Neoteric Art: Give us a little history on yourself.

Gabriel Villa: I was born in 1965 in El Paso, Texas. My parents met and married in the 1950’s in Ciudad Juarez, Chihuahua, Mexico and had seven children, six boys and one sister. My sister is the youngest of my siblings and I am the youngest of the boys. My childhood was rich with love and laughter. I was three years old when my family moved into what became my childhood home.

Many things have influenced my life and my work including: Family, U.S Texas/Mexico Border Culture, American Sports, 1960’s Counter Culture, 1980’s Reaganomics, Indigenous and Western Art. I decided to become an artist when I was in my early twenties. However, the idea of someone making a living and identifying as an artist was something initially foreign to me. It was not until I started taking college courses that I met professors that identified as artists. Since, creativity and art production have been a priority and a constant in my life.

NA: Discuss your work/thought process when starting a new piece.

GV: Generally a work begins by something I see while walking, driving etc. It may be an individual in my neighborhood or it may be an object or scene somewhere in Chicago or while traveling. I’ve trained myself to take a mental snapshot of the location and eventually if this image keeps tugging at me I return to the site and snap a photograph.

Although I work with mostly painting and drawing I think of my work as archiving and constructing. I lift images from what I see in my surroundings. I am a scavenger of images. I am drawn to people and imagery that are emotionally charged.

Seeking subject mater is a crucial part of my creative process. I am interested in chance, randomness and surprise that “every day life” offers.

NA: Recently you’ve been focusing on drawing. Discuss your drawing and how it compares to your other mediums: painting, mixed media and public work.

GV: In 2008, after a long hiatus from drawing I returned to drawing and started working exclusively on paper. There was a lot going on and I suddenly decided to change directions. Something clicked in my head and I started to place an emphasis on creativity and idea rather than focusing on one particular art medium.

Prior to this period I was bit of a die hard painter, now I have a different point of view on art making. I believe an artist should select materials and applications that best support his or her concepts. Because drawing is very immediate it is better suited for certain goals. Painting, for me takes longer to resolve. Drawing is like a short story. Painting is like a novel.

NA: From 2005-2011 you served as director for Yollocalli Arts Reach, a youth initiative of the National Museum of Mexican Art. Please elaborate on your role as director.

GV: Yollocalli Arts Reach is an arts education and career-training program for teens and young adults. The Yollocalli model is based on creating a space for youth to partner with practicing artists, access the tools necessary to realize their own vision and build skills as emerging artists. Located in the heart of Chicago’s Pilsen neighborhood, Yollocalli is an open forum for experimentation in art making based on issues in art, history, and youth culture.

I started at Yollocalli Arts Reach in 2005 as the Youth Programs Coordinator and later was promoted and served as Director. It was a great job and I learned a great deal of valuable skills, including staff management, grant and curriculum writing, youth development, building community partnerships and of course working with many talented Chicago based artist.

NA: You recently exhibited at MDW Fair. How was your experience?

GV: Over all it was a positive experience. MDW introduced my work to a new audience. It was a pleasure to exhibit my work with artist Nicole Marroquin and work with Curator, Trevor Martin from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. MDW introduced me to the work of many Chicago Based artists including Trevor Martin’s Performance work. I met a handful of collectors, gallery directors and a handful of inquisitive art students.

I will continue to participate in these types of venues. It is one way for one’s work to be evaluated and every once in a while you connect with people that really get your work. My work calls to people who respond to personal, emotive –expressionist work. My work is definitely not entertaining or conceptual. I want people to feel as if they are walking into my brain when they are experiencing my work. Art venues like MD are a good way to start fostering an audience to one’s work.

NA: Discuss your recent book project, “The Art of Gabriel Villa”.

GV: A few years back I was teaching as an artist in residence at Cristo Rey High School, located in Chicago. There I met an instructor by the name of Francisco Pina, at the time also the editor of ContraTiempo. ContraTiempo is a Spanish art and culture newspaper that feature artists and writers. I introduced to my paintings to him. He became a supporter of my work.

Francisco approached me with the idea of collaborating on a self – published catalog. The catalog featured works from 1990- 2005. At the time no one knew who I was (many still don’t). I didn’t have any money and I had many paintings and drawings unfamiliar to many people. I accepted the idea and the partnership. My role was to raise money and write grants for the collaborative project, which I had zero experience. Long story short, we landed a few grants and convinced a few collectors to support the project and I started working at the National Museum of Mexican Art (Yollocalli Arts Reach) to raise the funds. I worked at NMMA longer than I intended to because I enjoyed it so much.

Professionally, this was a good move to self-publish. This got the ball rolling and people started to become aware of my work. This publication led to accepting many other opportunities.

NA: Regarding your art career, where would you like to be five years down the road?

GV: Above ground.

www.gabrielvilla.net

Hildegard Bachert is co-director with Jane Kallir of the Galerie St. Etienne in New York City. It is the oldest gallery in the United States specializing in Expressionism and Self-Taught Art. Its predecessor, the Neue Galerie, was founded in Vienna in 1923 by the late Otto Kallir and was a principal exponent of German and Austrian modernism during the period between the two world wars. The list of prominent artists the gallery has championed includes Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, Oskar Kokoschka, Alfred Kubin, and Richard Gerstl among others.

Diane Thodos is an artist and art critic who resides in the Chicago area and was a student of art critic Donald Kuspit at the School of Visual Arts in New York City from 1987 to 1992. She also studied with printmaker Stanley William Hayter and abstractionist Sam Gilliam. She received a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2002 and has exhibited most recently at the Kouros Gallery in New York City and the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago and is also represented by the Alex Rivault Gallery in Paris, The Traeger/Pinto Gallery in Mexico City, and the Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago. Throughout her art and writing career she has held a special interest in Expressionism and its history.

Diane Thodos: To begin with can you give me some background on Otto Kallir, the establishment of Galerie St. Etienne and how you became his partner in the gallery?

Hildegard Bachert: Otto Kallier founded the Neue Galerie in Vienna in 1923 and his first show was an Egon Schiele exhibition. He has specialized in Schiele ever since. He wrote the catalogue raisonné of Schiele’s oil paintings in 1930. He became a Ph.D on the side in something unrelated because he wanted to prove that he was not only good in his field but also had a very good general knowledge of art. At that time he championed the avant-garde artists Egon Schiele, Gustav Klimt, and Alfred Kubin – the latter became a good friend of his. He staged some other major shows too. He brought a Van Gogh exhibition to Vienna from Holland and a Lovis Corinth show from Germany, among others.

DT: What other artists did he know?

HB: Max Beckmann. He knew Beckmann quite well. He was also a publisher of books. He published books by Beckmann and Oskar Kokoschka. In 1938 the Nazis came to power and Kallir had to leave quickly because he had tried to do some political anti-Nazi work before. There was a warrant out for him. The Nazis took over in March 1938. When they entered Austria they were received with open arms by the Austrians. He left with his family I believe in May or June of that year.

DT: How soon was it after the Nazi’s entered Austria that they left?

HB: The Nazis entered Austria on March 11, 1938, so it was about two months later.

DT: So he had to flee right away. But backing up a little I’m very curious to know any recollections you have regarding his relationships with the artists he knew. He had published prints with Max Beckmann and had intimately known several of the artists that he exhibited. Do you have any stories that describe what their personalities were like?

HB: He had a very close relationship with Alfred Kubin and had invited him to come to the gallery’s exhibitions. Kubin was a loner. He always had to be convinced to come to Vienna. He lived in a small town in a little house close to the German border near Passau. It was a little castle-type place that Kubin called Zwicklet. He was a very imaginative and decent kind of person, but also very difficult although Kallir got along very well with him. In fact at the beginning their relationship when they didn’t know each other well Kallir wanted to convince the artist that he could produce perfect reproductions of his art. Kubin claimed it was not possible so Kallir allowed himself to prove it. He published two facsimile reproductions of watercolors which he had printed by the renown firm of Arthur Jaffe. They used a Heliochrome process that involved making reproductions without using a screen. The watercolors he reproduced looked almost the same as the originals. That’s how he convinced Kubin that he was a serious dealer and cared about quality. Kallir was not a printer himself but he only worked with master printers.

DT: What was it in Otto Kallir’s background that made him seek out such extraordinary artists who had such profound expressionist and imaginative abilities? This was quite prescient on his part as an art dealer, similar to the way the French dealer Ambroise Vollard foresaw the significance of Picasso’s work. What were the aspects of Kallir’s character that drove him towards Expressionist art?

HB: That’s kind of a long story. Even as a boy he was a passionate collector. To sum it up Kallir became a dealer to feed his habit as a collector.

DT: A collector of Expressionism?

HB: A collector of everything that was of historical importance. He was a “Renaissance” man. When he was young he was terribly interested in technical things like aeronautics. He wrote to the Wright brothers in 1903 when he was only 9 years old. It was at the time they had their first flight at Kitty Hawk. He knew all about human flight and wrote a book about it that was published when he was about 19 years old, so his background was not in art. His father was a lawyer. He grew up in a well-to-do bourgeois family.

DT: In Vienna?

HB: Yes. He was originally oriented towards becoming an engineer. After serving four years as an officer during WWI he went to engineering school in Vienna where, being Jewish, he encountered so much anti-Semitism that he gave up the profession.

DT: This prejudice existed in the medical professions and the sciences, and so on.

HB: Everywhere. This was not only in Austria but in Germany as well.

DT: So his career became diverted because of anti-Semitism?

HB: Exactly. From having previously published a book he developed into a bibliophile and apprenticed at the bookstore of Thomas Heller who was also a young man. It was there that he started to meet artists. He said art is also of historical importance and the first works that he bought and collected were a batch of Gustav Klimt drawings.

DT: It ‘s amazing that he had already had an instinct for the top art in Vienna.

HB: He saw art, he saw culture, and he saw history. He knew what was important and over time he developed a fantastic eye for art, but he didn’t stop collecting aeronautical material as well. He collected manuscripts of great historical importance in literature, music, science, and history. Not mere autographs, that didn’t interest him. It had to be a document of importance.

DT: A manuscript of some kind or a letter – something from the hand of the person.

HB: Right. He was very interested in Austrian history so he had many important manuscripts such as those by Kaiser Franz Josef and Archduke Rudolf, the son of Franz Josef who committed suicide. He also had musical manuscripts of importance by Mozart, Richard Strauss, Gustav Mahler and many people he knew personally.

DT: Which musicians did he know personally?

HB: He knew Arnold Schoenburg, Richard Strauss and Hugo Von Hofmannsthal. The latter was the librettist for Strauss. He knew him very well in fact – they were very close friends. So what became his passion? As a young man he published several books on art and literature and then apprenticed at the Galerie Würthle in Vienna where he soon became a kind of partner to the woman who was running the gallery.

DT: How old was he at that time?

HB: I think he started there around 1920. He was born in 1894 so by then he was 26.

DT: It’s remarkable that he was already very developed by that age. He had already become a partner in a gallery that was at the center of the avant-garde art scene in Austria.

HB: At the same time he became the director of the art department at the Ricola Verlag Publishing House in Vienna and published more books, mostly on art. The art books are what really survived and are very important today. The most important publication he produced with the help of the Ricola Verlag (he didn’t have enough money to do it on his own) was a portfolio called Das Graphische Werk on Egon Schiele that contained etchings and lithographs which were posthumously published. Egon Schiele died in 1918 and the portfolio was published in 1921. At that time it was popular and had been beautifully bound, presented and numbered. That’s when, with cooperation of course, Kallir started to become acquainted with the whole art establishment. The forward of the portfolio was written byArthur Roessler, one of the major supporters of Schiele whom Kallir knew very well.

DT: So Kallir never got to know Schiele personally but came to know about his work through contact with the galleries and art scene?

HB: Exactly. So that launched his career. In 1923 he left the Galerie Würthle and founded his own gallery, the Neue Galerie, which is now the name of the museum here in New York.

DT: So the museum was named after Kallir’s first gallery?

HB: Indeed.

DT: As an homage.

HB: It’s an homage and it’s an amazing continuation of the spade work Kallir did all his life. He knew many Austrian artists personally – some who are not well known in this country like Otto Rudolf Scatz anGerhart Frankl. Oskar Laske has a certain reputation in the United States. The Busch-Reisinger Museum has two beautiful works by him but they are not famous. To put an artist on the “map” takes a lot of time and you can only do that with top artists.

DT: It seems that the art world had only so much space at the top.

HB: It seems that way unfortunately.

DT: Or else it’s possible that you’re not recognized within your time.

HB: Exactly.

DT: For some art careers recognition comes much later. For example the Feminist Movement of the 1970’s brought more attention to the work of Frida Kahlo, Mary Cassatt, and Camille Claudel creating a new historical appraisal of their work and careers. There can be a delay of recognition based on what the culture is, what the society is, and what critical consciousness is recognized at the time. You mentioned Kallir knew Max Beckmann personally and had worked with him to produce prints. How did they come into contact?

HB: He came to Vienna and was friends with relatives of Otto Kallir. Through them Beckmann met Quappi, his second wife, so there are many connections. Our previous exhibition was of Marie-Louise Motesiczky who was a student of Beckmann. Quappi was a friend of Motesiczky so you can see how certain relationships came together around Kallir.

www.gseart.com

Part 1 of 3

Neoteric Art: Give us some background information on yourself.

Sam Still: I was born in 1953 in Philadelphia, and shortly thereafter moved with my parents and older sister to a small town near my father’s birthplace in South Carolina. Our family would continue to grow with the addition of 2 more sisters and a brother. My mother was from a suburb of Philadelphia. My childhood was filled with alcoholism and violence.

Beginning at age 6, we made yearly visits back to Philadelphia to see may mother’s family. On that first visit my father took us to New York City. We rode the subway and visited the Empire State Building. My father stated emphatically that cites were disgusting and dirty and could not understand why one would actually want to live in one. I was mesmerized.

My mother’s father was a practicing artist in Philadelphia where he owned a frame shop and offered copies of famous paintings to his clients. He never received recognition for his own work. His 2 sisters, that I never met, taught at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. There were original oil paintings by my grandfather throughout the house growing up. My mother did draw small faces quite often but they were never discussed or saved. My father was a tool & die maker and owned a small firm where in later years I worked on and off until I was 18. I did torch cutting of metal, welding, milling machine and lathe turning of both metal and fiberglass.

Making art has always been with me as a means of closing out the rest of the world. In the first grade I was sent to the principle’s office with a collage I had made. I handed it to Ms. Pauline, she took it, studied it for what seemed like forever, handed it back to me, told me I would be a famous artist one day and to please get back to class quickly. It meant nothing to me. As I got older, I drew cars, houses and maps of imagined cities. Purchased my first rapidograph pen at 15 to facilitate a black for tires that I could not get with a pencil. Was given my first car at 15 with a gas credit card, asked my father if I could keep the car, drive less, but buy art supplies, he said no.

Started to cut classes, would drive many times more than 100 miles out of town, stop for a burger and return. I did this for two years without anyone noticing it though my father did inquire several times why my gas charges seemed excessive. Forged a fair number of sick passes, as I look back I realize schools at that time looked the other way when confronted with an uncomfortable situation. Did not graduate, acquired my GED at 18. Did apply to The Art Institute of Atlanta at 18 and Ringling School of Art at 19, was accepted in both, went, dropped out of both within weeks.

Married three times. First marriage and frame shop at 19 in South Carolina. To supplement income I would make small drawings using a rapidograph pen with overlays of watercolor and sepia ink. These would be sold at small weekend mall shows throughout South Carolina. I had quite a handsome pegboard display if I may say so myself. The drawings were of barns and other ramshackle structures. The structures always had a “brick” foundation and in each brick I would right profanities, only visible if one knew they were there. Generally, I would take twelve drawings, six with profanities and six without. Without fail, the ones with profanities would sell first and many times those six would be the only ones that would sell. My relationship with my father was strained at this time so I did not sign any work with my first and last name as I our names were the same, instead I used Aaron, my middle name. First marriage failed.

Entered my first juried exhibition (in S.C.) with work more abstract in nature, got rejected. Depressed and lonely, overdosed on a variety of medications left by my first wife whom had worked at a hospital pharmacy. Unsuccessful suicide. Fearing another attempt, committed myself to a mental institution in South Carolina, realized that was not the answer for me. Produced two drawings while there, got out one month later. I then naively evaluated where I might find an audience for my work. Looked at LA, New York, Chicago and San Francisco. Couldn’t afford my car, so LA was out, New York was almost bankrupt, Chicago was too cold, so I settled on San Francisco, it is 1975 now. Greyhound had a special cross-country ticket that I could purchase for 75.00. That meant I could travel from S.C. to California and still have 150.00 left over. I had sold all my worldly possessions for 225.00 to facilitate an escape. My mother told me I was running away and I agreed and stated “not fast enough”.

After an 80 hour plus cross country bus ride I arrived in San Francisco. Having only spent 15.00 on nabs (type of snack crackers) and soft drinks, I did have 135.00 left. San Francisco was big, scary and exciting. I found a room on California Street for 130.00 (monthly) and the deposit was kindly waived. Now with 5.00 left, I plotted my next move. Purchased more nabs, a soft drink, (and made a pig of myself) some paper and a pen. That first evening I copied ten resumes to hand out the next day. Being very intimidated by the world in general, I didn’t ask anyone how to use public transportation so I walked all over S.F. and hand delivered my hand written resumes to ten frame shops on Friday. No responses. Saturday I pawned my last possession of value, my Seiko wrist watch for 6.00 and purchased an extremely delicious mushroom pizza and a two liter bottle of a root beer. I was depressed again, but at least in a new world.

Having no phone, an extremely kind frame shop owner from Noe Valley actually came by the rooming house on Tuesday and offered me a job. I worked that Wednesday and at the end of the day asked if I could get paid. She said yes and I ate that evening. Things were looking up. Unknown to me, the owner was opening a second shop in Berkeley. Three months later I was the manager of that shop and given a company vehicle to take home every evening, all beyond my wildest expectations.

Six months later I was married to the manager that had suggested that I be contacted for the job. She was from the south and was not put off my heavy southern accent. As an artist, she enlightened me to the practice of entering juried exhibitions and creating an exhibition history. Within 18 months, her mother passed and we relocated to New Orleans to care for her father. Second marriage failed.

By this time I was established in New Orleans with successful frame shop. 1990 and life is bumping along, third marriage to a wonderfully understanding woman, a great family with 2 young sons, great neighborhood and a convertible! Life was good!

By 1998 bored with framing and making art in a much more serious manner in terms of contemplating the process. Sold my business in 2000, packed up the family and moved to New York City. I try to make most of my decisions on a deathbed scenario; what would I think on my deathbed about not trying to become a successful artist in New York and staying in New Orleans with my somewhat easy existence.

I could not bare the thought, so here I am in Chelsea cobbling together freelance jobs to stay afloat and selling drawings. The draw of New York was a financial one, in a very basic way I felt I could derive more income (even with a higher cost of living) than in New Orleans. This has proved to be true for my work. On the other hand I was extremely naive regarding the art world in countless ways, and it has been the most difficult endeavor I have ever been involved with.

Now in my 11th year living here, I finally know my drawings have evolved to a point that I feel very positive about my practice and the future on all levels except age. Closing in on 60, I know that is the biggest hurdle to overcome on so many levels, alas it is too late in the game to turn back so I continue to move forward.

NA: Discuss your work/thought process when starting a new piece.

SS: I have never felt as if I’m creating new work. The most recent drawing connects to the previous drawing and so on and on. Each work is simply a variation on the previous, no matter what the medium.

NA: Elaborate on the overall idea behind your “online” exhibitions.

SS: That the work is obviously for sale. I am asking for the sale. At this point, I’m not really sold on the idea of the online exhibitions, but always need to explore. The death bed scenario at work.

NA: Discuss your most current online exhibition, “Forty New Drawings”.

SS: Nothing really to discuss. I make the work and whether it speaks to people is not my concern.

NA: Earlier this year you were part of the “An Exchange with Sol LeWitt” exhibition at MASS MoCA. Please elaborate.

SS: I enter juried exhibitions that have no entry fee and this was one. Nothing unique re being chosen. I did not know the juror.

NA: Who/What has been an influence on your work?

SS: Working in my father’s machine shop as a young man. Welding, acetylene torch cutting of metal plates, turning metal on lathes etc. The hard edges and flat surfaces are in my drawings. The very first job I did for my father was sweeping his shop on Saturdays. This was a 4000 square foot building and I did a very sloppy job the first time. He took me around on an inspection and pointed out all of my inadequacies has a sweeper. His lesson to me was to do every endeavor with the utmost respect, no matter how seemingly unimportant, and to do it with the very best of my ability.

After arriving in New York I started to read as many art related books, magazines and articles in an attempt to place myself in and art historical context. This did not happen. To place my work in any context is not my job. My job is to make work relevant to my needs.

NA: Name a few art magazines and/or online art sites that you pay attention to.

SS: None really. I am basically only looking for no cost juried exhibitions to enter.

www.samstill.com

Images:
Top. 5:37 PM April 27, 2011, 2011, ink on paper, 30″ x 38″

2. Runner, 1977, pen and ink on paper, 9″ x 14″ — Drawing rejected from SC exhibition that proceeded suicide attempt.

3. Sanity/Insanity, 1977, pen and ink on paper, 10″ x 10″ — Drawing produced in Mental Institution. Which opening led to what?

4. Psychic Waterfall, 1977, pen and ink on paper, 11″ x 9″ — Life is an up-stream endeavor.

5. Second Chance, 1978, pen and ink on paper, 4″ x 36″ — Second chance in S.F. Box is up-righting itself.

6. 1:45 PM June 27, 2011, 2011, ink on paper, 30″ x 38″

Neoteric Art: Give us some history on yourself.

Victoria Webb: I grew up in Princeton, NJ within a few blocks of the university campus. My mom was a painter who studied at the Art Students League in NYC and my dad was a film editor who commuted daily into Manhattan. My childhood was filled with art and music lessons, along with a full arts curriculum in the Princeton public school system. I consider myself privileged to have grown up in such a liberal and diverse town, with teachers (and parents) who focused on critical thinking and freedom of expression. I went to one semester at Bradford College in MA where I was planning on a double major in art and music, and a transfer to a school with better studio painting classes. I then dropped out when my father became very ill.

In my early twenties, I was designing and selling embroidered clothing and textiles in rural areas of Vermont and Nova Scotia. My ex-husband and I moved to Toronto in 1974 and met a group of artists at a collective who were selling limited edition prints door to door. That was my first exposure with actually making a living as an artist. We made enough off that and my fashion modeling to buy a log cabin and acreage in Maine – early ‘back to the landers’ with the objective of building double studios and being full-time artists.

When I moved to Atlanta a couple of years later, I sold my own prints to galleries, at art festivals, and worked as an apprentice to an Atlanta studio, learning intaglio printmaking techniques like drypoint, aquatint, and engraving. At the same time I studied painting and color theory for about eight years at the studio of three Russian portrait artists renowned in Atlanta, the Chatovs. I began painting exclusively in oils in the early 1980′s.

NA: You have worked as a designer in the television broadcasting industry. Please discuss and also elaborate on how it relates (or not) to your painting.

VW: At the time I entered broadcast in 1982, the Mac hadn’t even been launched. I was working on the first ‘Paintbox’ developed in the UK, at the Weather Channel, one of the early cable networks. I was one of the few artists in television with a fine arts background and there was strong resistance to using abstraction in spots. The US TV industry was much more literal than Europe and Japan, which had a tradition of non-linear television commercials. Also at the time, a lot of engineering types were going into the TV design world – mostly all men. The graphics produced were on the whole, pretty awful. Heavy 3D drop shadows on text, a lot of chrome highlights that resembled cheap car commercials. The strong designers in the print world took longer to adapt to motion design, but of course now we have schools like SCAD.

Once I began animating, I used public domain and early avant garde films in commercial spots, like Man Ray, Joris Ivens, even Fred Astaire clips. Later I used Stan Brakhage and Bill Viola, Barbara Hammer and Harry Smith, among others. I loved American abstract avant film and video and it influenced my broadcast work. After layering a few dozen times, the originals were unidentifiable. Although I shamefacedly admit to putting a book of Motherwell’s paintings on an animation stand and using those too – but some of my film and video work never saw airtime; it was considered too non-literal and ‘out there’.

In 1997 I moved to San Francisco to take a job working for the interactive television network ZDTV, that eventually became TechTV; an early tv network devoted to technology owned by Ziff-Davis publishing. I learned a lot about web and motion design for the internet, interactivity, and how to build online communities. The job ended when the network was sold to the Los Angeles based gaming network G4, but that knowledge base has been critical in terms of how I’ve managed my online art presence.
The only other way my broadcast work relates to my painting career is that it supported me for 26 years.

NA: Regarding your painting, discuss your work/thought process when starting a new piece.

VW: Frank Stella said “it’s about observation….what you see and record. It’s the observation that’s most important.” Sometimes I’ll begin with a rough sketch but often I’ll just jump into an idea directly on canvas. I’m more focused my own emotional response to color, light and form than solving a problem of perspective. So most of my work is relatively flat and frontal. Over the past fifteen years I’ve been listening to primarily jazz and classical music while I’m painting; my early musical foundation in piano, violin and voice probably contribute a lot to the continued interest. Investigating contrasts and rhythms on canvas seems to me much like composing a sonata – using color instead of notes. This can come fairly directly, from live performances where I’ll sketch on site. Later I’ll transfer those to a larger format on canvas in the studio, working with sense memories.

I paint from life and rarely use photographs. I especially don’t like doing figurative or portrait work from photographs – where it’s almost always the case that the modeling gets flattened and the light source is overly high contrast. I try to be as spontaneous as possible on some work and on others, I’ll deliberate for months, sometimes years. Abstraction is not always immediate and has to be worked out just as figurative painting must be considered in terms of composition, anatomy and skin tones.

I have two times a day that are my favorites for natural light: morning and late afternoon. Sometimes I’ll work consistently and then take a week’s break. Those times away from the work offer new insight into a piece and allow for a more even critique. I have a habit that I picked up from my mother, of painting over my rejects. Regrettably, there are paintings I now wish I still had. I do have an entire slide inventory of work from my early years, but have used a digital camera to shoot the work since 2007. Technical aspects – I like textural artifacts on the surface and usually paint on heavy cotton duck that’s been stretched and gessoed a couple of times. I’ve used good linen but don’t much like the smooth surface. I still enjoy stretching my own canvas – the process allows for a quiet contemplative time before launching into the painting itself.

NA: What is your “painting” philosophy?

VW: I find it humorous when gallerists or curators refer to “issue-driven work.” The trends or current philosophies in art are not anything I’ve ever been interested in, except that during the early to mid 1980s when some of what I produced I might now agree is ‘bad art’. At the time that was a trend, and my work was shown in a lot of exhibits and galleries.

Every abstract painting is issue-driven as well; there’s always a problem to be solved, whether it’s color, form or structure and composition. It’s a personal response that may certainly be influenced by social justice, political or environmental issues, but the work is simply not as literal. I think this is where critics and curators make a great mistake in marginalizing or ignoring work in which themes or ideas aren’t instantly recognizable or communicated literally. A mark is a mark is a mark, as Gertrude Stein might say. We have obtuse and challenging music that is acceptable without having to be immediately categorized.

I began as a representational artist and still love and appreciate good figurative work. And often I’ll paint a landscape that’s absolutely recognizable. But my intent since the late 1980s has been focused on color and form, in the abstract. Again, I’ll paraphrase Stella to say that we’re just beginning with abstraction – it’s not possible (he says) to work your way out of it, but to expand the possibilities. The freedom and challenge to explore and take risks is what I love and find so exhilarating about abstraction.

NA: You live and work in Atlanta, Georgia. Discuss the local art scene.

VW: There’s a thriving arts scene here, but as another artist and I discussed at the closing of a recent show, it’s not easy to get to everything. In Chelsea you can visit one neighborhood and take in maybe 20-30 exhibits at a time. Same with San Francisco and the Union Square district. Philly has a First Night stroll and you can cover a lot of galleries in a few blocks. In Atlanta there might be two or three good galleries in one neighborhood, a collective and a café or restaurant that’s showing artists’ work. Traveling 20-30 minutes by car to each hood is not only a big time waster but it’s also now expensive because of gas prices. People generally flock to one area at a time.

There’s more outsider and folk art here in the South – it’s become a kind of branding for the region, whether that’s a good thing or not. There are also smaller outlying arts centers focused on local artists, and while we still need to get more women into the scene, it’s slowly happening. There seem to be more women gallerists and administrators running prominent institutions, like Annette Cone-Skelton at MOCA GA and Fay Gold, a longtime local gallerist who has come back into the fray developing a gallery space in the West Side Cultural Arts Center, opening this fall. Some of our arts writers and critics are women who’ve been involved in the arts for decades, like Catherine Fox, the former Atlanta Journal arts critic, who co-founded and writes for the blog ArtsCriticAtl.

NA: Who are some of your favorite “famous” painters and some of your “not-so-famous” painters?

VW: Way too many to name, but here’s the short list: Soutine, Bonnard, Vuillard, Emily Carr, the German Expressionists, the Canadian Group of Seven- specifically Tom Thomson and A.Y. Jackson, the Russian artist Valentin Serov, Hans Hofmann, Rufino Tamayo, Frank Auerbach, De Kooning, Kline, Cleve Gray, Cy Twombly, Diebenkorn, Arthur Dove, Hopper. I especially like the Bay Area Figurative painters, like David Park and Elmer Bischoff. Discovering Joan Mitchell’s work in the late 1980s was a revelation for me. I identified with her emotionalism and her bond with nature, and what I grasped from her body of work is probably far greater than any other influence.

I also like some lesser known artists in Europe – the Irish painters Barrie Cooke, Mary Canty, Donald Tesky. Ingávur av Reyni from the Faroe Islands and the Danish painter Ingvald Holmefjord. Carl Plansky is a New York artist I was about to do an interview with on my blog when he died unexpectedly a couple of years ago. Eric Aho, Mary Abbott, Stuart Shils are other contemporary American painters I admire.

NA: Regarding your art career, where would you like to be ten years from now?

VW: Gallery representation with a strong and knowledgeable dealer is something that I think most artists would like. I don’t yet know the new Atlanta scene well enough to choose – but I’m scouting. Back in the ’80′s I was with Heath Gallery (now gone) and what has become Sandler Hudson Gallery. There are so many more now, each with their own particular attributes.

I also sell online – amazingly – at retail artisan site Etsy.com and I’ve sold a few works at other online sites and off my own blog. I began posting work on Etsy at the beginning of 2009, a few months after my last broadcast job ended. I’ve sold more in the past two and a half years than I sold in the +thirty years I’ve been painting and exhibiting. I know a few other painters in reputable galleries, who sell on the internet as well.

Social networking has opened up the field and online sales seem to be a new model for the arts. Younger collectors are as comfortable buying art online as they are purchasing books from Amazon. I hope to expand my “business” over the next ten years. The positive aspect of that is having to be productive, the down side is keeping up with the technology. Retail is fickle and the new is always desirable. In fact, it doesn’t seem that much different from the business of art.

www.victoriawebb.net/
www.furiousdreams.com/blog/

Neoteric Art: Give us some history on yourself.

Debra Riffe: I’m a southern girl. A native Mississippian. I received a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Howard University, College of Fine Arts, Washington, DC and majored in Illustration/Publications Design. I’ve probably lived in more places than I want to admit: Tupelo, MS, St. Paul, MN, DC, Maryland, Burlingame and LaJolla, CA. Also, I lived abroad for five years in Barranquilla, Colombia, South America. I now reside in Alabama. I’ve called Birmingham “home” for almost 15 years. I suppose that I’ve come full circle because I’ve returned to the south; to my roots. I love that folks still say “please” and “thank you” and are genuinely polite in the south.

NA: You seem to be all about linoleum block relief prints. How did you get involved in this process?

DR: I was introduced to various forms of relief printmaking as an undergrad student. After I received my degree, I pretty much abandoned the fine arts and settled into a career as a graphic designer. Marriage and a family followed. I became a soccer mom and realized that I didn’t sit well through long practice sessions, so I decided to teach myself how to stitch and design needlepoint canvases; a portable art form that I could easily tuck into a backpack. A few years after we settled in Birmingham, I became interested in participating in local and regional art festivals. I loved the idea of showing and selling my needlepoint. However, I quickly discovered that it was virtually impossible to stitch canvases fast enough to build inventory for the festival circuit. I decided to convert my needlepoint images/sketches into block prints. I’ve been carving linoleum blocks weekly, if not daily, ever since.

NA: Discuss your thought/work process when starting a new piece and elaborate more on your imagery/subject matter.

DR: My thought/work process is relatively simple: I create what I know. Although my family (mother, father and three brothers) has always lived in DC, I spent my teen years living with my maternal grandparents in Tupelo, MS. I jokingly tell people that I “served time” in Tupelo but the reality is that living in the south (rather than visiting every holiday and during the summer months) was a turning point in my life. My grandparents, the close-knit community where I lived and the sights and sounds of the southern landscape shaped my sensibilities. I’ve always had an eye for detail and those details and my observations of living a southern life have influenced my compositions. I create what I know: African-American imagery of the rural south.

I illustrate activities and settings that I feel connected to. My work process is uncomplicated and basic. There are no tricks or secrets. I’ll rework a sketch or a doodle from my sketchbook, one that I’ve kept since my freshman year in college! Sometimes I’ll work from a photo that I’ve staged. Or, I’ll piece together an image from various references. I begin with a very tight pencil illustration on tracing paper and will work through several value studies and compositions. Once I finalize the details I’m ready to transfer the drawing onto the block and I retrace convex and contoured lines only, eliminating all shading. It’s important that I convey shape, gesture, attitude, movement and emotion on the surface of the linoleum at this point, with as few lines as possible. Although this is my template, I enjoy making my cuts spontaneously.

I consider myself a figurative and a narrative artist. My compositions are, exclusively, images of African Americans placed in rural southern surroundings, performing routine tasks in timeless solitary reflective moments. These tasks speak of social status and identity, intimacy and a sense of place. I appreciate the ordinary and try to record details, within each print, that will stir an emotion the viewer might respond to.

My early efforts were small prints -5 x 7inches or 8 x 10 inches- on mounted blocks. In hindsight, I think that I worked small because I had been away from relief printing for so long I needed time to regain my confidence in controlling the gouges and rethinking and finding balance in the subtractive process. Two years ago, I began purchasing unmounted battleship linoleum on a roll that, of course, gives me the flexibility of working any size I please. My images are becoming progressively larger. To date, the largest that I’ve printed is 18 x 24 inches. I love the challenge of working large, complex pieces. I enjoy the versatility and the immediacy of drawing with a pencil and the physicality of turning the wheel of a printing press. I own two Conrad etching presses and I, rarely, hand burnish my prints. The richness of Daniel Smith Traditional Relief Black #79 oil based ink pressed onto white BFK Rives printmaking paper is magical. The contrast of opaque black marks combined with sharp modulating lines gives each print an infinite range of tonal variation and texture. When I began showing my work in art festivals I was intimidated by all of the color artwork surrounding my booth. Color! Color! Everywhere! But I learned that my black and white images were a welcome addition to the circuit, a fresh approach. Black is a color!

I’ve been directly influenced by my friend, Amos Kennedy, whose mantra is to bring affordable art to the masses. One way of doing that is to get back to basics, in this case, printing onto chipboard or kraft cardstock. I don’t have access to letterpress equipment so I, literally, hand cut all of my letters whenever I have a message to share. Last year, I introduced several images printed onto chipboard, promoting sustainable living and healthy food choices. I try to maintain the same level of craftsmanship when carving and printing onto chipboard or a fine printmaking paper. All of my chipboard prints are “open edition” prints. Signed, but not numbered.

NA: Who have been some of your artistic influences?

DR: I’m drawn to the work of Charles White, Jacob Lawrence, Elizabeth Catlett, John Biggers, Aaron Douglas, Palmer Hayden, William H. Johnson, Horace Pippin, James L. Wells, Benny Andrews, Lynn Ward, Clare Leighton, Barry Moser, Kreg Yingst, Amos Kennedy, Stephen Alcorn, José Orozco, Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and any number of German Expressionists. Each of these artists and others, past and present, inspire and influence my work. I should add that I’m especially enamored with the African-American artists who thrived during the years of the WPA.

NA: You live and work in Birmingham, Alabama. Discuss the local art scene there.

DR: There is a vibrant arts community in Birmingham with a number of galleries showing excellent folk art and contemporary art by local, national and international artists. I must admit, tho, that I feel that I’m a bit on the outer edges of the gallery scene. Other than sharing notes and ideas with a few locally talented printmakers, I don’t consider myself an artist in-the-know. Having said that, there are indeed a number of wonderful local artists who are constantly working on new projects and I follow them extensively.

NA: Regarding your art career, what are some of your future goals?

DR: By day I am a graphic designer. I learned to draw on a drafting table with a pencil and technical pens. I’m a purist. I’m old school. I want to draw every day and cut blocks every night. I resent having to sit in front of a computer eight hours a day to make a living. Okay, now that I’ve vented . . . future plans include working MUCH larger, exploring woodcuts and collaborating with a “humble negro printer” this year on a book.

NA: You’re a graphic designer by day…do you keep your day job and your fine art career separate or are there overlaps…is there a connection between the two?

DR: No, it’s not difficult for me to separate my day job, as a graphic designer, from my fine art career. Not at all!!!!

My APPLE computer is loaded with the latest software and maximum RAM. A mouse, keyboard and monitor are my tools.  99.9% of my daily tasks involves measuring components to the nth degree. To achieve a good end result on any design I’m problem-solving, selecting color combinations, structuring and arranging type and images and following the principles of page layout and/or the fundamentals of logo design. I’m producing because I have to.

Printmaking is therapeutic for me. I live for the meditative, solitary aspect of the experience. It’s intuitive, tactile, messy and physical. The process allows you –actually it forces you –to THINK. Mistakes become an integral part of my design(s) and I never have to justify or defend them.  I have no one to answer to or to please but myself and I NEVER have deadlines to meet unless they are self-imposed. Measuring is arbitrary. I’m happiest when I’m carving a block or printing. I can be creative, inventive.  I’m producing because I want to not because I have to. And . . . what printer doesn’t enjoy the smell of oil-based ink?

The two disciplines meet, in the middle, ONLY when I’m photographing, scanning and creating brochures or publications for my festival venues.

All images © 2011 Debra Riffe

www.debrariffe.com

Neoteric Art: Give us some history on yourself.

Michael Cutlip: I was born and raised in the SF Bay Area, where I am still living today. I was a bit of a late bloomer when it came to the arts. I didn’t discover paint until my mid 20’s. I was attending University as a business major. I was only a semester away from graduation and took a drawing 1 class to fulfill a general ed requirement. I ended up changing my major to fine art, took another 3 years of college, and the rest is history.

NA: Discuss your work/thought process when starting a new piece.

MC: I just start laying down paint and let the work go the path it wants. I very rarely have a plan. Plans never work out for me.

NA: Do all your paintings have a central theme…are connected, or should they be viewed as individual works?

MC: Well, I suppose that the central theme of all the work is me, since I painted them all. But, yes, they are all individual creations. Each piece speaks something different to me.

NA: You live and work in Berkeley, California. Discuss the West coast art scene.

MC: To be honest. I tend to just work in my own little bubble. I don’t pay much attention to the art scene around me, other than what my wife and friends are doing…

NA: Who have been some of your artistic influences?

MC: Kids, street artists, just the world around me….I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to what “real” artists are doing.

NA: Regarding your art career, what are some of your long term goals?

MC: Just to keep painting with enthusiasm and hopefully to continue inspiring others.

www.michaelcutlip.com

Neoteric Art: Give some background information on yourself.

Doug McGoldrick: I grew up in the Minneapolis suburbs and was involved in art from a young age, my dad was an avid amateur photographer. My early work was all drawing and painting I actually have an MFA in painting from the University of Wisconsin Madison. After I finished school I started working as an assistant for commercial photographers and that really lead me into photography in a big way both professionally and art wise.

NA: Discuss the distinction between your commercial and fine art photography work.

DM: For me there is a pretty large distinction between what I do for art and what I do for my commercial clients. With commercial work, although I try to have my own style and an input on what the image ends up looking like, end the end it’s a job to produce something that most likely sells something else. I have to leave space for text, it has to be shot a certain way etc… With my art work honestly the last thing I think about is what someone else thinks of the images it’s really something I do for myself. It’s a great sense of freedom away from the commercial work.

NA: Regarding your fine art work, discuss your work/thought process when starting a new piece and/or series.

DM: For me when I start a new series it seems to start from something I see from the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of something usually some sort of play of light on something, then I spend the next couple years trying to capture that light on paper. The danger with my process is that sometimes when I start to get it I can get repetitious so I always keep on the look out for that. I also tend to work on several series at a time so if I start to feel like something is getting boring to me I can work on a different project for a while. Although I like to think of myself as semi conceptual photographer, I do love beauty in art, it goes against the grain right now to have work that considers beauty and has a bit of a romantic spirit to it, but I’m making work for me not the gallery world so I make stuff that I like to look at.

NA: Discuss in more detail your “Quiet Night” series.

DM: My wife grew up in Wisconsin and we have a cabin up there, I grew up in a family that never went fishing, camping or any of that kind of thing so the area around our cabin was a new world for me to explore. All the surrounding towns are empty at night and the lighting is really beautiful, it makes them look like film sets. I’ve always enjoyed night photography I love how it takes something so normal as a small town and turns it into a place with some sort of dark story, there is a sense that something is just about to happen and probably not something good. While in the day time these town are very Norman Rockwell. I love the stillness and mystery of those little towns.

NA: Seems like all your work is color. Do you prefer color over black and white? Elaborate.

DM: It’s funny I really like black and white photography and for a long time that was my thing I did black white mostly medium and large format work, I was a total darkroom nut, very classical. When I started the interiors series of images it was really the first time I played with color in my personal work, and for the most part those images in there early phase where pretty much just blue. But that kind of set off in my head the idea of doing color work for personal shots. Also digital had a lot to do with it, color film especially large format color film is wicked expensive, when I was able to get a digital camera that gave me the quality I wanted, I was able to start experimenting with color and I really enjoyed playing with colors in photoshop.

NA: Who have been some of your influences?

DM: My biggest photo influences are people like Lorna Simpson, Louis Gonzales Palma, Richard Avedon, Keith Carter, Carrie Mea Weems, the Starns, and Sally Mann. Although in the general world of people who really made me want to be an artist I can still remember going to the Walker Art Center growing up and falling in love with early pop art Rauschenberg, Jaspser Johns and Jim Dine in particular. That work really formed what I wanted to do, and through high school and undergrad that’s the kind of thing I experimented with, lots of chunky paint, photos torn from magazines, shoes and clothing nailed to the canvas etc.., When I was in grad school I ran across a Louis Gonzales Palma print at a museum and then shortly after that I saw my first work by the Starns brothers seeing those really showed me that photography can be more than just a single snap printed large and hung on the wall. I liked the idea that you could take a picture and mess with it kind of in that early pop art way. I was always concerned with photography in that there’s this feeling of well, if I was there I could take that photo too, but seeing there work showed me that photography could be more than a photo. Funny thing is that as I’ve gone on my work has become more or less straight photography.

NA: So what art blogs, e-zines, magazines are you keeping up with?

DM: I’m kind of an information blog junky, so there are a million I could list, I actually talk about them so much in my classes at Columbia College that I have made a delicious page for my students so they can try and keep up with me, http://delicious.com/dougphoto. I also get many magazines my favorites are Blind Spot, Lens Work, PDN and victor the magazine Hasselblad puts out seemingly at random intervals.

www.mcgoldrickphoto.com
www.dougphoto.com

Neoteric Art: You are a self taught artist. Give us some history on yourself and also discuss when and why you decided to be an artist.

Kevin Swallow: I grew up in the south suburbs of Chicago and went to Northern Illinois University, graduating with a BA in Media Communications in 1993. I created drawings regularly from an early age and have been shooting photos since my late teens. While at NIU, I designed flyers promoting the campus radio station where I worked as a DJ and station manager. My creative pursuits during that time mostly revolved around music – DJ-ing and promoting indie/punk bands. I think the DIY approach of college radio and indie/punk music influenced me later as a self-taught artist.

I’ve been a practicing artist for 15 years. I’m self-taught in that I didn’t go to art school but have taken various classes in drawing, painting and screen printing. I began pursuing photography more seriously and started painting when I was laid off from job at a magazine in 1995. I had just moved to the city (Chicago) over the weekend – took the “L” to work Monday morning and was home by noon with no job. With a lot of free time on my hands, I started to explore my new home in the city by bike, train or just walking different neighborhoods – taking photos of architecture and street scenes. I also hit the art store and picked up some acrylic paints and canvas and started painting. I read books to learn about the materials and experimented with different techniques. Once I found another 9-5 job, I created art mostly at night and on weekends. I’ve also had two other times when I’ve been laid off and have been able to dedicate a lot of time to creating art.

For about 10 years, I painted out of my home studio in various Chicago apartments. Since 2006, I’ve worked out of the Cornelia Arts Building in Roscoe Village. I’m currently in a shared space with painters Eric Weinstein and Jeff Bryner. I liked having my studio at home and being able to work whenever I wanted, but it didn’t take long for me to adjust to having the separate studio. It’s great to have that dedicated creative space without other distractions. It’s also been inspiring for me to be in a building with other artists. Having that community has influenced my art and helped me take things to a more professional level. I enjoy talking with the other artists, giving and getting feedback and seeing what everyone is working on. The open studio events have given me exposure to collectors that I wouldn’t normally get by just working out of my home. Being in the Cornelia Arts Building has also helped to me focus a lot more on developing my art and to be more disciplined with my studio practice. Having the 9-5 day job forces me to better manage my time and gives me a “creative routine” so that I can be productive when I’m at the studio.

Since 2001, I’ve exhibited my work in many places in Chicago: galleries, alternative spaces, cafés, restaurants, coffee shops, apartments, art walks, offices, silent auctions, a hotel and a hospital. For a few years, I curated shows for Friends of the Arts (fota.com) at a café in Andersonville.

NA: You create paintings, drawings, photographs, screen prints and digital media…that’s a lot! Very briefly, describe each one.

KS: For me, all of these media are connected and they fuel each other. My palette — whether using paint, a camera or a computer is strongly influenced by the unlimited sights, sounds, and colors of the city.

Paintings: I consider painting to be my primary media. I enjoy experimenting with my art and painting especially allows me to experiment. I paint a variety of subject matter but mostly cityscapes, people and abstracts. I work to create a harmony and balance between the shapes and colors in the composition. If I don’t have those things, it doesn’t feel right or done. I enjoy mixing colors and building up the layers of a painting over time. It’s relaxing for me – I like to listen to music when I paint and it’s easy to get lost in the creative flow. I feel “off” when I go a week or two without painting.

Drawings: Drawing is the one artistic thing I’ve done consistently throughout my life. I don’t really do elaborate drawings – I mostly use drawing to work out ideas and sketch compositions for paintings. Sometimes I’ll sketch from life and from photos I’ve taken or images from the internet. I then transpose the smaller sketches onto canvas to use as a basis for a painting.

Photographs: I love the spontaneity and freedom that photography provides – living in the city creates unlimited opportunities for shooting photos. I used to shoot with film but now mostly use digital cameras or an iPhone. I enjoy shooting a variety of subjects but usually shoot mostly cityscapes and architecture. Taking photographs energizes my creativity and provides a lot of inspiration and ideas for my art.

Screen prints: I took a screen printing class at Lill Street Art Center in 2008. I wanted to learn something new but it also turned out to be something that allowed me to combine my photography and painting. I use either hand-drawn images or my photographs when creating a screen print image. I paint over old record album covers, and then print a series of images allowing some of the original album art or text to show through. I built a light box (with help of Scott Simons, another Cornelia artist) to “burn” the images to the screens before I print them. I like the multi-faceted process of screen printing and the experimental nature of the medium. I like to work quickly, and screen printing lets me create many images at once.

Digital: I taught myself web design after being laid off from a dot-com in 2000. I built my first website then to showcase my art and still design and maintain my website today. Around that same time, I began creating “music snapshots” captured from the visualizations setting on a music player. I’ve also created abstract digital paintings in Photoshop and more recently started experimenting with the iPhone “Brushes” digital painting application.

NA: Since we at Neoteric are fond of painting let’s discuss that. Describe your work/thought process when starting a new painting.

KS: For me, it’s easy to start a painting – it’s finishing with that last brushstroke that’s most difficult.

I used to just pick a color and start painting. Now my preliminary process is more planned when starting a new painting. I’ll create some sketches and/or write out ideas for a series or individual paintings in my sketchbook. I sometimes print photos I’ve taken to use as reference or do some large scale drawings with charcoal to get the composition down first.

I use mostly acrylic paint and typically use pre-stretched canvas or wood panels already primed with gesso. I usually start with a wash of color on the blank canvas, mixing a few colors to create a warm earth tone. I’ll either build up the wash with more paint or sketch out the composition on the canvas with charcoal after the wash dries. Sometimes I just start drawing the composition or large shapes with a thinned dark paint.

My paintings usually take anywhere from a week to a couple of months in total. I work on a few paintings at the same time, so there may always be one that I’m just starting. I like to use some of the same colors on multiple paintings to create a cohesiveness and to help develop a series. While building up the composition, I add layers of color and create textures with different sized palette knives, ends of broken paint brushes and random tools. I do this by scraping paint or drawing with the tools as each layer is drying. This brings some color through from earlier layers and provides texture for future layers. With my abstract aerial landscape paintings, I rotate the canvas throughout the process until I find the orientation that feels best. Other times, I just paint over areas of the composition until I get it how I want it.

NA: Even within your paintings you have different genres such as landscapes, still lives, people, abstracts, mixed media, etc. Please elaborate.

KS: I started out as mostly an abstract painter my first few years but then that moved to painting faces, cityscapes and mixed media. The still lifes came out of taking drawing and painting classes.

I’ve always sketched faces – mostly imaginary but sometimes based on people I know. I use an illustrative sketch-like style with dark outlines and bright colors which I probably got from copying cartoons as a kid. About 8 years ago, I sketched faces everyday at lunch for an hour. Some of them I really liked and started creating paintings from them. I haven’t finished too many people paintings lately, but have several that I’ve been painting on-and-off over the last year.

Since 2005, I’ve been developing my “City by the Lake” series which is inspired by two great things about Chicago – the architecture and the lakefront. This is an ongoing series of work where I paint using sketches and photographs I’ve taken as reference, but also add in different elements from my imagination. I try to give the cityscapes, the buildings, water tanks, and lakefront scenes a more abstract quality and use different color palates than you’d see in real life.

Most recently, I’ve been working on a series of abstract aerial landscapes inspired by travel, maps and the natural landscape. The Chicago and New York series is based on Google maps and the Michigan series is based on photos I took from an airplane. My latest set of aerial landscape paintings is loosely based on maps and sketching shapes of different cities where I’ve traveled. I like painting abstractly because it helps me loosen up my brushwork and expand my color palate. I’ve also used abstracts as a way to experiment and move toward something new.

NA: Your water tank paintings are very interesting. Please elaborate.

KS: Rooftop water tanks are a unique architectural feature in cities – especially Chicago and New York. Due to difficulties maintaining and being removed during condo conversions of industrial buildings, they are now a disappearing element of the cityscape. Chicago used to have over 1,200 water tanks but now has less than 200. They became prominent after the Chicago Fire in 1871 and are a link to our industrial past.

The water tanks have figured prominently in my both my photographs and paintings for a while now. Due to the decline of these structures, I’ve been making it a point to photograph them when I see them before they become another cell phone tower. Some of these photos are then used for reference in my cityscape paintings or as the main focal point.

Rooftop water tanks have a great graphical element to them which makes them fun – but challenging – to paint. They are usually a dull gray/brown since many are made of wood and weathered over time, so I change up the colors in my paintings. I like painting the variety and different types of water tanks from different angles and perspectives. I paint directly using reference photos or I create a composition sketch first, then transpose that to the canvas.

Out my studio window, I can see the water tank on top of the old pencil factory loft building which is on the next block. This view has definitely inspired me – I’ve painted a lot more water tanks since moving into my studio, including one based on the pencil factory water tank. I continue to paint water tanks and photograph them. I’ve also used images of them in my screen prints and iPhone digital paintings.

NA: Who have been some of your artistic influences?

KS: My two all-time favorite artists are Picasso and van Gogh. I learned a lot by studying their work at the Art Institute when I first started painting and from reading books about their painting styles and artistic process. They were very prolific too which has influenced the way I like to work. In the last several years, I’ve been inspired by David Hockney, Philip Guston and Richard Diebenkorn as well as contemporary painters Amy Sillman and Dana Schutz.

I love street photography, so Henri Cartier-Bresson, Harry Callahan and Richard Nickel always top the list of my favorite photographers. The newly discovered photos by Vivian Maier that have surfaced recently are also very compelling. All of these photographers have an experimental nature to their work which pulls me in.

When it comes to screen printing, artists like Jay Ryan (who’s also a painter) give me inspiration.?

I’m also influenced by ideas I get from reading books, listening to music, street art I see when traveling, observing people and surfing internet art websites.

NA: Pertaining to your art career where would you like to see yourself 5 years from now?

KS: Five years from now I hope to still have a studio space and to be painting a lot. I’ve shown my work in galleries before – but I’ve never had gallery representation. So, I’d like to be represented by one or more galleries and to develop a larger collector base. Ideally, one of those galleries would be in my hometown of Chicago. A few years ago, I licensed one of my colored cityscape photos for a hotel redesign project. I worked with an art consultant from Atlanta which was a good experience for me. If I can, I’d like to explore the area of art licensing with some more of my photographs.

The internet has leveled the playing field for artists and there’s a lot of opportunities for artists to get exposure for their work. The internet has definitely helped me. Ultimately though, I enjoy creating art for myself – I feel that I need to. But, finding more and different ways to have others enjoy it too is also one of my goals. It’s always gratifying when someone I don’t know wants to buy an artwork of mine and live with it in their home or office. If these things work out, I’d eventually like to turn my art making into my main job and then have something else part-time to supplement the income. If not, that’s fine too – I consider myself lucky to be able to create art.

www.swallowstudios.com

Neoteric Art: Give us some history on yourself.

Meg Duguid: I came to Chicago in 1995 to study at the School of the Art Institute, where I focused on ceramics and papermaking. Within a year of graduating with my BFA, I started throwing public fights (Fight 2000 series), and that’s what really started my personal investigation of performative practice (although it took me a year or two to conclude that I was a performance artist). Those works led me to start exploring laughter, smiling, and eventually comedy, and later opened my practice up into a larger exploration of relationships.

After the Fights 2000 series I did a series of works called The Great Guffaw, where I staged group laughing events at various locations throughout the city. My favorite one was on the CTA blue line, where I had about 15-20 people in a rush hour train car; when the doors would open, we would all laugh, and when they shut, we would stop. The effect became eerie to some rush hour travelers, annoying to others, and still others loved it—this was done a few years before flashmob started. In 2002 I had the opportunity to create my first work at the MCA for the summer solstice event, where I threw Dance with Me…, a silent dance party which took place on the front plaza of the MCA; a DJ spun a transmission to 50 wireless headsets that participants danced to. I also attempted to dig a hole to China in Dogmatic’s dirt room, and I later toilet-papered the Suburban and left town.

I left Chicago in 2003 to get my MFA at Bard College. Bard is a low residency program, so I spent three months there every summer for three years, which freed up nine months to develop new work. I spent my first break interning at the Headlands Center for the Arts just outside of San Francisco, and then the next year I moved to New York City. In 2009 I came back to Chicago. In the grand tradition of the Chicago Alternative Space, I opened Clutch Gallery, a 25-square-inch white cube located in the heart of my purse, which I have been curating since December 2009.

My practice transformed a lot while I was in San Francisco and New York. I fell in love with early comedy, I started to direct individuals in performances, and I began to sketch. During that time and up to now, my investigation of public performance has created a practice that is as much invested in the recording of the performative as it is in the initial act itself. Over the last few years I have been attempting to rip apart my studio practice and build it back into one that is studio driven, utilizing contemporary practice and its intersection with the performative

NA: A lot of your work seems like it is or could be cathartic for the participants. Is there an underlying psychological or therapeutic motive?

MD: This is not my intention. I am interested in the crafting of a moment and the setting up of relationships. When I enlist groups of people, I may be interested in relationships of strangers to each other while participating in an activity, or I might be interested in a specific act itself and how it functions. In grad school I shot a series of portraits of fellow students smiling for as long as they could. The result was a series of videos that ran from 2 to 30 minutes that captured all the stages of smile from painful to forced to genuine.

At the outset of much of my work, I have a picture of what I want the piece to act like, contemplating how performers can be moved around, what method of recording makes sense, where the work is going to happen, and if the architecture of the space plays a major role within the way the work can be created. Last year, I created Everyone Is a Bathing Beauty, where I shot a silent film over the course of a week using the patrons of the Museum of Contemporary Art. In this work I was interested in how bodies can work together to create a shot as well as how a prop can become a character. The piece was loosely based on George Bernard Shaw’s classic play Pygmalion, with a Busby Berkeley twist. Visitors to the museum performed in either a large-scale Busby Berkeley dance scene or short, scripted scenes in which they played the role of Henry Higgins, Eliza Doolittle, or a supporting character. The scenes were edited into a finished film with a loose narrative. The silent movie features numerous Higginses, Doolittles, and supporting characters of varying age, gender, race, and physical appearance.

NA: Describe the relationship between performative work and more traditional studio art, like painting and drawing.

MD: I have found that the term performance art no longer encompasses what it is I do. I am actively seeking to articulate the relationships I am making between the performative and photography, video, sculpture, and drawing.

Drawing has proved to be a really effective tool for me in a few ways. First, for creating objects that stand in for the real deal. A mustache can suddenly just be a drawing of one held up in front of one’s face, and that’s enough for the viewer to say “Hey, look. A mustache.” In Everyone Is a Bathing Beauty, I was able to use a simple drawing of a bathing suit on a Tyveck jumpsuit as a reference for old Hollywood glamour. Of course, when drawing is used like this, it also references cartoon and fantasy just a bit.

Second, drawing is a really nice tool to use in conjunction with photographs of an action. In 2003, I started a series of street performances based in early filmic comedy. These performances derived from the simple question of what happens when you take a comedic moment out of its media context and re-present it in real life. While performing these acts in public, I have found that video cameras become too intrusive and upset the performance, usually contextualizing it as reality television, rather than being a calculated moment. As a result I switched my format to still photography, which allowed my documenters to remain as unobtrusive as tourists or other passersby.

When I got the photos back, I began to ask myself, how do I make this more than just documentation? It’s this question that led me to start erasing the performers out of the images and drawing them back in. The result is a photograph of an actual place and time with a comic book performer doing the action. It plays with the idea of what is real and what isn’t, as well as starts to refer to the idea of comic in all its meanings.

In the autumn of 2007, I staged a 15-person slapstick performance in Battery Park in New York City. The performance consisted of an all-female cast, 5 photographers, and the backdrop of a the Statue of Liberty. I am currently in the process of creating a comic book from it. This piece has taken up various portions of the last three years and hasn’t seen the light of day yet. Some day it will be finished.

Last year I started Smashing Pumpkins, a work all about how to film a falling pumpkin, make an action painting, and reference time-slice photography. Making use of 30 pumpkins, a ladder, a video camera, a digital sound recorder, a canvas, and a performer, I placed a ladder in the center of a circular perimeter (the splat zone). Around the splat zone, 30 marks were made, each one corresponding to a pumpkin drop, and a video camera was moved to each mark so each splat was shot from a different angle. The pumpkins were dropped one at a time, splatting onto the canvas.

Smashing Pumpkins was edited using the visual effect known as “bullet time,” which was popularized by the movie The Matrix. This technique is achieved as an expansion of a photography technique known as time-slice photography. As Smashing Pumpkins is an intersection of multiple acts rather than one, the time slice taking place mid-drop was generated by the 30 pumpkins in the performance, creating an imperfect animation effect that represents the performance as a whole. Additionally the canvas covering the splat zone was preserved as a painting and will eventually be stretched.

NA: During the creation of a piece, has anything ever happened that has changed the work from what was expected?

MD: This describes almost every piece I have ever made. Because each work is heavily dependent on the conditions of the space it’s in, who is in the audience, and sometimes the weather; there are things I just can’t predict will happen. My practice relies on the ability to structure a work around how I think it should function and then adjust to the reality of what it is.

NA: What are some of the challenges you face when creating your work?

MD: Outside of the general issues that artists can face—the need for a day job, lack of funding, the want for more exposure, etc). I look at the challenges I face when making a piece as a part of the process. From the physical challenges of going up and down a ladder 30 times in high-heels, or smiling for as long as I can, to encountering gale-force winds on performance day, or people just not coming out to participate.

NA: How do you see your work evolving in the future?

MD: It the future my work will become like the threads of a blog, where each piece generates the next iteration. Right now I am getting a handle on generating one iteration away from the performative moment, with a comic book, a video, or a drawing, etc. I am also hoping to start going back into older works and finding their next step in the threads of my art practice.

NA: When was the last time you laughed so hard you couldn’t breathe or you cried?

MD: A few weeks ago. My husband and I had a two-person dance party to Sheena Easton. Needless to say I ended up on the floor in hysterics. If you want to see me laughing hysterically when I was in my early 20’s over the word monkey, you can click here.

www.megduguid.com

Neoteric Art: Tell us about yourself.

Paul Sierra: I was born in Havana, Cuba in a typical middle class family. My father was an attorney but his true love was art. At home there was always classical music, books and conversation about every possible subject. It wasn’t perfect but it was a good environment to raise independent thinking children. When Castro came to power, we wanted to believe that it was going to be for the better. It was not. “…if you want to test a man’s character,give him power”—Abraham Lincoln. Eventually the family immigrated to the US; it wasn’t easy to adjust to a new society, to a new way of doing things. Fortunately for me I had painting. Art provides a means for leaving my past behind, not getting lost in the limbo between the old and the new life. Nostalgia is not a positive feeling.

NA: One can be reminded of Henri Rousseau in your paintings. Is he an influence, or is this coincidence? Are there any artists you admire?

PS: I admire and “borrow” from many artists, at one point one of them was H. Rousseau. But he was a bit too naive for me, his technique a bit too sloppy. Other heroes are Goya, Degas, Kijat, de Kooning, the list goes on and on.

NA: Your work evokes a feeling of memory or a dreamlike state, yet are very vivid in detail. Do you work largely from memory? Also, there seems to be a strong undercurrent of violence in some of your work such as the “Crashes” series and pieces such as “Icarus #10″. This almost seems the antithesis of much of your work. Do you find that this causes tension or balance in your work process?

PS: I work with a few different themes: Greek Mythology, fire, car crashes, imagined landscapes, Lincoln Park, birds, swimmers. I paint all these different things because I don’t want to paint the same idea again and again. Painting would become a job—I can’t think of a bigger disaster. I don’t use memories consciously, they may be there, I can’t tell. I like to paint a world that is quiet, silent, even after a terrible car accident. My universe is oblivious of our hope and desires. At best it’s indifferent.

NA: How has working in Chicago been beneficial to your career and have there been any changes in the art world, locally or otherwise that may have an effect on your art practice in the future?

PS: I love Chicago, of course not in winter. In the summer, Lincoln Park is my favorite place, the best in the world. I never cared much for the hard commercial New York Art world, too much shark feeding frenzy. Chicago makes it possible for me to paint whatever I want and still make a living. Perfect by me. I have seen some radical changes in the art industry since the 1980s. Many dealers wanted to believe that large expensive Art Fairs were the answer to their problems. Maybe it was for a while. Today around Art Basel in Miami there are about 15 different “satellite” art fairs. So now they face their major problem again. Fewer people are visiting art galleries and the art fairs are too many and too expensive. The must important change is the internet. It’s a difficult marketing tool to use; it takes lots of time and certain amount of money. But it has given the artists opportunities and the power they never had before.

www.paulsierra.com