Neoteric Art: Give us some background information on yourself.

Johannah Silva: I was born in the Philippines and immigrated to the U.S. when I was a teenager. My family settled in San Francisco and I started high school there in the 10th grade, shortly thereafter attending the University of California at Berkeley after graduating. Although I was exposed to art as a child, always drew and remember making a finished painting around eight years old, it was at Berkeley that I took my first-ever art class, an art and composition course with David Simpson, a fairly well-known painter in the Bay Area. It was soon after taking this class that I decided to pursue art more seriously. After finishing my undergrad at Berkeley, I moved back to San Francisco and set up a studio practice in painting, while also continuing to explore other media such as photography and performance art. I moved to Chicago in 1997 to pursue my MFA at The School of the Art Institute and have stayed in Chicago since. The Art Institute was great and also challenging for me. I don’t think I was completely ready to be in that environment at the time I was there. Nevertheless, I value my experience there and am glad to have gone there, for having known and met the people I did, and for the experiences I had while I was there.

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

JS: Sometimes I get a very strong visual or conceptual idea in my head and other times, I just start by making a mark somewhere on the paper or canvas. I have been working with a personal vocabulary of marks and shapes in the last few years and I usually start from these. I ritually draw and sketch a lot when I first get into the studio; it usually takes me at least an hour to get warmed up and get into the space of creating. I often generate more ideas and plot studies for larger works during this initial drawing period. Some of these drawings become finished works unto themselves and others end up in a pile, later to be unearthed and completed. Others serve as a reminder and record for me of my thought process, which help me understand my work and its direction better.

The act of painting is about a kind of meditation for me. I interact with my paintings with full presence and careful attention, much like mindfully observing one’s breath. Art-making is a space in which I connect with myself, and in turn, also hopefully connect and share with others through their experience of my work. Space, color, form and composition I would say are my primary, ongoing and recurrent preoccupations. In the end it is about invention, imagination, discovery, sensuousness, perception, and beauty.

NA: In the last few years you have used the circular shape/form in your work. Elaborate.

JS: Yes. When I started painting again after a few years hiatus after graduate school, I found myself painting these circular Forms. It started around 2003, and it was also around that time that I started using watercolor. There was something about painting these circles that felt right to me. I worked with them in repeating patterns, often employing them in various grid-like compositions. I liked the limitless variations, combinations and compositions that were possible with such a simple and universal form. It is to me a form full of associations; I like the fact that they can allude simultaneously to small dot-like microscopic
things as well as massive macroscopic bodies such as planets and systems.

I also like the circle’s symbolic meaning – it is a complete form and also a soft and feminine form that is a very fun mark to make with the hand and the stroke of a brush. I like to experiment with figure and ground, positive and negative space, interiority and exteriority and I’ve found the circle, and any organic or biomorphic form, lends itself nicely to these interplays. On a philosophical level, my iteration of these forms is akin to the repeating cycles of life and creating a deliberately limited set of parameters for myself. On an everyday basis we carry on with our regular routines and while things sometimes appear unchanging, everything is, in fact, vibrating and changing rapidly all the time at the molecular and infinitesimal level. Each iteration of the forms I work with is therefore never the same, and I hope the energetic pulse embedded in the individual marks and in their complex totality come through in the work.

NA: At a recent artist talk you gave at Harold Washington College you mentioned enjoying working with watercolor. Discuss further.

JS: I do enjoy working with watercolor very much. As I mentioned previously I started working with it in earnest about seven years ago and it immediately felt like the right medium for me to be working with. I like the fluidity of watercolor, as well as its immediacy and directness. I also think of it as a humble medium – soft and fragile, and quietly powerful. I believe in the zen of art-making and subscribe to the idea of a sustained art practice as a spiritual discipline. Watercolor, for me, serves these purposes very well, at least in the manner in which I work with them. I love seeing/witnessing the “accidents” and surprising interactions of material on the surface, bare whispers sometimes, as though the paintings appear to have effortlessly made themselves on their own. While watercolor has an ephemeral quality to it, it is also a very palpable medium to me. It seems to me to have the ability to move mountains, transform spaces, and create clearings with the tiniest of incidences.

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

JS: Five years from now, if not sooner than that, I hope to have it ALL figured out!… well, in all seriousness, I would like to be represented by a good gallery by then and perhaps also exhibiting in museums. I am working on the gallery representation now and putting together materials for submissions. Five years from now is not really a long time and we all know painting is a slow process. The important thing is to keep on working, keep on showing, and keep on talking to artists and art professionals in the art world, and remain engaged in the art community in however way one can and however it makes sense. On that note, I am excited to be starting a project/experimental space soon (stay tuned for the opening in mid-July)… I truly believe there is a place for everyone in the art world and it’s up to each artist to figure out for him/herself how and where he/she fits in to this community. I value being a teacher, for example, as equally as I value and am committed to my artistic practice; I believe these two roles and activities of artist and art educator have a symbiotic relationship to each other. I am definitely putting more energy on the business side of art these days and am looking for ways to market my work and expose it to a bigger and wider audience of appreciators, collectors, gallerists, critics, and curators. I would like to be in a solid place as far as these are concerned in five years’ time. In the meantime, I try to take things one step at a time, not get ahead of myself, and trust in the process. I am, after all, in this for the long haul.

NA: You have been living and working in Chicago for more than a decade now…do you consider yourself to be a Chicago artist? What is your take on the Chicago art scene?

JS: I consider myself an artist who happens to live in Chicago. The world has gotten and continues to get smaller and I don’t think it matters so much or it’s so important where one lives and works; if it is, then I guess I just don’t pay attention to it. One doesn’t have to live in New York to show in New York. There might be many benefits to being in New York, or L.A. or Berlin and probably one does have to establish presence in these places in order to be shown there, but I believe there are alternatives. I truly think there is a niche and market for all kinds of work and its’ up to each artist to understand their work, know their audience, and direct their energies to marketing or getting their work in front of those people. We are fortunate in Chicago to have such a strong alternative art scene , of homegrown spaces and artist-run spaces. It’s also still fairly affordable to live here, and it makes it possible for a lot of people to continue to make work and not spend all their time working to pay for rent. Also, with Facebook and social media in general, we can keep in touch and abreast of goings on everywhere.

NA: Who (or what) has influenced your work?

JS: The artists I like run the gauntlet and change all the time. I have some all-time favorites and some that emerge as new loves as I find myself making work in those same veins. I am fairly focused on my abstract work right now but also continue to make figurative work to keep myself in the conversation about the Figure, as I teach Figure Drawing and want to continue to bring new things to the classroom. Artists in the figurative vein that I like are Lucien Freud, Elizabeth Peyton, Egon Schiele, Francesco Clemente, Paula Rego, to name a few. As far as abstract artists, right now I have been looking more at Klimt, Julie Mehretu and Jennifer Bartlett, among others. I’ve also always liked the work of Terry Winters, Thomas Noszkowski, Ellen Gallagher, Philip Guston, David Hockney, Yayoi Kusama, Sam Francis, Charles Burchfield, and many more. Some of my old-time favorites are Cezanne (whose watercolors are exquisite!), Matisse and Derain. And there are many younger, contemporary artists whose works I admire, especially anyone who is similarly preoccupied as me with space, color, composition, and the creation of sumptuousness paintings!

NA: What are some of the art blogs, magazines, etc. that you pay attention to?

JS: Chicago Art Magazine, Time-Out, Chicago Art Review, Paul Klein’s Art Letter, Dawoud Bey’s blog (I really like the way he writes and respect his opinions and criticism), ArtSlant, are some I can think of right now. I also read some of the standards like ArtForum, Art in America, ArtPapers, New York Times Art Reviews, New American Paintings, X-tra etc. I also like reading the newswires like Flavorpill and updates on CAR and reading local magazines like Proximity. It’s hard to keep up with everything. Facebook, as I said earlier, is a good source of information as people are always posting interesting articles, news, events, and links and is a good way to keep in touch with artist friends and art goings on in general.

www.johannahsilva.com

Beatriz E. Ledesma: Not Quite There Yet
Elephant Room Gallery
Chicago
June 13 – July 22, 2010

There is a richness and sense of place to the exhibition of Beatrice E. Ledesma “Not Quite There Yet”, currently at the Elephant Room Gallery. There’s a theme the artist establishes and celebrates which reaches for explanation while connecting the traffic of conception to development to completion. In this show, she has found ways to do such things in a fashion is both pleasing and, upon exploration, tenacious to the unexpected. There is range in her works.

“I decided to show Beatriz Ledesma’s work because she is an artist that is incredibly passionate about her beliefs and concerns with current society specifically in the U.S., but also around the world,” shared Kimberly Atwood, curator and gallery owner. “Her work is directly influenced by these beliefs and reflects quite obviously in all of her vibrant pieces.” She concludes, “I am also intrigued by her background in psychoanalysis and how she interweaves that into her art, resulting in a marriage of the two that makes sense to both viewers coming from either background.”

A sophisticated use of browns and yellow ochre presents an emphatic sense to, “Surrounded by Warmth”, oil on canvas. There is a depth in this use of color, as well as a subtlety. In one bottom corner Ledesma surrounds a small brown bird on a swath of red and green patch. There are touches of the primitive along side resolute strokes and pale wide-openness accomplished with brushwork. “I tend to cover the canvas with a yellow ocher or raw umber to strip it away with a cloth and then apply it again- as many times as the energy indicates,” says Ledema. “This process allows me to determine if there will be a source of light and where it will come from. There are times when there is no image but only the treatment process of the canvas. I trust that the image will come when it is time.”

There is poetry in the work, some of which smiles of a different time, and with the artist’s application, and her tints and tones of. The shapes and angles of her shades and figures supply a shyness, or strength of. A lipse of sort. It is as though a pre-verbal society has come alive. The artists shares, “Oils and watercolors were the media I worked with when at the Institute de Bellas Artes de Buenos Aires, so I trained on them. But as time has passed I have chosen to continue working with oils as they have a personality of its own- if I dip the brush into a tinny amount of pigment, it will colored more than I want to.” She continued, “There is warmth, they take time to dry, and I can go back many times as I want to work and rework an area; besides the layering process brings a depth to the image that I find highly attractive and visually pleasing to the eye.”

In her willowy,”2010″, oil on canvas, as in her, “From the Earth, to the Earth, Breathing”, the viewer is called to look and move deeper into the canvas. These pieces push and pull with their evolutions of shades of reds and yellow ocher. There is polish to this performance, with the artist’s layered, scratched canvas groans from the scraping and brush work.

The works of Caravaggio, Artemisia Gentileschi, Kathy Kollwitz, and the prints of William Blake in particular, have been very appealing and moving for the artist. They contribute to the dramatic expressiveness of as her figures, and appear distilled into her color. Ledesma notes, “When at the art institute of Buenos Aires, we were trained to look at the European masters; I felt particularly drawn to Flemish art for the use of oil in details and the light it seems to emanate from its paintings. The use of light & darkness, emotion and drama energy in these works also reflects this.”

This exhibition confirms the artist’s now confident engagement with color. Yet she does on occasion wrestle with her art. “I may ‘sacrifice it’, she jokes. “I actually fight with it- scream and insult at it or it may call for a complete slash of gesso upon the image worked The piece has to talk to me and if it does it after ‘our’ fight”.

In the narrative of her work, the artist makes a leap toward turning her philosophy into art. Absent are the abstract themes some strive to peddle as representative, or to separate the figure from the painting in its imagery. What one finds ultimately is graceful and pleasing in its rhythms, imperfections and all, hardly not quite there yet.

www.elephantroomgallery.com

John Thodos’ architecture expressed a unique minimalist beauty with a distinctive Mediterranean openness. His invention of seamless glass boxes as bay windows brought in glowing light and the Aegean spirit in his design opened up the insides of his spaces to the radiant California sun and nature. These windows were often punctuated by orange-red steel frames that seemed to make the air vibrate, as did the warm cedar wood interiors of his homes. The exterior doorways of his homes reminded me of the column and lintel passageways at the ruins of Phaestos in Crete. I was feeling Minoan memory in these houses of Carmel-by-the-Sea, drawing from an ancient source of pre-classical Greek architecture in its simple and elemental timelessness. These distinctive door openings were specifically inspired by Cycladic architecture that John had experienced during visits to Greece following college in the 1960’s. The simple elemental forms of this architecture, with its clear masses and deep doorways, became imprinted in his visual memory. He incorporated materials from the American Northwest reflected in his use of white oak and red cedar woods and expressing his unique ability to combine an Aegean and Californian material aesthetic. The interior spaces of his homes were inspired by the use of the mathematical golden section, a particular and systematic division of space that has also been noted in the architecture of the Acropolis in Athens.

We will sorely miss the presence of this unique individual who brought depth and meaning to the Modernist architectural ideas which he staunchly supported. I was surprised to find as kin, so kindred a spirit who, like me, believed that true creative achivement came from a deep and meaningful struggle with history and inner vision. It was approximately a decade ago that we first received a call from John. He had been searching for relatives and found us – a long lost branch from his family’s past that had remained in Chicago when his father moved West. I distinctly remember him saying “I knew there must have been other creative people in my family, and now I have found them” – in visual art, dance, and theater. Yet our equally happy acquaintance with him was no small revelation. A dynamo in his own right, he was hardy and persistent, sure of himself, living in complete devotion to creative thought. He saturated his life with all that elated and inspired him to the fullest. Whenever we had performances and exhibitions he was there: loyal and supportive, inspiring and energetic. Some of the memories he related to us reflected his Greek family’s past with struggles that surely forged toughness within him, but also developed an openness of spirit and an upbeat energy that got him through difficult times. He also cultivated a well-noted mischievousness with youthful sense of possibility that many who knew him well remember. John was indefatigable in his political activity as a Democrat and progressive. He practiced passionate engagement toward reform and social improvement which he felt was the obligation of all citizens.

He told us the mysterious story of how he came to live in the city of Carmel, California. In the 1970’s he had wished to go to Greece and buy a house as a place to relax from his intense work, but conflicts in the region changed his mind. Upon returning to Portland and decided to “sleep on it” and had a dream that he should go to Carmel California, a place he had never visited. He called a realtor in Carmel the next day. It became the place where he was to build important award winning homes for himself and other residents of the city. He also built several distinctive office and apartment buildings in and around Portland Oregon where his main architecture design firm was located. He was to win over 15 design awards from the American Institute of Architects, among many others, for his innovative work. Not long after meeting him John sent us a 22-page article from the Italian Magazine L’Architettura published in January 2001 which profiled his seminal building achievements.

From the beginning we sensed John’s dynamism, his drive, and a certain West Coast optimism that was in tune with the sunny California coast where he lived. It was above all his spirit of possibility and creative realization that we were most taken by. His experimental state of mind was also apparent in the many paintings he produced. Most represent a formal play between gridded and curved segments, while are others are spontaneous clusters of gestures, lines, and dots – a reminder of his searching curiosity. He was constantly excited by the challenge of solving problems, particularly ones that others could not. He often said, “I don’t want to hear about how it can’t be done.”

Indeed the quality of light, materials, proportions and space in his buildings, furniture designs and paintings lend themselves to something both ancient and Modernistically democratic; something almost spiritual in its totality. I found symmetry, translucent space, light, and nature that combined Bauhaus purity with a kind of archaic transcendence that took the impersonal edge off the sterility which can often come to characterize Bauhaus architecture. When I visited Carmel in November 2009 following John’s memorial I recall standing in one of his homes and seeing the beckoning glow of California light through one of his glass bay windows. It generously framed nature that seemed to flow from outside to inside. I felt how warm and simply expressive his materials were, and though the proportions of his furniture and rooms were not large they retained a temple- like elemental monumentality. Here in the space between glass and wood, light and space, John was alive and spoke as only the work of true and lasting creative achievement can.

For more information on John Thodos and his work you can visit his website at www.thodosaia.com

Interior – Scenic Drive House, Carmel, California

Bradley and Byrd Residence, Carmel, California

Gallery House near Carmel, California

Gallery Park Apartments, Portland, Oregon

Torres Street Residence, Carmel, California

Diane Thodos is and artist and art critic who lives in Evanston, IL. She is a 2002 recipiant of a Pollock Krasner Foundation Grant and will be exhibiting at the Kouros Gallery in New York City in 2010. She is represented by the Alex Rivault Gallery in Paris, the Traeger/Pinto Gallery in Mexico City, and the Thomas Masters Gallery in Chicago.

Neoteric Art: Give us some background information on yourself.

Scott Simons: I was born in Iowa and grew up in Michigan. I graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in Marketing and moved to Chicago where I got my MBA at Loyola. I moved to NYC in 1991 and joined corporate America. I consider myself a self taught artist and find my business background very useful in navigating the business of fine art. I’ve been back in Chicago for ten years and a resident of the Cornelia Arts Building for the past six.

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

SS: I don’t plan anything out in the form of a sketch. I certainly have an idea and color scheme in my head as to what direction I want a painting to go but my pieces tend to evolve as I go. If I’m using found objects I move them around like pieces of a puzzle until they feel at home. Sometimes they stay put and other times they are moved or removed all together. Occasionally a work will end up in the dumpster but I’ll work it to death before I go that route.

NA: You use found objects in most of your work. Please elaborate?

SS: I like items that have a history and a weathered look to them. It’s interesting to imagine where they’ve been and what they’ve been through. A few years ago I started salvaging wood, metal, etc. out of dumpsters around Chicago and I saw a lot of character in these scraps of garbage. Then friends started dropping off stuff they found that they thought I could incorporate into my work. Since I already used wood panels as my painting surface it was easy to attach found objects and it just took off from there. It’s a fun way to work and cuts down on expensive art supplies. I’m using fewer found objects now but I still like to sneak a scrap of something in here and there.

NA: Discuss your current series “Chairs”.

SS: I’ve always been an abstract artist and decided I wanted to try my hand at painting something that exists in every day life. I like the interesting shapes and architectural qualities of chairs but decided not to paint the entire chair so that the overall work still had an abstract feel to it. Although I’m happy with the finished product, I found it very challenging and tedious….something I may not try again for a while. But it gave me a new found respect for representational artists. Now I’m working on a new series of construction pieces.

NA: What are some of the things you do to market your work?

SS: I have a website where I post pictures of my work and news about where my work can be seen. I think it’s important to keep your website current if you’re using this as a marketing tool. I’ve had many people attend a show and several months later check my website, see something new they like, and contact me to purchase it. I also send postcards and emails out when I have a showing.

NA: Who or what has been the biggest influence on your work?

SS: I get inspired by many artists, both famous and not. Jasper Johns is one of my favorites. I also get great ideas from the pages of magazines and the internet. A single picture can spark an idea in my head that can branch off in many directions. If you look at my work over time you’ll see many different styles almost to the point where it looks like they were created by different artists. My influences change often and I enjoy experimenting to find out where my weaknesses lie and to ward off boredom but overall I think my work has a style unique to me.

NA: Pertaining to your art career, where do you see yourself in 10 years?

SS: I’ll actually be happy if I enjoy going to my studio as much as I do now. Creating the work and seeing how people react to it is what gets me going. My goal each year is to put more effort into marketing my work but the lack of time always seems to be a factor. I’m doing better this year than in years past. If I could work my way into a reputable gallery in the coming years I would consider that a great accomplishment.

www.scootstudios.com

Recently, Details magazine ran an article on the 10 Coolest Art Galleries in America. All the major cities were mentioned with NYC getting the most nods, of course. When you break it down Top 10 lists and the like don’t mean much but they are fun.

So it got me thinking: which galleries do we think are cool? In Chicago, I think the coolest gallery is Zg Gallery. They always have consistently good shows with a good stable of artists plus the two owners Myra Casis and Meg Sheehy are cool too!

It’s finally here. A reality TV show featuring visual artists—Bravo’s Work of Art: The Search for the Next Great Artist (the show will air starting Wednesday, June 9th). If the competition between fashion designers, chefs, musicians, hair stylists, etc. is not enough visual artists will now get their due.

I’m not a big fan of these types of shows. If a person aspires to be a “serious” artist then participating in a reality type show is not the way to go. It seems cheap and actually kind of silly. It really comes down to being about a “TV show” and the “competition”—not about the craft.

Talent competition shows are not new. They have been around for many years. The difference is that today there is too much emphasis and media coverage put on today’s winners and competitors. It’s very difficult live down the fact that you were the “winner” of such and such. Again, I think it’s more about the “TV show” and “competition” than the actual craft or skill.

I have only seen previews of Work of Art but there is one thing I am curious to see. Supposedly these artist (based on all the other reality/competition shows) will be working within strict time limits. I think this would propose a hindrance to some—I have heard many an artist utter, “I can only work when the mood hits me”. Well, if you are one of the competitors the “mood” better “hit you” before the time limit bell goes off…if you want to win.

watch the preview

A few weeks ago, Chicago Art Magazine ran an article asking the question, “Are apartment galleries illegal?” The article summarized the troubles The Green Lantern apartment gallery ran into, and documented the issues the City of Chicago has with mixing businesses with residences. A follow-up article dove a little deeper into licensing issues and indicated the City is unfamiliar with the term “apartment gallery.”

The commentators, at the end of the post, voiced disappointment and frustration. One even accused the City of malevolence toward artists and musicians. Since I have some thoughts on the topic, I was going to chime in, but felt I didn’t want to get into a flame war. I’d rather do that here.

While it can be disheartening that the rules can make it difficult or even impossible to legally operate an apartment gallery, it certainly was not born out of some sort of plot to hurt anybody. Instead, the laws governing businesses have two main objectives. One is to protect nearby residents from disruptive activities and the other is safety.

As for combining business activities and residential living, there are many problems that can happen here. Certainly, a steady flow of customers in and out of a business can get on neighbor’s nerves. The increase in vehicle traffic and parking puts a strain on a residential area. In the case of apartment galleries, the openings which tend to be big parties, certainly disturb the peace.

Of course, it shouldn’t be hard to understand the safety issues. There are fire codes to protect patrons. Generally, these are more stringent than residential codes. Though there are occupancy rates for residences, they are a little stricter for businesses. Fire suppression systems are still optional for most type of residential buildings, yet businesses are required to have fire extinguishers and in many cases, sprinkler systems. Also, security for residents is a concern. While taping the hallway door open makes it easy for art patrons to freely come and go during openings, it also allows access for any nut job that has other reasons for entering the building.

These are just a few of the reasons any municipality would want to regulate mixing home and business and since it’s hard to address every single type of business, the laws are kind of a one size fits all. Except for the opening parties, I can see where one might be upset when the regulators clamp down on an apartment gallery. After all, there isn’t that much activity that would differentiate the gallery from the apartment.

So what should apartment gallerists do? Well, one tactic would be to convince the City to make an exception for apartment galleries. Demonstrate to those in charge the differences between a quiet gallery and a busy store and that most of the laws are in place to regulate the busy store. Educate them on the cultural impact of the gallery on the quality of life in the City and the reputation of the City as a global city. Find a way to protect the interests of residents while allowing a business to thrive.

The other tactic would be to embrace the outlaw nature of the apartment gallery. There already is a thriving underground restaurant scene. It’s an easy way for restaurateurs to build a reputation and gain some experience before opening up a public place. These renegade food services have been chronicled in the local media and seem to operate with impunity. The apartment gallery can be the new speakeasy. — Well, maybe that’s a little overboard.

I do know that generally these laws are passively enforced. A complaint has to be filed before a business is shut down, and often times more than once. That means if the activities of the apartment gallery don’t get out of hand, they are usually left alone. Besides, how long should one expect to run a gallery out of his or her home before either taking the step to operating a stand alone space or get out of the biz altogether. By the time the law catches up with the gallery owner, he or she has gone legit or is ready to throw in the towel. If there is a healthy “art apartment” scene, someone else will step in and keep up the tradition.

Neoteric Art: Give us some history on yourself.

Jean Koeller: I was very fortunate to have a mother who encouraged our creative sides as children. She took us to museums, surrounded us with music, books and hated television. She even called the TV an “idiot box” during the time it was a status item to acquirer. We were allowed to watch one hour and if we fought, it was taken away. Well, needless to say, we fought a lot. So I drew all the time, be it on walls in the bedroom or scrap paper. I also built things in the garden and wreaked havoc when I could.

I didn’t go to college right out of high school. I worked in a plastic factory for two years and then began taking classes at Ohio State. I think I declared five different majors in one year. Finally, thinking I would go into Art Therapy, I decided to transfer to Wright State University since they had a Masters in Art Therapy. I took a painting class as a requirement for an art education degree and fell in love almost immediately. That was it; I couldn’t believe people actually did this. I had no idea that WSU had such a great painting program with very good painters for professors. I have to admit, it still wasn’t clear to me how I would survive doing this so I didn’t declare Fine Arts, until Skowhegan accepted me for the summer.

At Skowhegan, I was one of maybe a few undergraduates and the rest of my colleges were in graduate school or preparing for a show or completing a grant project or some noble reason for being there. Since they were all art stars, I asked them a lot of questions and was fascinated by all the different ways people approached making their work. I believe this is where I figured out how much abstract and figurative had in common and no longer saw them in different camps. But I wanted the best qualities of both worlds. Skowhegan had a great library with all sorts of catalogues of work you wouldn’t see any where near Ohio. I was very influenced by Milton Resnick and Pat Pasloff. I understood Milton’s love of paint and pathos. Yet Pasloff was much clearer, verbally and she had the most amazing eye for work in process. The rest was history.

After returning I had one more year left in completing my BFA so I got a studio and tried as many things as I could by experimenting. If someone said don’t do that, I did it, to see why or what it meant, still looking at a lot of work and reading anything I could get my hands on. After undergrad, I painted on my own for two more years before applying to graduate school. By then I had decided that I wanted to work figuratively and needed to understand what made a painting a painting. It wasn’t clear to me why you would go to graduate school unless you wanted to teach. I ended up attending Parson’s because it was based on the French Atelier and I was in love with John Heliker’s paintings. We had access to the figure eight hours a day, five days a week, which was something I wouldn’t “make” myself do or afford on my own. So it seemed like the best reason to go and it was located in New York. I liked the idea of working in an open studio where you could watch your peer’s work and interact on a day-to-day basis. I was already working alone in a studio, so it didn’t make a lot of sense to pay to do that. At the time the figure was very important to me for understanding form and space and was the basis of the work I admirered most. Even though I was more interested in studying with John Heliker, I found, I learned more from what Paul Resika and Leland Bell had to say. I miss the great museums (and food) in New York. If I got stuck I would head to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I learned so much by looking and still do. I love seeing great paintings and the practice of drawing from great works of art or transcriptions.

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

JK: I usually “see” something or visually find something that is the start of the painting. Or the painting is started from something I found in the previous painting or pieces I am creating. Drawing happens during the process if I get lost or need to look at the work, but it’s not the start. I prefer the immediacy of the paint to start the conversation. I have been working primarily from perception as opposed to memory, but not copying what I see. I keep thinking that my ideas change, but they are pretty much the same in all the work. I do not start with an idea; it comes as I am working. There are threads, that I am sometimes not aware of, and then discover and they will be the reason I start a painting. I often move things around, change scale and invent. Yet I do love to paint smaller pure en plein air paintings because it teaches me and sharpens my eye and mind, and the freshness of this process is familiar and satisfying. It sometimes lets me into my subconscious and can be a relief from the larger more complicated works, those can be the “starts” for larger paintings as well. Even a color combination can be a start.

NA: You have focused primarily on still life and landscape painting. Please elaborate.

JK: I have returned to landscape over and over as a subject or a genre to hang my paintings on. I find it grounding. In my first attempt of pursing it as a subject or genre, after graduate school, I wanted to do for Ohio what Georgia O’Keeffe did for the southwest. I was looking hard at the kinds of landscapes this area possessed. Looking at the Hudson River School with their grand vistas and was thinking about how to make something out of nothing, since the landscape here is not as majestic. I found the dense views, close fence lines and areas denoting divisions or boundaries of interest. Both natural and man made boundaries created metaphors for my relationships and man’s inhumanity toward man and nature. I then became interested in the order of the picture plane, foreground, middle ground and background. The reflections I found in the water reversed and mixed up these realities and made me look harder at how a painting was composed. I love and still love to take what we see everyday and bring it to another level of consciousness. I painted for years on a property owned by Clayton Bruckner’s family. He was an Ohio inventor and I liked the history the land possessed. But the work became more about my stories, while trying to understand my relationship to the process of painting. In the winter I would return to the studio and paint from my own paintings, drawings and journal entries that led to the more narrative paintings and taught me to trust the inventive part of the painting that would happen.

As for my still life paintings, those happened when my VR job got more complicated. Painting out side takes a lot of effort and time to find a place and set up and you are at the mercy of so many elements. Because I had less time and needed to paint, I needed to just walk into the studio and get to work. At first it was a relief and funny how easy it was and why did I make it so hard by painting outside? I had no intention at first to paint still life; it came out of painting cityscapes from the windows and then bringing flowers and plants into the studio (somehow bringing the landscape into the studio). The color became a result of teaching in France for a summer. Seeing that light and being in that landscape. It is important to me to feel something about what I paint from, to have or feel the life energy or be alive in some way or another, before I can paint it. I found that I was visually attracted to a bouquet of flowers in someone’s house, the same way I am attached to a painting made by a human as opposed to a reproduction. I never understood how anyone could live with reproductions after experiencing a real painting, good or bad. So, I followed this impulse, it was just a whim to paint flowers and then I starting thinking that it takes a lot of guts to be a woman painting flowers in bright colors at the beginning of the 21st century. My experience with the Feminist Movement certainly did not prepare me for this turn in my work. Yet for me, flowers are far deeper than their superficial beauty for my understanding of being a woman, they can represent the ephemeral qualities of the body: how the body, especially the female body, changes so rapidly, even on a day-to-day basis from one state to another. If you look closely, I am interested in all the states in which flowers exist through time. Time and change were very much on my mind those days for I was going through menopause. I am amazed how one day I would be calm and moving along feeling fine, and then the next day the extreme opposite feelings in my mind and body appear, making me feel like I am out of control. I realize that I am far from extraordinary, yet since this is happening to me and to my body, the universal in menopause becomes inevitably deeply personal and individualized in that work.

I have taken these feelings and represented them in various symbolic states with the objects and combinations that I have composed in the paintings. For the use of time I have found that mirrors not only reflect what is not there, bringing what is outside the immediate view of my picture plane, often including myself physically, but it also multiplies the objects or just gives me an opportunity to explore more that one side of what I am feeling. I also use paintings of my own paintings, differently from how I used them in the landscapes, within the composition to carry the physical transition or creating a past window in the new piece. My highly individualized experience with this ancient balance through imbalance in the female body is reflected in the use of paint and color. I hope that intensity represents how I am pairing concrete still life materials such as objects with ephemeral aspects such as light, color, and time.

My return to the most recent landscapes came after moving to our “death” house. One floor, small, last move house. We purchased this new location because I saw paintings in the land surrounding the house. I am continuing to explore the essence of life in the landscape; still pursing stories, the body and right now seeing the trees as a metaphor. They display the continual process of life in their birth, growth, and inevitable decline into aging, death and renewal. Very much like the flowers in the still lifes. I am still fascinated by light, using color to describe its’ meaning, expression and its’ time.

NA: You have worked as the Visual Resource Curator for the University of Dayton from 1992-2007. Discuss your experiences.

JK: I taught for a number of years and wasn’t sure I wanted to continue. I thought more about the student’s work than they did, less about my own work. I was also aware of how little my colleges painted while in these jobs. So, I fell into this VR position. This position allowed me to focus on my own work. I could avoid meetings and a lot of the politics. What I loved about it at first, when it was a slide library, is that I could paint in the morning, which was my best time and then go to work. I also had fun with it, in that I saw it as my personal collection. I could collect the images of art I loved and they were right there to look at anytime I wanted to see something. I knew it wasn’t a replacement for the real thing, but close. It also exposed me to a lot of art I wouldn’t have looked at on my own. I enjoyed finding images for the faculty, helping them express their teaching ideas and discussing what to use to present them. I enjoyed thinking about the issues for VR professionals, quality of an image and how images shape history and point of view of future artists. When we moved to digital, it got more complicated and I wasn’t trained to do that kind of work. I did what I could to educate myself but became more unhappy about sitting at a computer for hours, and dealing with the IT people, who weren’t interested in supporting what I was expected to do, which was to convert the slide collection to digital images and bridge the faculty in the classroom with the technology they were expected to use. It moved farther and farther away from the meaning and teaching of art, I felt so out of my element, so it was time to leave.

The job did prepare me for this digital change and web responsibility that has become a part of our world. However I still feel like I am always technically behind. Yet, it compels me to keep technology out of my process of making the paintings, to preserve that human element even more.

I have to say, there is life after academia. I am keeping my head above water even though my timing wasn’t advantageous. I can’t believe how meaningful this whole process has become.

NA: You recently took a trip to India. Has that experience filtered into your current work?

JK: I think the meditative quality—such as my “Tree Watching” series is a result of that experience. I hope the Mythopoeic is more present in the work. First and foremost I want the work to be a great visual structure, I know that they can be paintings about paintings, but they aren’t just landscapes. My color sense became more intuitive, expansive and expressive. Since it was my first third world experience, I have a larger consciousness and better awareness of what is happening in the paintings as I make them and their relationship to the world, I don’t mean that to sound bigger than it is, but it’s in my context as a painter.

NA: You have an upcoming solo show with Keny Galleries in Columbus Ohio. How long have you been with the gallery and how was the relationship started?

JK: I have been with the Keny Galleries since 2007. Prior to the KG, I was represented by Shirley Jones Gallery in Yellow Springs, Ohio. Michael Jones and Karen Shirley, who are artists themselves, very caring people, had a wonderful gallery and aesthetic that they projected with the work they sold and showed. When they had to close the gallery, they were very gracious to make the introduction. I have had my eye on the KG for a while since they have been established for a long period of time. I also loved the historical shows they curated and their view of museum and American painting. The Keny’s weren’t looking, but, in Tim’s own words, when they saw my paintings in real life, they wanted to work with me. This lead to my first show in 2008 and my second show opens in June 16, 2010.

NA: Who are some of your favorite painters?

JK: I always go back to Matisse. I look at a lot of different work and sources. Right now it’s Rembrandt, Guston, Cecily Brown, Van Gogh, Diebenkorn, Beckmann, Soutine, DeStael, Gretna Campbel, Hoffman, Emily Carr, Pousin, Frieda Kahlo, Richard Tuttle, Bill Jensen, George McNeil, and the list can go on… Abstract Expressionists….

www.jeankoeller.com

An Art Coach is not a new profession but there definitely have been a lot more of them creeping up within the last decade. There have also been a lot of books published on the subject of how an artist can correctly market themselves and sell their work. The same tired topics are discussed: how to solicit galleries, the correct way to send a packet to a gallery, how to write an effective artist statement and resumé, etc. etc. etc. There is also a gallery owner in NYC that has a popular blog which discusses the same topics.

Don’t get me wrong. I think a serious artist can learn a few things from using an Art Coach and/or reading some of these books but after awhile it all sounds the same. Everyone has an opinion—right or wrong. Some people suggest doing it this way while others prefer dong it that way. There are no absolutes here.

Use common sense when marketing yourself. Have clear concise objectives and work your way toward fulfilling those objectives. Learn and take where you can—an Art Coach, a book, a blog or a fellow artist. Do what feels right or is comfortable for you.

Don Thompson is a professor and economist at the Schulich School of Business, specializing in marketing, economic regulation, and strategic planning. He has taught at the University of Toronto, Harvard University, and the London School of Economics, and holds an M.B.A. and Ph.D from the University of California, and an LL.M from Osgoode Hall Law School. Thompson has served as a consultant to government agencies and organizations in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Australia, Israel, China, Thailand, Laos, Oman, Sri Lanka and Turkey, consulting for companies as diverse as Procter & Gamble, IBM, Wal-Mart and British Airlines. He is the author or co-author of nine books.

About his new book: The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art

Why would a smart New York investment banker pay $12 million for the decaying, stuffed carcass of a shark? By what alchemy does Jackson Pollock’s drip painting No. 5, 1948 sell for $140 million?

Intriguing and entertaining, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark is a Freakonomics approach to the economics and psychology of the contemporary art world. Why were record prices achieved at auction for works by 131 contemporary artists in 2006 alone, with astonishing new heights reached in 2007? Don Thompson explores the money, lust, and self-aggrandizement of the art world in an attempt to determine what makes a particular work valuable while others are ignored.

This book is the first to look at the economics and the marketing strategies that enable the modern art market to generate such astronomical prices. Drawing on interviews with past and present executives of auction houses and art dealerships, artists, and the buyers who move the market, Thompson launches the reader on a journey of discovery through the peculiar world of modern art. Surprising, passionate, gossipy, revelatory, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark reveals a great deal that even experienced auction purchasers do not know.

Neoteric Art: What made you decide to write a book on the economics of the contemporary art scene?

Don Thompson: I have long had an interest in contemporary art, and over a number of years have attended evening auctions at Christie’s and Sotheby’s in New York and London. I teach in a graduate business school, and a regular question from friends was “What is the process by which someone selects the art and artists that make it to this pinnacle of the contemporary art world [the evening auctions]”, and “Why does so much contemporary art sell for ten or a hundred times what I think it should – especially given that the artist is still alive and producing, there is no scarcity factor as with Impressionist art?”

And my answer, always delivered with some embarrassment because I was supposed to be able to answer marketing questions, was “I have no idea!”

A couple of years ago I took a year off to answer these questions, spending the year with auction house specialists and dealers, collectors and artists, in New York and London. The book, The $12 Million Stuffed Shark: The Curious Economics of Contemporary Art, is my answer.

To my amazement, it turned out others were curious about the same question. The book is now in ten languages, including Korean and Czech.

Buy the book