two of you have worked together?

T.R.: We’ve collaborated, bounced ideas off each other and shared source materials for a long time, but this time it was destined to be a long-term project. Mark saw the potential first when I started the “Opulence!/Golden Age” series and after the first few pieces were done, we just kept riding the momentum. He does multiple variations of his source imagery and my process is all about multiples and variations. This is the longest duration we’ve worked together but it has been continually gratifying and smile inducing. Mark arranged the show in Atlanta with ABV Gallery and we zoned in. The deadline was helpful and the show was something to work for.

M.G.: Well, we’re just aging like a fine wine and fancy cheese over here; just gets better with age. Yes, this is the longest duration the two of us have worked together on a specific series.

S.: After twenty years of working together, I am curious about your actual collaborative process. Has that process changed much? Could you describe how the two of you work on an individual piece? Do you have a certain idea in mind? How much of your working together is still based on what Tony described as “Exquisite Corpse”/free association?

T.R.: We did most of the work separately; we texted and sent photos back and forth of works in progress. Mark gave me his line drawings and I went from there. We would chat about colors and imagery. Overall it was very organic. Mark was familiar with the imagery I was using and what I driving at with it.

M.G.: Nothing has changed. I like to spend my free time making things. It should be a relaxing occasion that I enjoy. Not a lot of thought put into the production end. All of the ideas and direction have accumulated over various amounts of time that has been spent doing the things I do not enjoy doing, and wishing I was doing something else. I doodle in my free time and hand it over to Tony when I’m done. Exquisite Corpse.

S.: The work seems to avoid using any kind of recent visual signifiers of the past twenty to twenty five years. Why is that? What do you find so appealing about culling images from what appears to be these early-to-mid 20^th century decades?

T.R.:  Actually, the cars (the Cadillac with bullhorns and Trans Ams) are from contemporary ads for used cars. The cheerleader and several other images are manipulated versions of pretty current stock photos. The nudes are from early 1970s girly magazines and one is from a 1940s book on photographic lighting. The post WWII era saw an explosion of consumerism and marketing.  We were promised a great deal. It was possible to buy happiness. It has defined our economy, landscape, lifestyles and our expectations. Later, Warhol changed the art world by referencing that and we are still referencing and re-referencing our past and cashing in on the “classics” and the “good old days”. They say “Fashion is cyclical”. There are plenty of clichés to go around. There is a tendency to see the past as better than it was. As a society, I think there is a vague feeling that our best days may be behind us and we are pining for a past that wasn’t exactly all it was hyped to be. There’s that, and also this stuff just looks so cool together in vibrant colors on shiny plexiglass.

M.G.:  The work does not feature any kind of recent visuals from the last 25 years because I am clearly not interested in it. Nothing that has happened during the last 25 years has become interesting enough to include in my work. This is obviously a preference issue. Our work is a commentary on the condition of America in the mid-to-late 20th century, and its desire to cover insecurities, and boast proud worthlessness.

S.: A number of the pieces Mark sent me featured people with somber expressions that are then offset with images of classic American cars. Do these kinds of themes just seem to naturally develop or is that a case of something that the two of you chose to explore over several different pieces?

T.R.:  Short answer: It was a natural development. We share similar sensibilities and I don’t remember ever having a conversation about the cars complimenting the beautiful comic book people. That just went without saying. I was doing my thing. Mark was doing his thing and the collaboration was just an easy thing to imagine.

M.G.: These themes have naturally developed – reflecting obsessions with materialistic possessions that will ultimately become worthless matter, in an advanced state of decomposition.

S.: When I spoke to you last year for the “Teeny-Tiny! Big-Time!” show, Mark had described how your greatest strengths stemmed from allowing your friendship to simply grow and allow a kind of spontaneity to develop. Since you have been under the deadline of this upcoming show, has it been difficult to conjure up that same spirit of impromptu creation and coincidence?

T.R.: Oh, man, that show consisted of six 24″ x 18″ pieces on plexiglass and some unique prints on paper. This was much more involved. We’ve been working on this since last fall. ABV contacted Mark before “Teeny-Tiny, Big Time!” opened. We also did a four color screen print in edition of 40 with George Cornwell at his studio at CoRK. That was a great experience. George is such a pro and that was collaboration-within-a-collaboration. Things just kept moving forward because we were both happy with the results and because of the familiarity we have with each other as pals and as artists. We might have had a couple of stress-induced tiffs, like a couple of old dudes would do. For a couple of high-strung cats with really specific standards, it was pretty easy. I don’t mean to sound like we’re on auto-pilot. This is just the pay-off from years of doing what we love and sharing our little projects.

M.G.: We’ve been preparing for this exhibit for seven months, so there has been plenty of time to casually develop ideas and produce work without compromise, that we are proud and happy to be associated with.

S.: So what’s next?

T.R.:  We’re up for the next one. Of course, we both still work on our individual projects. There are a few irons in things in the works for shows regionally and nationally. We’re excited to represent Jax and N.E. Florida as a small example of the blooming arts scene here.

M.G.: Only the future will tell …

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Home is where the art is with “The Apartment Exhibition”

[Installation shot of the living room of "The Apartment Exhibition." All photos by Laura Evans.]

This Sunday, May 26 at 10 a.m., Aiuppy is presenting the performance-event “Waffles.” At the time of this posting, the reservation-only event was at capacity. The display, however, can be viewed through June 2; an appointment to see “The Apartment Exhibition” can be made by contacting theapartmentexhibition@gmail.com

The participants agreed to be interviewed via e-mail. What follows is a transcription of their replies.

Thony Aiuppy

[ Installation shot of Thony Aiuppy's "Residual Effect," 2013, graphite, acrylic, pencil, charcoal on wall; dimensions variable.]

Thony Aiuppy: I have a wall piece called Residual Effect. It’s continually changing throughout the duration of the exhibition. The big idea behind the work is to explore how memory inhabits a space even after people have left it. The project uses charcoal, graphite and acrylic paint to capture shadows, contours of figures, and reflective light from outside sources and objects. Layers of paint and dry material work and flex between each other to create a memory effect.

Lily and I collaborated on a project where we mark each person’s, or guest’s, height. We both shared this memory and tradition of marking heights on birthdays or other occasions. It’s another way of owning the space and documenting who’s visited us during our time at the apartment.

I also have a collection of snapshots, called “Amenities,” that explore unforeseen treasures in the space. Visit the website to check them out.

S: When I was at the opening reception, you traced me on the wall, seemingly as part of the “Guests’ Height” collaboration with Lily Kuonen. Was this a kind of tribute to some parents’ practice of tracing their children’s height on walls and door frames?

T.A.: I talked about this in the previous question. I think that tracking children’s heights throughout a time at the home is intriguing because my wife and I started doing this with our son, Blaise, when he turned one. Time seems to collapse when you see how fast he’s grown in such a short amount of time; several inches in a year.

S: Tell me about your upcoming performance-event “Waffles.” What is the impetus behind that and what will it entail?

T.A.: “Waffles” is a performance that will happen this Sunday at 10 a.m. at the apartment. The idea is simply to make waffles for invited (by RSVP) guests. Making food for people is a very précis thing. Americans surround their most important affairs around food: marriage proposals, closing a business deal, going on a date, etc. Food is very important, but it becomes even more special when you are invited to someone’s house for a meal. “Waffles” taps into that experience.

During the time of the performance, I will be making waffles right on the spot. I’m sure I’ll be interjecting personal anecdotes and jokes as I progress through the experience. The process of adding ingredients to create the batter, spending time to cook the food, and then serving it up to guests adds to this sense of anticipation and time spent by the preparer for the other, in this case, the guest. Time can be more important to us than even money. I think that it is fitting that I’d spend mine making delicious food for new, and old, friends.

Staci Bu Shea

[ Installation shot of instructed bathroom #selfie.]

Staci Bu Shea: Obrist’s 1991 kitchen exhibition was created in the spirit of exhibiting work in an unexpected place. This was the initial inspiration. I’ve been interested in blurring the line between public and private space, and “The Apartment Exhibition” started with this impetus. Over the past 8 months of dialogue between the artists, it resulted with an attempt to discern “home,” or lack thereof, through the project. It was also about the physical and philosophical architecture of the space and our contingent occupancy. It was explementary of the ephemeral properties of a rental experience.

Through the exhibition, we became roommates. We built relationships with each other. We made up roles for some of us to identify with, like Sterling as landlord, myself as property manager. It was held within a potentially rentable garage apartment and became about apartments and about living; this is how the exhibition became transparent. It was about and concerned itself. The artists explained this transparency through their works. The artists were the most important components to this project, and I believe they all understood that The Apartment was an essential factor that we were all dependent on. And from that point they designated their personal relationship to it. I’m interested in art that is autonomous and is this way because it does not depend on the formulaic “rules of the game” and value systems. I think we tapped into how the apartment itself could potentially be independent of realty, too. A hyper-realized apartment and experience for rent.

S: What do you think are some of the concepts that the group is trying to collectively address with this exhibit?

S.B.: One of the most wonderful aspects to this exhibition was the group’s willingness to do things that they typically could not do in a traditional art setting. With every idea, there was a drive to push it a little further. Collectively, the artists distinguished a sense of place in relation to their bodies and anecdotal experiences, and to the past, present, and future of the apartment. They also explored, and offered, ownership in the way the objects they produced interacted with the space. They collectively addressed ephemera, take-aways, experience-as-art, voyeurism, and interaction. They provided vignettes into their personal interpretations of home and included family, friends, and strangers. They included representations of identity in living quarters, documentation of individuals in real-time and altering this memory at a later date, opportunities to self-realize when thinking about home, and scenarios for potential dreams.

S.: How did you approach this exhibition from a curatorial stance?

S.B.: In the summer of 2012, I presented the project to Lily Kuonen and asked if and how she would like to be a part of something like this. It led to Sterling Cox: a fresh, new friend I met around that time, and whose garage apartment (a part of his house) where the exhibition has taken place; then, to Edison William and Thony Aiuppy. I invited them over to Cox’s one evening and cooked them curry and rice. I presented the project to the group.
Exhibitions are not permanent. This particular exhibition presented the opportunity to think about realty of space, objects, and experience. I wanted to see how simultaneously material and immaterial this exhibition could be, so I created a website. Here, all information and web-specific works are stored there like storage unit. Now the exhibition becomes virtual; part of it can continuously be revisited and the concept reactualized. Once the physical manifestation of the exhibition is no longer present, the exhibition has the possibility of relating to many places, not just one apartment – most specifically, a renter’s experience; one relatable to most.
An integral part of the exhibition: it was not complete or finished at the start of the Open House. The exhibition grew into itself. It needed the artists present at various times throughout the month, alone; and the guests to interact with the work. It needed the trash to be taken out a few times. It needed a brunch with family and friends. It needed Marcel Duchamp’s “A Guest + A Host = A Ghost.”
A way of documenting this project, I wrote instructions on the mirror for bathroom-goers to take a “selfie” in the mirror, hashtag it, and upload it onto their personal social media forums.
Curating this exhibition, I realized I’m not an interior decorator.

S.: The actual apartment space seems pretty cozy. What were some of the challenges you faced in featuring four artists in that area?

S.B.: Yes, it’s lovely how cozy it is! Honestly, there weren’t any challenges with where the artists’ work is situated within the space. Since this exhibition happened slowly, the positioning was very organic.
Thinking about space though, Alicia Canessa played realtor [of experience] and bartender in the spacious closet of the living room during the Open House. She was an integral part and meshed well with the Kuonen and Aiuppy’s work in the living room. She fixed up the featured mixed drink “Security Deposit” (two parts Bauchant, one part Fernet, designed by Grape & Grain Exchange, San Marco). Fun fact: we chuckled about the bartender “being in the closet” -completely intentional.

S.: You used Craigslist to “advertise” the exhibit. Did you have any responses from any apartment hunters?

S.B.: We received a response from Chris Cogan, professor of experimental media and video installation at the University of Georgia, and we were all very giddy when we opened the e-mail. He has a house in Amelia Island and came to visit the Open House. Upon entering The Apartment, he caught me drinking water from the kitchen faucet with my hands because I suddenly had dry-throat and there were no cups in sight. It was quite embarrassing, but still, a nice, humble introduction.

Other than that, we received 17 spam emails! They’re really great! I’ve always had a fascination with reading spam emails, because they can be really creative. This is telling of Craigslist’s function, too. No one responded to our posts under “For Rent” and “Sublet,” except for spammers “who” don’t even know the content of our posts! I really wish I knew how many people read the posts. Why aren’t people more curious?

Here’s an example, from Kate Peter, katepeter63@gmail.com:

“Hello roomie,

            How are you doing? Guess fine I presume. My name is (Kate Peter) am a very simple and quiet person to live with. I am writing just to confirm if you still have the room for rent…………..If YES please I will like to have answers to the following questions below:

 1) I will like to know the description of the room, size, and the

social apparatus/equipments in there.

2) Moving date that the room will be available

3) I will like to have the rent fee per month plus the utilities.

4) Also I will like to know if there is any garage or parking space

cause i will have my own car come over there.

5) I will also be coming with some of my furniture, that is if it is

allowed, like bed, book shelf cause I read allot, shoe rack etc

Am from Canada and I will be having some seminars coming up soon . Right now am working for a Non Government Organization on a program on children with orphans and heart related probs.

My next program/seminars will be in Your Neighborhood  and I will need a room to stay for these seminars, so I want to secure a room before my arrival to the states.

I can’t wait to arrive to US cause I’ve heard a lot about the state….More so I will be staying for the period of 12-13 months, Pls do get back to me with the room description, move in rent fees for the first month, Utilities and deposit if included. And if any picture of the room is available, kindly attach it with your reply please.

Hope to read from you. Have a wonderful and productive day. Kindly Hit me Back

Kindest Regards.

 KaTE”

Sterling Cox

[ Installation shot from Sterling Cox's "A List of Things in 'This' Fridge," 2013, iPods, speakers, Dimensions variable.]

Sterling Cox: For the posters, I drew upon my experience in college at FSU. More often than not there was a Bud Light poster, football team poster [Seminoles], and/or Bob Marley poster in every house or apartment. These were certain symbols that expressed the residents’ self-images to visitors in a glance. I wanted to reconstruct the images, degrade them a bit digitally, and use readily available tools (i.e. Google Image Search and Paint) to make a kind of “hyper poster” that was printed on a high quality medium and mounted. So it was kind of a way to explore the way we might use certain agreed upon imagery, in some cases a corporate logo to express our self-image to other people.

S.: One piece is titled “To Alan Watts’; was this a kind of acknowledgement of Buddhist ideas of Impermanence, Unsatisfactoriness and Selflessness as filtered through the apartment/residence experience? Or am I totally off the mark?

S.C.:  For the refrigerator, yes your interpretation is accurate. Another thing that fascinates me is the symbols we use to convey reality, which seems like another symbol, etc. and we start to come to the conclusion that whatever the reality of the “actual” thing is we’re trying to describe is elusive. This was something first pointed out to me in an old Alan Watts lecture. So in a sense I went grocery shopping and filled the refrigerator with symbols of groceries, in this case an iPod saying the words then put another iPod in there describing what was actually in the refrigerator which was an iPod speaking food. The orange with Alan Watts’s name written on it was just supposed to be a little fun thing to maybe run across if you looked in the butter thing and wasn’t intended to be the name of the work.

I hope that answered the question. I tend to ramble, and I’m not used to the discussion surrounding art. In all honesty, I just wanted to make art that might make someone laugh.

Lily Kuonen

[Installation shot from Lily Kuonen's "Dreaming in Color," 2013, Benjamin Moore paint swatches, single-channel video loop, iPad, 12” H by 3” W by 10” L.]

Lily Kuonen: As far as the actual works I contributed, I explored the possibility of physically changing my address to “The Apartment” for the run of the show with a USPS form and mail delivered to that address, I created a video piece that loops one hour of continuous play shuffling through a Benjamin Moore paint selection, I installed a station for writing postcards where participants were instructed to “Think of the place you have lived that has felt the most like ‘home.’ Use this card to mail a note to the current resident of that address.” I assembled a structure of milk crates in which individually wrapped notes were contained within bubble wrap, and participants could take one and “care for” it. The notes were items that get left behind, and fall through the cracks between places and spaces. For the coffee table in the apartment I arranged postcards from my personal collection, placing them by category including The Grand Tour, Family Vacations, Homes, Gifts, and The Heart of the West. These postcards have been collected from travels over the past nine or so years, and postcards that have been given to me in the various places I have lived. I also collaborated with one of my fellow roommates, Thony Aiuppy, to offer guests of the apartment the opportunity to mark their heights within the space.

Beyond actual works, we all met several times over the course of the past year to develop the conceptual ideas of the show. We offered help and support in the form of critique for each other, and through these exchanges we developed what would become The Apartment Exhibition.

S.: It seems like your piece “Care For” used your “Playntings” approach in the sense that it reappropriated reusable objects like bubble wrap and other packing materials. I’m wondering if you might have used that same sensibility in your approach towards some of the other pieces in the show, particularly with something like “Dreaming in Color.”

L.K.: Lately, I have been discussing with Staci how PLAYNTINGS, as a descriptor, really embodies my philosophy or approach to materials, beyond that of just ‘painting’ materials. The ways in which I combine them, or activate them, investigating strength, support, flexibility, and the unknown. Care For most definitely follows this line of investigation, and involves a requirement of the participant/viewer as well. Dreaming in Color actually developed out of a practice I have been doing in my studio lately, but have yet to formalize completely. I have been taking short videos of things in my studio, sometimes it’s just light and shadows, or spills of paint, or maybe just my finger over the lens, but I think of these short videos as ‘sketches’ or thoughts, and one happened to lead to work for the exhibition.

S.: Could you describe your motivation behind utilizing postcards in the exhibition?

L.K.: The concept first developed out of considering how when you occupy a space, as in an apartment or a home, whether or not you rent or own, you still technically “own” the actual physical address; changing your mailing address to that particular location. I wanted to develop a series of postcards that required participants to reflect on past places they have occupied, and then reach out to the current resident there, for one more step of an extension. I have always been an avid postcard collector, and I really love to receive them, by the way, my address is 1529 S. McDuff Ave. Apt. 2 Jacksonville, FL 32205. After I developed the hand-cut and drawn postcards for the exhibition, I considered my actual collection of postcards, which is probably double what I presented in the exhibition. For me, the postcards reflect on distance away from a certain place, whether through travels or relationships, adding another layer of reflection on ‘sense of place.’ The collection that I used for the exhibition represents nine or more years of travels and relationships.

S.: Tell me about your recent performance-event, “A Sunday Conversation”? What was the inspiration behind this? Do you think it was a success?

L.K.: Well, Staci suggested I present a lecture or a performance, and I proposed this option, “A Sunday kind of Conversation.” As you know, my family – my mom Sheila Kuonen, my dad Joe, and my sister Oceanna – all live in Sherwood, Arkansas. Every Sunday my family calls me for a speakerphone conversation. We catch up on the week, we talk about what is coming ahead, and we share with each other — our respective places (whether it’s simply the weather as of late, what’s growing in the garden, or what’s going on in my studio). This conversation is their link to the place I live, and what I do here, and vice versa. As this exhibition was conceptualized, it became important for me to not only reflect personally on my own sense of place here, but how I share these ideas with my family. These speakerphone conversations (though awkward at times) help us bridge the physical distance between us, so that my family can consider the development of my art practice. Therefore, I called them to engage them in a discussion of the visual and conceptual properties of the exhibition.

I think it was a ‘success.’ My family was a bit nervous about it, but they were great. I always feel so lucky to have such a supportive family, who wants to know the crazy things I am up to. They all called me individually a few days after the conversation, and responded with their enthusiasm for the experience. They explained how they felt connected to what was going on, and how it made them really reflect on the concept of home and comfort.

Edison William

[Installation shot from Edison William's "A Private Room For Sleeping," 2013; bed, mirrors, images, books, vase, flower, leaves and handmade clock in the “bedroom”; dimensions variable and "Keep it in the Closet," 2013, unfinished clock, unfinished mirror, melting clock, wire, lamp, frame, and hammer in closet; dimensions variable.]

Edison William: It was quite a specific pleasure for me personally to be able to inhabit the space within the “bedroom” of the Apartment Exhibition. More recently, I have evolved my own definition of a bedroom as an accommodation in the sense that it is this convenient arrangement of “things” within a room that most individuals generally accept and construct it around the innate capabilities of the bedroom; sufficing restlessness, insinuating intimacy, and promoting the curative properties of sleep. Well, I work in my bedroom, and I am most restless and agitated in it, and I sleep far better in ANY room besides it, and I would much rather be outside, intimate in the dirt, rolling around like an ANIMAL.

The concept behind this room’s particular construction is to exhibit that restlessness by overwhelming the walls while minimally occupying the floor. It is a private place to sleep; a bed to lie in and drift away to subconsciousness, hoping that the last glimpses of the decor, the ever-consistent ticking of the clock, and overwhelming scents of cedar, will influence some sort of strange construction within the dream that could manifest. This room is an experiment for sensory stimuli. It is esoteric comfort. There is a bed; my own bed layered with black sheets with a framed canvas print of an angular nude tucked in under the white down comforter, which is entirely dusted with aromatic cedar sawdust. The walls are littered with thirteen cedar wood frames, housing canvas prints, two repetitious dead leaf collages, two mirrors, a clock, and a nightstand containing a white lamp and two books, “The Interpretation of Dreams,” by Sigmund Freud, and “Interaction With Color,” by Josef Albers. There is also a large wooden vase, comprised and constructed with many pieces of cedar wood, with a gigantic white, plastic flower blooming from it. The closet contains a long and tangled cable suspended at eye level, holding and displaying a melting clock. There is also a lamp with no light bulb, an unfinished mirror, an unfinished clock, and an unfinished frame with a hammer in front of it. I hand-built all the frames, clocks, and mirrors, collected the sawdust from each, and packaged it within twenty-four small, white, and transparent pouches, which were placed sporadically around the bed. There are two large windows in this somewhat small room.

S.: Your work focused on the bedroom of the apartment. I’m curious if your prints that you included are inspired by sleeping and dreaming?

E.W.: Oh, they are most definitely and genuinely influenced by that realm. Now that is not to say they are pure duplicates by any means, as the limitations of natural photographic capture, more specifically, filmed capture, greatly hinder the absurdities and incongruities we find within subconscious reality. It could be quite simple to physically build and construct a scenario that would mimic a perfect likeness of a dream, and THEN photograph it, but tableau and tableau vivant photography, I feel, would put the viewer into that methodically contrived construction of objects and people rather than the unplanned and arbitrary course of action that are ingrained within dream composition. The images are constructed by an idiosyncratic arrangement of pieces of colored film, sandwiched and joined together with scotch-tape to form a transparent collage. I think the aspects of this particular process symbolically parallels the processes within the subconscious mind, as it gathers the past, layers it, and voila! – a dream is born … it plays out, it dissipates, and it is lost almost entirely. The parts that lastingly linger into the conscious realm are what I feed off of. I cannot even begin to express just how prevalent wind and water are in my own mental motion pictures. I have such a fascination for tornadoes and waterspouts, but have never personally seen one, yet somehow, they manifest with ferocity and grace and just saturate and invade me in my sleep. I mean ALL the time. Aside from the literal interpretation of storms, and how I have read them to be perceived as metaphors for cleansing the soul by bringing about change through turbulent manners, I think of them more as how Freud descriptively described the purpose of most dreams as being wish-fulfillments, and I just attach myself to that, and believe in it. This has literally romanticized my dreams, especially of natural weather forces, and I feel very empowered to romanticize these natural representations, thus I am able to find shapes in reality, deconstruct and reassemble them with subconscious intent. The real waterfall found within “Worry, Weary, Waterspout,” is about as close of a resemblance to the funnel of a waterspout that I can physically find in MY reality. And I worked hard to find it. “Run for Your Lives,” isn’t about seeing hoses and extension cords figuratively running from some unseen danger; it is the reconstruction and portrayal of the basic FRAMEWORK of running, the blueprints of running, because I run from strangers with knives and creatures with legs quite often in my sleep. Sometimes, these creatures are dreadfully horrific…but I love their creation. I dream of women because it is what I personally desire, but I see certain women in my dreams that I have thoroughly neglected, and I continue to do so through complete and utter ignorance. “The Great Neglect,” encapsulates the most vividly intense, and wildly destructive relationship I have ever been a part of, and I don’t like to dream about it, but I cannot control it. I dream of coastlines littered with people, and vessels transporting goods and services, and I think to myself, how fortunate I am to have been planted and raised near this watery place I can call Florida, because apparently, I breathe it into my soul.

S.: When I spoke with you at the opening reception, you had mentioned the possibility of allowing visitors the chance to actually spend some private time and even nap in the bedroom that features your work. What was the motivation behind this? Is that still being considered as a possibility?

E.W.:  I think this city needs to eat, sleep, and breathe artwork. In all shapes and forms. With that being said, I initially thought of expanding upon the KIND of time spent with art directly from the purpose of the Apartment Exhibition, which to me, is an alternative venue that prudently distorts viewpoints to push for the maturation of progressing the intent of artwork. We need more “apartment exhibitions”; we need to conjure up ways to make “experience art,” but far beyond the already prevailing and ubiquitous venues that globally house art. It is as simple as broadcasting films onto buildings or screens in a park, which is a specific variation I truly admire and feel such wonderful nostalgia from.

I remember when I was very young, I attended what they commonly call a “lock-in” at the MOSH here in town. I believe I was eight or nine at the time, and after a long evening of making rubber, and assembling crafts, and playing with dry ice, they put a movie on a big screen, and kind of had an informal lights out. But nobody went to sleep. Hundreds of kids my age, and a little older, were jumping from group to group, stepping over sleeping bags that were scattered across the floor, playing tag and hide-and-seek…all under the cover of darkness. The only illumination was from the movie screen, and the lights directed onto the walls, exhibiting all the odds and ends you would find on museum walls. And we’re talking about MY youth’s generation in 1992. I don’t need to go into detail about how different things were…maybe I can just say “The Disney Channel,” and that could be enough to show how youth has wandered away; the last generation before “modern distraction” and before “technology.” I MISS it so much.

What I want is to recreate this particular experience with artworks that are designed by the subconscious; no political statements, no injustices, no social studies, no religion – just tangents from Freud and the Surrealists. Of course I want to have people sleep in the bedroom I created; I have myself.  If you can even fall asleep to the smell of a strange forest, dream a dream influenced by the works on the walls, and wake and make new opinions of oneself, then I would be very content with the purpose of this lonely bedroom. The space is limited, the regulation of time is a deterring factor and quite problematic…but I want to do it. But what I really want is to create a larger “lock-in” with real sleeping bags strewn across the floor, with wall decor and installations and sculptures, even performance pieces, designed for sleep and made from dreams. We have such large spaces within our art community; let’s exploit them.

All photos by Laura Evans

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Ouija Boards, Acid and Retinol Cream

       Baphomet Pentagram

(What follows is my first memoir piece for STAREHOUSE, chronicling some of the highs and lows of my spiritual and mental journey of the past 25+ years, however real or imagined. I had previously published parts of this as a note on Facebook. I have changed the names of all parties involved; the rest is all true – or at least what I believed to have happened to me.)

A spiritual awakening implies that previously in my life, I was not awake. I had fallen asleep, gradually at first through detached, selfish behavior and then more directly through a series of increasingly expensive, self-induced chemically tuned lullabies. I had removed myself from all of the work and all of the play, having little time or patience for other people and even less for a positive, spiritual life. God became a vacancy sign, and then gradually read “Closed for Business”.

If I ever had any form of religious or spiritual devotion in my youth, it was steadily based on negative beliefs; rebelliously turning all crucifixes upside down, taking smirking snapshots in area graveyards, rolling a defiant joint on any available bible. Some of this is expected and probably normal for a boy who felt compelled to reapply his Mark of Cain Tattoo every morning on his pale forehead. But somewhere the colors seemed to blur, and this mockery became a sort of accidental sorcery. Everyone has a ghost story, so now I’m cutting my own eyeholes into this sheet.

I like to say I was ‘Prayer-Retardant’ until I got finally clean and handed in my resignation as God, but that isn’t really true. I knew what religion could do and what a church was. When I was small, my family went to church as little as humanly possible; two quick funerals, a reluctant wedding, and maybe stopping by to drop off an annual, holiday donation. Religious piety conflicted with football. But I wasn’t raised by wild animals, and my parents had some kind of devotional upbringing, so they gave my brother and me a thumbnail sketch about Jesus, God, and the difference between right and wrong. I eventually became a master at splitting that difference, but as a boy I believed in Santa Claus, Popeye, and the music of KISS, so God was simply placed in that same toy box. To this day my Dad admits that he has had a lifelong problem in separating Goldilocks from Yahweh, and I can still suffer from the same hindrance of rational reasoning, quite possibly the enemy of carefree faith. But prayer intrigued me. I liked the idea of talking to something invisible, always listening. I can clearly remember being five years old and exhausting myself as I prayed in bed, blessing everyone I knew and verbally going down the line, “Please bless Mommy, Daddy, Ed, Grandma, Grandpa, Lady the dog, Presto the Clown….” Whether this worked I do not know, but I must acknowledge that three of those listed are still alive today and they could never make those charges stick on Presto, Louisville, KY’s premier TV kiddy host.

As I grew up I became precocious and then bored, and my insecurities and frustrations found a mirror in heavy metal, a music seemingly written by emotionally arrested ‘adult’ teenage boys for actual teenage boys. No one cool wants to hear about charity and grace roaring through a stack of amps so Satan and blasphemy were the only ways to strut and posture. My older brother went head first into this foul wave, and seemed to have an otherworldly ability in sussing out the vilest records; “Black Sabbath” blew the goat’s horn and then “Venom” and those make up wearing Swede’s “Mercyful Fate” led the charge. He would studiously watch 80s-era faith-based productions of ‘anti-rock’ shows that illustrated the seductive, evil horror of ‘backwards masking’ in vinyl, scribbling down which albums contained demonically encoded messages in the grooves. I can clearly remember Ed with a legal pad and pen in his hand, shushing me as he tried to crack the cryptic cipher of Black Oak Arkansas’ “Raunch and Roll”. It only got worse. If there was ever a generation gap, it only widened with Celtic Frost turning Our Lord Jesus Christ into a sling shot on an album cover.

I was probably nine years old the first time my brother tried to summon Satan. I don’t know where he got his information from or what Adolescent Spell Book he used, but I now believe that almost any 13 year old with a shitty attitude can wreak true, eerie, havoc.  A broken match can still ignite an inferno. Magic is surely hormonal on some level, and puberty may be the most direct example of a heightened, conjured consciousness in the human experience; one day a choirboy and the next day stoned with “Dio”. Ed had surrounded himself with a negative energy, and I was his imp and familiar, scribbling copious notes. It seems like this event occurred on the first night of a three day weekend. Somehow he and I wound up inhabiting the top floor of the family home, with three bedrooms at our disposal. A walk down the hallway would show the evolution of a child, with my bedroom alive with hamsters, colored marker drawings and “Conan-ish” things, and the playthings then changing as Ed’s drum set, guitars, and obsession with all things knife-based became apparent. All of his activities eventually dove-tailed into heavy metal and then segued into Satanicum Adolescentum.

Ed had made a few Hail Mary passes at Black Magic in the past. A well worn and crack-spined copy of “The Satanic Bible” made that clear. His Trapper Keeper Folder was layered in variations of “666”. This particular night involved a primitive looking tableau he had constructed on a thick piece of wood. A nauseatingly orange pentagram was figured on a pasty coating of bile covered greenish-brown paint. Ed had set tiny, painted pewter figurines (the kind used for role playing games, the Parcheesi of Doomed Teens) in some ritualized positions. The rest of what happened was between Ed and his weird Gods. Friday night was altered. I was in the other side of our floor of the house when all of this went down. He ran into my room and demanded that I come with him. I was so excited to be invited into his world that I didn’t notice how frightened he truly was. I remember him being trembly and pale, pointing to an unexplainable, shifting silhouette on the wall, and then hurling a 3”crucifix in the direction of this menacing shadow bobbing on the white latexed wall. It is funny to me now that in the middle of his concentrated anger he got religious pretty fucking quickly. The dark outline immediately vanished and we never did find that cross. There was a split second of something bad in that room. It happened so quickly that it felt like we were holding our breath so long we had forgotten how to move or inhale. In the nearly 30 years since this happened I have pretty much told myself it was a bullshit moment, a fabrication, but it is still a memory and part of two brother’s weirder, shared moments.

As we transformed into teenagers, our misfired spiritual direction only continued to grow, and water sought its own level. Ed had met a new friend on the Metal Path. Jake resembled a younger Neil Young, could hammer out raucous chords on his Mosrite Guitar and performed a beautifully nasal and monotone recitation of Social Distortion’s “Breaking Glass”. Even more importantly, his step mom was an actual psychic who apparently had all kinds of otherworldly abilities. Jake was one of a stream of reluctant adoptions my parents endured and he seemed to be waiting for us when we came home from school. His own home life was a mystery, so the day that he actually invited us into his family home found us racing over on our bikes.

On this particular afternoon, we were the only ones there. The house seemed normal enough, the only sound being a powder blue ceramic clock ticking away in the living room. He showed us his room which passed all of the Teen Metal Standards; posters of such luminaries as Ozzy and the Scorpions plastered the walls, and a homemade bong was hidden obviously away behind the wall’s loosened, brown paneling. The Stepmother had her own library that was also her ‘sitting room’ where she received her clients, who were mostly hysterically middle- aged, chain-smoking women from the greater beaches area.  Jake was forbidden to enter this room, let alone show it off to two of his friends, so we walked down the hallway in quiet and deliberate defiance. As we stepped into the cluttered room it felt like the central heat had kicked up a notch. Rows and rows of books lined the walls, and my eyes tried to focus on everything but it felt like I could see nothing. Every space seemed to be fighting with some sort of curio box or wall hanging, and an actual crystal ball sat on a table covered with an actual pentagram. It felt like the air in my lungs had turned solid. Ed seemed to share my discomfort, assuring Jake that “this was cool” but he hung by the doorway, waiting for this now uncomfortable tour to end.

Jake lowered his voice, “You guys gotta see this”.

He started digging around under an ornate wooden desk, which seemed like a very bad idea.

In his hands was a bundle of burgundy colored felt-cloth that was tied with a yellow, braided cord. As he pulled the tie, the cloth fell away, revealing what looked like a piece of cracked earthenware. It was a reddish-brown dome, but there where hints of gray and white under the layer of grime. We all knew it was a human skull; a real skull.

Ed started to nervously say, “Jake, this isn’t too coo-…” when the skull instantly cracked into dust in Jake’s hands, as if something had smashed it in anger, spraying shards in all directions, covering us in bones and God knows what else.

There was a split second, a hand moving once on a clock, as we raced from that house and ran to our bikes piled on the lawn. We were quiet and red faced as we pedaled home. In the confusion, Ed wound up riding home on my much smaller bicycle, but he just pumped his legs faster. I’m pretty sure that night there was a reprieve on the music of Black Sabbath.

My adolescence was a slow uphill climb. Junior High was a blur of being self conscious to the point of invisibility, hearing only the sound of my own nervous breathing as I walked through the hallways of school. I was reassigned to all Honors or Gifted Classes, where I found company in a Math Guru with Tourette’s and awkward yet cute girls that were just starting to develop their obsessions with Sylvia Plath, a whole other kind of saint. I felt fragmented and incomplete. I can clearly remember sitting in a cubicle in the school’s library, watching an educational slide show for my English Class and discovering the word, “Antipathy”. It meant aversion or hatred; hostility. This is what I have, I told myself…antipathy. Two things occurred in my life. I increased my intake of pot and I began practicing the Smite Prayer, as in “God please kill them”. When I was eventually diagnosed as having Bipolar Disorder, I ripped God from the universe.

My older brother surrendered to a deeper level of metal. He started ordering homemade fanzines and demo tapes from various bands around the country, and eventually Europe. This was a faster metal, now deemed thrash metal or speedcore of the 1980s, but his real craving was for what was now being called Black Metal. These bands played on the outer rings of a black planet of distortion and blasphemy, each vocalist growling out with a fury towards Christ. This shit was personal. Denim vests were now covered in blood. My own tastes were as much reactionary to his own; for every Slayer or Bathory song he would blast, I would listen in solemn brain fry to the Grateful Dead or Jefferson Airplane. This led to much blotter LSD, which led to the most horrific and essentially satanic acid trip I would ever endure.

According to my teenaged experiments with the Ouija Board, God is real and Jack Kerouac made it to heaven.

How could we not drop acid on the 4^th of Fucking July? I had first dropped acid in the previous year of 1986 when I was fourteen, and I became a devout believer with that initial, frantic surge of the drug. My friend and initiator, Warren, played an LP copy of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here” – in Quad Sound no less – but I was unfazed and bored. As a joke he popped on Chuck Berry’s Greatest Hits, and my chakras cracked like a whip. This was it! I can clearly remember listening to “Havana Moon” and was in silent awe as the universe took on a frigid, aquamarine hue. I recognized this place as one of comfort and vowed to spend much of time there, if only for eight to twelve hours at a time. The Mom of a close friend, an adult I actually trusted, had told me she ‘worried’ about my immediate love and enthusiasm for LSD but I just giggled at her concerns through perpetually dilated eyes. We already had several hits of reliable Clown Blotter tucked away in our freezer, carefully hidden and buried in the icy frost like a fossilized UFO. Since my parents lived a mile from the beach, our house was considered ‘base camp’. My friends were smart enough to not drive when tripping on acid. Breaking and entering, huffing Freon, fistfights, self-inflicted tattoos and simple vandalism were completely allowed, but they had the integrity to never operate an automobile while hallucinating. I reverently peeled open the square of foil and we all then each took a hit and placed it on our tongues. The twenty minute walk to the beach and strip on First Street consumed us with an interior electricity, passing around cigarettes and waiting, forever waiting for the acid to take hold. Now and again one of us would wave a Marlboro around in the darkening sky, looking for visual trails, or let out a sudden war whoop. Half of the fun of tripping was fucking with someone else as they began to peak, waving your hands back and forth in rapid karate chops around their dilating eyes, slowly chanting to them “You’re running through a tunnel…” LSD was never a social or friendly drug for us; it was like lighting a stick of dynamite and passing it around, wondering who would first be destroyed by that blast.

We arrived on the beach wired for sound. At first the fireworks were beautiful, deafening flowers blooming in the sky over the sea. I had also secretly dropped another hit before the first mortar exploded. Gradually, I started to feel flushed and hotter, but shrugged this off to the Florida humidity. The booming report of the colorful rockets started to become slightly too intense and uncomfortable. I looked around at the yellow, red, and blue faces of my friends and the other people celebrating under the shifting lights. I tried to yell some form of communication to the stoner nearest to me, but he was overwhelmed as if he was possessed by laughter, streaming tears now turned to wet tattoos on his crazy face. Louder and louder still, I began to flinch from all of the sound and color, the smoke seemed to now bubble and hiss not from the explosives around us but from the black ocean itself. It all turned terrible. “This is like hell”, I said over the roar of it all to no one. This is hell.

Something flipped a switch somewhere, and everything and everyone died but it seemed like no one else had told them they were dead, so I was frozen in the sand and too afraid to let them all know. They were all dead but they would not lie down. My friends were having a grand old time, two of them were performing a mad man’s version of a bluegrass promenade, swinging their partner round and round in time to the evil concussive blasts from above that now shook the earth. Smoke continued to spill out of the ocean. I am in hell, I assured myself.

It was hard to imagine, but even harder seeing on the face of that little girl. She was maybe six or seven at the most, and was proudly showing her Daddy the fluorescent light-stick in her hand. I stared at her fully paralyzed. She was small like a little girl but had the face of an old hag… no, something even older. She was dead. She was a dead, evil little thing only no one had even told her so she kept on playing and laughing. Her face was a wrinkled, gray smile and as she now cackled over at me, it seemed as if the decaying meat was dripping off. She pointed the glowing, green rod at me as if it were a wand. When I looked around to inform my friends that there was a fucked up, zombie-child on our beach, I came to understand that they were also insane with the same, now shared decay. I started to walk away from that beach. The sand became deeper and denser the closer I got to the boardwalk. When I looked down the sand was the color of the blackest blood. The sand seemed to be pulling on my feet, knowing I was trying to escape. Everything in my sight began to lurch in a rhythmic, negative tempo. This is hell, I told myself. This is not like hell; this is hell. I need to get out of here. I need to leave hell. I looked around at the crowd under the streetlights and that was a terrible mistake.

I was the only living thing in the universe. Even the No Parking signs were dead. The letters looked like some banished runes. The smell wafting from the overflowing trash cans was all pain and rot. The wooden boards on the side of an ancient souvenir shop were bent upward like hungry fangs. I tried to light a cigarette but was so upset I lit the filter end and wound up inhaling a chemically noxious hit…more putrid, rotting shit. A hand grabbed me and I whirled around. It was what had once been my friend Long, recently released from the “P Farm” for grand larceny and now freed to walk the earth as a zombie stoned on acid.

His voice seemed to rumble out of his chest cavity, a guttural and mucous filled hiss, “Man! Dan….I- I am tripping balls”.

I tried to respond, to make peace with this new monster, but in my heart I knew this was a trick. His eyes had changed into solidly opaque, lime green spheres and they were unmoving, trying to stare into my soul. This is Satan. I am in Hell and this is a form of Satan. The devil now owned my mind.

I backed away and kept moving forward. There were police cars everywhere throwing blue and red beams of light around that quickly turned into their original form, vampire bats. I tried to lock my eyes forward, looking at nothing but then taking it all in. I was finally able to light and then smoke a cigarette, so that became my focus. I crossed the main drag, 3^rd Street – and lit another cigarette. Maybe the tobacco would protect me, a voodoo shroud. Now my friends were stumbling through the loud, festive drunkenness of the night, their footsteps surely guided by darker energies. Their motivations were only bad and wrong, put here to bring me down to some inevitable, bottomless pit.

“Dan…wait up, man!” my friend Bruce cackled behind me. His teeth dropped out of his rotted head and clicked on the ground. They all seemed to howl and hiss in demonic joy at this, finding more and more pleasure in the fact that I was now walking a full block ahead of them. It was now a taunting chase and they were just letting me run myself out. I’d be theirs’ soon enough. Some black bell would ring and they would overtake me in flames. Hours seemed to go by. I swear that the sun rose and fell in that mile long walk; an evil day seemed to pass over us all. The night kept smiling around me.

I was in the homestretch. I could see the red brick of my parent’s house. The monsters trailing behind me in the near distance were now laughing under the streetlight, collectively fumbling with a cigarette lighter as one of them, John, swatted at moths under the whiteness around them. I could clearly see his pointed tail hiding in the shadows of his pants leg. I had the key to the front door clutched tightly in my knuckles.

I was so winded from walking at such a fast pace and chain-smoking Marlboros to ward off these horrors that I barely had the breath to rasp out a weak, “Good night, man!” I unlocked, opened, and then closed and locked the front door in one, fluid motion.

Thankfully everyone in the house was asleep. I had a hard enough time acting straight around my parents on a good high. I was not prepared to see my Mom in her true, accursed form. I quickly grabbed our cat Garcia and locked myself in my bedroom. I was afraid to turn on my lights, fearing it would encourage my former human friends to tap on my window, to drag out our little party. The lights were off but my room was exploding with energy, vile vibes seemed to pulsate in an even time. Translucent lines of light seemed to run around the black room like an animated circuit board, and when I closed my eyes they remained, but now changed color to a deep burgundy, the color of pumping blood.

Finally there was mercy, as I heard the clack-clack sound of the engine turning over in Bruce’s Volkswagen Rabbit and then they were gone. I held Garcia against my breast. She seemed to be breathing in time with me, realizing how freaked out I truly was. I cautiously turned on my bedside lamp. The cat’s hair seemed to flow and curl like feathers in an invisible wind. But she was an angel, there to protect me. I fumbled around on my bookcase until I found the only thing that could save me. I had found it on one of my many flea market book searches. It was an old paperback, a hippy relic, a “Jesus Freak” published Holy Bible entitled, “God Loves You, Man!”  On the cover there was a woman in a yellow turtle neck sweater and wearing a black, peace sign pendant whose face seemed almost overcome with spiritual rapture. I held my cat and bible with an equal measure of intensity.  I spent the next few hours like that, gradually parachuting back to sanity with Garcia, murmuring countless staggered prayers while the Beatle’s “Rubber Soul” softly playing in the background until I came down from hell.

While I endured a troubled youth, I never turned to Christian Metal band Stryper.

This moment had briefly sworn me off of acid but not my spiritual hitchhiking on the back roads of God. My brother and I pored over Neville Drury’s “Dictionary of Mysticism and the Occult”. I soon realized that the quickest way to contact the universe was by way of the Ouija Board, the Devil’s Speak and Spell. Any cautionary warning I had heard regarding this practice only encouraged my resolve. A quick trip to the beach’s “Pic N’ Save” soon found me alone in my room, candles lit, with squinting eyes and fingers lightly resting on the plastic planchette, as the board rested on my knees. The board itself was unremarkable; the letters of the alphabet, ten numbers, and the answers ‘Yes’ and ‘No’ book ended at each corner. I would whisper quietly if anyone was there with me but never had any response. Soon my legs would start to cramp from my awkward lotus position, and I would grow bored with trying to summon something.

My friend Dindi was an adventurous sort, and she had actually pointed out that the Ouija Board’s instructions suggested that a male and female use the board together, each placing their fingertips on the plastic teardrop shaped device. We sat in reverence and began our interrogation into the other realm.

“Is there anyone here that wants to speak?” she asked.

The planchette immediately began to move along the board with a soft, scraping sound.

“YES.”

Over the course of that day and the following week we had amazing results. We realized that if we moved in different parts of my room and the house itself, we would get varying responses. We contacted one spirit with the sinister name of “Red” in the corner of my room. In the garage we spoke to a spirit that could only speak in “Yes” or “No” since it had died as an infant and was unable to spell. The board confirmed to us that the Devil was absolutely real and Jesus was the son of God and Jack Kerouac had made it to heaven; yet the board was indifferent to the music of Sonic Youth. All of these results seemed to satisfy our quest. Yes, we had found something “out there” and now we were bored with this game. Sixteen year old table- tappers are an impatient breed.

In my later teens I met a girl who was as crazy as me so we agreed in calling it love. She matched me drink for drink, drug for drug, and shared my same manic sense of an almost apocalyptic sense of affection. Kathy shared my negative self worth and nihilistic world-view. “Fuck or fight” we’d say to each other, only half-joking. Days were spent working at restaurants and nights found us chugging beer, laying down drugs, and inevitably rolling around like wild cats, locked in what sometimes ended in ambiguous bruising. All was fair play. We’d fall asleep mumbling to one another and hit the reset button the next day.

I woke with a start one night, the bedside lamp blinding me awake. I looked to my right and she was red faced and crying, looking at me in an anger that bordered on violation and disbelief.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?”

I started to get pissed, amazed that she had the nerve to wake me up to argue, especially when she knew I would have been more than willing to do so after a good sleep. I rolled my eyes and began to reply with my own volley and retaliation hit.

She then added to her question, “What the fuck is wrong with this place? This is fucked up….”

I was now dumbfounded by her question and soon forgot any fight. When she saw the sleepy innocence on my face she told me what had happened to her; or really, to us. She told the story like this:

            “I woke up in the dark and I couldn’t move. At first I thought my body was asleep but then it felt like somebody, something was holding me there on the bed. I couldn’t move my hands or feet, I couldn’t even raise my head. It was hard to breathe and I started to panic, I started to cry. It was so quiet in here. I looked at the window and there was a white light streaming in. It looked like a giant flashlight was being aimed through the blinds. But there was a shadow, Dan. It was a big, lumpy silhouette of something big, a big being. It was rocky and looked like the Thing from the Fantastic Four. It didn’t move. It was like it was watching through the closed blinds at us, at me. I started whimpering and tried to cry out but I could only whisper. I started whispering at you, ‘Dan, Dan wake up!’ You didn’t wake up, and I thought I was dying or was already dead and was in hell. Then you spoke. Your mouth and lips never moved, but your voice seemed to just come out of your head like a recording…’This happens all the time…they’ll leave soon…don’t fight it…’ and then it stopped and suddenly I could move again and I just woke you  up… What the fuck is wrong with you?!”

Then she broke down again in convulsive sobbing, her body shaking like a crying child. I had no answer to give her. I was now frightened. I held her that night with all of the lights on until we finally passed out asleep. Over the next few days we began to joke about that night, and eventually we just stopped mentioning it until maybe a week had passed. I was in the other side of the house watching late night TV, when Kathy came charging into the room looking as scared as she was angry.

“What in the FUCK is wrong with you? What are you doing in your goddamned room?”

I felt like I knew what she meant when she said this, but I didn’t want to feed my own fears so I forced myself to be calm.

“What do you mean?”

“I was just in your room, and there was some fucking laughing, some giggling coming out of your closet. It sounded like a little man; it was like a little thing lying on the ground…like it was looking at me under the closet door and it was laughing at me…”

We both were quiet then. This was crossing into a place we never asked to be. This was weird in a bad way, not in a weird fun way like all of the beer and acid. This was bad. We both felt even younger then. We were scared children.

Detail from “The Last Judgment” by Hieronymus Bosch, c. 1482; also witnessed by the author while under the influence of LSD on July 4, 1987.

We armed ourselves with a ball bat, carving knife and an industrial sized flashlight, even though my bedroom was lit up like Christmas. She later said that this made all of it worse. This time all of the lights were on and she could move. When we opened the closet there was nothing there. No little “Goat Man” like she feared, nothing was there. That night I slept on the couch and she slept in her own bed, twenty miles away in town. Any strange visitations soon passed. Years later in a phone conversation Kathy brought these things up, using them to convey just how “fucked up our love was” but I did not appreciate the memory and we have not spoken about these things since.

My twenties and then early thirties went by in an increasing blur of alcohol and narcotics. I didn’t think I was an addict. I knew I was an addict, and addiction leaves no time for any contact with things alive or dead. It separates all things. The more I used to get ‘out of myself’ the deeper and deeper I found myself thrashing around in a pool of self-obsession, splashing around in terror and resentments. I spent months of my life trying to go to sleep as my heart pounded in my chest, my bloodstream at war with itself as beer, cocaine and valium played King of the Mountain on my central nervous system. I lay there nightly plotting the death of a good friend that wronged me, a guy who bailed on my last apartment and stuck me with every bill, still unpaid as the days staggered by. In my mind I envisioned his death, and imagined finding a desolate beach at night where I could torture him, a place where they would not find the body let alone hear the screams.

I was sick. I was losing it. I was Edgar Allen Poe raging on speedballs. I was always alone, the only successful spell I had ever truly cast. I slapped the world away. I broke up with a girlfriend of ten years. She complained too much about my hateful ranting. I hung out in my room, one lamp lit with its angry, red, whorehouse lampshade. Over time I could feel a palpable presence in that room as I got high. As I surrendered to a deeper level of shooting up dope, I broke down the last walls of my own castle, letting all of the bad things back in. I don’t know if they had ever really left, or if they had just been hiding in darker corners. I would inject drugs into my wrist or the crook of my arm and would once again be unable to breathe. I would go stand and weave back and forth in a cold shower, or wrap wet towels on my neck and chest, gasping through slow, gulping breathes. Then I would do it again and again, every time the same result, the same soggy and weak corner of hell.

I soon started praying when blood would register in the syringe.

“Please God don’t let me die! Christ if you are real … please – do not let me die! God I accept you. Christ I accept you. God help me. Don’t let me die. God do not let me die!” And I would shoot up again.

I’d pray every time. But no God ever put a needle in my arm. Over and over, I did.

I’d lay there in the dark, The Band’s “Music from Big Pink” faintly playing in the background on the outer realm of my awareness, some kind of protective hymn, the CD player on repeat. I became more and more aware of a thing, a concentrated force that would seem to materialize in the chair next to my bed, a few feet away in front of my desk. It was a black, oily, scaly thing. It looked like static, like steel wool waiting to rub off my flesh. I was certain that it had long, curved white fangs. It kept its fangs clean. It would spin in that chair. It was waiting me out. Other nights I would lie perfectly still, terrified because I knew that it was there but it was deliberately being quiet until finally it would ramp up the game and then the whispering would start. It whispered my name softly, “Dan…..dan…..dan.” It was winning a game it had made up, but I kept playing along.

And for whatever reason something pulled me back. I honestly no longer care to know what it is. Sometimes I call it the Universe, sometimes I call it a Higher Power, my higher self and sometimes I call it God. Sometimes I call it no name but I pray and speak to it. I began to have new reactions to reality; polar opposite spiritual things began popping up around me. I hate to call them this, but I do call them miracles. I have reclaimed that word…one day a red butterfly began flying almost protectively next to my head as I walked down to the marina at two months clean from drugs and alcohol. It bobbed along next to my head for nearly five minutes and then playfully vanished back into the woods. I began seeing more and more that in the same way I had been wrong about drugs, I was also wrong about many things. I was wrong about women. I was wrong about my family. I was wrong about other people. I was wrong about God. I realized that God was not a bounty hunter after all. I guess I had taken all of the anger, shame, and guilt of my entire life and had rolled it up into a ball, threw it into the clouds, and called that “God”. I am grateful to be wrong. I now know it is better to stand corrected than to die in a confused sense of correctness.

I still do not wave a religious flag. I don’t go to churches; I do go to some religious-themed facilities where my mutual support groups meet. I still have a healthy disdain and skepticism for all religions, and ‘blind’ anything – especially faith. God knows that my faith and belief and trust are completely conditional, I need a little face time – a little proof – so God is nice enough to surround me with Neon Signs of a spiritual presence. I no longer sleep in fear. Whatever was spinning in that chair and cackling my name has moved on, evicted surely by my newfound love for myself. I still believe in the power of Slayer. And I am still awake.

“God is at home, it’s we who have gone out for a walk.” – Meister Eckhart (1260-1327)

Not so sweet at 17 circa 1989. Photo courtesy of Maureen Shaughnessy.

Dan Brown (clean date 9/6/07)

starehouse@gmail.com

1987; aged 15. At one point, I was prescribed so much Lithium that I referred to myself as the “Human Salt-Lick.”

(This is an edited memoir excerpt that I had originally posted as a note some time ago on FB and had also been previously posted on a website devoted to spirituality and recovery. I wrote this four and half years ago in an attempt to summon my precise mindset during my 14^th and 15^th years, after being diagnosed with having Bipolar Disorder. At that time in my life, I was prone to these nightly walks that were as senseless as they were somehow mandatory. Looking back, I think I was simply in a manic state and maybe that constant motion helped me keep one step ahead of the pain I could never seem to elude. If the writing or sentiment seems like that of an adolescent, then I have succeeded, for that is the very voice I was trying to both resurrect and reconcile in this piece.)

After a strong year of creeping, I had learned by now to be quiet and not let the screen door slam behind me. The real trick was in tiptoeing down that last stretch of creaky flooring just past the hallway where the carpet met the parquet flooring that led to the front door. The porch light was alive in a competition of frantic moths and swirling dust that all seemed covered in a blinding whiteness. A familiar pink gecko looked on unimpressed. My hands were shaking but they always shook; yet another side effect of the Lithium that had been prescribed in part to end these senseless walks. I lit a cigarette and the bluish smoke and cold, invisible night air became one in my breathing. I tried my best to conjure camouflage inside of that.
I knew which way to walk. I had been traveling this particular path every night. Months earlier, I had been removed from the ninth grade after my brain had stopped cooperating with the rest of reality. Class had been dismissed. Over the past eighteen months, Pre-Schizophrenia, Borderline Personality, even the possibility of brain cancer had all been scribbled down as possible culprits, but ultimately Bipolar Disorder won the prize. A battery of tests followed, washed down with medications whose names all sounded like menacing constellations that had yet to be discovered: Tofranil, Stelazine, Valium, Elavil, Nardil … I had been pushed from the pack and I was learning to survive the woods alone. I was learning to enjoy this abandonment. As I stood in the night, my ears felt like they were rising up from my head and all of the hairs on my body seemed to curl outward in an awakened state. As I walked east towards the beach, I would hear an occasional car purr behind me over my shoulder on Penman Road.
A few nights back when I was on my march I came upon a cat lying down in the middle of the street. He or she was a still, tan thing and seemed perfectly calm on its side. I slowed my pace as I came up closer to its body. Why didn’t it run or move? That cat was in the exact middle of the road, right where they would have ran a painted, yellow line. I stopped and stared at the cat. Kitty, kitty I said. The cat didn’t move. We were at a standoff. Its eyes were staring up at me.
I finally realized this cat was dead. I didn’t know what to do or how to feel. I couldn’t really fathom how it had died (twenty years of hindsight led me to believe it was simply a car) or how it was placed so perfectly there. This was a powerful omen in the moonlight. I enjoyed the intimacy and power inside of this moment, the shrapnel of my thoughts bending into contemplation. I bent down and stroked its fur. I smelled my hand but nothing had truly changed. I accepted all of this as prophecy and kept on walking on.
I moved in a newly familiar and now comforting simmering hostility, and with each step I forgot that I was even afraid. I knew how to be mad and played around in disappointments. I had learned how to dig in my heels. I knew how to tell those around me to fuck off and the perfect place to kick a door so the hole would look like an angry crater in the wood. I would spend hours in the bathroom mirror with the window cracked, perfecting the art of slow motion smoking with a rehearsed glare. In the mirror I stared into myself and my eyes were furious embers. Weeks earlier, I had angrily spray-painted Rimbaud’s “I is Another” on my bedroom wall, hoping that I would become someone else as the black paint hissed out the words. My parents would randomly stop me at times when I came in late at night after returning from some misadventure with my mute and denim clad friends. Let us see your eyes, they would say. We want to see if your pupils look dilated. Lately I had gotten in the habit of staggering in the house and taunting them in a singsong voice, do my eyes look ‘related’? Only years later when we were all more sane and civil and starting to heal would we joke that it was as much the Lithium as all of the LSD that made my eyes look like they were about to launch out of my head.

Great corrupter of youth, the French poet Arthur Rimbaud (1854-1891). During my teenaged madness, I had spray-painted “I is Another” on my wall after reading the following Rimbaud passage: “I is another … I witness the unfolding of my own thought: I watch it, I hear it.” At the time, I thought that this bit of prose was the perfect articulation of the state of my mind. On a lighter note, since I had never actually heard someone say his name, I pronounced it as “Rim-BAWD”; always a bridesmaid I am.

It was impossibly quiet outside, a kind of dull silence afforded by living in the suburbs. The grass was wet from the now-quiet sprinklers. The street itself was dry and black. I could faintly hear the ocean sighing the short mile away from the shoreline. As far as a midnight walk went, Second Avenue was a fairly safe place for a fourteen year old to be. Now and again a police car would slow down to a crawl but the cop inside would usually stare at me with tired disinterest and roll on. I was a deliberate anomaly in the mid-eighties, a chubby, hippy kid wearing sandals and sadly at times even a dashiki which I would then customarily drape with beads. At 2 a.m., in Jax Beach I was an ass-kicking waiting to happen. There must have been some fed up angel working in my life, some supernatural figure that protected me, sent by the religion of the deranged. I would stay on my street for as long as I could but at some point would have to step onto Third Street or Beach Boulevard to continue my quest. There I would be like a dumb lamb drifting into the wolf’s side of the forest. I would no longer be under spiritual protection.
My eyes would be troubled by the brighter activity on the main road and the street lights and gas station signs would seem to flicker and jump in recognition of my presence. There were a few people around and cars would race by but it was always more frightening when they would slow down to yell or taunt or even worse just stare. This was the only real obstacle on my nightly course, but they probably thought why bother and they too would soon speed off back into their own lives and be erased back into the night. I would look up to the moon hoping that it would surprise me and change its shape or location. I would seek constancy in everything and then be saddened by all of this appointed sameness. I would walk and walk and feel like I was in full blown demonic possession of myself.
Sometimes if it wasn’t too late, I would go bother the girl that I considered to be my girlfriend. At least I had threatened her as such. I’d find her there in the same bathrobe, tired but opening the door for me. She had been a good sport, and would sit with me in quiet boredom as I talked about all of my big future plans and discoveries I had unearthed over the course of the past year, but she treated this news with same measured equanimity she had practiced when I would rant about the power of The Velvet Underground or Richard Brautigan. I had dreams and held her hostage with them. I went to her one night after consuming my suicide dose of Tofranil. I ultimately survived that attempt at self-destruction, due in no small part to her calling my parents that night. But I regained my strength to aggravate her even further. Her patience was like a buoy I would acknowledge and pass before swimming into the deeper waters that called me.
The beach was an unfailing place, comforting in all directions. It met me with the smell of the water and the hissing foam of the waves that could overwhelm me. I would look south down the shore and the moonlit sea shells, beach glass and bottle caps looked like punctuation marks on a sentence that would never end. The pulsating, orange glow of my cigarette was in communion with the moon. I used to stand there in all of this total incompletion and unwanted silence and hope that someone would come along and do something, or at least ask me why I was even there.
And I had my answer for them because I too had my own question. It was what I had been loudly asking myself over the past year and a half, what I had sheepishly asked the frowning doctors since my diagnosis, and what I asked every lamp lit or darkened window when I made my midnight rounds. My question was one that surely preceded the Bible as I knew it. It was on me like a birthmark. It was a mark of protection. It kept changing form. It is what kept walking me there. I was standing on that beach because all I ever did was live hour to hour with the same baffled and blurry investigations. And this is what I asked the ocean, the moon, the God who was deaf to me: How do people sleep when all of this pain is occurring? Does everyone feel this partial, so fully incomplete? I had been reduced to praying to myself and in my own name over this. Do they all walk in the same guilt and shame? Is everyone else hiding their halos? What god would do this?
And I had the same answer every night, like cheating on a test in hell. The ocean would see me coming and curl its lips as if to smile and she would shush me between waves. “Without wait, without wait…without wait…” the ocean would say and I would walk home even angrier, but even more blind and deaf, and even more loyal to the original amnesia that sent me there every night in the first place.

1987: The Velvet Underground, cigarettes and electric guitars saved me from self destruction. I am forever indebted to all three.

Dan Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Tom Catton, “Dharma Opening of the Heart,” and Bea Austin. August 2009; meditation retreat in Estes Park, Colorado.

In 1986, I was a confused 14 year old boy, fucked up like a soup sandwich. Two events merged into one in my then trembling field of being. Through a mediocre Jim Morrison biography I had discovered the Beat Consciousness – Kerouac, Ginsberg, Burroughs, etc… They were part and parcel of my simultaneous awakening and corruption. They in turn introduced me to Buddhism (and the romanticizing of drugs). I spent many teen nights trying to decipher the Tibetan Book of the Dead (the only book I ever stole – catch that Karmic irony!) and the Diamond Sutra with burning pot smoke curling up into my eye. The Beats took Buddha off of the takeout menu and centered him into my psyche. Kerouac made Christ sound like the original beat, assuring me that “Walking on water wasn’t built in a day.” Buddha spoke of suffering, but as a young teen I simply took this as this: “all life is shit.” Fair enough. At one point I even had the grandiose plan of one day going to the Naropa School in Boulder, CO., to study at the Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, whatever the hell that was. I went as far as to order the Course Catalog, excitedly showing my Dad as he nodded and tried to look interested as the UK Wildcats played on the TV.

At that age, I was already an expert sufferer. This same year I met Ginsberg, Buddha and the Beatnik Christ, I had my first of many blind dates with Psychiatry. I was diagnosed depending on the doctor…Bipolar Disorder, Unipolar Depressive, Pre-Schizophrenic, Psychotic… pills were prescribed accordingly; pills that set me further apart from the human race, pills that marked me as being incompetently made, pills that made me fat, then skinny and at times shaking uncontrollably, pills that led to black winged hallucinations and incredible side effects like my eyeballs literally shivering in my eye sockets, spontaneous vomiting, sleeplessness, forgetfulness… more depression and anxiety. I decided to fight back at who I was and committed to a total surrender to LSD. I let the drugs fight it out in my brain. I did not care who won. I experienced two failed suicide attempts, a brief time spent in an adolescent psych ward; and then graduated to the adult ward at 19 years old. I can still recall the wave of relief when I heard (the possibly apocryphal tale) that Richard Brautigan kept a copy of Emily Dickinson’s poems at his bedside when he was spending his own stint in a mental institution. Hearing this made me feel less alone. I vowed that if I was locked up again I would have the books of both authors somehow stitched inside my straightjacket. I aimed my blame at God and those other gods of the brain: psychiatry. Over the years as I sunk deeper and deeper (the only direction, really) into active drug addiction, my resentments for all religions and all forms of psychiatry/psychology only simmered and festered. So I sought and ultimately endured a 20+ year smoke break and staring contest with myself, the life of a using addict; the end result a terror filled junky, an exhausting, self-fulfilling prophecy.

Fast forward the tape 23 years to 2009. I was now a 14 year old boy turned into a 37 year old man, totally clean of all drugs for almost two years. After getting clean, some people kept strongly suggesting that I would need some kind of higher power to get through each day clean. I realized I had to obsess over something so I aimed my inner agitation towards spirituality. I had nothing to lose; I couldn’t sleep, so I read about my enemy. In the way that I had chased heroin, I began poring over texts of various wisdom traditions, finding the most comfort in esoteric and arcane teachings. Some of this was probably a holdover of trying to be “terminally cool” yet it soon became a gradual awakening that my belief could be personalized, customized, streamlined and hot-rodded to my liking. I could say “God” and “Fuck” in the same sentence – repeatedly – and would not be hit by lightning. The recurring refrain of all of this mixed bag of beliefs was the practice of meditation. So I began sitting for five minutes at a time, then ten minutes, twenty minutes, an hour that seemed like it would never end. I felt like a fool. My mind attacked me with brute force. But I continued to meditate. My life immediately changed for the better in indescribable ways. I started gradually meeting other people that shared my own sketchy sense of God, many with a similar experience born as much from desperation than rapture. Through the serpentine path of circumstance, I eventually met my de facto spiritual advisor in the form of a guy named Tom Catton. Even though he lived in Hawaii, he agreed to help me and his first question to me was this: “Do you meditate?”

After this introduction to a shaky sense of spirit, I wound up 8,000 feet above sea level at Estes Park, Colorado at a Zen Buddhist Retreat hosted by the sangha of Thich Nhat Hanh. I booked my ticket for the sole reason of deepening my burgeoning practice of meditation. I met Tom and his wife Bea there, both veterans of this kind of thing, having already spent decades investigating various retreats and spiritual traditions spanning the globe. They walked the walk. At the retreat, I was also surrounded by a thousand other people of every possible color and creed, sitting in silent meditation, attempting to continually come back to the breath and the present moment. Ironically, Thich Nhat Hanh was not at the retreat. At first I called bullshit on this, thinking he had pulled a Sly Stone/George Jones on us enlightenment junkies. But he was in fact ill and one of the nuns read a letter from the venerable master, expressing both his apologies and assurances that the dozens of monks and nuns on hand were more than able to guide us.

Over the course of the week, and after overhearing conversations in passing, I began to notice that I was in fact alarmingly outnumbered by many Psychologists/Psychiatrists. So I found myself trapped 8,010 feet up in the Rockies (oddly enough, 60 miles from the Naropa School) at a Religious retreat surrounded by a veritable cabal of Shrinks.

In a moment when I could feel the galaxy shift, God literally lifted these resentments from me. Later that night, I found myself quietly crying as I sat on my meditation bench during a guided session in the great hall filled with others. I realized that grace and transformation can sometimes follow forgiveness. God can be momentary and change me in that moment. I went outside and looked up at the sky and it seemed as if the clouds were a ring of eyes looking down at me, the light and shadow resembled wispy eyelashes, all approving, and forever loving me. I believe I was healed at that moment of a needless prejudice, another barrier that had been keeping me apart from people. In that very instant, I was directly transformed through meditation.

During those five days, I ultimately received the Five Mindfulness Trainings through the Thich Nhat Hanh tradition, which I ultimately forgot and blew off. I was also given the name “Dharma Opening of the Heart” which I also shook off like a new age nickname.

But the experience of that first retreat undoubtedly changed me. I became a meditation junkie. A lifelong love of William Blake was reborn and Blake in turn led to Austin Osman Spare, which in turn led to me meditating on a Sigil, a magical symbol of my own design. My identification with Gnosticism led to Hermeticism, then a deeper understanding of Carl Jung and the ever-radical Annie Besant and G.R.S. Mead. I kept wandering. I sat at the feet of a guru espousing the way of the Brahma Kumaris; I left with little more than a few pamphlets as souvenirs, printed in Sanskrit I still cannot decipher. I spent a weeklong satsang at the Jainist-derived lineage of Dada Bhagwan; the culmination of that experience led to a ceremony called a Gnan Vidhi, an hour long experience of chanting which promised to clear away all karma. During the ceremony, I had the odd experience of all of these “meditation memories” rising through me. Yet I can also remember that night walking out to my car in the parking lot and thinking with certainty, “that guru is full of shit.” I sat restless in a few church services, certain that inevitable demons were going to blast out of my skull. There are over 40,000 different denominations of Christianity; with my track record, I am bound to pick the one that leads to death by strychnine poisoning. I was abruptly blown off by a Vedanta center, ostensibly after revealing to the head Swami that “getting off of drugs” is what had led me to the Brahman. The Sant Mat people never returned my calls. Ten days were spent deep in the Georgia woods, learning the practice of Vipassana meditation as taught by S.N. Goenka, a retreat that some consider the ultimate boot camp of mindfulness; 12 hours each day are spent meditating and the entire event is held in noble silence – no one speaks for the duration of the event. I had an indescribably and even purifying experience while there, but also felt that Goenka, while being an undoubtedly superb teacher of the dharma, had a touch of the huckster in him as well. “This method is a completely non-sectarian technique,” he assured us in nightly video discourses; as he went on to badmouth every other religion. Through another bizarre turn of events, film director David Lynch wound up paying for my Transcendental Meditation training, but celebrity encounter aside, TM was not the fit for me. While TM boasts of many adherents, in my opinion their pricy “pay-to-play” approach to teaching a very basic method of meditation seemed more like Amway than liberation. I ultimately returned to the practice of Vipassana, which I still adhere to as my main vehicle of inner realizations. Twenty minutes a day, returning to the breath, letting the thoughts and body sensations rise and fall; easier said than done.

I discovered a weird logic and guidance in all of this and gathered something from all of these and other attempts. In the same way that all conspiracy theories seem tied to a linked hierarchy of paranoia, it seemed as if all of these explorations of different belief systems seemed to dovetail together into the same ultimate experience, one of positive change. But I always ventured in with a healthy dose of discernment, open-mindedness and downright skepticism. A dear friend of mine, a resolute secular humanist, once pointed out that I “keep seeing sunflowers because you are looking everywhere for sunflowers.” And he is absolutely correct. But what can I do when I keep stumbling into all of these gardens? I do believe that divine intervention is based as much on the willingness to receive as anything else. But after all of this seeking, sitting and praying I still feel like I am about as religious as a fistfight at a baptism.

I also realized that nearly all of these traditions suffered from the inevitable reality of the cult of personality. I have watched two meditators argue and snicker over which teacher had the real goods on mindfulness. I’ve cringed as I listened to people talk glassy-eyed about how wonderful their guru/preacher/whatever truly is; I once participated in a discussion group following a Buddhist teaching and sat uncomfortably as a woman sobbed over the perfection of her guru. It was the same kind of manic, scattered emotion I had once witnessed in the common area of a psych ward.

Having said all of this, I honestly believe that I am drawn to this surprising attraction to spirituality simply because of this: I am afraid, I am broken and I need help and assistance from something greater than me. And I truly want to be a better person. I realized I can’t do this alone. “God enters through the wound,” said Carl Jung and I am a wounded fucking person. I have literally risen from prayer and been flooded with thoughts of violence that horrify me. In the last year alone, I have lashed out at certain people in ways that I can only hope might one day be amended. But I am healing and I am getting better.

What is most remarkable to me is that I asked for none of this. It just seemed to show up in my life. I have certainly wondered if I parlayed a nervous breakdown brought on by opiate withdrawal into a mystical experience, but fuck – it works. It still works! And I think I have become a better person from the entire experience.

I wrote this piece with some apprehensiveness since spirituality and God are, at best, a highly personal thing. But something happened to me. I am simply trying to document and convey what has occurred in my life and remains as an ongoing, shape-shifting presence. And I also must acknowledge the people closest to me who tolerate my beliefs and blathering on about God, most of who are in fact agnostics or atheists. They have taught me as much about compassion, a way to live and unconditional love as any starry-eyed, convinced believer.

It really all comes down to this: when I was a child I was terrified of learning how to ride a bike and I watched other children ride their bikes, at times out of jealous suspicion.

Now I am riding the bike.

I post the following quote quite a bit on Facebook because I identify with it very much and think Selby was another person who was somehow transformed by something as well. I also think that he is, for lack of a better word, one of the most directly spiritual writers this country has ever produced:

“Because of what has happened in my life, I’ve discovered something within me. I guess some people call it God. I don’t like to use that word too much because it’s a tough word, people misunderstand it. What I’ve discovered has got nothing to do with church or religion…a power of infinite and unconditional love that has created and maintains the Universe, has revealed itself to me from within…and I attempt to live according to the principles this power lays down” – Hubert Selby, Jr. (1928-2004)

Blinded by the Light: morning after 10 day Vipassana retreat in Jesup, Georgia. ‎Sunday, ‎October ‎28, ‎2012, ‏‎6:50 a.m.

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Three artists champion the power of expression with Hero or Non-Hero?

“Expression Necessary to Evolution”

Hardship, grief and loss are universal experiences; inevitable moments of being that can be as heartbreaking and painful as they are life-altering and even transformative. Yet like their positive counterparts, such as joy, love and success, these times of change can redefine us and even make us stronger. Perhaps the people we consider heroic are in a sense those who can accept these unavoidable highs and lows of life with equanimity, practicing an almost uncanny acceptance of both the shadows and light that color our existence. These same heroes become an example to others and their epitaphs are ultimately inscribed on the lives that they touch.

In the past fifty years, the poet and meditation teacher Stephen Levine has collaborated with people as disparate as spiritual guru Ram Dass, beat author Alexander Trocchi and even hospice visionary Elisabeth Kübler-Ross. In his book, “Meetings at the Edge,” Levine writes eloquently of a kind of humble heroism that defies routine categorization, of everyday heroes too busy with living in the here and now to be concerned about the limelight of mythology.

“Growth is measured by the gentleness and awareness with which we once again pick ourselves up, the lightness with which we dust ourselves off, the openness with which we continue and take the next unknown step, beyond our edge, beyond our holding, into the remarkable mystery of being.”

What Levine describes can be layered onto the realm of visual arts and the artist. It could surely be argued that engaging art champions these same concepts of growth, awareness, openness, the unknown and the beyond, and Levine’s “remarkable mystery of being”; the artist becomes the hero when they create works that point us in the direction of these very notions.

In the upcoming show Hero or Non-Hero?, artists Margete Griffin, Tim Hartman and George Cornwell explore similar ideas of heroic identity, perceptions of morality and even the possible evolution of one’s character. After settling through the shared experience of losing loved ones, Griffin and Hartman began culling through boxes of family keepsakes. Photographs, journals, clippings and memories of the past were recycled, rearranged and then rendered into a set of serigraphs expertly printed by Cornwell. The pieces feature animals, phrases and emblem motifs with some including the Hero or Non-Hero? graphic in place as a kind of branding. And while the initial inspiration of the series was one of loss, as Griffin and Hartman explain below, the end result was one of hope, humor and creative gains.

The reception for Hero or Non-Hero? is being held on Friday, June 28 from 7-10 p.m. at MetaCusp Studios, located at 2650 Rosselle Street in Riverside, across from Bold City Brewery and CoRK Studios. The event also features refreshments and live music by Nathan Smith. Following the show, prints from the series will be available for purchase directly from Griffin through her site.

I interviewed Griffin, Hartman and Cornwell via e-mail. What follows is a transcription of their responses.

Margete Griffin

“Oh Hell”

Starehouse: What does the title Hero or Non-Hero? mean?

Margete Griffin: It means we should look deeper before deciding what is good or bad. Good acts and ideas can be found in some very unlikely places. It’s not only the finest institutions that have the answers. It may or may not be in the media … instead it may be on a poster you’ve overlooked on the street, or from the mouth of a child. The symbolism of the barking dog means perhaps it’s not the loudest voice that is right, although the freedom of speech allows him the right to bark it from the tallest building. Loud or quiet, big or small doesn’t equal right or wrong. Look deeper for the agendas or you may be surprised by the eventual outcome. It’s funny where that statement was found. It was scribbled on a crumpled old paper at the bottom of a box of Tim’s old school stuff that his dad had saved. We almost threw it out without reading what it said. I had no idea how I would use it at the time, but I saved it.

S: When did you begin the actual creation of these pieces?

M.G: About a year ago, after returning from an art adventure in NYC and a fresh perspective. Before that, it was stirring in my mind, and I had all the pieces … It took being away to decide on the exact statements I wanted to make with them. From the beginning, I had decided to use found elements with new illustration to convey things I wanted to say, using screen prints as the medium. After a much needed time away, it fell together. The editing of mountains of material into art that says something was the most time consuming part of the process. With screen printed art, there are many steps, all done in layers. I could think about the message as I built the layers and chose the elements that illustrated the point. Then I decided on a freshly painted sun ray pattern to tie them together visually as a series and mark the time period for me personally. The pattern signifies a new day.

S: How many pieces total do you think will be featured in the show?

M.G: With screen printing, you work in editions. Each paper is hand printed and handled by the artist and the printer for each separate color that is laid down by hand one, color at a time. The colors are custom mixed on the spot and squeegeed through a screen that allows the ink to flow through exposed areas that contain the art. Each individual print is considered original art for that reason. Being a handmade process they will have slight variances. They have a look and feel that can’t be achieved by an automated method. So, I’d say exactly 220 original handmade pieces. They are however, contained in seven main editions and assorted smaller pieces. The five largest prints are numbered limited editions, meaning those will never be printed again. Every single piece is signed original art. George Cornwell and I worked as a team, and enjoyed the printing collaboration on this long project. His participation ensured that each piece was to the highest standard. We all spent quite a lot of “shop time” in the making of the prints.

S: Your press statement explains that the series “was inspired and instigated by a common turning point … the loss of a loved one.” In a previous e-mail, you had explained that the impetus behind this show was actually put in place after cleaning out the home of your late grandparents. How did that experience directly inspire Hero or Non-Hero?

M.G: The end result is not at all about people who have passed … I’ve used it to say my own statements that any viewer could relate to. My work always seems to be a reflection of a time that I am living … in the present. After my grandmother, and then my parents passed within a few years of each other, it was my task to decide what to do with their belongings. My grandparent’s home of many years in Georgia was an interesting time capsule of our life as a family. The house sold rather quickly and I didn’t have time to carefully sift through everything, so I packed it up and brought it home with me. Suddenly, I realized that what I intended to finally be doing with my time again, was art. There I sat with 150 years of saved family junk and treasures. I had to go through things and sort it out, and as I did, I decided to do both as I was unpacking: using found, cool vintage stuff and making art. I think when I revisited the chapters in their lives, I had a renewed admiration for the things they had done during their lives. It made me start considering how I might be remembered one day. While I don’t think of myself as any sort of hero, I do have a talent and the drive to express messages through art. While there may be a story behind the things I chose to use, the viewer should be able to find some common experience of their own that crosses their mind. I deliberately left them open to interpretation. The pieces actually have lots of humor and aren’t at all about dead people. That’s one reason I borrowed some pieces from Tim’s family things too…and included new illustration … and some of my son’s sketches are in there too. I didn’t want it to seem in any way like it’s memorializing any particular people, just slices of life. I did include a code emblem of who contributed to the piece, whether living or dead.

S: The images of the work that you sent me seems composed of signifiers such as animals, books and scrolls, kings and queens from a deck of playing cards, etc… to me they seem like they are as much archetypes as they are simple graphic symbols. I guess I am wondering why you chose these certain images and what are they meant to convey.

M.G: The animals reflect how people act. By using them instead, like barking dogs, for example, or a horse galloping headlong in the wrong direction … well, we probably all know people who do those things. The fallen King and statuesque Queen also are symbols of mere common people who act as if they are queens or kings. My grandmother was a Queen … actually, a Life Master Bridge Tournament Player and that is the origin; from her very old card rule manuals. The flying books, posters and records have a pretty direct meaning in the Hero or Non- Hero? image … How much influence does a song, a book, or art have upon us in our decisions of what is good or bad? Should we only listen to certain kinds of songs, appreciate art only in museums, (the Met is there, too) or blindly believe every word in a book? I say look deeper … Heroes can be found in unlikely places if viewed with an open mind … and is it a hero at all, that might dictate how we should think?

S: Pieces such as Enlightened on a Serious Note and Oh Hell also feature the prominent use of text in the composition. Could you explain your decision to add these phrases into some of the pieces?

M.G: Both of those are taken directly from handwritten notes. In the first, Enlightened on a Serious Note, the copy reads: “Note: Don’t Take Life So Serious”…with birds and a cat way in the background. The words are from a tiny old love note by Tim in his youth. The Bird, again a symbol of a high flying goals of people not even noticing the danger of the soft, innocent-seeming pussy cat coming from behind. Not noticing the seriousness can be suddenly enlightening in the real world. The bird is from Swift Manufacturing, a textile mill my grandfather worked in for 50 years. They went out of business due to outsourcing fabric manufacturing cheaper overseas. The workers never saw that danger coming either, as many of us need to look at some things more seriously. It could apply to almost anyone’s personal story though. In Oh Hell, that is a line directly from my grandmother’s hilarious college diary in the 1920’s. The piece is open to interpretation … we have all had those moments.

S: You had told me that have had a long 35 year career in commercial art. I also know that you are very involved in the local art community. Could you give me a background sketch of your own beginnings as an artist?

M.G: Well, I left home at 17 and had to make a living. Some of my first jobs in the field were in picture framing and illustrating yellow page ads for the phone book. I worked my way through night school college. In both of those jobs I met friends I still have today, both in the fine arts with framing and commercial art in advertising. In fact, my favorite class in college was printmaking! I have several friends from that period coming to my show. After all these years, still friends.

S: You have worked in a variety of media including illustration, graphic design, printing and painting, as well as woodworking. You also have experience as a gallery manager and have worked at the Cummer Museum of Art and Gardens. I’m curious about your journey that led you through such a rich exploration of the arts. Was there a kind of “chain reaction” effect that helped push you further into these various pursuits?

M.G: I was hungry! I just always worked hard. I have met many good people on the journey and they know I give more than 100% to anything I do. Most of that time I have been self employed as a freelance artist, so you learn to do whatever the job calls for. In the eighties, I was a part owner of a T Shirt screen printing company called Panda International where our designs were sold worldwide. That’s where my expertise in designing art for screen printing was developed. My seven years at the Cummer was during the time I was looking after my parents in their last years, and teaching homeschool with my son. Deadline driven commercial art was not feasible with others depending on me for help. I worked in the museum store and really loved the position. It gave me the opportunity to meet every interesting person who walked through the door and learned so much from the exhibits and the permanent collection. I sold my paintings there as well. I still have many good friends from my years there too, both customers and staff.

S: You explained to me that you lost “my grandmother, father and mother in recent years … but took time to care for all them through hospice and raise my family so I have been lying low for many years.” Do you feel comfortable describing your personal hospice experience and how it affected not only your art, but your life?

M.G: It was one of the most meaningful experiences of my life. It was not something I had planned to do, but my help was needed and so I just did it. At the time I was having a really strong career, but there simply weren’t enough hours in the day. I didn’t really want to stop with the great clients I had, but that is a business that is deadline driven, and so I couldn’t do both. Looking back, it was the right decision as my life is richer for having spent the time with my family; I had been working hard for decades.

S: Tim Hartman, who helped add elements to these pieces as well, also lost his father while you were dealing with your own loss; by your own admission that shared grief seemingly helped forge your friendship with Tim and brought him into the creation of this series. Could you elaborate on both your friendship with Tim and what he brought to the works?

M.G: It’s really kind of silly…we met on Facebook, and he was going through moving his mom here from Indiana after his dad passed. Having just gone through all that, I couldn’t imagine how this young guy was going to juggle that task! I’m not so sure it was really the grief; we just like to go have fun! We became fast friends as he told me about his father and many stories of his years as a skateboarder. That’s a world I’m familiar with as it’s my son’s passion too. Tim toured and was really good. He had a career in that field, some years ago. His art is reminiscent of the zines they sent back and forth. It’s all in the attitude. It brought a funny juxtaposition into the mix. We both have families to tend to so it’s nice to get away with a friend. Right in the middle of the project, George lost his mom as well … so maybe the stars just aligned for this time in a project shared.

S: Your artist statement describes how you strive for commonality and connection with others through your work and encourage others to “seek art that shifts them to a better feeling…” through hardships. It seems like your work is one of deliberate affirmation, of optimism and hope. Do you feel like the experience of working on Hero or Non-Hero? has fortified those principles in your own life?

M.G.: Absolutely! 100%. I can’t leave without special mention of thanks to Jeff Whipple and Liz Gibson, loaning their studio for the show… Donnie Dusinberre and Chad for the beautiful framing, Rob DePiazza for some decals … of course George and Tim, and my family Rick and Ben for putting up with my whims.

Tim Hartman

“Enlightened on a Serious Note”

Starehouse: Margete explained that both your personal and collaborative relationship was forged in part by the shared loss of loved ones. Would you feel comfortable in describing how your own grief and loss inspired your involvement in Hero or Non-Hero?

Tim Hartman: I took it pretty hard, the unexpected death of my father, while also watching my marriage fall apart. After some time had passed where I didn’t focus on art or anything except working as a chef, I got a call from my mother in Indiana, wanting a fresh start closer to me. I went and packed her up and moved her here to Riverside a few blocks from where I live. I had been worried how she would cope with the loss of her partner of 48 years. With her she brought three big plastic tubs of vintage stuff my dad had collected through his life. It took quite some time to actually open them, but when Margete seemed interested in hearing the stories and talked of a project using her own found elements, we went through them one by one. It brought back lots of memories of my dad and grandmother’s early encouragement and I was surprised by the old art, photos and papers he saved. It made me smile more than sob.

S: Margete also explained that you directly brought some key elements into the pieces. What were some of the ideas that you contributed to this series?

T.H.: My dad built midget race cars for competition and we found the funniest rule book that some graphics were used from. Margete’s son builds fast cars too, so we laughed at how some of the crazy rules in those books could be used in the print Rule 47. Check Direction First. A sketch I drew while waiting for my missing friends in front of the Met in NYC was used in the print Hero or Non-Hero? That one was new from a trip Margete and I took last summer to New York. My dad had saved some of the old zines and papers from my teenage years and a line from an old love note I wrote a long time ago was blown up big to make a statement in Enlightened on a Serious Note. Margete cut a heart out that was part of an old drawing and blew it up to go in the emblem she designed. I had no idea what she was going to do with it but little things became big, old things became new. I had been feeling like my unrefined style wasn’t going to be appreciated when Margete came yelling at me, “I love that!” and she wanted to use some of my stuff. It gave me a new spark I hadn’t had in years and I hope that reflects in what she did.

S: She also described you as having an “interesting background.” I know that you actively support the local art scene. What is some of your own personal story that brought you to art?

T.H.: In the beginning when I was little, my grandmother bought me art supplies and encouraged me to make stuff. When I was about ten, I found a skateboard and I was introduced to another world of expression, and a raw form of art I loved. When finishing high school I passed up a scholarship to go to art school to travel and skateboard. After tearing my ACL, my art became a more and more important focus. After laying low through some uncertain times, I am working on new things. In recent years, I have the chance to be creative with food as a Chef for Biscottis. I’m getting back to painting some and enjoy doing my art again.

S: Did you feel a sense of healing of your own grief and loss after helping collaborate on this show?

T.H.: A sense of healing? More so a feeling of rejuvenation! After seeing all the things my father saved of my art and my career he followed with news clippings, I realized he only wanted me to find what made me happy.

George Cornwell

Stacked pieces from “Hero or Non-Hero?”

Starehouse: I know that in the past you have created prints for artists such as Jim Draper, Shaun Thurston and Dennis Campay. Margete Griffin credits you with being a crucial part in the creation of “Hero or Non-Hero?” What is your philosophy and artistic approach in working with individual artists?

George Cornwell: My philosophy, approach with the artist is try and give them what they are looking for and provide them with the options that I can offer. This pretty much goes hand in hand with my own creative vision where I work with an open mind to understand what the artist wants to happen in his print.

This approach is completely different than my 17 year experience in commercial fine art printing in NYC. Here, the artist was completely removed from the process with the printers working solely with publishers. We were, for the most part, reproducing exact copies of art pieces, 99% of the time paintings, for the sole purpose of consumer sales. The theme was pretty much,” tell me what you want and I’ll tell you what I can give you”. As sterile as that sounds, (and it is) I was trained within the strict discipline of exact registration, exact color matching, and quick time production with many editions running over 1000 prints.

S: How much are the artists you work with directly involved in your personal process? I guess I am curious about how you navigate or even compromise your own creative vision with their direct demands, suggestions and input?

G.C.: Working directly with the artist today becomes a MUCH more pleasurable experience. The main appeal of the process is the artist individual participation. Most of the artists do their own color separations, approve the colors themselves and oversee the registration of the prints. In the case of Dennis Campay, I did the separations and mixed Dennis’s colors. Dennis thoroughly researched the screen printing medium and thought it ideal for his work. He trusted in me the process, which allowed him to concentrate on his painting. Nonetheless, it’s still a learning process that I’m going through in working directly, hand in hand, with the artist.

S: What led you to originally pursue screen printing? I know that you are a longtime veteran and participant of the local punk rock community. Did punk rock lead you into visual art?

G.C.: I originally moved to NYC to form a punk band with Noli in 1987. I applied for a job reclaiming screens in Manhattan for Chromacomp, the leader of fine art screen printing in the city. I was hired because I spoke English, so I was told. So I worked the days learning the medium of fine art printing and spent the nights performing, practicing, and writing in a punk band with Noli. I was fortunate that, for the most part, I moved forward in both undertakings to where I am today.

S: Are you as equally adept and enthusiastic about other fine art printing processes?

G.C.: My specialty is solely in screen printing. I have an interest in paper embossing which I’d like to use in my fine art, but I’m not too concerned in the other mediums. It’s up to the artist to choose the medium, mediums for their pieces. Staci Bu Shea has worked with screen printing and letter press to deliver some great pieces. I’m more interested in how to use screen printing to achieve the unique character that many of the other mediums offer. Aquatint is a medium I’m looking to duplicate and eliminate the toxicity that it involves. That being said, I definitely look forward to working with other masters of the fine art printing mediums! Vin Dolan, Barry Wilson and Patrick Miko, among others.

S: How was your experience in working with Margete and Tim? Were there any technical or compositional problems that you encountered during the creation of this series?

G.C.: Margete and Tim were great to work with. Margete’s experience in graphic art was a pleasure in that she knew what she wanted and was pretty adept in color herself. Tim was very open-minded and helped in keeping things simple and has the long shoulders of an accomplished print racker; taking the prints from the table and placing them in drying racks.

The only real compromise, or problems, was in dealing with the deckles along the edges of the fine art paper the Margete personally chose. But Margete was quick to reassure me to not be so delicate and exacting on whatever registration questions I had in mind. And she was right.

S: And I have to ask in an unrelated topic: how has the response been to the first “No Vaccine” gigs (the new “artist super group” of sorts that features Noli Novak on vocals, Cornwell on guitar, Clay Doran on bass and Jack Twachtman on drums)? Any plans on recording and releasing an album?

G.C.: The No Vaccine shows were so much fun and the response has been great. We are looking forward to starting it up again this fall. If Clay and Jack are up for it, Noli and I would look forward to recording all the material over time as we possess all rights to the catalog of songs.

Margete Griffin inspects prints for the “Hero or Non-Hero?” series.

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Donny Miller creates provocative text-fueled imagery for the 21^st century

Donny Miller has a message for you. In fact, for the past two decades the L.A.-based artist has been creating thought-provoking images that combine clip art, self-branding and even pictures of the cosmos with messages that run the gamut from sardonic observations, to social commentary and even encouraging affirmations. In one Miller piece, a still life image of wine, cheese and fruit acknowledges, The hardest thing to do in art is something original. In another, a man and woman reveling in a cloud of confetti and party balloons are sprawled into over-sized champagne glasses, crowned with the header, Enjoy ignorance. A dark-haired woman adjusts her hair, seemingly deep in thought: I’m making new memories because I don’t like the old ones.  

While in his early teens, the now 39-year-old Miller deepened his artistic awakening by surrendering to the SoCal skateboarding scene. Miller eventually landed a commercial gig as art director for “Skateboarder Magazine,” while simultaneously honing his craft at creating his fine art creations. Miller is highly skilled at toggling concepts like brand-identification and the juxtaposition of text and images, essentially turning the tools (and weapons) of mass media back on themselves. Miller’s work has been featured in numerous national and international galleries, while he has also been hired on by companies as diverse as Vans shoes, X-Large, Men’s Health Magazine, American Apparel and Rockstar Games. In retrospect, it could be argued that the entire Meme phenomenon was propelled forward in part by Miller’s subversive media blitz and almost-anonymous influence on contemporary graphic design. Yet while Meme Celebrity “Grumpy Cat” now has both an agent and apparent movie deal, Miller continues to quietly generate radical art, seemingly indifferent to the wheel of hype that seems to spin much of the relentless, social media-based imagery.

While Miller considers himself first and foremost a writer/artist, along with his prints he has also created sculptures and engaged in some savvy street art as well, some of which Miller captured on video. In the film “Gas Signs – Truth in Advertising,” Miller plasters a gas station wall with a sign that offers: “We’re proud to bring America’s economy to its knees,” signed with the Shell emblem. “We had record profits and still get huge tax breaks” boasts another strategically placed at a 76 gas station; a company whose actual slogan explains that, “We’re on the driver’s side.” In 2007, on the day before the Academy Awards, Miller plastered a sign on a building on Rodeo Drive that reads. “Coming Soon! Only 99¢!” The film “99 Cents only or What middle class?” features Miller dressed in workers clothes, carrying a ladder and posting his advertisement as a few baffled, Beverly Hills shoppers are seen doing a double-take at this upcoming sale.

Now Northeast Florida art lovers can investigate Miller’s unique vision with his upcoming show at space:eight, continuing the gallery’s current season that has already presented exhibits by Anthony Ausgang, Sarah Emerson and local painter Chip Southworth. While STAREHOUSE tries to be a mere impartial servant to the arts, the Miller show is surely one not to be missed.

The opening reception for Donny Miller’s Ignorance is a Choice is held from 5-11 p.m. on Friday, Aug. 2^nd at space:eight gallery, 224 W. King St. in St. Augustine. The reception will feature a DJ spinning music and refreshments. The contact number for the gallery is 904-829-2838.

According to the space:eight press release, Miller will not be attending the reception since he “will be out of country conducting migratory animal field studies in the Okavango Delta, Botswana.”

Prior to this alleged exotic expedition, Miller agreed to answer a few questions about his upcoming show and work via e-mail. What follows is a transcription of that interview.

Starehouse: How many pieces do you think will be featured in the upcoming show at space:eight? What kind of printing process do you use?

Donny Miller: 22 pieces; Giclée on Coventry Rag paper.

S: What is the average size of the prints for this show?

D.M.: 22” x 23” signed.

S: In a previous e-mail, you had mentioned a skateboarding company; I recently read in an earlier interview that you did with Film International where you acknowledged that you were into skateboarding when you were a kid. And I have also read that had worked as the art director for “Skateboarder Magazine.” Skateboarding is such an inherently visually charged scene – when you were younger, did that world specifically kind of open up your mind to creating your own art?

D.M.: Skateboarding is the seed of everything I’ve done. I did art anyway before I skated.  I started skating when I was really young. I had a fiberglass Hang Ten board; I still have it. It was my brother’s. So, when I was young, there were so many great companies – a great time for skateboarding.

S: In that same e-mail, you had described how you are trying to “transition to pieces with more meaning” and “trying to breakdown the human condition in four words or less…”  Could you elaborate on what that “meaning” might be – I guess I am wondering if there is some destination, source or endpoint you are trying to reach?

D.M.: I like taking complex things and making them simple. Condensed.

S: And why are you now attempting to set a kind of self-enforced word count limit on text and phrasing in the work?

D.M.: Part of it has to do with the aesthetic of the piece. Sometimes it just looks right.  It’s also a challenge to make meaning out of four words or so. It’s like a street sign:

SLOW
ROAD
WORK
AHEAD

Almost anyone with a limited command of the English language can understand that.

S: If you could “breakdown the human condition in four words or less” at this very moment,what would those words be?

D.M.:

FUCK
IF
I
KNOW.

 I’M
JUST
KIDDING,
MAN.

MAN
ADAPTS
TO HIS
MISERY.

That’s five words, but again, it looks right.

S: When I look at some of your works from the Fine Art (good for walls) series, particularly in pieces such as The next time you feel really good, just keep feeling that way the rest of your life or All tragedies become romantic memories, I perceive those as positive or even hopeful statements; but they could also be read as sarcastic commentaries on feelings, emotions and memory. In some of your pieces, do you deliberately leave the message ambiguous or play with dualities?

D.M.: Yes, I don’t want to tell anyone how to feel about something. When I look at a many of those pieces I think of a little kid writing them. I made a lot of them over 10 years ago. When I think about what I was into then, what my life was like, it’s primitive. They’re cool, they’re part of me.

S: Or am I quite possibly just a sappy person who is looking for some positive, uplifting message in your work?

D.M.: I think deep down we all are. I know I am. Life is better when you’re positive and this is coming from someone who used to be super negative and hung up on stupid shit. It’s better to grow. Otherwise, people turn out like overgrown teenagers.

S: You had also told me that “really I’m a writer who can draw, paint and make conceptual works.” Who are a few of your favorite past and present writers that inspire you?

D.M.: Gabriel Garcia Marquez, John Kennedy Toole, Albert Lincoln Camus, etc…  I only like writers with middle names.  William Shitbucket Faulkner. A lot of people don’t know William’s family started the toilet industry.  William Carlos Williams.  I just added him, but I never read any of his works.  Eakert (sic) Epilepsy Tolle is great.  Joyce Carol Oates.  She’s not my favorite, but she has a floating eye and a middle name. There are a lot of other ones. Antonio Carlos Jobim.

S: Did your attempts at writing precede your interest in visual art?

D.M.: They happened at the exact same time.  I had a paint brush in one hand and a pen in the other.

S: In the process of creating a piece do you begin with a “text”-based idea or a visual image?

D.M.: Usually text first.

S: Considering that you utilize all of the above abilities – drawing, painting and writing – as well as street and video art, when you initially began creating art, did you ever struggle with trying to find a way to hone all of those disciplines?

D.M.: When I very first began, I didn’t know what I wanted exactly.  Like when I was 19, I was pretty sure I wanted to be a painter, then a writer, but I didn’t have the focus and I let girls get in the way of my life. They were a waste of time. If you’re reading this and there’s a girl or boy in your life who doesn’t believe in you, DUMP THEM NOW. I wasted too much time with stupid people, but I ended up making some art from it. It was my destiny – my sufferin’ art.

S: Did you have any projects or concepts that just fell completely flat on their face?

D.M.: Totally. If any artist says that doesn’t happen, they’re lying. I just put them away and they don’t see the light of day. Just act as though nothing happened. “What? Oh, that thing?  I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Grieve privately.

S: If so, what do you think you learned from that kind of experience?

D.M.: Plan. Be graceful and don’t burn any bridges.You really don’t know who you may need later or who will come back into your life with a giant sack of money for you. Believe me, it happens.

S: While some of the pieces seem to be inherently playful or driven by social commentary, some of the Fine Art works seem like they are posing questions that are digging deeper into who we are, almost based on a form of self-inquiry: Expectations are disappointments in disguise; Maybe I like making the same mistakes over and over again?; I’m making new memories because I don’t like the old ones; A lot can change between here and here. What compelled you to make those specific pieces?

D.M.: Expectations are disappointments in disguise.
That was actually what I thought when I saw the mask, the picture, not the movie. I had had some experience with disappointment.

Maybe I like making the same mistakes over and over again?
I think I saw the sponge and thought about that, but it was something I felt I did at the time a lot. And I saw it a lot in other people. It was almost as though they enjoyed making the mistake to fill their bored lives.

I’m making new memories, because I don’t like the old ones.
Nothing specific.

A lot can change between here and here.
That actually was a play on a Captain Beefheart lyric: “I just looked at myself and from here to there, it ain’t far enough, but from here to here, it’s too short.” [lyric taken from “Hey Garland, I Dig Your Tweed Coat” from Captain Beefheart and The Magic Band’s 1982 album, “Ice Cream for Crow.”] I wish I could have met him. Then I was thinking of that in relationship to the width of a woman’s head and how much can change in that area.

S: Are these questions, statements and observations the results of any kind of disciplined and deliberate contemplation, meditation, etc…?

D.M.: Not those ones. I was just having fun. My mind kind of thinks in those phrases a lot. I do meditate a lot and some of the universe work I’ve done is a result of that.

S: I see your work as being based on a blend of everything from euphemisms, proverbs, maxims and affirmations to marketing slogans and campaigns, branding, etc… Do you think the familiarity and even bluntness of some of these messages helps trigger a more pure response from the viewer?

D.M.: I think it’s targeted. Some people have said they’re too blunt. I say to them, “Stop being such an over-sensitive pot smoker.”

S: I don’t mean in the sense that you are trying to manipulate the audience; but rather that their own comfort with sayings and slogans might keep them engaged and hopefully even provoke some kind of thoughtful experience from seeing your art.

D.M.: When I first did these, the point was making pieces that were like an advertisement:  slogan, product/model, manufacturer. That’s the formula, in a way. I was the manufacturer that used models or products with slogans to make art.

S: The Universe Series features images of the cosmos with statements that are even more direct and brief. They also seem mostly optimistic. I guess I really see your work as becoming increasingly based more on personal insight and a kind of awakening rather than what might have been formerly sardonic or political. Do you agree with that observation?

D.M.: Yes. It has more to do with me figuring out why I’m here. Why are you here? Why are you reading this? Your whole life has come to this. Why or what is the significance? I suppose you need to go to the show and see for yourself.

S: Do you feel that in your life you are becoming increasingly more of an optimist?

D.M.: After years of being on the pessimistic side, I’ve found that it’s mostly an energy thing. Some of the worst pessimists turn out to be the most positive people. Things can turn around for anyone.  Not to say, nothing bad ever happens to the person who is positive, but his reaction changes. That’s the point many people miss. That’s the point many allow themselves to become derailed from their positivity.

S: Also, are these pieces from the Universe Series intended to be direct statements and transmissions sent by the actual Universe to humanity; or does this simply touch on your above comments about creating works with “more meaning”?

D.M.: There’s something about celestial bodies that quiets the mind,  to me anyway. They’re beautiful. It’s like a sunset. No one ever looks at a sunset and thinks it’s stupid. It can’t be. It’s too much to comprehend and the beauty is overwhelming. You can make a lot of things, but you can’t make a sunset or a nebula. I want to make a nebula. I’m going to have to call NASA.

S: Along with creating your own separate body of art, you have also done commercial work for a variety of companies, including Vans, Nike, Adidas, Orbit Chewing Gum and even Nickelodeon. Other than the (hopefully) reliable payment, do you think these types of (for lack of a better wording) controlled settings have also helped you in reassessing your own approach with your personal, non-commercial work?

D.M.: These are the reason I know how to read contracts so well. So, does it make me rethink my approach to my own work? Sure. I’m able to broker high level deals with ease. The one thing that makes artists eat it a lot is that they don’t know anything about the legal side of what it is they’re doing. But if you understand these things, you’ll be good. Here’s a freebie: If you ever come across “derivative works” take all of that language out.

S: Have there been any notable (if you feel comfortable naming them) commercial gigs you have turned down since they seemed like too much of a compromise or made you feel too uncomfortable, greasy and prostituted in dealing with the company?

D.M.: There are so many scumbags out there, but I wouldn’t name them, because I wouldn’t give them any association with me whatsoever.

S: You have created fine art prints, street art, commercial art, video work, sculpture, installations and even had a book published with 2006’s “Beautiful People with Beautiful Feelings.” Is there some other medium or creative realm that you feel like you haven’t explored that might be beneficial to where your art is heading next?

D.M.: Mmmm…  I have a few things I’m doing.

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Jacksonville University now offers MFA in Visual Arts program

 Northeast Florida’s current spate of artistic activity is surely due in no small part to the art and design programs offered at local colleges and universities. The Art Institute, Flagler College, Florida State College at Jacksonville, Jacksonville University and the University of North Florida all offer programs geared towards students seeking an education and guidance in creative careers in a variety of disciplines and media. These same schools certainly benefit by featuring faculty members and instructors that are as serious about their respective artistic disciplines as they are in sharing their experience and wisdom with their students.

Jacksonville University (JU) is now stepping up their game with the implementation of a Masters of Fine Arts in Visual Arts degree, the first of its kind ever offered by a local college.

The JU website offers the following information in explaining The College of Fine Art’s MFA in Visual Arts directive and overview:

“The MFA at JU nurtures the development of rigorous and refined relationships between three aspects of creative production:
stimulus, practice, and analysis.

The MFA degree is a 2 year low-residency program emphasizing conceptual and the creative process of generating new works that are grounded in both classical and contemporary art genres. Each year the program starts with a 6-week Summer Intensive, on the campus of Jacksonville University. This is followed by two non-resident semesters using a combination of distance study with JU Faculty and mentors who work one-on-one with each student to expand their project-based work. Plus an additional one-week mini-residency on campus to work with undergraduate students setting their creative work and developing pedagogical approaches.

This MFA is particularly geared toward artists in transition and expects that applicants should have professional experience in the field prior to application.”

The instructors in the MFA program are the Dean of the College of Fine Arts, Bill Hill (who is teaching the course, “Low Residency MFA in Visual Arts”), Visiting Professor of Art, Tiffany Leach, (who is teaching the course “Process Investigation 1”), Assistant Professor of Art, Lily Kuonen (teaching “Contemporary Practices”), and Assistant Professor of Computer Animation, Eric Kunzendorf (teaching “Intermedia 1″). The school’s Assistant Professor of Dance, Cari Coble, is the Director of the Graduate Program.

Since the summer term began on June 24, the students have already had the opportunity to learn from visiting artists Ray Yeager, Anthony Fontana, Jaime Griffiths, and Alan Sonfist. The summer term ends on Aug. 2; the program resumes during the fall term on Aug. 26.

The first ten accepted candidates for the inaugural MFA program are Amber L. Bailey, Chris Dent, Mico A. Fuentes, Alex Gotay, Joi Hosker, Dorian Jordan, Garrett Peaks, Valerie Place, Matthew Swaim, and Zach Taylor.

What follows is a transcription of interviews with three of the faculty members and four of the students.

THE FACULTY

Bill Hill

Starehouse: How long have you been the Dean of the College of Fine Arts at Jacksonville University?

Bill Hill: Seven years.

S: When did Jacksonville University originally create and implement their College of Fine Arts program?

B.H.: 52 years ago in 1961.

S: Will the MFA be offered for the College of Fine Arts in all three of its divisions: the Division of Visual Arts, the Division of Music, and the Division of Theatre and Dance?

B.H.: Eventually.

S: Why did JU decide to create the MFA program now? How long has this been in the works?

B.H.: The MFA in choreography began four years ago.  It was in direct response to a need for dancers in transition, who were winding down their performance careers and looking to transition into another related field.  We developed the Low Residency format to meet their needs to be able to pursue an advanced degree and to continue their professional careers without relocating and putting their life on hold for two to three years. With the success of that program, we have sought to expand it into visual arts and are starting the Visual Arts MFA this year.

S: As an MFA graduate, what advice would you give this first group of candidates?

B.H.: The best advice I can give any student is to invest in themselves.  Higher education, as with many things, returns proportionally what is invested.  But beyond that this is their time, and they should be “selfish” to challenge themselves to grow as both an artist and a person.

Cari Coble

Starehouse: As the Director of the new MFA program, what does your job involve?

Cari Coble: If just one person believes in you, then you can do anything. My job involves believing in the success of each student and working every day to see that they have the support they need to achieve their best work. I am there from start to finish, from answering questions of potential students, to working with them through the selection and admission process, to advising them each semester, and to taking pictures at graduation. I really love it, so most of the time it doesn’t feel like a job and some of my favorite things include the guest artists series and meeting the guest artists, and seeing the student’s artwork as they are creating it.

S: How many people were involved in the actual judging and selection of the students who made it into the program? Who were they?

C.C.: A committee made of administrators in the JU graduate admissions office, visual arts faculty, and the Chair of Visual Arts look at all of the applications and make decisions as a group.

S: How scrutinous was the screening/vetting process of the students applying for MFA candidacy? How many in total applied?

C.C.: The admissions process is highly selective. For low-residency acceptance, applicants should be mature, mid-career working artists. A BFA degree or equivalent professional experience is required. The total number accepted each year is 10, and we have a working waiting list for those who do not make the first round of acceptance.

S: What were some of the key elements the committee was looking for in the applicants’ work?

C.C.: This MFA is particularly geared toward artists in transition and expects that applicants should have professional experience in the field prior to application.

S: As an MFA graduate, what advice would you give this first group of candidates?

C.C.: An MFA is a wonderful degree and is an investment in yourself as an artist.  Also, the degree can really give you some flexibility and stability in the workplace so that you could be more marketable in your field and continue to work with a career in the arts for the rest of your life.

Lily Kuonen

Starehouse: Could you explain the Summer Intensive Session and describe the Low Residency MFA program?

Lily Kuonen: Bill Hill is teaching “Graduate Seminar” which hosts a series of Visiting Artists and “Graduate Critique.” Tiffany Leach is teaching “Process Investigation 1.” I am teaching “Contemporary Practices,” which is a mix of theory investigation and applied concepts, and Eric Kunzendorf is teaching “Intermedia 1″ This is the course listing for the first Summer Intensive Session, which is basically a semesters’ worth of courses compressed over an intensive summer. Then the cohort of students will continue to take online courses throughout the fall and spring semesters. They are required to do a one week residency in pedagogy during the fall and spring, and then they will do another “Summer Intensive” session next summer with a different set of courses, followed by another year of online/hybrid courses. Basically the students are going to school year round for two years, in a mix of online and in-person courses;  thus, “Low Residency” and online/hybrid coursework. The 10 students selected travel through the program as a cohort, so there is a pretty strong bond formed among them.

S: Since the program actually began over the summer, what has happened so far?

L.K.: The program started about three weeks ago [as of July 24 interview]. Last week the students completed an Artist Residency Program at White Oak Plantation and worked with visiting artist Alan Sonfist. They worked on a permanent Land Art work that will be on site at White Oak as part of the organization’s focus on conservation and preservation.

S: As a graduate of an MFA program, what is some of your own personal advice and “combat wisdom” that you could offer the students?

L.K.: I would have to say my first point of advice to my students in this program is to be open and responsive in order to get the most out of their MFA experience. I use my experience as a guide as well. I explain how when I went through my MFA I entered the program (MFA Painting, Savannah College of Art and Design) knowing I was ready for a change, and I welcomed wherever that led me. It meant that I completely overhauled my studio practice, developing what I make today. I then advise them that this is not the track for everyone, but to be prepared to thoughtfully consider and deconstruct all aspects of your artistic practice.

I also believe I interject “combat wisdom” on several levels; sometimes in the form of professional advice, sometimes in the form of research paths, and other times, merely just experiential knowledge (what works and what doesn’t work).

THE STUDENTS

Amber L. Bailey

(Amber L. Bailey, “Lady in Red,” 18 x 18, oil on canvas.)

Starehouse: Where are you originally from? How old are you now?

Amber L. Bailey: I was born in Jacksonville and have lived here most of my life. I have always lived in the Northeast Florida area. I am 30 years old.

S: I’m curious about your creative beginnings. When did you begin making art? Did you originally start during childhood or is it something that developed later in life?
A.L.B.: I have always drawn, since the age of about four, however I would say I really began creatively in my first figure drawing class. I really understood gesture drawing, and capturing movement. At that point it was no longer about replication or copying an image.

S: What is your prior academic background in visual art?

A.L.B.: My prior academic background in art is a studio minor from UNF. I graduated with a communications degree in advertising with a studio art minor.

S: Did you have any anxiety about beginning the MFA program? What do you hope to accomplish during your MFA experience?

A.L.B.: I had some anxiety about beginning the MFA program simply because it was a risk in leaving my current employment and/or corporate stance and the stability that came with it. I have wanted to pursue an MFA degree since I finished my bachelor’s degree in 2005. I hope to push myself and my work conceptually, to create pieces that demand a little more from the viewer. I am currently working on combining elements from my visual vocabulary and composing them to make a new statement. I’m working with a series of paintings that have a sexuality theme and I’m researching ways to suggest sexuality through the combination of images.

S: At this point in your life, art and academic studies, have you noticed any recurring patterns or ideas being revealed in your work?

A.L.B.: The recurring ideas in my work definitely revolve around sexuality, particularly from the female standpoint. I have always painted the figure, more often the female figure than the male, and I am interested in pushing my work further than simply figure painting. This I am currently doing with my “collage paintings” as I’m calling them.

S: How was the experience at White Oak Plantation working with Alan Sonfist? What did that entail?

A.L.B.: The experience was eye opening, particularly to the idea of ephemeral art and the documentation of it. My White Oak experience expanded my ideas about what art is, and how often, the art lies in the experience of creating, even if the work does not last.

S: Your artist statement offers the following: “Fashion magazines and online media have directly influenced my work and many of my paintings represent loss of individuality and the objectification of the female image. The lure of full lips, large eyes and partially open mouths deliver messages of sex and strength which have transferred to my paintings. Dually, these images reveal a loss of true emotion and distinction; the vacant idealized face.” Reading this description, it seems as if some of your work is addressing your own ideas of female empowerment. What are your motivations and goals in reflecting this very same “vacant idealized face”? Ultimately, what do you want the viewer to take away from your work?

A.L.B.: I am exploring the ideas of the female perspective of sexuality and making an affirmation of the woman’s role in being viewed. I am taking the idea of objectification and twisting it. My idea of the woman being objectified in art, photography and life is that she is empowered through this, not degraded. My current series of paintings focuses on the idea of female sexuality, indulgence and consumerism. I’m using the “idealized face” and indulgent images of food and products to say “Yes, I’m a woman…I like sex, food and makeup…so shoot me.”

S: Your statement closes with the following summary: “I primarily focus on the female representation but I am, in general, intrigued by the way the human form and face exude emotion.” What do you ultimately find intriguing about those physical expressions of emotion and feeling? Do you have a sense of how you will explore these concepts over the course of your MFA experience?

A.L.B.: I explored these concepts on a small scale recently, with a series of small paintings of expressive female faces. I do intend on furthering my artistic research on the idea of human emotion and how it is conveyed through facial expression and body language. What intrigues me about physical expressions is what lies behind them and how vital first impressions are in reading the true essence of a person, before they’ve had time to explain or represent themselves through words. I am fascinated by the power of intuition and perception.

S: After graduating, what do you think you might do? Do you have a set goal in mind?

A.L.B.: I am open right now. I am entertaining the idea of becoming a painting professor, however that could change. This training is vital in furthering my work and truly diving into what I want to say as an artist. I’ve been painting for more than 10 years, and have always been “artistic”…but I am just brushing the surface of I feel my potential is. In this 6 week summer intensive at JU, I have grown leaps and bounds and have created the most conceptually driven pieces I’ve ever painted. I am now actively thinking about concepts and investigating ways to create imagery that has the viewer in mind as well as my own interests and ideas.

More of Amber L. Bailey’s work can be seen here.

Mico A. Fuentes

(Mico A. Fuentes, “Negative and Positive Birds,” 24 x 36, liberated paper and spray paint.)

Starehouse: Where are you originally from? How old are you now?

Mico A. Fuentes: California, 34 years of life.

S: I’m curious about your creative beginnings. When did you begin making art? Did you originally start during childhood or is it something that developed later in life?

M.A.F.: I started at an early age with my first teacher/grandmother, Belen Poincot, who gave me my fundamentals in art when I was a child. She was my Mr. Miyagi, and I was her Daniel-san. While other children played outside I was inside practicing exercises in perspective.

S: What is your prior academic background in visual art?

M.A.F.: I found Barry Wilson and Larry Davis, two of my art professors, extremely influential in my visual art education.

S: Did you have any anxiety about beginning the MFA program? What do you hope to accomplish during your MFA experience?

M.A.F.: I have had anxiety in every life-changing decision, and this has been no different. I hope to gain skill in high productivity and process under stress.

S: At this point in your life, art and academic studies, have you noticed any recurring patterns or ideas being revealed in your work?

M.A.F.: There is a constant balance of strength and vulnerability, usually represented with visual symbols such as birds, women, and guns.

S: How was the experience at White Oak Plantation working with Alan Sonfist? What did that entail?

M.A.F.: I consider it a great learning experience. During the residency we had a chance to create our own site-specific piece of art. I was interested in how my work interacted in a natural environment, as it is usually set in an urban landscape.  My thoughts prior this project about land art and site-specific earth alterations is that they functioned as a means to alter an environment aesthetically. I still hold this belief to be true, but my truth has grown to be more about why it is important to alter the land.

S: Your artist statement features the following: “I create work centered upon my perception of reality: a triad of spiritual, mathematic, and vibrant forms.” Could you briefly describe how you became aware of that perception and in turn have learned to apply it directly into your work?

M.A.F.:  Subconsciously, the understanding of this perception has always been there.  Recently, I have had to put these innate concepts in the form of words. Speaking about my work formally has given me a new perspective of my own experience. Using language to talk about my work is almost like going backwards in the creation process; I am using the left-brain to explain what the right brain has created. It has been an introspective study of myself that is still underway, slowly revealing patterns that exist amongst the formal components of my work.

S: Although you do describe your work as multimedia, you also explain how you essentially begin “a process with nothing” and then through exploring the use of “found” or “decaying” objects, “expired paper materials such as maps, blueprints, and pages from old books,” you reach your end goal of a “tangible expression of my experience.” Do you consider yourself strictly a process-based artist? If so, how do you know when that actual process, once applied to an individual piece, is complete?

M.A.F.: The process of creation over-values the end product, until the end product exists and then it is hugely valuable. In creation there are different levels of completion, and the minute something breaks the process is reinitiated.

S: After graduating, what do you think you might do? Do you have a set goal in mind?

M.A.F.: Sleep, create…repeat.

Alex Gotay

(Alex Gotay, “Wrapped 11: Embrace,” 22 x 26, acrylic on a three dimensional muslin casting.)

Starehouse: Where are you originally from? How old are you now?

Alex Gotay: I always say I am from North Florida. I grew up largely between Arlington and Macclenny, but my mother and I moved a lot when I was a child so I wound up living on the Westside, in St. Augustine, in Baldwin, and even back to Arlington for a second time. Currently I live on the Southside. I’m twenty-three, making me the youngest of JU’s MFA VA charter class.

S: I’m curious about your creative beginnings. When did you begin making art? Did you originally start during childhood or is it something that developed later in life?

A.G.: My mother put herself through school, both her BFA at UNF (in painting and figurative sculpture) and her Masters at JU. So I spent several years growing up in UNF’s studios alongside her. If she was sculpting I would be too. If she was painting, I was either working on one of her old canvases or drawing. She still has paintings of mine from ’95-’97. She worked in the UNF Gallery with Paul Karabinis at the time as well so I was always around when new shows went up. Art has always been in my life, it just has shifted mediums throughout the years.

S: What is your prior academic background in visual art?

A.G.: I graduated Summa Cum Laude in 2011 from the University of North Florida with my BFA in painting. Before that point I was largely self-taught; even in high school, with a schedule full of art courses, I always experimented on my own. If I wanted to learn more about something I would either find a source that could tell me more or try until something worked.

S: Did you have any anxiety about beginning the MFA program? What do you hope to accomplish during your MFA experience?

A.G.: I think if you don’t have anxiety about entering into your MFA you must have a misunderstanding about what you’re undertaking. Even more so with this being the charter class. We are determining the future of this program, and we’re both extremely excited and a bit nervous about that. I’d spent the last few years focusing on my technical skills and so I hope to strengthen the concepts behind my work and delve into some more experimental works as well.

S: At this point in your life, art and academic studies, have you noticed any recurring patterns or ideas being revealed in your work?

A.G.: There are definitely some recurring images and themes. I’ve realized a lot of my work comes from a background of Awareness and Separation. Especially the works I’ve been making during the summer intensive here at JU. I find that humans have a lack of awareness about their bodies, their food, what they portray themselves to be, death and the impermanence of their entire situation. And they aren’t aware because they keep these things so separate. I have scoliosis and quite a bit of joint and body damage due to a mix of dance, tennis, and just being oh so lucky, so I’m constantly aware of my body in ways that most people aren’t until much later in their life, if at all. Moving forward I’d like to communicate these things, I’d like people to be aware of their bodies and the ephemeral nature of being alive.

S: How was the experience at White Oak Plantation working with Alan Sonfist? What did that entail?

A.G.: White Oak was a fantastic experience. The grounds are so beautiful and the staff is courteous beyond belief. We learned on the job, that’s for certain. Alan Sonfist has a very fluid idea process and we weren’t able to complete the project at the time, but we just wrapped up the second stage (finding a local nursery, picking the plants for the site and clearing them with the groundskeepers, finding the equipment for stone carving) and we hope to be back out at White Oak within the next month to complete the piece.

S: Lily sent me two pieces of your work: Via Pescherie Vecchie and Wrapped 11: Embrace – the former is a painting of street scene while the latter appears to be more of an abstract, almost-figurative work that seems to be rendered in fiber/cloth. How would you describe your work? Do you feel like your current work leans more towards the realistic or the abstract? Are you as comfortable working with both approaches?

A.G.: As I said in an earlier response, I spent the last few years on my technical skills. Of those two pieces, Wrapped is the older work, prior to my large scale food based paintings. But it was a technique I knew I wanted to return to at some time and I have with this program. But at this time I’m working on a process of both casting and painting (on the reverse side instead) as well as then un-forming the cast into an abstracted image. I consider myself still a representational painter, but I’m very comfortable walking that line between fully rendered and ephemerally abstract. This time at JU I’m going to use to reconcile these sides, hopefully pushing forward into a new way of working. I attached a couple of images just to show you the piece I’m currently focused on. One [top image] is prior to being wet back down; the other [bottom image] is after I’ve been spraying it and layering up more paint.

S: According to your CV, you have received several awards and scholarships, garnered portrait commissions, and have also been featured in over a dozen local and even international exhibitions. I am most interested in your experience in participating in these gallery shows. Do you feel like the presentation of your work in conjunction with being exposed to the work of others has affected your own ideas about art as well as your personal creative attitude?

A.G.: Working with others, showing with others, it definitely shifted the way I work. You learn the most from your peers. Wyatt Parlette is a friend I’ve worked beside and shown with for several years. Working alongside an abstract painter while I was making portraits slowly but surely loosened up my style, something that when I had been working alone I had attempted but had difficulty doing so. From working with me he finally started using green; he’d just never come across one he liked until I brought up Hooker’s green deep hue. Constantly exposing yourself to the art of others is something I find extremely helpful to my process. If you’re sitting in a shed cranking out work that could be from 1780, that’s lovely, but are you learning anything or growing in anyway? Being involved with other artists if nothing else lets you gauge yourself, so long as you have the sense to question where you’ve come from and where you’re going.

S: After graduating, what do you think you might do? Do you have a set goal in mind?

A.G.: After graduating, my main goal is moving to North Carolina. Or elsewhere honestly, I’m not that picky. I’ve spent the huge majority of my life somewhere in Florida, and I feel like I’ve gained all I can from being here. The goals are to continue making art, get back into showing work (in galleries, in events, or exhibitions), and eventually to teach at a university. I’m still quite young, so there’s the obligatory, but still quite real desire to travel. But at some point I would like to settle in at a university and give back. I may be highly experimental but I still have a very strong technical background and I’d like to put that to use teaching.

More of Alex Gotay’s work can be seen here.

Zach Taylor

(Zach Taylor, “Actual Size,” digital photo, 2013.)

 Starehouse: Where are you originally from? How old are you now?

Zach Taylor:  I’m originally from Logansport, Indiana. I’m 37 years old.

S: I’m curious about your creative beginnings. When did you begin making art? Did you originally start during childhood or is it something that developed later in life?

Z.T.: My parents sent my brother and I to art class as kids, formal art lessons for kids in a local artist’s basement. The high school art program was pretty basic, but we learned a variety of techniques. I planned to join the military after high school, but my mom talked me into art school.

S: What is your prior academic background in visual art?

Z.T.: I attended Ball State University in Muncie, Indiana for three years and there I began to develop the bug for making art so I transferred to the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. At SAIC I spent 3 years mostly painting and printmaking. In Chicago I was able to benefit from great mentors and professors, Art history, study of world social issues, and theory classes that helped me begin to understand the reasons for making art and why it’s important to be “present” in my work. 13 years later, I’m still trying to be “in” my work, the work needs to be honest to hold any interest for the viewer.

S: Did you have any anxiety about beginning the MFA program? What do you hope to accomplish during your MFA experience?

Z.T.: No anxiety. I’m pretty much focused at this point on developing my visual language. I’m in this program to cultivate my communication skills through the artwork. In my opinion, it’s a difficult and necessary part of making art. It’s the opportunity to make honest work about being human and have a critical environment in which the work can develop.

S: At this point in your life, art and academic studies, have you noticed any recurring patterns or ideas being revealed in your work?

Z.T.: If there is an existing pattern, it’s revealing itself slowly. However, larger developmental steps are being made between pieces and I’m becoming more aware of my ideas and how they are translated visually. Humor and memory are themes that come naturally to my work.

S: How was the experience at White Oak Plantation working with Alan Sonfist? What did that entail?

Z.T.: White Oak is an extraordinary property. Our Cohort from JU was able to work closely with Land Artist Alan Sonfist on a large site-specific work of his design. During the week we were in residency, we also designed and created our own site-specific artwork. The ideas I generated while creating an artwork in a dry creek bed at White Oak have already influenced the design of my next installation piece. It’s an incorporation of personally meaningful furniture and objects in a gallery installation setting.

S: Your artist statement features the following: “Sculpture has been the most exploratory outlet for defining and completing my ideas lately. I’m always focused on developing skills in woodworking, metalworking, electrical, automobile restoration, furniture restoration, and sound recording. All of which come into play in my work.” You also create text-based paintings, landscape paintings, and acknowledge that through the exploration of these different mediums and materials they all collectively “influence my ideas.” That being said, do you set out with a specific concept or idea or do you just begin arranging different materials/disciplines until the idea emerges?

Z.T.: I definitely have a few things going on all the time in my studio. I find it difficult to investigate every idea with the same medium. Often I allow the idea to dictate the medium in my work. I find that allows the process to be more natural by not forcing a material interpretation that does not suit the concept. I’m always doing multiple things in every aspect of my life, so the artwork is just a continuation of that, but if a pattern exists in my work I think it’s yet to be seen.

S: You also state that you actually find a “more focused approach” in working on many pieces at one time rather than concentrating on one piece, then offering the following: “I can allow the ideas to spread throughout the work as a whole and through the entire process hope to tie the work together as a cohesive body.” Have you always created work in this regard i.e. focusing on many pieces at once? And acknowledging your description of your work as a “cohesive body,” do you feel like you are attempting to create one unified narrative or mythology within your work? If so, how would you describe that story?

Z.T.: Having multiple pieces in progress at one time can allow me to explore ideas through various technical modes. If a larger narrative does exist, I would actually consider it to be a “diary”. Working on multiple pieces at once feels most productive toward developing a visual language that can eventually exist alone and be cohesive. The “story” is my experience with human emotion and exposure to my senses. I’m trying to feel “real”, and then interpret that feeling through, humor, contemplation, language, emotion, and material.

S: After graduating, what do you think you might do? Do you have a set goal in mind?

Z.T.: I’m here to develop a greater understanding of the overall themes that tie my body of work together. My work relies on a wide range of technical abilities that I continue to cultivate, research, and expand daily. Helping the artwork communicate seems like learning a new language for every piece. Each piece is produced with a specific technical approach and as I become comfortable with more techniques, my concepts can hopefully exist and communicate more clearly to the viewer, as well as, help me understand myself. I’ve found collaboration with other artists to be instrumental in finding new directions for my art, so I plan to continue collaborating. I hope to have a fulfilling daily studio practice that incorporates numerous technical possibilities and offers successful development of my artwork.

More of Zach Taylor’s work can be seen here.

[I would like to personally thank both the faculty members and MFA students for honoring a 48 hour deadline in getting this interview up and running ASAP. Thank you all very much!]

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

The subconscious and grotesque stick together in the art of Russell Maycumber

(Russell Maycumber’s “kclub,” ink on Post-it Note; year unknown.)

Since the early nineties, Russell Maycumber has been documenting his life, travels and interior reality onto three inch, yellow squares. Introduced by the 3M Company in 1980, the Post-it Note is a small square of paper with an adhesive backing – initially introduced as an office-friendly product that could be used to jot down reminders, appointments and upcoming tasks, and then applied to any available flat surface. Yet Maycumber uses these ubiquitous pieces of sticky stationary to create images that explore memoir, humor and the phantasmagoric, creating them systematically, if not compulsively; a kind of hypergraphia barely contained in magic marker and yellow paper. The 44-year-old Maycumber admits to owning “volumes” filled with these images that date back to the early nineties. But rather than having them tucked away on some shelf in his house, the St. Augustine-based artist creates massive installations and sculptures that can contain hundreds upon hundreds of these carefully arranged Post-it Note drawings. Viewed in mass, the small squares can have an overwhelming effect: these images of chimerical creatures, people captured in mundane activities, classic automobiles, flying skulls, sexuality and playful demons seem to exist in a weird realm that splits the difference between the subliminal and the obvious. Some images feature cryptic text, while others offer little help in deciphering the odd, miniature graphic. Maycumber’s work seems to find company in the fever dream-styled imagery of artists like Francisco Goya, Edward Gorey, Max Ernst (especially the surrealist’s pioneering, 1934 collage work “Une Semaine de Bonté ,” translated as “A Week of Kindness”) or even underground comic raunch lord S. Clay Wilson. Yet Maycumber’s concepts and delivery are wholly his own, blasting these images at the viewer in the form of a mob of hundreds of pieces of visual shrapnel, aimed for the bull’s-eye of the viewer’s retina and mind.

While Maycumber might be a lesser known quantity among local art lovers, he has been consistently presented by a few, key area galleries. In March of 2005, St. Augustine’s Screen Arts Gallery (now transformed into space: eight) featured Maycumber’s work. “I consider his work ‘intellectual folk art’ – smart, witty, and original,” says space: eight owner Rob DePiazza. “And I need to credit Russell and Billy Matlock (they painted together in collaboration as ‘Frank Lee’) for talking me into doing a show with them, which then kick started the gallery at Screen Arts. They also introduced me to the Jacksonville art scene.”

Five years later, Maycumber was invited by Jacksonville’s nullspace gallery to present a show. The collective brainchild of artists Mark Creegan, Kurt Polkey and Jefree Shalev, nullspace encouraged artists to look at the downtown-based gallery space as a blank template to imprint their work, thus a “null,” or empty, void space. Maycumber’s show, Pips and Paracosms, The Lost and Found of Paradise, was ostensibly the first display of his Post-it Note Universe structured en mass. “What I like about Russell is his oddball sensibility that seems to come from some dark, mercurial subconscious,” says Creegan. “His imagery is hilarious and his use of the Post-it Notes seems so nonchalant, but they really allow for limitless display possibilities.” Creegan also recalls that Maycumber really took the Nullspace challenge of utilizing the open space to heart. “Jef, Kurt and I knew that Russell was perfect for our gallery. We always wanted each artist to really take over the space and make something unique and dynamic, and Russell really delivered! I loved that he played with narrative in such a way that allowed the viewers to make their own connections and associations. Russell’s show is often cited as our best show by people I meet reminiscing about nullspace.”

And now Maycumber’s ever-growing universe of illustrated squares is about to be broadcast to an even greater audience. The jury for the Highway Gallery, a joint-project between Florida Mining gallery and Clear Channel, has chosen Maycumber as part of this year’s group of artists to be featured on digital billboards throughout Northeast Florida. “I am really proud to have Russell and his work in the gallery through September and on the Clear Channel boards through the summer of 2014,” says artist Steve Williams, who also owns Florida Mining gallery. “I am taken by Russell’s work, both visually and also within the content. I can look at it for hours and still see something different, each time I look. The drawings are inconsistently, consistent – the color and placement and design of what he accomplishes are always from an eye of expert. And the feeling I get when surrounded by his poetic line and sculptural presentations give me a feeling that something important is happening around me. I think from a perspective of being from a long line of Jacksonville people, he is unexpected at times – or is it just what we expect.” Maycumber was also voted Director’s Pick and garnered the audience’s Popular Vote for this year’s series. Maycumber’s piece, “Untanglement,” is currently on display at Florida Mining gallery through September 19. The gallery is located at 5300 Shad Road in Jacksonville. The contact number is (904) 425 -2845.

Maycumber lives in St. Augustine with his wife Beth, a talented writer in her own right, and their 13-year-old son and fellow artist, Russell III (or, “R3,” as we were first introduced). Maycumber currently works for Flagler College’s Department of Art and Design.

I spoke with Russell Maycumber on the evening of Monday, August 5. What follows is a transcription of our conversation, which touched on everything from Maycumber’s experience of being a student during the flagship years at Douglas Anderson School of the Arts, to his humorous and peripatetic wanderings, and ultimately his unique vision, approach and creative use of the Post-it Note-as-visual-art medium.

Starehouse: First off congratulations, on being both the Director’s Pick and winning the Popular Vote for this year’s the Highway Gallery series. Have you dusted off all of that confetti yet?

Russell Maycumber: Right, yeah (laughs). No, it’s awesome.

S: How did you get involved with the project? Were you invited or was there a submission process?

R.M.: Yeah, there was [a submission process]. Mostly, I think I was introduced to the whole Florida Mining gallery group through Mark George.

S: Yeah.

R.M.: And maybe I met Steve [Williams, gallery owner] through Mark. But then I realized that he [Williams] was friends with a lot of friends of mine.

S: That Mark George opens doors!

R.M.: For everybody.

S: He is a key to the lock of the local art scene. So you kind of met Steve and that crew through him.

R.M.: I think so. And then also, Debi Boyette is a friend of Steve’s. And she now lives in Seattle and is running a gallery there. And I lived with her in Atlanta before she moved to Seattle. So I think she was key, as well (…) just by knowing her. And she’s connected to Gillyard, Eric Gillyard, and (…) you know. It’s a good circuit.

S: Yeah, a good circle to be in. So let’s talk about the piece, “Untanglement.” First off, does that title allude to anything specifically?

R.M.: Yeah, I’ve been having a lot of entanglement, as far as Quantum Entanglement (…) as far as I understand, since I’m not Mr. Scientist. But I think that when you get involved with people and things, you start to entangle yourself, no matter what (…) you start to become entangled with certain threads of their reality and you start to tie each other’s realities around one another (…) it’s like spaghetti (laughs). There’s this thing called King Rat. It’s when a bunch of rats become entangled with each other and their tails start to wrap around each other and it becomes a knot of rats (…) which is what I imagine people sometimes doing as well. So there’s an untanglement. How do you untangle yourself from all of this? It’s kind of like (…) I don’t know, I think eventually you learn how to be in the world, but not entangle yourself. Because I realized after a while (…) like now, there’s a friend of mine and I’m helping to restore her home and I’m constantly involved in her family and I really don’t necessarily want to be (laughs). And I have to clarify that these are really great people. But even like, her little girl, I’m in her world, too. I start hearing her music and then pretty soon I come home and I’m listening to her music (laughs). So you get entangled so there must also be a little process of untanglement.

S: I gotcha, kind of like healthy detachment. It’s almost the same idea of a self-help or psychiatric word like enmeshment; and there’s some truth in all of that. So is there a story in there, inside of the piece, with all of those drawings?

R.M.: Not a very specific story. It’s a very non-linear narrative. It’s not a specific narrative about multiple narratives. And none of them finish; there’s no end – because the person describing the narrative, hasn’t “ended.”

S: How large is the actual piece in diameter?

R.M.: It is ten feet in diameter.

S: Do you know, or can you estimate, how many Post-it Notes were used in that piece?

R.M.: Well, we pinned them because they start losing their stickiness. We bought 1700 pins and we have about 500 left.

S: So how long did it take you to complete, from start to finish?

R.M.: It’s probably about six or seven hours of pinning them up. I figure it was fifteen minutes for each drawing (…) 1200 divided by four.

(“Untanglement” on display at Florida Mining gallery; photo courtesy of gallery.)

(Detail image of work-in-progress of “Untanglement.”)

(Detail image of work-in-progress of “Untanglement.”)

S: I’ll do all of this math later (laughs).

R.M.: It was about 300 hours spent in total, of drawing.

S: Can we totally shift gears and talk about your early days?

R.M.: Yes.

S: Now were you born in Jacksonville?

R.M.: I was. I was born at Baptist Hospital.

S: Where did you grow up? Where were your stomping grounds?

R.M.: Murray Hill. I grew up on Glen Laura Road. My mom had that house built as she was living on Lamboll [Avenue], which was a house my grandfather had helped build, when he was living on, I think, Headley Street. And his grandmother and her people had come from Cassat Avenue. My grandmother was from White Springs and my grandfather grew up on a dairy farm in Callahan. So they slowly moved forward from the country, as the work dried up in the surrounding areas.

S: So when you were a kid, where you like drawing as you left the womb? I always make these presumptions, because you and I are from the same generation, and it seems like things like comic books and Star Wars became inspirations (…) but that’s not always the case. Can you remember how you got into creating art?

R.M.: I do specifically remember. In first grade, at Ruth Upson [Elementary School] in Murray Hill, the teacher (…) it was kind of a bad policy (…) she was trying to show how kindergartners could draw better than the first graders.

S: Oh really? That’s an encouraging teaching method (laughs).

R.M.: And mine was one of the drawings (laughs) she picked as an example. “Look, these kindergartners can draw better than you.”

S: So your art was born as an act of defiance at age six: “I’ll show her!”

R.M.: Yeah. And then in second grade, I was like Paul Revere and my friend was another patriot, I forget who it was, so that’s where I guess we though “fuck this system!” (…) I don’t know (laughs).

S: That’s weird about the teacher. I had kind of a similar thing where my third grade teacher would not let me draw in class. She even tore up my drawings in front of the class as a warning. So when I was like, 36, I finally let that resentment go.

R.M.: (laughs)

S: I want to talk about this. You are, I think, the first locally-based artist I’ve interviewed for this blog who was a student at [Jacksonville-based public arts high school] Douglas Anderson School of the Arts [D.A.]. Were you enrolled in the first year [1985] of the school’s opening?

R.M.: Yes, the charter class.

S: And you were in the first graduating class as well?

R.M.: Yes.

S: So what was that experience like? At the time, was it fairly “free-for-all” in the sense that they were trying to get their program together?

R.M.: Yeah, I think so because even within the second year they switched principals. So it was kind of a big thing. We were going to actually stage a protest (laughs) and have a “walk out” kind of thing. But then the newer principal, who is still there [Jackie Cornelius], turned out to be really awesome. But I think it was an interesting time since all of the nerds met; all of the drawing nerds finally met and suddenly we were somebody. We came from respective schools and were we all a bunch of nobodies. But suddenly we were in this kind of meritocracy. Suddenly if you had talent you were somebody. And that was a big deal.

S: And it [D.A.] has had such a pulsar effect on the city. I guess I was 13 when they started up and it was strongly suggested by a few of my teachers that I actually try to go to that school. But I guess I thought I’d lose my cool credibility of being a lonely, chubby kid who constantly drew pictures in the library. So I didn’t go (laughs). And then I eventually met all of the Douglas Anderson kids anyway (…) hindsight’s 20/20. So I imagine that unlike your first grade teacher, they only encouraged and fortified your talents. Did you have a particular field of study that you were focusing on?

R.M.: I didn’t really (…) because they also offered Drama and when I graduated, people thought that I was a Drama Major. Because that was one of the other electives that I took (…) I just enrolled in that to kind of “fill up my card” kind of thing.

S: So were you like a “theatre kid,” too?

R.M.: Yeah, pretty much. And then (…) but not necessarily since there were definitely students who were way more devoted to theatre. There were a couple kids who were already acting at The Five Points Theatre [now Sun-Ray Cinema] (…) you know, “Jesus Christ Superstar” was going on (laughs).

S: Right.

R.M.: And I never got that involved. But at that time at the school, no one really knew where to put you to fill out your electives.

S: Now were you still focused on illustration?

R.M.: Yeah, yeah, definitely. There was a guy that I met there (…) and I don’t know why his mom put him in there. He was just exceptional; his name was John Mylan. He was just (…) it’s weird, (lowers voice in a conspiratorial manner) you grow up and some of your friends suddenly become these Super Christian People (…) and you think, “What the hell happened?” (…) I don’t necessarily challenge (…) a lot of our friends knew John, but he was a major influence on me. This guy just had a super style when he was nineteen.

S: Do you mean as far as talent and artistic charisma, or he just emanated some attractive vibes?

R.M.: I’d look at his drawings back then and even now I think, “Who was this guy?” He was just that person who, at that age, already had their style down. I don’t know if you had ever met somebody like that when you were younger.

(“Compellation,” ink on Post-t Note; year unknown.)

S: I know what you mean. They somehow magically direct you to the right band, or the right book or artist at that one juncture when you needed that experience. And then sometimes they just move on but you’re still changed by that relationship, or just the moment.

R.M.: Yeah. And he was the kid (…) later I had heard that his mom let him smoke weed when he was eight years old (laughs). You know? And he came from Hawaii…

S: Only eight (laughs)? What a lightweight.

R.M.: (laughs) After knowing him I often wondered – what is it about Hawaii? Was it in the lava rock? But he was so influential and encouraging to me. When I first saw him at school, he was in a sculpture class and he was like this tough-looking skinhead with a leather jacket, wearing all of this crazy jewelry. And then we met in the hallway and he was like (in a high-pitched, ‘Mickey Mouse’-like voice) “Hey! Hi! How are you?” (laughs). But that school’s environment kind of pulled in all of this talent that was around at that time. And then when I graduated, I just assumed that everyone came from that environment. If I was to look at it from a legislator’s point of view, that school was money well spent.

S: So after high school, did you pursue college or did you just kind of knock around?

R.M.: I didn’t really anticipate going to college, because my family didn’t really have a whole lot of money. I was offered a scholarship to SCAD (Savannah College of Art and Design) but it just never happened. So the day I after I graduated I moved down to Miami with my family. I was living with a friend. I was sleeping on his floor, to go to D.A., because my family lived in Tampa. So I moved in with my friend Cary Whittier and his family.

S: Cary’s a photographer, right?

R.M.: Yep. That’s him. He and his family lived over in Murray Hill. Our grandfathers grew up together, hunting alligator and all kinds of crazy adventures.

S: Parallel families.

R.M.: Exactly. And his family was totally cool and welcoming. I was there for like a year and a half.

S: So the SCAD thing didn’t happen. Did you try to check out other schools?

R.M.: You know, at the time, everybody thought college was bullshit. I thought, “Well, fuck this, I’m just going to go straight to my career.” Well, I should say at least the people that I was around. There were a couple of people like Ash Brannon, he was in my graduating class at D.A., who went on to Cal Arts and then he went on to become animating director for “Toy Story” and “Toy Story 2.” He was one of the few people I knew who went straight through college from our graduating class. But at the time it seemed like college was a joke or scam. So the day after I graduated, my parents were in Miami so I went down there and over that summer (…) as soon as it was time to register for classes, my Mom told me, “Alright, go register for community college because you’re not just sitting around here.” So I enrolled and went for a semester and then I moved to California with my family. And I ended up staying there in L.A. for like five years.

S: So you’re in your early twenties at this point?

R.M.: Yeah.

S: So what did you do while you were in Southern California?

R.M.: I met a girl from Florida who was moving out there and she was heavily into theatre and acting. So I would do like, um, I think it’s called “Cast X” (…) it was just a weird movie thing where you would do whatever you could to get by, work as an extra, whatever (…) I think “Cast X” was non-union. But once you can get in, I did like “Jurassic Park”…

S: I spoke to you before about this, but weren’t you working on some of the special effects things? I thought you had told me that at one time.

R.M.: Probably the closest I came to effects was I sculpted toys, like “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” “Gremlins,” and it was right when that miniature figures, mini-figs, was big business. It was pretty crazy, the business. I remember my boss showing me his gold watch that Playmates [Toy Company] had sent him. “Thanks for kicking ass with record sales.”

S: So you’re there for five years. Didn’t you eventually wind up in New York for a time?

R.M.: Yeah, I actually tried to move to Houston with my parents. Because I didn’t know what in the hell I was doing at that point. I totally ditched the toy job so I didn’t have to commute. I really hated driving in a car in L.A. I was really trying to simplify my experience. So I started riding a bicycle to a recycling job (…) it just started breaking down. “Why am I here?” I had friends coming out to visit all of the time and the person I was dating at the time (…) we were just heading in different directions. So I went to Texas and ended up in Houston. I spent a little time with my parents there and then I moved to Austin, which was a really great, weird, fertile ground for everything (…) music, art, whatever…

S: So what year is this?

R.M.: This was around 1994 and ’95.

S: So during this time, even though you had been around the film industry/toy company thing, were you still illustrating and creating your own work?

R.M.: Yeah, I tried to get into Cal Arts. I applied there and I didn’t make it so I figured “Fuck it (…) maybe this isn’t for me, maybe I shouldn’t pursue this.” And I just couldn’t concentrate enough to get past an Associate Degree.

S: I understand completely. I was too mentally agitated to really get a college degree.

R.M.: It seemed like it was different for the people I knew. All of these guys I knew who went to New York, like Cary and Lysergic Garage Party [nineties Jacksonville- bred psych rockers, now known as Dead Stars] were like, “Fuck let’s just try this and do what we want to do.” It was kind of weird, because why did we assume (laughs) that we could just step into that kind of level?

S: So did you go from Texas to New York?

R.M.: Yeah, in a roundabout way (laughs). I was living with my parents and then I moved to Austin with my friends. During all of those years, I rode the Greyhound Bus a lot (…) I don’t remember, I think I hitchhiked (…) I was really fed up and didn’t know what I was doing, so I went to the Drive Board at University of Texas (…) you know, you can catch a ride with someone. I guess they still have the Drive Board system in place (laughs). This girl with dreadlocks was there. And I asked her, “Where are you going?” and she said “I’m going north. Do you have a car?”(…) “No, I don’t” (laughs) because I had been totally broke but I had just done a drug study and I had like $800 in my pocket.

S: Oh really? Like experimental drugs – that kind of thing? You were a human lab rat?

R.M.: Yep – Pharmaceutical studies.

S: What was the study might I ask?

R.M.: Yeah, the most recent one I had done was for a schizophrenia drug. And it turns out that I got the placebo, because certain people who got the actual drug (…) because I did a later study for schizophrenia and I must have gotten the drug because I did not last, it just completely freaked me out.

S: Did you undergo these studies due to a personal history of mental illness or just for the cash?

R.M.: No you just sign up. I didn’t even know what kind of study they were going to do.

(“back,” ink on Post-it Note; year unknown.)

S: In hindsight, would you suggest that young, struggling artists sign up for schizophrenic drug research studies (laughs)?

R.M.: Yeah, right (laughs)! It’s money. It was a $100 a day, man! Back then, how could you make $100 a day?

S: That still sounds like a pretty good deal today. So did you and the dreadlocked woman somehow join forces and hit the road?

R.M.: We did. We made it as far as Utah. But she dumped me. It’s actually cheaper to travel as a couple but she told me it would be easier to travel as a “single woman” so she “could do her thing.” So she took off. I think we were actually in Montana when she left and then I got picked up by some Green Beret dude who just wanted company. So we talked all the way to Utah (…) and the next ride was from a woman I met who worked at the Tabernacle in Salt Lake City and she dropped me off in Twin Falls, Idaho. And then the next ride I got was these two hippies that took me to Vancouver. And I wound up at a Rainbow Gathering and I met some ladies there (…) and then I ended up in Europe after meeting them.

S: This was with one of the Rainbow Gathering people?

R.M.: Yeah.

S: I didn’t know you had these hippie roots.

R.M.: (laughs)

S: Did you at least survive the drum circle-induced dysentery outbreak as a souvenir?

R.M.: Yeah, (laughs) right. The first or second night I was there at the Rainbow Gathering, this veteran from Desert Storm gave me his coat. And I had already shaved my head, so I had a bald head and was wearing these combat fatigues.

S: And a central nervous system full of experimental schizophrenic drugs.

R.M.: (laughs) And I’m in the middle of this hippie gathering.

S: It was like the film “Born on the Fourth of July.” Did they all gather around you and hold you aloft to the sun?

R.M.: (laughs)

S: So you were just in a state of constant motion, somewhat funded by drug research. I should just put a giant map on this blog post (laughs) with a little Russell Maycumber traveling around, like young Billy in “Family Circus.”

R.M.: (laughs) I ended up in Germany and then came back to Florida. And then I wound up in Jupiter and a friend drove me back to Jacksonville. And then I heard about this thing in Andersonville [Georgia] where you can be a Civil War extra (…) and I had grown out my beard by then, so I looked like the perfect Civil War-era prisoner of war. So I ended up in Andersonville with this Canadian woman (laughs).

S: As re-enactors? How long did this go on? How many battles did you endure?

R.M.: I think about a week, maybe a month? We made pretty good money. Those guys from Lysergic Garage Party were all on the set. It was kind of a big Jacksonville faction all living up there, re-enacting The Civil War (laughs).

S: So for the sake of this winding, confusing chronology, what year was this?

R.M.: (yells to wife Beth) “Beth, what year was Andersonville?”

S: (laughs) “What year were we in the war?”

R.M.: (Laughs) apparently, we were in the troop of ’94.

S: Oh, it that was a cold, ruthless winter in Andersonville. Alright, after the war ended in ’94, you headed north.

R.M.: Well, I think I wound up back in Houston. And all of my friends from Jacksonville had moved to New York by then. So I’m in Texas kind of fizzling out not knowing what I was doing.

S: You were admittedly running out of bohemian-derelict options at this point in your life. You had tapped the well.

R.M.: Totally. I was gathering Marlboro Miles on my bicycle (laughs). So I decided that if I went up there for a month, maybe my luck would change. So I moved to New York and that’s where I met Beth.

S: That’s where you met Beth. Where is she originally from?

R.M.: She was born in New Jersey and moved to Jacksonville when she was eight.

S: But you met in NYC?

R.M.: She had moved up there with Cary, Angela Marsh and all of the Lysergic guys and she wound up working her ass off. And I stayed with Cary and slept on the floor, I think he charged me like $70 a month.

S: What were you doing there for money? I’m almost afraid to ask.

R.M.: I found a job delivering sandwiches on a bicycle, riding in the middle of Manhattan traffic. And then I wound up working at a bar where everyone was working at, The Ginger Man, doing bar-back kind of stuff.

S: So were you checking out contemporary art there at all or just kind of bopping around?

R.M.: Totally. It was like a dream. I’d been up there before in 1989 to visit my sister and that was kind of during the tail-end of the whole SoHo scene and you could kind of feel it. I think Basquiat had just died the year before. But there was still like smoke in the air where all of that art had exploded.

S: So now you and Beth meet, love is in the air (…) did you get married up there?

R.M.: We had been dating for like six months (asks Beth, “How long had we been dating? Three months?”) She was pregnant in like three months.

S: That’s one of the ultimate side effects of sex.

R.M.: (laughs) Yeah (…) Beth is also very creative and a total bohemian woman. So we thought, “We don’t necessarily have to get married.” But after a month or two of being in New York, we had gone on a road trip and not necessarily returned to the city. We had gone to Boone, North Carolina and lived there for a little bit and then we moved to Atlanta. So by this time we were living in Atlanta, and she was trying to get a job and she realized that she was pregnant. I was like, “We have got to make this work.” I was working as a furniture restorer, a wacky little job right in Five Points in Atlanta. We were living in Cabbagetown and just trying to figure out how we were going to manage (laughs) having a family.

S: So did that kind of end your wandering ways?

R.M.: Yeah, pretty quick (laughs). And it also solidified our relationship. But you know who I also met in Atlanta, was Eric Gillyard and Debi Boyette. And Eric also now has a kid. But at the time they were dating. But I can remember Eric working at Mellow Mushroom for eight hours and then coming home and painting all night. And it was like, “Holy fuck (laughs) how can this be?”

S: So he was like a direct example; “I need to get back to this.”

R.M.: Exactly. You know, nobody in my life at that point was so serious about art. It was survival up to that point. And Eric was that person (…) even to this day. Like now, Brianna Angelakis (…) she’s got that same drive. Eric had that. He would just come home from his job and work. He was very serious; he and Ryan Coleman. It was really good for me to be around these people that were working on their art. And I think that they are also both D.A. grads.

S: Yeah, I know that Eric is. I had the chance to interview Eric for Folio Weekly. When I went to his home, I was really impressed that he worked a fulltime job and was a brand new dad, but it was apparent that he had maintained this meticulous work ethic.

R.M.: He still does.

S: So I gotta get to the epiphany of working with the Post-it Notes. When did that happen?

R.M.: When I lived in L.A., I was drawing on Post-its, but I didn’t think it was legitimate. I didn’t accept the legitimacy of what I saw as my idiosyncratic language. I was building the language at the time, but I didn’t realize it. I didn’t think it was legitimate because it wasn’t on a painting (…) I mean, even other artists would say, “Yeah, I’ve seen you make these little drawings, but I never thought you could paint.” I guess that is what they had conditioned themselves to see as my work. I came back to St. Augustine. We had our kid and I was doing day labor. I had been doing day labor in Boone and came here and did the same thing. I guess for the sake of just attention deficit with work, period. Like I couldn’t wake up and go to the same job every day. It would kill me. So I decided that day labor was for me, I could either go in or not (…) I enjoyed the autonomy (laughs) of it. And eventually, I kept creating so many drawings that I decided I had to do something else. So I applied to Flagler. And then while I was working on my BFA, I hooked up with [painter] Billy Matlock and started working with him. He was good friends with Rob DePiazza and Rob had a painting in the lobby of his business for like eight months (…) and Billy proposed that we have a show in the front of the business. So Rob agreed (…) and I seriously think that was kind of the first show of what has now become the space: eight gallery.

S: So did Matlock also encourage you to take another crack at art school?

R.M.: Totally. They day we moved into our house in St. Augustine from Boone (…) it was too fucking cold in Boone; I would have to dig out all of this snow just to go to my day labor job (…) and right next door was Billy Matlock. This was pre-hipster, but he was just a cool guy. So one day I’m painting on my porch and he’s painting and our windows are facing each other. It was kind of ridiculous (laughs). So he came over and said, “I’m painting over there, you’re painting over here … what’s up?” So we ended up becoming friends and painting in his studio. And we ended up doing shows at Energy Lab and DePiazza’s Screen Arts Gallery. And there might have been two or three restaurants that we could show work at. So Matlock was really the guy pushing me to do shows and at the time I would say, “Well, I’m just trying to build a body of work.” But I realized that I couldn’t do day labor forever so I applied to the school.

S: Did you complete that degree? Did you get your BFA?

R.M.: I did. I got my BFA. I had gone through the whole rigmarole…

S: What was your main focus? Illustration?

R.M.: I started out in Graphic Design because I had a kid and I knew I had to make some money. And then, surely enough, just sitting around the art building I thought, “Man, who am I kidding? I can’t do this.” I didn’t want to sit in front of a computer so I switched my major into the fine art program. So I brought in all of these things I had been working on for years, all of these Post-it Notes (laughs). I had these books of Post-it Note art from 1994, maybe even earlier that I had kept. And they were just sitting on my shelf. And I was still making more. So I brought them into class and my professor, Patrick Moser, just told me “This is what you are doing and what you should be doing.”

S: So when did you finally graduate?

R.M.: 2006.

S: But you had been generating this huge body of Post-it Notes this entire time. So were you really just more or less uncertain, in the sense of “Am I just doodling or is that actually fine art?”

R.M.: Right. Even to this day, I still wonder that. There’s only a certain amount of people who will understand and think that this is legitimate. I think there was somebody working at the Florida Mining gallery and one of the words he used to describe it was “doodles,” you know? And I don’t mind that – because on some level it is. But at the same time I think that there is a level of legitimacy to what I am doing as well.

S: Well, you know while I was writing out these questions, I came across the information that Post-it Notes had once invited artists to create art on their product, and four artists also somehow incorporated Post-it Notes in their work: Paola Antonelli, Rebecca Murtaugh, Ardan Özmenoglu – by the way, I’m not making some of these names up (laughs) because they all have great names – and R.B. Kitaj (…) but they really only used Post-its in the past five or half dozen years (…) so one could argue that Russell Maycumber is really the pioneering Post-it Note artist.

R.M.: (laughs) Right, thanks.

S: When you do each drawing, do you think of a concept first? Because each individual Post-it is titled, right?

R.M.: Yes.

S: Is that title an afterthought? Do you do these in a way that is based on free-association?

R.M.: You know, I was thinking about this after you asked me to do an interview, it is so much like music. Every time I try to describe what I am doing: it’s like improv. It’s total improv. And kind of weird because I am from a generation where it was uncool to do a guitar solo. Until someone came along and started playing guitar solos. You know what I mean?

S: Absolutely. It’s in the same way that J. Mascis was so radical with Dinosaur, Jr. since he dared to bring back the guitar solo. And it turned out that some people wanted to hear a guitar solo!

R.M.: (Laughs) Exactly. A lot of comic artists will “pre-draw” something in blue pencil and then add the ink. But I feel like if I do that I take the energy out of it. Sometimes I will build up a drawing if a friend wants me to draw a logo or something like that. But it is total improv. Every time I sit down I don’t know what I am going to do and I think that is an integral part of the experience. So every Post-it is like an impulse.

S: Looking at your work, some of the images are obviously humorous and fun but I think a lot of them lean towards the grotesque. Two of my favorite definitions of grotesque, which I had to look up in my trusty, cheaper version of the Oxford English Dictionary, read as follows: 1. comically or repulsively ugly or distorted and 2. shockingly incongruous or inappropriate. And it seems like those could all be slapped right onto your future artist statement.

R.M.: (laughs)

S: So all of that being said, even though you acknowledged that it has this subconscious and spontaneous inception, did your work begin with that sensibility? Just letting the weirdness run free?

R.M.: When I was growing up, one of the first things I ever drew was the guy from Cracked [magazine mascot Sylvester P. Smythe]. I had read comic books but it’s like my friend John Myland from high school, he brought all of these underground comics from Hawaii and when I saw those I was just like, “Gee, that is repulsive!” (laughs) because I was seriously like this Jacksonville, Baptist kid. “This is the devil’s work.” I seriously believed that for a while. But I think that the drawing is a way for me to mitigate my experience with things like sexuality and, uh, just body hair (laughs) just the grotesqueness of being human.

S: It’s weird because I did some research on classical grotesqueries and they really were first implemented in the churches, with gargoyles and weird little archetypes, where they were these strange filigrees that reconciled divinity and just bizarre shit. But they seemed to always tuck them away into these corners (…) they were usually small renderings. And your work kind of follows that in the sense that it is also based on miniature ideas, but you use them in a mass scale. I really first saw your work firsthand when you had your show at nullspace. And I thought of two artists in particular: Raymond Pettibon and Gary Panter. And I think I saw some of the similarities in the line quality as much as the ideas.

R.M.: You know, after I had that show, I was friends with Panter on Facebook and I actually wrote him a thank you message for making that possible. Just trying to be unfinished and immediate, that was akin to his style. It didn’t really happen before him in illustrative art. The whole RAW comic was just radical.

S: In your work, I also see these weird corollaries with Alchemy woodcuts, where they had truly juxtaposed things, ideas that shouldn’t be in the same place (…) the moon has a face, the sun has arms. Like I think your drawing “Ren,” has a sense of this. It’s almost visual ideas we take for granted now and things that have kind of infiltrated common graphic design. But those Alchemical images were ultimately codes for these mystical messages. I guess I’m just wondering if overtime you might have realized more overt influences of what you are creating.

R.M.: Over time, I started looking at people or things I could be influenced by. In L.A., I did take a Far Eastern history class. But then I discovered Masami Teraoka, a Hawaiian artist who was doing contemporary themes, in the style of a woodcut, but he did this with watercolors. And seeing his work made me go back even further. And the Japanese had made these prints as a way to sever their ties, Buddhism-wise, with China. They were making fun of the monks: monks were drawn as monkeys and frogs, and “look how absurd this is,” “it’s absurd to have a tradition.” And I thought that was awesome. Teraoka was on the cover of L.A. Weekly. And I saw a pretty big Robert Williams show when I was out there, when they were really kind of pinning down that “lowbrow” deal. He had the show in this tiny, little gallery called The Soap Plant on Melrose, and the same people had the La Luz de Jesus Gallery.

(“ren,” ink on Post-it Notes; year unknown.)

S: It’s interesting to me that you draw these Post-it Notes, these small images, but you in turn create these large pieces and installations with them. Like, “Untanglement” is a giant wheel of small images. You create a mass of these images. What do you think draws you to that approach?

R.M.: I think maybe just because it’s a way to display multiple instances. I mean, I could display just one Post-it. But as I’m speaking, I know there are 1200 or more in that gallery right now. And I’m looking in my kitchen and there’s another 1200 or more. (In the background, Beth can be heard saying “And there are 40 on the floor!”) Yeah, there are 40 here in front of me (laughing); they’re in the living room. So it just can’t be (…) one Post-it. I feel like I’m kind of being genuine with one. It’s kind of about scale and if I am offered a space, I want to fill that space. I also think too, it’s like the act of reading. If you read a book, it’s maybe eight inches tall and six inches wide but it’s actually so big – it takes up your life for a week or a month. When I see people looking at a big sculpture of all of these Post-its, they seem engaged. And I think that it’s really one of the most beautiful things about that experience for me, in watching people “read” the work. It’s visual, but they seem to read.

S: It isn’t like an abstract of one color. Your work almost requires the viewer to lean in and investigate it. I want to talk about some of your prior shows. In 2005, as you had mentioned earlier, you had a show at Rob DePiazza’s Screen Arts gallery. What was that like? Was it an installation or separate pieces?

R.M.: (Asks Beth, “Do you remember Screen Arts? … confers with Beth)

S: Beth is like your actual memory (laughs). Just put her on the phone, man.

R.M.: (laughs) That show was more like paintings. (Confirms this with Beth, “Those were paintings, right? “Yes,” explains Beth). Screen Arts was paintings. They were mostly house paint on canvases that I built on bed frames. I’m looking at one now and I think even the canvas on this one was an old bed sheet. We had a newborn. I think Russell was like two or three. And there was not a dime. We seriously couldn’t spare any money for anything except sustenance. I did up end up selling a painting to a friend of Rob’s down the street, who usually come to his shows.

S: And in September of 2010 at nullspace, you had the show titled Pips and Paracosms, The Lost and Found of Paradise. What was the impetus behind that show? It does have a title, so was there a theme to that?

R.M.: Yeah, I think (…) and it’s still going on (…) and it might be an overly psychological examination of my deal. Because I am trying to figure out, why am I (…) why do I (…) it’s kind of a Tourette’s. I’ve been trying to understand Tourette syndrome.

(Top and below: images from Maycumber’s show, “Pips and Paracosms, The Lost and Found of Paradise,” featured at nullspace gallery in 2010.)

S: Just as far as why you compulsively do this thing with Post-it Notes?

R.M.: Yeah.

S: Have you ever contacted (Post-it Note manufacturer) 3M about an endorsement deal?

R.M.: I actually did write an e-mail once (laughs) but nothing ever happened. But the thing is, the Post-it was really accidental and it’s still the cheapest material that I could get. And still, to this day, people give me Post-its. Every Christmas I get Post-its. I haven’t bought a pack of Post-it Notes in years.

S: Self-fulfilling prophecy.

R.M.: Yeah. And now I’m at a point, and actually after reading your article about JU’s MFA program, it seems like they are emphasizing people who are in transition with their practice. That’s kind of where I’m at.

S: Are you considering maybe pursuing an MFA?

R.M.: I totally am. Because all of my colleagues at Flagler are like, “Dude, get your post-graduate degree and you can teach here.” They want me to teach here, but actually I’m totally happy with what I am doing here. But it would be nice to have another degree.

S: You’re still working at the school, right?

R.M.: Yeah, this is my fourth year.

S: Your official title is “Wood Shop Assistant” but what does that entail? Are you generally working with sculpture students?

R.M.: Yeah, I work with a variety of students including graphic design. It’s kind of a resource for even like the Marine Biology students; I was building oyster beds for them. But mostly it is the sculpture and metalwork students. And then the painting students, I’m always helping them learn to stretch canvases. And then I’ve got students that just want to come down and talk. I’m kind of the liminal person. I’m always there, eight hours a day. I end up getting some students who just want to come down to the wood shop (laughs) and talk with me. So it’s kind of weird, because I’ve been through the program, and I do believe (…) there’s a certain amount of faith that an art career or an art direction, takes. You have to believe that this is worth a shit. And those seem like the people, the students, who end up in my workshop. Because I still do believe that this is a valid way to be.

S: In April 2012, you were also featured in a show at Launch F18 in Manhattan. What did you feature at that show?

R.M.: Yeah, with site95 (visual arts site and publication).

S: And Beth writes for that as well, right?

R.M.: She does; she edits the interviews.

S: So did that show feature more installation-type work?

R.M.: Yeah, I did a wall. I’ve also been painting on bottles and doing more wood sculpture.

S: You’re a part of a family of artists and creative types. Beth is a writer and your son Russell had his first show when he was five. How does all of this energy affect the Maycumber household? Do you wander off into your respective studio caves?

R.M.: Yeah, I think that’s a pretty good description. I had met this guy in northern California. He was my friend’s neighbor; he was an art teacher in California. And this guy had developed Squaw Valley. And this guy could afford to have a house built by (…) who is the guy that built “Falling Water”?

S: Frank Lloyd Wright.

R.M.: Yeah. So he had this really incredible house. It was this really weird neighborhood on the side of a hill. And across the valley was a dentist who lived in a teepee. And he would play classical piano out of his teepee every night. It was a weird little zone. And this teacher had told me, “If you marry someone, marry someone who is creative. Because they will understand you” And sure enough, there are moments when all three of us really appreciate this space we have and respect that that we all have our own creative times. And I think that it’s an important thing to realize that we have this kind of creative space going. And you know I’ve got Post-it Notes all over the walls (laughs) so if they can put up with that…

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

The Estlunds’ “Out of Nowhere” is an invitation to embrace the unknown

["Surfacing," a Shannon Estlund piece to be featured in "Out of Nowhere"; oil and enamel on panel; dimensions unknown.]

While CoRK Arts District is best known as being the home base to sixty artist studios, the complex has also introduced an engaging Artist-in-Residency program. In February of this year, New York-based multimedia artist Rachel Rossin was the flagship visiting artist-resident at CoRK. Rossin’s spiritually-inspired piece “Holy See,” was an installation that combined 2,500 hollow eggs and curtains of holographic light into a fully immersive experience. The following month, Brooklyn, NY-based artist Casey James was invited to stay and work at CoRK; the North Gallery was then home to his multimedia show, “Nawth Ta South.”

“The reason for the Artist-in-Residency program was to bring in new and different perspectives from other artists and art communities around the country,” explains sculptor and CoRK main man Dolf James. The CoRK AIR program offers a modest stipend for travel and materials, a private studio for the visiting artists, and then culminates with an exhibit of their work in one of CoRK’s available galleries. “We wanted to see what they were doing, thinking and experiencing, and for them to do the same with us. Building these relationships extends the reach of our community and helps keep a fresh flow of ideas moving.” James is quick to cite Aaron Levi Garvey as the chief curator of CoRK’s AIR program. “There is absolutely no question this program would not be happening if it were not for Aaron.” James explains that Garvey is essentially the one that attracts, communicates with, plans, promotes and ultimately takes care of all the details for the resident-artist coming to CoRK. “The idea behind having the artists come to Jacksonville is to give them a studio/exhibition experience out of their usual experience,” says Garvey.

“The artists and caliber of work that I have curated into the CoRK spaces, past and forthcoming, have been artists whose work I have been following for some time,” explains Garvey of his personal criterion in searching for innovative artists to bring to this area. “I’m looking for work that I feel can change the dynamic of the spaces, and artists that I feel can benefit from spending time in Jacksonville.” Garvey admits that when he travels to other cities in seeking possible residents for the CoRK AIR program, checking out art events and visiting artists in their studios, he is invariably asked “Why Jacksonville?”

“I usually respond with the quip ‘come and see’ to lighten the conversation, which ultimately then becomes lengthy.” And Garvey’s instincts for blending out-of-town artists with local audiences have been right on point. “So far the response has been really well received on both ends. The shows have been well attended and the artists have enjoyed their time in the city.” The next exhibit that Garvey has arranged will be with artist-in-residence Daniel Newman, with the show opening September 13 at CoRK’s West Gallery.

While Garvey has created a strong foundation for CoRK’s AIR program, the upcoming residency show is different in a few regards. “Out of Nowhere” is the first AIR program to feature three artists who are returning to their Northeast Florida roots. Mark Estlund, Shannon Estlund and Phillip Estlund were all longtime Jacksonville residents and each began their creative lives in this area. They have all since moved on to different environments. Mark and Shannon currently live in Minneapolis with their two daughters, Sophia, age six and three-year-old Natasha. Phillip splits his time between West Palm Beach and New York City. While each artist has their own undeniably distinct style, there seems to be a few organic connections that link them: the use of found materials, a shared fascination with the natural world, an investigation into cerebral and shadow-like realms, and an equal affinity for pushing their work into deeper, and at times, seemingly undecipherable places. Whether these similarities are based on familial roots or the parallel evolution of the three artists is irrelevant to the strength of their separate disciplines and work produced. “Out of Nowhere” is an opportunity for the three to combine their singular visions into a unified whole.

While Mark and Phillip had exhibited together last spring at Flagler College’s Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, “Out of Nowhere” is the first time that all three of the Estlunds have shown their work together. Also, while Garvey has curated the previous and forthcoming AIR shows, the presentation of “Out of Nowhere” was the brainchild of artist Crystal Floyd, who curated the exhibit and handled all of the attendant details of getting the Estlunds into CoRK. [see Floyd’s comments regarding the show and her relationship with the Estlunds in the interview transcription.]

The opening reception for the Estlund’s “Out of Nowhere” is held from 6-10 p.m. on Friday, August 16 at CoRK Arts District, 2689 Rosselle St., in Riverside.

As an aside, this interview presented a few unique challenges for me, primarily with unforeseen circumstances conjuring up the looming specter of an accelerated and near-psychosis-inducing deadline. Due to the combination of the Estlunds traveling and then hanging/arranging the show, I wasn’t available to speak to the trio until the afternoon of Tuesday, August 13. This was also the first time I had ever interviewed more than one person “live,” which led to all kinds of interesting logistical turns during the actual transcribing process. After interviewing Dolf James on August 14, I was harassing both Crystal Floyd and Aaron Levi Garvey for quotes while literally writing the piece in the last 24 hours. So this story for me was a happy marriage of time, technology, and absolute manic force that I personally think resulted in an interesting and, hopefully, engaging read. But dear reader, please remember the STAREHOUSE motto, invisibly carved on the face of countless mountains: “No refunds – Alea iacta est (“the die has been cast”).

I interviewed the Estlunds in the Artist-in-Residency studio at CoRK. I was glad to finally meet them in person for a talk that was in turns informal and informative; I was also weirdly surprised to discover a shared and direct influence with Phillip of someone from my own past who also helped kick me even further into the arts.

Starehouse: Okay, so I am here with Mark, Shannon and Phillip. Can I make sure I have your voices matched to the correct person when I transcribe this?

Mark Estlund: Mark.

Shannon Estlund: Shannon.

Phillip Estlund: Phillip.

Starehouse: What is your age and, uh, (laughs) astrological sign?

Phillip Estlund: 38; Libra.

Shannon Estlund: So, we are both 37.

Mark Estlund: Yes; and both Aries.

Starehouse: Aries? Me too. What are the odds of that? So is the show a kind of collaborative installation or is it a collection of individual pieces by each artist?

Mark Estlund: Yeah, it’s a collaborative installation in the sense that we were talking together about what kinds of works we would bring. But most of the work had already been made. Except for a few of mine that I’ve been making, thinking of the show as I have been making them (…) but I would have probably been making them either way.

Starehouse: So do you have actual collaborative works in this, or is it all individual works?

Phillip Estlund: It’s all individual works.

Starehouse: What does the title “Out of Nowhere” allude to?

Phillip Estlund: It’s a variation on a title of one of Shannon’s paintings, isn’t it? Is it the title, or…

Shannon Estlund: It was called “Middle of Nowhere.”

Phillip Estlund: So yeah, we started with passing some titles back and forth and decided to reel it in and start looking at titles of all of our work and Shannon’s piece, “Middle of Nowhere,” kind of left it open-ended and spoke to all of our work and we modified it (…) because “Middle of Nowhere,” we were concerned, made Jacksonville seem kind of bad (laughs) and, uh, then we modified that as the title of the show and then matched it up with one of Shannon’s paintings as the kind of the identity of the show (…) that makes it look really seamless and then kind of bridges all of our work.

Shannon Estlund: And it had a reference to place, which is really important to my work and Phillip’s work (…) and mystery, which is important to Mark’s work and my work (…) and probably Phillip’s work, too. It kind of thematically worked across all of our practices.

Starehouse: How many pieces are in the show? Do you know?

Phillip Estlund: That’s yet to be determined…

Mark Estlund: I have four, Shannon has five…

Phillip Estlund: And I’ll probably have three significant pieces and a grouping of smaller works. So we don’t have a finite number yet.

Shannon Estlund: Fifteen, probably?

Phillip Estlund: Yeah, fifteen to twenty.

Starehouse: So when did you receive the invitation from CoRK to do this?

Mark Estlund: Six months ago?

Shannon Estlund: Yeah, six months ago.

Starehouse: Who is the coordinator? Was it Aaron Levi Garvey who contacted you?

Mark Estlund: Crystal Floyd.

[I spoke to Crystal Floyd on the evening of Wednesday, Aug. 14. She was kind enough to offer the following about her reasons for bringing the Estlunds to CoRK as the resident artists:

“I first met Mark around 2007 when Clay Doran and I were curating these shows in the Old Library Basement [the former Haydon Burns Library, located at 122 N. Ocean St. in downtown Jacksonville.] And when I first spoke to Mark, he said, ‘Hey I have all of this crazy shit in my garage (laughs), can I come bring it to one of your shows?’ and we had another room that needed to be filled so we invited him. And of course he brings his work in and it is amazing. So from that point on, he has always been one of my favorite Jacksonville artists.” After meeting Mark, Floyd was eventually introduced to both Shannon and then Phillip. Once she realized there was an open slot at CoRK’s East Gallery, Floyd organized the Estlunds as Artists-in-Residency and curated their subsequent upcoming show. “I think there’s a lot of restraint in some of what they do and there’s a really good conversation going on between their pieces. I really wanted to see them together because I like seeing ‘power teams.’ I’ve seen Mark’s shows, I’ve seen Shannon’s work exhibited, and I’ve seen Phillip’s shows. And they are all three respectively amazing. But how badass would it be to have all three in a show? And through the Artist-in-Residency program, I was in a position to make that happen. I love all of them. And I really wanted to expose people to their work who might have been previously unfamiliar with them. Now that all three are so further along in their careers and evolved so much, I’m really excited about what they are bringing to this show.”]

[A Mark Estlund piece to be featured in "Out of Nowhere." Mixed media; title and dimensions unknown.]

Starehouse: So how long have you been here in town?

Phillip Estlund: We really just arrived in the last few days (…) more about how the show came about; Crystal asked us, when, last winter?

Shannon Estlund: Winter or early spring, yeah.

Phillip Estlund: And it was really just that she liked our work and whenever we were back in town together, she wanted to coordinate a time for us to do a show. And probably a couple of months after that, she told us that there was a formalized residency program that had a stipend and a studio space to work in.

Shannon Estlund: …which made it much more realistic (…) for us to be able to do this.

Starehouse: So can I ask, regarding the stipend, was that essentially used just to get all of you here, or for materials?

Phillip Estlund: It was $1,200, right?

Shannon Estlund: Yes.

Phillip Estlund: It helped pay for flights and transportation.

Starehouse: Did you ship the pieces here?

Shannon Estlund: We did; we shipped ours from Minnesota.

Mark Estlund: He drove up; he drove his up from South Florida.

Phillip Estlund: West Palm Beach.

Starehouse: Is that where you are now – West Palm? So you’re no longer in New York?

Phillip Estlund: Well, a couple of times a month I’m in New York for a week or two at time, but I’m primarily in West Palm.

Mark Estlund: He also has a cabin in the woods here in Jacksonville.

Starehouse: Is that right?

Phillip Estlund: Yeah, but I don’t tell it “on paper” that I come here a lot.

Starehouse: Should I omit this (laughs)? Phillip’s Hideaway.

Phillip Estlund: (laughs) Exactly.

Starehouse: So I know that Mark and Phillip, you had a show at Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, “Born of the Sun.” But have the three of you ever worked together on a show?

Phillip Estlund: No.

Mark Estlund: No. Shannon and I have never worked together on a show and we’ve been married for eight years. And it’s something we’ve always wanted to do, but this a great way to do it.

Philip Estlund: So it’s not really a true collaboration, but we did cut down some trees together, (laughs) on that one piece?

Shannon Estlund: Yeah (laughs) on “Middle of Nowhere.”

[A Phillip Estlund piece to be featured in "Out of Nowhere." Mixed media; title and dimensions unknown.]

Mark Estlund: I think with Shannon and me, it was just the reality of the finances. She’s just getting out of school, and going through two years of one person working and having two kids (…) that really put a crimp on our money situation. And that stipend really made it feasible to do this. But still, it was like “how can we realistically do this without putting ourselves in a tight spot?” So that was a conversation that was ongoing. But things totally worked out.

Starehouse: But I mean more in a sense of planning the show and getting the pieces together. Were the pieces already finished?

Shannon Estlund: We really work independently on our work. And we haven’t set up the show yet. So I think that’s the only place where we are going to have a creative collaboration is in how we hang the show. And we haven’t really done that.

Phillip Estlund: Although I think that Mark, more than you and I, has been working this year towards this show. He’s been making work that’s very specific for this.

Shannon Estlund: But there would never be any “push back” from you or I about it.

Phillip Estlund: No. I think we’ve all been a part of seeing what our practices have been like in the past year and have had “input,” but never direction.

Starehouse: So you already kind of “play well” together; there wasn’t any conflicts?

Phillip Estlund: The other thing too is that we had talked about maybe having an installation here.

Shannon Estlund: Yeah, that’s true.

Phillip Estlund: I think we backed away from that idea because of the “unknowns,” as far as the time restraint and all of us working together, in a collaborative way; it could be a great thing, or it may be messy. And personally I didn’t want to experiment with that (…) in case it got messy (laughs). And also be running around in the August heat collecting materials. But I think we realized that there are threads running through all of our work that made the body of work, as a show, cohesive enough to where we really didn’t need to do a three-person piece.

Starehouse: So there’s no actual collaborative piece in this show?

Mark Estlund: As of right now, no.

Starehouse: You have still got four days left to get out in the woods and start grabbing things! I want to ask you, looking at your work, would you describe yourselves as multimedia artists? Is it presumptuous to say that? How would you describe what each of you do?

Phillip Estlund: (to Shannon) you’re primarily a painter.

Mark Estlund: No, not now.

Phillip Estlund: No?

Mark Estlund: She has definitely broken through into sculpture.

Phillip Estlund: I definitely tell people that I do sculpture, primarily. But I also do collages. And I’m becoming a little bit more of a painter now because I’m reducing the volume of space down to more of a flat plane. I think we’re all interdisciplinary. I think all of our work is multi-layered.

Shannon Estlund: Mark is a sculptor but his work tends to be frontal and wall-hung.

Starehouse: You definitely have three distinct approaches. And I’m really going by what I saw at Mark’s Nullspace show [“Sequence Variations,” June 2011] and what I have seen online, but there seems to be a common element of collage or assemblage in all of your work. And it seems that each of you have created pieces that use found objects, repurposed items, natural objects (…) but you also all have created these structural objects. Mark’s work seems more defined by using items like grandfather clocks and furniture, these very finite things. Yet Shannon and Phillip, some of your work seems to resemble these tent-like, fortress or tree house-like sculptures. Do you agree with that? Do you think that could be from all of you being so close in the sense of family (…) or is it from familiar tastes?

Mark Estlund: I think we have all definitely influenced each other, as far as aesthetics and things we are drawn to, with things like found objects.

Shannon Estlund: I do think we influence each other but I also think it’s something that’s in the water right now. I know there are artists that are into other things, but the artists I’m attracted to almost have this sense of Neo-Romanticism (…) where there’s mystery in the natural world and almost a sense of mysticism.

["Ultimatum," a Shannon Estlund piece to be featured in "Out of Nowhere"; oil and enamel on panel; dimensions unknown.]

Mark Estlund: Yes, taking things that are familiar and kind of tweaking them.

Starehouse: I want to address this too, since you’re back in Jacksonville. When I first walked in, I was talking to Mark and he mentioned how the growth of the art scene here made it seem like a different town.

Mark Estlund: This [CoRK] wasn’t here when we still lived here.

Shannon Estlund: Not in the way that it is now.

Mark Estlund: It was starting.

Starehouse: When did you move to Minneapolis?

Mark Estlund: We left two years ago.

Starehouse: So Mark and Shannon are in Minneapolis (…) and Shannon, you are getting your MFA at MCAD (Minneapolis College of Art and Design)? Where are you at in that program?

Shannon Estlund: I graduated in May.

Starehouse: Congratulations!

Shannon Estlund: Thanks!

Starehouse: Mark, other than art, what are you doing in Minneapolis?

Mark Estlund: I’m doing home repair work. I work at a home for foster care children and adopted children, children that have mental or physical disabilities. I fix stuff and build things for them.

Starehouse: That’s fantastic. That’s a pretty noble job.

Mark Estlund: Yeah, the lady that I work for has crazy ideas. She wants to put a circular slide inside the house (laughs). I used to have a home repair business here so I’m drawn to that type of work, but this is still pretty unique.

Starehouse: Are they familiar with your visual arts background? Would they be into you making a slide featuring glass-encased bees (laughs)?

Mark Estlund: Not so much that but she knows that I have an artistic eye.

Starehouse: So she’s somewhat aware of your shady, arts past?

Mark Estlund: Yeah.

Starehouse: And Phillip, what do you do? Do you have a side career?

Phillip Estlund: Well, I work with a private art collector. It’s a woman who comes from a New York family who is involved with all of the New York art institutions, so she comes from the tradition of that and has taken it to a whole other level; she has a museum-scale collection.

Mark Estlund: It would put most museums to shame.

Phillip Estlund: Yeah, absolutely.

Starehouse: Do you feel comfortable naming this person?

Phillip Estlund: Oh yeah. Her name is Beth DeWoody.

Starehouse: So what is your official title?

Phillip Estlund: There’s no official title, I manage projects related to the collection, which involves an array of different responsibilities. And I’m one of a handful of people that are involved in it. There are different levels. But that’s what enables me to be between West Palm Beach and New York, since she’s in both places. I’m able to do projects with her and do my work wherever I am. But all of the things I had done up until now have been related to carpentry within a museum setting or something (…) Mark got me a job once building a large log house, so I have a construction background (…) so a merging of museum studies and construction, that’s kind of where I came from.

Starehouse: Did you both grow up doing construction-like jobs?

Mark Estlund: Yeah. But I was more involved with building sets for commercials and props for big events

Phillip Estlund: We really got our feet wet with construction through our Dad. He taught us carpentry; building houses …he was a do-it-yourself guy.

Starehouse: So you are all three in either Minneapolis, West Palm Beach, New York (…) I’m curious, since it’s my understanding through Dolf James that part of the impetus of CoRK’s Artist-in-Residency program is about exchanging ideas and checking the pulse and radar of what’s out there. Have you all seen or experienced ideas or programs that you think could be implemented and beneficial to Jacksonville’s art community?

Mark Estlund: I personally think Jacksonville has a lot of influence on its own. I don’t know if people are starting to see what’s going on here, but just the talent level that’s here is incredible. And Minneapolis had its big eruption in the eighties. So it has deep roots now; but to me it doesn’t have the same type of excitement and the same type of fire that’s happening here.

Starehouse: Why do you think that is?

Mark Estlund: I think because there are a lot of people who are there who had been running these kind of “side” art adventures, doing performance art and things like that since the eighties (…) so it’s kind of like this embedded community. There’s still an excitement there but here it feels so fresh and new (…) like seeing a lot of the street artists who we grew up with here, getting recognized (…) like Shaun Thurston and Matt Abercrombie. There’s just some serious, serious talent here. But Minneapolis has influenced me, personally, to kind of loosen up on my work.

Starehouse: How so?

Mark Estlund: I’m trying to make it so it’s not so labor-intensive. The work I started making here, I had to figure out on my own, so I was kind of locked into this one way of working. Moving across the country, I’m working with new materials and so I’m trying to kind of break away from my old approach and plus make it where I can ship stuff.

Shannon Estlund: His work now is more gestural and a little bit quicker. A lot of his work took a lot of effort from the viewer because there are these lens and layers, so you had to approach it and really look at it one-on-one and it took time to really take all of it in. And these newer pieces are still layered in their meaning but they really kind of grab you from across the room.

Mark Estlund: I think that the program that she was in, at MCAD, really helped me kind of start working away from old ideas.

Starehouse: Shannon, how was that experience for you? What was MCAD like? Did they have certain disciplines they focused on?

Shannon Estlund: It’s an interdisciplinary program. I expected that to mean it would be closer to painting, performance and installation. One thing that surprised me was that half of the students were design students, so interdisciplinary to them meant more art and design.

Starehouse: Right. So does that equal more computer-based ideas, preparing more for graphic design?

Shannon Estlund: A lot of it was computer-based, but still cutting-edge and interesting work (…) a lot of light-based work, people doing projections and sound. So that’s all really interesting and in some ways it expanded my mind since I’m very much from a fine arts background and hadn’t been all that comfortable with design. So it was interesting being exposed to more design ideas; and experimental design as well.

Mark Estlund: And Shannon is known pretty much in Jacksonville for being a painter, but now through this program and outside installations that she’s done; she’s really more recognized as a sculptor in Minneapolis.

Shannon Estlund: And that was my choice. I entered this interdisciplinary program because I wanted to expand what I did and it was excellent for that. At MCAD you have to be very independent because it’s a mentor-based system, it’s more of a European-style teaching system where you find a mentor, and you work with that person one-on-one for two years. So a lot of it is up to you; you are not taking a lot of traditional course work. You don’t have assignments. You are working it all out with the person you choose as a mentor.

Starehouse: Who was your mentor?

Shannon Estlund: I had two really great and supportive mentors. The first was Clea Felien, a super-skilled painter who helped me with loosening up my painting technique. The second was John Gaunt, an abstract painter who was great at asking difficult questions and getting me to think about things in a different way. I was mostly categorized as painting, because that was mostly what I did.

Starehouse: I know that Tony and Wendy [Tony Rodrigues and Wendy C. Lovejoy, artists and owners of TACT Apparel] have a killer painting in their house that you did years ago – of a pair of wolves?

Shannon Estlund: Oh yeah. That was a while ago (laughs).

Starehouse: Phillip, how has your experience been in West Palm?

Phillip Estlund: What initially moved me to that town was that I had been living in Miami, and there was a really cool institution in West Palm called the Palm Beach Institute of Contemporary Art. It was a European-model for a museum; it was a Kunsthalle, a non-collecting, contemporary art space that was funded by one couple. They had like a million-and-a-half dollar a year budget. So I got hired from Miami to move there and work with those exhibitions. That was around 2002, maybe? And it lasted another three years. So the funders’ experiment lasted four years. And for whatever reasons, there wasn’t enough foot traffic; sometimes you’d get three people a day, sometimes you’d get eleven people a day. And these were really world-class shows. We would co-organize shows with The New Museum in New York, Site Santa Fe in New Mexico (…) so the audience isn’t there, necessarily, for contemporary art. And there’s not really any formal residency program there. It’s also like a playground for the rich; so there’s like a big divide, experientially, for people who live there. My studio is in a very down and dirty warehouse district; my gallery is on Worth Avenue in Palm Beach. I’m much more comfortable in my warehouse (laughs). But that’s kind of the dichotomy of that area but there are great collectors there. But we’re an hour north of Miami, which has a lot of great residency programs; some are privately funded, some are attached to institutions. One is called The Fountainhead, that’s run by one couple, and it’s basically a house that they offer a residency program out of and then they have separate studios as well. So in West Palm, with very few exceptions, I feel like I’m hiding out down there. I’m pretty cut off, I think.

Starehouse: But you’re participating on some level?

Phillip Estlund: Well, yeah. I guess I’m hiding out in a good way. I’m not in exile.

And you know, when I’m up in New York there’s so much going on (…) there’s a gallery system, residency system, a tiered-gallery system, and everything in between (…) and so much stuff going on that I don’t even know about (laughs).

Starehouse: Here we have the Art Walks, and you have to forgive my ignorance if this a century-old phenomenon around the planet (laughs), but do they have similar events in Minneapolis or West Palm?

Shannon Estlund: Northern Spark [an annual, all-night Minneapolis art festival that started in 2011].

Mark Estlund: Not only that, but Northrup King [Minneapolis art center] has something once a month. But there isn’t a city-related thing, except once a year.

[A Mark Estlund piece to be featured in "Out of Nowhere." Mixed media; title and dimensions unknown.]

Mark Estlund: We went out as a family to see it, and then Shannon and the girls went home and I had my bike and I rode all over the place, with a GPS strapped to my handle bars. I ended up going to the Walker Art Center and seeing a John Waters-curated show, at like four o’clock in the morning. And of course it was just completely bizarre. Everyone was just completely burnt out.

Starehouse: Staggering with excitement.

Mark Estlund: Yeah, but just trying to push through the night. And they also have these Art Shanties, which they do bi-annually. People build these, uh…

Shannon Estlund: Ice fishing shacks.

Mark Estlund: Yeah, ice fishing shacks and they’re basically these sheds that are hand-built and each one is an installation on its own and they’re out on a frozen lake. So there’s like ice-skating and people make these weird ice-bikes. And you just visit these different Art Shanties all over the lake. It’s really weird for us, because I think that was the first time we ever walked on a frozen lake (laughs).

Starehouse: Which is one more time than I ever will.

Shannon Estlund: (laughs) But it’s fairly clear so you can see how deep that it has frozen.

Starehouse: I’d like to talk about your time spent here. Were any of you born here in Jacksonville?

Shannon Estlund: I was.

Starehouse: Mark?

Mark Estlund: Philly.

Starehouse: Phillip?

Phillip Estlund: Greece. Athens, Greece. Our dad was in the navy.

Starehouse: I had interviewed Mark for the Nullspace show and you had kind of credited Lee Harvey for encouraging you to stay on the creative path. You had said “Lee was the first person to recognize that what I was doing was contemporary art.” I guess I’m wondering if when you were here (…) if any of you had encountered other similar people that directly encouraged you to make art.

Phillip Estlund: Does he know the whole story with Lee?

Starehouse: The semi-notorious (laughs) Lee Harvey.

Mark Estlund: What is the whole story (to Phillip)?

Phillip Estlund: That he saw some things you were making …that you didn’t really know that it was even art.

Mark Estlund: Right. I did not know what I was making (laughs).

Starehouse: How old were you at the time?

Mark Estlund: I was like 19 or 20. And I grew up off of Fort Caroline Road, on restriction for most of the school year.

Starehouse: Was that for art-related crimes?

Mark Estlund: No, just because I was terrible at school and my parents were doing whatever they could. I’d hang out in the garage and take things apart and glue things together.

Phillip Estlund: Taking, like, electronics apart.

Mark Estlund: Yeah, just like radios and whatever (…) burning wood. But then I got a little older and I tried to actually make things and Lee ended up living in a building that I was living in and we started talking about art, and he was pretty exciting to talk to about the art world and his past with it. He came to my apartment and had seen some things that I had made at that point. And was asking him what it was, and I remember asking him, “Is this even art?” And he said, “Yeah, this is contemporary art. But you couldn’t sell this.” (laughs) (…) because it was just things that were stacked and assembled, but not really attached. But it’s funny because it’s a lot like what some galleries want today. It’s not really marketable; they just want to show you making something. And it doesn’t have to be shipped. But from that point, I started making things that could be sold and shipped some place. Now I’m trying to get away from that whole idea.

Starehouse: So you all kind of grew up in Jacksonville? Were you all Douglas Anderson School of the Arts kids?

Phillip Estlund: Yeah, all Douglas Anderson.

Mark Estlund: Phillip was visual arts, Shannon was visual arts.

Shannon Estlund: No, I was creative writing.

Mark Estlund: No, you were creative writing, sorry (…) and I was stage tech.

Phillip Estlund: Can I tell my story about who influenced me?

Starehouse: Totally, tell it, yeah!

Shannon Estlund: (laughs)

Phillip Estlund: When I was 14 or 15 I met some guys (…) Mark and I grew up in a kind of working class, Orange Park neighborhood, and played ball at the ball field, went to the fight-or-flight elementary school and middle school. And before I went to high school I met these older guys from St. Johns, who were very (…) they had culture, they read good books, and they listened to jazz…

Starehouse: Right, with long flowing capes.

Phillip Estlund: Yeah (laughs) but they introduced me to this guy at the beach named Kyle, whose last name I don’t remember (…) (to Mark) you might remember?

Starehouse: Kyle Hedquist. Was he a sculptor? Kyle Hedquist.

Phillip Estlund: Yes!

Starehouse: Sadly, he passed away.

Phillip Estlund: Well listen; you know Chris Wilson [local artist-musician]?

Starehouse: Yeah.

Phillip Estlund: Chris was my introduction to Kyle. I was like 15-years-old. One time after staying up all night, trying to sleep on Chris Wilson’s couch, like on Naldo [Avenue] (…) they were like five years older, working in restaurants (…) so Chris is up all night playing guitar, not really saying much (…) and I couldn’t really sleep, and Chris had this drawing he had done of Rimbaud in his apartment, that ended up going to Einstein-A-Go-Go [now-legendary Northeast Florida all ages rock club], on the wall in gift shop (…) and I was just like, “Chris, how do you keep making art and keep making music? Sometimes I just don’t want to do it.” And he said, “You just have to do it.” And that’s always stuck with me. When I don’t feel like making anything (…) you just have to make something.

Starehouse: You have to sometimes fight through that resistant atmosphere.

Phillip Estlund: Yes. And then it becomes self-perpetuating. So Chris introduced me to Kyle, who lived in a bomb shelter…

Starehouse: Yeah, in Jax Beach.

Phillip Estlund: In Jax Beach, and had a garage upstairs above ground where he could also make his work; very Giacometti-esque plaster sculptures with elongated bodies and torsos.

Starehouse: And I remember he had these Native American-themed sculptures, too.

Phillip Estlund: Yeah, and I would go down there with these friends that were 19 or 20, and of course Kyle was even older than them; he was in his late twenties. And he was the first person I met who was “living in the art.” His place was covered in plaster, filled with smoke (…) there was just enough sunlight (laughs) and he had that weird little toilet (laughs) up on a stand in the corner. But he was the first guy here who showed me, “you can be a grown person and live in your art – and make it.”

[A Phillip Estlund piece to be featured in "Out of Nowhere." Mixed media; title and dimensions unknown.]

Phillip Estlund: Yeah, Kyle was also the guy who introduced me to things like Ornette Coleman and Sonny Rollins.

Starehouse: I actually tried to find him online and was sad to see that he had passed away…

Phillip Estlund: … In Chris’ arms, in Chris’ driveway. Kyle had gotten really bad into drinking and Chris was trying to peel him out of his house. Kyle had become a total recluse and wasn’t seeing people. He was down to nothing, weight-wise (…) and Chris was getting him into detox (…) and they were sitting in Chris’ driveway, and Kyle went into DTs – and had a heart attack (…) and died in Chris’ arms.

Starehouse: Jesus.

Phillip Estlund: Yeah, this was about five years ago. Chris and I thought about putting together a show of some of Kyle’s work.

Starehouse: That would be fantastic, kind of a fitting honor to him (pauses) Weirdness (…) Let me steer us back to the show. I’m curious that Shannon, you used the word “mystical” (…) and I see also it as cryptic or mysterious (…) it’s hard for me, because I don’t want to pigeonhole the three of you, but trying to interview you collectively (…) I was looking at some of Phillip’s collages online with these distorted faces with orange spires shooting out of them (…) Shannon, you have the “Children of the Dark” paintings with these kids in shadow and darkness (…) Mark, has these clocks with horns and insects in glass. I guess I am wondering how you separately but almost collectively come to that kind of tone in your work? Does that make sense?

Phillip Estlund: I don’t think we can all speak to how we all got there.

Starehouse: Well, how would you say that you got to that place?

Phillip Estlund: Well, I would say we are all influenced by (…) well, I think Shannon’s work really reflects the texture of this region; like as a starting point – a base point. I don’t think that like all of her work looks that way, (to Shannon) but the one you are going to stretch, definitely. But I’ve always been horrible at doing things I have to plan, artistically. I’ve been stronger at improvising. And have always had a certain attraction to a certain type of materials, whether I know what it is going to do or not. So I have become a collector of this stuff. Also, in my experience with museums in making dioramas and things like that (…) that got carried into the work in it becoming more atmospheric, multi-layered and textural. Now I find my work becoming more of a direct response to the environment (…)

Mark Estlund: Materially.

Phillip Estlund: Materially and emotionally.

Starehouse: When I look at all of your work, it seems kind of dark.

Mark Estlund: I think Shannon explored more of this at MCAD (…) she was really kind of forced to explore, and articulate, what you’re referring to.

Shannon Estlund: (laughs) are you prompting me?

Starehouse: You are being prompted (laughs)!

Mark Estlund: And (to me) you’re referring to mysticism as the thread, in what we’re doing.

Starehouse: Yes. And Shannon, when you used that word “mysticism,” was it as a spiritual term or in a broader sense?

Shannon Estlund: I mean it more in terms of when the familiar becomes the unknown and then there’s something exciting about the unknown; and then something that resonates in union.

Starehouse: Mysticism is usually used as “seeking union with God” but you could easily omit “God” and say union with that unknown, that “other.”

Shannon Estlund: I said mysticism, but it’s not really a word I would normally use in my work (…) I do think about mystery, the uncanny and I guess it’s interesting to me because I’ve thought of my own work a lot, and I’ve thought about Mark’s work a lot, and to me (…) because we are so deeply engaged in what we are doing, it’s hard for me to see the commonalities. So it’s interesting to me when you say you see something in all of our work, because it’s harder for me to see what they have in common. It’s hard for me to see it from the outside.

Starehouse: Well it’s equally hard for me (…) since you have such separate styles (…) but it’s unavoidable for me to not see certain things (…) it’s not “depressing,” but [speaking to Mark] like in your assemblages there is some reason it’s not little bunnies and stickers of butterflies.

Mark Estlund: It’s touching on some matter that’s deep but you can’t see exactly what it is.

Shannon Estlund: I guess I’ve thought about it a lot in my own work in the sense of the choices you make in life and whether you make that choice to step into the unknown. And the rewards aren’t necessarily worth the risk. But you take that leap anyway and the adventure is the reward. But I guess the way that I look at life is complex (…) and it probably is dark at times.

Starehouse: I think you had kind of alluded to this in a way, but growing up here (…) there’s a lot of nature in the surrounding areas of the city (…) and you all use natural materials to some degree. Do you think that directly influenced your work as artists?

Mark Estlund: I was very influenced by that.

Shannon Estlund: Yeah.

Phillip Estlund: All three of us definitely.

Starehouse: Were you all nature children, out in the woods?

Mark Estlund: Yeah.

Shannon Estlund: Definitely.

Phillip Estlund: Yeah. Boy Scouts, camping a lot (…) a lot of outdoor stuff.

[Installing "Out of Nowhere" on Tuesday, Aug. 13; left to right: Shannon, Phillip, Errol Pierce, and Mark.]

Shannon Estlund: That’s a good point. And I think my work is using the viewer. Instead of putting people in the work, the viewer is the person; you’re dealing with nature, as the viewer.

Mark Estlund: Right (…) Absolutely. There’s definitely that common thread with Phillip and I. And the things not only that I find in nature that I use in my work but also (…) I look at things at, say I find at a thrift store or in someone’s trash, I try to relate to it in the same way that I would find a rock or some piece of wood (…) it’s just a natural response to it.

Phillip Estlund: Also, I’ve been getting more into these landscape-type paintings that are really assemblage-sculpture (…) like as a variation of addressing nature’s beauty and grandiosity and all of that. It’s really addressing nature’s brutality and indifference. The beauty that we see in it is a real perception and it’s something that brings us a dopamine or serotonin charge so that we can feel small in a grand place. So that is as real as understanding that it doesn’t matter if you’re there or not. Nature does not care; it’s indifferent. We translate in our lives that it does things “to us” like natural disasters as a brutal force; but it’s even sadder than that, because it’s really an indifferent force.

Shannon Estlund: I didn’t know if you knew this, but one of my paintings is called “Brutal Indifference.”

Phillip Estlund: Oh Really? Really? I had no idea!

Starehouse: See? There is an Estlund Mind Meld happening on the familial level!

(All laugh.)

Phillip Estlund: Wow. Yeah, yeah and I’ve been thinking a lot about this. It kind of lets you off the hook. Because there are so many times we can look around our landscape and say, “This would look so pretty if this pole and these wires weren’t there.” But that is the thing. It’s the totality of our contemporary landscape.

Shannon Estlund: I think even in environmentalism there’s sort of preciousness to it, whereas if we could sort of expand our minds about what is natural (…) let’s include more, in terms of what is natural. Maybe there’s a new way of looking at environmentalism (…) I don’t know.

Phillip Estlund: Just accepting that.

Shannon Estlund: I mean in just doing what we can now. Maybe we can never go back to virgin forests.

Phillip Estlund: Right.

Shannon Estlund: So what can we do to fix this? Maybe it’s not pretty, but what is the next step?

Starehouse: What are you each doing after this show? What are your separate plans?

Mark Estlund: My one plan is to clean my studio (laughs). The pieces that I’ve made for this show are really kind of testing new water and I’ve done quite a few experiments, in kind of grabbing ahold of an idea that seems like it can turn into a piece. But a lot of these experiments I’ve been doing could definitely be turned into “show-like” work. So I’ve learned a lot leading up to this, in getting away from my old way of working. But I think what I would really ultimately like to do is to get even more gestural, more loose and then do shows where you can’t really sell the work. It’s there and then again; it’s just very organic. So that’s the direction I want to move in. But no solid plans; I never approach it with a solid plan.

Shannon Estlund: I’ve got a couple of cool little projects that I hope will come through. They’re actually a couple of sculptures. But I lost my studio at school when I graduated, so I have a new little room that I’m turning into a studio. So that’s a new project for me.

Mark Estlund: We’re sharing our basement. They have basements in Minnesota (laughs).

Starehouse: That’s one benefit of Minnesota!

Mark Estlund: So we’re sharing that as our studio space; it is separate rooms. It’ll be interesting for you [to Shannon] to work in that space.

Shannon Estlund: I haven’t made work where I haven’t had to defend the work immediately, even before it’s finished, in a long time. So I am really looking forward to having some time in the studio where I don’t have to explain anything to anyone else.

Mark Estlund: Oh, and she also did a large painting that she gave to someone she’s become friends with to tear apart or do whatever.

Shannon Estlund: It’s kind of a collaboration with a sculptor I met in Minneapolis named Amy Toscani. She’s a really cool sculptor who has had some influence on Mark and I just with her fearlessness with materials. She’ll use anything and just throw it together in a very fearless way.

Mark Estlund: And fearless of criticism as well.

Starehouse: That’s a deadly combination, a double force. Phillip Estlund: what’s down the road; other than possibly hiding out in that cabin in the woods?

Phillip Estlund: Well, I need to finish a tree house that I’m building, (laughs) in the next couple of months. I’m actually doing a line of chairs, like an extension of my studio practice, for an artist-addition furniture line that’s getting some momentum. It’s actually going to be in an Elle Magazine showroom in New York; that’s starting next month through January. I’m trying to get the production of that more self-propelled, so I can focus on doing what I really want to be doing – making dismal landscapes (laughs).

[Left to right: Mark, Shannon, and Phillip Estlund in the Artist-in-Residency studio at CoRK.]

starehouse@gmail.com

space: eight gallery prepares for the visual onslaught of Art Dorks Rise

[Brendan Danielsson's "Cpl. Brach Lee," 12 x12, oil on panel, 2013.]

The line-up for this exhibit of original work is an impressive regime of visual artists that includes Aeron Alfrey, Dan Barry, John Casey, David Chung, Brendan Danielsson, Justin DeGarmo, Mark Elliott, Jad Fair, Joseph Daniel Fiedler, Charles Glaubitz, Robert Hardgrave, Gregory Hergert, Gregory Jacobsen, Jonnie Jacquet, Colin Johnson, Jason Limon, Jon MacNair, Dan May, Christian Rex van Minnen, Chris Mostyn, Heiko Müller, Jason Murphy, Katie Ridley Murphy, Kristian Olson, Matthew Pasquarello, Anthony Pontius, Meagan Ridley, Kim Scott, Scot Sothern and Scott D. Wilson.

Individually and collectively, the Art Dorks work in a variety of media ranging from illustration and painting to photography and mixed-media. Some are highly trained with extensive academic backgrounds; others are purely self-taught. And their work is just as diverse, with imagery and concepts that exist on the outer terrain of contemporary art. Bizarre, humorous, poignant, brilliant and even baffling, the Art Dorks strength lies not only in the numbers of their ranks but also in their respective array of vision and approach to present-day art. A link featuring bios and images of their work can be found here.

As an experiment in hypomanic blogographic arts inquiry™, I am attempting to briefly interview all of the Art Dorks and post their responses and work episodically as they come in. Whether this attempt will be a successful feature boasting the views and pieces of dozens of artists or a withering flap of slap happy hubris remains to be seen.

So far, I have e-mail interview commitments from Art Dorks (in no particular order) Joseph Daniel Fielder, Kim Scott, Chris Mostyn, Scott D. Wilson, John Casey, Aeron Alfrey, Jon MacNair, Robert Hardgrave, Scot Sothern and Anthony Pontius. I plan on respectfully re-harassing the other Art Dorks within the next coming days and weeks leading up to the opening.

I am kicking off the series below with interviews of space: eight owner Rob DePiazza and Art Dorks founder Brendan Danielsson.

The opening reception for Art Dorks Rise is held from 5-11 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 4 at space: eight gallery, 228 W. King St. in St, Augustine. The show will be on display through Nov. 30. The contact number for the gallery is 904 829-2838.

Rob DePiazza

Starehouse: Why did you choose to bring the Art Dorks Rise show to space: eight gallery?

Rob DePiazza: It all started when I saw Brendan Danielsson’s work in Hi-Fructose Magazine. I immediately was drawn to it. Brilliant! In the interview it was revealed that Brendan resided in Atlanta and having an interest in showing as much art from the region as possible, I got in touch with Attaboy (Daniel Seifert), Hi-Fructose co-owner along with Annie Owens, both of whom I had done shows with in the past, to get Brendan’s contact info. So started the process of talking about doing at show at then named ‘The Gallery at Screen Arts’. Shortly after the talks we closed the gallery due to construction but Brendan remained at the top of the list knowing someday I’d reopen the gallery. Once I made the commitment to do so in November 2011, I reestablished communication with him and set a tentative date. So what began as a solo exhibition evolved after several months to a small group show with three other artists and a few months later Brendan pitched the idea of making it an Art Dorks reunion show – Art Dorks Rise – a collective Brendan started in 2004 – that features 30 artists from around the country and outside as well.

S: What are some of the qualities of the work about this particular do you find compelling?

R.D.: The most compelling aspect of this show is the diversity of styles and of course the amazing work and stature of each artist. The collective is a veritable who’s who in new contemporary art.

S: This show seems like a culmination of several shows you have had over the years, yet this is undoubtedly the largest, with 30 artists showing original work. What have been some of the logistical or curatorial issues in getting this off the ground?

R.D.: Brendan has been working behind the scenes to wrangle everyone into action. I’m handling the usual pre-show planning and production. We’ve printed 5000 Art Dorks sticker invites for distribution and are printing show posters shortly. We’re doing everything we can to bring out the Northeast Florida art community and folks who appreciate art in general. With everything happening in the Jax art scene these days, getting people to the shows has been a task in itself.

S: What can local art lovers expect from the Art Dorks Rise opening reception experience?

R.D.: We’re working on some ideas to make it a really special evening but since a few things aren’t nailed down mum’s the word for now.

Brendan Danielsson

Starehouse: The first Art Dorks gallery show was seemingly in 2004 at the Art Farm in Atlanta; Art Dorks Rise at space: eight gallery will be the seventh show for the Art Dorks. Has there been a theme to each of these shows or is it really about showing each chosen artist’s current work?

Brendan Danielsson: That first show here in Atlanta, at the Art Farm, was actually more of a local artists thing and less of what eventually grew out of the Art Dorks website. But it was sort of the beginning of some of us local Art Dorks wanting to exhibit art and attaching the Art Dorks name it. There’s no theme for this show. As far as the rest of the shows, though, only a couple of them had any sort of theme. Those were shows that required the art to be in a square format and one of the shows the piece had to be 5 x 5 inches. In general, I’m in favor of an open theme show. I think giving the artist complete freedom allows them to do what they do best without guidelines. Themed shows offers up a different kind of challenge that I sometimes enjoy, but for the Art Dorks shows, I just like to keep it open.

S: What was your original impetus in gathering a collective of artists?

B.D.: It wasn’t really my impetus. It just sort of happened on its own. But I did create the original website that resulted in the gathering of artists. Several of us on the old forums started talking about how to get into shows. Some of us hadn’t really been in many shows while others had shown quite a bit. A couple of the more established artists started getting some things lined up for us as a group. I think Travis Louie got us our first real show at a gallery in New Haven, Connecticut.

S: What is your criterion in inviting certain artists? What qualifications are needed to be considered a bona fide Art Dork?

B.D.: No real criteria other than they’ve created interesting work. Most of the artists in our group, including newer members, have already exhibited together in other group shows. And most of us are somewhat connected together online. What happened on the old Art Dorks website continues to happen on all the other various sites like Facebook, Flickr, and Tumblr, whatever… where likeminded artists attract each other. It’s a natural gathering that happens in any group online. So it was just a matter of asking a few of our favorite artists to participate in this new show.

S: In your own work, you seem to celebrate the grotesque. While some of this appears to be based on humor, do you feel a kind of a kinship or even sense of compassion for these people that you portray?

B.D.: I like things that are different. Maybe I get bored easily so I add in all the grotesque elements as details and attention getting devices. And they are things that are amusing to me. It’s like when you’re doodling something in school to show your friend to see if you can make him laugh.

As far as the characters themselves, I see them as existing in a world where they are considered normal, not ugly or grotesque. I like to think of them as being happy even if their expression doesn’t reflect so. They may appear (to us) to have gone through a struggle or may be living with an abnormality, but they are all that way. That’s life in their world and they are none the wiser. And I guess I feel a certain kinship for them because I’m their creator. But then again, they’re not real. But you know, people always want to know what the characters are thinking or feeling. But to be honest, I just draw and let them become what they want to be. I don’t put a lot of thought into what they are thinking or feeling. I can make up a story and tell it to you or the viewer can make up their own. Either way, it makes no difference really.

S: You use oil on linen for your recent paintings and it seems as if you also use Old Masters painting techniques like underpainting and layering as well. Do you use that media and methods to counter balance the imagery in the composition?

B.D.: I only wish I knew the techniques that the Old Masters used – then maybe I’d know what the hell it is that I’m doing. Painting has always been a struggle for me. When I’m painting, I feel as though I’m running down a hill, completely out of control, trying not to eat shit too hard and hoping to make it to the bottom in one piece. My technique is the I’m-learning-how-to-paint-all-over-again-technique…. every single painting. So I try and keep my subject matter and compositions simple for now. But I hope one day, as I get more paintings under my belt, the pieces will grow in complexity.

S: It also seems as if your work touches more on something like Goya’s “Yard with Lunatics” than it does comic books or other typical influences of our generation. Can you recall seeing certain pieces of art from your childhood or youth that kind of helped later “flip the switch” in your direction and approach?

B.D.: Not any specific pieces that I recall… The largest influence for me in my drawing technique comes from one of my first drawing instructors, Zhi Lin, at Missouri State University. He was a great instructor and an amazing artist. His drawing technique was awesome and I just remember being blown away at how well the figures were rendered in his work. He also didn’t beat around the bush when critiquing the work. He once said to a student in class, “Your drawing is so bad it makes me want to kill myself!” Here’s an interview I found with him.

S: Where do you think are some of the best places to “ugly people watch”? Grocery Stores? Any number of banks? Beauty Salons and Barbershops? Zealot-driven Religious Institutions? City Council Meetings? Agricultural Fairs?

B.D.: Wal-Mart, the dog track, and C-SPAN.

S: The world of the 21^st century seems to grow smaller every day. In your travels and day-to-day affairs, have you ever encountered any real-life doppelgangers that resemble any of the people from your paintings?

B.D.: Yeah, I have seen people with strange growths and what not. I feel bad for them… especially when it looks like something that could easily be removed, but maybe they just don’t have the money…. or maybe they simply don’t care.

S: Do you have any special message to the art lovers of Northeast Florida from the Art Dorks?

B.D.: Yes. Come join us for the opening! October 4th. It’s going to be a great show.

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com

Liz Rodda explores belief, fate, and the unknown with Clockwise

[Liz Rodda's, "Plan For Victory," black jade icosahedron, 16 millimeters.]

A native of Sacramento, California, the 31-year-old Rodda garnered a B.A. from Willamette University in Salem, Oregon in 2004 and in ’06 received an M.F.A. from Massachusetts College of Art & Design in Boston, Massachusetts. Rodda’s work has been featured nationally and internationally in solo and group exhibitions at venues including Texas State University, Brand 10 Art Space in Fort Worth, Texas, the Museum of Contemporary Art, North Miami, the Contemporary New Media Audio-Visual Festival, Madrid, Spain, and the Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles, California. Rodda currently resides in Austin, Texas where she is an Assistant Professor in the School of Art and Design at Texas State University, located in San Marcos.

Rodda will be giving an artist talk at 7 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 5 at Flagler College’s Ringhaver Student Center, located at 50 Sevilla Street in St. Augustine. The opening reception for Clockwise is held from 5 – 9 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 6 at the Crisp-Ellert Art Museum, located on the school’s campus at 48 Sevilla Street. The show is on display through Oct. 18. The contact number for CEAM is (904) 826-8530.

I interviewed CEAM museum director Julie Dickover via e-mail to get a sense of her own views on Rodda’s work and reasons for bringing this show to CEAM.

I spoke to Rodda in a phone conversation from her home in Texas on the afternoon of Tuesday, Aug. 27. What follows are transcriptions of those two exchanges.

Julie Dickover

Starehouse: Why did you choose Liz Rodda as part of this year’s museum programming?

Julie Dickover: Liz’s work really fits into the vision I have for the museum as a space to greater expose the community and Flagler’s fine art students to current contemporary art practices. In my opinion her work embodies what is happening out there with contemporary art, by embracing a diversity of practices, such as video, sculpture and works on paper as well as utilizing a lot of non-traditional materials, like Nyquil and popcorn ceiling paint. In another sense, I try to be fairly balanced with the museum programming and tend to seek out variety so that there’s a little something for everyone.

S: When and where did you first see or become aware of her work?

J.D.: Last fall, Patrick Moser (Associate Professor in Flagler’s Art and Design Department) sent me a link to Liz’s website because they had both been included in a video exhibition and he thought her work was interesting. I perused her site and immediately liked her videos and sculptures, which I’ve not actually seen in person. I emailed Liz in September, she and I started a conversation and we ended up scheduling an exhibition at CEAM.

S: What do you find so compelling about Rodda’s work?

J.D.: I’m very attracted to how Liz’s work can’t really be pigeonholed, and that you can’t pin her down as a “video artist” or “sculptor,” because she experiments with so many mediums. One of the pieces that I really fell for when I was becoming acquainted with her work was Someday We Will Be Together, which included a potted orchid whose leaves were allowed to shrivel and fall during the exhibition, along with two stacked speakers playing Lionel Richie’s “Hello” on a loop. A sort of companion to that work is Hello (I’ve Been Alone With You Inside My Mind), in which the artist sculpted a bust of her then boyfriend out of clay. First of all, I think the reference to Lionel Richie’s classic music video is so funny, but at the same time the work is tinged with this sense of sadness and longing. Liz seems to have this very dry sense of humor, but in so many of her pieces she delicately balances humor with seriousness or tragedy (personal or otherwise). In the same way, her work beautifully expresses this essential human quality of questioning by pitting disparate ideas against one another to reveal how closely they are connected, i.e. skepticism and belief, longing and un-fulfillment, having control versus chaos or powerlessness. There’s really a lot to say about her work, I could go on and on.

S: Even though it has been a viable medium for decades, in your experience as a curator and museum director, do you think people have particularly different reactions to video work than they do to something “static,” like painting or sculpture?

J.D.: It’s true that a person could spend either minutes or hours looking at a single “static” work, as you put it. Certain works have an immediate effect, but I’ve spent serious lengths of time looking at individual pieces that I find particularly captivating. Video does require a time commitment from the viewer. In the several video shows that I’ve had at CEAM, we’ve had visitors who walk in and see that there is a video projection and walk right out. I might add that I have been guilty of doing the very same thing, depending on my mood. Those who commit to watching the works in their entirety are the people who have the potential to take more meaning away from the experience. In that vein, I think that video also requires the visitor to embrace a wider interpretation of what art is or isn’t. It goes without saying (but here I am saying it) that video has a safe place in the canon of art history, along with the many significant artists who have made film/video over the past fifty plus years. However, this is something that I take for granted, not always paying heed to a wider audience out there with more traditional views on art and art making. That’s perfectly valid, but my hope is that visitors will open themselves up to these potentially new and different art experiences.

Liz Rodda

Starehouse: How much time do you think we have? I want to be respectful of your schedule.

Liz Rodda: We can talk as long as you want to but I have to tell you I’m a little exhausted (…) but I’m going to do (laughs) the best that I can.

S: Me too. I’m totally worn out. So we’re on a level playing field.

L.R.: Okay, awesome.

S: Ok I’ll jump right in here. In a video interview produced by the Oklahoma Visual Arts Coalition from 2011, you explained that as an undergraduate you originally studied English Literature but then kind of shifted your focus to visual art after graduating. You said that you used “literature and language as a starting point.” In hindsight, in what ways do you think you used your love and knowledge of literature and language to transition into visual arts?

L.R.: That’s a really good question. I think it really started where I was really interested in dissecting texts and thinking critically about what I was reading and I think what applied to art-making, too. But when I first started making art, there was really a direct link. I was writing these weird little poems and pairing that with video and also having other people read the poems. And at this point I think that literature doesn’t have much to do with what I am doing, other than I spend a helluva lot of time thinking about titles.

S: Right. Me too (laughs).

L.R.: And titles are my love and hate. I spend so much time thinking about how I’m going to title something.

S: Well, like a writer you need a really good lead-in to kind of ignite the story; so you kind of start with the title as your concept?

L.R.: You know, recently I have. For the first part of the summer, I just compiled a ton of different titles or just sayings that I really liked. And some of them wound up kind of leading to pieces or just led to ideas of how I could be making something.

S: So do you think that literature now really just shows up in your work in the sense of a title?

L.R.: Yeah. I still love to read but I like to write, too. Not about my work (…) but I definitely think it’s less of a focus at this point.

S: Even though you say you don’t like to write about your work, I gotta acknowledge that, at the very least, your artist statement and writing about your own work is some of the most comprehensible and descriptively non-bullshitting that I have read. (laughs).

L.R.: Well, thank you! I try really hard, and especially try to avoid in needlessly using big words that really aren’t helpful (laughs).

S: You don’t fall back on being oblique or mysteriously coy when writing about what you are trying to convey. Sometimes when I read artist statements I feel like there must be some artist-statement-reading-course that I don’t know about.

L.R.: Yeah, that’s a really big compliment. I appreciate that. I teach and I spend a lot time with my students talking about artist statements and I tell them, “If you don’t understand it, then no one else will understand it.”

S: That’s kind of why I do these interviews, because I can have a hard time articulating these things and I think that talking to artists helps me articulate thoughts about visual art as well. If that makes sense?

L.R.: That makes a lot of sense.

S: I’m glad that you’re teaching a new generation to not sound like robots writing artist statements. I applaud you.

L.R.: Well, thanks (laughs).

S: I want to address this. In that same video interview I mentioned earlier, curator Shannon Fitzgerald described you as being part of a “fourth wave of feminism in both ideas and the media you are exploring.” Do you agree with her description of your work?

L.R.: You know, Shannon was an incredible curator to work with and we still communicate quite a bit and she is incredibly smart. (pauses) I had not considered that as something that I was exploring. I was surprised to hear that (…) at the same time I could see how someone might read into it that way. And actually when I was studying English, I thought that I was this hardcore feminist and I only read books by women and blah blah blah (…) and I kind of got over that. And I don’t think my art has anything to do with that anymore.

S: No?

L.R.: Yeah.

S: So you don’t feel aligned with that directly, as far as this fourth wave of feminism?

L.R.: I guess I’m not really even sure what fourth wave feminism is.

S: Please humor me, because I’m right with you (…) and I’d like to think that I am a feminist but I honestly probably learn the most by being corrected at points and I still have a lot to learn. And I don’t say that cynically, but more in the sense that we, or at least I, hopefully learn from error.

L.R.: Right.

S: But Fitzgerald’s quote kind of led me to research this and I found some interesting views and explanations about the fourth wave from some feminist activist-writers so bear with me here.

L.R.: Sure.

S: Jennifer Baumgardner cites things like the ongoing fight for reproductive justice, transgender rights, male feminists, and the deployment of social media activism as characteristics of the fourth wave. And on the other side of the spectrum, Pythia Peay says, and I think this is pretty interesting: “At its heart lies a new kind of political activism that’s guided and sustained by spirituality. They’re also exploring a new feminine paradigm of power that’s based on tolerance, mutuality, and reverence for nature – values they now see as crucial to curing the global pathologies of poverty and war.”

L.R.: Wow.

S: Yeah, so I guess now we both know all of that (laughs) we are both more informed about the fourth wave.

L.R.: (laughs) Absolutely!

S: I guess I’m wondering, as an artist, are you mindful of that? Personally, as a male, I don’t think I look at art and think “Oh, a woman made that or a man made this.” As a visual artist do you see this even subtly appearing in your work?

L.R.: It’s not something that I think about as a visual artist. As a person, I like to think that I am tolerant and I’m very liberal socially. But you know, I’m not thinking about my role as a female in the work that I’m making. I’m actually more interested in ideas related to humor and things that are unexpected. I’m not really thinking of myself as a female when I am making art. Except, the only time I’m really thinking about it is that my husband, he’s an artist, and he makes work that is really, really fucking funny. It’s super witty. And some of the things that he does, like with the colors and materials he chooses, I think are funny partially because he’s a male. He has this piece where he painted a unicorn using Kool-Aid and poison, which was a reference to the Jonestown Massacre.

S: (laughs)

L.R.: Yeah – which is kind of horrible and amazing. But I don’t think it would be the same for a female to do that kind of piece (…) but yeah, I don’t think it is now something I really think about too much.

S: I got you. So that’s your answer and thanks for talking about this; because I wasn’t aware of fourth wave feminism. I guess I was aware, from my generation, of third wave things like Riot Grrls (…) which was very open and organized, really grassroots and a strongly active movement with bands and fanzines (…) I’m just trying to learn through all of this.

L.R.: Yeah, I understand.

S: So at your upcoming show, one of the pieces you’re showing is 2010/2011, right?

L.R.: Yes.

S: And that piece is composed of two images taken of the night sky in the split second between those two calendar years. You described how it references your interest in ideas of “scientific otherworldliness of outer space” and also “the Shakespearean notion of fate” – which I love. Why did you choose to combine these two ideas into this one piece?

L.R.: I was doing a lot of work about chance and I’m really interested in belief systems and I think, ultimately, it referenced ideas of “star-crossed lovers” and that’s where fate came in. And Shakespeare talks a lot about stars as well (…) I guess I think that it’s interesting how people think that by looking at the stars they can find out something about their personality or what lies ahead for them (…) and I think that my work is kind of grounded in this weird relationship between skepticism and the desire to believe. And that’s where it comes about. I don’t know if I’m answering your question (laughs)?

S: Oh you are – absolutely, absolutely.

L.R.: Well, I also wanted to say it [the image] is the constellation of Taurus, which is my astrological sign.

["2010/2011," two Inkjet prints, 10 x 13 each.]

L.R.: Okay.

S: It seems like you are interested in these things like the unknown and fate. One of my favorite quotes on fate is taken from Evelyn Underhill (…) I don’t know if you might be familiar with her (…) but she wrote this amazing book called “Mysticism,”(…) but she quotes this Ancient Roman maxim, which I love: “The fates lead the willing and drag the unwilling. “And I guess I am wondering, do you personally believe in ideas of fate or even providence?

L.R.: I don’t think I do. I’m a romantic and I’m also a skeptic but at one time I did. I think a lot of my work is influenced by the fact that as a teenager I was in a really serious car accident and it sort of blew open my ideas of what the future entailed.

S: How so? Because it was so cathartic and shocking that you experienced that kind of accident?

L.R.: Yeah. It just made me realize that anything can happen at any time. The fact that we constantly plan for our futures and to realize that anything can happen at any time to totally change that. So thinking about the future becomes this really unknowable thing.

S: So do you think we are kind of powerless to this inevitable current that pulls us along?

L.R.: Basically, yeah. I don’t know if it’s a pessimistic view.

S: Well it’s surely an understandable and acceptable view. I have a point to all of this (…) in the two videos that will be featured in this show, Stabilizer and Death Drive (…) it seems like their perspectives kind of lean towards this powerlessness or inevitability. In Stabilizer, it seems like the audience is this kind of helpless onlooker to a tsunami that you described as either being in the process of arriving or leaving; but the end result is still destruction. While in Death Drive you kind of use juxtaposition and a split-screen. In one side, you put the viewer in the driver’s seat, fully in charge, while on the other side of the screen there’s this driverless-car just circling out of control.

L.R.: Yeah, I think you totally hit the nail on the head.

S: So they both touch on inevitability.

L.R.: I think the other stuff that comes up is that there’s a part of me that wants to believe in this very romantic idea of fate and that “things are meant to be” but unfortunately I’m very skeptical of that (…) but yeah, I do think that it’s about the inevitable. In the Stabilizer video I actually used a video effect that tries to stabilize the footage so you can actually see what is happening. But typically when people stabilize things they crop it so that appears more stable when you look at it; it actually becomes less disorienting. One of my concerns with that piece is something like cultural tourism; I’m obviously not from there and I have never experienced a tsunami. But at the same time I think that when disaster happens in our lives, and something like this happens in our world, I feel like there’s no real way to deal with it. So I thought that it made sense on that level.

S: Yeah. I personally didn’t view it like you were exploiting a disaster. So you’ve got my vote (laughs).

L.R.: Okay, (laughs) good. I was just concerned about being sensitive to that.

S: You had mentioned how your earliest segue into visual arts was with poetry and video. It seems that with a fair amount of video artists, their work is very autobiographical; it’s very personal with memoir or storytelling. But your video work seems like it’s based on the study of something other than yourself. Do you agree with that?

L.R.: Yeah. I try to avoid making work that is memoir-based. But to a certain degree, I think those things come out whether you want it to or not because you are the one making the work. But I am much more interested in things that other people can relate to (…) and I don’t know if that even makes sense because memoirs are the perfect way to help someone relate to what you are doing.

S: But I think sometimes people are shrewd enough (…) even if they create a narrative in their head that is, for lack of a better word, wrong (…) if I saw one of your videos and I gave you my take and you said “Oh, that’s bullshit” (laughs) I think people can still tell a strong story without filling it out with the obvious.

L.R.: Yeah, that’s true. I guess I don’t want to make work that really is obvious. I don’t necessarily mean that memoirs are obvious but I think they do point towards the idea of giving away too much information. I like to challenge viewers and I hope to think that the kind of work that I make (…) the viewer will spend a little more time with it and in turn get something more out of it.

S: Right. Now are you kind of increasingly leaning towards video work and adding that to the arsenal of what you are doing?

L.R.: Making just videos? No, I’m actually just starting to work with sculpture for the first time; and two-dimensional work. I have never been interested in being a great painter or video artist or anything like that with one particular medium. I think that I just like exploring different ideas and then deciding what materials kind of make sense for it. So a particular idea could wind up either as a video or a sculpture. And recently I’ve been really drawn to utilizing domestic materials and that has in turn led to more sculptural pieces.

S: When you say domestic materials, do you mean literally like things at hand?

L.R.: Yeah, things at hand and things that seem really banal. I guess something like popcorn ceiling spray isn’t something people typically think of as being really sexy (…) and then cough syrup.

S: That’s totally sexy to me: a good bottle of cough syrup.

L.R.: Well, it could be sexy if you use enough (laughs).

S: Let’s talk about the show, Clockwise.

L.R.: Okay.

S: I’m not trying to kill you with quotes, by the way, but I am trying to create a history or chronology. In this show, you’re exhibiting the piece Plan For Victory, right?

L.R.: Yes.

S: And the curator Fitzgerald described it as a “tiny black jade cut into the shape of an icosahedron” (…) so she describe it as this “twenty-sided glossy die, materially imbued with magical connotations, is presented as artifact; its function in determining fate is now preserved in static honor.” I am wondering if you agree with that description of it being “imbued with magical connotations.” Was that part of your original intent is that just kind of her read on it?

L.R.: I read online that black jade is supposed to protect its owner from negative emotions and so that was part of it. But I was more interested in the fact that it was modeled after the die that’s used in [classic role-playing game] “Dungeons & Dragons.”

S: (laughs) is that right? Were you a role-playing game kid?

L.R.: Yeah, yeah (laughs).

S: No way! Were you a “D&D” person specifically or were you a free range role-playing geek child?

L.R.: No, I wasn’t super into it but I just tried it here and there…

S: Now don’t backtrack on your statement; it’s ok to have been an RPG child!

L.R.: (laughs)

S: I had all of that [D&D] stuff and I knew way too much about [D&D creator] Gary Gygax. But I was such a nerd that I couldn’t even find other nerds to play the game with. I’d create these characters, and buy new sets of dice and then I’d ask my dad to be my Dungeon Master and he’d just say, “No.” Now I feel less inadequate knowing you were also creating elves and painting little dragons.

L.R.: (laughs) that’s awesome. I like how you could see the magical aspects [of Plan For Victory] and I like how it can be seen in multiple ways. But it’s also the shape of the object that is inside the Magic 8-Ball. And then jade is also my birthstone, so it kind of ties into the reference of the 2010/2011 photograph. I’m very skeptical of those notions, but it’s just this idea how one might try to find out something about themselves by looking into astrology or obtaining these gems that might influence their life.

S: You know, sometimes the word skepticism probably gets a bad rap. It can be as much a sense of discernment or even wisdom. It’s healthy to doubt things.

L.R.: I agree. But sometimes it can be a little extreme, too.

S: I think I imprint belief or skepticism on objects or events. I have this I Ching app on my phone, which is probably the ultimate in lazy New Age pursuit (…) but I’ve noticed that depending on my mood or headspace I’ll think “this is right on target” or “this is total bullshit.” So it seems like my own skepticism can be conditional on feelings.

L.R.: Yeah, I can definitely see that.

S: Let’s get back to the show. Your statement for Clockwise explains that you use the circle as a recurring motif throughout the exhibit that can represent unity and wholeness as well as cyclic behavior and circular reasoning; so seemingly are you saying that the circle can be both security and even a trap?

L.R.: Absolutely. You explained it perfectly (…) I really have nothing to add to that.

S: Okay, cool. Can we talk about some of the pieces from Clockwise? Are you comfortable with explaining them in detail?

L.R.: Yeah, definitely.

S: So the show features video, sculpture, and two-dimensional pieces.

L.R.: Right.

S: So is it seven, kind of static pieces and two video pieces? Does that seem right?

L.R.: It’s going to be three videos and I think there will be more than seven pieces. One room is going to just be three videos in a darkened space and the other space has a variety of different sculptures and two-dimensional things.

S: Did you come down to Crisp-Ellert yet? Have you seen the space?

L.R.: No, I haven’t at all.

S: It’s an amazing space and I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised.

L.R.: Julie has been so amazing.

S: Oh, she rules, especially for this area. In just a few years, she has come on strong and hasn’t let up on bringing in some incredible programming (…) Okay, let’s go through some of the pieces and if you want to, you can talk about these as little or as much as you like.

L.R.: Okay.

S: So let’s talk about the piece Gravity.

L.R.: So that piece started when I saw these instructions that somebody had posted online. This guy was trying to make a geodesic dome for his chickens, as a chicken coop. And I thought that was really bizarre and interesting (laughs).

S: What was his logic behind that? Did he have some kind of reason why?

L.R.: There was no logic; or he didn’t explain why. But it looked amazing and so I started creating it and the idea of using popcorn ceiling was initially a separate thing, but then I started thinking of how we think of that as a material of being ugly or used to hide things.

S: It’s kind of a masking material.

L.R.: Right, a masking material. And the paint that I used was actually called “Gravity” – that’s where the title came from. I definitely see it as possibly being a model for something larger or it could be seen as a space for an animal; eventually for my cat to take a nap in (laughs), I don’t know. It reminds me of “Animal Farm” and it’s also a kind of futuristic-looking object.

S: And also combines the circular idea with that same shape used in “Plan For Victory,” it looks like that half of that shape, the icosahedron. That pervasive “Dungeons & Dragons” influence is showing up on the unconscious level.

L.R.: (laughs) yeah, definitely.

["Gravity," popcorn ceiling spray, foam, 24 x 40 diameter.]

L.R.: So that piece is super-geometrical and has a lot of these hard, fast lines. And it’s covered in bath salts that look kind of like icicles; they’re hanging down and kind of falling part. I was thinking of this highly systematic planning of an object but then that’s why it is called PLANB, because it acknowledges this type of failure, potentially – what comes after Plan A. And also, are you familiar with the philosopher Slavoj Žižek at all?

S: No. Not at all.

L.R.: He’s kind of become this world rock star in the philosophy world, but he writes quite a bit about this idea of Western Buddhism and New Age philosophy; he’s kind of critical of it but also thinks it’s interesting, but he’s more critical of it than anything. But anyway I was thinking about bath salts as a material that a lot of people think will produce some kind of relaxation or have calmative properties. I was going to cover it in rock salt. And also there’s been a lot of news of bath salts as a drug.

S: Right; The Bath Salt Zombies. This piece is all-inclusive: philosophy, cough syrup, and people on bath salts eating each other’s’ faces (laughs). Also, PLANB is kind of text-based; it spells out the word.

L.R.: Yeah, you’re right. I hadn’t really thought about that.

S: You know when I saw this, I saw at as (…) are you familiar at all with Sigils?

L.R.: No.

S: It’s like an occult tool, I guess. This is one of my obsessions so bear with me (laughs) but Austin Osman Spare, who was an amazing 20^th century British painter and occultist (…) he was kind of after Aleister Crowley but not as “rock star”-ish, more of a humble type. But he created Sigils, these magical symbols, and to me, PLANB resembles these. There’s a method where you take a word, and remove certain letters, and you create a symbol from that word and imbue that symbol with some kind of magic or supernatural qualities; until it no longer means that original word. Not to label you as an occultist (laughs) but I saw that as well in this piece.

L.R.: I could see that, actually. I like your read on that a lot.

["PLANB," bath salts, glue, steel, and spray paint, 61 x 45 x 1]

L.R.: I was teaching at the University of Oklahoma for five years and living in this little town there, and there are a lot of Native Americans who live there. And what I noticed was that there would be tons of people driving around with Dreamcatchers hanging in their rearview mirrors and they would never be Native American, they were always white people. And it seemed like yet another thing we had somehow taken from Native American people. You could get a bottle of cough syrup and a Dreamcatcher at the gas station and I was thinking a lot about how some people abuse cough syrup to get this hallucinogenic high.

S: Yeah, “Robing,” as they used to call it.

L.R.: Yeah, or “Tussin Space.”

S: I had a friend – and this friend is not me by the way – but I had a friend who once drank an entire bottle of Robitussin and he said that it was like he had died and was reborn – but in a bad way (laughs).

L.R.: (laughs) Yeah, I read a lot of people’s experiences online about this (…) and they describe it as this very disassociate state and they hallucinate and what I found to be really bizarre is that some people were doing it for spiritual reasons; to have some type of spiritual experience. I guess for me the piece is partially about my guilt as a white person.

S: You think? Why? Is it because people carry this sacred symbol around in their car?

L.R.: Yes, it’s been used so much that it’s almost become meaningless. It’s been adopted by white people. And I guess those are some of the things I was addressing.

S: And again, within the Dreamcatcher you have a similar shape that to me resembles that same shape in Plan For Victory. Maybe that’s just the cough syrup talking, Liz, but I’m seeing that same icosahedron-like shape.

L.R.: (laughs) Yeah, you had a bottle before you called me.

["It Wasn't Supposed To Be This Way," plastic, canvas, and cough syrup, 36.25 x 32.35 x .25]

L.R.: Right. I think this piece has to do with aging and beauty and things related to that. You know Elizabeth Taylor was known as someone who was beautiful all of her life but she was also someone that we watched age.

S: She was surgically timeless, one could say.

L.R.: Yeah, yeah (laughs) I like that.

S: “Science and glamour kiss on the face of Elizabeth Taylor…” I’m sorry, go ahead.

L.R.: Absolutely. But once again this piece deals with belief systems. The audience has to actually believe that I put a bottle of perfume in plaster. You’re not actually seeing it.

S: So as the audience, I’m allowed, if not encouraged, to be skeptical.

L.R.: Right.

["The Vow,"yoga mat and full bottle of Elizabeth Taylor's Forever embedded in plaster.]

S: Okay, let’s go to the final one you sent me. It’s called Plateau, which is made of cough syrup and die transfer on paper.

L.R.: That’s from a series of seven. But I started working with cough syrup because of the reasons we talked about earlier and realized as I started pouring it on paper that it produced these really beautiful, tropical, and weird colors. So ultimately I was interested that I was able to make these weird landscapes using cough syrup and I was thinking of ideas related to escapism (…)

S: A plateau also kind of implies that you’re on the edge of something.

L.R.: Absolutely, yeah. But I think the images lend themselves to something one might see when they’re high and they also resemble Rorschach tests to a certain degree. So those were some of the ideas I was thinking about with that series.

["Plateau," cough syrup and die transfer on paper, 27.25 x 22.25 x 2; from a series of seven.]

L.R.: Sure.

S: I kind of want to go back to where you give a broader sense of the show. In your statement you explain that these works “may best be understood as guideposts for exploring a new frenetic world where there is no longer delineation between skepticism and belief.” And we have touched on some of this, but it seems like much of your work explores these intersections (…) moments-between-moments with the 2010/2011 piece, this distance between skepticism and belief, which I think can sometimes appear chasm-like in our lives (…) You have kind of answered this to some degree, but I guess I am wondering what do you find so compelling about these almost-innocuous connections or junctures. How do you think they can directly affect your own skepticism and belief?

L.R.: I think skepticism can become a type of belief, too. I think for me, I was one of those teens that went through an intense period of trying to figure things out and make sense of things (…) asking really hard questions without finding satisfying answers. And I took it to an extreme (laughs)…

S: So this came out of that grand search (…) adolescence can be such an exaggerated state of being but it can also be kind of beneficial. So it came out of these kinds of deep, adolescent ponderings?

L.R.: Yeah, to a certain degree I think so. I feel like I still ask a lot of those questions. I’m just a little bit more jaded now, unfortunately. But I think it does kind of stem out of experiences I had from adolescence.

S: When you were in this car accident, did you almost die?

L.R.: Yeah. It was a really life-altering experience.

S: So you were kind of directly re-defined by this?

L.R.: Yeah and I think it forced me to grapple with these tough questions. But, and maybe it’s just me, I also see a lot of humor in the work that I’m making, or at least I try (…) I listen to comedy a lot and I think that there’s nothing more complex and interesting than a well-crafted joke (…) for me the work is also like really, really dry and subtle jokes.

S: I could totally see that with Death Drive, where you have this car cruising along like a car commercial and on the other side you’re showing this “America’s Funniest Home Video” that is totally chaotic and looks like things are going to turn out badly (laughs).

L.R.: I don’t know if it will read like that to everyone (laughs) but humor is probably the one thing that I’m most interested in. You know the piece that I think that is closest to that was Hello, which was a bust I made of my former boyfriend while I was blindfolded. And it looks horrible, it doesn’t look like a person, but it was referencing the Lionel Richie music video. I hope that some form of humor or playfulness is in the work because I think that’s a really good, healthy way to deal with not-so-fun topics.

S: Can you see your work kind of moving in a more obviously humorous way?

L.R.: I think it will always be subtle, since that is what I’m interested in. And I don’t even know how I would begin to make a piece that is intended to be a serious joke.

S: I see an indirect similarity and a weird corollary, but please forgive me if I’m wrong (…) but someone like John Caged used things like chance, fate and indeterminacy as his inspiration. But you approach those ideas as an observer, almost to the point of the metaphysical, or even on the other extreme, more akin to anthropology. You’re really looking at these things pretty deeply.

L.R.: Thanks. I like that.

S: (laughs) You can freely drop that into your next artist statement! But I don’t think you’re going to become a wacky artist, as you just said in your previous answer (…) but do you think you might hit an end result with this? If you’re looking for an answer, and I don’t know if you even are, but if so – do you think you’re going to find some ultimate answer through creating this work?

L.R.: No, I don’t; absolutely not. I think I’m more interested in questions than any kind of answer. And ultimately, I would love to make work where the questions that I’m asking are weirder than anything else (…) I guess it is hard to describe, but I think with my work I’m really aiming for a question that is so bizarre – that it doesn’t suggest that there could ever even be an answer.

[A still from the video, "Death Drive."]

starehouse@gmail.com

Marcus Kenney streams his vision through mixed-media with Shed My Skin

["How to Make a War," mixed media, 48" x 48"; 2007.]

A native of rural Louisiana, Kenney received his MFA from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1998. The now 40-year-old artist and his family have called that same town home for the past fifteen years. Yet Kenney is hardly a provincial secret. His work has been exhibited in cities such as Atlanta, New York, and Chicago, and as far afield as London, Paris, and Hong Kong. Kenney’s works have been featured in media outlets including Art in America, The New York Times, ART PAPERS, Oxford American, and New American Painter. Locals now get a chance to check out Kenney’s work at his upcoming exhibit, Shed My Skin.

The show is unique in more than one way. In the interview below, Kenney explains that the title is as much a reference to a Peter Gabriel song as it is to the state of transition and forward motion his work is heading towards next. The exhibit is also unique in that it features the return of nullspace gallery and that inventive group’s joint presentation of Kenney’s art with Florida Mining gallery.

Under the auspices of artist-gallery owner Steve Williams, FMG has presented the works of national artists such as Geoff Mitchell and Rachel Rossin, while also overseeing the highly successful community arts project The Highway Gallery. The latter is an ongoing joint venture with Clear Channel that has exposed local commuters to work by area contemporary artists on digital billboards throughout Northeast Florida.

Beginning in early 2010, the artists Mark Creegan, Kurt Polkey, and Jefree Shalev began hosting a series of highly-engaging exhibits at their nullspace gallery in downtown Jacksonville. Over the course of 16 shows, the trio presented inventive programming that leaned towards installation. Russell Maycumber, Jenny K. Hager, Tony Rodrigues, Greta Songe and collaborative experiments by Jim Draper and Morrison Pierce, as well as Patrick Moser and Loren Myhre, were a few of the local artists invited to take advantage of the gallery’s concept of an empty room to be filled as each artist saw fit i.e. a “null” space.

After a hiatus, the trio of Creegan, Polkey and Shalev has now joined forces with kindred spirit Williams, who will be hosting nullspace shows in his gallery, an act of creative unity that helped bring Kenney to this area, with all four artist-slash-curators planning to bring in future exhibits for local art lovers.

Marcus Kenney is giving an artist talk at 6:30 p.m. on Thursday, Oct. 10 in room E-112F, located across from the art gallery, at the Kent Campus of Florida State College of Jacksonville, 3939 Roosevelt Blvd.

The opening reception for Shed My Skin is held at 7 p.m. on Friday, Oct. 11 at nullspace gallery, hosted by Florida Mining Gallery, located in the Harbinger Sign building, 5300 Shad Road, Jacksonville. The show is on display through Nov. 22. The contact number for the gallery is (904) 425-2845.

For more information on Florida Mining Gallery, visit: http://floridamininggallery.com/

For more information on nullspace gallery, visit:

http://www.nullspaceprojects.com/

I spoke to Marcus Kenney at 1 p.m. on Saturday, Oct. 5.

I then interviewed Steve Williams, Mark Creegan, Kurt Polkey, and Jefree Shalev via e-mail on Monday, Oct. 7.

Below is the transcription of my conversation with Kenney, followed by the interviews with Williams, Creegan, Polkey, and Shalev.

Marcus Kenney

Starehouse: Tell me about this upcoming exhibit, Shed My Skin. How many pieces do you estimate will be presented?

Marcus Kenney: Well, I’m going to do an installation of four with these three-dimensional sculptures of monkeys. And then I’ll have probably 10 paintings, maybe four taxidermy wall sculptures, and a handful of black and white photographs. I’d say total about 20 pieces.

S: So the installation section with the monkeys, is that going to be a separate entity altogether?

M.K.: Well, no it will just kind of be one piece; it will still be part of the exhibit.

S: I’m only asking about the installation idea since nullspace gallery was kind of known for presenting artists in these kinds of installation environments; quite successfully I might add.

M.K.: This really going to really be kind of a straight up exhibit with an installation in one area.

S: Right. The title is Shed My Skin. Is there a kind of a narrative or collective tone to this exhibit?

M.K.: A bit; I actually got the idea from a Peter Gabriel song.

S: Yeah (…) what is that song?

M.K.: Is it “Big Time”?

S: Yeah, “Big Time.” (Note: it turns out we were both mistaken; the actual Gabriel song that features the lyric “shed my skin” is from his 1986 hit, “Sledgehammer.”)

M.K.: I was listening to that and thought, man that is a great title for this show. So, you know those three words can bring up all kinds of connotations, but for me I think it’s a bit of a transition (…) and this show is going to (…) I mean it’s not really a retrospective in that sense but it is a bit of a survey of the kind of work that I’ve been doing, a combination of works that I’ve been doing over the past several years. And I feel like my work is beginning to change a little, so I feel like this might be a swan song of sorts with this time period in my life. I just turned 40 so that’s kind of what I was thinking.

S: Well, congratulations on making it to 40. I was thrilled to hit 41.

M.K.: (laughs)

S: I want to get to the work but I’m always intrigued about the origins and roots of visual artists. Are you cool with talking about some of this stuff?

M.K.: Yeah.

S I know that you were born and raised in Louisiana in Franklin Parrish in a town called Cooter Point. I’m just curious if you in some ways align yourself with being a particularly “southern artist” – or are you indifferent to that kind of labeling?

M.K.: I’d prefer not to be labeled that way. But, you know, I can’t hide from it. Some people want to be labeled as a southern artist. I mean, I’m not opposed to it, but I would like to think that my work could speak more to American culture than just southern culture. I would hope so. This lady was interested in my work and the curator put me in touch with her through an e-mail and the curator wrote “Marcus is one of the best artists in the Southeast.” The curator was out of New York and it kind of just pissed me off.

S: Yeah, right (…) kind of constrictive.

M.K.: Yeah. I mean, it was a compliment to be one of the best in the Southeast and not to be taken lightly (…) and this person is a respected individual but at the same time she put that “excluding New York” tag on it.

S: Or even the rest of the planet, for that matter.

M.K.: Yeah, I feel like people like to do this.

S: Sure. Well, I’ll try not to do it! (laughs)

M.K.: (laughs) Well, if that’s your decision, do it.

S: No, I’ll be mindful of that. I kind of scoured some of your previous press and interviews, but I never really found anything – and maybe from my lack of investigation – but I never really discovered any information about the years between your growing up in rural Louisiana and then you pursuing visual art in college. I am imagining you were creating art at a young age but I might be wrong. (…) Were you drawing and that kind of stuff, kind of, out of the womb?

M.K.: No. I mean I was drawing. I was a compulsive drawer as a child (…) it was kind of my deal. I was even selling drawings to my classmates for nickels and quarters.

S: It was lucrative at a young age.

M.K.: Yeah, it seems like it was from the beginning. But then I just, I don’t know (…) I went to such a small school that we didn’t have art as an option, or music (…) it was very basic. I went to the same building K-12, graduated with 22 kids and most of them I started kindergarten with. We didn’t have a lot of options but I was always an artist. I just didn’t know exactly what that meant. Because I wasn’t exposed to it (…) and when I went to college I was really exposed to art. I wasn’t a late bloomer but I really didn’t seriously start making working until my mid-twenties.

S: Is that right?

M.K.: Yeah.

S: That’s fascinating just considering the skill level and body of work you’ve created.

M.K.: I’ve been hitting it pretty hard since then (laughs).

S: Yeah (…) Total Surrender.

M.K.: Yeah.

S: But can you recall when you were a kid seeing specific pieces of art that kind of resonated within you; even if it was just in a book or magazine?

M.K.: My grandma was an old Cajun lady, and she had this original oil painting and she had cut herself out of a black and white photograph of herself sitting with a deer she had killed. And she cut the picture out and glued herself onto this oil painting that had kind of a lake with a little house, and a mountain scene. And I grew up looking at that and I gotta think that obviously had some kind of influence, as far as me doing collage. And she did lots of little things like that; cutting out Hallmark cards and putting people’s photos in there, different things like that. Van Gogh was probably the first artist I was aware of. I don’t even know how it came up. Probably just this story of how he was this crazy guy who cut his ear off. And that was kind of my idea of what an artist was.

S: (laughs) Man, that is still my idea of what an artist is! What are you doing with both ears?

M.K.: That being said, I think I was naïve enough that I could do it because I wasn’t exposed to so much that it seemed overwhelming. It was more of a case of, “Oh, well I could do this.”

S: I guess that naiveté made it a feasible reality. I guess you didn’t have anyone saying you couldn’t.

M.K.: I didn’t; exactly. Because nobody said I could and there was certainly nobody saying that I couldn’t. Whereas my kids, they go to an arts school, that is a performing art school where they offer dance, visual arts and theatre. But you know, I think for them they’ve been exposed to so many things that I think it would be harder for them to (…) it seems so impossible to make it in art nowadays for young kids that I talk to.

S: Why do you think that is?

M.K.: There’s just so much competition, there’s so many artists (…) It’s just so hard to get that ball rolling. I mean it’s certainly doable but it just seems like (…) it’s hard. When I tell people this is what I do for a living, they’re just astonished. “Well, how?”

S: You’ve been exhibited all over the world. What do you think has been key to that level of success? What do you think has helped you kind of step through the portal and achieve that kind of attention?

M.K.: Well, I’d like to believe it’s my work.

S: Sure.

M.K.: That’s kind of what I always (…) that was my goal and when I decided that was what I was going to do it was to make work. That’s why I didn’t run off to New York because I knew it would be harder to do that. So in Savannah I’m able to afford a place to work and keep my expenses low and make work. And I think when opportunities do come up, I usually have the work to do something; because I always say, it doesn’t matter if you have the director of the Whitney come to your studio and then don’t have anything to show them. So what’s the point?

["Anton Rocamora," foam, fabric, plastic, limbs, clothes pins, various papers, pins, fur, paint brush, acrylic, buttons, cork, etc... on panel; 43" x 37" x 31"; 2011.]

M.K.: Yeah. But you know I don’t know why some people have success and others don’t. Because I certainly know a lot of talented artists, some more than more me, that aren’t having the success that I am. I don’t know why. Sometimes it just happens that way.

S: So when you were growing up during these “lost years” that I couldn’t find any information about, how did you kind of spend your free time? Were you out in the woods; did you hunt and do those kinds of things?

M.K.: Yeah. I grew up in the country. My dad was a farmer and I was just a little redneck boy running around, fishing (…) you know. We lived on the Bayou Mason; we were slumming all summer, building tree houses and forts. I grew up in rural Louisiana and it was twenty years behind on everything; it really still is (laughs). We shared our telephone service with a neighbor, a party line. My grandma had an outhouse. I grew up thinking that was normal (laughs).

S: Yeah, my mom is from Fish Pond, Kentucky and her mom still had an outhouse well into the eighties. It’s like a Third World Country up in those hollers.

M.K.: Oh yeah. You know growing up like that, looking back now, I do think I had a unique situation.

S: And now in the 21^st century, it’s becoming an almost extinct American experience.

M.K.: Absolutely.

S: I’m sure there’s Wi-Fi in the holler and bayou now.

M.K.: When I go home and see where I grew up, it’s like a different world now.

S: So Cooter Point is about three-and-a-half hours from New Orleans. When you were growing up would you take road trips there to check out art or just raise hell?

M.K.: I did when I got older. I didn’t spend a whole lot of time there. But I do love that city.

S: I read an interview that you did with with The 22 Magazine, where you described how you “grew up in the middle of two cultures,” explaining that your “mother’s family are Catholic Cajuns and commercial fisherman”, and your “father’s are Protestants and farmers.” Since you specifically mention those two faiths, were you raised with a strong religious upbringing?

M.K.: Yeah, I was. We were in church three days a week. We went Wednesday nights, Sunday mornings, and Sunday nights most of the time. It was a tiny little church down the road from our house.

S: Did you kind of discard those beliefs or do you still apply those ideas to your life or even work?

M.K.: I still try to hold onto my faith but it’s hard to do. But I wouldn’t say I’m a regular churchgoer. I try to mix that all into my work, somewhat.

S: Between the blend of Catholicism and Protestantism you could be a guilt-plagued, hard worker (laughs) – you get the best of both worlds.

M.K.: Yeah and I married a Catholic (laughs).

S: I’m curious about this recurring use of taxidermy, some of which will be in this upcoming show. In that same interview that I had mentioned, you said that some of that was a “direct response” to how your mom would decorate (…) I guess this deer head (…) “with the appropriate holiday attire.” What did you find so intriguing about that where you wound up emulating that idea, albeit in a more personal and intense scale?

M.K.: It just clicked with me one day in the studio. I had some taxidermy lying around and started hanging stuff on it. I don’t remember exactly how it happened; it just kind of made sense. I’ve been moving more in a sculptural direction for the past several years anyway (…) I’d say 80 to 90 percent of what I do now is sculptural.

S: Those particular taxidermy pieces and other assemblages remind of things like effigies, primitive fetish objects, and religious icons (…) some of them look like these mutant piñatas from some alien planet. Do you have any kind of interest in any particular thread of primitive art or icons?

M.K.: Yeah, I mean all of the above. I’m certainly interested in not only Native American culture but native culture in general. That’s kind of been a fascination of mine for some time. Where I grew up I would find hundreds of arrowheads (…) out on my dad’s farm I’d discover all kinds of things. My grandmother gave me books on Native American tribes and cultures. Every time I go to New York the first thing I do is go to the American Museum of Natural History. I get much more enjoyment out of that than I do from any of the art museums. So I was just interested in how I could create my own art out of contemporary items with some of those things or ideas.

S: Now where do you find these taxidermy pieces?

M.K.: I get them at antique markets or flea markets (…) wherever. People will call me and tell me they have some. I’ve done deer, bison, raccoons, antelopes, geese, turkeys, fish (…) and I’m getting ready to do two life-sized giraffes.

S: Oh wow. Jesus, man. Do you have friends and well-wishers now coming by and bombarding you with stuffed deer and fox?

M.K.: Yeah. I’m kind of ready to be done with it. I think the giraffe work will be the end of it. It is a lot of work.

S: Looking at your site and going kind of chronologically through the work, it seems like every mixed-media piece from like 2004-2008 features some kind of landscape and it’s kind of drenched in these crackling backgrounds of color, texture and energies. But then in the works from 2007-2009, the ideas seemed to quickly shift to the overtly political. You use the kind of inventive, almost psychedelic, use of backgrounds and negative space, but then you began inserting these political and national signifiers like flags, presidents, bald eagles (…) and some of the pieces seem like they address war, race, and civil rights. All that being said, I guess I am wondering if something occurred during those years that made you move towards that approach.

M.K.: Well, I just think our country became interesting. We were gearing up for a new election and Obama running (…) that became our national dialogue. My interests and barometer just kind of switched into that direction. And then you know recently the work that I’ve been doing has almost zero political content. The thing is, with those pieces I really didn’t want them to have any direction one way or another, in the way that people would look at them. I was just putting imagery out there that people could interpret the way that they wanted to. And it worked; one person would say “Oh, it must mean this” and someone else would see the same piece and depending on their political persuasion they would see what they wanted to see. It’s pretty fascinating.

S: Since 2012 and these recent pieces (…) with both the two-dimensional and three-dimensional pieces, there seems to be this sense of adornment and almost positive transformation, rather than something disintegrating and decaying. Do you agree with that?

M.K.: I’m not sure. So much of my work is material-based that the material itself drives the direction of the work. And what I’m interested in (…) I went to a bunch of yard sales this morning with my son and it’s just fascinating to me to see the change that I’m drawn to because five to ten years ago I was drawn to completely different things. And I think with my work just being so material-based that a lot of the time that is kind of what happens. Those two things in my brain (…) things that I’m interested in culturally collide in my brain with things that I am interested in physically. When those two things come together (…) that’s kind of where the work of these past three or four years have kind of come out. Now I’m moving somewhere else.

S: Do you have any sense or idea of where your art is going and how it will be developing?

M.K.: I really don’t; not enough to put it into words. I wish I could but I don’t know. It’s just a feeling. We just had a two-week old, our fourth child (…)

S: Congratulations, man.

M.K.: Yeah, thank you (…) so I think those kinds of things also create these kinds of seismic shifts in the work.

S: And it seems like your family are recurring figures in your work; definitely in the photographic pieces. They’ve seemingly always been an undercurrent in there.

M.K.: Yeah; absolutely.

S: Would you feel comfortable walking me through the four images that you sent me for the upcoming show?

M.K.: Sure.

S: Let’s start with Anton Rocamora. Who is that, by the way? Is that someone you know?

M.K.: (laughs) Well actually that name has been kind of my alter-ego. My wife and I joked (…) you know when you get married, women don’t always have to change their name and either spouse can change their name (…) so to split the difference I was going to change our last name to “Rocamora” and I’d be Anton.

S: (laughs) Where did that name come from; some weird epiphany at the altar?

M.K.: (laughs) No, I just made it up. Sometimes when I’m traveling, people ask “What’s your name?” so I just come up with one. It’s kind of silly. But to me, that one out of all the deer pieces (…) that one is me. It’s kind of a self-portrait in a sense.

S: And quite colorful I might add. I get kind of an upbeat read on that piece (…) Walt Whitman (laughs): “I celebrate myself – as Anton Rocamora.”

M.K.: (laughs) Yeah; exactly.

S: Okay let’s move on to Justice, Liberty and Equality. I find this one interesting. It seems pretty political. What’s going on there?

M.K.: Well, that’s sort of the motto for our country, right? I can’t remember exactly who said it or where it comes from (…)

S: Or if they still honor it (laughs).

M.K.: Yeah, but you know again it was just trigger words. That’s sort of what I do with titles in my pieces; at least with that body of work (…) mostly with the paintings I give people a title that will trigger something. Everybody’s heard of “Justice, Liberty, and Equality” and we all have an idea of what that means (…) and when you pair what your mind is already thinking with the imagery that you see, hopefully it will make you think of something else entirely.

["Justice, Liberty, and Equality," mixed media, 54" x 54"; 2008.]

M.K.: That one is just another one of those things I read somewhere or heard somewhere and it popped into my head as a good title: “How to Make a War.” It might have been something one of my kids said. Sometimes I get things from them. I had a painting titled Every Man Against Himself (…) and my kids were playing and my son yelled “Every man against himself!” (laughs) and man, that’s really it, isn’t it?

S: (laughs) Yeah. He caught on early.

M.K.: Every man against himself. So How to Make a War is another example of putting a provocative title matched with hopefully-provocative imagery and letting the viewer make up their own story (…) to me it’s sort of these kids in a bathroom and there’s writing on the wall, and phone numbers, and a person passing money (…) the cheerleader (…) it’s kind of taking this high school situation where kids are up to no good, and applying it to something very serious.

S: Let’s talk about Helen Estelle. I think this one is really interesting. Now is this one of your children as well?

M.K.: That’s my eight-year-old daughter.

S: Now was this shot in water or did you digitally manipulate this?

M.K.: No, no, a straight shot. We have a glass table on our deck and it had rained and the water had pooled up on it and my daughter was climbing under it (…) the light was just hitting it perfectly; so I ran in and grabbed my camera. I took a bunch of pictures of her. You know, most parents would try and take flattering pictures (laughs) of their kids (…) my poor kids (laughs).

S: (laughs) Yeah, how do they feel about all of this?

M.K.: It drives my wife crazy. On the first day of school she’s like, “Alright kids, let’s take a picture.” And they’ll say, “Okay, but dad told us not to smile.” (laughs).

S: And then you hand them a deer skull covered in ribbons.

M.K.: For sure. “Here son, hold this dead possum.”

["Helen Estelle," black and white photograph; 2012.]

Starehouse: How did the idea of Florida Mining Gallery hosting and presenting nullspace gallery come about?

Steve Williams: Our goal from the beginning was to create an atmosphere that embellished installation and artists activating our space. Through a few different curators on staff, we felt we needed some fresh blood and reached out to nullspace. We always respected nullspace and actually worked on a JTA curated event a couple years back. This move is one to focus more on engaging the community, picking up the conversation, and presenting works that are interesting and ones that will hopefully start conversation, make an impression, and educate Jacksonville on museum-quality gallery artists attractive both for collecting and for following.

S: Will this be an ongoing collaboration with nullspace i.e. will you continue to host their exhibits until the unforeseeable future?

S.W.: We love the idea of a nonprofit mentality; shows that we do not have to sell in order to sustain. Jacksonville needs venues that will sustain – and that is our main commitment – can you believe that? A commitment just to sustain. Wow, we have a long way to go and we are on our way. Jacksonville CAN do this. We can be a city of collectors and art supporters.

S: What compelled you collaborate with nullspace? What do you find so engaging about their programming and what are some of your thoughts on their former shows?

S.W.: We think alike. We share some of the same aesthetics. That is of paramount importance to us. We want the highest quality, intellect, conversation, and installation available anywhere.

For more info on Steve Williams and his work, check out:

http://floridamininggallery.com/artists/steve-williams/

Mark Creegan

Starehouse: What was the original impetus for nullspace? What inspired you three directors (Creegan, Shalev, and Polkey) to utilize the concept that the gallery was a de facto “null” space, a blank canvas?

Mark Creegan: From the start we saw the idea of nullspace as a sort of laboratory where an artist is given total freedom (or as much as possible) to create a cohesive environment or complex arrangement of works. My experience as an artist in Jacksonville is that it is rare to be able to explore your practice on an intense level. Usually you are provided a few feet of wall space and that is it. We wanted solo artist shows presenting very sophisticated forms and ideas.

The name came from Rachel Levanger who is a math genius (she is currently getting a PhD in math at Rutgers). She described this idea of the null space as a field or area that contains nothing, its empty. We thought the name fit well because we wanted our space to be a raw, empty field of potentiality.

S: What do you feel like the three of you are looking for when selecting an artist? What is your criterion, if any, for choosing certain artists?

M.C.: I think we mainly look for artists who have the potential of creating really engaging experiences and who can utilize a given space really well. Contemporary artists create meaning through the interaction of material, form, and context. I think all of the artists we have worked with do that sort of dance really well in complicated ways.

S: What do you find so appealing about Kenney’s work?

M.C.: You know, right now, a few days prior to the installation of his show, I still do not have a complete grasp of what to think about his work. But I like that! That is where the curating and my own art practice collide. There are just too many unknowns that will reveal themselves later, and I hope to interesting affects. That is what interests me most. I want to be surprised and confused. Right now I see his works as individual pieces in all their campy glory. I also see them in the context of his studio which is a creative vomitorium! So what it will be to me in a few days? Ask me then.

S: At the Tony Rodrigues exhibit The Sweet Mundane (Oct.-Nov., 2011) if I recall correctly, you and I had a conversation where you had told me that you had to move from your original location (108 E. Adams St.), and then possibly even the second location (109 E. Bay St.) , due to the cost prohibitive and seemingly mandatory insurance fees. Was that stipulated by Off the Grid or was that a city ordinance to rent a space downtown?

M.C.: We lost the Adams Street space due to it being rented to a full paying company. We knew we could lose that space due to that and we were glad we had almost two years there. Then the second space, we had two great shows with Mark Estlund and Tony, but it was so divided into three small areas, we missed the larger single space of the original; so doing any more shows would have been not as fun. The issue with the insurance is that we just didn’t want to pay unless we either had fun or could recoup some of those funds.

For more info on Mark Creegan and his work, check out:

http://www.markcreegan.com/

Kurt Polkey

Starehouse: What do you find intriguing about Marcus Kenney’s work?

Kurt Polkey: Marcus Kenney’s work is the kind that anyone would like. It’s an over- the-top experience for any viewer. It’s flashy. Kenney’s work is so endearing that even those who only go to art shows for the free wine will love his work.

But I’m a curmudgeon. I don’t hate art, but I come pretty close sometimes; so I didn’t fall at first blush. After my second and third visit with his work however, I realized there was something beyond the bright colors, little kids, and animal heads. His pictures and sculptures tell a story that is completely authentic. Marcus is bona fide.

S: Part of the allure of original nullspace shows seemed to be in presenting certain exhibits that combined disparate artists with distinctively different styles in collaboration. Why did that idea come about? Did nullspace approach the artists or vice versa?

K.P.: The nullspace curatorial approach is a simple one; get out of the way.

Typically we’ve approached the artist. It’s easier that way. There’s not much new in the art world, so sometimes putting art or artists that wouldn’t normally be put together can make an original statement. It can also make us feel like we are doing something.

S: You are not only a director/co-curator of nullspace but also as a visual artist and presented your own exhibit there with Masculine Pictures. I’m wondering if the presentation, logistics, or approach of the artists from the shows prior to yours influenced your own exhibit, in the sense of works, installation, or maybe avoiding certain obstacles or roadblocks the previous artists might have encountered.

K.P.: I wish I had a better answer for your question, but I just do my thing.

For more info on Kurt Polkey and his work, check out:

http://polkey.wix.com/kurt-polkey-ii

Jefree Shalev

Starehouse: How did you originally become aware of or familiar with Kenney’s work?

Jefree Shalev: To be honest, I’m not totally sure. Steve Williams may have suggested we check him out or he may have come up on a search we did of Savannah artists. Mark, Kurt, and I, in this go around with nullspace, want to broaden our pool of artists to show. We’re interested in bringing regional, national, and even international artists to Jacksonville. We believe that the art community here is so strong and so supportive that it will welcome and support artists from around the world. In the past, it’s been difficult to achieve the kind of attendance you’d like to see at shows where the artist was not local or very well known. One way we intend to counteract that is by having two-person shows, on occasion, where we’ll group a local Jacksonville artist with someone known more nationally who shares a common theme in their work or a common approach with the local artist. The first couple of shows we have planned, however, are solo shows. When we decided to search regionally for artists, it was clear that Savannah, home of SCAD, would be a great place to start. After an internet search of artists working in the area, we settled on a few we wanted to visit and interview. Marcus was the first one we met with. We were immediately impressed by the quality, the breadth, and the sheer impact of his work. We are quite honored to have him show with nullspace.

S: What do you find so engaging about Kenney’s creative vision?

J.S.: On one level, the work is very approachable. It’s fun, it’s got something to say which is immediately conveyed (especially the paintings), but it’s also very rich and very varied. The more I spent time with the work and thought about it, the more I realized how important it was. Marcus has a lot to say about our culture, about race and economics, and about history, and not just the way white men have reported it. His photographs are otherworldly and in fact, much of his work seems to exist in or seems to come from an alternative reality. He turns symbols and hierarchies on their heads and in that way, shows us another way to think about things. His assemblages are steeped in history, our ancient past or our post-apocalyptic future, if it’s possible to speak of something that hasn’t happened yet as history. The relics he uses to adorn his work have a history of their own that is very important to Marcus and then the finished work will often have a name derived from a historical figure; one who’s accomplishments may be little known outside of a small subculture. Marcus is southern and traditional and iconoclastic and rebellious and none of that is in the least contradictory. He is very well integrated, mystical and practical, with a keen eye and the ear of a writer. Literature has a large influence on him and where once, his work was quite narrative, it has evolved into something with more depth; he now creates characters and the narrative is much more subjective or subdued entirely. There is, throughout the work, a deep investigation into what it means to be human. Often, he will use animals and wild forces to help us see where we belong in the world. What more could we hope for of our artists?

S: I noticed that you are also creating a catalog for this show; you also published similar books for previous nullspace exhibits. Considering so much contemporary publication seems geared towards the internet/social media, why do you think it is necessary, or even crucial, to present a catalog with your shows? I imagine it could be cost prohibitive, but does Blurb make it more feasible since they seemingly offer a kind of “made to order” service?

J.S.: Listen, the internet is great for providing snippets of information that you can click on and then just as easily surf away from when something more urgent pops up on your screen. It’s not a good medium, in my opinion, for taking a long careful look at something. There’s also something to be said for the physicality of an actual book. So much art is available to be seen on the internet, but that is not a substitute in any way for seeing a work in person, for seeing that work in relation to something next to it, and for really getting a sense for how the work was made. The way things join, brush strokes, side views are all important. Likewise, the physical catalog is a way of putting the art in your hands, not just in front of your eyes. Having said that, I’m not sure how many more of these we’ll do. They’re quite labor-intensive and if the public doesn’t support the effort, I become the only one who really gets anything out of doing them, which is not an insignificant point. For me, they’re immensely educational and I gain enormously having spent so much time thinking and writing about an artist’s work.

S: Do you have any other upcoming nullspace exhibits confirmed? Have the three of you set up a programming schedule yet?

J.S.: We plan on doing shows every other month with an opening to be held on the second Friday of the month. For December, we have an amazing show planned. A local art collector, Michael Cavendish, will allow us to show two installations that he has purchased from the artist, David De Boer. In addition to those two installations, we are talking with De Boer about bringing supplemental material with which to craft an entire curated experience. There is currently a documentary about the installations in Cavendish’s collection and the cross country trip they endured on their way to Jacksonville which is in the final stages of production; which we hope to show in December as well. The project deals with lofty concepts related to art and ownership and authenticity and more. February will bring a two-person show: Greg Eltringham and Patrick Moser will be teaming up to investigate the ways that masks work. Do they hide a person’s true identity or do they allow the true identity to emerge due to the cloak of anonymity which potentially frees the wearer? In April, we will be presenting the work of Craig Drennen, whose longitudinal studies of the characters present in failed books, short lived television shows, and critically panned movies makes for intricate and cross pollinated events spanning across our peripatetic culture to the depths of his empathetic imagination.

For more info on Jefree Shalev and his upcoming community arts project, “Our Shared Past,” check out:

http://www.cummer.org/programs-events/calendar-of-events/our-shared-past

Daniel A. Brown

starehouse@gmail.com