PULPO:

Hieronymus Bosch

Meets Theodor Geisel

Interview with Fernando Hereñú

by Mike Foldes

I don’t exactly recall how I came to know Fernando Hereñú’s work, most likely on a jaunt through Chelsea last summer, but I do know that soon as I saw it I had stepped into a world of fantasy that combines childhood dreams and adult nightmares. It was no surprise to find out that Hereñú, who goes by the nom de plume of Pulpo (incidentally the Spanish word for octopus), is engaged in comic book illustration. Citing historically diverse influences as Hieronymus Bosch, and Argentine illustrator Jose Luis Salinas, Pulpo invites us to venture with him into psychedelic realms where we can linger longer than with a fleeting thought. Hereñú was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1977, completed his Graphic Design studies at the Universty of Buenos Aires in 2002, and for the next four years  he worked as a designer for Cartoon Network. He lives in Buenos Aires and is creative director for an online games company.

Q: How did you come to art? Were your parents artists?

A: I have no family artists. But all my relatives are related to sociology, anthropology and humanities, science… So when I was a kid we always had many art books in my house. We had a large library where they were almost all European artists of the 20th century. I looked at those pictures and was very confused, I remember much of it, could say that I liked but could not stop looking at art. Imagine a child looking to Hieronymus Bosch. That might be a good image on my childhood.

I started to draw early in my life. Was the only way I was quiet in my house.
I could spend hours and hours just drawing.  My parents realized of it and then they send to me to study comic book to one of the best teachers in my country.

Q: Who was the teacher your parents sent you to, and what was his/her process of teaching, and working with you?

A: My teacher was Jose Luis Salinas, one of the drafters of the Marvel comics. One of the most important studies was the anatomy of the human body and another, perspective drawings. They made ​​us work very hard. Where the human form and the handling of the pen was the most important.  We students drew for hours drawing hands, bodies, etc.

I was among the younger students throughout the academy. I spent about two years and then went to work more on the comic mode. In this way, then, I got my job at Cartoon Network.

Q: What kind of work did you do in your first job at the Cartoon Network?

A: I really do not remember. The important thing to know at that stage was different illustration styles and meeting friends. Another good thing at that time was to know a little about the production of animated entertainment.

I think the best we had at that time was the quality of animation and illustration.

Q: What project/program did you work on?  Can you see them on the web?

A: Now I am working for an exhibition in Salvador Bahia. I’m working hard for this. Since it is a project to purify the aesthetic lines.  You can see it all on my page, http://pulpocorporate.tumblr.com/

My project is to continue the series. I’m working to further deepen the concept.

Q:  What is the Bahia, Salvia project? Is it a commission?

A: Salvador Bahi its an important city in Brasil. I will be there this month because I have an exhibition there. I am going to present some abstract drawing. There are something strange that happened to me now, I don’t want to draw figurative things. I prefer to be more complex than the reality. The abstraction, it’s like a dark hole.

Q: How difficult is it to make a living for a commercial artist such as yourself? What would you tell others who are interested in pursuing careers in illustration, as artists or as cartoonists?

A: For me it would be much more difficult to live a profession other than as an artist. I think I could develop another activity. To me, life is 24 hours related to art.

Some artists are rich and others poor. But art has nothing to do with money.

But the most important thing I can say is that illustrators do this activity with the heart. Finally they will find a worthy a place to work. Art has nothing to do with the grasp of money. To make money there are other better careers. The career of an artist is to find within ourselves something to show others. It puts everything into images we think and feel.

Q: Where do you get your ideas? What’s the most “fertile territory” for your images. They seem too strong to be taken from café scenes.

A: I use a technique called Synchronism for composition. This technique has to do with surrealism. I do not plan a lot about what I do. I try not to think about them if possible.

Q: What is your preferred medium these days? Do you sculpt?

A: My preferred medium is paper and India ink. It is actually the preferred way that I always use in my career. I love drawing more than anything else. But the painting half seems tedious. I just love painting with the comic style, which is easy to give good volume. Like you, I am not really a person with great patience.

Q: How do you know I’m a person without great patience? (BTW, I am laughing out loud with that last answer!)

A: I wanted to say that I’m a guy a little (too) anxious to sculpt. I want to see something now. I want to create a painting now, I feel I have no time.

Q: What’s next on the agenda for you?

A:  But I prefer to be more concentrated in the creation this year, because I have a lot of ideas that I feel have to take priority. Maybe I’m thinking to move to the U.S., France or Tokyo soon. That will be my next project.

Note:

Fernando Hereñú aka Pulpo’s first solo exhibition in New York, “Hidden Drawings,” took place at Tache Art Gallery in New York last summer, where his work is available.  This interview was conducted via e-mail between September and December 2011.

www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=187291607992623
www.tachegallery.com
http://pulpocorporate.tumblr.com/

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Anthony Haden-Guest

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Mr. Hyde | Spray-paint and oil on canvas | 110 x 115cm

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Dale Grimshaw

Painting the bad dream 

Q: The theme of your new show, ‘Semi-Detached’, you have described as depicting ‘what goes on behind closed doors’. How much of the show will relate to personal experience?

A: My experiences as a child in a very difficult and potentially violent environment, has had a strong impact on all parts of my life. My father was a violent and cruel man, whose presence in the family home caused physical and emotional pain for us all. My mum was the focus of his violent behaviour and she really suffered at his hands. We were left homeless after fleeing the family home. We lived in so many places after that, including a caravan in a farmer’s field and also a gutted farm house that was home to chickens – the chickens still came in to visit after that! My oldest sister witnessed a lot more than me and sadly I believe it really brought the worst out in her in later years.

Being a child in that type of situation is a nightmare. All the things that should be there to support you and help you develop as an adult are undermined by the fear and unpredictability of the situation. My mother did her best to protect us, but she was lonely and vulnerable herself. Despite all that happened in the early days, my Mum’s love has shone through for me and I have held onto that as an adult, despite losing her tragically early when I was only nineteen. Without this love, I can’t imagine how I could have carried on and achieved anything as an adult.

I’m always intrigued yet horrified when I read in the paper about murderers or people that have sex slaves in their basements. Neighbours are quoted as saying things like “ooh he was such a quiet and polite man… who would have thought”.

Sociopaths can be the most worrying, as we like to think we can summarise and judge people quickly and accurately – but we can’t always. Who knows what some people are up to behind closed doors…

My work really started taking off when I realized that it was ok to express some of the darker emotions in my art. For a long time I kept a lid on all these feelings. My piece called ‘Exorcism’ is the first piece in which I found my creative voice and it’s still one of the most powerful images I have ever painted.

Exorcism

Q: Where do you call home, these days, and where is your studio?

A: I live in north London with my partner and two cats. I’ve lived in the Haringay area of London for twenty years now. I couldn’t really imagine living anywhere else other than London. London is such an amazing place with so much to do. A lot of people that inhabit the city take it all for granted I think. It can be a lonely place though; I found it hard when I first arrived here with £4.90 in my pocket.

It’s nice to feel safe and be finally settled now, although I still have a wooden club next to my bed though, just in case…

Our house has a nice garden and the house is big enough for me to have my own studio at home. This works for me at the moment, but in time I may need to expand into a bigger space. I love the idea of working much bigger than I currently do.

Q: When and how did you get involved with art?

A: I’ve been drawing and painting for as long as I can remember. I was naturally talented I would say, but there wasn’t anyone in my family that was arty in the obvious sense, that encouraged me.

I always loved the military look of the feudal and medieval period, so I would draw Saxons or Knights. I was never really a confident drawer in front of people but when I started painting and using pastels at about 12, I really came into my own. I did still lifes and landscapes from my imagination. I also did drawings of Johnny Rotten, Adam Ant and other bands. Later I had a period of painting LP covers on people’s leather jackets. I was always obsessed with graffiti and I would write ‘Dale G’ from the age of about ten, then later I became ‘Grimmy’ and I would daub that at every given opportunity! My mum encouraged my art and bought me materials when she could, I also stole materials from shops when the occasion arose.

When I was at Assessment Centre in Blackburn as a teenager, I was helped to pursue creative routes – they must have been desperate to stop me glue sniffing and I was allowed to paint on the walls in the building, which was great.

The Fool | Oil and spray paint on canvas | 2009

Q: Who or what would you say has been your principal motivator to take art?

A: No one in particular motivated me to produce art – I naturally gravitated towards it myself. There’s no defining moment either.

I wanted to be really famous so I thought I should either be a famous archaeologist, a serial killer or an artist. Archaeology started to appear really boring as time went on. With being a serial killer I realized I would have to kill people horribly, so that was out of the question. Being a famous artist seemed really plausible. I was a strange child.

We had several prints by famous artists in our council house on Clarence Road whilst growing up, including Monet and Constable. Constable’s ‘The Cornfield’ was really painterly and had a farm boy drinking from a stream. His sheep dog and herd were near by and in the background was a cornfield. I loved the narrative of it.

Later on I was fascinated by the designs of punk record covers. The drawing on the front of Adam and the Ants ‘Young Parisians’ single springs to mind. If you look at the photography on Adam’s ‘Zerox’ cover, you can really see similarities with what I do now. Later I liked Jamie Reid’s approach to art – cut it out, throw some glue on it and stick it down ‘Blue Peter’ style.

Q: Do you have a formal education in art, design or photography that you bring to a session, or are you self-taught?

A: I guess you would say I had formal training, but tutors don’t really teach you, in the strict sense of the word, especially at degree level. At foundation level you are taught basic colour theory and life drawing (working from nude model), etc. I went to Blackburn College of Art and Middlesex University, based in north London.

In my very early teens I got those ‘how to paint’ books from the adult section of the library; I would study and copy from those. In time the snotty-faced librarians tried to stop me for a while, fuck knows why…

Q: What kind of medium do you favor, and why? Oil, acrylic, pastel, all?

A: I was mainly an oil painter in the early college days, I started seriously again with oils after my mum died. However, as time has gone on I have found that this medium doesn’t suit all my needs in the studio. It’s a shame because I really love the feel and finish of oils, but I work with a lot of splashes, smears and gestural brush marks. I found acrylic paint really suits this approach better, due to its accelerated drying time. I also use spray paint, especially when I’m painting on outside walls. Spray paint is good for blocking in big areas quickly and it also dries really fast so you can work over it with other types of paint.

2009, Woodcut print, Shoreditch London

I also produce big woodcut prints that I paste up out on the streets across the world. With his technique you first draw your image onto the flat piece of wood, then you cut out the areas that you don’t want to print – it’s like inverted drawing. Then you apply ink with a roller over your design, place the paper on top, apply pressure and then the inked image is left on the paper. Voila!

Q: Where do your images come from? imaginary or based on real events that you transform?

A: The ideas for paintings are often based on memories or experience, but usually the paintings are more of a loose interpretation rather than being a really literal depiction. I sometimes get photos off the internet to start an idea going, then I nearly always take my own photos, mainly of the body, to back this initial reference material up. I do a lot of digital sketches before I start painting. If I’m working on a full colour painting, as opposed to monochrome, then I like to have lots of detail of the skin areas. I love to capture the real visceral fleshiness of the human form – the veins and muscle underneath the skin, if I can.

Q: What artists working today do you admire, and who would you most like to work with (living or dead)?

A: I was a huge fan of Scottish painter Peter Howson when I was younger, along with Ken Currie. I loved the Herculean type physicality of Howson’s work. I also really admired Lucian Freud with his fleshy un-apologetic take on the human body in its many grisly forms and colours. I never really went through what seemed to be the obligatory Francis Bacon obsession that most art students go though — although I’ve come to really appreciate his stuff of late.

I really like Jenny Saville’s work too.

I’d probably work well with someone like Rubens – he could do his amazing translucent fleshy bodies and then I’d add to it and fuck it up with all my trademark smears and splashes. That would be great as I could nick some flesh-painting tips at the same time.

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Q: Anything we haven’t touched that you’d like to comment on?

A: My solo show ‘Semi –Detached’ starts at Signal Gallery London on the 7^th October. The private view is Thurs 6^th October. (The show runs through October 29th.)

www.signalgallery.com

About the interviewer: 

Patrick Palmer has the unusual combination of having both an artistic and a business background — over 20 years’ experience in media, marketing and publishing. He is  a figurative artist, and his work can be seen at: www.patrickpalmer.co.uk

Snowman II, Walter

The Drawing Room Revisited

Walter Gurbo − painter, sculptor, illustrator, muralist, set designer, set-painter and most recently filmmaker, known to reshape and transform any medium he can get his hands on. Gurbo is probably best known for his 12 years of weekly surrealistic drawings known as the “Drawing Room” on the back cover of NYC’s TheVillage Voice. Along with this, Gurbo continued to exhibit in NY Galleries and had shows at area colleges.

His most recent series it has been said “reinvents the still life.” All of Gurbo’s work typically has a thought-provoking humor which is evident even in his most abstract work. A just released book titled, “All The Art That’s Fit To Print (& Some That Wasn’t)” by Jerele Kraus (Columbia University Press) includes a drawing series from Walter’s New York Times days where he contributed more than 300 drawings. He also shows extensively in many upstate N.Y. venues. Following the exhibition at Anthony Brunelli Fine Arts in July, Gurbo exhibited his recent still-life series at the West Kortright Centre in August 2011.

©2011 Joseph Bowman

Castle in Forest, collage, pen-and-ink. 11″x17″

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Joseph Bowman Has 9 Lives

Bowman on Bowman:

I begin my work with a large — and growing — pool of black-and-white, freehand illustrations. I photocopy the images needed for any given piece onto art paper, and cut them out in as much detail as possible and in such a way as to minimize visible seams. I then collage these cutouts together to create large-format, richly detailed city- and landscapes ranging in size from 4″ x 6″ to 3′ x 5′, of which I have completed about thirty so far.

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View larger photos from the gallery please enter the FS button.

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I have limited experience showing my work, having participated in a group show at the now-defunct Echo Curio, and with several warehouse art cooperatives in Los Angeles. However, the response I have gotten thus far has been overwhelmingly positive and I am interested to see how it plays with a wider audience. I like to use the following bio (bear in mind that there are a lot of historical Joseph Bowmans):

Joseph Bowman (1752-1779) was an officer in the American Revolutionary War who served in the Illinois campaign. Maj. Bowman participated in the 1778 capture of Fort de Chartres, and remained there for some time as the commander of the newly renamed Fort Bowman. While attending a victory celebration, Maj. Bowman was injured by an accidental gunpowder explosion and later succumbed to his injuries, becoming the only American officer to die in the Illinois campaign. He lives in Los Angeles.

You can see more of Bowman’s work at:

http://www.flikr.com/photos/jpowersbowman

Buy the book!

Interview with Ultra Violet (oka, Isabelle Dufresne)

by Mike Foldes

A couple of years ago Hélène Gaillet suggested a Ragazine interview with her friend, Ultra Violet, one of the Superstars of Andy Warhol’s infamous Factory troupe. It took a long time to finally make the connection, and when we did, Ultra didn’t want to talk about the old days. “Read my book,” she ordered. “It says everything.” Instead, she moved the conversation to what’s happening now, and said what she’d said, in so many words, when we spoke on the phone: “I want to talk about tomorrow. Tomorrow is important.”

Ultra’s Chelsea studio is in one of the larger converted factory buildings on West 26^th Street in New York City. When we visit the crowded space late afternoon on April 30, she is contemplating a move to a larger studio that had come available in the same building. The 26^th Street space appears to be more of a place to show her work, than to make it.  Many of her pieces are one-off or short runs made at her direction by artisans in shops both in and beyond New York. There’s no way she could produce some of the pieces on display here in such a space without means of production. When asked the extent of her participation, she asks pointedly, “I don’t have a shop to bend metal. Do you?”

Most of the recent pieces in the room reflect Ultra’s commitment to understanding and explaining the cause and effect of the 9-11 attacks on the World Trade Center, and on America as a nation.  “American naivete,” she says with a French accent, for she is, in fact a French-born heiress who ran away to see the world — and did. “American naivete, it died that day.”

Ultra, born Isabelle Dufresne in 1935, comes across as self-confident and energetic. In the studio, she’s in her element. Her friends, acquaintances and lovers comprise a pantheon of some of the 20^th century’s most famous and accomplished artists, writers, politicians and business people, as well as many more unseen stars who will never be seen, heard of or heard from ever again.  I mention to a friend we’ll be doing an interview with Ultra Violet. “Who?” he asks. “One of the Warhol Superstars,” I say. His wife remembers her this way: “She was famous for being famous.”

That was then. This is now. Ultra Violet is who she was, and more. Today she’s serious about leaving a mark, focused on seeing that her art becomes a constant message to audiences of tomorrow of what 9-11, and its lessons, mean for all of us.

Ragazine: Are you done with the 9-11 series?

Foldes, Ultra & IX-XI sculpture. Maya Photo

Ultra Violet: No no no, the other day I did a performance, a 9-11 performance. No, I’m not done…. No, I’d love to do a chess game; I’d like to do an hour glass, a huge hour glass. No, I’m not done, I don’t know when I’ll be done with it.

R: Do you take breaks and do other things in the meantime?

UV: Well, I do. I just came back from the Dallas Art Fair premiering a movie… I do other things, but 9-11 is a very important subject …

R: Where did you live when that happened?

UV: I was in Manhattan, on the Upper East Side.

R: We were wondering when we came over here whether you lived in your studio.

UV: No, no, you can’t live here ….

R: Once we saw the building it was pretty obvious….

UV: No, no, you don’t live here.

R: How many pieces do you have in the 9-11 series so far?

UV: The other day I had a show, a wonderful show. They counted 25 pieces; actually I have more, but some of them they didn’t want to show…. Like the nuclear terrorism after 9-11, they didn’t want to show this one, because they thought maybe it is irreverent. (Ultra points to a painting of an angel Mickey Mouse). It’s a very touchy subject, they thought maybe it would be irreverent…. Or something.

R: This is the gallery in Brooklyn?

UV: Yes, it was a great show. You know some people might take offense to this, though I can explain this. I’m not trying to be funny or irreverent.

Mickey Mouse represents the American naivete, or good humor, you know, and that day I think that he got nailed. Actually I wrote a story that he died on that day, that’s the meaning of this. But some people, some 200 people or whatever, might take umbrage to that.

R: I don’t understand why people would take umbrage to that.

UV: They would, because the idea to mix Mickey Mouse, which is “Ha ha ha ha,”  with a tragic event, you know,  to some people…. You know, they are in touch with some commission people they want to bring to the studio and I am going to hide this.

R: You mentioned on the phone you didn’t want to look back, that you like to look forward, to what’s happening.

UV: I do, I still do. Usually the press asks you about the past, and I’m not interested in the past, I much prefer tomorrow. What I might do tomorrow. A lot of what’s in the past has already been recorded.

I mean, you might say 9-11 is in the past, but it’s the very near past. It’s just about 10 years, and I think it was such a blow to the American nation that I don’t think people have yet digested it, if you know what I mean, absorbed it, and oh, and plus, a marking of time….

This is a marking of time. It’s really the official date of the Terrorist Era. Terrorism has existed before, I am aware of it. The word terror was created in the French revolution and in Roman times the Zealots, but you know, as we know it now, terrorism… this is the official date. And it will never go away. Terrorism. Unfortunately. So, that’s why I think that marking of time, which is what I am doing with my “Woman of Miracles” (Ultra gestures absently toward another sculpture in the space), matters a lot for people, and I think I was able to do it in a very elegant way.

R: It is, it’s really clean. When I was looking at pieces on the web, they were very clean and seeing them here they’re very clean lines, and to see how smooth they are. Do you do this, or do you have people working with you?

UV: Do I have a factory that bends metal? I don’t …

R: So this is steel?

UV: Aluminum.

R: When did you do the mirrors in the glass frames?

UV: Oh, the glass.  Those are fairly old,  maybe three years or so, and it’s a baroque frame cast  in acrylic.  I think the frame is absolutely phenomenal, and it took me at least a year to decide what should go inside. I tried things, you know, paintings, portraits, blue, green, yellow, and it finally dawned on me to do a mirror, and to do a self-portrait, which I think is pretty nice. (Laughs.)

When you look into it, it must be a self-portrait, but you must think of it. This is a very expensive work. If I could do this very, very cheap… I looked for (a way to do) it, but I couldn’t find it. You know, they used to make mirrors in metal, and they also used to make frames all in plastic, plastic molded, and I was looking for a very cheap $10 mirror that would look good in this. We used to find things on Canal Street, and now Canal Street is all Americanized.

R: Chinese-ized. When you’re working on 9-11 projects, do you conceive of other things, films, or things based on what you’ve done it the past?

UV: Oh, I do. Yesterday I did an interview with a television show with, I don’t know, and the interview was about tarot reading. Why? Because someone created a tarot card (deck), and each card is designed by an artist and I designed one.  The deck is going to premier at the Andy Warhol Museum, and they asked me to do a tarot reading there. I said I would if it only lasted 15 minutes each, and they said “OK”. So, they did that interview for television, and so I spoke about tarot and I did a reading, totally improvised.  I mean I’ve never read the tarot.

So, you know, I do other things. Not all in the studio.

We have a short chat about Helene Gaillet, about Ultra updating her website, and whether Ragazine will ever be in print. “Not likely,” is the answer, but you never know. Ultra continues:

I met a lady at the Invisible Dog (the gallery where her recent show took place) who was doing a thesis on 9-11 … and what she did, she Googled “artist” and “9-11”, and she had a whole list, and she asked “How come you’re not listed?”

(She turns to Martin, an assistant who is doing a time lapse photograph of one of her pieces, and who is also working on the update of her web site.)

Martin you’re supposed to work on this, remember?

M: I’ll do some SEO.

UV: Did you do this? Am I listed?

M: Probably not.

UV: Well I would like to be.… And she found me by chance, because someone told her I am doing work on 9-11. Ah, I guess it’s the new way of the world. You have to deal with it.

R: It used to be video, and before that it was Polaroids. Things change.

UV: Two days ago I was on a panel of Andy Warhol –  since you mentioned Polaroids. The subject was the influence of his artwork today and the influence of the Factory today, and on the panel was Bob Colacello. Do you know him? And then a famous photographer, Berger…. I think he works for Vanity Fair, and then a vice president of the World Foundation who resigned now …. I forget his name…

(Jumping to another subject ….)

Can you take that piece of paper there … the building once a year does an open house, and it’s this weekend, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I have to sell things. Martin, you still need the white cloud?

M: I do until nine o’clock…

UV: What are you doing exactly?

M: I’m doing a time lapse with the cloud in the background.

UV: Then I can’t walk over there …

R: When did you do your clouds?

UV: About two years ago. Much of my work is luminous. This is luminous (points to a neon piece on the wall), and the rainbows are luminous. I was saving…. I can turn them on, but you know all these things have a lifespan. They have a lifespan. The neon, I don’t know if it lasts forever…. And ever.

R: I have a bar down the street, and it has neon in it that’s been there for years.

UV: Well How do you know they didn’t repair it? (Laughs…)

This is neon (points to a neon sculpture on the wall), at the Invisible Dog.   I have this one and another one in black light, ultraviolet light,  and the owner of the place bought it, and he just sent me an e-mail, he said your neon, 9-11, one of the letters is not lit. It never happened to me before.

R: Who does your neon?

UV: There’s a place in Brooklyn called Technolux. I will have to bring it back to them.

I have more in boxes here. We did not unpack everything. I have a series of Windows in the World, it’s a series of 20 little windows on the world, with sky, sky, and after that the sky is crying, and after that the sky is no longer a sky, and I turn it on when I have to but I don’t leave it on all the time. And it flickers. I don’t know how long they last.

R: What’s that piece? (I point to a piece high on the wall, written in Arabic.)

UV: Can you read it?”

R: I can’t.

UV: It’s 9-11 in calligraphy, Arab calligraphy…

R: 9 being the top number?

UV: Well apparently there are many ways to say it, whether you say it nine one one, or n-i-n-e-e-l-e-v-e-n or phonetically, or whatever. So I inquire at Islamic school and they always send me different interpretations, because this one is not exactly the same as this one, and this one I worded to say this way, and left a mirror below.

You know they’re doing a 9-11 memorial in London and the purpose of it is mostly centered for better understanding between the Muslim world and the European world. I don’t want to say it’s invaded, but it’s really not the same civilization…

R: What interests me is that in France, fundamentalist Muslims don’t seem to be very well accepted, these days. (Referring to French law against women wearing the chador).

UV: Yes, and a lot of French people regret it, regret that the laws are so strict….

R: Where do you live in France?

UV: In nice, in the south, you know….

R: Do you have pieces in the show, the 9-11 exhibition that’s coming up?

UV: No, not yet, but I might …

R: How much time do you spend in France.

UV: I don’t spend any time… I just happened to be there a little while ago because I have a show in Paris, and I give a talk in Paris at New York University, and I was signing a very big art project, so I went to Nice for one week….

R: Do you go in the summer?

UV: No, I will spend the summer here, because I have lot of projects planned. One of them is very nice, it is visual and sound and in the project is Bob Dylan and Becky Smith and John Giorno, and it is coming out in August at the Jackson Pollock Kassmer House in the Hamptons. It’s produced by Sony, so it should be lots of fun.

R: So it’s a film?

UV: No, no, it’s a box, and inside the box, you have a visual. My visual happens to be 9-11, and some recordings, probably a DVD. In my case, I excavated a chant, very classical, which I recorded in 1973 for Capital Records, so I’m happy that’s coming out.

R: You mentioned one of the Warhol projects you’re working on, has to do with the influence of Warhol’s ….

UV: Oh, that was a talk two nights ago…

R: So that doesn’t have anything to do with any upcoming projects….

UV: No, no, that was a panel that was organized in Soho by a company that makes furniture, and Bob Colacello was there, and after the talk he signed his book. He has a new book out called OUT, and he was just signing OUT. It was a photography book, mostly of ‘60s photos, and it was organized by these furniture designers, the New Traditionalists, it was at Broadway and Spring.

I’m going to be at the Houston Art Fair in September.

R: Do you take pieces ….

UV: I don’t show it. The gallery takes a space at Art Fair. In this case, the gallery in Houston does that.

I was well positioned, sandwiched between Indiana and Warhol, and there will be a premier of a film which they’ve never seen, that I introduce ….

It’s interesting. The photographer Bill Kennedy, who photographed people before they were famous, in the ‘60s, during the love years… I just happened to be there, and a few others. The photographs have been buried for about 50 years, and now they are just coming to surface, and they interview Indiana and me and a few others…..

R: Indiana, he is still alive?

UV: Yes, he’s alive, he‘s in Miami, Florida. He’s about 70.

R: What’s your routine like when you’re working?

UV: Routine?

R: When you work, do you have a routine?

UV: Well it varies, with some freelance, it depends a lot on appointments. When I have an appointment here and when I stay the day, depending, and I work a lot from home. I have a nice Mac and a lot of my information is there. I work between home and here… No set time… Saturday or Sunday , noon to six… Actually, I met a guy who works with architects, and he knows about my 9-11 and likes it, and I want to put my 9-11 in a situation… For example, I might put it down around Ground Zero. I met the architect that designed Ground Zero, Michael Arad, and I might send that to him, so … It takes time… time.  Time is the issue, time is limited. I am limited, too.

R: Who’s working today whose work you like?

UV: Oh, a lot of people. I like Cristo and Jean Claude. I like James Turel. I like, there are some good people…. There’s a lot of trash, but there are good people, too.

R: Has it always been that way?

UV: No, more so now, because of the art market. Everybody wants to be an artist and cash in, they read the   prices which are phenomenal and they want to cash in. There are a lot of artists now, which makes it very hard to make it, and to break into it (the art market)….

There’s a knock at the door. It’s the agent who will be showing her the other space where she will be able to hang her large paintings of Ground Zero. The interview is over. It will take several weeks before it’s transcribed, edited and placed on the page. In the end, it doesn’t look the way it sounds.

See more of Ultra Violet’s work at http://www.ultravioletweb.com.

Michael Elmgreen/Ingar Dragset:

The One & The Many, Rotterdam

Art Review by Miklós Horváth

After enchanting audiences and critics with the sumptuous exhibition Infernopolis last year, the curators of the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen have decided to host another spectacular installation, The One & The Many in the Rotterdam’s Submarine Wharf. The exhibition is now open to the public and can be visited until 25^th September 2011.

Submarine Wharf can be reached by a 15-minute boat trip from busy Willemskade to a desolate harbour without shops or crowds. You are alone with those you came with on the boat from Willemskade. The experience a visitor may discover is similar to how Mr. Lockwood felt upon his arrival at Thrushcross Grange, described by Emily Brontë in Wuthering Heights. Far from the stir of society, Lockwood felt the desolation and considered his new living area a misanthrope’s heaven.  Though he intended to spend some splendid days in the grange and wanted to enjoy its treasures, most of the time Lockwood was disturbed by those around him.

Visiting the exhibition alone can give visitors an experienc similar to Lockwood’s. Being removed from society for a short time, visitors are encouraged to reconsider their desires – their needs and their desires. This exhibition is a psychological experience, definitely for those who like taking risks. For those who choose to participate in this enticing journey, it will broaden the understanding of how the mind works.

Visitors who come alone to the exhibition often will come across completely unexpected  situations. They might be provoked by wandering performers, such as a screaming young mother, young men selling themselves on the street, or an auto mechanic busy working on a luxury limousine. Due to these interruptions, single visitors may find it difficult to completely enjoy the treasures of the wharf. But, as they are advised beforehand, a visitor to this exhibit never simply observes, but becomes an object in it, as well.

For those who visit with a relative or a friend, the art project no longer offers a fearful experience on dark streets. These visitors will not be followed by performers, they do not have to consider what to do and how to act in an unexpected situation, and can enjoy their walk in a secure place of meditation.

The Exhibition Hall is reached through a tunnel, which Elmgreen suggests is a kind of vacuum cleaner hose. Although this-suctioning-you-in feeling is pronounced, you always have a choice to turn back. A reassuring poster on the tunnel wall states, “There is a light at the end of the tunnel, a reference to the Promised Land offered by God to his chosen people after their tribulations. Elmgreen and Dragset deconstruct and discredit the message of God as it becomes a soap-opera-like sentence, an advertising of a new reality show instead of a real message. Therefore, the collaborative duo claims, there is no light at the end of the tunnel. They intend to show that many people could not experience the light in their life and could not turn back when they felt a certain danger.

During the Nazi regime some people did not have a choice to avoid an unwanted situation. The vacuum cleaner (tunnel) and the fake promise therefore can be read as the symbols of the oppressive powers which guide people to their final destination. These symbols recall a circumstance when certain people did not have a choice to turn back and their private lives were under threat.

The struggle between one’s private and public lives is one of the main issues of this exhibition. Visitors  can peep through the windows of a housing block, get access to the toilet, and look into a limousine. Single visitors soon realize they are part of the exhibition, as they are monitored by the performers, as mentioned above. Private life can become a public affair as young men solicit on the street with discourses of sexual intimacy.

In her review of the exhibition, Nicolette Gast says The One & The Many is the third in a trilogy, a bridge between the two first parts: The Welfare Show, and The Collectors, which were shown at various venues in London and Venice. The Rotterdam exhibition is set in the social milieu of the middle class, and addresses how we are searching for new  identities in a world of constant transition.

For further information about the exhibition, visit the Boijmans official website.

(http://www.boijmans.nl/en/7/calendar-exhibitions/calendaritem/770/elmgreen-dragset-in-the-submarine-wharf)

About the author:

Miklós Horváth  is an undergraduate student at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, and Leiden University,  The Netherlands, where he received an Erasmus Scholarship to study.

Ia Orana Maria Aka Hail Mary, Paul Gauguin

Gauguin

and The Postmodern Narrative

The Reception of The Myth Maker

in Belgium and in London

By Miklós Horváth

While in 1889, Paul Gauguin received a negative reception from the Belgian audience, this year he was celebrated as a legend builder and a myth navigator at Tate Modern, London. The distinctive reception of his works raises the following questions: Why was Gauguin so disregarded in the 19^th century, and why now is the exhibition of his painting being reported by The Times and The Guardian as “the show of the season” and as a “brilliant event”?

Tate Modern

The Tate exhibition, which opened in September 2010 and closed in January 2011, presented Gauguin’s work by focusing on myth and the construction of narrative in his life and art. The work on display gave a glimpse into the artist’s methods, and into a lifestyle as dreadful, dark and bizarre as it was full of a revolutionary visual language. Revolutionary in that no other 19^th century artist so uniquely intertwined Symbolism, Primitivism, Fauvism and Expressionism. Gauguin became a stylistic innovator, a fabulous story teller, and “a weaver of intimate psychological dramas that got under the skin and delved into the minds of his subjects”, as Richard Dorment wrote in The Telegraph.

The 20^th century’s postmodern and postcolonial literatures were very much engaged with story-telling and myth-making. Novelists were interested in what made a narrative, what one’s private story stood for, and how it contributed to the history of a community or a nation. The stories of the protagonists of such novels are often handcuffed to their national history. The protagonists tell not only their own stories, but also narratives that almost always relate to the national ‘grand narrative’.

With this idea – that the protagonist of a novel with his or her own story is a representation of the history of a community or a nation – postmodern narrators and exhibition curators often derive their themes under such a banner, as the Tate Modern exhibition pronounced Gauguin a mediator and a myth-navigator who introduced the Western World to the beauties of unknown cultures and mythical traditions. As it is widely known today, our knowledge of Tahiti and its inhabitants is heavily influenced by Gauguin’s narrative and his paintings.

As mentioned above, myth-making is a narrative strategy. It is used in prominent contemporary literature, such as Wide Sargasso Sea, by Jean Rhys, and Midnight’s Children, by Salman Rushdie. These novels are engaged with cultural representations and story-telling; and they will be used while discussing Gauguin as a myth maker. It is in the similarity between postmodern narrative techniques and Gauguin’s hybrid 19^th century narration that they changed the way 21^st century viewers receive Gauguin’s paintings.

Without an understanding of the postmodern narrative, which stands for otherness and promotes diversity, it would be difficult to discuss Gauguin as a Myth creator. It is also very important to note that in the late 19^th century this postmodern narrative technique was unknown. Thus, Gauguin received a negative reception at Les Vingt in Belgium. The audiences, often with a peasant’s mentality for things outside their immediate environs, were unable to understand Gauguin’s worldly aesthetic. Their parochialism limited them to understand and accept only their own views, and they were unable to consider, let alone comprehend, other ‘ideologies’. In Silas Marner, George Eliot gives an enthralling description of such people. She says that the world outside the peasants’ own direct experiences was a region of vagueness and mystery: “… to their untraveled thoughts, a state of wandering was a conception as dim as the winter life of the swallows….”

The authors of postcolonial and postmodern books usually develop one or two distinctive interpretations of cultures and nations by one or two protagonists in their narratives. Wide Sargasso Sea, for example, provides two interpretations on the Caribbean culture. One is given by the protagonist Antoinette, a Creole girl who tells of her childhood in the Caribbean. The other is given through the lens of an Englishman, Rochester. In Midnight’s Children, the protagonist Saleem Sinai tells of the history of India after the British rule in 1947. He was born on the stroke of midnight when India became independent; therefore, his circumstances fulfilled a special position: he embodies the identity of his nation. He becomes the voice of his nation.

Gauguin is also known as a legend builder. He honed his reputation as a rebel and libertine, telling his own tale of a specific culture to his contemporary audience. He brings together the Tahitian religious belief and his own personal experiences. He conjures up the remote and exotic world of Tahiti for western ears.

Although Antoinette, Saleem Sinai and Gauguin all become mediators of specific cultures or nations, they all are also aware there are countless interpretations of cultures and nations. Antoinette knows she can only evoke fragmentations of the past, and that she cannot recall them in their plenitude. Saleem Sinai was born on the stroke of midnight when India became independent; therefore, in his own words, he is “mysteriously handcuffed to history, [his] destinies indissolubly chained to those of [his] country”. Later in the text, readers are informed that one thousand and one children were born within the frontiers of the state at the same time, which means that there are many personal histories contributing to the national narrative.

By the time he’d reached his mid-30s, Gauguin had set sail and circumnavigated the globe several times, leaving behind a lucrative financial career, and leaving his Danish wife and five children with her parents in Copenhagen. This man had experienced life in the Americas, Europe and Oceania, and had gathered data which was selectively used. He did not want to build a grand narrative, but to add a collection of fragmentations of varied histories and cultures, instead.

Gauguin knew that his narrative was only one possible fable among many. He felt he was a kind of alien mediator who incorporated unfamiliar words and expressions from the Tahitian language into his paintings, which preserved a definite distance between European views and the tropical scene.

In the late 19^th century these narrative structures were not widely known or understood. For that very reason Gauguin received a negative reception at Les Vingt in Belgium in 1889. A fine arts critic, Elise Eckermann, wrote about Gauguin’s critical reception in Belgium in 1889 and 1891, saying that a cartoon published in Le Patriote illustré was mocking one of Gauguin’s paintings: Among the mangoes at Martinique.

Amongst the Mangoes Martinique, Paul Gauguin, 1887

More than a century later, Gauguin’s reception dramatically changed. In 2010, The Guardian termed the exhibition a “brilliant” event; The Times called it “the show of the season”. Thanks to our understanding of the postmodern narrative, which challenged attitudes towards “otherness”, including cultural and racial diversity, we can appreciate the Gauguin who gave us new perspectives on the value of understanding foreign cultures. Thanks to Gauguin, the eyes and imaginations of the Western World were opened to the power and beauty of other cultures, and to the so-called primitive arts.

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About the author:

Miklós Horváth is an undergraduate student at Eötvös Loránd University in Hungary, and Leiden University, in The Netherlands, where he received an Erasmus Scholarship to study. His trip to England to see and research the Gauguin exhibit was underwritten by grants from: Pro Renovanda Cultura Hungariae: Students for Science, National Union of Students in Hungary, and the ELTE Student’s Union.

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Darfurnica, Nadia Plesner, 2010

Darfurnica: Casualties

in the Intellectual Property Wars

Editor’s note:

Presented in the this month’s edition is a piece sent in by Leon Tan. It’s a twist on the integration of  art, power and politics – a relationship not always complementary, and one with us as long as we humans have been entertaining any notions of society. The details and nuances of the relationship tend to tell us a significant amount about what is and isn’t happening in our times, and Tan’s submission is no exception. So take a read and let us know in your low or high brow opinion the thoughts that his piece evokes. And keep an eye toward the September/October edition, as we will be featuring another ‘art to politics’ article with a focus on the musical group, The Rooftop Revolutionaries.

— Jim Palombo, politics editor

by Leon Tan, Ph. D.

The painting, Darfunica, by Danish artist Nadia Plesner (based in the Netherlands) is conceived in homage to Picasso’s 1937 painting Guernica. It is also an expression of political claims by the artist, who makes the point that the obsession with Hollywood celebrities in popular news media means that genocide in Darfur (or any number of places) could take place without even making the headlines. Plesner finds this situation unacceptable, explaining her painting as follows: “In Darfurnica I have mixed some of the horrible stories I have learned about Darfur over the past years with some of the Hollywood gossip stories which made headlines during the same time period.” The idea, it seems, is to juxtapose the luxury world of Hollywood celebrity with the horrors of Darfur’s ongoing civil war.

Darfurnica came to my attention only because of my interest in issues of copyright. As it happens, the artist and work are at the centre of a legal battle initiated by LouisVuitton, who objects to the bag being carried by the boy in the middle of the painting. Louis Vuitton alleges that the use of the LV pattern on the bag constitutes infringement of its intellectual property rights. On 27 January 2011, Louis Vuitton obtained an ex parte court order against Nadia Plesner from the Court of The Hague.

On her website (http://www.nadiaplesner.com/), Plesner counters Louis Vuitton’sclaim by asserting that the court order violates her rights to free speech and artistic freedom under Section 10 of the European Convention of Human Rights (ECHR). In this case, Plesner is correct, as Section 10 does in fact guarantee freedom of expression, which specifically includes non-interference by public authorities. In fact, the court order also violates Articles 18 and 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, not to mention the right to participation in cultural life specified in the International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR).

Conveniently ignored until very recently in the contentious politics of intellectual property, the conflict between intellectual property legislation on one hand, and human and cultural rights legislation on the other, deserves greater scrutiny. For legal institutions have in the main apparently forgotten the existence of such rights and frameworks under continuous lobbying pressure from ruthless corporate oligopolies. A related case in Sweden involves the Swedish government prosecuting organizers behind The Pirate Bay, under direct pressure from the U.S. government and a predominantly American media oligopoly (Tan, 2010). At no time did the Swedish court pause to reflect on its own violations of international frameworks such as the UDHR and ICESCR, not to mention the ECHR.

As a matter of fact, ‘The Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights has previously recommended that every state conduct a general human rights impact assessment of their IP regimes.’ (Shaver and Sganga, 2009) No mention has yet been made by the courts in either the Netherlands or Sweden of any such assessment. It is timely therefore, for legal institutions to educate themselves concerning their own obligations under the aforementioned frameworks for human and cultural rights, and to cease delaying rigorous human rights impact assessments on national, regional and international intellectual property frameworks. In the meantime, it is encouraging to see that Plesner filed her own lawsuit against Louis Vuitton to have the order lifted.

References:

Leon Tan, ‘The Pirate Bay: Countervailing power and the problem of state organized crime,” CTheory: Theory, Technology and Culture, 2010, 33(3).

Lea Shaver and Caterina Sganga, ‘The right to take part in cultural life: On copyrightand human rights,’ Wisconsin International Law Journal, 2009, 27.

About the author:

Leon Tan (PhD) is an Art Historian specializing in aesthetics, social theory, contemporary art, and the history of networked art and media. He previously lectured in Art History and Psychotherapy in New Zealand, before relocating for part of the year to Sweden in 2009.

©2011 Shawn Huckins

Portrait of An American Family

“An American Revolution Revolution”:

What would George post?

An interview with Shawn Huckins

By Mike Foldes

The following interview took place by e-mail exchanges in June 2011.

Q: What initially prompted your series of “Revolution” paintings?

Shawn Huckins: I’ve always had a fascination with the American Revolution, ever since learning about it in elementary school.  Not just the political aspect, but the way of life, the architecture, the food, the clothes, the fife and drums, and of course the art.  So their way of living has always been in the back of my mind.  I always wonder to myself what it must have been like to not worry about computers, cell phones, cars, and the list can go on and on —  So this initially prompted the series, combining two different worlds.  You are constantly bombarded with modern technology that at first it may seem wonderful and beneficial, but in the long run, makes us drift apart and makes us set our priorities in different places.  I wanted a comical aspect to my work, but also make a statement.

Q: Are they oil or acrylic paintings? If not, what medium? Mixed media? Canvas or board?

A: All of my work is acrylic.  Some are on canvas, some panel.

Q: How did you select the subject paintings that you eventually metamorphosed?

A: There are numerous factors when choosing a painting that I will eventually replicate.  Some things of concern are picture quality … normally, I would photograph the painting myself with a series a detail shots, just so I can retain the original artist’s work as closely as possible.  Second, if I myself think the work is of good composition/color.  Some portraits just speak to me more than others.  I find the work of Copley very inspiring because I work in a very meticulous manner, trying to create an almost photorealistic quality to my work.  My early work borders on realism, so portraits that have a realistic quality to them, I tend to lean toward.

Q: Do you identify at all with Marcel Duchamp, and what do you think Duchamp would say of your work?

A: Duchamp never really inspired me.  I remember learning about his work at college art history courses, but was never drawn to them.  Duchamp made a statement about the art world and the work itself, creating works of art that wouldn’t seem like art at that time.  My work, more or less, contrasts two ways of life and how it dramatically changed over just a few hundred years.  I would think Duchamp would be drawn to my work because some would say I’m “defacing” the original portraits and the prominent people that helped create this country that we live in today.

Q: Out of curiousity, how much are the paintings in this series? Do you have a gallery?

A: No gallery, but I’m in the process of finding gallery representation.  My work goes from $1500 to $4000.

Q: You appear to be strongly influenced by ed ruscha, whom you’ve said is your favorite artist. How would you describe what makes you different, and not a variation on a theme?

A: Yes, Ed Ruscha is very influential on me.  I discovered his work in school and never turned back.  I wrote him a “fan letter” awhile back, not hoping to get anything in return, but a few weeks later, he sent me a postcard with one of his works on front and on the back with his signature.  But to top of the story, a few weeks from that day, I got a package with a return address of “Ruscha Studio.”  My heart started racing…he sent me his autographical book with a little note inside stating “Shawn, thanks for the kind letter.  Best Wishes, Ed Ruscha.”  Not many big time artists would do that for some rinky dink artist, but that gesture shows he’s a really a great guy…and not to mention his amazing work!  His text paintings are very apparent in my work, I think having that kind of bold text makes it easier to make whatever statement your making more clear.  Ed Ruscha’s gorgeous backgrounds mixed with the text have no (in most) apparent relationship, that’s the reason why they are so great…it’s almost so random and the juxtaposition of the two subjects makes the paintings work in some strange way.  For example, he’ll have the word HISTORY going behind a mountain scape.  Ruscha’s work also has a very west coast presence about it.  My work, however, I try to make a statement by contrasting the two words…the world of a “civil” society against the world of modern technology and its distractions.  I also like the fact that I’m recording the language used today in my work.  It dates my work, but it also makes the record of how our language is being cut down/abbreviated, etc. just like how the egyptians recorded their hieroglyphics and the early caveman recorded their language of using symbols and icons.

Q: What you see as a trend in art among working artists of your age/generation?

A: As I see a lot of artists working along different mediums rather the traditional mediums like oils, acrylics, canvas, etc.  I feel artists try very hard to find that one unique medium that makes their work theirs.  Art Work today also seems to have a more an anime/cartoon look, like urban or street art … along the lines of Shepard Fairey.  I like to retain the old traditions of painting, but add and combine popular culture lexicons to contrast the two.

Q: Do you see yourself moving in other directions, and if so, where?

A: I like the direction that I am currently moving in right now.  For once, I feel like I’m making a statement about my work that people can relate to, in contrast to my other work which may seem cool and technically well done, but didn’t really say anything.  There was no gusto behind it.  For example, my last series, The Paint Chips … I had a great time with those … they were fun, colorful, and able to retain my realistic, crisp quality of my work … but they didn’t really mean anything… I was merely trying to make a cool looking image … that’s it.  Although I still like the way they look and enjoyed working on them. I got dried up fast with them and felt constrained.  I feel like I was limited with what I could do with them.  My future work, is going to be along the same lines I’m (working in) now … I would like to do large scale diptychs and triptychs with more of a longer statement/facebook status/tweet. Overall, I’m a very pleased with how the series is turning out, the statements that it says, the comical tone of some, and plan on continuing contrasting the two worlds in some way or another.

Q: Do you plan on staying in Connecticut, or will you be moving to NY anytime soon?

A: Connecticut definitely is not my first choice of which state to live in.  My partner and I have discussed moving out west for a few years just to experience something completely different and get away from the fast paced east coast. San Fran or Portland.  I feel further down the road settling down in New England, but have no plans to be in the Big City.  I’m perfectly happy with being only 1.5 hrs from the city…. easily accessible, but far enough from the congestion.

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View larger photos from the gallery please enter the FS button.

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Graffiti is illegal in Belgium. That's too bad.

Dehors! L’histoire des graffiti à Bruxelles

By Sara Marilungo

Neerpede Park is a huge open air art gallery. Little known by the people of Brussels and surely not included in any tour guide or do-it-yourself journey in Belgium,  it lies on the outskirts of Brussels, Eddie Mercks metro stop.

The pillars of the three flyovers that cross the park have become the favourite spot of Brussels’ graffiti artists to show dozens and dozens of works of street art.

“Neerpede Park is one of those places that I call ‘no-man’s land’,” says Adrien Grimmeau, art historian and professor at Iselp, a contemporary art centre in Brussels. “Brussels’ graffiti artists moved away from  the streets of the city centre, where there is less control by the police and they can make works that sometimes require up to 10 hours, sometimes even two days”.

Artist at work: Defying da law

Grimmeau has recently written the first book ever about street art in Brussels. The book, titled Dehors! L’histoire des graffiti à Bruxelles and published by CFC-editions, will be released on the 15th of June on the occasion of the exhibition Explosition. L’art des graffiti a Bruxelles – a title in between the French “explosion” and “exposition” – at the Musée d’Ixelles of Brussels.

“I chose this title for the book for two main reasons: first of all “Dehors!” – get out! – is what the teachers say to the kids who misbehave in class. Graffiti art is made by young people, often children who were considered “rebel” at school. Secondly, I say “Dehors!” to the readers of the book, but also to the artists and to myself. Enough with the museums, go look for art in the streets!,” says Grimmeau.

The exhibition will show pictures, sculptures, paintings and installations made by almost 20 artists with a street art background. It aims to show how the artists who exhibit in the museums sometimes come from a background which is anything but academic.

The book tells the history and evolution of graffiti art in Brussels from its origins in the ‘80s until now. “It is a way to speak about Brussels, its youths and its street art,” says Grimmeau, who collected interviews with some of the most famous graffiti artists of Brussels’ milieu, namely Bonom, Muga, Obes, Na and Defo, five artists who differ in terms of topics, typology of art forms and techniques.

“During the ‘80s graffiti was a more social and political art. Afterwards, in the ‘90s, hip hop became an out-and-out underground cultural movement linked to music, rap and break-dance. Differently form today, the graffiti of the ‘80s and the ‘90s were mainly made of letters and few images in poor and degraded areas of the city,” says Grimmeau. These graffiti were also often inspired to comics, of which Belgium boasts a rich tradition. However, Grimmeau explains that the graffiti artists of the ‘80s mainly drew their inspiration from American comics, in particular Vaughn Bode. “It was more ‘cool’”, explains Grimmeau with a smile. “I know for sure that graffiti artist read comics, but it is not ‘cool’ to paint The Smurfs – Les Schtroumpfs – on the walls.”

“Now it is different. The artists want to show a different way to look at the city and take it back. They don’t want to change the world, maybe they want to make us smile or surprise us. They want to tell the people to look around themselves. “

Not only spray then, but stencils, fonts, stickers, images, tags and out-and-out paintings.

Grimmeau calls them neo-graffiti, in order to highlight these artists’ will to increase the interaction with the city and with the spot itself where the painting is realized.

“Graffiti are more site-specific, which is also what happens now with works of contemporary art in the museums.” For instance, in the case of Bonom, there is always a reason for the animal painted on a certain building. Grimmeau mentions the example of the fox falling on the wall of a building in Place du Congrès. At the feet of the Colonne du Congrès et de la Constitution there is a flame – the flame of the Unknown Soldier –,  which blazes endlessly. Looking carefully, the orange fox looks like a flame pointing at the sky. “Nowadays, in most cases graffiti artists are not inexperienced people, but they come from art schools and they want to bring art out of the museums and the schools, in the streets.”

Grimmeau notices that in the recent past Brussels’ authorities, as often as not, built  “architectural monstrosity” ; in one occasion they even destroyed an art nouveau building by the architect Victor Horta. “Graffiti artists don’t paint on the walls because they hate the city, but in order to make it better and more beautiful. It is also a way to claim the public space as a social space.”

For instance, Obes believes that the city belongs to everybody and that everybody is allowed to express him or herself creatively. But if the city belongs to everybody, then someone may not agree with the graffiti. “As a matter of fact, it is difficult to come to an agreement. Here in Belgium we are very good at making laws and regulations that don’t please anyone, precisely because they’re aimed at pleasing everybody.”

Graffiti in Belgium are illegal and, differently from other cities in the world, there are no walls legally used for street art display of graffiti. For this reason, most of the graffiti artists interviewed for the book had problems with the law on several occasions. For example, Defo and Obes went to prison for some days. The artists are often required to repay substantial amounts of money for damages.

Bonom is the most famous graffiti artist in Brussels. He painted some beautiful graffiti of animals and dinosaurs, even if half of them have been removed. However, not even Bonom is protected and he often had problems with the law, according to Grimmeau.

“The whole graffiti process is contradictory because sometimes these artists are summoned by the authorities to paint public places, such as the tram station  De Wand,” says Grimmeau.

Supports for the arts ...

Beside Neerpede Park , there are other “concentrations” of graffiti in the vicinity of the cultural centre Recyclart, nearby Gare du Midi o in Le Marolles, an historic neighbourhood in Brussels where, since the ’60s, artists have been meeting to make art and discuss about the problems of the city. “It is the soul of Brussels,” says Grimmeau. However, most graffiti are made along the metro lines, such as the line from Gare du Midi to Gare Central or between the station Pennenhius and Bockstael, in the neighbourhood Laeken.

Near the metro stop  Porte de Namur, Bonom painted several buffalos that create the illusion, for the people observing from the metro, that the animals are running. “There are at least 20 buffalos. Even before he discovered Blu’s animations, Bonom revolutionized the way of looking at graffiti in the metro lines of Brussels: once the graffiti were painted on the trains and moved with the trains, now the trains move and the motionless graffiti come to life.” A similar dinosaur was painted by Bonom near Etterbeek Station.

In collaboration with Iselp, Grimmeau also organizes  “graffiti walking tours” for organized groups of several people. You just need to contact Iselp to make arrangements.

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About the writer:

Sara Marilungo has an MA in journalism from Independent Colleges of Dublin. She is a freelance writer in Dublin, but temporarily resides near Brussels. Her work has appeared in the Italian webzine www.nuok.it, and occasionally for other websites and newspapers. She also received a degree in Italy in Communication Science with a thesis about contemporary art and philosophy of languages. This article appeared in the online magazine www.nuok.it, in Italian. This is its first publication in English.

For more information:  http://saramarilungo.eu5.org/

© 2011 Herb Moore

“Draw until your hand feels numb…”

An Interview with Herb Moore

by Mike Foldes

The following interview with cartoonist Herb Moore was conducted via e-mail exchange in April 2011.

Q: When I look at your drawings on your web site, it seems like I’ve seen these somewhere before. How long have you been at this, and where does your work typically appear?

Herb Moore: I was a doodler in school but it was more to escape listening to the teacher than for a love of drawing, ha, ha.

Herb Moore's self-portrait.

Mike, I’ve been in this business for twenty years and have worked at almost every major studio in Hollywood, with the exception of Dreamworks and Sony, but I’ve pitched project ideas to both.  I’ve spent most of my time working at Warner Bros. and so maybe some of their style rubbed off on me, ha, ha.  I was always a fan of the Warner Bros. cartoons when I was a kid because the characters seemed to have some bite to them.  They developed some great characters and character duos.  Now I’m working on Phineas & Ferb, during the day, and it has to be one of the best productions that I’ve ever been on both because of the staff and the show itself. Finally, my website has been an opportunity to showcase some of my personal work as well as a place to host any new content that I create.  I’m soon to release a new animated short titled, “Duffy McTaggart and the 19th Hole” and I’m co-developing several mobisode series of animations for a client outside of the United States.  I’m very proud of animationsoup.net and I look forward to creating even more content to showcase at my website.

Q: Where did you study animation techniques, or did you have on-the-job training?

HM: I passionately studied animation on my own as I obtained my Bachelor of Fine Arts degree.  I knew that I needed to draw as much as possible, and really had no solid guidance as to what I “should” do exactly, but I wasn’t going to be stopped.  Once I got my foot in the door at my first “industry” job, that’s when finding work became a little bit easier.  I actually learned more on the job than I possibly could have been taught in school.  I’ll admit, an education in an animation program would have helped, but really, once I got my foot in the door, and I demonstrated my desire to work hard and learn, I did fine, (and will continue to).

Q: In becoming a cartoonist, did you distinguish between what apparently came naturally to you and the classical concepts of ‘fine art’? In your mind, what’s the distinction?

HM: That’s a heavy question for a lite mind like mine, ha, ha.  As I studied “fine art” in college, I initially knew I needed to draw as much as possible and fine art allowed that, but what I gained was an appreciation for true art and what it takes to create it.  I knew that I could tell an entertaining story, as well as act funny, and I felt that I could back that up with great drawings “eventually,” as I worked at drawing, but I had no appreciation for what it actually took to create through art.  Fine art to me is the ability to create something artistically that can be appreciated in one way or another, that is unique, born out of it’s creators experiences, feelings, imagination, and is one’s own personal expression.  Wow, that’s good stuff, I have to write that down.

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Q: I take it you’ve worked with quite a number of other cartoonists over the years. Who do you recall as being most memorable, or fun to work with?

HM: When I worked at Warner Bros. several years ago, I worked with Bob Doucette who was probably one of the most enjoyable artists for me to work ever with because he was so pleasant, as well as extremely talented.  I learned so much from him and had a great time.  Currently, Rob Hughes at Disney is the most fun because he knows funny, he knows how to make people laugh with his artwork, as well as his writing.  I have never laughed so hard as when I’m working with Rob.  I have been extremely blessed to have worked with some very talented and enjoyable people who have eventually turned into great friends.

Q: What do you think of the “Beavis and Butthead” or “South Park” programs? Anime? Any favorite styles?

HM: I love animation, unless it’s totally crap and I just don’t watch crap.  Shows like “Beavis and Butthead”, as well as “South Park”, are great shows.  I was so happy when “South Park” won an Emmy a few years ago.  It’s hard for me to say I have a favorite style, but I will say this, I love independent animation productions both feature films and short form.  Some of the most creative and well thought out animation seems to come from independent productions.

Q: Herb, I imagine both hardware and software have changed a lot since you started out, and there is the fear technology is taking over for pushing pencils and papers (people). How has the business changed technically since you started out and is how is demand these days for good cartoonists? Where is that demand coming from (if it is)?

HM: Things have definitely changed but technology is simply allowing us to do more things faster.  Yes, you have to know more than just how to draw but the possiblities in animation are broader today than ever before.  Personally, I believe “demand” for talented artists and animators is quite healthy these days, in most if not all areas of animation.  And, you don’t have to live in Los Angeles or New York, etc., to be consistently busy within this industry.  The internet has obviously open up a lot of opportunities for animators and I only see that increasing.  Also, animation in the games business is growing rapidly, all due to the blossoming of the digital age.

Q: What computer programs do you find most helpful to produce your cartoons?

HM: I use Sketchbook Pro for creating and developing ideas, such as backgrounds and characters, and then I do my animations in Adobe Flash.  I often use Photoshop in creating or touching up artwork for my website or for presentation.  I’ll also use Adobe Premiere to assemble my animatics as well as my final output of my latest animted short film.

Q: Any tips for the aspiring cartoonist?

HM: Well, yes.  Not only do you need to draw until your hand feels numb every waking hour of the day, and you must continue to study great shows, films and great stories, but you have to be technologically prepared for drawing on digital tablets, like the various Wacom tablets, and you have to know a variety of software, and then be able to manipulate your images in different ways.  Younger people have such a great opportunity to impact the world through their creations because we’re linked together now more than ever, so be prepared.

Visit Moore’s web site at: http://www.animationsoup.net

©2010 Karen Gunderson

Ramadan, 2010 | oil on canvas | 52 1/4 ” x 61 1/2 “

“All Black: Paintings That Have To Do

With How The Light Works”

An interview with Karen Gunderson

by Mike Foldes

The following interview took place by e-mail exchanges from September 2010 thru April 2011, during which time Gunderson had shows in Santa Fe and Bahrain …

Q: Karen, let’s start with the basics? Can you tell us where you’re from and what life was like growing up there?

Karen Gunderson: I was raised in Racine, Wisconsin.  My father was a World War II veteran/hero and damaged by it.  He earned the Silver Star, Bronze Star, Croix de Guerre and citations from all over Europe.  He was in the Battle of the Bulge and was one of 20 men to come back from a company of 200.  I guess he had a reason to drink.  He was brilliant mechanically.  My mother was kind of high strung.  A really hard worker, very smart and she wanted to be loved and have fun and be appreciated.  My dad was very stoic and my mom very verbal.  I work hard like my mom, but I think I am more stoic like my dad.  I was an only child, so my friends became my family.  In fact, I am still very close to a number of my childhood friends.

We moved when I was seven to Blaine Avenue and had some girlfriends as well as boyfriends and a front yard and a back yard.

Q: What are the first things you remember that gave you the impetus to make art? What visual experience? Or, was it the first set of watercolors your parents got you when you were 5?

KG: I think I was around 10 or 12 when I had a heightened perceptual experience that probably made me the artist I am today.  My parents had been fighting and I felt out of control… or as I perceived it… crazy.  So I went outside and thought what would a crazy person do?  I proceeded to touch the ground, the grey cement.  I brushed my hand across the top of the grass.  I traced the lid of the garbage lid.  I took the branches and leaves of the weeping willow tree in the back in both my hands and moved with them, back and forth, then I touched the begonia petals on the plants on the north side of the house.  All this and more happened while walking around the house many times.  On the last trip, I knelt on the grass in the front and peered under the bushes that were up against the house.  The dirt was black and crystal like.  There was a leaf of clover and then suddenly a shiny black ant climbed up the stalk and across the green petal.  The ant was so big.  Then I turned, holding the ant in my mind and imagined him on the huge maple tree near the street.  The scale shift was visceral and intense, as was the experience of getting up from the ground and being aware how everything changed each time I got higher or moved my head.  Each change was a different perspective.   I never told anyone until a few years ago about that day of experiences.  I kept it a secret, but I knew then that it had made me become different or maybe I was already different to have experienced it.

Q: OK, so what was it like being a “different” kid in the neighborhood? Were you a closet artist? Did you start drawing or painting right away, or was it evolutionary…. Jr. high, high school, college? Were your first subjects some of the things you saw during this epiphany?

KG: Actually, I wasn’t a “different” kid.  That’s the thing.  It was my secret.  I rode bikes, wrestled with the boys, played with my girl friends… all quite normal. I became a public person… one that was about being popular, and involved with school and cheerleading and later the local theatre guild, and stuff that was involved with achieving and being social and making my father and mother proud of me.  I kind of knew that that was what I could give them, because the part of me that was different I couldn’t give to them.  And all along, when I went to the feeling place of the loneliness of an only child I had my secret.  And also secretly and a part of that place, I was very shy.

The art started in high school a bit.  And I went to Wustum Art Museum summer classes on the lawn to learn to draw.  There was a good instructor whose name escapes me.  I think that is where my confidence to be able to draw started. But my friends Linda Winchester and Joe Wilfer were the artists in high school.  I was more involved with the public stuff.    Images with changing perspectives which were part of my epiphany didn’t come into being in my work until Graduate School.

Q: Was anyone in your  family involved with art?

KG: My Grandpa Gunderson whose father came from Norway was a housepainter in Wisconsin.  I remember his hands were hard and gnarled and I learned later that they were totally arthritic due to working in the cold a lot of the time.  As a hobby, he used to paint furniture in the “Norwegian marbleizing” style.  I never realized he was marbleizing until I went to Norway and saw the same painting on pillars in churches and walls.  Apparently the Norwegians had no marble, so they made their own!  When he retired, he took all his old leftover paint from the houses and began painting on pieces of cardboard.  He used a lot of invention in the way he paint the images of trees or mountains or sky and when he wanted to put something in that his arthritic hands couldn’t do, he would cut something out of a magazine and paste it on the painting and then kind of paint on it a bit to integrate it.  I have two of them and they are prized possessions to me.

Q: Where did you study?

KG: College, I went to Wisconsin State University, Whitewater… a very small school at the time. I was majoring in Elementary Education.  I think I got a D in piano and got the sophomore blues, so I quit in the middle of my sophomore year.  My English teacher Ben Collins told me that I was too smart for Whitewater and should be in a better school like Santa Barbara.  I got a job at Johnson’s Wax and worked in the Frank Lloyd Wright building’s great workroom.  It was wonderful being in the space of that building.  The spaces alone were constantly changing, as were the vantage points from every step.  I had intended to save money and go to a great school, but soon I got involved with the local Theatre Guild again and kind of blew everything on clothes and eating out in restaurants. But I hated working 9 to 5 and so I decided to go back to Whitewater and I was determined to get a great education there if I had to pull it out of the teachers.  I never got below a B from then on.   I took a drawing class which was required for my major and one day, Tom Parker and Francis Coelho and John Stevenson stopped me in the hall and said they had seen my drawings and that I should major in art.  What they said connected for me and I called my mother to ask her if I could change majors and she said yes if I would still get a degree to teach because she didn’t want me to be a starving artist. Considering my family background, I would need a job.  Also, being an artist meant that I was going to do something that was not an approved or normal profession for someone from my family.  By becoming an artist I was cutting a big part of myself off from my family. They were always supportive of me as a person, but I think they thought I was becoming a stranger to them by being an artist…something that they didn’t know about.

I went to Graduate School at the University of Iowa. I received a MA in Painting, followed by an MFA in Intermedia.  I believe it was the first degree of Intermedia in the United States.

Q: Who were your most influential teachers?

KG: Clayton Bailey, Tom Parker, John Stevenson, Francis Coelho and Ben Collins were my most influential teachers during college. And then there were Stuart Edie and Hans Breder during graduate school.

The students in the art department were very industrious.  We would be in the studios painting or drawing or doing sculpture or clay or prints or art history beginning at 8 am and working until about 10 every night.  Following our intense day, we would all go out drinking and playing pool at the local downtown dive.  We were a fortunate group.  Twenty-one of us graduated in art and art education and eleven of us got assistantships to graduate schools.  Something clicked in me during that time about making art.  My art was something I could be in charge of… not necessarily control because I was still learning that. And it was the first time my secret way of looking at the world could live in my everyday world that included other people.  It also increased my secret shyness and made me more afraid because what I was doing meant so much to me and I was suddenly vulnerable to the world’s view of something that was all mine.

Q: What are your earliest memories of making art, or wanting to be an artist?

KG: I remember drawing a fish when I was about 4 that I was delighted with and my mother loved.

Q: When did you know this is what you would be doing for the rest of your life?

KG: I had conflicting feelings when I was in college.  On the one hand, I wanted to learn to be a Montessori schoolteacher and take the knowledge to someplace poor and teach the children like Maria Montessori had.  On the other hand, I wanted to be an artist, which wasn’t all that respected in my family.  After all it didn’t put a roof over anyone’s head, but being an artist won out.   Especially because I got an assistantship at the University of Iowa and I knew I could teach college somewhere and do my art.

Those days you could get a job.

Q: When we met in the late ’60s, you were teaching art at The Ohio State University. How did the environment there differ from what you had at Iowa?

KG: I went to graduate school at the University of Iowa, in Iowa City and the environment is one of calm and patience. Very different than Wisconsin and very different from Ohio State.  Upon graduating with an MA in Painting… working with Stuart Edie and an MFA in Intermedia… working with Hans Breder, I went up the road to teach at Cornell College.  I was 25 years old, had really long hair, drove a 1964 356C red Porsche and my boyfriend’s 350cc Yamaha motorcycle. I wore mini skirts and over-the-knee yellow vinyl boots. I also had had a 90cc Honda for all of graduate school that I drove in all kinds of weather.

I was very welcomed into the Art Department, but until I actually had conversations with other faculty members, I was clearly left out of the community.  After I got to know people, I got included more.  But although it was a nourishing environment, I was definitely on my own again.  The good thing was that everyone in the art department, including students, was excited about what they were doing, but it still had that feeling of calm and patience.

Ohio State was very different.  I met some great people there including you and Cheri and Larry Camp, but the feeling in the Art Department was more impersonal.  That might have been because it was so big.  There were forty men and me and another woman who I think taught weaving part time.  I got patted on the top of my head or my tusch almost every day.  I don’t think they took me very seriously and there was a real passive aggressive streak there.

Q: You had a long working relationship with Sol Lewitt. How did that influence the way you approach your art and the style that you have?

KG: One really great thing that happened when I taught at Ohio State was that I met and became close to Sol Lewitt.  He had come out to do a wall drawing… a real beauty.  His influence on my art has been great.  When I hold him in my consciousness, he demands that everything about the piece is in the piece. I eliminate anything that doesn’t get to the point.  Maybe that is the most important thing I have said in this whole interview.  His personal integrity to focus on the art and not get caught up in the exclusivity of the art world is also really important to me.  I really admire and care for his widow Carol and their two daughters Eva and Sophia.  What they are doing with his estate is important and it feels like they are doing things the way he would want them to be done.

Q: I loved the cloud paintings and cloud pieces you were doing at the time. How did these come about?

KG: The clouds all began in Iowa.  They were a new experience in a way.  The clouds in Wisconsin change very fast.  A whole weather system can change in about ten minutes…very dangerous for those sailing on Lake Michigan.  When I was in graduate school in Iowa, the same clouds would hang around for days.  And you could see the weather coming a week ahead of time.

Again, there was a sense calm and patience… and looking up, which came to mean hope.

Q: You seemed at the time to have a great interest in poetry and literature. Are you still a ‘fan’?

KG: I used to go to poetry readings all the time at Iowa.  The poetry workshopbrought some amazing poets.  I still love to go to poetry readings and to read poetry. Besides your poetry from so many years ago, which I have saved, I feel connected to a number of poets…that I read all the time.  I really respect and admire John Yau, Hanford Yang, Gerrit Henry, Tod Thilleman, John Ashberry, Mark Daniel Cohen and Donald Kuspit.  Mark is writing my catalog essay for the exhibition. So much gets said in less words and it is so much more than that. For me, poetry is a distillation of experience or thought and a relationship with the sound of the words.  It is actually more than I can say. So yes, I am still a ‘fan’.

Q: You moved to New York in the early ‘70s. How did that affect your work?

KG: When I moved to New York in 1973, I had to start using acrylic paint because I was living in a loft that I shared with my graduate school friend, Suzanne McConnell, and my studio opened up to the platform I had constructed for my bed.  I invented a way to paint with sponges and kind of drawing the paint on by squeezing the sponge.  I was continuing the cloud series and including images in the clouds.

Q: Your circle of friends and business associates in the art world?

KG: I kept my old friends from Ohio and Iowa and Wisconsin… in fact they happily used the opportunity of my living in New York City to visit the City.  But before I moved to New York, I went there and met Mark Richard and Lucy Feller who were introduced to me by Steve Fox from Iowa.  The Fellers were wonderful people and they liked my art and to help me, they had a brunch for their collector friends where they introduced me and my work. I had come back, bringing a number of pieces… one to replace theirs which they had purchased and had been broken in transit.  Among the collectors was Paul Schupf.  I still count Paul as one of my best friends.  We had the same eye for art and similar principles and I can to this day, trust Paul to be honest and to care. I met lots of famous people through Paul…Leo Castelli, Irving Blum, Henry Geldzahler, Alex & Ada Katz, to name a few.  I remember one evening that Paul took me to dinner and we were with some lovely people from the Tisch family and it was really interesting and I was talking so much that I didn’t eat much.  They insisted I take home my dinner along with some extra cookies, all of which I am sure cost more than my rent for the month. I always felt the need to touch base with my own reality, so after that magnificent evening, I went to Magoo’s where I saw my friend, Julian Weissman.  I asked him if he liked leftovers and he said yes.  I didn’t at the time, so I gave him mine and he walked me half way home.  We’ve been married now for 31 years, and have a great son, David Weissman.

Q: What do you regard as your ‘big break’ as a working artist?

KG: In terms of importance, first there is Julian and also David. Without his support, and David’s understanding and care, I wouldn’t have been able to do what I have done. Julian has helped me at every crossroad and been my spiritual as well as physical support throughout our life together. Let’s just assume that Julian permeates everything…as does David.  Chronologically, the first break was the opportunity to come to New York City with a job.  I taught a class called Perception with a composer and a dancer, (I was the visual part) at NYU School of the Arts for three years.  The knowledge was amazing, as were the students.  The students were actors, dancers and cinematographers and they were brilliant.  It allowed me to move to New York and get a loft and also gave me the time to paint.  Break #2, I had my first one person show at Gloria Cortella in the Fuller Building.  It got reviewed in Art News by poet/critic Gerrit Henry and Margaret Pomfret in Arts.

But when I met Elaine deKooning through Julian, Break #3 and she suggested me to Aladar Marberger at Fischbach Gallery, that really began things. Lots of reviews and lots of sales and the experience with Alidar was great.  He really believed and promoted his artists.

A lot of times my big breaks are meeting and just knowing people.  They are supportive guides in a way.  From being in the Florence Biennale and winning second prize in painting, I got to know the amazing scholar and writer John Spike and his also amazing wife/writer Michele. Meeting and knowing Jonathan Silver and his wife Barbara, Michael Brenson and Sharon O’Connell, Kocot and Hatton, Lars and Bente Strandh, James Young and Lisa Ades, Sanford Hirsch and Debbie Beblo, Ellen and Sam Newhouse… these are all important people to me.  I look to them for their example of hard work, talents and invincible spirits.

Q: What’s it like to be an artist, a mom, a wife and a businesswoman?

KG: Being an artist is my addiction to life.  If I can’t paint, I get cranky.  On the other hand, being a Mom gives me some perspective on life.  It is something even more important than my art.  Not that I would ever stop making art, but the day to day of being David’s Mom takes precedence over the art.  As a wife, Julian’s  and my careers are not the same, but related and so it is not exactly easy, but understandable.  In years past when Julian was running public art galleries, we had dinner parties for the artists.  It was fun because I learned to cook and I loved the artists he showed.  To answer your question about being a businesswoman… I am not a good businesswoman.  I think I have a problem with that because it involves dealing with the world outside of my art.  I love sending emails to friends when I have a show or something coming up, but I don’t think about promotion as in “careerism” because it doesn’t feel right.

Q: Do you think women have a tougher time than men these days making it in the art world?

KG: As always, I think the toughest part of being a woman today has to do with money.  (Maybe it is true for men too.)  When someone has some success, there is a competitive feeling that comes out in a lot of people.  People can get mean.  Also, there is still the reality that people feel women shouldn’t get paid as much as men.  I personally love it when rich women stand tough
and make people pay top price for their work.  That makes them even richer and more powerful.  That will in turn make it easier for the rest of us in the future.

Q: Who in the contemporary art world have been your strongest influences?

KG: Sol Lewitt, David Hockney, Grace Hartigan are the most contemporary influences.  You didn’t ask what art I liked.  Actually, I like the work of a lot of living artists…G.H. Hovagimyan, Meg Abbott, Kocot & Hatton, Lars Strandh, Deborah Kass, William Beckman, William Richards, Hans Breder, Brenda Zlamany, Robert Mangold, Yvonne Jacquet, Robert Gober, Clayton Bailey, Tom Parker, Donald Sultan, Cindy Sherman, Alex Katz, Eric Fischl, April Gornik, John Torreano, Vija Celmins, Tim Hawkinson, Scott Daniel Ellison, Frank Stella, Odd Nerdrum, Mark Tansey, Jess, Janet Passehl, Fredericka Foster, Jack Ox, Daisy Craddock, Catherine Behrant, Dennis Farber, Jaroslaw Flicinski, Gary Kuehn, John Walker, Susan Ebersole, Michael and Carol Venezia, Kim Keever, Maciej Swieszewski, Andy Goldsworthy, Becca Smith, Michael Torlen, John Walker, Alex Frances, Paul Zelevansky, Nancy Hagin, Mary Miss, Barnaby Furnas, Ana Mendiata, Linda Benglis, Omar Rashid, Rahim Sharif, Esther Senor/Carmen Cifrian, Kareem Al Bosta, Rocio Garriga Hinare,  Ali Al Mahmeed, Samia Engineer, Balquees Falkro… those are artists I like and admire… for influences other than contemporary, Jonathan Silver was really important to my painting, and I really liked Jack Smith, and then we have to go to Art History including Chinese Northern and Southern T’Sung paintings of landscapes…especially the vertical mountains.

Q: I understand you recently moved your studio into a portion of your loft. Will your paintings get smaller?

KG: I doubt it.

Q: How do you work? At night? With music?

KG: Being a mother, I learned early on that I can work at any time.

These days it is preferable in the morning because I am more rested.

I put on old movies while I paint.  Since I have seen them all, I don’t have to watch them.  I can imagine what is happening on one of the sides of my brain and that becomes kind of a white noise and on the other side of my brain I can look at what I am doing and think about that.  Also, if I get interrupted, I can stop the movie, then when I go back, I am in the same place, so to speak.

Q: What is the evolution of your ‘black’ paintings? Do they come from a dark space inside, or are you simply exploring another way to manipulate light?

KG: They began as underpaintings of my last show of cloud paintings with Fischbach Gallery in 1988.  Three things were going on.  One, my dealer Alidar Marberger was dying of AIDS and I wanted to do something great for him.  So I made the entire gallery a sunset with a cloudless painting with varying shades of blue to the gold magic time of the day on one side and the far end an almost all black painting of clouds that were overpainted with cerise red.   All the paintings had secondary images in them, and most of them were presented in different ways.  Some went into corners, some went around corners and one went onto the ceiling. These are installation shots of the exhibition.( http://www.karengunderson.com/fischbach.htm )

The other thing is, I needed to change the way I was painting the clouds… invent a new way to show the light and the forms, so I painted the cloud forms with black paint, let the paint dry and then painted against the grain of the brushmarks with color.  That takes us to the third thing.  I had quit drinking.  I found I had a lot of energy and I was not afraid of my dark side anymore.  Before I had painted my cloud paintings almost as a way to escape… to leave earth behind.  Now I was feeling grounded and connected to the paint and the painting in a new way.

After the show, with Aladar’s permission, I left the gallery.  He hadn’t been there for at least three years and he said he was never going back because he was collecting disability.  He was my champion, so without him there, I didn’t feel like I belonged.  I continued to work with the images of kind of cloud-like forms in black and then painting color over the strokes as in the exhibition at Fischbach.  Then one day I painted an all black painting and left it that way.  My great collector Blaine Roberts saw it and wanted it, so it left my studio.  I went back to the black and color and then a couple months later, I had two paintings of entirely black paintings in my studio, drying, waiting for me to paint on them and my friend Jonathan Silver came over.  He said, “Leave those paintings alone.  Just give them a couple of weeks Karen.”  I always trusted Jonathan and that was the true beginning of the black paintings.  It isn’t just manipulating light.  It is a different way to paint images.  Black paint has always been used abstractly.  Using black paint to paint the images and using the light to show the forms becomes an experience.  It includes the viewer, the body of the viewer and the movement of the body of the viewer.  I want my painting to be an experience… a physical experience as well as an emotional and intellectual one.  The paintings change as the viewer moves up/down or right/left.  The images I choose have to do with how the light works.  With the images of water, we see the light reflected off the surface of the water.  It is the same thing with my paintings, we see the water because of the light reflected off the surface of the painting.

Churning Sea, 2006 | Oil on linen | 60" x 60"

And the experience of water is that it is always moving and as the viewer is always moving it reinforces that experience.  The moon painting changes just a little from left to right… only to show us the volume of the moon, but the most important thing about the moon is that it is glowing and that you can see craters and shadows and it connects with all the myths of the moon — for me, anyway.

Murphy's Moon, 2010 | Oil on linen | 60" x 60"

The landscape paintings to date are of the mountains seen from Tibet.  I have never been there, but I think Tibet is really fascinating and important and I want people to hold it in their minds to protect it from destruction.  Because the paintings are monochrome, it helps us to focus on the varying forms and shapes and spaces… which change as we pass by them.

Everest from Kala Patar, 2005 | 52 1/4" x 61 1/2"

The constellations are my way of fighting cynicism.  There is always the negative in the news.  I guess it is the nature of news.  I personally think people like the adrenalin rush that one gets from fear.  I probably do too because I like action films, but for things that last… like Art, I want to remind people of events that I think are revolutionarily positive, like when the Berlin Wall came down, or the passage of the Abolition of Slavery.  The constellation paintings are harder to see because they need absolutely perfect light to be seen to the full effect.  By painting exact days and locations of the constellations, I also want to remind us that things happen at different moments everywhere and what we do individually and collectively is important and also to try to pay attention to what is happening… or will happen… in the case of Apophis Near Miss.

Apophis Near Miss, 2009 | Oil on Linen| 61 1/2" x 156 3/4" | Triptych

The Portraits are reminders of powerful people who each accomplished things in the world for their countries.  In those paintings, black is a metaphor for history and the people are stepping into the light for including them in our lives today.

Q: What advice would you give a young person about becoming a working artist in this political and economic climate?

KG: Well Mike, I would tell a young person or anyone who is becoming an artist that they should first figure out how they are going to make a living other than from their art…they say on Broadway “Keep your day job” which holds true for artists as well.  Then I would tell them to make art that is relevant to themselves and/or their time…no matter what anyone else says.  I have always believed artists are shamen.  Their art in the world is like pebbles thrown into a pond and they have ripple effects.  So they also need to take  responsibility for the importance of what they make.  I would love it if people would look at the world and think of what would make it better and then make that thing that helps or heals or just makes people think.  I would tell them to locate themselves in a place w here they feel comfortable to live their lives, and a place where they will push themselves to struggle in the context of their art.  I would tell them to socialize with people and friends who are interested in their art and who they are interested in.  One good reason to go to Graduate School is to meet a community of friends that they will bond with for the rest of their lives.  I would suggest that if they are fortunate enough to exhibit in a good gallery in NYC, they should trust their dealer to price and promote their work…but to keep a good eye on it and to help wherever it is appropriate.  And finally, I would tell this same person to feel really lucky because they get to get up each day and see the world from their special, perceptual, intelligent and sensitive eyes.  They get to live that day looking at the world from their unique experience of themselves…it’s a great way to live.

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To see more paintings , visit Gunderson’s web site at:

Gunderson’s work is represented by ClampArt in New York City, New York; William Siegal Gallery, Santa Fe, New Mexico; and, Frost & Reed, London, England.

“Karen Gunderson: Constellations, Moons, and Water”
May 5 – June 11, 2011
Opening reception:
Thursday, May 5, 2011
6.00 – 8.00 p.m.
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For more information contact:

ClampArt
www.clampart.com

521-531 West 25th Street
Ground Floor
New York City 10001
646.230.0020 T
646.230.8008 F
Gallery hours:
Tuesday – Saturday,
11:00 a.m. – 6:00 p.m.

“We are all Khaled Said.”

Think graffiti under fire!

By Hala Salah Eldin Hussein

Albawtaka Review editor

(This article appeared in somewhat different form in Alahram weekly newspaper.)

You don’t come across such eloquent voices of objection every day, not in Egypt anyway. It was the celebration day: February 11, 2011, former vice president Omar Suleiman announced that Hosni Mubarak was to step down from office. Crowds had flocked to Tahrir square, already crammed full of people, to rejoice in their victory.

Egypt, you are my special mother.

“Egypt, you are my splendid mother.”

Trying to push my way through throngs of people in jubilant mood in the Square, or rather, swept along with the crowds till I reached the nearest exit on Sheik Rehan St. – you don’t choose where you are heading with a multitude of one million souls in one place – I was struck by these brilliant graffiti, probably woven within earshot of bullets or among tear gas, by unknown citizens.

In random blurry lines, or in brightly professional ones, these artists – probably talented young people who never scribbled graffiti before – have woven paintings that they must have known municipality workers will probably paint away. In fact, they could not even have known for sure whether their demands — now glaring with articulated statements on the wall, screaming to topple the corrupt regime and introduce political liberties and social justice — would be met.

No doubt some of these young artists have been met with beating, massive arrests, and killings. Yet they continued to paint within a short distance of the Ministry of the Interior building. Future retribution was possible, which might explain lack of signatures, whereas several names accompanied those on a wall in Mohamed Mahmoud St. bringing out Egyptians’ joy of freedom in all its splendor.

This is what happened on 25.

One graffito remembered Khaled Said, a young man killed by brutal policemen in June 2010, in Alexandria. You could tell that graffitists are internet users, engrossed in the Facebook revolution and social-networking sites since the words “We are all Khaled Said” written in one part of the wall is actually a Facebook group demanding legal action against those guilty of killing the young man. However rural backgrounds can be detected. Rudimentary scenes from the Egyptian country are lucid, too, pigeons, verdancy, country walls, footprints, in all colors, illuminating part of the wall. It’s uncertain when these drawings took place. They must have been drawn in stages, from the first sparkle of protests till the triumph, “He is down,” says one graffito. Another graffito would mark a new post-revolutionary change in Egyptian behavior, “From now on this is YOUR country,” it said. “Don’t throw garbage in the street. Don’t give bribes. Don’t forge documents. Don’t submit to injustice or tyranny. Make a complaint against any service that fails to fulfill its duties.”

One can only imagine how difficult it must have been to smuggle paints and brushes into this turmoil of unprecedented demonstrations. These markings — initials, slogans, and drawings, written, spray-painted, or sketched — are evidence of the artistic spirit of the revolution. Somehow amidst all the clamor and bloodshed, young artists came armed with their brushes and paints, pallid colors and shiny ones, to light up the wall with pride and determination, “Revolution till victory,” one design read, and another, “Hold your head high, you are an Egyptian.” Some designs glorified a particular day, “This is what happened on 25″ while others portrayed scenes reminiscent of rural origins. They have expressed gratitude, “Glory to martyrs”; rage, “Leave, NOW” and its future outgrowth, “Seeking revenge for martyrs”; joy, and the longing of joy.

Your love is freedom.

These graffiti, in political perception, were much like statements proclaimed by the leaders of non-violent protest movements. They were mature, vigilant, and passionate, street art forever shedding light upon political spontaneity and patriotism, as in the words, “25 January, oh, how sweet is my country.” They represent the true beat of the streets, all over, free as air, sending a message to all.

About the author:

Hala Salah Eldin Hussein is the editor of Albawtaka Review, an Arabic independent (non-governmental) non-profit online quarterly concerned with translating English short fiction. In January 25, 2011, the Egyptian people went into the streets to topple the regime, and in 18 days, after 30 years, they did it. Says Hussein, “I used to wake up every morning telling myself, ‘This day I’m going to do it. I will topple the regime.’ Now we are free. We are planning to re-build the nation from scratch, and the sky is the limit.”  Alahram weekly is only distributed in Egypt.

More photos at: http://albawtaka.com

The garden at Soekershof

Soekershof:

Jody Joyner’s Land Art & The Amazing

Botanical Gardens of South Africa

With Yvonne de Wit & Herman van Bon

In the narrow meaning of the word, a nest is the spot in which birds lay their egg(s) and hatch. In the Germanic languages it is also used as a name for a sleeping spot or a place where two lovers please each other. In the more natural sense of the word, ‘nest’ means ‘house’. And at home you feel yourselves at home in your own protected surroundings or shelter. People nowadays have simply attached themselves to comfort which modern technology offers us and that actually detaches them from the natural surroundings.

Why then not a nest made of natural material from its own surroundings? Simply to attach to the vicissitudes of nature and to repair your own ecobalans?

This idea is the basis with which Land Art artist Jody Joyner from Tucson, Arizona, U.S.A., has been playing from the end of December at Soekershof; Private Mazes & Botanical Gardens in South Africa, also named Green Cathedral of South Africa.

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Jody Joyner

A studio art major from Tucson, Ariz., she was awarded a Thomas J. Watson Foundation fellowship for her project, “The Art of Place: Where We Are.” She is traveling to the United Kingdom, South Africa, Australia, Japan, and Canada to study how artists visually convey their perceptions of, and connections to, the natural world, how their artwork reflects knowledge of local geographies, and whether art cultivates a sense of place.

Before beginning work at Soekershof in December 2010, she was involved in Landartgenerator in Dubai and a project in the Louvre in Paris. From South Africa she will fly first to Australia to be involved in a project with aboriginals, and from there she will create an object with Inuit in the North of Canada. Her assignment in South Africa was part of Land Art project in South Africa, an initiative of Soekershof,  a private initiative without governmental grants and/or subsidies.

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About the gardeners: Yvonne de Wit & Herman van Bon

Who we (me and my wife Yvonne) are?  Well, best is to google ‘soekershof’ or ‘green cathedral of south africa’. Be aMAZed and feel Welcome. We don’t pretend to be scientists (we just make use of those in a mutual beneficial way) and we are considered as ‘weird’ by some of our neighbours.
OK, visiting Soekershof is a bit of a whimsical experience, but also the proof that a garden does not have to be “boring”. It’s entertaining with a very serious undertone.
And what more: there is an outdoor collection of over 2500 different, registered, species/subspecies/cultivars/etc. of succulent plants from all over the world and we are very proud of that.
It also explains why representives of the SANBI gardens (Kirstenbosch, Karoo, etc.) in South Africa do not want to know about us, but we play nicely with some university gardens, nurseries and collectors around the globe.
You are Welcome!

For more information: http://soekershoflandart.wordpress.com/

©2011 Amy Kollar Anderson

Phyxiated, acrylic on canvas : 12″ x 14″

Babies in Bottles

Amy Kollar Anderson

How an artist goes from painting babies in bottles to a phantasmagoric series based on characters and scenes from “Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There” (phantasmagoric in itself), is just one of the questions that came to mind looking over Amy Kollar Anderson’s work. Anderson’s ‘bottle paintings’ expose a frightfully cold tableau of images recorded by a meandering, surrealistic mind. Alas, whereas babies in bottles (my manacle, not her moniker) once were the province of medical schools, where they were meant to teach, and carnival side shows, where they were meant to shock, Anderson’s paintings do both. While the “Alice” series keeps to the caverns of her imagination, they are more grounded in images that we, as impartial observers (as if there were such things), are not as afraid to imagine. We may have been there, may have done that, but never quite did it this way.

Five of the “Alice” works shown here will be on display at the Hive Gallery and Studios in Los Angeles beginning in March. See how it’s done in “Phyxiated”.

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Phyxiated – Time Lapse Painting

by Amy Kollar Anderson

A time-lapse video of approximately 55 hours total, with 1 frame per minute of Amy painting Phyxiated.  Acrylic on canvas, 12″ x 14″. Score: “The Butcher,” performed by Ape the Ghost. See them on Facebook.

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Anderson on Anderson:

With my paintings, I create narratives about obsession and containment to explore the differences between being in-and-out of control. Containment is revealed through locations with physical barriers, but it can also be addressed through the emotional or psychological condition of the individuals. Obsession can be seen in the multitude of details, or in the characters that are fixated with an object or idea. I attempt to find a balance between contrasting concepts, such as control vs. chaos, attraction vs. repulsion, etc.

I find these worlds through an oblique path, beginning with an idea and then wandering my way into the finished piece through multiple layers of color and patterns. Each layer adds to the complexity of the puzzle, and in turn reveals another part of the puzzle differently, affecting the final piece. This kind of revelation and exploration takes time, often with changes in composition and color, but the process uncovers a more complex and satisfying narrative than first glimpsed in that original idea.

I enjoy the process of creating a completely new environment in each painting, complete with new rules about interactions and colors. The aesthetic involves a contrast of overlapping vintage and modern design elements and untraditional paint choices, such as metallic, fluorescent and interference colors. This subtle psychedelic presentation misdirects the viewer from immediately focusing on the issues presented, therefore adding to the harmony and tension in the narrative.

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About the Artist:

Amy Kollar Anderson lives in Dayton, Ohio, with her husband and their cats. She received her B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her Master of Humanity with a focus in Fine Arts, from Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. For more information about Anderson, visit her web site: http://www.kollaranderson.com.

© 2011 Michael Jantzen

The Sounds of the Sun Pavilion, Concept by Michael Jantzen

Building Art into Architecture

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Michael Jantzen

The products of architecture often are limited by what materials are available to the architect. Pushing those limits is what makes architecture art, and the architect an artist. For centuries, man has combined mind and materials to achieve artistry of the highest kind in seeking to arrive at various ends: tombs, as in the Great Pyramids of Giza; palaces, as in the Taj Mahal; places of worship, as in the temples of Angkor Wat and the Vatican. But those things have all been done. We are at a stage now where the evolution and development of materials and methods allow contemporary architects the freedom and flexibility to meet today’s social, environmental, geological and geographical challenges in ways never seen before. Michael Jantzen is one of those people whose imagination seeks not only to meet the architectural challenges of today, but also the human needs of tomorrow.

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Michael Jantzen/The Sounds of the Sun Pavilion

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The Sounds of the Sun Pavilion is a conceptual proposal for a large structure made of many small, pre-fabricated, square, curved, steel tube components. These components are joined together to form thirteen large interwoven curved elements. One side of each of the large curved square elements is covered with flexible solar cells. The ends of each of the curved elements are formed into large funnel shapes. The solar cells generate electrical power and monitor the random distribution of light as it strikes different surfaces of the pavilion. The excess electricity generated by the solar cells is used to help power the community in which the pavilion is placed.

Some of the electrical energy produced by the solar cells is used to generate electronic sounds based on the random movement of light over the surface of the structure. These random electronic sounds are heard by visitors through speakers, which are mounted inside of the funnel shaped ends of the large interwoven curved elements. These funnel shaped sections are also fitted with electric lights that are illuminated at night, and are also powerd by the solar cells. At night or when the light levels are too low or unvaried, the sounds emitted from the structure are low and constant. When the light levels increase and begin to be monitored by the solar cells, the sounds vary widely in their pattern and volume and are never exactly the same from day to day.

The design of the shape of the pavilion comes from a desire to create a structure with a great deal of complex surface area, relative to the ever changing position of the sun, as it’s light moves over the pavilion through the dayu The curved elements refer to exaggerated versions of the arcs of the sun, as it moves across the sky.

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Michael Jantzen/Super Symmetry

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©2010 John Dobbs

Untitled #17, 2010. Watercolor and gouache on paper, 4″ x 5 3/4″

Equilibrium/Disequilibrium

In December, I went to the New York City Small Presses Night. I didn’t know about ACA Art Galleries, where it was being held, or about the gallery’s storied history as a bohemian bastion for artists, writers and poets from its founding in 1932, right up to this  day. Of course, the literati and art crowd aren’t bohemian, anymore.  And the fight against artistic expression today isn’t nearly as apocryphal as it appeared to be in the early ‘50s when many ACA affiliates were under Hoover’s gun for their left-leaning swagger. Sufficient to say, and thanks to Dorian Bergen, I learned more about the gallery that night than about any of the alternative presses and publishing houses I’d set out to discover.

What got the conversation started was a question about the work of Deloss McGraw, one of the many artists in ACA’s stable. (Is that unkind, comparing an artist to a horse? After all, who pulls the cart?) I’d met McGraw at W. D. Snodgrass’ poetry reading at the Downtown Writer’s Center, a program of the YMCA of Greater Syracuse, shortly before Snodgrass passed away in January 2009. McGraw has illustrated hundreds of Snodgrass’ poems, and there were dozens on the walls at the Y to commemorate their longstanding creative relationship. There were dozens more — and larger — at ACA.

The conversation with Bergen progressed (as it should have, this being a progressive affair, and all), to the work of John Barnes Dobbs, whose exhibit, “Equilibrium/Disequilibrium”, dominated more than half the gallery’s exhibit space.  Dobbs (b. 1931), a long-time associate of the gallery, had requested the gallery hold a retrospective of his work, and they kindly obliged, offering up one room, which soon expanded well beyond. In the end, that wasn’t a bad thing. At first look, the drawings and paintings seemed unfinished, almost like studies for works to come. But in moving from one image to another evolved  a humorous fascination with the human condition in form and function. Reason enough to side with history and bring his work to Ragazine readers.

– MRF

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From the catalog:

John Dobbs is an accomplished draftsmen and painter who has exhibited widely for over fifty years since his first show in New York in 1959.  His work depicts a wide range of subjects from contemporary politics, urban landscape and portraits to interior scenes.  Inspired by observations and experiences from his own life, he draws on his memories and impressions as a source for his work.

Dobbs on Dobbs:

I spent my first seven years in a small house built for Erie Lackawana Railroad workers, the same company that had hired my grandfather as a railway express clerk many years before. The house was right across the street from the railroad embankment; a fascinating, forbidden playground, impossible to resist.  The shining rails gave me my first example of one-point perspective as they raced toward the next town down the line.  My father was a leftist, a skeptic, and a closet poet.  My mother was a pianist.  Art, music, and literature were as integral to my boyhood as baseball and running wild.  Politics was mother’s milk.

I’ve always been, in part, a painter of protest.  I was in the army during the Korean War, in Algeria during their War of Independence, in Paris when terrorist bombs were a nightly soundtrack, and I was back in the states during the passions of Vietnam.  In short, war has been one of my themes.  Anger has always been a dependable fuel for my work.  I was disappointed in humanity, which, I suppose, is a grand way of saying I was disappointed in myself.  I expect a lot from both.

Some years ago a Mexican priest and a rabbi approached me independently of each other at one of my openings and said, “Your work is beautiful, and disturbing.”  To me, that’s the ultimate compliment.  When I hear that I feel I’ve hit the mark.  I’ve never made a painting with the sole idea of selling it.  And I’m not afraid to say that I’ve made paintings that could be hard to live with.  I’ve strived to give representations and metaphors of social life which is, inevitably, an aspect of political life as well.

Art to me has always been a way to make sense of violence, war, and the overwhelming dynamics of human life; street life, metaphorical life, a soldier’s life, the closing skyline and the open road.  I’ve loved working with themes: highways, motel rooms, automobiles, or people in windows who always seem to me like a secret being half-revealed.  This is probably my last show, and the theme is balance and imbalance, equilibrium and disequilibrium; moving between the one and the other, trying not to fall.

For information, and to see more of Dobbs’ work, visit:

http://www.acagalleries.com

ACA Galleries, 529 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-2800
(212) 206-8080

Interview:

Artist in Flux

With Michael Foldes

Born in 1972, Amy Swartelé grew up in Belgium, Holland and England. Her mother was a dancer, and her father a businessman who also wrote poetry. If Hieronymous Bosch were alive today, he likely would have no problem at all deciphering the imagery manifest in her paintings.

Swartelé’s work combines the technical knowledge of the chemist who mixes the paints, the precise craftsmanship of the painter who applies it, and the ability to translate surreal, often disturbing visions from a wellspring of inspiration that resonates between mind and matter. Flux, Swartelé’s show in September at the Jungle Science Gallery featured recent paintings that depict subjects, some of whom appear to drowning, as seen in or through pale liquid. Or, perhaps, more in keeping with her recent interest in quantum science, who could as easily be stranded in the divergent planes of parallel and intersecting universes.

Swartelé’s earlier series, Flesh and Bone, was not much in evidence at this show. It explores the relationships of objects in the physical world, the cycles of life and death, the examination and metamorphosis of common influences, organic components, the disintegration of flesh, the remnants of bone. She literally digs into the big questions, “What is life?” “What does it all mean?” “Why are we here, and what do we all have to do with one another?”  Her answers are not for everyone, but they influenced Jungle Science’s Brent Williamson enough to give her a show, and to suggest we also take notice.

The following edited interview with Swartelé took place in September, the morning after the closing reception, at Java Joe’s, a noisy little coffee shop in downtown Binghamton. Swartelé’s husband, Michael Yeomans, sat in on the conversation. Both Swartelé and Yeomans are professors in the art department at State University of New York-Potsdam. Yeomans teaches studio art, and Swartelé, who teaches painting, commented that most of her students must take his course before hers, so she has confidence in their abilities to draw.

Ragazine (to Yeomans): Do you also exhibit?

Yeomans: Yes, I do, but I would have to say of the two of us, Amy is much more driven in the exhibition portion of her career than I am. Amy is a painter who teaches at a university, whereas I’m a university professor who makes art….

Swartelé: I think that’s accurate

R: When I was looking through your web site, it says:  “I can explore the parade that my own psyche offers – absurdity, grotesquerie, a carnival of demons and freaks, which may frighten, fascinate and seduce….”  You have a sort of transmogrification of your environment. What drove you to that in the first place?

S: In terms of transformation, the very fundamental idea that the only constant is change, that everything is changing all the time no matter how much we may try to deny it, ignore it, pretend it’s not there. We like to think of ourselves and the world around us of having some constancy. It’s more comfortable and our brains like going down the same neural patterns all the time, but honestly, I don’t believe that’s how the world is, and I don’t believe that’s the way we are. We’re constantly changing moment by moment, on everything from your quantum level exchanging particles with the world around you to your thoughts, your feelings. You’re thinking different things right now than you were five minutes ago. I think part of the work is an attempt to both deal with and embrace the circumstances of constant change, so that’s where some of the transmogrification comes from, and the metamorphosis of one form into another form.

I have a great love of ideas, of evolution, hybridization, metamorphosis, from old mythological tales, to more fundamental scientific shifts. The potentials and possibilities of change are so much more interesting to me, are so much more exciting and optimistic in spirit, to my mind, than ideas of things staying the same. That is just worst than death.

R: But a lot of people see change in a different direction than you see it.

S: Right, which is part of why I’m painting about it, because from my point of view it’s not this evil, you know….

R: But is this a lot of what you imagined when you were in India? I can see that being more in line with that reality you perceive.

S: Well certainly some of the ideas come through Buddhist philosophy I’ve read. So that’s definitely been an influence in thinking in that direction.

Both when I was in India a few years ago and just now in China, in Tibet, there’s a very different perspective on what your reality is and how it’s formed and how the world changes your perception of reality. So I don’t know if I would say I have seen what I expected… I hardly ever see what I expect. I’m almost always surprised….

R: Yes?

S: In degree if not in type, do you know what I mean?

R: Michael, did you travel with Amy to India or China or Tibet?

Y: No, she gets to go to all these places on her own.

S: Michael is both a less experienced and less adventurous traveler than I am.

Y: I have no desire to see it … filthy, disgusting …. (laughs).

S: Third world situations (Amy laughs).

R: You mean where you wrap yourself around the toilet?

S: I have been to the hospital a couple of times (laughing). About everyone at the arts colony had dysentery. The arts colony where I was in India – everybody got sick at one time or another.  One girl got bitten by a monkey and had to go through the rabies shot deal. I had severe gastroenteritis, two other people had GE, one person had gotten parasites of some kind. And it seems like the only people who didn’t (get sick) were people who had spent a lot of time in country already and had some experience.

R: Yes, some immunity.’You have mentioned something about the Heisenberg principal? What is that?

S: Well the couple of things I mentioned in the artist statement that come from quantum physics… I should modify all of this somewhat by saying that I’m in no way any kind of expert on things to do with quantum physics, but the ideas that reading about quantum physics generate for me, those are what interest me… even though what I understand about them may be off the standard ones, but essentially the uncertainty principal…. Do you know about the Schrödinger’s thought experiment? It’s a thought experiment where you took a cat and put it in a box, and there were, I forget the details of it, but essentially, you know when a nuclear structure breaks down and the half life, where it deteriorates, the point of it is that you put the cat in the box, you can’t see inside the box, there is a breakdown of an (radioactive) element that at a certain point may or may not kill the cat. You don’t know at any point if the cat is alive or dead or what….

The whole idea behind the thought experiment is to kind of illustrate what has been found with light particles — light can be a particle or a wave, right? And there’s the idea that the observer affects the experiment. It’s been proven that through the very act of observation, the nature of the light particles or light waves is altered.

So the Schrödinger’s cat experiment merely posits the idea the cat is both alive and dead and sort of neither alive nor dead until you open the box and take a look. Because until it is observed, it’s the same as that particle of light, it’s sort of in that in-between stage, it hasn’t decided, for lack of a better word, it can’t be alive or dead. You can’t know the position and speed of the particles at the same time –. because the act of observation literally changes reality, which for an artist, what an interesting idea is that, that for every possible event in the universe a new universe jumps into play, leaps into existence. So that’s the multi-verse theory.

That uncertainty principal has to do with the positioning of limbo, sort of everything and nothing in a circumstance of potentiality, but nothing’s come into being yet. I’m a huge believer in contradictions, and this idea of being in that situation where anything is possible and depending on how you perceive or if you perceive you might push the universes in a particle direction. So the potentiality of that excites me. I take the interpretation of those things that are happening on the quantum level, and I think of them on the macro level, and of course as far as the physicists, everybody will tell you that you can’t make the jump, but on the larger level the whole Newtonian universe still very much holds sway. It’s only on the quantum level that things go nuts.

But I like thinking how to take those ideas that come from the quantum level and apply them to a more macro level, that to me is where the fun is.

R: well that’s reflected more in your Flux paintings than in your …. Fesh and Bone.

S: Well the shift from Flesh and Bone to Flux, in Flesh and Bone I was still thinking about how things interact with each other, and the idea of perception being reciprocal and that everything … that if I interact with you it’s not only me acting on you but you acting on me … how you’re responding affects how I act, and it’s the very cyclical nature of any kind of interaction, both between people and people and their physical surroundings….

But when I got to what was for me the end of Flesh and Bone I had gotten very frustrated with how still and static all my forms were, and that they might be interacting on a psychological and emotional level, but they weren’t as dynamic as I feel the world is, and so I had to start breaking the forms loose and creating dynamism in the form of themselves for me to be able to reflect that idea.

R: Just as a brief aside, you see realities here, but that explains why anybody would say it’s a lot of fun to watch…

S: Like at the closing last night, people watching, awesome, at an opening or closing event you get all kinds.

R: You talk about quarks Charm and Strange… What is quark Charm?

S: Names of different quarks are Up (quark), Down, Charm, Strange … These are names of particles in quantum physics– the beauty of that. I love that.

R: How many are there altogether?

S: Six…. I  forget the others. There are two others. (Top quark and Bottom are the other two. – ed note:).

R: You mentioned having a corporate sponsor. Who is your corporate sponsor?

S: The family company is Soparind/Bongrain. An international food business. (Soparind-Bongrain is an international independent food corporation based in France. It consists of a hundred companies established in 24 countries. The group employs 21,000 people throughout the world. – ed. note)

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Amy Swartele

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R: I’m impressed that they would sponsor…. I think a lot of U.S. companies would have a hard time sponsoring your work. I think they would shy away. “Oh my god, we’re going to lose breakfast cereal sales…”

S: Well that’s one of the things with the commission, because the paintings are going to be in their new corporate headquarters in France. (Turns to Michael.) What’s the word Alex uses, torture?

He told me, I did a commission for them several years ago and that’s how this whole thing developed, and the first commission was …. I had much tighter guidelines on what they wanted for what at the time was going to be their new international headquarters.

That all turned out well. Still lifes…. I spent a couple of months touring their companies learning about their business, and it was very much based on the imagery that came out of that. But actually some of the meat  imagery that comes up in Flesh and Bone came out of the factories.

R: Are you a vegetarian?

S: Yeah, I am …. (laughs). But then a few years ago, when I had opportunities for the exhibits, I stayed in touch with Alex and that kind of thing, and I approached him and asked if he’d be interested in sponsoring some of these exhibits and that all worked out, and now that they’re building a new international headquarters, he approached me to do this new commission. We met and I’m working on the designs now. He actually was my sponsor for this last trip to China. The new group of paintings is not meant to deal with their business at all, but to reflect the expanding international nature of their business. So I said “Ooooh, where do I get to go?”

“… Hence the China trip, so I’m developing a series of designs that I am going to show him based on different places around the world, sometimes literally, sometimes more abstract, more conceptual sort of images.

Y: And only one of the only other “guidelines.”

S: “I have only one guideline, the paintings are not allowed to be torture,” which is how he describes much of my work…. The paintings are not allowed to depict torture. So I’m going to show him a number of images. He’ll pick the ones that appeal to him the most and I’ll base the paintings on those images.

R: What did your parents do, what kind of influence did they have on your work? Was your father a physicist? Was your mother a physicist?

S: No, my mother (who is Belgian) was actually a dancer…. and she also writes short stories. My father (an American) actually writes poetry, though he’s a businessman. I will say this, they were always completely encouraging of anything artistic.

R: Did you pull wings from flies when you were  a kid?

S: I didn’t actually find painting as my first love until I was in college. Until then I was split evenly between acting and visual art. I did a lot of theater in college. I was a double major in theater and art.  It wasn’ until I got to my senior year in college and I had an acting thesis lined up and a painting thesis lined up and I said, Oh hell…. and picked painting. Mainly because in the studio you have utter control over what you do. You’re god for what it is you can create on that canvas. You can do anything. In acting you’re at the mercy of the casting director, and everybody else. Your choices, artistically are far more limited.

R: What about painter influences…. ? I mean there are a lot of Flemish and Dutch artists who were into some very bizarre ….

S: Yes, yes…. Breugel and Bosch always were very early influences. One of the first reproductions of paintings I remember seeing was in a Flemish comic book I read as a child. Suske and Wiske.  There’s one episode where the characters jump into a Bosch painting where the characters come alive.

The tradition of Flemish painting is so strong … you’ve just got a world of painters to choose from ….  Bosch, Rembrandt, van Gogh, Magritte, you know not the CoBrA people so much, but certainly the surrealists, certainly the magical realists, certainly Van Eyck and all the old masters there, and the tradition of what I think a lot of modern day eyes … that sort of grotesque still lives, but with glorious texture and color and … finding beauty in that detritus of form is an influnce… Francis Bacon, big influence. Lucian Freud, big influence. I mean, I tend to jump around at any given point depending on what it is I’m trying to do that will affect the people I’m looking at at that given time….

R: What is your process? Do you start with a drawing? Like for this commission?

S: I generally have an idea that I’m working with but the start is always the idea. Then I find the imagery that will help me develop that idea. My process is enormously fluid, so having to come up with a design for this commission is counter to my usual process.

My usual process, I start with an idea and I’ll find a couple of images from photographs I’ve taken or objects I’m collecting… I think I mentioned last night all the dead animals in my studio. I get my dentist to give me teeth she pulls out of people’s mouths. I collect things from junkyards. When I say I’m a scavenger I mean that quite literally. I really do grab stuff from all over. So I’ll start with a couple of things that I’ve scavenged, photographs or objects… Those will start to get developed on canvas and then usually what happens is they get moved, changed in size, painted over, combined with another form….

My process has a lot of metamorphosis in it. It’s very transformational. The end product usually looks nothing like where I started because where I’m working I’m responding to what I’ve got on canvas and that very fluid process allows me…  means for me my subconscious comes into play a lot more. These are not planned things, these are things that whatever it is I have on canvas… “Oh, I  really want to give it peace now,” or I want to make it do this, or I want to make it have an interaction with this other thing….

And usually I know when I’m on the right track…. When I really have to kind of stop and question myself and say this is really weird, bizarre, or it’s just plain silly, but I really want to do it anyway. (So I say to myself) “OK, just let’s do it.”

R: How do you work in pastels? It’s not so easy to cover over.

S: But it has the upside of being very quick compared to oils, which makes a nice shift, and actually, with fixative … Yes, it alters the color a bit and all that, but it allows you to layer in a bit more than you might be able to do otherwise. I think it’s really useful to shift materials a little bit that way every now and then because it forces you into solutions you wouldn’t find otherwise.  So by playing with pastels, then when I go back to the paint, I do paint differently. That to me is useful.

R: What about the commissions, are you taking photographs you’ll use later? Or is it all mental images, or do you sketch?

S: No, I’m sketching the designs that I’m going to show in France. They are essentially paint sketches. I’m sketching. I took about 2000 photographs on the trip. I’ve got about 3000 photographs that I’m working from.

R: Digital imagery saves thousands and you don’t generally screw up, and if you do you see it right away….

S: I’m also interviewing people from countries I haven’t been to, talking to them about
“What’s this place mean to you?”,”If fyou had to describe an image to me that embodies his place, what is it?”  So I’m trying to gataher information in different ways, I’m reading myths from different countries …

R: There’s something in a review of your work, “rendered in hues once deemed inappropriate…” I don’t understand that. I don’t know what hues would be inappropriate. Does that mean anything to you or is that sort of like somebody’s…?

S: Someone else’s take? I would say what was meant maybe was not in terms of color, but maybe because I’ve taken some things which are generally thought of as pleasnt things and made them grotesque and vice versa. That maybe it’s that shift that’s being talked about.

R: So he’s not really talking color, he’s talking something else ….

S: That sounds like flowery, rhetorical language …

R: How do you get that luminous quality on the surface, is that an overcoat of lacquer? Or is that in the paint itself?

S: It’s in the paint itself. .I glaze hell out of my paints. Glazing is when you have translucent layers of paint, a little bit of pigment, lots of medium.  I really play with the viscosity of my paint a lot. I’m moving back and forth between very opaque to very thin, almost transparent stuff. Thick and thin. The physicality of oil is one of the most glorious things about it. You can do anything with oils. And glazes. I’m sort of a glaze queen.  I love to glaze, And the reason for that is, you can literally…. say you have two pigments, mix them together opaquely you get a certain color. If you put one color in a glaze and put it over the other color in a glaze, you will end up with a visually completely different color than if you mixed them opaquely because the light is having to move through multiple layers and simply interacting with those pigments differently..

When you have an opaque layer of paint on top, the light just hits that top layer and bounces right off. But if you have multiple translucent layers, that kind of interior luminosity that you get, you’re literally doing that through how you’re building your paint layer. You get a richness of color that way.

R: You can’t do it like that with acrylic …

S: Well you can glaze with acrylic, but to my mind acrylic doesn’t do it as well. There are all sorts of glaze out there for acrylic now, so you can glaze with acrylic, but to my eye it doesn’t have the richness that oil has.

R: I know you have to finish taking down the show, and drive back to Potsdam… Thank you for your time.

A: And thank you, too.

To see more images, and for more information about Belgian-American painter Amy Swartelé, see http://www.amyswartelé.com.