Art Space Talk: Eric Blum

Eric Blum has been mastering the difficult medium of encaustic since its re-emergence in the 1980s. Currently living and working in New York City, Blum has exhibited widely nationally and was featured in the seminal publication on encaustic painting, "The Art of Encaustic Painting" (Joanne Mattera, 2001). He was educated at UCLA and St. Martin’s in London.

Encaustic is a difficult medium to work with. However, Eric reveals a strong sense of control with his abstractions. By repeatedly alternating many layers of pigmented wax and watercolor, Eric creates a sense of luminosity and infinity in his work. The surfaces of the paintings are smooth and the edges are deeply rounded enhancing the implied third dimension of the painting/wax sculpture.

No. 519, watercolor and resin on wood panel, 20 x 20 in., 2006

Brian Sherwin: Eric, your work was represented by Julie Baker Fine Art (www.juliebakerfineart.com) at Art Chicago this year. Many critics stated that the validity of Chicago as an 'art world power', so to speak, would be decided by the success of Art Chicago. In your opinion, has Chicago shown that it is still a force in the world of art? Would you say that it should have never been questioned?

Eric Blum: I've never attended Art Chicago while my work was exhibited, but from what I've heard, it has lost some luster. When it was on top, there were fewer domestic art fairs... there wasn't much of one in NY and not yet a Miami/Basil.

BS: What about the art market as a whole- are you wary of the current boom in the market?

EB: It hasn't personally affected me one way or the other. My guess is that it has peaked and will sober up, but regardless of the climate, and these are catastrophic times, there will still be someone willing to pay for the extra zeros at the end.

No. 472, watercolor and beeswax on wood panel, 27 x 19 in., 2006

BS: At LittleJohn Contemporary (www.littlejohncontemporary.com) you have two series of work on display, the abstract paintings and the portraits. Can you tell us about these two bodies of work. How do you switch from one mode of creation to the next without loosing direction in between. Do you every have problems staying equally focused on your work when you are creating in two different modes, so to speak?

EB: These two bodies of work may be perceived as quite different from each other, but from my point of view, they both have something to do with the same urges. With the semi-abstractions, I am confronted with multiple choices at every turn, whereas the portraits are a more direct route from A to B. I'm a multi-tasker, so I do both. Actually, I only make the portraits once every year or two, but shifting one's focal plane occasionally is good for the vision.

BS: Eric, you have been the recipient of Pollack-Krasner Foundation (www.pkf.org) grants. Can you recall how you felt when you were chosen?

EB: It put me in a really good mood.

No. 484, watercolor and beeswax on panel, 13 x 16 inches, 2004

BS: Eric, your work often deals with themes that focus on the desire to possess that which cannot be possessed- and the conflict that stems from it. Why did you decide to convey this with your art? Can you go into further detail about your artistic philosophy?

EB: My early first impressions from infancy have played an important part in my approach and I have spent my adult life interpreting the images stamped from this period ...not the literal images, but their blurred and implosive nature. I'm interested to portray forms as they appear before closer inspection. The irretrievable glimpse as seen from the corner of the eye can lead to some odd and poetic interpretations. It stimulates my desire. One way for me to deal with this desire is to make something that may resemble it.

No. 456, watercolor- oil/alkyd & beeswax on wood panel, 23 x 23 in., 2003

BS: Eric, can you tell us more about your artistic process. How do you begin a piece? When do you know that a piece is done?

EB: I begin a painting with a specific direction but I don't over-think or sketch. I jump right in a little recklessly with the first semi-transparent layer, splash around, seal it up, then do another the following day. I work in a way that doesn't allow me to see the results of my actions until the end of a session, so there's a bit of suspense. The layers are loosely linked to each other but typically wander far from the original intent. I will always start new paintings before the previous ones are complete. If I am able to live with it for a period of time, view it through a variety of moods and times of day, without the compulsion to add or subtract ... I can let it go. There are times when I think I've completed it, only to unravel it later. Fortunately, I have the luxury to be able to strip back layers to return it to a more innocent state.

No. 535, watercolor and resin on wood panel, 9 x 9 in., 2007

BS: Eric, tell us about your studio practice. What is your studio like? What are the conditions you need in order to create? For example, do you work in silence... or do you prefer music playing in the background?

EB: My studio in Manhattan is rather small. I look out the window a lot. Solitude would certainly be one of the essential working conditions. I rarely use an assistant. Music always, usually in the form of a shuffling iTunes playlist. Sometimes I work to my own recorded compositions, or I'll play the drums. Working to a self-made soundtrack crystallizes the inclinations.

No. 527, watercolor and beeswax on wood panel, 27 x 19 in., 2006

BS: Eric, do you ever collaborate with other artists? If not, can you see yourself doing that in the future?

EB: I haven't collaborated before. Making this kind of work is a private pursuit.

BS: What are you working on at this time? Care to give our readers insight into your current work?

EB: It's pretty much a seamless continuation... one painting follows the other. I don't mean to sound like I live in the clouds, but much like the blindness that prevails while making the daily layers, the same holds true for the body of work as a whole. I would not be able to really see it clearly until there is some distance. Even then, descriptions may elude me.

BS: Eric, do you have any upcoming exhibitions? Where can our readers observe your art in person?

EB: Nov. 29, 2007 to Feb. 14, 2008 at Lemmons Contemporary (www.lemmonscontemporary.com) in NYC.

No. 511, watercolor and beeswax on panel, 50 x 50 in., 2005

BS: Eric, do you have any advice for artists who are just starting out? What should they look out for when seeking gallery representation? Are their any pitfalls you would like to warn about?

EB: I'm not very good at offering general advice. Everyone's situation is unique.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

EB: The "artword," if it exists, is more than an industry... to call it that would be frowned upon and spoil the effect. It's a kind of seductively-presented alternate society with rules and codes of behavior, where everyone seems to know each other...its perhaps a first cousin to the fashion world. When its engine roars, rich people spend. Regarding my own work within this context; I make a painting and toss it out there. Who knows how it will land.

You can view more of Eric's art by visiting his website- www.ericblum.net. You can read more of my interviews by visiting the following page- www.myartspace.com/interviews.

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: David Stoupakis

David Stoupakis is a dedicated painter who has quickly earned international recognition for his art. David has stated that his paintings are about the strength of imagination, innocence, and the truth that children are are far more intelligent than most adults give them credit for. In a sense, David explores his own world through his imagery-- a world that often conveys a fairytale-like quality... yet it contains the essence of reality.

David's paintings, like fairytales, are open to interpretation. Viewers have had mixed reactions about his work. Some observe a sense of purity within David's imagery-- while others see only brutality. The reality of David's imagery is that what you see is in the eye of the beholder. Thus, his paintings have an aspect of psychology about them-- it reminds me of Carl Jung's theory about the 'shadow self'.

The Tea Party, oil on board, 24" x 24", 2006

Brian Sherwin: David, can you tell our readers about your youth? Do you recall any key events that helped guide you toward the direction your are going today?

David Stoupakis: When I was a young kid I found an old wooden chest while looking through the window of my neighbors ran down barn. While I was peering in I got startled by a noise and ran. That night I couldn’t stop wondering what could be in that chest. The mystery of not knowing was running all kinds of stories through my head. It was the first time I recall really feeling the power of what imagination and story telling can do for you. I feel it's moments in my life like that one that play a large part on the direction I take my art in today. The idea from a vision and the curiosity of the unknown.

Balance, oil on board, 16" x 19", 2005

BS: Do you have formal training in art? If so, where did you study? Who were your mentors?

DS: I did one year of art school at the Art Institute of Boston before making the choice to study on my own. I think art school can be amazing and be really beneficial. However, at that time I just wasn't ready to go through with another 2 to 4 years of schooling.

BS: David, what about early influences? Were you inspired by certain artists or musicians?

DS: My early influences came from fairy tales, horror movies, and most of all comic books. Almost all my early work was heavily influenced by comics. I also studied some of my favorite artists like Sargent, Vermeer, Bosch, and Goya. Music has always played a roll overall. After all, we all need soundtracks to are life.

Frozen, oil on board, 16" x 28", 2004

BS: I've read that you started out as a mural painter... do any of these murals still exist? Can you tell us where some of these can be found... or would you rather forget your early commercial work?

DS: I started out doing murals, signs, and video games. I'm not sure if any of the murals are still around because I haven't been back to visit any of them but in no way would I want to forget any of the early commercial work I did. I feel like everything I have done has helped me grow into how I am today.

Mary And Her Lambs, oil on board, 16" x 28", 2004

BS: What made you decide to make the jump from doing commercial art to personal art? Do you still do any commercial art on the side?

DS: I just had my own stories to tell. It wasn't really ever a jump over from commercial to personal. I've always done my own thing outside of the commercial art gigs. I think I was just still trying to find myself as a painter when I was taking on those jobs. Then when Aprella and I moved to NYC that’s when I made the decision to step way from the commercial art thing and really try to put myself out there with my own work. Now I only get involved in select projects outside my personal work that I believe in and truly want to do. That's not to say the commercial art world is bad. It can be a really amazing money making job. But, the long hours needed give no time for personal work and being my own artist was what I wanted most.

BS: David, in recent years your career has really had a boom- you've had interviews in Juxtapoz, Hi-Fructose, and have been very involved in the scene... does this form of success ever make you wary? Does it put pressure on you? Or do you just let the chips fall, so to speak?

DS: It's been a great year and I just take it as it comes and roll with it. I am extremely grateful to have the opportunities that I've been given. Sure, it's high stress at times, but it's not worth complaining about. Life can be truly amazing when you work hard at it and anything is possible if we just set are hearts to it.

The Day The Frogs Rain Down, oil on board, 18" x 24", 2005

BS: David, some people view your work and only see disturbing images of children... they miss the point of what you are trying to do. Based on what I know of your work- I'd say that you are trying to give voice to children who have never been heard- voice to the abused and broken. That is what I see in your work. Would you like to clear the air and say, in your own words, what your imagery is about and the motives you have behind it?

DS: I feel that most of the time people see negativity in things because of the conflicts they are working out in their own life. So they seek and dig for something disturbing or some sort of negativity in something. I have never seen what I do as disturbing. My works are about imagination, innocence and the truth that children are far more intelligent than most adults give them credit for. I work with antique photos of children that I find and purchase quite a lot. For me it's sad to think of these abandoned or sold off images of children just sitting in a box in a dusty store. So, I bring them home and paint a world for them to live and tell their story in.

BS: Can you go into detail about your process? How do you start a painting?

DS: Mostly I paint on board. I start out with a lot of gesso and sanding. Most of the time I do an under drawing then I just get into the oil paint. I always try to experiment with different ways to do the process. So I can try to keep it new and growing.

Red Ribbon, oil on board, 24" x 26", 2006

BS: David, tell us about your studio... do you work in a small space? Large space? What is it like to be in the studio of David Stoupakis?

DS: It’s a good size space. There's quite a good deal of antique photos, fairy tale books, misspelled writings and an overall trash pit of paper, empty coffee cups and supplies. The most important thing about my studio is that I share it with Aprella. We both work everyday-- as much as 12 hours or more a day sometimes. So if we didn't share the space we might never find the time to see each other.

BS: In many ways you remind me of Chet Zar in that you have created a unique world with your paintings. Like Chet, you don't really seem to care about what is popular at the moment... you continue to dig into the world you have created without looking back. I assume that you will continue to dig deeper into 'your world' no matter what fate brings you as far as success is concerned. Would you say that I'm correct in feeling this way about you and your art?

DS: It's just all about me trying to understand more about what I am doing. So, yep-- you got it. For me it’s never been about what’s popular. It’s always more about me working out whatever I am going through at the time-- as I am sure it is for many other artists as well. I'm on a quest to understand this world I have been creating and if it happens to put me on a path of being unsuccessful that will suck, but I'll still be me doing what I do. I am not selling paintings to match your couch.

The Messenger, oil on board, 36" x 36", 2006

BS: Do you have an suggestions or advice for artists who are just starting out?

DS: Make art all the time-- and really all the time. You won’t grow unless you do, and the art won’t make itself. If you have a TV-- get rid of it. When you feel you are ready figure out whatever field it is you would like be involved in and approach them. They don’t know about you so you need to let them know who you are. If you are trying to get involved in the galleries pick up this book "Taking the Leap" it's an insider's guide to exhibiting and selling your art by Cay Lang. Don’t let criticism get you down. The art world can be really overwhelming at times. You definitely need to work really hard at it. If one place turns you down keep moving on to the next place and just keep on hitting it and don’t ever lose site on why you make art. Your art is who you are. The most important thing is to just believe in yourself.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

DS: I am so very grateful to be where I am today. It is a dream come true to be living from my artwork and I am so looking forward to the road ahead for Aprella and me. I'm an extremely fortunate person.

You can learn more about David Stoupakis by visiting his website, www.davidstoupakis.com. You can read more of my interviews by visiting the following page, www.myartspace.com/interviews.

Surreal Visionary Fantastic Art & Metamorphosis Art Book

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space News: Censorship? Pornography?... You Make the Call

A photograph from a controversial art collection owned by Sir Elton John has been seized by police in a child porn inquiry. Sir Elton's website declared that he owned the controversial piece and that it was on loan to a gallery. The photograph was seized by detectives the day before an exhibition of the musician's private collection was due to go on public display at the Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art in Gateshead, Northern England. The rest of his collection was displayed as planned. Ironically, the photograph was reported to police by the management of the Baltic.

The Baltic management has declined to comment since reporting the photograph-- aside from a spokeswoman who stated, "We are working alongside the police and are not in a position to comment further". A spokesman for Northumbria Police said: "We attended the Baltic last Thursday at the invitation of management who were seeking advice about an item from an exhibition prior to it going on public display. This item is being assessed and Northumbria Police in consultation with the CPS are investigating the circumstances surrounding it".

The photograph, entitled Klara And Edda Belly-Dancing, depicts an image of two naked young girls and was taken by controversial American photographer Nan Goldin. The girls in the photo are laughing and playing-- one is on her back with her knees bent under her and the other is wrapped in fabric. Police and Crown Prosecution Service lawyers must decide whether the image owned by Sir Elton is pornography or art. It is now being examined by Northumbria Police to see if it breaches UK pornography legislation.

Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing, which was purchased by Sir Elton from the White Cube gallery in London in 1999, is one of 149 images that comprise Goldin's Thanksgiving Installation. The collection is said to document Goldin's life between 1973 and 1999. It has been widely published and has been exhibited throughout the world. In the past the photograph has been offered for sale at Sotheby's New York. Based on what I've read there have never been any objections to the photograph in the past-- even when it was exhibited in London.

Insiders have stated that the Northumbria Police are focusing on who may have been involved in the production of the image-- which would include Nan Goldin and anyone involved in the images development-- and anyone who has previously owned or displayed the photograph as a part of their investigation. Others have stated that the police are focusing on Goldin's past heroin addiction and the fact that her work has been involved in past child-porn inquiries.

What do you think about this case? Should all artists feel threatened by this censorship? Is this just a sign of our times? Is it justice? Should Sir Elton John, Nan Goldin, White Cube gallery, Sotheby's and any other individual or organization that has possessed Klara and Edda Belly-Dancing-- either the photograph itself or a reproduction-- be held responsible if it is deemed to be child pornography? Will this charge hold up if it is brought to court? Is Nan Goldin an artist or a criminal? Is Elton a collector or a criminal? Did the management of the Baltic stab the artworld in the back? Do fine art photographs like this one give pedophiles an excuse for having child pornography? Could this be a form of publicity stunt? Discuss.

Art Space Talk: Carol K. Brown

Carol K. Brown began as a traditional sculptor working in metal. Her work evolved into installations that involved multiples of what appears to be an imaginary species. These creatures seemed to re-create or replicate within a given space-- a theme that has been dominate in Carol's work. Her current work consists of specific studies of common people caught in motion. These figures are combined in infinite arrangements-- they multiply. Carol's work reveals an interesting aspect of life... that things are not always what they seem. Carol has exhibited at some of the most prestigious galleries in the world, including the Nohra Haime Gallery and Ambrosino Gallery. She has exhibited at several major art fairs-- Art Basel, Art Chicago, Scope- just to name a few.

Pedestrian (63015), acrylic on paper, 17” x 24”, 2006

Brian Sherwin: Carol, where did you study art? Who were your mentors? What were your early influences?

Carol Brown: Because I already had young children when I started school, I didn’t have the luxury of choosing where to study. I always went to school wherever we happened to live at the time, and only could attend courses based on babysitters’ schedules. I got degrees from University of Miami and University of Colorado, Boulder. I learned a lot from watching one particular teacher who was in Miami while I was there, Dick Gillespie.

BS: Can you recall any events from your youth that directed you on the path you are on today?

CB: Nothing specific. I had no idea what an artist actually was, except that growing up in New Orleans; I assumed it generally had something to do with those people in the French Quarter who made likenesses of tourists around Jackson Square.

Details- an installation consisting of several hundred small unique bronze castings--various sizes up to 14” h.This project was completed in 2000

BS: Carol, from 1999 to 2000 you created several hundred bronze objects. These objects, which took on organic forms, were scattered upon the floor when displayed. The space between each piece revealed a sense of isolation, a theme you have continued to use with your more recent work. Why do you utilize a sense of isolation with your art? Is it something many viewers relate to?

CB: I have no way of knowing what viewers relate to, but it’s certainly something I relate to…

BS: Of these sculptures you have stated the following, "I've made an installation of many hundreds of them. This is a detail, a component of a monument that has now shrunken to the status of clutter, literally, an object in our path... a thing we might trip over.". I must ask, with this work are you also stating the fact that many people do not appreciate larger public sculptures? Would you say that people living today do not respect sculptures as they would have in the past?

CB: Certainly the roll of public sculpture in most people’s lives, or any visual art for that matter has decreased. Few people today consider it important. Unless there’s controversy, few people care-- hard to compete with all those ipods and video games and American Idol.… And without wanting to be a Philistine, I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing since there’s some pretty awful public sculpture out there… Maybe I was thinking that by leaving it where one might trip over, it had to be confronted…

Edgewater Ballroom (#12), photographic print combining digital manipulation and paint, mounted with acrylic on sintra, 26” x 38“, 2003

BS: Carol, I've read that you are ambivalent about the use of new technologies to create art. In your opinion, technology reduces the physical labor required to produce objects, thereby eradicating the hand of the artist and leading to images short on humanity. However, at the same time you have used a computer to manipulate your hand-painted images. At what point do you think the use of technology in art gets out of hand? Or have you changed your position about the use of new technologies to create art?

CB: I was referring to an ambivalence I felt towards the seductive quality of new media, but that was written a number of years ago--I’m constantly changing my mind about most things, and that idea seems off to me today. I was also bemoaning the fact that technology should reduce labor, but in my case, I always manage (accidentally) to find ways to use any processes in rather convoluted ways that invariably manage to increase the labor involved. I.e., rather than making videos by using a video camera, I drew many hundreds of stills in Photoshop and imported them into a movie making program to imply movement. Computer people tell me that’s a really dumb waste of time and you get a choppy effect, but that’s the effect I want.

Doing it the "right" way invariably looks slick, more like an ad, which is not what I’m after. Having spent so many years working in more traditional media, I did have an initial reluctance to give up the tactile quality of a physical object, but now I’m just as happy working at a computer as in a foundry. But I always seem to keep returning to painting or sculpture, as if I still need to get my hands dirty.

Edgewater Ballroom (#14), photographic print combining digital manipulation and paint, mounted with acrylic on sintra, 26” x 38“, 2003

BS: You are well-known for you abstract sculpture... so why did you decide to use a computer to manipulate your hand-painted images. Did you feel it was time to find a new direction? Or would you say that it is important for artists to explore other mediums from time to time? Were you able to take anything that you had learned back into your other forms of creation?

CB: I don’t think of my work as being medium-based, meaning, I don’t wake up and say, what should I blow in glass this morning. I tend to shift my interests periodically, and I have to then look for the best materials to use to pursue that interest, rather than the other way around. I do tend to shift often because there are many things that interest me. I also find it interesting that you say I am known for abstract sculpture—in my mind, my work is not so abstract, but always related in some way to living form, imaginary or otherwise.

Pedestrian (63011), acrylic on paper, 17” x 24”, 2006

BS: Carol, your series, PEDESTRIAN, consists of acrylic paintings on canvas and paper and a video animation that capture the lives of anonymous individuals who find themselves, unknowingly, under your scrutinizing eye. Can you go into further detail about why you decided to do this series? What was your motive behind the work?

CB: It’s hard to walk around and not notice people. The term pedestrian means both one who walks, but also ordinary or commonplace….I think these people I’ve painted are anything but….. While painting these, I realized that while I was interested in people on the street, or the public facade of private people, I was also interested in how we react to each other.

I’ve been working hard on a new body of work I’m tentatively calling "Passersby". They are paintings of homeless people or those people most of us would rather pretend not to see as we walk by. I also love the irony of the fact that someone will probably pay a lot of money in a pristine white walled rarefied space of a gallery or artfair for an image of a person who’s hungry….and that same purchaser will try hard to avoid that same subject on the street.

I’ve also had a completely different project I’ve been working on for a long time. It has to do with my completely overwhelming sense (fear) of what it means to be a parent. My working title for the project is "Offspring" but it probably won’t be completed for ages, I often work on several things at once.

Pedestrian (63018), acrylic on paper, 17” x 24”, 2006

BS: Carol, can you give our readers a brief outline of how these images came into being? What were the steps you followed toward their creation?

CB: I’ve used a variety of different painting techniques but everything begins with stalking someone and taking as many photographs as possible with the tiny camera I always have with me, preferably without their knowledge. I’d be lost without the source photos. I’ve experimented with many different techniques but all of them seem to involve a very small brush and a very large magnifying glass, attached to my worktable….I always seem to get lost in the details.

BS: There is a voyeuristic nature about the PEDESTRIAN series. Would you say that the fact that the images you captured were not staged helped the success of the series? Are these 'stolen moments' part of what makes this series so unique?

CB: While I certainly hope my work is unique, I have no idea if others out there may be working in a similar vein, so I can’t be concerned with that… I just try to make work that seems relevant to me, and I hope that it might seem relevant to anyone else.

Pedestrian (63018), acrylic on paper, 17” x 24”, 2006

BS: Carol, I find it interesting that your recent paintings share some of the same structure as your earlier sculpture. They share a sense of isolation... and are spaced out in a similar manner. Would you say that your early work has served as a reference for the work you are creating today? Also, do you plan to sculpt again?

CB: While I don’t have any specific plans to go back to metal working any time soon, I won’t rule anything out until I’m dead.

BS: Carol, you have been involved in several major exhibitions of art- Art Basel/Miami, Scope New York, Scope London... the list goes on. What do you like about the huge art fairs? What do you dislike? Do you feel that large exhibitions of art are important... or do you prefer to have your art exhibited in a smaller space?

CB: For me the beauty of the fairs is that the work is seen by a much larger audience than ever comes to a single art show. Of course the downside is that everyone’s brain has become toast because of vast visual over-stimulation. I sometimes feel like you need to train for the Miami/Basel artfairs like a marathon runner who stokes on carbs before a big race. I’ve long associated the concept of pain with seeing great art…there’s foot pain of standing long hours in museums….but what happens during the fairs is seriously taxing on the body if you try to see everything, and I’m an image junky so I can’t imagine not trying to see everything.

Pedestrian (61023) acrylic on paper, 17” x 24”, 2006

BS: Carol, your work has been featured in Art in America, New York Times, and several other publications. Has your work ever been published in a book? Do you plan to release a collection of your work in the near future?

CB: It has not, but I certainly would be amenable to the idea.

BS: Carol, tell us about your studio space. What conditions must you have? Do you work in silence? Do you follow a certain routine?

CB: The routine… absolutely. I get up--I work. That’s about it. But I don’t really think of it as work…it’s like just what I do, what’s normal, kind of like breathing. If there’s something else that comes up, like lunch or a dentist appointment I go do it, then I go back to work. I love that I now work in the same place where I live, because time doesn’t have to be a factor in my schedule.

I used to work in a warehouse that I had set up as a metal shop, and I would draw in a cleaner area, at a drawing table. Now I paint at a drawing table on paper or unstretched canvas, so I can look through a large magnifying glass attached to the table to see detail. I keep the canvas unstretched so I can roll the painting onto my lap to get to larger sections…I tape it to the wall to stand back to see what I’m doing, then stretch the canvas when I’m finished.

I always like noise—loud music in the shop and music or TV when I’m at my drawing board, which I hear but never see since my head is in the work. I also now have the freedom to travel between New York and Miami, which I do a lot, because I only need a drawing board to keep me happy….I can have a drawing board in both places. The only thing that I "must have" is the supply of Diet Cokes.

Edgewater Ballroom (#3), photographic print combining digital manipulation and paint, mounted with acrylic on sintra, 26” x 38“, 2003

BS: Carol, do you have any suggestions or advice for artists who are just starting out?

CB: I wouldn’t presume to give advice to anyone-- that implies I know more than they do and I’m pretty sure I don’t.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

CB: Naah!

You can learn more about Carol K. Brown by visiting her website: www.carolkbrown.com. You can read more of my interviews by visiting the following page: www.myartspace.com/interviews.

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space News: Will Mass MoCA Display Installation Without Consent?

A part of an installation is hoisted into a warehouse for a Christoph Büchel exhibit-- but is it really a show of his work?

A Federal Court judge has ruled that the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art can display materials assembled for Christoph Büchel's unfinished 'Training Ground for Democracy' installation. U.S. District Court Judge Michael A. Ponsor issued his ruling following a hearing on motions filed by both Christoph Büchel and Mass MoCA. In granting Mass MoCA's motion to allow the museum to display the installation, Ponsor also denied Büchel's motion to prevent the piece from being displayed in the museum's football-field size Gallery 5 (one of the largest gallery spaces in the United States). Ponsor's decision was due to the amount of space needed for 'Training Ground for Democracy' to be adequately displayed.

Büchel's design for 'Training Ground for Democracy' was indeed large-- both in size and cost. The installation, which cost the museum over $160,000 to assemble, is based on a mock village used for U.S. military training. Staff members were to obtain the items Büchel needed for his design. His list of required items included a leaflet-bomb carousel, a two-story Cape Cod cottage, an old bar from a tavern, a vintage movie theater and various "banged-up" vehicles. The artist had requested nine full-size shipping containers and had planned to design a re-creation of Saddam Hussein's hiding place-- commonly referred to as the 'spider hole'. However, Büchel's plans were scrapped due to disputes with the museum in January.

By the end of January, well past the scheduled Dec. 16 opening of the exhibit, Büchel departed from the project-- which resulted in several negative exchanges between the artist and museum officials. Büchel claimed that the incident has damaged his reputation and refused to have his name associated with the unfinished project because museum workers had continued to work on the installation without him -- the museum argued that it has a responsibility to deliver a show to the public and that its reputation is on the line as well. Both parties ended up in court over the issue and critics have stated that the ruling, which favored the museum, is a blow to artists’ rights in general.

During the case Büchel accused the museum of un-professionalism and went on to state that the museum had interfered with his work and had wasted his time. The museum claims that Büchel agreed to a $160,000 budget and that the project had cost more than twice that by the time Büchel had left the project. However, Büchel claims that an amount was never agreed upon and that the installation should not carry his name or be displayed in public since he did not oversee its completion. The court ruled that Büchel's work was not protected under the (VARA) law and that the museum can display the installation as long as they mention that it is not complete.

Many artists, art critics, and art advocates have proclaimed that the museums actions are not in the best interest for art as a whole (which conflicts with the museums mission statement). The debate has opened the door for discussions on ethics in the art-world since Büchel is being forced to exhibit work that he does not consider finished or acceptable for public viewing. There is strong concern that this case will allow future works to be shown without consent and that the ruling has created a loop-hole in laws that have been created to protect artists and their work.

In my opinion the financial loss the museum endured was a poor business expense on their part. I don't feel that Christoph Büchel should be punished since there obviously was not a clear contract involved with the work situation. This case has made a villain out of the artist, but I would think that the museum is in the wrong as well since they should have made things more clear. It is crazy to throw that kind of money around without a contract. It appears that the project was flawed from the start.

Büchel conceived 'Training Ground for Democracy' and oversaw the installations construction until his departure in January. The key word is 'departure'-- Büchel left the project! So how can this piece be considered his work? Especially if he does not want his name associated with it? Is it his fault that the museum threw money at him left and right and that they tried to force him into deadlines? The fact that the museum lost thousands over this project does not matter to me... the fact that an artist has been forced to put his name on something that he does not see as finished does! Both sides should have cut their losses and moved on.

I'm not the only one annoyed by this ruling. Many people feel that the museum has broken trust with the artist, the viewing public, and art in general. There are real fears that this case could lead to more troubles for artists and exhibit spaces in the future. What do you think? Was the ruling fair? Should Büchel accept it and move on? Would you be OK with your art being exhibited unfinished? Is this a blow to artists’ rights in general? Do you think Mass MoCA should go on with the show? Discuss.

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space News: Naomi Kasumi's MEM: Memory Memorial

Photo by Punchlist Design

Two parts of Naomi Kasumi's MEM: memory memorial installation series are on display at the Simmons Visual Arts Center at Brenau University. The exhibit deals with the artist's experience with having an abortion. "I know I am not alone in dealing with this experience", proclaimed the Seattle based Kasumi-- recalling the procedure and psychological aftermath.

Kasumi has stated that the creation of art is like a cathartic ritual experience. The Japanese-born installation artist stated that her process of grieving and healing began nine years ago after she, as a young college student, chose to abort a pregnancy-- "Coming from Japan, I have a different cultural background and perspective. Abortions are considered taboo and such events must be kept secret. Through my art, I found that I could share my concealed emotions and personal experiences in public. Sharing the truth of my experience with others..." Kasumi explained.

One part of the exhibit features 108 slip casts of Kasumi's hands, open and extended. Another part features 5,000 egg shells from which Kasumi removed the white and yolk-- a process that spanned the course of 18 months. The artist stated that visitors sometimes place a gift or message in the hands. In a sense, the audience builds upon the space that Kasumi has provided-- making the installation a very interactive experience that enforces positive dialogue.

Controversial themes, like abortion, are often viewed in a negative manner by onlookers and the media when it comes to artistic expression. However, Kasumi has had positive reactions in regards to her work. One would think that an installation like this would stir political debate, but the MEM: memory memorial installation has yet to polarize anyone. Viewers have focused on Kasumi's experience rather than politics when viewing the installation.

In my opinion, works like this are important because they allow people to see a different side of issues that are often the source of political bickering. MEM: memory memorial provides viewers-- no matter what their political agenda --with an experience that allows them to discuss a tough issue on common-ground. In a sense, Kasumi has made an aspect of her private life public in order to help others who might be dealing with the same struggle and to foster peaceful conversations about the issue of abortion.

What do you think about this exhibit and the intentions of the artist?

(The exhibit runs through October 7th at Brenau University's Simmons Visual Arts Center in Gainesville, Georgia. www.brenau.edu)

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Jennifer Dalton

We all know that there is a great deal of controversy in the artworld in regards to business practices and how artists are marketed. However, it is rare for an artist to have a concentrated focus on this issue and to directly reflect it within the context of his or her work. Installation artist Jennifer Dalton has done just that. One could say that she has brought this attention to the next level by devoting entire bodies of work to this theme. Since graduating from Pratt in 1997, she has created bodies of work that take a critical look at various angles of the business of art. The auction market, influence of the press, and art collectors have all been a target of Jennifer's work-- installations that appear to be a form of documentation of her experiences while engaged with the art world's trends and expectations.

Would You Rather be a Loser or a Pig?- 2006

Brian Sherwin: Jennifer, you received a BFA in Fine Art from U.C.L.A. and an MFA from Pratt Institute. Who were your mentors at that time? Have you remained in contact with those former instructors?

Jennifer Dalton: I did have some great professors at both places. At UCLA I was strongly influenced by the photographer Connie Samaras, who introduced me to feminist theory and taught me to conceive of art from a conceptual basis. At Pratt my strongest influence was Robert Zakarian, a sculptor who was brilliant at helping students learn how to analyze artworks, including our own, and he taught us how to see what makes great art great and where to aim to attempt to make great work.

How Do Artists Live?, 20-image slide show- 2006

BS: Can you tell our readers about your recent solo exhibit, 'What is the Art World Thinking?' at Smack Mellon Gallery. Tell me... what is the art world thinking?

JD: "What is the Art World Thinking?" is a project I'm doing at Smack Mellon Gallery in Dumbo, Brooklyn. It's an ongoing series of anonymous short surveys I'm creating to query the art world (or at least a segment of it) on various subjects that interest me. Sometimes the surveys relate specifically to the current exhibition at the gallery, or other times they just reflect ideas that I'm interested in at the moment. So far I've asked people about the necessity of all-women art shows, what it takes to be a mid-career artist, and what artgoers' philanthropic habits are. The next survey is going to have two simple statements and viewers are asked choose the one with which they agree more strongly: "I am inspired by art" or "I am depressed by the art world." We'll see what they say!

The Collector-ibles- 2006

BS: Jennifer, you are no stranger to asking questions about the artworld with your art. Would you like to discuss some of the concerns you have with the artworld at this time? Perhaps you could discuss you piece, 'The Collector-ibles'?

JD: Well, "The Collector-ibles" consists of five large cabinets containing little figurines representing the top 200 art collectors according to ARTnews magazine. I really enjoyed the feeling of turning the tables on these very important people whose tastes influence so strongly the kind of work that is created and shown, turning them into trinkets and containing them in a cabinet. It made me feel momentarily omnipotent, which is an unusual feeling for a young(ish) artist.

The Collector-ibles- 2006(detail)

BS: When I attended the Scope, Pulse, and Armory Show press previews a few months ago I heard many people say that the traditional gallery system is being over-shadowed by the "huge art fairs". Do you think that Scope, Pulse, and other major art fairs are dangerous for the stability of the 'artworld' and art market? Or do you think these concerns stem from gallery owners who fear that they will have to compete with other galleries on a yearly basis just to stay in the market, so to speak? Do you think the stability of brick and mortar galleries are at risk due to these fairs? Do you think this shift will harm artists or does it place more power in the hands of artists?

JD: Hm, well at first I was fearful about the rising importance of art fairs because I felt that they rewarded only artwork that was the most sensational, that had the fastest read, and that could compete instantaneously to stand out from the very crowded walls as people strolled by. And perhaps it is stating the obvious to say that that work might not always be the most ultimately rewarding or worthwhile. But I am now thinking that we are witnessing an evolution in the creating, viewing and marketing of visual art, and that interesting things might come out of it. It makes me think of the record companies and newspapers, who are being forced to evolve quickly to respond to new technologies, but ultimately there could be exciting new opportunities if we rise to the challenge and respond creatively. Of course I do hope and believe that galleries will continue to exist as physical addresses, because it is very hard for artists to be satisfied with working so hard for a 3 or 4-day "exhibition," and most of us believe that our work warrants more sustained attention, and benefits from a quieter environment, than art fairs can provide.

What Does an Artist Look Like? (Every image of an artist displayed in the New Yorker magazine 1999-2001)

BS: You have been reviewed in several major art publications- ARTnews, Art in America, Artforum... just to name a few. Did you expect that your work would have the impact that it has had in art-related media? Or does it still come as a shock?

JD: I never expected to get much attention at all from my work, but I think that since some of my work directly addresses the art world as a subject it's very easy to write about and I have benefited from that.

Getting to Know the Neighbors

BS: Jennifer, you obtained a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant in 2002. Do you have any advice for artists who desire to obtain grants or other funding?

JD: Keep trying. Get in the habit of applying and apply for everything. I only get about one thing for every ten that I apply for, and I have had many other people tell me the same is true for them.

BS: I read that you were involved with the Yaddo Artists' colony. Can you tell our readers about that experience?

JD: I have visited a few colonies and always had wonderful experiences there. It is heavenly to have all the time in the world (for a few weeks, anyway) to focus exclusively on your work, except for the time you spend socializing with all the other fascinating smart people around you. Yaddo in particular was great because it is on such an incredibly beautiful old estate.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

JD: That's all I can think of. Thank you very much for inviting me to participate!

You can learn more about Jennifer Dalton and her work by visiting her website: www.jenniferdalton.com. You can read more of my interview by visiting the following page: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Thornton Willis

Thornton Willis observes abstract painting as an abstraction of personality and nature. In that sense, his paintings are a reflection of himself and his experiences. Thornton is known for being a powerful painter, but his most recent work reveals the strength of his painterly technique and knowledge that derives from decades of exploring his artistic practice. His work is bold, but at the same time it conveys a sense of delicacy. His triangular forms seem to map-out his experience as well as our collective experience-- the essence of the human condition.

Full Spinner, oil on canvas, 24" x 18", 2007

Brian Sherwin: Thornton, I've read that Mel Price was your mentor during college. After your studies Mr. Price, a close friend of painters Franz Kline and Willem de Kooning, encouraged you to pursue your career in New York City. Can you recall any unique experiences of those early years? Also, can you explain how Mel made an impact on your study of art?

Thornton Willis: It is true that I studied painting with the Abstract Expressionist painter Melville Price at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa, in the early l960’s. Price was an inspirational example of what it meant to be a painter of integrity. From Mel I learned that the idea was to "live the work." To "be in" the painting and to see the work as an extension of one’s self, and it has always been with this attitude that I approach my painting.

Mr. Price had been in New York City during the 10th Street years and had been a member of the "Club." He was friends with the "First Generation of Abstract Expressionists" he knew their work and they knew his. When New York artist Theodoros Stamos came to the university to give a lecture I asked him if he thought I would have a greater advantage if I were to go to New York to study painting. Stamos replied " not necessarily, so long as you’re working with Mel Price." When I graduated Mel encouraged me to go to New York City.

Counter Cluster, oil on canvas, 24" x 18", 2007

BS: Thornton, in the early 1980s, you were often grouped with such painters as Elizabeth Murray, Bill Jensen, Alan Uglow and Sean Scully. Art critics have stated that in recent years you have†tried your best to†keep a lower profile in the art world. If this is so, may I ask why?

TW: Well, Brian, I didn’t intentionally keep a lower profile through the l990’s; it was a result of circumstances. For example, most if not all of the galleries with whom I had some affiliation in the 70’s and 80’s were closed by the early 90’s. These included Bykert, Paley & Lowe, Oscarsson Hood, Twining, and Sidney Janis Galleries. The art market was going into a real depression along with the economy. That was when the galleries closed down in Soho and began their eventual move to Chelsea. Some of the other artists you mentioned went to Europe, which was somewhat sheltered from the recession here. Many artists were hurt during that downturn and painting took a hard hit.

We had just had a little baby girl and I decided to stay home and raise her and paint until times got better for painters again. (I keep waiting for that day.) But I did show in numerous group shows during that time here and in Europe. I have never stopped painting.

Preacher, oil on canvas, 24" x 18", 2006

BS: Thornton, what are you working on at this time?

TW: The paintings I am working on now are based on a system that I began developing in the early 90’s. In l993 I had a one person show at Andre Zarre Gallery in Soho and the paintings from that show, the ideas and the system have continued to evolve. I am also putting a show together of some earlier work, including the early "Slat" and "Wedge" paintings. The exhibition opens October 13th at the Sideshow Gallery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. (I like the artists and galleries in Brooklyn) The show will include major work from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s as well as some paintings from the 90’s and a few current paintings and works on paper.

Lowdown, oil on canvas, 80" x 69", 2006

BS: Thornton you have received several honors and awards-- including, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (painting fellowship), The Pollock-Krasner Foundation (painting fellowship), and the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Fellowship. How do you feel when you have learned that you have been chosen for honors, awards, and grants? Do you feel nervous? Excited?

TW: Brian- it is a very wonderful experience to be given a grant; it has to make you feel encouraged and energized as an artist. You always know that lots of other fine artists went up for the same grant and it is very flattering when I have been fortunate enough on a number of occasions to receive much needed financial support for my work. The feeling or the emotion I have is mainly one of gratitude.

I also try whenever I can to nominate artists for the grants I have received and written many a letter of recommendation. Right after 9/11, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation called me about artists living near the World Trade Center and how to contact them for much needed emergency money. Actually I wish there were more grants for more artists.

Redeemer, oil on canvas, 79" x 62", 2006

BS: Thornton, you have exhibited at several prestigious galleries and spaces-- The Museum of Modern Art (NY), AndrÈ Emmerich Gallery, Elizabeth Harris Gallery... and several others. Can you recall your first exhibition? Where was it? How did you feel going into it? Also, do you have any suggestions for younger artists who are seeking gallery representation?

TW: The first solo show I had after graduate school and moving to New York was in 1963 in Washington D.C. at the Henri Gallery. The Henri Gallery was actually the first gallery in Washington to show contemporary art. A friend of mine, Ed McGowan was showing with her and he introduced me to Henri. She liked my work and gave me the show. I remember it well, but I remember even more the first show I had in New York, maybe because the paintings that I did in that first year in New York were so pivotal for me?

The first gallery I showed with in NYC was the Paley and Lowe Gallery in Soho. They sponsored my first one-man show in New York in l969 where we showed a number of large "Slat" paintings at the sculptor Alan Saret’s alternative space at 119 Spring Street. Paley and Lowe was new gallery and they opened with a group show simultaneously while my show was up at Alan Saret’s space. Mr. William Paley, then President and CEO of CBS, acquired the one painting I had in the group show. I was amazed when I heard about it, and for many years, until his death in the mid-90’s the painting hung in the CBS building (it is now installed at the Museum of Broadcasting on 53rd Street which he founded before he died.)

But finding gallery representation for an artist at any age can be very difficult in New York. It is mainly a matter of being prepared to take advantage of opportunity when and if it arises. And making some of those opportunities happen for you. That is why it is good to show in groups with friends or with artist with whom you have an affinity. It is also good to show in galleries where the dealers are really interested in the art. Showing at Sideshow is a pleasure because Richard was an artist before he became involved in running a gallery. Elizabeth Harris is the kind of person who really sees art and loves it.

Fighter, oil on canvas, 80" x 63", 2005

BS: Thornton, You have taught and done guest lectures at several prestigious educational institutions-- Princeton University, Art Institute of Chicago, Carnegie-Melon University, Pratt Art institute... just to name a few. Can you tell us about your educational philosophy? What is your instructional method like? Also, how did you balance the role of being both an art educator and practicing artist?

TW: Brian, the schools you mention are schools whose art departments invited me as a visiting artist or guest lecturer with the exception of Princeton University. My contact with the art students at Princeton came as a result of my friend, Sean Scully who was teaching there at the time. He brought a group of his students to my studio and we talked informally for more than one session.

Teaching painting and drawing is something I have done but I have not had what one would call a pedagogical career. When I have taught it has been at the college level over a semester or more. My ideas about teaching art are based on the individual student: I try to understand what each is thinking about what they are trying to do and why. Since this kind of individualized teaching is very difficult to do, and almost impossible to balance with my own work, I stopped teaching some years ago.

Also, there was quite a long time when many of the schools around the country had eliminated Painting from their programs. This was in some ways a result of accepting the notion of Post Modernism. (Every decade someone tells me a new theory of why "Painting is dead") But I think that this has been slowly changing as I meet young painters. The idea that the basic tenets of Abstract Expressionism, coupled with Cubism, are ongoing and the backbone of mainstream painting is coming once again to the forefront is a good thing.

Downtown Slam, oil on canvas, 40" x 30", 2002

BS: Thornton, Jed Perl said the following about your art, "Abstract painting is an abstraction of character and personality as much as it is an abstraction of nature." Do you agree with this statement? If so, do you care to add to it? How can a viewer learn to understand and appreciate abstract art?

TW: Yes, Brian, I do agree with Jed Perls' statement. In order for a painting to have meaning it must be an honest reflection of the artist’s personality, otherwise it is illustration. I think that the best way that we can understand abstract art is to look at as much art as we can. Look at Pollock, deKooning, Kline, Rothko or Rembrandt and look some more. Try to figure out what they are doing.

BS: Thornton, you have said the following about your art, "In my paintings the forms are locked in this flux. It is part of the dynamic of the work and meant to be so. In this work, figure and ground, positive and negative are all equal." You have also stated, "The best painting is always "open-ended." It asks questions, and partners with the viewer to bring the experience to closure, or it might excite another painter to respond--this is what I aim for in my work." Can you go into further detail about your artistic process and goals as a painter?

TW: Process and systems are part of what my art is about. That is, I invent, find, and borrow ways of making painterly statements, which reflect my person to the extent that I am able to reach into that core of my being. It’s a kind of self-analysis that requires a balance between the rational and the intuited.

My painting has been primarily influenced by the two major movements of the 20th century, Cubism and Abstract Expressionism. But I have been, and still am like a sponge with a sense of discretion. I absorb what I choose for whatever personal reasons. What I hope to accomplish is a dynamic and powerful painting that takes a very special place in the world of objects in that it reflects life and personality through its esthetic properties. That’s my goal. It has nothing to do with the reverence or irreverence of past or present social or cultural convention, (which seems to be the primary aim of some current art in the popular marketplace) other than the fact that we are able to practice and make our art represents a kind of political freedom.

Konstrukt, oil on canvas, 24" x 18", 2003

BS: Thornton, do you have any further advice for young painters? Or for painters who desire to explore abstraction?

TW: I once had a Jazz musician friend who often said, "There ain’t no vice like advice." I suppose there may be some truth in that saying. Even so, I think the advice to anyone who wishes to pursue abstract painting is to look at the great art of the 20th century and to learn and know as much about the history of what we call abstraction in painting as possible. Then of course hard work is usually required to learn how to make the work that he or she wants to make.

To sum up, focus on what you are interested in. Then go see as much of that kind of painting you can find. Museums and galleries can be a place to learn and obviously you should read and inform yourself. Continue to educate yourself and paint as much as you can. I think that is what artists have always done.

Cayote Dreams, acrylic on canvas, 90" x 72", 2002

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the art world?

TW: There isn’t much I can say about my painting except that it always changes and it does after all speak for itself.

As for the art world, it is as real as Hollywood and at least as fashion conscious. I think that we are aiming for something less ephemeral, less slick, and less easily packaged. I believe that it is important for the artist, painter, poet, dancer, etc. to keep in mind that it is the art that drives the art world and not the other way around. Artists and other people of intelligence have the power to bring deeper content to our culture.

You can learn more about Thornton Willis by visiting his website: www.thorntonwillis.com. You can read more of my interviews by visiting the following page: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Timothy Hawkesworth

The art of Timothy Hawkesworth is known for conveying a sense of urgency and disruption. One could say that his work is a visual translation of the chaotic flow of creative energy that stems from the soul of this artist. These battered surfaces reveal the passion that Timothy has for his work and for life. I feel that his images convey a sense of raw purity that has been caught in a twisted maze of chaotic uncertainty and peril-- a perfect reflection of our times. Timothy's paintings are the survivors of this creative exploration-- they shed insight into the very essence of humanity.

Out #18, Oil on Canvas, 30" x 30 ", 2007

Brian Sherwin: Timothy, you have exhibited for over three decades in New York, Los Angeles and Dublin. Can you share some of your insight into how the artworld has changed during that time? Has it changed for the better?

Timothy Hawkesworth: Oh yes well first I would like to put this in context. The artworld is a very small thing when you think about painting and the consciousness that painting addresses. To paraphrase Emily Dickenson, a painting is a rectangle of burning consciousness – nothing else! So as we explore consciousness, filling out what it means to be human, following the paint – that journey – that great ride – has a strange and awkward relationship with the artworld. It is like the relationship between spirit and religion. My God it is almost hilarious if it wasn’t so tragic! So I think as artists we need to understand the misfit at the heart of this relationship between our work and the artworld.

I remember the story of Jackson Pollock and Williem De Kooning running into each other on 57th Street after they had got some fame and just falling over laughing at the thought of it. Don’t get me wrong I like the fact there are places that show paintings and people who buy them and people to write about them – I even like all the trendy coffee shops that spring up around the galleries. I like showing my work. I just don’t want to let my relationship with it get out of hand or to be too worried about it all.

Yes the artworld changes, it has to, that is marketing. It will keep going round and round being surprised and excited by the view of its own tail. It forgets where it has been so that it can be refreshed by what it comes upon. Painting is slower. Brancusi talked about the patience of the peasant waiting for the harvest. Medieval time. Painting and consciousness unfold more slowly. They need more quiet, more time, more sensitivity than the artworld tends to give. James Joyce said "Silence, exile and cunning!"

Going Out #2, Oil on Canvas, 36" x 36", 2004

BS: Considering the current art market-- do you have any advice for artists who are just starting out?

TH: Oh dear I don’t think young artists if they were anything like I was, would listen to the likes of me. Still here goes. Don’t "consider the current art market" whatever you do! You have to be crazy to paint. Crazy enough to believe that in the end they will come. I am crazy enough and I do believe that if you do the work and take the time to come up with strong personal painting, they will come. People hunger for this.

So figure out why you are painting. What is the job? Really what is it and why does it matter? You will need a broader context than the one usually offered by art schools, art magazines, great blogging, curators and critics. Then just do it. Stand in your vision and experience – paint from there. Figure out ways to let yourself do it. You need time. Get part-time work – whatever you can pull together. Know that the longer you do it the better you will get. When you have work to show, really work at getting it out. It is your job to get the actual pieces in front of people with the resources to show it. After that it is up to them to decide if they want your work. This is not easy. I found that being aware and considerate of the predicament of the curator or gallery owner was the most effective path.

Really though I have no idea.

When the Heart Opens, Oil on Canvas, 60" x 72", 2003

BS: Tell us about your early years... when did you decide to pick up the brush-- and why?

TH: I painted as a kid. I grew up in Ireland in the mountains of Wicklow. I did landscapes and sold them to tourists out of one of the farm buildings. I wanted to paint like John Constable (I think I still do). Anyway I always painted. Back then you could get grants to go to university. So I got paid to study history while I painted away. It was a strange time. Ireland was on the brink of civil war. There were two histories and always two different responses to events as they unfolded. It was hard to know what to believe and how to get past all the lies. Painting seemed like a place where I could do that – where I could build a way of working that I could trust.

Painting for me has always been an extremely physical body centered language. The paint goes onto our nervous system. We follow Rembrandt’s finger through the paint. It is communication by touch. It is always a physical presence and that is its gift. To look at painting and to paint we need to stand in our bodies responses. Painting insists that we stand there. It is how it works.

The poets talk about making a temple of the inner ear for sound to echo down into the psyche, painters have to make a temple of the belly and stand with how marks, paint and imagery go onto our bodies. This is a radical stance in a culture that keeps trying to separate us from our body’s experience. The social and political dialogue is designed to separate us from the experience of living in our bodies. It creates a gap in which people get lost. Painting is one way to close that gap. So when I first came to painting it seemed like a way to get straight – get to some bedrock.

Heart #1, Oil on canvas, 60" x 72", 2003

BS: Timothy, your art has been reviewed in The New York Times, ARTnews, Art New England and several other publications. How do you feel when you are asked to be featured? Do you get nervous?

TH: No, I am pleased. I believe strongly in the value of painting and its relevance. I am driven to talk about how it works and why it matters. I don’t feel that artists and critics are doing a very good job at explaining this. There are exceptions like Philip Guston, who was a great talker, and the great critic John Berger. On the whole, however, poets do a much better job. I read what they write about the relevance of poetry and this helps me find the words to talk about painting.

BS: Timothy, has your art been influenced by any major world events? Also, where do you draw inspiration from? Can you discuss your influences?

TH: Yes I think whatever effects me effects my painting. I have done series of works that came out of my response to events. During the first gulf war I did a series called "Para La Quinta Del Sordo" which means "From the House of the Deaf Man" this is a reference to Goya’s house. This was because I got so angry. It seemed everyone was lying to me and yet they were going to war on my behalf. I hated the military news briefings – the jokes and high aerial photographs of targets being bombed that showed no understanding or compassion for what was going on on the ground. They were very angry drawings and I was grateful for Goya’s great angry response to his own time.

Now I think my work is impacted by the planetary crisis that is unfolding. I don’t know fully how it will show itself but I am aware of my growing unease and my grief at the awful and profound violations of nature that are continuing to threaten our existence. I believe our survival now depends upon our return to a humbler and attentive relationship with nature. Now I work to do just that – to be a better watcher of the incredible complexity and power of nature and to paint from those experiences.

As to where I draw inspiration, it always seems to go back to the landscape in Ireland where I grew up. I have wanted to paint, not so much the landscape itself, but the experience of being in it. How it opens me, dissolves me. It has always been the question how do you get to that? At first I would paint my body into the painting – paint myself in there. Then it was a matter of getting past my body’s presence into the energy that is the experience. It’s into the body then through the body then out of the body. It’s about pure energy. The motifs that have shown up over the years were stepping-stones to this dissolution. Basically the ambition to paint experience as a subject has been with me a long time and it is the Irish landscape of my childhood, and its weather, that opens me up.

Out #4, oil on canvas, 36"x36", 2006

BS: Timothy, can you tell our readers about your 'Going Out' and 'Out' series. What are the differences between these two bodies of work? How are they connected?

TH: These two series happened when I stepped up to the challenge of my long search to paint the way landscape opened me up. For years I had worked at it, pushed at it. I would take as long as two or three years to complete a painting. I was working on 15 foot triptychs trying to get at the impact of landscape. I was banging my head against it. Then I decided to just paint it directly – to go straight for it.

I chose a smaller canvas size, 36" X 36", and I did a painting a day for two weeks without a break. I just put them out. Just to see. I found that I got further and I got more coherent the freer I was. This amazed and delighted me. I discovered that when a painting goes well, it is easy; it has a life of its own. Its quality and its conviction come from its naturalness. It appears effortless because it is. The work, the struggle, is getting to that place of effortlessness with enough knowledge and experience so that it will cohere into the language of painting.

The other challenge is not messing with that effortlessness: letting it be; not letting the conscious mind mess with the wonderful lightness of those moments. These paintings were the "Going Out "Series. The paintings that followed were the "Out" Series. These came as I stood more confidently in the painting of the experience of nature.

Going Down in Time III, mixed media on paper, 32"x 22", 2000

BS: Timothy, I really enjoy your Horse Drawings series... these images are loose, yet they have a sense of static about them-- as if the horse figures are encumbered or stuck. Can you tell us about this series of images? What is the story behind this body of work?

TH: I was very surprised when I started doing these drawings. They came from my memory of a horse I had when I was a kid. She was part thoroughbred. She was perfect except for the back legs which scraped the ground going down hill. It was a kind of loss of faith. She feared that her legs would give out. She refused to trust the rhythmic movements passed down in her genes. Fear and stubbornness ruled. It was a fear fed by a rampant imagination. A swooping bird, a rustle of leaves, a passing shadow, everything reduced her to a trembling nervous excitement. "Shy" was the word we used: she would "shy" from anything that moved.

I grew up with her and I grew up like her. After she died I started to imagine her journey through horse history. She told me stories – how she crossed the Alps with Hannibal: how she was part of the battle of Wounded Knee. This was the starting point. She provoked the memories and the connections to make these drawings. However, once started her presence was submerged in the process: a backdrop to the making and unmaking of the images. Her sensitivity was a conduit with nature.

I had the physical memory of the movement of her body – of her attunement – of the speed of her mind as it manifested itself in the twitches of her body. She taught me to see. I think when you don’t have religion you need an imagery horse or a boat. You need transportation to the other side. Maybe that is only true for the Irish!

Feel Good Saddle Sores, mixed media on paper, 40" x 30", 1998

BS: Timothy, you have stated the followings: "At the heart of painting there is a kind of affirmation; it returns us to hope. When form appears in the paint, when the color starts to sing, it’s already on the side of hope.". I assume that you see artistic expression as a form of hope, both for the creator and the viewer, correct? Can you discuss this further?

TH: Yes I’m really talking about all creativity when I say that. We live in a creative ecology. We are by nature creative – all of us. James Joyce has his alter ego Stephen Dedalus say "the only limit to creativity is [self] consciousness." We have no idea how far we can go. When I work and when I teach I see how creativity is encouraged. What helps it. It comes from feeling good, from openness and fluidity. It comes from an ‘up’ energy. To be creative we have to stand in possibility. Creativity by definition means going out beyond what we know and already realize. For this to happen we must believe that there is more to us than we realize: that there is more out there to be experienced and that there is more inside us. Hope is different from optimism. Optimism suggests things will work out. Hope implies that there is more to it – more over the horizon. In this way the creative act is always an act of hope and possibility.

Leah’s Lift, oil on canvas, 70" X 62", 2007

BS: Timothy, can you go into further detail about your artistic process and philosophy? How would you explain your art to someone who is not aware of what you do?

TH: I believe the job of the artist is to fill out what it means to be human – not to illustrate or just conceptually explore what we don’t know about ourselves – but to actually create the possibility of expansive experience. This is what we experience in nature – in our experience of nature’s creativity and rejuvenation. The roots of aesthetics are in our response to nature, which is why artists have always studied the natural world. Painting along with the other arts offer the opportunity of this expansive experience.

For me to stand in front of a painting that expands me, that refreshes me, that feeds me as nature does, is really a return to sanity and possibility. It is a place where our learning and our nature co-exist. When they are separated we are dysfunctional. If we are to survive as a species we need to return to a humbler more holistic, perhaps reverential relationship with nature. Painting, poetry, drama, dance and the other arts are built on the holistic nature of experience – the very way they work is dependent on this fluidity between body and mind, nature and thought. They also stand us in our creative possibilities. We need them now more than ever.

So for me the process is one of surrender and immersion. I have to work my way into the painting, past the voices and the cleverness, to the place of silence where the imagination can find room to travel and where the paint moves ahead of thought. All my intelligence has to turn physical, to gesture and pass through my hand into the flow of the paint. Everything has to be re-found in the process. All the issues of painting – coherency, composition, balance, pressure, color etc have to be solved, but the solutions have to be found in the process. This is why it takes years to get fully free in painting – fully versed.

The freedom of the late Titian's and Rembrandt's were because they had learned to close the gap between their painting and their experience of living. To communicate experientially you have to get down into the tissue of experience. Experience is impulse saturated. We have to get down to the speed of impulse. For me that is where I make the good aesthetic decisions – faster than the conscious mind. It is what Robert Frost meant when he talked about "impulse and right action and some lucky events" as being the path to finding a poem.

Imagination too is characterized by movement. Painting is well suited as a recorder of movement. It is an incredibly subtle recorder. To have something to record, however, we have to let ourselves have experiences in the process of painting. To do this we have to get present and get past the chatter of our own minds. This is the great gift of painting. It shuts us up. It calls us present. It makes us stand in our own experience and our personal truth.

Out #10, Oil on Canvas, 30" x 30 ", 2007

BS: Timothy, what projects are you working on at this time? Care to give us some insight into your current work?

TH: I never know what is coming. Recently the paintings got darker and the pictorial space more expansive. I get opened up by new (usually wilder) ways to apply the paint. I call these cheap tricks but if they open me up and bring me along, then they are pure gold. I am always looking at the history of image making and I have a great library now which keeps feeding me. Recently I have been looking more at Chinese and Japanese painters like Hon’Ami Keotsu. Amazing work!

BS: Do you have any upcoming exhibitions? Where can our readers view your art in person?

TH: Yes my next show is at the Taylor Galleries in Dublin in April. Littlejohn Contemporary in New York also has work on hand and so does Peyton Wright in Santa Fe...

Out #18, oil on canvas, 36"x36", 2007

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

TH: Well I suppose it is true to say what I do is out of step with much of what has recently been going on in painting, or at least what has been focused on by the artworld. Magritte’s painting "C’est ne pas une pipe" is analogous to walking onto a stage during a performance of Macbeth and saying okay it’s not a murder, it’s just a play! This mischief has become institutionalized. Contemporary painting is often reduced to the philosophy of the visual. This bores me. It’s like studying nutrition when you are hungry.

At the heart of painting is reverie, you sit in front of one and it quiets you. For me this is the opportunity in painting, this is the experiential base. Enough painting about painting - let’s deal with something bigger. The scientists are speculating that there must be at least ten dimensions in order for relativity and quantum physics to work together. The scientists are sitting out there with the mystics! Where are the painters?

This opportunity at the heart of painting to create expansive experience, to center us in our experience of living, is a radical stance in the commercial culture in which we live. Painting insists that we stand in our body’s response, in the holistic nature of experience. Our cultural discourse, whether political or commercial, is designed to separate us from the validity of our experience. It creates a gap between how it feels to be alive in our bodies and the discourse used to bind our community. This gap is then used to manipulate us and to sell us things or ideas.

We are told our bodies are not beautiful we need products and even surgery to be beautiful. We have romantic names for war that seek to separate us from the awful experience of warfare. It is all about manipulation. So when we stand up and speak from the truth of our personal experience – when we honor "the integrity of the senses and the truth of the imagination" (as Keats advocated), we reclaim the possibility of real dialogue. In this we reclaim all the great tools of humanism that have been usurped by the practitioners of manipulation. We put them back to work in the service of creativity and possibility.

For this to happen artists have to return to the risky business of going out beyond what is already known. They have to get used to exploration - to raid the inarticulate. They have to go below the floor of consciousness to expand our understandings and experience of life. This is what painters have always done since the Shamans of our ancestors reported back from their dream travel with cave paintings. However to do this artists have to relearn how to stand in their body’s truth, to honor its responses and to paint from that holistic place where the mind turns fluid and the imagination is given room to travel.

You can learn more about Timothy Hawkesworth and his art by visiting his website: www.timothyhawkesworth.com. You can read more of my interviews by visiting the following page: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Remi Thornton

Remi Thornton creates a mysterious atmosphere around the subjects he captures with his camera-- leaving a story that only the viewer can provide. These images are open to interpretation. In my opinion, Remi's work reveals how common objects, scenes, and people can become more than what they appear to be at first glance. They show how light and shadow can be utilized in order to give new meaning to the things we view each day without a second thought.

Brian Sherwin: In 2006 you were involved with an exhibit titled Quiet Chaos- a two-person show with Cathy Bruegger at the Silver Eye Center for Photography. How did that show go for you? Do you have any upcoming exhibits at this time?

Remi Thornton: It was a good experience. I was able to basically curate a show of my own work with another artist that I had never even seen work by. Which seems challenging, but we were able to share photographs in emails and put together a nice show. I couldn’t have asked for a better partner in this respect because we pretty much agreed on everything. I wasn’t able to go hang the show, or attend the opening, so that was an unfortunate disconnect, but the nature of out-of-town exhibitions.

My solo exhibition at Gallery Katz was a breakthrough for me. It was the first time I really put my work out there for people to see...I sold prints and got excellent exposure. I have some work in a group show at the Danforth Museum and will be in an auction at the PRC in Boston next month. I don’t have any planned solo exhibitions right now and would kill for some representation outside of Boston. Know anyone?

BS: You have stated that what you are capturing is not complex and not completely conceptual. You have went on to say that your work is pure, simple, and eerily beautiful. Can you go into further detail about your work and the vision behind it? What are you attempting to accomplish? Have you came close to your goal?

RT: I think I’m just a purist. I want people to know that if they don’t want to read into the photographs on a conceptual level, that they don’t have to. I really like art that is both aesthetic and meaningful but if it’s just one or the other, that’s ok too. It doesn’t have to be both. However, I do like knowing that my work may cause an emotional response or feeling. If the photographs doesn’t seem to carry meaning for the viewer, but are appreciated on an aesthetic level, that’s just as good. The "eerily beautiful" thing really just stems from comments I received after my solo show at Gallery Katz. People said the photographs made them uncomfortable, but at the same time, they really liked looking at them. To me, that’s a bonus response. I enjoy taking late night walks, and capturing that awkward silence of a location is what I’m after.

BS: I've read that you only photograph at night...and that you focus on urban spaces that are bustling with life during the day and are absolutely vacant at night. What are the social implications of this manner of photographic work?

RT: Well, firstly, I do not only photograph at night, that was a slight embellishment. I work with a stock photograph agency (a very recent development), and they will take my "other" work in addition to the night photographs. But, I am really only interested in taking the night photography to the "fine art" level. I feel good about them and like sharing this particular work. The rest of the stuff I take to keep myself busy and to feel less guilty about spending so much money on a camera that isn’t used more often. But, at the end of the day, I’m just not interested in shaping those photographs into a body of work to show.

As for the social implications of shooting in these locations...The first thing that comes to my mind is that I’m usually pretty terrified while taking the pictures. Being mugged, hassled by locals or annoyed by police and security. I find it amazing that these places that are so alive during the day can become such strange or seemingly dangerous places once the sun sets. Now, obviously, I’m also just very paranoid, but nonetheless, that’s what the experience is about for me. And, I think that the uncomfortable nature of my own being while taking the picture comes across in the photographs. At least, I think that is the case with the more successful images.

This might sound stupid (if I’m not already), but one of my gauges when I take a photograph is how nervous I am while at the location. If I’m not, then usually I don’t like the end result. So, the more uncomfortable you find the imagery, just know that I found that spot to be 100 times more freaky. On that note, you should see how many pictures I messed up because I was rushing to leave. Early on, I would take one picture and move on. I’ve learned that after MANY blurry or soft shots, that it’s worth the time to take a few extra shots to be safe. I’m such a nervous dork though and usually don’t practice what I preach leaving me very frustrating after returning from a shoot.

BS: Can you tell our readers about the Runaway Reindeer project? The page containing info about the project received over 15,000 visits during a two week span and was the number one most emailed story on the Boston Globe website.

RT: My friend Hargo (www.not-rocket-science.com ) is a really talented conceptual artist (and also a great photographer). Coincidentally, he also created The Somerville Gates, which was a parody on Christo’s gates in Central Park. That project was written up in the New York Times and I think he was even on CNN or something like that. It was so popular online that it crashed his site (and I think his Internet provider). He has several successful projects under his belt, but the Somerville Gates is his most popular to date. The reindeer site was all his idea, and his hard work. He took care of the conceptual elements (because he also knows that ain’t for me) and asked me to do the photography, and I was more than willing.

Anyway, it’s a modern and somewhat creepy take on a book called The Runaway Bunny by Margaret Wise Brown. Honestly, I never read the book as a child, so I’m not that familiar with it. But it was the foundation of the project’s story, so I’m told by Hargo. From what I’ve learned about it online, it is pretty strange to begin with.

Anyway, we were excited about the success of the site and story and hope to do more this coming winter. Oh, your readers should know that we were removed from the number one top ten emailed stories on the Boston Globe website after about 10 minutes...There was a stomach bug in Tewksberry, MA, that was apparently more interesting than the runaway reindeer site (www.runawayreindeer.net).

BS: The practice of digital manipulation in regards to photography has been increasing in recent years. Photographers are using computers as a tool to alter their works. I've read that you try to stay away from altering your images. Why is that?

RT: Given the nature of the digital photography process, literally speaking, almost everyone manipulates their photographs. Even your point-and-shoot cameras help you manipulate an image There is software in the camera that allows you to add contrast, saturation, and other goodies. For the more advanced, the computer is a powerful tool that has replaced darkrooms altogether. Don’t forget that even with film, going back many years, photographers have manipulated their work in the darkroom. Dodging, burning, enlarging...So, in that sense, I think most photographers finesse their work before going to print, which isn’t much different than before the digital era.

I mention that I don’t alter the images (beyond any necessary adjustments to correct exposure or color) because people always ask me if what they’re seeing is "real" or "fake." I don’t think the process matters one way or the other, but I think it’s important in my work that the viewer knows that what they’re looking at really exists and I did not add or take away from the scene in order to achieve my desired effect.

BS: Do you think that some photographers are relying to much on digital manipulation? Would you say that an unaltered photo can reveal more about the human condition than one that has been digitally manipulated?

RT: Ugh. What a loaded question... I think I’m guilty of relying on digital manipulation in the sense that if I mess up an exposure, I know I will be able to correct it on my computer (to an extent). I imagine that being able to rely on manipulation in that sense applies to many photographers out there. But I think you’re hinting upon a different type of manipulation. And, it is a fine line between digital photography and digital art. I think that if you start changing reality, you cross that line into the realm of digital art. That can be an intentional transition or inadvertent, but there is a distinction.

Listen, I mentioned I’m a purist, so I feel like if I can take a strong photograph, there is no need to go messing with it. If the photograph isn’t working, I’m not talented enough as a digital artist, to make it work conceptually or otherwise. But, if another photographer has something else in mind with their work other than taking a straight photograph, by all means...I think what you’re trying to do is to get me to say that photographers that digitally manipulate their photographs are cool or lame. Well, like with many other mediums, it all depends on the situation and the intentions of the artist, so I won’t say one way or the other. Nice try!

BS: What equipment do you use? Do you have any suggestions for photographers who are just starting out?

RT: I just bought a Canon 5D but was using a 20D for a long time. After printing larger and larger, I finally decided it was time to get a camera that might be better equipped to make

larger prints. I use a totally digital process...I shoot using Camera RAW which is an amazing piece of technology and I recommend any amateur photographer to start using it if they don’t already. Also, know your computer as well as you know your camera. It’s literally a digital darkroom and perhaps the most important part of the process. It’s like framing a piece of artwork...A bad frame can destroy the look of the work. Likewise, bad computer processing can totally ruin a good photograph.

BS: Finally, what are your planning at this time?

RT: While the weather is still nice, it’s the time for me to be shooting. It gets cold out there at night during the Winter and is totally unpleasant to out there. I’m dedicated, but only so dedicated. Dedicated, but not insane.

You can learn more about Remi Thornton and his work by visiting his website: www.remithornton.com. You can view more of my interviews by visiting the following page: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Pedro Matos

Pedro Matos is an emerging artist from Portugal. Pedro started painting at the age of 16. This 18 year old painter displays a lot of raw talent in his work. His paintings, which are influenced by the Old Masters and street art, explore the plight of the downtrodden. These works contain a social message that demand consideration from the viewer. Keep an eye on this artist-- I expect great things from him.

AmmoBoro - Bullets Kill, 80 x 60 cm, mixed media on canvas, 2007

Brian Sherwin: Pedro, you were born in Santarem, Portugal. I've been told by artists from Portugal that it is very hard to find representation there-- it seems that it is hard to find a venue or outlet for contemporary art. Many of these artists strive make their mark internationally due to this. Do you agree with their opinions? Would you say that it is difficult to be a successful artist in Portugal?

Pedro Matos: I would totally agree with them. We don't have all the show openings neither the same amount of galleries as in the US or other European big cities. And the art scene is quite different too. From what I have tasted so far, in my country, your school diploma tends to be much more important than the work you create.

BS: Pedro, I've read that you have been drawing since you were a child and that you started painting two years ago (at age 16). You are currently in high school-- and are, for the most part, self-taught. Where do you plan to study art once you graduate high school? Or do you plan to continue teaching yourself?

PM: Although I believe that I will always be teaching myself for as long as I keep painting, I intend to go to the fine art school (university) in Lisbon, then continuing my studies abroad. I'm researching on London, Barcelona, Italy and maybe American schools too.

Untitled, 120 x 80 cm, mixed media on canvas, 2007

BS: You display a lot of raw talent for your age. Do you come from an artistic family?

PM: Thanks. Not at all, my parents are both science teachers, which keeps the drama even more intense.

BS: Pedro, at age 18 you've already had two solo exhibitions of your art and you have been involved in three groups exhibitions. Due to this you have had national and online press coverage. It seems that you are very ambitious for your age. Care to share some of your goals with our readers?

PM: What really matters to me is the moment I create. Once I have experienced that, I just want to make sure that I don't have to put an end on it. Succeeding in the art business is pretty hard, so I have been struggling a lot to go further and further. I just want to get my work seen, and I also try to make sure I can make a living as a painter.

(Un)noticed among the crowd, 50 x 40 cm, acrylic and oil on canvas, 2007

BS: Pedro, in your art you focus on 'humanity'. You create backgrounds that represent occidental modern society. These backgrounds stem from different elements-- including influences from graffiti, lowbrow art, and pop culture. Can you go into further detail about where you draw inspiration from? Who-- or what-- has influenced you?

PM: Aesthetically I've been mostly inspired by artists such as Caravaggio, Modigliani, Da Vinci, Shawn Barber, Dave Kinsey, Tiffany Bozic, Kat Von D. I've also been influenced by all the graffiti and street art I find out there. I'm still influenced from everything I experience in my day-to-day life. Traveling to a lot of different countries and getting to know a lot of different cultures took a big part on the role too.

BS: Your work often captures a sense of despair... of cultural and ethnic unrest-- tell us what these paintings are about. Do they serve as warning? A form of social message?

PM: As you can see, most of my characters are fading, melting, disappearing. Its not by a coincidence that I bring them into backgrounds that represent our society. I'm not as direct or genius as Banksy, but you can still say there are a lot of social messages in my work.

Chad Muska- private collection

BS: Pedro, one could say that you capture the grit of modern society within your work. With that said, would you say that there is still a ray of hope within the context of your paintings? Do you desire to convey a message that screams, "we can overcome this!"?

PM: You can never repair the damage done in the past. Same goes on where global warming is concerned. But you can always make a change and overcome a lot of problems. (before my characters are completely gone..).

Untitled,70 x 50 cm, Acrylic on canvas, 2007

BS: Pedro, tell us about your artistic process. How do you start a painting? Do you do preliminary studies? Or do you work from your imagination as you paint, so to speak?

PM: It works both ways. I have to do some preliminary studies for my portraits, and human figures. Especially when I change the facial expressions and so on. Everything else is from my imagination as I paint. Some of my works have other paintings in the background that I wasn't happy with. I start drawing my characters on the canvas and then I work from there. I like to paint with some music going on too, and I paint mostly at night.

Untitled, 80 x 30 x 5cm, acrylic on canvas, 2007

BS: Finally, is there anything else you want to say about your art or your goals as an artist?

PM: I want to keep learning and improving my painting skills so I can put all my ideas into action. I would like to approach humanity and the human figure from other perspectives in the future. I have also been painting happy and fulfilled characters that I find in under-privileged places. I represent them fading or disappearing in our modern and pop culture, because I find that same happiness and values disappearing too. I hope I get the opportunity to show my work worldwide, and just keep painting.

You can learn more about Pedro Matos and his art by visiting his myspace profile: www.myspace.com/droneh. You can read my other interviews with emerging and established artists by visiting the following page: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Valerie Hird

I was introduced to the art of Valerie Hird by Laura Pabst of the Nohra Haime Gallery. Valerie is known for creating work that has a unique focus on cultural myths and their interaction with historical memory. Her research lead her to travel the world for eighteen years. She has visited and traveled with semi-nomadic communities in Morocco, Turkey and Central Asia. Through the years she has also tackled the legacy of myth and metaphor within her own society-- the culture America consciously or unconsciously exports to the rest of the world.

Valerie believes that the fictionalization of history provides a rich and evocative tool for societies that rely on oral narrative. That wealth of metaphor, fact and cultural myth was her creative home while abroad for eighteen years. Valerie now focuses on her own oral traditions-- based on radio stations, television news, and other forms of media that bombard us with opinions and information on a daily basis. Valerie finds that these sources utilize a similar strategy compared to the oral histories she embraced while traveling-- they are equally rich as a source for visual imagery.

Gentlemen, When The Bell Rings, Shake Hands and Come Out Fighting by Valerie Hird

Brian Sherwin: Valerie, you studied at Beloit College and the Rhode Island School of Design. Who were your mentors at the time? Also, can you recall any of your early influences?

Valerie Hird: Beloit College was where I learned that my interest in archeology and in anthropology would never become a career. It was clear to me in my first year that visual art was my primary, all-consuming obsession; other disciplines could only influence and inform. I transferred to RISD where the teachings of Dean Richardson and the critiques of Richard Merkin brought me to focus less on technique and more on content. They told me to break my fingers and learn how to see. They exposed me to my early influences; Vulliard and Bonnard, Robert Henri and David Levine. I was also fortunate to work as a conservator for the RISD museum under Diane Johnson and the wonderful curators Christopher Monkhouse and Eleanor Fairweather. Together they opened my world to the rich expanses of visual language in the decorative and design arts. This rich terrain stood in contrast to three colorful years as an apprentice to a Sicilian family of picture framers and commercial restorers (I was working my way through RISD). Between those two worlds, my education beyond rural Vermont ; my original home, was assured.

Lysistrata Revisited by Valerie Hird

BS: Since that time you have held several art-related positions, including: Conservator at the Museum of Rhode Island School of Design, Director of the Passepartout Gallery, Trustee for the Vermont Arts Council, and you have instructed at several educational institutions. How were you able to find balance between these positions and creating personal art? I know from experience that it can be difficult to take on responsibilities while remaining active with your art at the same time.

VH: So many disciplines feed my artist practice. In addition to archeology and anthropology I also love to read and write. At one time I wanted to apprentice to a Romany family to learn flamenco dancing. About the time I start to feel comfortable in my life is about the time I think I’m not doing enough. So ‘balance’ as a lifestyle concept has always made me nervous. I’ve learned to use travel as a means of gaining insights into lives and identities other than my own in order to build a mental warehouse of remembered experience from which to draw imagery. I’ve traveled with Uzbek herdsmen through 1000 year old juniper forests, made a diet of fermented yogurt and grazed sheep on glaciers. I’ve had the privilege of working with archeologists in the Great Western Desert of Egypt. Under the watchful eye of an ancient librarian, I’ve gazed at 12th century Arabic texts in southern Morocco and had the distinct pleasure of swapping stories with a Sufi mystic while hiking in Turkey.

If I spent too much time in the studio I feel trapped. If I’m away too long I begin to feel fractured and irritable. Generally, I find outside jobs to be an impetus toward constructing a productive studio schedule. I try to put in about 30 hours a week during the academic year. My teaching syllabi usually relate to projects confronting me in the studio. So my students are sometimes integrated into my artistic practice. Having said all that, my time can often feel out of my control. My solution is to travel without a cell phone or internet. Away from daily stress I can look at life through another lens and reset my internal clock.

In God(s) We Trust by Valerie Hird

BS: Valerie, you have been represented by Nohra Haime Gallery since the early 90s. Nohra has represented you at several major venues: Art Chicago and Art Miami-- just to name a few. It seems you have built very good rapport with Nohra. What does it take to establish a strong bond between artist and gallery owner... as you have done with Nohra?

VH: It is very important to understand the opportunities a dealer can provide, it is also very important to understand a gallery’s limitations and where you yourself must carve out opportunities. The more clearly those roles can be defined, the easier it will be for artist and dealer to work together cooperatively for mutual benefit. I was aided by having owned and run a gallery before working with Nohra so our relationship has the advantage of my ‘dual perspective’. Nohra is also an unusual gallery owner. Instead of focusing all her energies on sales, her strategies are aimed toward advancing an artist’s career. Having a dealer truly believe in your aesthetic makes those lean financial times spent floundering in obscurity much more bearable.

BS: Valerie, I understand that you have been extending your work on cultural myths and their interaction with historical memory. Much of your inspiration is drawn from years of visiting and traveling with semi-nomadic communities in Morocco, Turkey and Central Asia. Can you go into further detail about how these communities have influenced you and how your art will continue to explore these issues?

VH: My time observing and traveling with semi-nomadic tribes was central to my interest in oral narrative as a tool for recording cultural history. Myth and metaphor are mixed with fact and fiction within their historical memory. A particular location would provoke the memory of a past event -- thus geography became a series of oral/visual narratives that would change depending on the memory and tribe of the orator.

So much of my time is spent collecting stories. Narrative is a constant in my work. I also layer paintings with historical imagery to give context and depth. My 2003 Cycles of Faith, Cycles of Fiction was all about appropriating formats from 12th century Spanish and Persian illuminated texts to form a strata for contemporary cultural events.

But as globalization escalated the stress on tribal lifestyles, it seemed increasingly irrelevant to remain focused solely on the icons of a cultural past. And with the rise of fundamentalist Islam it became increasingly difficult to find people willing to host a white American female with limited language skills. So I altered my imagery to focus on people instead of their landscape. I began researching individuals from both the East and West who have been stressed by recent religious and political turmoil. For the past five years I’ve been absorbed by these manifestations as they play out in daily lives. Insights into other cultures become comprehensible when the stresses involved are filtered through the lens of specific individuals; their lives and their interaction with their communities.

Lest We Forget by Valerie Hird

BS: Valerie, recent news events have provoked a shift in the direction of your art. I’ve read that you are concerned with the legacy of myth and metaphor within the context of your own society, within contemporary Western culture itself. You feel that this is the culture we consciously or unconsciously export to the rest of the world. Can you go into further detail about this... what concerns do you have? I understand that your studies have lead you to focus on war and how war plays a part in these cultural changes...

VH: While researching the rise of American fundamentalism I was struck by the similarities in vocabulary between faiths under siege and their embrace of violence in a just cause. Pope Urban’s peculiar Christian take on the ‘Might Makes Right’ concept by exempting holy warriors from the first commandment continues to be a rallying banner for a number of religious/nationalist conquests. It seems a recurring paradox that men/women are willing to ‘march into hell’ for a ‘just cause’. As Americans we are passionate about ‘justice’, and deeply concerned about morality and ethics, but wildly divergent on what constitutes a ‘righteous cause’. Americans believe in the heroic myth. It is present in every facet of our popular culture.

I have a son who is twenty three. When the present war with Iraq broke out he was the exact age my ex-husband was when he was drafted into the Vietnam War. My son’s perception of war in 2003 was based entirely on the action movies and videos games that we export with such success to Europe and Latin America . I became intrigued with the differences in our perceptions of victory and heroic myth. Thomas Hirschhorn’s exhibition ‘Utopia’ using the camouflage pattern on military fatigues as the ubiquitous world-wide fashion statement testifies to the cultural ambivalence toward violence and the attraction of the commercial heroic myth.

Great Minds at Play by Valerie Hird

BS: Speaking of war... in January 2006, your principal gallery – the Nohra Haime Gallery in Manhattan-- presented an exhibition of your work which juxtaposed some of the historic and contemporary ambiguities surrounding war. Can you tell us more about the work that was included in this exhibit? I understand that it involved aspects of graphic novels and video games...

VH: It did. The 2006 exhibition Myths Now and Then was an examination of the substructure of our culture of violence. Each painting had a strong narrative structure layered with imagery appropriated from medieval paintings of epic or heroic battle scenes. Like the originals, they seduce the viewer with a brilliant pageant of color into an appreciation of the heroic ideal. But in Shake Hands Gentlemen the reference to the relative civility of structured combat seems inappropriate when applied to the contemporary combatants.

Killing Time was based on a conversation I had with a local veteran. Recently returned from combat in Iraq , he saw no irony in playing the Doom and Halo video games as the preferred means of decompressing between duty hours.

My work on paper juxtaposed compositional forms from illuminated medieval texts with contemporary images taken from media coverage of war. In Transition Team, the apostles, the biblical embodiment of the heroic ideal, are replaced by their equivalents from American and British action films; seated in gilded splendor, they are surrounded by sectarian violence.

BS: Valerie, can you discuss you artistic process... how do you start a painting? Also, how did you feel making the jump from traditional works of art to the use of animation? Will you continue to explore animation or perhaps digital art? Film?

VH: Any visual vocabulary I use is dictated by the concept image. Painting has a long track record that is specifically germane when having a visual conversation about historical memory. My process begins with research, empirical to start and then supported by text. The gestation period of any body of work is about 5 - 7 years. My use of animation, as developed by William Kentridge, was a logical extension of my drawing process. Digital animation using a succession of drawn images scanned into a computer, prolongs process and allows me to interrogate every element in the project. I am using animation as part of my Maiden Voyages Project.

Of course, when all is said and done, the artistic process remains a bit of a mystery to me. I try not to analyze it too closely because clarity doesn’t confer success. I wish the experience of painting was cumulative, but even after 30 years of professional practice, good painting demands fresh invention from me every single time. Sigh.

Killing Time by Valerie Hird

BS: Valerie, what projects are you working on at this time? When do you plan to reveal some of your current work? Do you have any upcoming exhibitions planned?

VH: My work will be included in the Bridge Art Fair in London in October. The Nohra Haime Gallery will be showing Hero Worship my new body of paintings and animation in a one person show at Red Dot during Art Basel, Miami in December of this year. The work represents my most recent examination of the manifestations of the heroic myth within our culture. It’s both serious and sardonic.

The Maiden Voyages project mentioned in the last question is the result of correspondence with women from the Middle East and myself. Each month I collected my own and four e-mailed diaries written about a single day, the same day once a month for a year. The goal of the project is to bring a measure of depth to our knowledge of women from the Middle East . American perceptions are largely based on media sound bites articulated within the narrow vocabulary of war. The results of those diaries will be translated into a series of large-scale drawings structured as timelines which can be exhibited traditionally in a gallery setting as well as on-line in animated sequences. I will be going to Amman Jordan to work on the drawings and animation for Maiden Voyages in the spring of next year. I anticipate exhibitions of the project to begin late in 2008. But images from both projects and information on their exhibition will be available on my website starting next month.

BS: Valerie, do you have any advice for artists who are just starting out?

VH: Work as much as you can. Elevate your craft as much as you can. Expand your visual vocabulary as much as possible. Don’t base your research solely on computer generated information. Active engagement with the real world is the best source for concepts and imagery. Having and being able to articulate a great idea, is the best way to get exposure. Competency in business, packing/freighting, computer software and writing wouldn’t hurt either!

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

VH: I’ve never been able to figure out who exactly constitutes ‘the art world’. You probably have a better handle on it than I. Me, I’ve said enough about myself.

You can learn more about Valerie Hird and her art by visiting her website, www.valeriehird.com, or by visiting the Nohra Haime Gallery (41 East 57th Street.
New York, NY 10022). Also, feel free to read my other interviews by visiting the following page: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Bask

Originally hailing from Czechoslovakia, Ales "Bask" Hostomsky is a street artist who utilizes various mediums to bring forth socially and politically-aware messages. Bask, whose family fled Czechoslovakia as political exiles in 1984, draws from the iconic, subversive imagery of advertising and propaganda. Bask has been noted as being one of the top contemporary post-graffiti writers-- having been categorized with the same cultural importance as D-Face, Buff Monster, Swoon, Faile, Above, Shepard Fairey, and Banksy.

O.D.

Brian Sherwin: Bask, you are originally from Czechoslovakia. Upon moving to the States with your family you observed the similarities between the communistic iconic propaganda from your youth and the consumer advertising you found in America during your teen years. Can you go into further detail about this relation and how it made an impact on your artistic direction?

Bask: When we moved here in 1984, I was only eight years old so I didn't make the connection until I was much older. But coming from a political system which was very specific on how it delivered its messages and propaganda to its people, it wasn't hard to compare that to the way add agencies and corporations target it's consumer audience. Coming to this conclusion I started to play with icons and the power they held over people not to mention myself.

It's a Fine Line Between a Social Drinker and A Drunk

BS: May I ask why you decided to go by the moniker Bask? Your real name is Ales Hostomsky, correct?

Bask: The alias Bask came at the end of a line of tags I was doing in my teens. I wrote Argus, Ayl, among others and eventually I started to put up Bask when I was seventeen. There isn't a deep story behind the name. I think I just liked how the letters came together. Eventually everybody just called me Bask rather then Ales (pronounced Alesh) and I just rolled with it. Strangely enough, I relate to the name Bask more then Ales these days. Does that make me a schizophrenic, hahaha!

BS: Bask, have you observed any other connections between communism and the American lifestyle?

Bask: Not really. It's actually quit opposite in regards to lifestyle. In an American or western lifestyle you have an abundance of everything where as in an communist system there is a shortage. In America, you're encouraged to make more money, get more credit cards and spend it all. Back in my home country, you bought mostly just what you or your family needed, really needed, not like "need" an XBOX or something.

Installation: Killer Bees

BS: Bask, tell us about your influences. Have you been influenced by other artists? Art movements?

Bask: My influences range quite a bit. It's not just art or other artists for that matter. It changes and moves daily. I could get inspired by a song one day and a fight with my girlfriend the next. I never know when or what it will be, I just know it always comes and goes. But if I was to name a few artists I like, it would be Tes One, Barry Mcgee, Phil Frost, Derek Hess, Sarah Gail Hutcherson, The Seventh Letter Crew among countless others.

Harvey's Cafe

BS: Bask, your work is known for having an "anti-iconic" twist. Sometimes your work offers a satirical worldview... other times there is a strong focus on conveying dark emotion. These pieces often reveal a sense of social and industrial decay-- can you go into further detail about the message you are creating with your art and the social implications that you capture?

Bask: Well, to answer that, I'll have to explain my process a little. I create most of my work on found object like panels and boards I salvage from alleys and dumpsters. Things that people find worthless and frankly a burden to deal with. Most of the things I pick up are larger then what a garbage company likes to deal with. I take one of these panel and layer it with pop imagery, child like scribbles or whatever else it calls for depending on the theme of the work. Finally I clear coat and display it in a museum or gallery. This is how the paintings are born. I have a huge respect for this process and try to accentuate the fact that the painting originated from something that was no longer wanted. Top that off with a social issue or emotion I'm trying to convey visually and the rest just happens naturally. I found if I paint on a new canvas with new brushes my work feels empty and soulless. but if it was born out of something I find in an alley then it enters the process with already having a rich history.

Installation for 2007 Bumbershoot, Seattle, WA.

BS: Bask, your work is richly textured-- you utilize a technique of multi-layered applications. Can you go into further detail about your artistic process. How do you start a piece and when do you know that it is done?

Bask: Well I think my last answer covered most of this question. But how do I know when a painting is finished? I'm not really sure, I guess when I stop working on it. I once heard something to the effect of "a painting I'd never finished, just abandoned" I kind of agree with that. I look at some of my older work and every time I see something I could add or take away from it.

BS: The theme of destruction is obvious in your art-- both in how they are created and the message they contain. However, do you leave room for hope? Or do you see the current socio-political climate as one that will only result in peril... doom?

Bask: I'm definitely an optimist. Actually a lot of my work pokes fun at the elements around us, good or bad. Unfortunately, most good art comes from struggle and a sense helplessness-- as if your only voice to be heard is through your art. The current state of affairs lends itself to the arts pretty well.

BS: Bask, your imagery has appeared in countless publications in both advertising and editorial capacities. Do you ever fear that your work will become the very issue that you rally against? Are you concerned that your work may lose meaning due to advertisement? Are you concerned that your work may end up being seen as just another commercial message? Would you embrace that form of irony?

Bask: I do everything in my power to prevent my work to be viewed in that manner. I turn down a lot of work because I choose not to do commercial work unless I get final approval on how my work is used. It's hard sometimes to turn down good paying gigs, but I look at the big picture, and a few bucks can't buy my integrity. But, with that said, in today's art arena, you have to make yourself known so promotion and advertising comes with the turf. The difference is on what you're addressing and as an artist, what you lend your art to advertise. Is it a new pair of kicks for Nike or a series of new paintings you're displaying at your next show.

Kids Bomb the Suburbs Today

Installation detail: Kids Bomb the Suburbs Today

BS: Bask, your art has been shown at the Florida International Museum as well as the Jacksonville Museum of Modern Art-- which also has your work in it’s permanent collection. You have shown in Baltimore, Detroit, Miami and Tampa. Where can our readers view your work at this time? Do you have any upcoming exhibitions?

Bask: At this time my work can be viewed at the Public Trust in Dallas Texas, Vitale Gallery in Saint Petersburg Florida, Foundation One Gallery in Atlanta, CPOP Gallery in Detroit, and other galleries in the near future. For anyone wanting to find out more about my current shows or what I have coming up, go to www.myspace.com/BaskInYourThoughtcrimes.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the art world?

Bask: No, I think I'm good. Thanks for the great questions!

I hope that you have enjoyed my interview with Bask. Feel free to view my other interviews by clicking on the following link: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Ray Cabarga

Ray Cabarga has been surrounded by visual art and music for most of his life. Ray's delight in experimentation is what attracted me to his work, specifically a series of paintings that he calls 'oozings'. This body of work reveals total disregard for traditional methods of painting application. However, they also convey a strong bond with the art theories of Wassily Kandinsky-- which I find appealing. Ray's work reveals the fruit that can be produced from planting unknown seeds-- a field of mystery.

Brian Sherwin: Ray, you were born into a family of visual artist, but chose music. You performed jazz and salsa throughout the bay area for fifteen years before placing total focus on your visual art. That focus has been solid for over ten years now. How has your experience as a musician influenced your visual art?

Ray Cabarga: Greatly, actually. I see music as being directly analogous to visual art and of course all art is a metaphor for life. All the same principles in music apply to visual art, just the specifics are different. The tones are color values, the familiar phrases are figurative representations, the tension created by obscure variations or from the structure of the musical form are the abstractions or impressionistic forms in the painting. They say that playing music develops your brain in a unique way that opens and expands creative thinking and I think writing, arranging, performing and improvising music has all given me a leg up on visual art almost as if I had been practicing it all along. However, the technique is completely unrelated so that was a transition, but technique has always followed concept for me: If I see it clearly in my head, I can paint it.

BS: Ray, how exactly did your family influence you as far as visual art is concerned?

RC: Well, my dad is an accomplished painter and was a commercial artist for 45 years, art directing in New York, then owning an ad agency in San Francisco. My eldest brother is a commercial artist and has had over 25 books published. My youngest brother is a painter and a commercial artist. My sister is a clothing designer and is in some very high end boutiques. And the brother just below me in age plays clarinet with the National Symphony Orchestra in D.C. so its all around me and we have all had a lot of encouragement from both parents to pursue art careers. Oh, I forgot to mention my mother who is a martial arts master, mostly healing arts, and a teacher, though both parents are retired they continue to pursue their art forms.

BS: Where else do you draw inspiration from? Can you discuss your influences outside of music?

RC: The masters of course. Dali, Escher, Kandinsky, Gorky are some of my favorites. all the impressionists and surrealists and many of my contemporaries as well. I spend a lot of time looking at art on websites such as this one and regularly peruse galleries and other art venues. Early childhood memories of visits to the Guggenheim and the Smithsonian-- even the paintings my dad had done and hung in our house back east, to this day, strongly influence me. It's like I can still see those images with a child's mind and feel the awe and wonder that I felt at three.

BS: Ray, you have a unique way of painting... you call these painting 'oozings'. I've read that specific conditions must be met in order for these paintings to be created. It is my understanding that these paintings do not involve any brushwork. Would you say that you control the outcome or do you let nature take it's course, so to speak?

RC: With this particular painting technique, which by the way is only one type of painting I do, I throw away or recycle about 9 out of every ten canvases I attempt so 1 out of ten turn out well. So you might say I let nature take its course but certain very specific conditions affect that and it's become almost a form of alchemy or magic to achieve those perfect conditions. The really good ones are never planned-- planning seems to preclude success and I have to almost step away and detach myself from the work in order for it to do it's thing. It's a discipline in letting go of control of my art which is a very big life lesson for me. To trust the art to paint itself without my constant cajoling and persuading, without my preconceptions of how it should proceed and where it should start and end. It's largely about timing and quantities and being able to put the elements in the environment and then leave it alone for the exact duration and no longer.

BS: Ray, can you go into further detail about the process of creating your 'Oozings'?

RC: Sure I start by mixing ordinary acrylic paints with flow mediums and glazing mediums, acrylic enamels work the best and then I mix colors with glass and porcelain glazes and start applying them to either canvas or gessoed Masonite board. The larger the board the harder it is to make it work. The glazes are basically poured onto the surface and allowed to partially dry for anywhere from 3 minutes to fifteen minutes but this duration is critical. Then I run hot or cold water over it and rinse a lot of it off. Now I start applying the acrylic mixtures and alternate running water over it or drying it with a hairdryer all the while changing the angle so that more or less paint, water and glaze run off. At this point I may add more elements of color but basically after a certain cut-off point I can't add anything else and I leave it to ooze at a certain angle and temperature-- either room temperature or under a heat lamp to slow the oozing and freeze it which is almost impossible to do. After my work is done is when the truly amazing art is created ironically. Kind of like children. You create them and then you just sit back and watch them blow your mind. They show you what you wish you could do. Don't try to control what they do because you'll fail at that endeavor and more importantly you'll deprive yourself of seeing the result of your own evolution. Oozings are exactly like children Brian, all you can do is give them the best you've got and then trust them to do the right thing. And then you accept whatever they turns out to be, because you can't change it. That's what Oozings, and progeny are all about.

BS: So... you are an artist who likes to take chances. Do you think that is something that is missing in a lot of the art that is created today?

RC: Oh yes. Art that doesn't take chances is hardly art at all now is it? What's the point of that. If you want a realistic representation of something, a camera would be my first choice. It is more than taking chances though... it is like creating chances. For everything I can perceive, there's a million things I can imagine. So I would never waste my time on something that's been done, even if it was done by the greatest artist in the universe... the universe... I have my own little universe going here and the only limit I have is how much I can perceive and then from those perceptions, how much I can imagine in my lifetime.

BS: Do you plan to discover other unique ways to build the surface of your work? As an artist, are you concerned with finding new methods and techniques of artistic creation?

RC: Not concerned but definitely open to the possibility. I forgot to mention I discovered Oozings completely by accident. I was trying to do a portrait and it didn't turn out so I tried to wash the board off before it dried. The phone rang and I left the room then forgot about it. When I came back three hours later My first oozing was sitting there and it was the most amazing thing I've ever seen. I tried to recreate the process but I never have exactly done that the best. I know what your next question is going to be, "Can I see the original painting?" and the answer is no-- no one ever can I had to destroy it because it was too amazing for anyone to gaze upon. I'm Kidding!

BS: Ray, what is your studio space like? What are the conditions you need in order to create? Do you follow a steady routine of studio practice?

RC: Nope! No pre-requisite conditions. Usually the art is all created in my head before I start working and I just need enough room to move my elbow and someplace to put it to dry when it is done-- seriously. I'm sure there are ideal conditions for the piece of art I'm working on but I never know what those are so I just do it anywhere.

BS: Ray, do you have any upcoming exhibitions? Also, are you represented by a gallery? If not, are you seeking representation?

RC: Funny you should ask that. Have you ever heard of an artist that spends all his time creating art and doesn't give nearly enough attention to self-promotion? And does a large carnivorous quadruped relieve himself among the natural arboreal growth? I'm currently seeking representation, yes.

BS: What projects are you working on at this time?

RC: A piece commissioned by a client who loves physical representations of old sayings. Its a four foot diameter globe of the earth constructed out of oyster shells. Can you figure out what old adage this represents?

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

RC: I love art and artists and the artworld. Art is my life so people should buy my art before my death because the price goes up after that!

You can view my other interviews with emerging and established artists by visiting the following link: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Heather Hutchison

Heather Hutchison is a very humble artist considering the fact that she has gained great success in New York City. Her work has been featured in ARTnews, Art in America, and several other publications. By applying tinted beeswax in horizontal bands to Plexiglass panels, Hutchison creates see-through paintings that are subtle, yet contain the powerful essence of nature. These panels are attached to wooden frames that create a form of controlled atmosphere. In my opinion, these works reflect the conflict that results from aspects of the natural world when they are contained-- there is certain tension about this work. In the end-- through the force of light-- nature dominates.

Brian Sherwin: Heather, can you tell us about your youth? When did you decide to pursue art? Can you recall any early experiences or events that directed you on this path? Also, who were your early mentors?

Heather Hutchison: My father was a caricaturist. Early on my parents, my two brothers and I would travel every six months from Arizona to Oregon and back again visiting with his artist friends while he did "the circuit." My parents then decided to settle down, and from ages six through thirteen I lived with my family in a grand old hotel we owned called, "The Copper Queen," in Bisbee, Arizona six miles North of the Mexican border.It was the early 1970's and people were seeking refuge in this small burgeoning artist colony from "yuppies". They were pouring in from places that they felt were already being ruined like Aspen, San Francisco, Marin County, and New York, lots of guys coming out of Viet Nam as well... as a young kid I was aware that it was a a time of massive change.

I feel fortunate for the amount of freedom living in the hotel afforded me, it was in the center of the town, which is built like a European village, nestled a mile high in the mountains-- everything within walking distance. I developed inspiring friendships with many interesting adults, visionaries, writers, artists,and hippies. I would spend time with them in their studios and homes independent of my family. Having been influenced by all of these artist's lifestyles and witnessing their work practices, I began a studio practice before I was ten years old. The hotel and our other properties gave me an enormous amount of space, enabling me to set up a studio.

I was lucky to grow up knowing that I had come from at least four generations of professional artists and to have it reinforced throughout my whole life that being an artist is a valid lifestyle choice. I was so convinced that I didn't see the need for art school. This wasn't because I thought I knew everything-- I still know nothing-- but, because I had learned through experience that being an artist meant having original vision, and at eighteen I couldn't imagine how being confined to an institution with hundreds of other inexperienced youths who were being taught by the same handful of teachers could help that much in attaining originality. If I'd been thinking about a career back then I would have tried to get into Yale.
BS: Heather, you have been reviewed by ARTnews, Art in America, The New York Times, and several other publications. How do you feel when your work is selected for coverage? Do you get excited? Nervous?

HH: I usually feel hopeful that a critic is going to write something that will help me to see my work from a different perspective, that it will teach me something about what I am doing, and then I am often disappointed that it doesn't enlighten me at all. I suppose that is something I could have gotten over by getting crits in art school.

BS: Heather, your Minimalist work often reminds viewers of the natural elements of nature- light, ice, water and earth. Are you influenced by nature?

HH: Yes, to borrow from Pollock, "I am nature" and I am coming back into being more nature as I grow closer to returning to dust. This is the world I, and every other art making, art viewing human exist in... I think it is impossible to escape the influence of nature even if the work isn't recognizably "nature based," it is-- it can't help it. But, yes I do embrace that metaphor. I am working to make it be not such an easy one to come to... sometimes I can't resist.
BS: For those not familiar with your art, what do you strive to convey in your work?

HH: It seems that whenever I consciously "try" to convey anything it is a disaster, self-conscious, and corny...so I avoid doing that. Sometimes people don't notice my paintings at all, sometimes they are extremely moved. I think it all depends on what the viewer brings to the viewing experience, no matter what your looking at.

Heather Hutchison- Black & Light (2007)120 x 240 inches, site specific, fabric & paint

BS: Heather, for over twenty years, you have developed a visual language that utilizes components of painting- light, color and depth. You combine these methods convey a sense of emotion, memory and the passage of time- with a focus on translucent media. Where do you see your work going next? Also, What are you working on at this time?

HH: In July I finally created an installation I have ruminated on for the last 13 years. I had organized an exhibition in Woodstock, New York (I have been curating lately), the curatorial focus being artists in different medium that limit their palette to black and light. When it came to planning the hanging I realized that the show needed something to regulate the light that was coming in to the space... this was a push and an opportunity to realize this long desired installation.

I utilized a large window covering it with layers of different translucent materials... and painting the wall to recede, the end result being a completely flat field of light that was constantly changing with the movement of the daylight, sun going behind clouds, buildings, etc. I collaborated with videographer Dean Janoff and we made a 24hour time-lapsed video condensed into 3 minutes that I am very pleased with. Both the video and the installation are fixed yet constantly changing-- that is something I would like my other pieces to do... the paintings/ sculptures I am making since July have learned from that experience. I am working on having the opportunity to realize more of these window pieces in public spaces-- I can do them most anywhere.
BS: I assume that creating art is a constant form of exploration for you... correct?
HH: Correct.

BS: Heather, Elanor Heartney (ARTnews) stated that your work demonstrates some similarities with the work of Eva Hesse and Christopher Wilmarth in that your manner of Minimalism often enhances the use of metaphor instead of taking away from it. Do you agree with that statement?

HH: Definitely, that was one of the writings that I actually learned something from.

BS: Heather, your work sometimes deals with religious or metaphysical concerns. Would you say that you are a spiritual person? If so, how does that spirituality enter your artistic practice?

HH: You could say that I am spiritual. I don't have a rigid ritualistic practice-- I've tried, but once again I start questioning the conformity. I have always just been looking for answers. My study and experience of religion is usually focused on the the philosophy of the religion. My artistic practice, my studio, and now raising a human being (my son) are what is most sacred to me. It is in the studio and through the meditative practice of making work that I feel I have come closest to any truths.
BS: Heather, can you tell us about your other influences? What artists or art movements have influenced your art?

HH: Another by-product of being self-taught... when I started working with translucency and light in 1988 I wasn't aware of the California Light and Space Movement-- in 1990 a dealer from L.A. turned me on to it.I am inspired by, and feel I am working parallel to, much of that work. Later, after making work that is a direct result of process and application for about ten years I discovered that there was a Process Art movement. It is reassuring to me to have other artists share my obsessions-- I feel less crazy.

The minimalism that was being created at about the time I was born (early sixties) has resonated the longest and most consistently with me. Major influences and inspiration from other artists in chronological order since my early twenties: Album art, Magritte, Hopper, Guy Pene du Bois, Barnett Newman, Agnes Martin, Donald Judd, Joseph Amar, Christopher Wilmarth, Menardo Rosso, Turner, Camille Corot, Corbet, Giovanni Bellini, Giorgio Morandi, Robert Irwin.

BS: Heather, where else do you draw inspiration from?

HH: I believe I am obsessed with particular horizontal divisions of space that for some reason resonate with me, I can also be transfixed by the movement of water and light. Raw materials really turn me on as well.

BS: Tell us about your work space... what is your studio like?

HH: I have two great studios, One in DUMBO Brooklyn that has big windows that look at the city, the Manhattan Bridge, and the River. The other is in Woodstock, NY where we have had a home for 12 years. For the last five years it has been our primary residence, we are in the woods on a private dirt road that no one drives up... we turned a large post and beam pole-barn into studios, my husband paints upstairs and I have the bottom floor. It is only 30 feet from the house.

We have an eight year old son and at this time in my life keeping the balance between the home and the studio feels right to me. I will be working and while something is drying I run in to the house and start some soup.While that is cooking I will go back in to the studio and continue working on a piece. We originally came to the country because I was feeling that our life in New York City was out of balance, with too much emphasis on the self-referential art world and having a "career," not enough awareness about the life we were living.

I am happy to be up here having a family and an extremely high quality lifestyle... in the long run it is important for the work. I have realized that I am in it for the long run and having distance (2 hours) on the artworld allows me to be happy, refreshed, and non-competitive when I am in the heart of it.
BS: What are the conditions you need in order to create? For example, do you work in silence or do you listen to music? Do you work alone or do you prefer company?

HH: I work alone. I can go through a certain amount of the process with someone in the studio or working with me, but the point where the piece is actually coming to it's own has to be done in solitude-- usually with one CD (probably Bob Dylan) playing over and over to the point where I can't really even hear it anymore it just becomes part of me, like my heart beat.

BS: Heather, tell us more about your artistic process. How do you start a piece? When do you know that it is done?

HH: Without a pre-conceived idea of what the work will be I start by deciding the dimensions of the plywood box, and whether or not to build multiple panels. I build my own forms from Birch plywood that I rip into boards on the table-saw. I choose the boards for their grain and warp. Then I mount and route the Plexiglas. After the form is done I start applying color to the inside of the box and the surface of the Plexi. It is in finding the right balance of the inside and surface color that will give me the overall color(s).

Once the color is determined I scrape it back down and begin playing with composition I apply the color to the composition until it is a painting/sculpture, meaning that it can stand on it's own as a painting/sculpture and it transcends looking like a piece of furniture or a light fixture. This can sometimes take months to determine... I let things hang out to see if they pass the test of time. Sometimes things will come back to the studio years later and I will rework them-- they didn't pass. I think everyone does that.BS: Heather, where can our readers view your art in person? Also, are you involved with any upcoming exhibitions?

HH: I am represented in Manhattan by Margaret Thatcher at 511 W. 25th st., she usually has something up in the back-- she will be taking my work to the 07 art fair in London and Pulse in Miami. I'll be having a solo show at the gallery in a year or so, date yet to be determined. We are pretty good about keeping upcoming shows posted on my website www.heatherhutchison.com.

BS: Heather, do you have any advice for artists who are just starting out? Perhaps you have some suggestions for seeking gallery representation or issues that emerging artists should be aware of in the artworld?

HH: I have noticed that success has to do with luck, working as hard as you can, and bugging people until you get what you want. If possible, arrange for, or marry someone with, a sizable trust fund. I am lucky, but not lucky enough to have a trust fund... I have been working for years on being able to bug people-- but I am just too sensitive. I have been training my son since he was born to be lucky by constantly pointing out his good fortune, it is all in your self-perception.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

HH: Yes Brian, since you asked, I think it is imperative to the future of contemporary art that the artworld (artmarket) remember that it was started by and would not exist without artists.

You can learn more about Heather Hutchison by visiting her website: www.heatherhutchison.com. You can view my other interviews by clicking on the following link: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space News: SH Contemporary Art Fair in Shanghai

Nondescript (diptych) Year 2005 - Medium oil on canvas Size 55.1 x 110.2 in. By Qiu Xin

The opening night of the SH Contemporary Art Fair in Shanghai was a great success. Upon entering visitors were greeted by an artist who passed out a snack of rice with a hidden message among the grains-- "Rich Bastards Beware.'' Oddly enough, the 'fair-warning' by artist Rirkrit Tiravanija was warranted! For example, collectors paid as much as 150,000 yuan ($19,885) for the work of emerging artist Qiu Xin.

Collectors and critics know that China is a rising star in the global art market. The Shanghai Fair served as a test of that stability and of the vitality of China within the context of the global art market. On the opening night, leading Chinese artists made the highest sells when compared to artists from other nations. Those who attended agree that China's influence on the art market will not stop anytime soon.

Fair director Lorenzo Rudolph, a former director of Art Basel, and Swiss dealer Pierre Huber, the curator, organized more than 110 galleries from around the world. About a third of the galleries represented at the fair are from China and the rest were foreign galleries that focus on Chinese art. Event organizers made it clear that the fair would represent the best and brightest of artists from China.

An interesting aspect of the fair is the fact that the galleries from China, which represented artists working from within the country, out-sold the Chinese artists represented by foreign galleries. Again, this is a reflection of the art-boom in China. Collectors desire work from Chinese artists who live and work in China. I find it interesting how Chinese artists living outside of China were not as sought after by collectors.

Not everyone was pleased with the fair. Some viewers felt that the majority of the work, though fulfilling the purpose of spot-lighting contemporary Asian artists, catered toward the current trends that Western viewers enjoy-- trends that embrace kitsch mingled with sex. What can I say, sex sales! If the market for contemporary art from China continues to grow-- you had better be buying!

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Pat Lipsky

Pat Lipsky has dedicated herself to painting for several decades. Lipsky graduated from Cornell University with a BFA in 1963, following which she attended the graduate program in painting at Hunter College where she studied with the sculptor, Tony Smith.

Lipsky's paintings have been reviewed by David Cohen (The New York Sun), Ken Johnson (The New York Times), Alicia Turner (The Miami Herald), Karen Wilkin (Art in America), Alexi Worth (The New Yorker) -- among others. Her paintings are in twenty-four public collections: The Whitney, The Hirshhorn, The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, and she has had twenty-eight solo exhibits.

Installation, Color Paintings, 2006, Elizabeth Harris

Brian Sherwin: Pat, through the years you have had several solo and group exhibitions -- including group exhibitions -- Whitney Museum of American Art (New York). How do exhibitions make you feel? Do you learn from them -- as in, do you take in all the information you can about your work from onlookers?

Pat Lipsky: Exhibitions make me feel nervous at first, and are also often a goal to work towards (although I work all the time, with or without an upcoming show). I have learned a great deal from my shows. They're one of my best teachers -- seeing the work up, out of the studio, and looking at it with "foreign eyes" is very illuminating. There were some shows early on where I felt (as the woman in Eliot’s "Prufrock") that "that is not what I meant at all. That is not it at all." The viewer is of course important too, but somehow the first thing is my own eye. It’s always fascinating to get another person’s take, especially someone you respect, and it's also interesting and instructive to see which paintings resonate with professional viewers, and critics.
Blue Border, oil on canvas, 70 1/2" x 68 3/4", 2002

BS: You have been reviewed in The New York Times, Art in America, The New York Sun, ARTnews, and several other publications. Thinking back on your early years, did you ever expect your work to gain this much attention?

PL: In all candor, I did. I’m like any artist: I feel there hasn’t been enough. Yes. That’s because I had a strange start in the art world. Almost a year after graduating from Hunter College’s
Master’s program my work was taken on by one of the then-best galleries in New York City, Andre Emmerich. This was perhaps an unrealistic debut and spoiled me for what a life in art might be. I immediately started selling the stained paintings -- two styles: burst and wave -- that I was doing at the time, and there was attention from the press and even a kind of odd bonus, a solo show at the Everson Museum in Syracuse. So I got the idea that this was the way it was going to be. And then, to my surprise, the lean years came. So to answer the question, my work gaining attention and being reviewed was something I expected from my early years -- although not, of course, as a student.

That’s That, oil on canvas, 53 1/4” x 67 1/2”, 2002

BS: Speaking of your early years, can you recall any periods or events of your youth that helped pave the way toward your exploration of art?

PL: Good question. I guess you could start with my mother taking me, when I was seven, to study painting with an elderly man in the neighborhood who had a framing shop. I sat in back, in a little booth, and he taught me how to use oil paint, how to make a tree, and a path, and put clouds in the sky. This appeared magical to me, but I’d already been drawing, and working with crayon and watercolor so it wasn’t so strange to find myself working in oil at that age. Then 17 years later there was Tony Smith, a great teacher whom I had the privilege of studying with in graduate school. He had a real sensitivity to color, and helped me to both refine and re-find color in my painting. And then, too, there was seeing my first Rothko at the Jewish Museum in a show created by a Cornell teacher Alan Solomon. I gasped when I saw that first painting, an orange and yellow. I didn’t know that you could do that in painting, make color so obviously the subject. (Even though Rothko claims in his writing that color is not the subject.)

BS: You studied at Hunter College, The Art Students League, and Cornell University. Who were your mentors during those years? Can you recall any interesting experiences from your apprentice years?

PL: The Jewish Museum show was a big moment. I would add this anecdote about the Art Students League, where I studied during a semester, I took off from Cornell. The teacher was the painter Charles Alston. I was in the class painting from the model; there I was with my canvas and palette starting to work when Alston came up to me and said, "Why are you doing that? Painting from the model?" I was stunned. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do in a figurative class? He said, "Why don’t you try an abstract painting?" The question frightened me, but I was always one to take a dare. So even though it felt totally alien and I didn’t really know how to do it, that’s when I painted my first abstract canvas.

Alan Solomon at Cornell was also instrumental in that he knew the scene in New York; he served as Director of The Jewish Museum at the same time he taught in Ithaca, and he would tell me every weekend what I should see in New York. I’d ride the Greyhound bus to town and visit the galleries and museums he suggested. As well as the Rothko, I saw the first stained paintings by Louis, Frankenthaler and Noland. The new acrylic paint invented by Lenny Bocour allowed painters to work directly into the canvas, as Pollock had done with enamel, instead of on it. I also remember Jan Mueller and the early Stellas -- as well as Rauschenberg, whose work I detested.

Homage to Bellini, oil on linen, 81 3/4" x 62", 2006

BS: Pat, you have also been an art instructor. You taught at Parsons School of Design, Hunter College, San Francisco Art Institute, and several other schools. During those years how did you find balance between being an instructor and creating your own art? Also, can you describe your instruction philosophy: in your opinion, what is the best way for an art student to learn?

PL: I found it extremely difficult to balance teaching with painting. Very few painters will say this -- it’s the thing you aren’t supposed to say. You should say, "I grew and I changed" or "the students' fresh attitude helped me see my own work in a blah-blah way." I just saw it as a big intrusion, three days a week. I knew every exit sign in the building; this is a hard thing for students to know, but it’s something most painters and sculptors will admit, and a lot of writing teachers too. It’s better, of course, when there is a really interested student.

As for my instruction philosophy, I told the students to look at painting; I took them to see paintings whenever possible. And I told them not to listen to what Harold Bloom calls "the cheerleaders" in the art and art history departments, who were pushing outsider art, feminist art, video art, each for a semester, but to look at the masters who had created the tradition. As Donald Judd once wrote, "When you need a plumbing job done, you call a working plumber." Except in rare instances, it’s more a situation of surviving art school with your enthusiasm and talent intact. I like the Gertrude Stein quote: "Genius is knowing who to be influenced by."

Proust’s Sea, oil on linen, 81 3/4” x 62 3/8", 2006

BS: I see you once gave a lecture at the Pollock-Krasner House. Can you recall what you spoke about? Also, do you plan to give any lectures about art in the near future?

PL: The Pollock-Krasner House -- that was a lot of fun. The topic was "What Tony, Lee and Clem Told Me"; that is, what I’d learned from Tony Smith, Lee Krasner and Clement Greenberg. (I knew the latter best.) I particularly compared Greenberg and Smith; what was so interesting was that they were talking about the same people --Pollock, Barnett Newman, Rothko -- and saying entirely different things, about their approaches and their work. I also talked about Soho in the seventies. (The talk incidentally is collected at The Archives of American Art, http://www.aaa.si.edu/collections/collections_list.cfm/fuseaction/Collections.ViewCollection/CollectionID/6089)

Installation: Red River Valley series, 2004, Elizabeth Harris

BS: Two of your most recent bodies of work -- the Red River Valley series and Color Paintings -- were exhibited in New York in 2004 and 2006, respectively. In the Red River Valley group, you repeated one theme over nine canvases. In this series you subtly changed the colors from one picture to the next. With Color Paintings, you continued your goal of expanding the vocabulary of color in abstraction, with an additional focus on colors that have not been labeled or codified. Can you go into further detail about these paintings? What influenced you to create them?

PL: With the second group, paintings that have many no-name colors, I was looking for hues that don’t yet exist, that don’t immediately have a name when you try to describe them -- like the new words or combinations you sometimes get in poetry. I think many colors have become clichés. I made up my mind to avoid those and move onto more difficult and complex mixtures -- to give the viewers an experience they hadn’t had before. What I had in mind was a kind of abstracted landscape -- creating mysterious and elegant worlds through color. I tried to keep the surface as smooth and the format as unruffled as possible -- to drench the viewer in color.

I didn’t, and don’t, end a picture until it has what I consider a presence, a sense of life that extends beyond the painting. By sense of life I mean that it has an identity, like a place or person. Sometimes this takes a very long time to achieve. Sometimes it doesn’t happen -- and those are the pictures you don’t show.

BS: What about Red River Valley?

PL: Those came out of twelfth-- and thirteenth-- century stained glass windows I ‘d been looking at for several years in France. I came away with the idea that these anonymous stained glass artisans were the true and original fauve artists. I went to many French cathedrals -- Troyes, Laon, St. Chapelle, Chartres-- where the overwhelming sensation I had was simply the richness of red and blue. That, especially, is what I wanted to recreate in these canvases.

I also responded to the faintly homemade feel of early stained glass, and tried to recreate that impression as well. The structure in the pictures is always asymmetrical, with no line hitting at the same place in any of the divisions. In all my painting, I’m interested in what "difference" is and in how differences add up, creating assonance in the minor shifts between hues. As you continue to look at the paintings the differences "come up" and make you aware that what you saw at first is not what the paintings are about.

My reading of Proust and Eliot, my viewing of Bellini and Giorgione and Titian and Ablers and Cornell and Pollock, my listening to Bach and Thelonius Monk, my liking Eric Rohmer and Monty Python might seem totally unrelated, but they teach the same lesson: differences matter. When Monk plays a single note instead of another, a piece is either saved or ruined. When Albers puts a white next to a yellow instead of a blue, the yellow is changed -- and the white is changed too. If Proust chooses to follow one character instead of another, to write 50 pages about a dinner instead of four paragraphs, the reader's experience is alerted in the most intimate and immediate way. We look at works of art as single large units -- but they’re actually composed of hundreds, of thousands of individual and tiny units, each one a decision. It’s those units that I’ve been experimenting with throughout my career.

Installation: Red River Valley series, 2004, Elizabeth Harris

BS: Pat, you have stated the following: "Painting is about seeing. And that’s not easy. To see what you’ve done, to be able to actually see other work takes a lifetime. Seeing changes -- what I thought was very good last year might not look that good to me now. And when I put something away for six months and then take it out I’m a bit nervous at first. Will it hold up? Of course, it’s even worse when it’s your own work, because you are so subjectively wrapped up in it. It’s everyone and everything you know up until that moment." Would you say that you are your own worst critic? Do you think that is a good thing?

PL: Aside from Henry James -- who preferred the Academy to Monet -- I don’t believe there is a "worst critic." I do take my eye seriously, and I also like looking at my paintings with people I’m close to. Sometimes I’m surprised I couldn’t see that something wasn’t working from six months ago. It’s a humbling experience. It can go the other way too -- something I’ve ignored, pushed aside, actually is working. When you are standing next to another person looking together it objectifies the experience of seeing, and that's helpful. (James writes, in one of his stories, "he had a fresh eye, and I was in a good deal of need of any such organ" -- which is why nobody is ever really a worst critic.) As a painter it’s essential to be critical of your work, and to edit heavily. As Matisse said "An artist’s bad paintings are his own worst enemy."

BS: Pat, when I view your paintings I think about Mark Rothko. I must ask, has his work been an influence on your art? If so, have you ever visited the Rothko Chapel? If you have -- how did you feel upon entering? Also, who else has influenced your art?

PL: We’ve been talking today a lot about Rothko. I think his paintings of the fifties are brilliant -- along with Pollock some of the best pictures of the twentieth century. I don’t much like his later work, and although I’ve never been to the Rothko Chapel I’ve studied other pictures from after 1955 – some of the Seagram panels were shown at the National Gallery a few years ago, and there’s the late Rothko room at the Tate Gallery in England. To my eye, Rothko falls off in these paintings, which look almost as if they were done by someone imitating Rothko. I think it’s the turgid colors, the maroon palette, and the general darkening of hues -- none of it seems to suit his sensibility. To my mind these pictures are self-conscious, trying to look important and serious, and for that reason they miss both qualities. (I’ve actually heard that he’d invite people over to look at them and then play Mozart and ask if the paintings came up to that level.)

As for other influences, lately I’ve been influenced by Bellini and Titian, and northern Renaissance painters like Van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden. When I was a teenager I loved Cezanne and Manet, who I became acquainted with through a set of posters from the Cortauld Gallery that hung in my bedroom. There are many others along the way, Pollock and Newman to name two Americans. And always I’ve admired Matisse, the great colorist.

Poussin Calm, oil on linen, 23 7/8” x 33 1/4”, 2007

BS: In your work you seem focused on the medium itself -- I sense that you are interested in the physicality of paint, how you can push it to make it do what you want. Is this so? Also, can you go into further detail about your painting process? How do you begin a painting?

PL: I do love paint. I love colors in tubes, and pure pigment -- I even love the names of colors. "Terre verte," "burnt sienna," "alizarin crimson." I am interested in surface, how to go about creating one that is rich, beautiful, elegant and smooth. And I’ve thought a lot about the expressive nature of surfaces -- for example in Chardin and Raphael and Soutine, the surface is the style. It’s the most personal thing.

For how I start a painting, I begin sometimes from a work on paper, but more often not. I usually have a pretty good idea of what I’m going to do, and usually that changes as I go along. Some paintings take years to complete. As Robert Frost once said of his poems, I try to "ride on my own melting."

BS: Pat, what are you working on at this time? Also, do you have any upcoming exhibitions?

PL: I’m working on some smaller paintings for the first time in many years, at the same time that I'm continuing the larger scale ones. And I’m recently back from Venice and Rome, so I’m playing with renaissance colors.

BS: As you know, many people have a hard time understanding (and sometimes even accepting) abstract art. In your opinion, why do you think that is? What would you say to someone who does not understand abstract art?

PL: I’d say, "Look again," and then I’d say, "Keep looking." Abstract art isn’t that difficult; it’s only a little tougher to get abstraction than representational painting, because it’s a new language. I think the highest moment we had in painting -- and maybe in any of the arts -- was Abstract Expressionism in the fifties. We were competing internationally for the first time. Seeing this work did involve some struggle on the part of the audience, some necessity to expand, to tolerate that feeling of being uncomfortable. But then we absorbed the style. The minute the deliberately vacuous Pop Art showed up, many of those same people breathed a sigh of relief and said, "Oh thank God. At least I can stop that struggle now. I can relax." Nabokov makes a great point somewhere; he says nothing dates quicker or more irrevocably than the avant-garde. Look at some of the most "modern" exhibits from the Venice Biennale last summer -- staged photographs of women abandoned by lovers, artists throwing licorice on the floor. How does that compare with the experience of taking in a Rothko, a Matisse, or a Pollock? The art that has replaced abstraction is about as visually rewarding as a trip to the super market -- and in lots of cases less so. Think of those great photographs of supermarkets by Gursky.

Portrait, oil on canvas, 24 3/8” x 38 5/8”, 2006

BS: Pat, tell us about your studio? What are the conditions you need to create? Do you work in silence or do you prefer to listen to music? What is it like to be in the studio of Pat Lipsky?

PL: I like silence -- which is very hard, if not impossible, to come by in New York City. I don’t listen to music when I’m working; it throws me off. I have a nice space with five windows and a skylight so the light is good. I know which wall gets the morning light and which the afternoon, and so I move around accordingly. And towards the end of the day, I notice I see better.

Installation: Color Paintings series, 2006, Elizabeth Harris

BS: Do you have any advice or suggestions for painters who are just starting out? Many young artists seem to fall into the trap of waiting to be discovered. As you know, that does not always happen. What is the best way for an emerging artist to put his or her best foot forward?

PL: I don’t know the answer to that question. I remember the late Clement Greenberg saying in lectures he gave in the Northeast, "Come to the center. The great artists of the past had to go to Rome, or Paris, and now it’s New York." On the other hand, there seems to be a way in which the art world climate is mirroring the political climate; both seem played out, full of evasions and numbness. So really I’m at a loss for advice, other than to say, "be true to yourself, trust your instincts." I guess what I’m saying is read Emerson’s "Self Reliance." It’s one of the most American texts, and also one of the best texts to give a young artist.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the art world?

PL: No, I think that about covers it. Thank you.

Art Space Talk: Tom Bennett

Tom Bennett grew up in a household of artists-- he was influenced by his father, also an award-winning painter, Harry Bennett. Tom received a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Painting at the University of Connecticut where he studied under the painter and photographer, Bill Parker. Tom also studied design under Paul Zelansky. Since that time, Tom has been involved with numerous solo and group exhibits in the United States. He is represented internationally in both public and private collections that include the likes of Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Hockney.


Brian Sherwin: Thomas, I understand that your father is also an artist. How did he influence you during your early years? Is he still an influence today?

Tom Bennett: I grew up in a house with art as a focus. I was drawing from the beginning, and my father once told me he knew I was going to be an artist when he looked at a drawing of a head I did at the age of 3. He noticed I had included the iris and pupil in the eyes of the face. He naturally was and is always an influence.

BS: Having viewed your work and the work of your father I must say that you have both went in your own direction as far as art is concerned. I assume that he did not push you toward a certain style. Care to share further information about your father and how he has supported your career as an artist?

TB: My father did not aggressively push me at all as a painter. My oldest sister was a prodigy and she may have resented any 'pushing" by him, so he decided to let me develop at my own pace. I made my first canvas oil painting at the age of 5 and was hooked.

BS: Thomas, aside from your father, who else has influenced your art? Have you been inspired by certain artists or art movements?

TB: As a kid, I was really into the artists from Mad magazine, like Mort Drucker. As a teenager, I became excited by painters like Degas, the pre-Rafaelites and Klimt. I discovered Francis Bacon in art school, who was and has been a major influence. deKooning, Diebenkorn, Frank Aurebach are some of the other figurative/expressionist-heroes of mine.

BS: Thomas, you attended the University of Connecticut where you earned a BFA- you decided not to pursue an MFA. Why did you make this choice? Also, how did you further your studies after college?

TB: I recall the last semester of art school and talking to a professor about my future. He suggested that I didn't need grad school. I should just paint and 'work in a factory" to support my painting. I had decided to take some time off from school anyway and moved to NY, painted, exhibited, and took odd jobs. I then went to Europe and never looked back.

BS: While in Barcelona you took part in group shows and had two one-man shows. Can you recall how the scene was at that time? Also, why did you decide to leave Barcelona?

TB: I arrived in Barcelona and developed friendships with mostly ex-patriots. I met some local painters such as Santi Moix, who has quite an international reputation today. Ultimately, through some of my acquaintances I found an apt with a painting studio in the marina section of the city, a few yards from the sea. It was a wonderful place to paint. I got legal working status in Barcelona, but couldn't make any money, outside of the occasional gig teaching English. I sold some paintings now and then, but I returned to the States, thinking I had too many financial obligations and I had difficulty making any sort of income in Barcelona.

BS: Thomas, when you moved back to New York you moved into the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn just before the influx of artists who moved into that area. Can you recall any experiences or events you observed during that time? I assume that you settled before prices skyrocketed?

TB: I knew nothing of Brooklyn when I returned to NY. I saw it as some alien planet. My friend Rick had invited me to share an apt in Greenpoint/Williamsburg, I needed a place to live, so I went. Later I found my own studio across the street from a crackhouse on South 2nd Street. I would be walking home and cops would ask me what I was doing, suspecting me of buying drugs. I would say, " I live here.' They would stare blankly at me. They were shocked. I was one of a handful of artists in that neighborhood at the time. It was all great old polish kielbasa shops and businesses that had been there for generations. It was around that time the first galleries started opening. Today, it's vastly changed. Sky-rise apartment buildings are going up and there are 2-bedroom apartments going for a million dollars or more.

BS: Thomas, you have said the following about your art, "Though I'm strongly influenced by my classical training, I love pushing the medium around. Motion is essential. I'm always thinking about how muscles and forms can almost connect.", can you go into further detail about your art and what you are striving to do?

TB: Painting is foremost a physical act for me. I love the materials. Movement is a natural outcome of the way I approach the work, whether it's a drawing, monotype or painting. The process, of course is the exhilarating thing, and when the product incites a strong emotional or psychic response, I've succeeded. A good piece of art is one that can hold many layered ambiguous narratives or allegories.The viewer brings his own interpretations to the work and the hope is that there is an ongoing dialogue between the two. Over the last several months I've been making homage paintings referencing some classical works I've chosen for both their formal strength and /or the allegory involved. I like the interpretation and re-translation of these images in our art-historical collective unconscious.

BS: Thomas, can you discuss the darkness of some of your works? They often reveal a haunting atmosphere. Do these images capture your thoughts about current events? Are you conveying a certain mood with these images? Or do you just prefer to work in that manner?

TB: It's really always been a natural. unconscious thing for me. I'm really a nice guy outside the studio.

BS: Thomas, I've read that you are represented internationally in both public and private collections that include the likes of Andy Warhol, Richard Diebenkorn, and David Hockney. Where can our readers go to view your art?

TB: I'm represented by Tabla Rasa gallery in Brooklyn, NY and the Riversea gallery in Astoria, OR.

BS: Thomas, you exhibited with World Artist Network during the WAN Gallery Inaugural Show in Baltimore, MD. As you know, WAN had long been one of the largest art groups on myspace.com. At one time, their membership was over 100,000. How did you get involved with WAN? Can you tell us more about WAN and why you agree with their philosophy?

TB: WAN is an open forum for the exchange of ideas and the opportunity to form alliances with like-minded artists. It's members include really exciting people with fresh ideas and powerful work.

BS: Thomas, tell us about your studio. Do you work in silence? Or do you prefer to listen to music while working on your art? What are the conditions you need to focus on your art?

TB: My studio takes up the entire top floor of my house in Brooklyn. Because it's located in my home, it's easy to be distracted. Therefore I must shut the door and shut out the world. I do work with music or NPR on the radio. I'll listen to everything from old blues music to Beethoven, depending on where I am in my head that day.

BS: Thomas, can you tell us more about your artistic process? How do you start a piece? Do you plan it out in your head first... draw it out? What are the first steps you make when creating?

TB: Sometimes I'll do drawings and monotypes working out ideas and I'll build on that. Sometimes I'll take a leap from photographic reference I've found or shot myself. I also work from life. It depends on the project. Once I actualize the process., it's a continuous dance between lawlessness and order. By that I mean it's allowing the intuitive subconscious to work with conscious control.

BS: Thomas, do you have any upcoming exhibits?

TB: I'm working out developing a show here in Brooklyn for early next year, but the dates aren't set. I'll be in a group show at the Visual Art Center of Northern NJ in January. My work can be seen at the Riversea Gallery in Astoria, OR, and the Tabla Rasa Gallery in Brooklyn , NY.

You can learn more about Tom Bennett and his art by visiting his website: www.tombennettart.com

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Michael Cutlip

Michael Cutlip creates abstract landscapes of lines, markings, brush strokes, spray paint blots, and graphite smudges. The artist works intuitively, as he feels a planned painting is a failed painting. Process is essential to Cutlip's works on panel - during which time his painting is free to wander.

Horse Power, Mixed on Panel, 24" x 24"

Brian Sherwin: Michael, you are represented by Melanee Cooper Gallery in Chicago. Do you have any upcoming exhibits with the gallery? Also, where else can our readers observe your art in person?

Michael Cutlip: I'm going to be part of an exhibit called "Cool Globes" in Chicago. It's an innovative project that uses the medium of public art to inspire individuals and organizations to take action against global warming. www.coolglobes.com. I will also be part of a three-person show in New York next month at Stricoff Fine Art.

Up until the past 1-2 years I have mainly exhibited here in California. I now have representation in Chicago, New York, Denver, and a few other cities across the country.

Obsession, Mixed on Panel, 48" x 48"

BS: Michael, let us take a step back-- can you recall any experiences from your youth that helped guide you on the path you are on today? Tell us about your early experiences in art.

MC: I wasn't really into art as a child...other than an occasional brush with a box of Crayola's. I played the saxophone in the school band growing up...so music was always my creative elective. I was 23 and in college when I took my first drawing class. It changed my life forever.

BS: Michael, where did you study art? Who were your mentors?

MC: As I mentioned above...I kind of discovered my passion for art accidentally. I was studying business (God knows why!) at Cal State University Hayward (definitely not a none school for the arts). I was ONE semester away from getting my degree and I realized I needed to fulfill an elective requirement. I thought Drawing would be easy and decided to go for it. What happened next came completely by surprise. I became completely seduced by this new world I had discovered. The man who taught that class was and still is my sole mentor. He was an older man (maybe in his early 70's at that time), but he had the spirit of a twenty-year old. He was amazing, and inspired the hell out of me. He saw beyond my clumsy, awkward drawings and told me he saw art. Well, I was hooked from that point on. I never finished up the business degree and continued to study art for the next 4 years. I then finally received my degree in fine art after 8 years of college.

Pollinate, Mixed on Wood Panel, 48" x 48"

BS: Michael, you have been involved with several impressive group exhibits- including Bridge Art Fair Miami in 2006. Do you enjoy art fairs? I've spoken with several artists about art fairs and have had mixed opinions. Some artists feel that they threaten the stability of the traditional art market. Do you see the fairs as a threat or do you feel that they are important for the vitality of art as a whole?

MC: I can't say that I really have a strong opinion about that. They seem to be the wave of the future for better or for worse.

BS: Michael, you work with mixed medium on panel. Why do you prefer that surface over say... canvas? Also, can you go into further detail about your artistic process... how do you start a piece? Do you 'map' it out in your head? Or do you go where your imagination takes you, so to speak?

MC: I personally hate working on canvas... I tend to fight the texture. I prefer the smooth surface of the wood. Wood is also more durable..I always tear canvas when I work on it. I use electric sanders and scratch into it, so canvas doesn't work.

As far as my process...no, I definitely do not map out a painting. Ideas are dangerous in my mind. When ever I come up with a "great idea". I am sure to fail. I am very process oriented, so the paintings evolve naturally from one move to the next. I definitely have a process (as most artist's do), but I don't really think about it much when I am working. I go on auto-pilot, so to speak.

Discoveries, Mixed on Wood Panel, 36" x 36"

BS: Michael, have you been influenced by other artists or art movements? Where else do you draw inspiration from?

MC: I honestly do not frequent the art galleries too often. So, art, in it's traditional form, doesn't have much influence over me. Well, on some level, I'm sure it does...I just don't think about it too much. I'm inspired a lot by everyday things i see on the street. I like graffiti, street art, a lot. Mostly, I inspire myself, through the process of creating. When I make a mark and my heart starts to beat a little bit faster...that's the good stuff!

Time Line, Mixed on Wood Panel, 48" x 48"

BS: Michael, what projects are you working on at this time? Have you been working on a new body of art?

MC: I don't really see my work as separate bodies of work. Each piece evolves from the last and so on and so on. I did just finish a mural in Tokyo Japan. That mixed things up for me a bit...I was quite pleased with the result.

BS: Michael, have you ever collaborated on a project? If not, do you plan to at some point in the future?

MC: My wife is a painter also...we use to do a lot of collaborative stuff back when we were in school together. For some reason that stopped. I don't really think it was because we were a couple...it's just very difficult for me to work that way. Although, I did have a positive experience a few months back. I invited a painter friend of mine to help me out with a failing painting...we ended up working all night on it together. It opened up some doors for me, that I may not have found on my own. The painting itself is so, so...but, some good discoveries were made.

My best collaborative experience was when I was in school. A painting professor and I spent the better part of one summer painting a mural in the university library. The thing was two stories tall, so we had to work on scaffolding. I felt like F***ing Diego Rivera up there...It was awesome!! If you are ever in the CSUH library, it is still there. It is a big abstract piece, unusual for a mural.

Black Bird, Mixed on Wood Panel, 24" x 24"

BS: Michael, tell us about your studio. What are the conditions you need in order to work. Do you prefer silence? Or do you enjoy listening to music while you create? Do you follow a routine or do you work sporadically?

MC: Music...of course. I do tend to follow a routine. Although, that is my life in general these days. I have two small children...family life has definitely made me more of a 9 - 5'er.

BS: Michael, do you have any suggestions for artists who are just starting out?

MC: I would just say...focus on what's most important, that being you work. The rest will figure itself out.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

MC: My old painting professor use to say to me, before exiting the room..."Keep your Brushes wet"...I like that. Just keep working!

You can learn more about Michael Cutlip and his art by visiting his website: www.michaelcutlip.com. You can view my other interviews by visiting the following link: www.myartspace.com/interviews/

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin

Art Space Talk: Jerome Prieur

Jerome Prieur examines the profane elements of day-to-day life-- the intricacies, eccentricities, and absurdities that define humanity and modern life. A central focus on his subjects’ bodies allows him to explore careers, hobbies, relationships and social roles that are re-invented and reinterpreted through the complexity of his work and his unique stylistic approach. This results in studies that appear to be a mix of science and psychology-- mangled together within the context of contemporary society.

Brian Sherwin: Jerome, I've read that you were raised in a family of artists. Can you recall any early experiences you had with art? Who first noticed your talent?

Jerome Prieur: I remember that it all started with dinosaurs. I was completely fascinated and began to draw them. A vivid memory would have been when I was 7 years old, I did a drawing of a T-Rex and I came into class and asked permission to show and talk about it. This would have been my first public showing of something that I was proud and passionate about. During my youth and teenage years my teachers and classmates knew that the only things that mattered to me were to do with the arts, as I had the worse marks (except in Art)!

My parents and my sister were the first to notice, and still help in my research through conversation and location of resources (my mom is forever bringing me books on subjects I am interested in). I could never thank them enough for all the liberty they gave me and understanding about my artistic thoughts and pursuits. Let’s say that I rarely paint anything "really pretty", but they know me well enough to know the inner meanings of my pieces and for them it is natural.

BS: Jerome, you have collaborated with artist Marie-Josee Roy and Grant Cunningham. Can you go into detail about this experience? I assume that you enjoy collaborating with friends, but are their draw-backs to these forms of artistic unions? Creative differences? Or do you think that is more of a question of who you are working with and for how long? Do you plan to work with anyone in the near future?

JP: Marie-Josee Roy is my prime example of my trust and confidence in showing with other artists. Marie-Josee and I have known each other for 20 years and have had numerous shows together; even today we are respectfully represented by the same galleries on the same street! For mysterious reasons we unintentionally follow each other and ironically a lot of clients buy our works without even knowing about our relationship (keep in mind these would be separate from our group shows). We grew together surrounded by art and sharing ideas. Even though our styles are completely different we complement each other.

Grant Cunningham is another example. We have shown together. We are more into the individual rather than our artistic approaches, yet we dig each others works. Marie-Josee, Grant and myself collaborated in 2003 on a piece entitled "3 dissection de l’interieur" This piece united 3 self-portraits on one canvas. Were there any draw-backs? No, we painted our sections, swapping the canvas between us, and then we showed it, had a vernissage, and got drunk. Off it went to a new owner!

I am very fond of being around other artists. Some say that it can be awkward at times; I have not experienced that aspect. Perhaps that is because I truly believe that art is a freedom of speech and is not competitive as a corporation would be. Artistic ideas are too individual and personal to be copied. I love to see my fellow artists grow in their works and addition to their CVs etc. In our society, the best gift is for me to see any artists make it out there.

BS: Jerome, what else can you tell us about the underground art scene in Canada?

JP: The underground scene is Canada in my opinion is growing. In the USA the underground art scene has grown very rapidly and it is currently catching up in Canada. Mind you, "underground, lowbrow, contemporary"…whatever we currently are labeling it, is in my opinion a vague series of words; you have serious artists that respect the genre and you have others that claim to be part of it, yet without completely understanding it. Furthermore, we have artists that are doing great works, but yet fall between these categories, depending on how narrowly we define it.

So far, I have been really fortunate to have met and shown with very creative minds, most of us have began in the underground art world, this underground scene in Canada is very broad, often it touches further than just art, it is fashion, stage shows, performing arts, music, poetry, spoken word, literature, film etc. I find in Canada that we put a great deal of effort into everything that revolves around the arts, and from there we network together; and it ends up being at everyone’s advantage. Especially the underground, as it is often associated with the unique, the unusual, freedom of speech and the non-commercial production of art.

BS: Jerome, tell us about your art.... you are obviously influenced by Art Nouveau- can you tell us more about artists and art movements that have influenced your work?

JP: Gaudi is my hero! I have been an admirer of his work since I was a teenager. Hector Guimard is also a very strong influence in my works. Art-Nouveau, to me, is a design and architectural movement that will never be equalized in our modern world (the cost of such creation and the freedom of imagination through patronage…you cannot find this, not in today’s economy and trends). The mystical aspect of such style is that it is the only architectural movement that flows yet is motionless.

If you look at one of my paintings, it is truly inspired by the movement, but I make it my own without stealing specifics, from the subject’s clothing to the fusion between human flesh, mechanics and objects. Art-Nouveau is soft, I have been told many times that the subjects I use for my paintings are perceived as harsh, but the implementation of an art-nouveau style softens it enough for people to attend and to have time to really contemplate what the piece is about. If the subject matter is challenging, then they can get lost in the intricacies of the technical skill and details of the lines.

BS: Jerome, where else do you find inspiration? Your work contains a lot of visual information pulled from several sources... your images are like an explosion of genres scattered upon the surface in a controlled manner. I see references to cyber-punk themes, old side-show posters, every traditional playing cards. I get the feeling that you could write an essay about your interests and how they are conveyed in your art. Can you explain how you get all of these ideas to come together... to mesh as they do?

JP: Upon a multitude of situations, I question the human body and it’s relevance to our incomprehensible society, our limits, our abnormalities and our mortality. These subjects are transformed by the fusion of science, genetics, mechanics, madness and humour. I am always revisiting subjects and objects to make them more efficient.

For example, I am currently finishing a painting involving a boxer whose legs have been amputated and fused with giant mechanical grasshoppers (to help him skip in the ring). Additionally, two tiny elephant heads are fused to his shoulders, and using the water from his body splash water on his face. This is an ‘improved’ version of the recognizable white water bottles used in the ring. These are two examples specific to the subject, out of many in the overall piece, which show my ‘making’ (reconstruction) of the boxer. I am inspired by the overall body, as well as the individual aspects of it, and how this is so perfectly engineered.

I paint a lot about what we do as humans. I take a lot of inspiration by people’s professions. When you think about it, even in our free time, our careers are what define us in so many ways, we talk about it, we are even questioned on a first date, and we are often remembered by our career when we die.

The word "controlled" in your question is the one I have always struggled to explain. I am not sure where it comes from and why I spend so many hours on details. To help me understand my strange behavior toward tiny details is that I say to myself that the best car prototypes always take years to achieve, so it makes me feel better! The only answer I can find is that the subjects I create have to be perfectly engineered and rendered. Therefore this perfection, this controlled environment of my paintings, needs to be controlled by its creator. Think of a mad scientist. I guess I would be a mad ‘scientartist’. Everything must have its place. Every piece of the larger work must be eloquently drawn to fuse properly into the next. By doing this I create a flow that connects all random, obscene, and conflicting details.

I do write essays about my work when I get a chance, I feel that it is important, sometimes the essays are not made public, I know that whenever a piece sells, I often get a request from the new owner to write about the piece, I do it gladly. Writing about a piece in length after its creation is a great time to decompress.

BS: Jerome, tell us about your studio. Where do you work? What conditions must you have in order to create?

JP: I live and work in my studio in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. My conditions in terms of working is a lot of music, books and a TV playing with lots of films , that I watch over and over again. I have an old dining room table that I paint on. I work on a flat surface, no easel. I paint my largest canvases by propping them against the wall and painting them standing up.

BS: Jerome, what projects are you working on at this time as far as your personal art is concerned?

JP: I am currently working on a piece that will be shown at Yves Laroche galerie in Montreal for a group show called Sweet Calvares in October. It is about my hate for the KKKs. This exhibit is around the theme of celebrating death and I have decided to paint my own pay-back to the @**%^^&# KKK and the damages they have done. It is simultaneously political and factual. I love painting it. I knew I would do this piece or one similar to it eventually, and it should be done in about a month… or so. Then, I have a few group exhibits here and there in Canada and the USA. When the Laroche show is over, I will be starting a new series of paintings, with the goal of a solo show. Not sure where it will be yet, but I have not had one since 2005 and I already miss it!

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

JP: The art world is very indefinable and very vague. What is art? What is good talent? Who is posing? All of which are cyclical and unanswerable questions. Our economy forces us to either self-promote or to rely on a gallerist in order to survive. What I can say is that there are so many amazing talents that deserve a strong base in our economies and a just legacy. The public needs to be educated regarding emerging and living artists. How to seek them out, how to access art, etc. Our masters often starved and were misunderstood when they put their art/creations forward. The support was not always there.

In today’s economy, political climate, etc., we are dealing with an entirely different, yet strikingly similar situation. Who patronizes the arts? We cannot deify the art world/market. It is not an entity that is dictating to us, it is something that we control. Either we feed it and it grows and (re)produces, or we starve it and it dies. It is easy once someone dies to recognize their talent as their body of work and their capacity to create becomes finite (at this point we know they will not fail us).

You can learn more about Jerome Prieur by visiting his website: www.jeromeprieur.com. Feel free to read my other interviews by visiting the following page: www.myartspace.com/interviews

Take care, Stay true

Brian Sherwin

Art Space News: 'Bling' Skull goes for Big Bucks

(The work, entitled "For the Love of God," is a skull cast in platinum and encrusted with 8,601 diamonds.)

Damien Hirst's latest piece-- "For the Love of God"-- sold last Thursday for 100 million dollars (75 million euros), a record price for work sold by a living artist. A spokeswoman for the White Cube gallery in London, where the piece had been on display, stated that the diamond-encrusted skull was sold to a group of anonymous investors. The skull has been hammered in the press and by onlookers for being nothing more than a form of 'bling'-- an overly expensive item that is nothing more than an indication of wealth.

Hirst remains best known for earlier conceptual works in which creatures including a shark and a cow were preserved in formaldehyde within glass tanks. Critics have stated that the British artist would not have a career had a "corpse not been involved"-- a statement referring to Hirst's earlier work, statements he has made to the press, and his most recent venture. Nevertheless, Hirst has earned a large following of supporters throughout his career regardless of the controversy that surrounds him.

The controversy over Hirst's art is not the only media bombardment that the artist has had to deal with. He once made the grave error of stating that the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States were like a work of art. On September 10, 2002, on the eve of the first anniversary of the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks, Hirst said in an interview with BBC News Online:

"The thing about 9/11 is that it's kind of like an artwork in its own right ... Of course, it's visually stunning and you've got to hand it to them on some level because they've achieved something which nobody would have ever have thought possible - especially to a country as big as America. So on one level they kind of need congratulating, which a lot of people shy away from, which is a very dangerous thing."

Due to public outrage, Hirst issued the following statement:

"I apologise unreservedly for any upset I have caused, particularly to the families of the victims of the events on that terrible day."

'Bling' or not-- the skull sold. What do you think? Does Hirst profit off of death and suffering? Does it matter if he does? Do you think there was a sense of passion behind the creation of "For the Love of God"? Or do you assume that the piece was nothing more than an example of a man showing off his wealth? Discuss.

Art Space Talk: Mie Olise Kjaergaard

Mie Olise Kjaergaard is one of four artists who will be featured in Saatchi's 4 New Sensations exhibit-- a Channel 4 Prize for STUART 2007 graduates. The four were chosen from a selection of twenty finalists.

Mie's art is inspired by abandoned places and desolate spaces. She captures the essence of these spaces primarily through painting, but she also constructs models of wood and cardboard. Mie is trained as an architect and is interested in constructions, perspectives, and scales of places that have been left behind by human beings.

In her work she asks, "What happened here? Did I leave it myself? Who left it? Why?" Mie attempts to find pieces of the answers by utilizing architectural constructions, perspectives and putting together different scales in order to tell stories that psychologically investigate the desolation and memories left by the presence of these forgotten spaces-- the ghosts of industrialization.

(A section of Mie's studio.)

Brian Sherwin: Mie, you have studied at the Byam Shaw School of Art and at London University of the Arts. Who were your mentors?

Mie Olise Kjaergaard: My mentors are: the writer Chris-Kul Want, artists Clive Hogson, Douglas Alsop, plus my fellow students. I am finishing next month.

BS: Mie, can you recall any early events that directed you toward being an artist?

MOK: As a child I built shoebox-cities and made Christmas calendars for my school mates. I saw every problem as an opportunity. I fixed things, especially bikes. I painted my first big canvas when I was 15. At that time I started looking at art, and sat in the art section, of the libary looking through the same 5 books again, and again.

BS: Mie, you have been chosen to be one of four finalists in Saatchi's 4 New Sensations competition. You will be exhibiting alongside- Marcus Lanyon, Mark Melvin, and Sarah Maple. How did you feel when you were informed that you had been chosen? Also, how does it feel to know that your work will be on view during the Frieze fair? Are you nervous?

MOK: I am excited. And of course happy that they chose me. I am looking forward to show my work. I am working on the project right now, and it´s a new approach as it´s more fantasy, subject wise; "What will happen in 25 years"! That´s fun.

BS: Mie, you work with abandoned places and desolate spaces... you use them as references for your paintings, but you also build models of these structures out of wood and cardboard. Why are you so interested in these structures? Do they have a spiritual meaning for you? Or do you see them as a sign of 'our times', so to speak?

MOK: I just like structures like that. Huge man-made things falling apart. It obviously tells a story at many levels. It´s a machine, something built for a purpose, and yet the purpose didn´t last, and the structure stands there, as a visual witness of an idea that fell to the ground. I can be terribly romantic and brutal.

There are references to the actual places, but as my working process starts, it becomes something else. A metaphor, a visual interpretation, and the labyrinth of painting is entered. That means a lot of questions, problems, and discussion, not so much about the abandoned place, but about the painting. Which colours I want to use, which ones I can´t use, I set up small rules for myself, as a way of choosing a different approach, and developing my practice.

The same things happen with the structures. The structures are never built on somewhere I have seen. I relate to the space I am building it in. And from there, I try to create a flow through the space, and especially concentrate on the body's experience around the construction, on a psychological level.

I am on my way to Istanbul tonight, to build a structure with sound and moving images in it. I got a girl, Sona, to find me an abandoned place and describe it in words... she says it has pyramids on the roof. In that way the structure becomes a place of mind-- somewhere in between Sona´s actual discoveries and my interpretations of her descriptions. When I have built my model, I will be visiting the site, and probably get very surprised.

BS: Mie, upon entering an abandoned building.... for example, an old warehouse- how do you feel? What thoughts cross your mind?

MOK: I think I'm very sensitive towards space, and construction. It fascinates me to get near desolate huge structures. It´s like, it has taken over, as man left. It´s funny, living in big cities, where people might be carrying knives and shot guns-- that I can be scared of nature! In a way these structures are becoming nature again. But I am also very interested in the architecture of these machines. It is very fantastic, yet every little detail has a specific function for the structure. I guess I analyze the buildings, and then I build on top of them or break them down.

BS: Mie, I've read that you have an idea for a future project. You call it 'Future of Place'. You have stated that your goal is to find a building that has been built this year and observe the building for 25 years- in order to capture how it expands or falls into obscurity. Tell me more about this project. What exactly are your goals?Have you found a building yet?

MOK: That is the project that I am working on for the 4NS, during Frieze. I have found the site (it´s in Bloomsbury, London) and have built a little model of it. Right now I am asking a lot: what if ... and what if...? It´s gonna become five paintings.

Apart from that, I don´t really have goals. I guess that's the thing about painting. That you simply don´t know it before you have gone through the labyrinth. It appears while you walk, and along the path you have to solve a lot of problems--ask a lot of questions.

For this project my ideas are more radical, I am working with contrasts; rather than obvious perspectives like decay or refurbishments.

BS: Mie, what other plans or project ideas do you have at this time? Also, do you plan to collaborate with anyone in the near future? Or do you work alone?

MOK: The Istanbul Project is a collaboration called The Triangle Project. It is a collaboration between New York, Istanbul and Copenhagen artist. It runs for 3 years, and will be happening in New York starting in the spring of 2008. Danish composer Goodipal has made the sound for my project. I just met him this morning and played around with a lot of items that will be put in top of the loudspeakers-- to distort the sound.

I also have an artist group in Cph, +LABORATORIUM/FMstereo, we were running a shop and exhibition space for five years, and still do "city investigation projects" together. I am curating a show in London with a friend in the spring. So I like to collaborate on different levels, according to the projects.

BS: Mie, I understand that you draw inspiration from several sources-- including psychology. Can you go into further detail about how the study of psychology has influenced your art? Do you enjoy the work of Jung? Would you say that your art is a psychological study... a way of 'charting' yourself or society, so to speak?

MOK: Especially in my installations (constructions with video in it), it becomes very essential of how people move around them. If they crawl, peep through a hole, go close to something, feel something rough and huge, soft or close. It all makes you react on a psychological level. And that´s a sort of communication. I am interested in Freud and Jung, and in perception theories in general. I make studies in models, and investigate. I set up my own laboratory experiments, rather than read books. I see my works as an exploration of my ideas, it´s clearly pseudo scientific; and subjective! Objective Art is Science!

BS: Mie, I understand that you have been looking into the work of photographer William Christenburry, whose images from Alabama have a touch of decay. You have stated that the 'abandoned and uncanniness' that he conveys with his work is close to what you want to express in your work- you went on to say that some of his work "scares the hell out of" you. By implication does this statement suggest that you want to 'scare the hell' out of people who view your work? Do you want to challenge peoples sensitivities... their fears?

MOK: I think it´s that fear, that makes me interested in the work of William Christenburry. I find it very inspiring! The silence, the desolation. Coming back to the same place through many years, and recording the changes. And the fact that nothingness (the empty), can be scary.

This summer I went to an abandoned Russian city, The pyramid, on Norwegian ground near the North-pole. It´s a communist utopia that was left within 3 months. There are books still in the libary, furniture still in the houses, and glasses still in the hotel bar-- ready for mixing another drink. I worked in video, as the crazy thing about that place is that it actually exists!

But because painting is-- and has to be --very different from photography and video, it´s also quickly becomes-- painting! It is built up of nothing, but paint, brush-strokes, colours, layers, texture-- within a canvas. It becomes a system of problems, a way to go through a process. So many things occur, and I like that journey.

I would like people to stand in front of my paintings or structures, switch off half their brains, and just look and explore. If it hits them, it´s good! I can´t specify what people should feel, the work has to communicate itself. I tend to get mostly hit in my stomach. If I could do that to people-- then I would be very happy!

BS: Are you represented by a gallery at this time? If not, are you seeking gallery representation?

MOK: I have a Danish gallery, that represents me there. Working in London, I think it would be interesting to show my work here-- in a gallery, non-commercial space, or even an apartment. I see my work as communication, and therefore I like to show it.

BS: Finally, is there anything else you would like to say about your art or the artworld?

MOK: Art is a visual language, so maybe it´s time for me to stop talking...

You can learn more about Mie Olise Kjaergaard by visiting the following sites:

www.olise.dk, www.myspace.com/mieolise, www.saatchi-gallery.co.uk/4newsensations/

Also, you can view more interviews by clicking on the following link: www.myartspace.com/interviews/

Take care, Stay true,

Brian Sherwin