Shari Mendelson

MH: Do you come from an artistic background, or did you discover creativity on your own?
SM: My father worked as an engineer but in his free time he was always taking photographs, painting with watercolors, and making things in his shop. My parents were both New Yorkers, but they moved to Schenectady before I was born and that’s where I grew up. We visited the city often and they always took me to the museums. They were very supportive of my interest in art and encouraged me to go to art school.
MH: When did you start working with recycled materials? And what was your initial draw to using plastic in your work?
SM: After graduating from high school I lived on a kibbutz in Israel for a year, then I came back and went to Arizona State, where I studied metals, fibers, and craft-based media. I wasn’t thinking about recycling at that point; it was more about learning different processes and the physicality of making things. Recycling plastic evolved out of my interest in composting, which I’ve been doing for a long time. I was always drawn to turning food scraps into soil for my plants.
MH: Your use of recycled plastic inevitably brings an environmentalist slant to your work. Is this part of your conceptual underpinning or is it an unavoidable association?
SM: Yes, recycling is a big concern of mine. I don’t like to buy things and I don’t like to shop; I’m just naturally a frugal person and a scavenger. The amount of stuff that we throw away is very disturbing to me, and the idea of recycling is a farce because the majority of our waste sits in landfills. But I don’t want that to be the main thrust of my work. I’m interested in the idea of transforming an object from one thing to another, so if I find a plastic bottle with an appealing shape, I think about how I can incorporate it in a sculpture.
MH: I love that you don’t conceal your medium or make it look too precious; indeed, you don’t pretend that it’s anything but plastic. It brings humor to the work, like when the bottle’s expiration date is visible on a finished piece. Do you think of your work as playful? Ironic?
SM: I definitely think of it as playful. It’s also humorous, even absurd. When I first started the series I was making them into vessels, so the transformation from one vessel to another seemed funny to me. And it was ironic that people thought the work was precious, when it was just a plastic bottle.
MH: Plastic production is one of the largest contributors to climate change; by some accounts, only around 10% is recycled. Does the futility bring some tension to your studio practice? Maybe add fuel to the fire?
SM: I don’t go out and buy the plastics, so I don’t feel implicated in using what already exists. In fact, I feel like in my microscopic way I’m helping the situation by using these objects that would otherwise go into a landfill. I suppose it’s depressing, but I don’t think about that aspect while I’m working. There are some beautiful resins that would give the sculptures a shinier, more glasslike surface than the acrylic mediums I use, but I resist the urge to use them because they’re toxic and terrible for the environment.
MH: What is your connection to the archaic sculptures that inspire you? Do you think about their provenance and research the civilizations that produced them, or is it more about the formal aspects of their creative work?
SM: It’s both. First, I’m drawn to them for their formal qualities – maybe the overall form is interesting, or a detail stands out – something will grab my attention. Then I research how they were used and by whom. Lately I’ve been looking at the relationship between the Egyptian and the Chinese funerary models at the Met. The glimpses of everyday life that these models depict are fascinating, and they are so beautifully constructed. They make those ancient societies come to life.
MH: When you’re deeply involved in a piece and working on the forms, do you feel a connection to the artisans who originally produced them? Is there a sense that you’re tapping into the primal source or energy that inspired the original makers?
SM: Definitely. I feel that my role as an artist and maker of objects connects me to a long lineage of artists and makers. If, for example, I look at an Etruscan bronze horse versus an actual horse, I have a better appreciation of how those artists abstracted form. And I’m aware that I don’t fully understand who made these objects or for what purpose. I’m comfortable with the element of mystery. I know that I’m projecting my contemporary understanding and values onto these pieces and the people that made them, but what else can I do? Art is always interpreted by the viewer.
MH: It's interesting that an artist looks at a horse and sees a series of stylized lines, then a millennium later another artist looks at a horse and sees completely different lines and forms.
SM: Exactly, and that’s what I love about studying this. There are specific ways of abstracting a form that become characteristic of a time and a place, and then a similar style begins to show up in another civilization, continents apart. It’s fascinating how these related forms and patterns will appear in distinctly different cultures, like ancient Iranian and Native American.
MH: I’m curious about the ornate appearance of many of the ancient works. Do you think excessive ornament is an indication of an affluent culture? Presumably there was not only the wealth to commission the work, but the leisure time to enjoy it.
SM: I would assume so. We can see the opulence portrayed in Roman frescoes, which is more recent, but the rich patterns and exquisite detail in some of the ancient cultures, as well as the use of precious metals and stone inlay, must have been reserved for the wealthiest. It makes you question who our work is for. We make art because we need to, but if you start thinking about who can afford it and where it ends up, it can be depressing.
MH: It is depressing, but if the popes and pharaohs hadn’t been so fabulously wealthy, and if they hadn’t possessed such bloated egos, we wouldn’t have the Sistine Chapel or the pyramids. It’s a tragic paradox that we often overlook. In our current political climate where there’s a similar imbalance of obscene wealth and egos, do you think it’s possible that some of it will be directed towards the arts?
SM: I don’t think the paradox is overlooked. I think it’s something that is questioned now more than ever. One can’t help but think about the paradox when looking at the vast collection of art at the Vatican Museum – didn’t Jesus preach against material wealth? During the time of the robber barons, the discrepancy between the rich and poor was vast but there was an ethos for enriching the community. I’m sure there was a lot of horrible stuff that happened during that time, but we are left with the Morgan Library, the Frick Collection, and the Carnegie Museum, to name just a few. Can you imagine the kind of art that Trump and his anti-art, anti-intellectual acolytes would collect? I think this administration is more aligned with the destructive nature of the Taliban than with robber barons. With his takeover of the Kennedy Center and the Smithsonian, I fear this is just the beginning. So, to answer your question, no, I don’t think any of the Trump/Musk wealth will be directed toward the arts.
MH: Your work is often very stylized, with curvilinear lines and arabesques that most often adorn the animal figures. Besides the satisfaction of playing around with your medium, do these forms speak to you in some way? Do they feel contemporary to you?
SM: They do feel contemporary. So much of what I’m drawn to is ancient, but my work is also of this time and place. A lot of artists today are looking at art history, and part of being contemporary means that we have access to so much history through our databases. If I see something I’m drawn to, either in a book or museum, I can easily mine databases and discover where I can find similar objects to draw information from. It’s so easy to cross-reference. I’ll be looking at pictures of ancient horses online, and then my Instagram feed fills up with reels of horses. It makes it convenient to look more closely at the back of the hoof, the graceful curve of a leg.
MH: Is elegance contemporary?
SM: It’s an interesting question, and I think I unconsciously struggle with it a lot. I spend an infinite amount of time trying to get the exterior line of a sculpture to be elegant and look just right. Then I look at other artists’ work and it’s so expressionistic, with little regard for proportion or elegance, and I think, why can’t I do something like that? I love the crude quality of their work, so why does mine have to be so refined? But we have to follow our own impulse, which for me is to make something that has a beautiful, elegant line that’s inspired by looking at ancient works.
MH: It sounds like there’s a fine line, where you want to bring the piece to a certain level of refinement, but not too far. You want people to know that this is plastic, this is not precious.
SM: Yes, but there’s also that element of artmaking where it doesn’t really matter what I want. Sometimes there’s the intention to make something look a certain way and then it goes off in its own direction. I’m still steering the ship and making decisions, but something else takes over. It’s that feeling in my gut that this is not finished, that doesn’t feel right, so I keep working on it until it feels resolved.
MH: It’s like an itch that you can’t stop scratching, and it takes over your life.
SM: Haha. Yes, it’s painful and ridiculous.
MH: Where do you find the most joy in your practice: working on a piece and bringing it to formal resolution, or completing it and reveling in the finished sculpture? Or is it all of a piece?
SM: For me, the making of it is everything. It’s the handmade quality, the mark of the maker, which makes or breaks a piece, otherwise it’s just a concept. For some people that’s not very contemporary, but the art world’s current interest in craft seems to favor the handmade. As far as the finished piece, even when I get something that I really like, that lasts for about two seconds, then I think I could make it better, or I second guess and think it may be too corny. I like the process of being in the midst of making something.
MH: Even when you’re struggling? I feel like the struggle is great fun once it’s in the rearview mirror.
SM: Yes, but at this point I’m used to that. Sometimes it’s a good struggle, with all its ups and downs. Like when I go to bed thinking that a piece I’m working on is horrible, then the next morning I go into my studio and it looks pretty good. I have to just keep going.
MH: Do you think making art is important in these difficult times? The obvious answer is yes, but seriously, what do artists contribute to the human race at a time when we’re facing environmental devastation and humanitarian crises?
SM: That’s always the question, right? I struggle with it, but I know that I’m not going to be any good to society if I stop making art. It’s not as though I’m going to do some other thing that’s more useful. We contribute in the ways that we can, and when times are hard, people need things that are uplifting. Art can make us reflect more deeply as a society; it can be a spiritual practice, an enlightening practice, something bigger than ourselves.
MH: Looking at art is also a way to remind us of who we are, especially when times get dark. If you look at a painting by Goya, you see the best and worst of humanity, but it’s the artist’s compassion that comes through. It’s what we relate to and who we are.
SM: Right. We can connect to other people through their hard times by looking at their art. So much of the art that was made during times of struggle reflects that time, overtly or covertly, but still there’s some expression of humanity. So yes, I think now more than ever we need art in these dark times.
MH: Conversely, do you think the current crisis in leadership benefits our studio practices in some perverse way? I wonder if the threat of authoritarianism has the potential to make us stronger, insofar as it gives us something solid to push up against and double down on our work.
SM: I wonder about that, because I don’t think the people currently in power care about the continuation of art. In the early days it was about artists getting together and building community with like-minded people, with little regard for creating marketable work. If the art market tanks under this administration, there could be a resurgence of this kind of experimentation and underground art movements.
MH: No human likes to think that their work is in vain; likewise, no artist wants to be painting seascapes on the Titanic. Has a sense of futility begun to corrode our efforts to make meaningful work? Or are our studio practices an essential part of the resistance?
SM: I think what we do as artists is a resistance, because we’re not giving in to the current political agenda, which is about giving wealthy people more breaks. Why save all this money through cuts to humanitarian programs? What purpose is it if we don’t put it back into society, if we don’t put it toward doing good? So if we can do good through our art, then yes, I think it’s a resistance. It’s a way of bringing positivity to the world, but it’s also a way to place ourselves within the context of the current political crisis. It helps us to move forward when we see this as a passing moment in history.
MH: Most artists believe that their work has meaning and that they’re contributing to a vision larger than their solitary studio practices. How do you regard your practice as it relates to other artists, and to our collective contribution to the planet? To humanity?
SM: I love going to talks and hearing about other artists’ work and process, because it always sounds like they’ve figured it out and have all the answers. But every artist I talk to finds their process to be a little ridiculous. Everyone’s in their studio trying to figure it out and that creates a wonderful sense of community, which is huge to me, the feeling that I’m not alone. I also feel that way when I go to galleries to see what’s out there, what artists are doing and what they’re thinking.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
SM: I love that we can learn so much through our processes and by following our interests. For me, the research aspect of my work is endlessly fascinating. Within the solitary process of the studio life, I’m in conversation with a community that transcends time and space. Being an artist makes me more engaged in the world. And just being in the studio trying to understand and build my work is fun, interesting, challenging, and thoroughly engaging. It’s everything.

www.sharimendelson.com

Stefana McClure

Stefana McClure works with text in the way that a painter works with chiaroscuro, contrasting light and shadow to create psychologically dense works of art. The first time I encountered her work I was moved by the painstaking skill involved in slicing and knitting the thin strips of paper. As I spent time with the individual pieces [see images 1-3, above], a dark presence slowly emerged, casting its shadow across the intricately woven text. I later learned that they were made from government documents obtained and released by the ACLU, detailing the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used by the CIA on Iraqi and Afghan soldiers. The black ink was redacted text, adding another layer of shock and revulsion. The stark juxtaposition of the exquisite and horrific is a recurring theme in McClure’s work, as she uses language and writing to express the complexity and capacity of human nature. And what better medium to convey its inherent contradictions? McClure finds poetry in the threat of violence when she wraps her Protest Stones in feminist verse, admittedly pointless when you’re on the receiving end of the stone, but wry humor is another important aspect of her work. Indeed, McClure is self-deprecating when describing her process, and is quick to poke fun at the absurdity of her time-devouring studio practice. In her words, “It’s serious work, but it doesn’t take itself very seriously.” She spends weeks and months extracting exhaustive information and condensing it into a single piece, as she does in her Films on Paper. In this series, inspired by her love of foreign films, she copies the subtitles, including the typos and clumsy translation, and superimposes them on a monochromatic field, positioned as on a television screen. The writing is illegible, but carries the energy of the film, just as her wrapped novels carry the intent of the writer. McClure’s love of language is visible in every work, and her fluency in Japanese, as well as her time spent as a translator and interpreter, give her a unique insight into the gap between languages, where much of meaning is lost. McClure doesn’t seek to eliminate the gaps, nor does she deny the threat of violence that is present in much of her work. Instead, she seems to embrace the fissures that exist between cultures and within our collective psyche. McClure’s appropriation and reconfiguring of literature allude to some of our greatest achievements, while humbly acknowledging the darker aspects of humanity.

MH: You grew up in Northern Ireland during a time of prolonged conflict. Did the political climate have an influence on your decision to become an artist?
SMcC: The conflict definitely gave me something to push back against and fight for, which probably influenced my decision to become an artist. I grew up in a province where language could be a dangerous and sometimes fatal weapon, so it’s not coincidental that when I started making art, language became my material of choice.
MH: You later went to art school in London and after graduation moved to Japan where you lived for twelve years. How did that cultural shift affect the direction and style of your work?
SMcC: The experience of living between cultures and languages very much affected my work. I went to Japan with the intention of studying paper making, but I soon realized that I couldn’t study anything because of the language barrier. So I launched myself on a three-year manic study of Japanese and ended up being good enough at it that I was able to work as a translator, and ultimately as an interpreter. At some point I realized that language isn’t neutral, and that realization influenced my work. As Etel Adnan said, “We don't think the same way in every language. Language is a tool that acts on us, collaborates with thinking, is not neutral.”
MH: Your studio practice comes out of your love of literature, poetry, and film. Did an early influence guide you in that direction?
SMcC: My dad was a teacher and the principal of the local primary school where my mother also taught. She prided herself on teaching all subjects through art, and often brought writers into our classroom, such as the poet Seamus Heaney. His reading of Mid-Term Break, a poem about the death of his younger brother who was killed by a car when he was only four years old, made a profound impression on my nine-year-old self. The final line is particularly devastating: “A four-foot box, a foot for every year”.
MH: Next to mathematics, language is our most precise mode of communication. Do you work with text because of its relative accuracy, or do you see your work as more approximate and poetic?
SMcC: Definitely the latter. One of the things that attracts me to language is all the slipperiness, those things that can’t be translated or don’t exist in other languages. It’s not precise in any kind of way.
MH: The first time I saw your work was in 2011 at your solo show, Secrets & Lies, at Josée Bienvenu Gallery. There was a series of text pieces made from declassified government documents, heavily redacted to hide the names and techniques relating to “enhanced interrogation”. You sliced and glued the documents into a thin paper strand, knitting it into exquisite weavings. The black redacted text was at once deeply disturbing and breathtakingly beautiful. Do you often juxtapose psychological elements in your work?
SMcC: With the redacted drawings it was a conscious decision to take that horribly disturbing information and make it into something beautiful. People were drawn to the work in spite of themselves, and then discovered that it was made from records of “enhanced interrogation” methods. Another piece in that show was a folded shroud entitled Manner of Death: Natural. This was made from autopsy reports of Iraqi and Afghan soldiers who had been tortured to death in U.S. custody, and in all cases their deaths were deemed “natural”. I downloaded hundreds of pages of autopsy and death reports and knit them into a long, folded burial sheet. It was a very powerful piece to make because it took many months, so I spent a lot of time with it.
MH: In an ongoing series, you slice an entire novel into sentences, join them into a continuous length, then wind them into balls, similar to balls of yarn. I get the impression that you love the process of repetitive labor, as well as the physical contact with books. It’s like you just want to touch them, handle them, be in contact with them.
SMcC: Yes, I call these sculptural drawings, and they’re deconstructed books, often lengthy ones, such as Moby Dick and The Odyssey. I slice them apart sentence by sentence, then reconfigure the pieces into a continuous length of string. The process gives me long lengths of time to spend with the book, and I often reread it as I go along. For this reason I only use books that I absolutely love and want to spend time with.
MH: Do you ever feel like you’re ingesting the book?
SMcC: Yes, absolutely. It becomes part of me in some way. Right now I’m working on a series of circadian novels, which take place over the course of a single day. Ulysses by Joyce is an obvious one, also Mrs. Dalloway and Between the Acts by Virginia Woolf, and After Dark by Haruki Murakami. I’m drawn to material that’s so compelling that it represents a whole world unto itself.
MH: An important aspect of your work is that it is scrupulous, complete, and faithful. For example, when you wind a novel into a ball, you use the book in its entirety, from the copyright page to the appendices. And you don’t cheat by using a tiny ‘starter ball’, which would be so convenient, and who would ever know? Why is this level of integrity critical to your work?
SMcC: It’s conceptual work, and the idea behind this series is that it’s faithful to the book. Take for example Moby Dick; the book in its entirety becomes the big white whale. It wouldn’t make sense to leave portions of it out, because as a conceptual piece of work, it has to be the whole thing. I also structure them so that they start at the end of the book and work towards the beginning, so on the outside you see the beginning of the book rather than the end.
MH: Many of your pieces have a subversive quality, much like the books from which they originate. Others possess the threat of violence, like the text-covered stones that were part of your childhood experience in Northern Ireland. Would you talk about the aggressive potential of your work?
SMcC: The protest stones started out as an installation of eight children’s jackets, with a pair of stones in the pockets. Each pair of stones is covered with the text from a single poem that referenced the Troubles, the thirty-year conflict in Northern Ireland. For the text I used poems from Seamus Heaney’s anthology North, first published in 1975. I collected stones from our back yard in Brooklyn, covered them with his poetry, and knocked off their edges by hurling them at the stone walls of our basement. The idea was that the words of the poems gained some extra weight by the threat and anticipation of violence.
MH: What you describe sounds really powerful, like you were imbuing the stones with a heightened energy or force.
SMcC: Yes. As kids we carried a stone in each pocket, and the idea was that we could throw them at army vehicles, or we could use them to gain extra time to get away from any trouble. As I continued making these weapons, the stones started to become more lethal, so I moved on to making hurling weapons, the kind used to take down an animal by entangling its legs. When I started making these, I turned to the works of feminist poets like Emily Dickinson and Forough Farrokhzad, clothing the stones in their poetry.
MH: Books have been weaponized throughout history, either to persuade or justify violence against perceived enemies. But they also express the profound depth of the human experience, and your work seems to embrace both capacities, sometimes within a single piece. Does this dichotomy create a tension that feeds your process?
SMcC: I like to have that tension there. It gives life and purpose to the work. But I bring poetry and nuance to the fight, engaging in a form of poetic politics. Words are my weapons and my tools.
MH: Tell me a little about your film subtitle series. It’s more subtle than the work with books, and more difficult to comprehend. You mentioned that you copy the subtitles of foreign movies, sometimes in several languages, and superimpose them as they appear on a movie screen?
SMcC: The series is a direct result of spending those twelve years in Japan, watching a lot of foreign movies and reading the subtitles. As I became more fluent in the language, I wondered what impression a Japanese person would have if they didn’t know the original language of the film. The subtitles, especially the dialogue spoken by strong Western women, were often dumbed down, translated to be softer and more culturally appropriate. My Films on Paper—drawings that consist of the superimposition of the subtitles, closed captions or intertitles of an entire movie—address this phenomenon. To make the drawings I watch a film frame by frame, systematically inscribing all of the subtitles on top of one another on a ground of transfer paper. The process is subtractive: the surface of the paper is slowly eroded as successive layers of information are transferred off. Hours of translated dialogue are reduced to a ghost form, dense in the middle, fading towards the edges.
MH: Whether you’re working with books or film, your process is incredibly meticulous and time-consuming. You mentioned that your audience has a wide range of reactions, including raw anger. Why do you suppose your work would expose a person’s anger issues?
SMcC: I think some people are incensed that anyone would have the luxury, as they view it, of putting so much time into a piece of work, especially a piece that at a glance looks minimal. For some reason the film series seems to evoke this reaction. Condensing time and information into a piece is what my work is all about, but I think some people can’t wrap their heads around the fact that anyone would choose to spend their time at such an effort.
MH: Artists spend countless hours laboring in their studios, attempting to bring a piece to a reasonable level of satisfaction so they can let it go and move on to the next piece. Beyond engaging in creative expression and satisfying handiwork, do you ever consider that we’re working out something on a deeper level?
SMcC: I hope so. I think on a certain level our work is a form of meditation, of close, quiet time. I hope we’re working out something a little more profound in our heads.
MH: I think of all the women who came before us, sitting in their parlors doing their fancywork for hours upon hours, and I wonder if it had parallels with our daily studio practice. Working with their hands, aligning something deep within themselves, and bringing a kind of equanimity into the greater world.
SMcC: Maybe. I love what Virginia Woolf said: “Knitting is the saving of life.”
MH: You have a series where you hired a professional typist to copy a poem while wearing gloves with type wheels attached. [see video below] My interpretation of these hilariously awkward and ungainly performances is that you’re underscoring the blundering, clownlike aspect of humanity. We try so hard to do what’s right or reasonable, but we’re eternally ham-handed. Was this part of your concept?

SMcC: I love your interpretation, so I’ll say yes. I was aware that it was hilarious on some level, because obviously you can’t turn a poem into an exact image, and it was a ridiculous form of translation. The gloves had IBM golf balls attached to the end of each finger and thumb, and the idea was that any of those 88 characters had a chance of being represented. I’m very attracted to obsolete technology, and there is a lot of humor in the piece. All of my work has a level of humor, but people don’t always recognize it. It’s serious work, but it doesn’t take itself very seriously.
MH: Many of your pieces deal with injustice, violence, and cruelty. Do you have faith that humanity will pull through this challenging time, or has human nature irrevocably shifted toward darkness?
SMcC: I have to maintain hope that we can pull through. Hopefully what’s going on right now isn’t irrevocable. As artists, we have to believe that we can survive through art.
MH: What role, if any, do artists have in maintaining the decency and goodness of humanity? Or is our creative endeavor a form of escapism?
SMcC: I don’t think it’s a form of escapism. Art has the power to change how people think. That’s huge. As long as we can make meaningful work and get it out there, it has the potential to make a difference.
MH: I don’t know if any single artist has the ability to make that shift, but as a collective effort, maybe a shift is possible.
SMcC: Right, but we’re talking about incremental shifts; at some point there’s a critical mass. As Annie Dillard said, “How we spend our days is how we spend our lives.” We’re choosing to spend our time engaged in a studio practice that brings meaning to our lives, and hopefully to the lives of others.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
SMcC: Art making, especially when it focuses on resistance and repair, is a truly human endeavor. It helps us explore the world and understand it better and provides us with material and a framework in which to think. And, as John Cage said, “We make our lives by what we love.”

IMAGE LIST
  1. Redacted (Waterboard), detail, 2010, knitted paper, 25.75 x 25.75 inches
2. Redacted (Enhanced Techniques), 2010, knitted paper, 25.75 x 25.75 inches
3. Redacted (Top Secret), detail, 2011, knitted paper, 25.75 x 25.75 inches
  4. Manner of Death: Natural, 2011, knitted paper, 7.4 x 3.7 feet
  5. Manner of Death: Natural, detail, 2011, knitted paper, 7.4 x 3.7 feet
  6. Silenced Voices: Forough Farrokhzad (The Wind-Up Doll), 2021, Moleskine notebook, perforated archival ink-jet print, pearls, 10 x 15 x 1 inches
  7. Silenced Voices: Forough Farrokhzad (The Wind-Up Doll), detail, 2021, Moleskine notebook, perforated archival ink-jet print, pearls, 10 x 15 x 1 inches
8. Whammo Bricks, 2017, vintage clay bricks wrapped with poet Öyvind Fahlström's "whammo,” an invented language based on onomatopoeic expressions in American comic strips, 8 x 3.5 x 2.25 inches each
9. Riot: a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks, 2020, 2 poetry-wrapped stones, left stone: 4 x 5 x 3 inches, right stone: 3 x 5 x 3 inches
10. Protest: a poem by Ella Wheeler Wilcox, 2020, 2 poetry-wrapped stones, left stone: 3.5 x 5 x 2 inches, right stone: 4 x 5 x 1.5 inches
11. Rebellion: poems from an anthology by Forough Farrokhzad, 2021, poetry-wrapped stones, Italian ruby spring twine, cut nail, 6’ 3" x 7" x 7"
12. Rebellion: poems from an anthology by Forough Farrokhzad, detail, 2021, poetry-wrapped stones, Italian ruby spring twine, cut nail, 6’ 3" x 7" x 7"
13. Protest Jackets, 2018, eight jackets, ten wooden pegs, 16 poetry-wrapped stones, 28 x 80 x 7 inches
14. Protest Jackets, detail, 2018, eight jackets, ten wooden pegs, 16 poetry-wrapped stones, 28 x 80 x 7 inches
15. The Hunting of The Snark: a poem by Lewis Carroll, 2023 – 2024, cut paper, 19.5 inches circumference
16. Ulysses: a novel by James Joyce, 2020, cut paper, 20.5 inches circumference
17. The Odyssey by Homer, translated by Emily Wilson, 2021, cut paper, 18.5 inches circumference
18. Map of the World (Central Europe), 2006, cut paper, 22 inches circumference
19. Brief Notes on the Art and Manner of Arranging One’s Books, 2006, still from 36-minute single channel video
20. A Postcard from North Antrim: a poem by Seamus Heaney, 2018, Teflon mounted on notebook cover, 13.75 x 20 inches
21. Rage For Order: a poem by Derek Mahon, 2018, Teflon mounted on notebook cover, 12 x 17.75 inches
22. Scrapple From the Apple, 2007, detail, Teflon mounted on museum board with soundtrack, 3 panels, 13.25 x 13.25 inches each
23. Studio View: The Simpsons: The Complete First Season and Parasite: English subtitles to a film by Bong Joon-ho
24. The Simpsons: Season 1, Episode 1, 2014, yellow transfer paper mounted on rag, 10.6 x 12.5 inches
25. Gaslight: closed captions to a film by George Cukor, 2019, graphite transfer paper mounted on rag, 19 x 27.5 inches
26. Tokyo Story: English subtitles to a film by Yasujiro Ozu, 2015, wax transfer paper mounted on dibond, 40 x 60 inches
27. Wonder Woman: Japanese subtitles to a film by Patty Jenkins, 2018, transfer paper mounted on rag, 7.5 x 9.75 inches
28. Studio View
29. Modeling the modified gloves
30. Studio Portrait

Sharon Butler

Sharon Butler is an artist, writer, editor, and publisher of the art blog Two Coats of Paint. In 2011 she composed an essay for The Brooklyn Rail in which she coined the term New Casualism, an approach that defined a new aesthetic and style of working. Butler did not invent Casualism so much as she noticed it in her own work as well as the work of other artists. It is characterized by the sense of a work being incomplete, unrefined, and unresolved in contrast with the traditional criteria of Western classicism. In the intervening years, Casualism has come to represent more of a tendency than a convention-defying trend, an inclination rather than a swagger. It values process over product, eschewing any formula or mannerism that may render a work suitable for the art market. For Butler, Casualism is a sensibility that extends beyond paint and canvas; hers is an open-ended process that favors the unexpected and unintentional. Beauty is incidental and subjective, interesting only insofar as it generates an emotional response. In her current work, Butler explores the relationship between the emotions and the intellect, searching for the sweet spot where both may be activated simultaneously. But the intentionality behind this inquiry may preclude the desired outcome, as, according to Butler, the emotions are most readily accessed through the accidental marks that suffuse her paintings. Indeed, it is the unintentional smudges, drips, and pentimenti that expose our humanity, not the calculated curves and angles of geometric abstraction. Humans make mistakes, create chaos, and are beset by blurry indecision, all of which contribute to an emotionally charged painting. But that’s only half the equation for Butler, who invites the intellect, with its surgical specificity, to interact and collaborate with our erratic emotions.

MH: How and when did you come to be an artist? Did your parents push you towards the artist’s path?
SB: I wasn’t pushed towards an artist’s path, but my parents were lovers of Modernism. They built a modern house in Stonington, Connecticut where I grew up, and the house and environment had a great influence on me. When we moved into the house there were lots of empty white walls, so my father painted replicas of his favorite abstract paintings. There were Mondrians, Picassos, and Klees, and I didn’t realize until later that these weren’t his original paintings. My mother lived in New York before they were married, and she took us on frequent trips to New York to visit the museums. So being surrounded by Modernist architecture and abstract art, and then having exposure to great art museums really informed my interest in art.
MH: You went to college in Boston and eventually found your way to New York. Did living in the city immediately have an impact on your work, or did it take a while to sink in?
SB: I just continued along the path that I was on. I was working abstractly at the time, painting big pieces of plywood, cutting them down with a jigsaw, and making these small constructions. At some point I took a studio in DUMBO, where all my power tools were stolen, and this had a big impact on the type of work I was making. It was a huge period of transition and I felt like New York got the better of me, so I ended up going to grad school in Connecticut where I got my MFA, then I moved back to New York. It was the two years in grad school that changed my work, more so than living in New York.
MH: In addition to being a painter, you’re also known for founding the art blog Two Coats of Paint and for writing an article in the Brooklyn Rail (2011) in which you coined the term New Casualism. This may be defined as an approach to painting that is intentionally dissonant, unpredictable, unfinished. 2011 was a long time ago, and I wondered if you still adhere to a Casualist sensibility in your work?
SB: I think of Casualism as a tendency rather than a movement, and there are several things that influenced my Casualist approach. One of them is that I moved a lot between places. I didn’t have a permanent studio, so I started using acrylics and unstretched canvases, and I’d fold them up when I had to move. This lifestyle began to affect my aesthetic. I started to like the way the folds looked on the canvas, and I became less interested in completion and resolution. When I looked around, I saw that other artists seemed to be working in the same way, and I began questioning this notion that paintings must be resolved. What if a painting wasn’t resolved? What would that mean? So I started looking at work that didn’t adhere to the Bauhaus principles of design and color, and this was the work that excited me. I wanted to write something about it, and the only reason I called it Casualism is that I needed to name it something so that I didn’t have to keep describing the work. It was just an easy way to discuss the tendencies that I was seeing.
MH: So if I understand you correctly, Casualism is a sensibility that continues to be present in your work; it’s basically who you are as an artist.
SB: It is. If someone tells me that no one likes green paintings, then I’m going to make green paintings. It’s kind of a contrary way of approaching the project.
MH: Do you find it ironic that Casualism, with its insistence on anti-formalism and rejection of traditional art school training and pedagogy, is now required reading in art school?
SB: I’m glad that it’s required reading in art school, because it’s simply a different way of looking at things and a different way of thinking about all those Bauhaus principles. If you do things in a way that you’re not supposed to do them, that’s how you’re going to come to something new.
MH: You have a lot of art instruction and you paint well, so your Casualism is going to be different than someone who doesn’t have that background. Is classical training essential before the artist can embrace a Casualist sensibility?
SB: I don’t think so. I appreciate things related to mark making and process that aren’t necessarily valued by other people. I was once a juror for a competition for high school students, which consisted of a bunch of carefully rendered drawings from magazines and films. The piece I chose for first place was a drawing that was crudely drawn, but the marks were very emotional and moving. The students were very upset.
MH: To create art without regard for formal concerns, the artist must possess a heroic amount of self-confidence. Without conventional standards by which one can gauge the results of their work – indeed, with notions of good and bad art taken out of the equation – the artist is called upon to trust in her own aesthetic choices. Is supreme self-confidence part of your DNA?
SB: (Laughing) No, I don’t think I have supreme self-confidence. Doubt is a big part of my work, and I like to see doubt in other artists’ work. My grounding in art history has been very important, because it allows me to think of my work as an extension of something from an earlier time. This knowledge of art history differentiates trained artists from untrained artists. I can slash a canvas, but I know that other people have done it before me, so I’m responding to, and having a conversation with, those earlier artists. Whereas an untrained artist might slash the canvas and think they’re the first person to do so.
MH: Ralph Waldo Emerson, who may have been the first Casualist, wrote a brilliant essay on Self-Reliance, in which he famously speaks of the need to “Trust thyself.” Is radical self-trust a requirement for the artist’s journey? Without it are we more apt to fall into the trap of imitation and assimilation?
SB: I think the key to being a successful artist is developing self-trust. And it’s not like you either have it or you don’t; it happens over time. It’s about having a commitment to your vision, whatever that is, even if you’re committing to the idea that you’re going to do many different things. It’s a commitment to your ideas and to the artist’s path and to knowing that other people have walked the path.
MH: One of the questions that I like to ask artists is how they know when a piece is finished. The answers are always a variation of, “When everything is resolved and working together as a whole.” But in a Casualist painting, where incompletion and imbalance are de rigueur, the response is more nuanced. So I ask you: how do you know when a piece is finished?
SB: I don’t like a piece that looks overdetermined. I like there to be a sense of openness, of the unintentional. I try to avoid that point where the shapes are too obvious, when the sense of space is too specific.
MH: What happens when you’ve gone too far? Can you dial it back?
SB: Yeah, that’s when I get out the paint roller. I make a mess of it again, then I try to bring it back to the point where it’s almost there, but not quite. And that’s when I like to stop. If you go just a little bit further it might be even better, but sometimes you just have to trust and stop where you are.
MH: Does Casualism redefine beauty, or is beauty considered irrelevant, anathema?
SB: I have a complex relationship with beauty. It’s a relationship with beauty, desire, and the audience. How much do I care if someone else finds my work desirable? Do I want them to appreciate it from an intellectual standpoint? Do I want them to swoon over it? I think beauty is hugely important in how the audience responds to your work, and I’m not talking about the New York art world, but about the world at large. Beauty is the thing that can draw people in, no matter how little they know about art. We all find beauty in different things, and there are people who find it in the unfinished, the less skilled.
MH: Given that it’s so complex and personal, maybe beauty isn’t the goal. Is there another benchmark that you use to assess your painting’s quality or value?
SB: I don’t like to write about my own work, because I don’t want to understand the mystery. If I understand what I’m doing, then I can’t do it, because it requires a sense of unknowing.
MH: One of the things that I admire about your work is that it’s continually evolving. You don’t get stuck in a style or mannerism but continue to explore and expand your medium. Do you place higher value on your process than the finished work, or are they of a piece?
SB: I love the process of figuring out where I’m going. I can’t make ten of the same thing, so there’s always going to be the sense of a timeline in my work, of how I got from here to here to here. Often when I have a show, I’ll stop moving forward and explore one idea until I finish the work for the show. That’s my way of creating a series that seems cohesive, because my work in general has that sense of forward motion.
MH: In that situation, and in all your work, it would seem that the process is paramount, and the finished work is an outcome of your exploration.
SB: Yes. I’m not very product oriented, and I’ve always been insulated from the market. For many years I was a professor at a university, so I never had to support myself through selling paintings. It’s given me the freedom not to care. Back in the day, collectors were interested in the intellectual and emotional process of making the work, but now the collectors seem to be more interested in the product. This makes it harder for artists who are more attuned to process and ideas.
MH: As a writer and thinker, you spend a lot of time in your head, and your studio work has a decidedly intellectual bent. But your paintings are also emotional, and I’m curious how the two come together as you smear paint around the canvas for hours at a stretch.
SB: Now we’re getting to the main focus of my endeavor for all these years. The relationship between thought and feeling, going from the sliding scale of digital diagrams to the murky area of paint on canvas. How can you take a diagram or outline and infuse it with emotional content? Or how can you take a gestural painting and infuse it with intellectual content? Paintings need to have both, and my practice has been about exploring that relationship. Like cooking, more of this, less of that, tinkering with the ingredients. Right now I’m particularly interested in the emotional aspect of painting, whereas for many years when I was making digital diagrams on my phone app, I would start with an idea or shape and find a way to infuse some emotional content.
MH: Your work is not formulaic; indeed it may be described as anti-formulaic. So to create emotional paintings, the best you can do is to show up in the studio and be present. I think we all hope to show up in that way, but it can be exhausting to be your raw, emotional self for hours at a stretch.
SB: Yes, I think that’s right. But I’m a flinty New Englander. I grew up not thinking about emotions one way or another. My sisters and I learned to be emotionally resilient, to just get on with it. So this idea about the relationship of emotion, thought, and action and all of that behavioral analysis is fascinating, but it plays to my strength of analyzing. I’m not an emotional live wire; it takes thought for me to access it.
MH: It’s interesting that a person who doesn’t have immediate access to her emotions is aspiring to create emotionally charged paintings. You really do like a challenge.
SB: Yes, and my question is, what does it mean to create an emotional painting? I look for artists who are interested in finding that sweet spot, where they can work in geometric abstraction, but find humanity in it as well.
MH: Color resonance can summon a lot of emotion. A Renaissance painting of the Crucifixion is moving to us today because of its color structure, not the subject matter.
SB: I recently saw the Orphism show at the Guggenheim, and what I loved about the work was that it was experimental; it had been made before they mastered their ideas. It’s interesting that the Orphists were thinking about what it meant to remove the image from painting. Does that remove the humanity? And how can we bring it back through color?
MH: You speak of an emotionalist tendency within geometric abstraction, and I know there are many art historical references to be made, from Albers to Malevich to Agnes Martin. How does emotion present itself in your paintings, geometric or otherwise?
SB: I think it’s the unfinished, the blurry, the drippy, the indecisive, the doubt. That’s where it is. And the color, as we’ve been talking about. These are the elements that I consider to be the least intentional and therefore they carry the emotional content.
MH: Interesting. Does intentionality undermines the emotions?
SB: Yes, I’d say that’s true in my work. There’s something about certainty and specificity that requires an analytical approach, and that requires more forethought.
MH: Are the analytical and emotional mutually exclusive in painting?
SB: It’s always on a scale. I love the accident of painting one color over another, the lack of intentionality when the paint blurs. There’s something that’s unavoidable in the accidents that I find very moving and emotional. I’ve always thought that there’s nothing more heartbreaking than a badly drawn line.
MH: I find it intriguing that the accidental passages are those which carry the most emotion for you.
SB: Yes, and I always appreciate being surprised by that. Sometimes when the work looks too intentional, I have to go back and start again, trying to find those accidents.
MH: And in that process there are analytical decisions, such as, This looks too intentional, so you have to go back and make it unintentional.
SB: But then you’re intentionally being unintentional. There has to be an authenticity in the accident.
MH: You sound like an artist who doesn’t do many thumbnail sketches.
SB: I actually do a lot of them. When I was doing the digital drawings on my phone, I did thumbnail sketches before I started painting. I have to get to know the shapes and the spaces between them before I can begin painting.
MH: Art reflects the time and culture in which the artist lives. This is generally seen in the rear-view mirror, but do you have any insights or inklings of how the work being produced today is, or will be, representative of early 21st century art?
SB: I’m not very optimistic that in 100 years anyone will be thinking about the paintings we’re making today. We have so many challenges ahead; are they really going to be worried about art history? Will the wealthy collectors be shipping their collections off to Mars? I don’t know. I’m just not hopeful that with climate change, anything’s going to survive. Look at what’s happening in L.A. Raging wildfires are consuming entire collections. Artists are losing bodies of work produced over their lifetimes. I think we probably got the best of it, Meg. We had a lot of freedom, women’s rights and more, which the new administration will be in the process of clawing back from day one.
MH: You’re about to set sail on a new journey. What inspired your trip to Ireland, and more importantly, giving up your studio?
SB: I’ve been in studios in DUMBO for over ten years, and I just needed a break. Sometimes you have to stop what you’re doing in your personal bubble and look up. This is that kind of period for me. I didn’t want to relive another four years of this administration by doing the same thing I did the last four years, because it didn’t work. It made no difference. So maybe there’s another way to approach the situation. I have several small projects going on, and many possibilities, but I’m not ready to pick anything yet. Being able to move around is something that I’m interested in – moving around and being with other people whose paths I wouldn’t cross if I continued working in my bubble.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
SB: There are so many good things, and I’ve been pleased with every aspect. I love getting up in the morning and focusing on the things that I want to. You get to a point where your work coalesces and you have a better understanding of what it is and what you’re doing, and the older you get the better it gets. It’s like a rich stew. You start out with a broth, and you throw in a couple of things, and you stir it for several years and then it gets a little thicker, and by the time you‘ve reached my age, the flavor becomes so much more complex and interesting. Had I stopped when I was in my 30s or 40s, I wouldn’t have reached this point, so I’m grateful to have had the opportunities I’ve had in order to keep going. I can’t imagine being anything other than an artist.

www.sharonlbutler.com

The artist will be giving a talk at the Royal Hibernian Academy of Arts in Dublin, Ireland on January 29 .

Audra Wolowiec

Audra Wolowiec is a New York-based artist whose work is centered around language, sound, and breath. Her work spans many disciplines ­– installation, print, sculpture, performance – and speaks to the human body and the space it inhabits. She explores the body as a container for sound, and many of her performances play with the idiosyncrasies of language, with its plosive consonants and feathery fricatives. Wolowiec grew up with a stutter and describes how as a child she struggled to push awkward letter combinations out of her mouth. She experienced stuck words as physical blocks and was able to “see” these sounds as dense forms in her body. Her years of various speech therapies led her into the back rooms of the spoken language, where slippery syllables are exchanged for stock words that are more easily enunciated. These lessons in word substitution and speech fluidity gave Wolowiec a familiarity with language that few of us will ever have, and this intimacy can be seen, heard, and felt in all her work. The arrhythmic cadence of a spoken passage, the exhalation of commas extracted from the U.S. Constitution, a text by Virginia Woolf distilled into a sound score and performed by vocalists on a ferry crossing – these are just some of the compositions that bear the mark of Wolowiec’s affinity for language and poetic expression. Her sculptures and works on paper are similarly layered with linguistic allusion and may be best described as tactile poetry. They are quiet and unassuming, possessing the grace and gravitas that express the essence of our humanity. Indeed, there is a thread of vulnerability that weaves through all of Wolowiec’s work, perhaps a remnant of the dysfluent speech that she painstakingly learned to modulate. Through her work we also become attuned to the fragility of the breath, and by extension, the tenuous nature of our existence. We are communal creatures who depend on social intercourse, and our intentions are conveyed in the interstices between utterance and breath.

MH: Your work crosses several disciplines – installation, print, sculpture, performance – and is centered around language and sound. How did you arrive at this mode of expression?
AW: I’ve always been interested in tactility, the body, and spaces that the body inhabits, and sculpture seemed like a good umbrella to cover all those things. When I lived in Detroit, I worked in a production pottery shop where I learned how to make molds and the process of casting, and this led me to grad school at the Rhode Island School of Design to study sculpture. Through trial and error I began to delve further into my experience with speech and language. As a person who has had a stutter my whole life, I have a very different understanding of speech, the voice, and what it’s like to have words held inside one’s body.
MH: How did overcoming a stutter contribute to your interest in speech, sound, and the flow of language?
AW: I’ve gone through various speech therapies and read a lot about speech dysfluency. In my work, I started playing with ideas of voice and speech as tactile materials. In terms of my personal experience with dysfluency, what was produced was a lot of social anxiety. It’s something that I hid for so long and tried to avoid talking about, because there was so little conversation around it when I was a kid. It was hard to say my last name, and I had such trouble speaking that I just didn’t talk in class at all.
MH: I suppose the shadow side of speech therapy, or any kind of corrective therapy, is the underlying message that says you’re not okay as you are. How do you walk that fine line?
AW: It’s very tricky. I hated speech therapy when I was a kid. I felt like I was always doing it wrong. We grew up in a time where we had to hide so much about ourselves, and we weren’t able to just be in our bodies the way they are. As a teacher now, I’m conscious of nuanced approaches to communication, and I avoid the things that I had anxiety about when I was in a classroom setting.
MH: Have you heard of JJJJJerome Ellis? I love their work! They’re an artist, musician, and composer whose dysfluency informs their work. I love that they spell their name the way they pronounce it.
AW: Yes, I’ve met them – they’re wonderful! They’ve done some work with Dysfluent Magazine based in the UK that I’ve been involved with, and they did a billboard for the Whitney Biennial, which Jerome was in. They work with other advocacy groups and invited SPACE to stutter to create a pop-up exhibition during the biennial that I contributed to, bringing awareness, acceptance, and visibility especially for younger people. The poet Jordan Scott also comes to mind. He wrote a beautiful, tender book about stuttering called I Talk Like a River.
MH: Language is a physical, tactile, and visual experience for you. Would you talk about that?
AW: There’s so much about the body that goes into speaking for me – breath, slowing down, being centered – and there’s also a playful quality that comes from my slipperiness with speaking. Like if I’m trying to say a word that isn’t coming out, I experience it as a physical block, so I’ve learned to switch to another word, or try a different pace or cadence. Some letter combinations are very hard for me to say, so I’ve learned to substitute or elongate certain words or syllables. It becomes very visual and tactile for me.
MH: I’m quoting you here: “It’s alarming how much stuttering makes other people uncomfortable. Through the sound scores and performances, I’m interested in challenging that discomfort, playing with it, and making it tactile.” Would you explain some of the ways that you bring dysfluency into your work?
AW: A specific work comes to mind, a sound installation called Power Talk. It’s from a self-help book about speaking with influence, power, and command, and it lists the words that you should include in your speech. They’re very strong words with plosive beginnings, and I thought, what if the power was not in the vocal commands, but in vulnerability? So I took the list of power words from the text, then extracted all the sounds that are considered powerful, like the hard P’s an T’s. It was a very awkward series of sounds that I thought could invite a listener into an intimate space with another person’s voice. I had the recording on various speakers at Present Company in Brooklyn, and the speakers were embedded in the drywall, so you walked through this narrow corridor where you’re aware of your body and the space that it takes up. I was l hoping to invite a kind of intimacy.

Breathing Room, 2012. Plastic bags, thread, wood, tape, air
Site specific installation using natural airflow into and out of a room. attention is placed on one's own breath as the architecture itself begins to breathe. Shown at Studio10, Brooklyn.

MH: Your work addresses not only speech, but the silence between the spoken words. It’s as if you’re more interested in the space between words than the words themselves. How do you regard this space, and how do you relate it to breath and the comma?
AW: In music notation, the comma is the mark for the performer to take a breath. There’s an analogy between the comma as a sign to take a breath in a performance, and the comma to take a pause in a sentence; both are very charged spaces. So my use of the comma came through wanting to address the breath in an existing text in the same way that I played with language. There’s a lot of interplay between the cadence that comes out between those pauses or gaps that’s often interpreted as an absence, but I think of it as a very rich and generative place to work from and sit inside.
MH: If humanity can be expressed through something as ephemeral as breath, then we might expect it to be present in a brushstroke, a single note of a symphony, a solitary vowel in a poem. Does your isolation and repetition of letters and sounds allude to this in some way?
AW: My hope is that it creates the space for that, and a space of listening and connection. When breath becomes an intentional act, then it brings attention to being present. I think what you’re talking about happens most often with performative art, when these daily repetitions become central. The work of Pina Bausch comes to mind, or the work of Tehching Hsieh.
MH: In your piece AIR, you erased all the letters and punctuation in the U.S. Constitution except for the commas. Quoting you again: “(I was) thinking about the Constitution as a document of the people, how it’s supposed to stand for our rights, but it’s so often used against people. What is the most human element in it? I thought it was the breath. It’s something that we all have, something that’s been taken away or contested. The commas are the breath emerging from the Constitution.” In this context do you see the commas (and breath) as inherently subversive?
AW: I think it’s subversive in our political climate, where certain people are allowed to breathe and others aren’t, and where some breaths are taken away in a violent manner. Breath is something that every person does naturally; it’s a way of communicating and of calming one’s body. There’s a lot of privilege in not thinking about breath, so drawing attention to it was important to me.
MH: That’s interesting. So when you breathe, you’re basically saying I’m here. And if your existence makes another person uncomfortable, like if you’re an immigrant or trans or dysfluent, your very breath can be seen as subversive or confrontational.
AW: Yes, and breath is so intimate. We don’t listen to each other breathe – it’s uncomfortable, maybe even a little creepy. Breath is incredibly nuanced and has a direct relationship to rights and access, as well as the ideas of power and belonging.

Recording of an excerpt from AIR: ”The sound installation and notational score was created from extracting the commas from the Constitution of the United States of America. In music notation, the comma is the mark for a performer to take a breath. I invited breath practitioners from various fields—singers, actors, yoga and Lamaze instructors—to translate and interpret these pages of commas through their individual training and practice of breathing. I was interested in how the commas in writing are analogous to commas used for breath marks in music, and how an intimate and vulnerable exchange could emerge from this politicized text, extending beyond the boundaries of language, into an embodied and intimate human experience.”
(from the artist’s website)

MH: This piece about the Constitution, AIR, is apropos to our current political climate, where we’re holding our breath, as it were, to see what comes next. Do you ever regard breath and breathing as an act of independence, even patriotism? Or is it entirely human, without political or religious overlays?
AW: Breath is the one part of our voice and existence where we can sit in front of each other and breathe and listen without knowing each other’s language or beliefs. It’s the thread of empathy, the space to see another person, and it’s a communicative sound without speech or language.
MH: In the presence of censorship and the absence of creative freedom, all that’s left is the soul of the work: its breath. Do you have faith that our humanity could be conveyed in a work of art, even in the face of profound oppression?
AW: I think art in its many forms teaches us about humanity. It allows a sense of the collective, a way of understanding things outside ourselves, and when it works, it’s deeply empathic. In terms of profound oppression, I think imagination gives a sense of hope, something to hold onto. But then it becomes something different than self-expression. It’s no longer the solitary artist or writer expressing herself, but a lifeline that allows people to transcend their situation and to imagine a way forward, a future one can exist in.
MH: In a perverse but advantageous way, oppression and censorship may transform artwork from innocuous paintings to subversive agents of rebellion. A simple landscape or abstract painting might become a beacon of humanity when hanging on the walls of a corporate headquarters. Do you think art has the power to pierce through the disinformation and change minds?
AW: Definitely. It’s important that we read and look at the works of people who are under assault and in exile, for example, Palestinian writers and poets. There is such a lack of empathy in our society, and it makes a difference to understand human, lived experiences. I do think that art and writing can do this, and if not directly, then as an entry point.
MH: So oppression and censorship almost amplifies what the artist has to say.
AW: It highlights it if it’s brought into public view. How would we know of the many silences? I’m thinking of the banning of books, which is happening all over the country. Someone gets to decide what books are allowed and not allowed. It’s quite shocking what’s considered off limits, and that should tell us about the structures at play. In terms of art, I encountered a situation recently where an artist’s performance was censored because it was deemed to make certain people uncomfortable. When something is censored, and when that censorship is brought forward into public attention, it potentially has more voice. Censorship is designed to silence, but also as a way to exhaust; one has to go up against it.
MH: If hope has been gutted, what do we as artists have to express? Does one’s work become nostalgic, as in a pining for freedom, or do we carry the torch for the next generation?
AW: After the election there’s been a lot of commentary about freedom, democracy, and the idea of hope. I think we have to consider what we do have, and how we can work together. Perhaps courage is a better word? The idea of nostalgia is tricky because in many cases, there’s even less equality in the past. There’s a lot of privilege that comes with nostalgia, and for many people, nostalgia becomes oppressive.
MH: Absolutely. That’s what the whole MAGA movement is about – nostalgia for a time when white men held all the power. So the question becomes, nostalgia for what?
AW: And for whom. James Baldwin has written a lot about this.
MH: On a less apocalyptic note, your work with language is deeply poetic, engaging our senses on many levels. In a recent piece, (waves), you had five vocalists (sirens) perform a spoken word piece on a ferry crossing, and after the ferry reached the further shore, you placed words made of ice into the Hudson River. A gaggle of passengers and geese gathered to witness the ice words slowly melt until they were subsumed into the river. This feels entirely mythological! Did you place coins in the passengers’ mouths?
AW: (haha!) Yes, that was what I was hoping to conjure – the experience of water, of human passage, movement, migration – all these things were there. That was one of the prompts for the performers – to locate their own experience of water as a character, a place to speak or sing from. In my own speaking and in dysfluent speech, there are a lot of analogies to fluidity, fluency, and smoothing speech. With the ice, I was thinking of something solid like a block of ice with its hard edges, and then to have those edges smooth and dissipate as they melt in the water. It may be mythological, but it’s also a metaphor for speaking, both the physical and the ephemeral nature of words and language.
MH: Does your work sometimes feel mythological, as if you’re expressing something larger than the time in which we’re living?
AW: Maybe, but I don’t know if I consciously think about that. I’m really interested in collaboration, so maybe that comes into it – wanting to bring other voices in and not be the sole author of a piece. I like the idea of interpretation, of inviting people to respond and to add their voices into the mix. It’s a way to think about the collective or the human experience that is outside of my own experience.
MH: You spend a lot of time with literary works, thinking about their content and surgically excising their letters. As you deconstruct these texts, is there a common language that slowly reveals itself to you? Not in a literal sense, but a silent expression of our shared human values?
AW: It’s specific to the individual work. I’m interested in the title of the book, what the author is saying, and how they’re writing. I try to distill or extract an aspect of what the author was trying to express, and these are books that I’ve had on my shelf for a long time, so I’m very familiar with them. So when I worked with The Waves of Virginia Woolf, it wasn’t the whole book, but these interstitial, italicized chapters that talked about the weather and the qualities of the ocean. I worked with it by pulling words to the surface and being in conversation with the text, like what is the most wave-like, slippery, buoyant aspect of the text? I often think about it as a process of mining.
MH: Other than the desire to communicate with our fellow humans, what do you think artists hold most dear?
AW: Artists question the status quo, and they often don’t conform to what other people are doing. When you’re a young artist, living outside the mainstream is a lot easier. Things like housing and having good healthcare may not be accessible, so there’s a marginal aspect to being an artist, especially in the United States. Artists invite a slower read of the world, and often shape their lives around it. 
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
AW: Talking to other artists. Being in conversation with other creative people. A sense of possibility.

www.audrawolowiec.com

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Gelah Penn

Thanks for reading my conversations with artists!
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Gelah Penn's art transcends traditional categorizations, merging installation, sculpture, drawing, and painting. She describes her process as “drawing in sculptural space,” and her unconventional materials include polyester mesh screens, plastic bags, translucent sheeting, and fishing line. The constituent parts are altered in various ways – sliced, torn, draped, stapled – then attached to a wall in loose, transparent layers. Penn’s sculptures are seductive, cinematic, and enigmatic, but attempts to assign meaning or context are thwarted by both the art and the artist. Indeed, the work is riddled with a sphinxlike quality that resists interpretation: we want to know more, but its mysteries are concealed behind gauzy layers of mylar and mesh. These visual disturbances could be seen as invitations to a deeper understanding of her work, but instead we stay on the surface, distracted by dazzling moiré patterns and shimmering veils of reflected light. This obfuscation heightens the intrigue, and the viewer is reluctantly drawn into the shadowy realm of dualism, the psychological space that pervades all her work. This is the artist’s home turf, where her installations come alive and transform from delphic contradiction to zen-like paradox. From this median perspective, we begin to comprehend Penn’s work: her lifelong interest in film noir, her preference for open-ended novels and films, even her aversion to using declarative sentences when talking about her work. Penn’s intriguing visual language reflects her fascination with dualities: materiality and ephemerality, gravity and transcendence, cognition and obscurity. The formal elegance of Penn’s sculptures is seen in her dramatic compositions and masterful use of materials, but its impact is felt most powerfully when we grasp and assimilate its many contradictions.

MH: You went to art school and probably started out like all artists, with figure drawing, painting, sculpture, and all the traditional stuff. What are your current materials, and how did you come to them?
GP: It’s been a long and winding road. I started as a painter and painted for many years, but there was something missing; I needed the materiality and physicality. So I started putting things on the paintings like wood chips, synthetic hair, and my own hair, and that became more satisfying than painting. Gradually that moved into sculpture, and there was always a relationship to drawing. I became interested in using materials that would give me a linear quality, so I started using fishing line. And I didn’t like building things, so I used found objects, and eventually I stopped working in the round and worked directly on the wall. That was the best fit for me. The relationship between drawing and physical space made a lot of sense, and that’s when I started coming into what I was most comfortable with.
MH: So you think of the fishing line as a way to draw in space?
GP: Yes, then when fishing line became not enough, I explored other mark-making materials. I wanted a more geometric mark rather than the expressionistic mark I was getting with the fishing line, so I started using mosquito netting. It worked great, and I was able to stretch pieces of the netting into corners and create interesting incidents in space.
MH: Your work is not easily categorized. Is it sculpture? Installation? How do you refer to it?
GP: I call it drawing in sculptural space, or a combination of drawing and sculpture, but I don’t find these distinctions useful. The best description is that my work is at the intersection of drawing and painting and installation, or drawing and painting and sculpture and installation (haha). Like many artists, I’m fine in those interstices.
MH: The layering of mesh generates moiré patterns that create a visual buzz. I know they’re unavoidable when layering screens, but do they play a role in your work?
GP: Yes, definitely. I’m interested in creating visual disturbances or irritants, and I use the moiré to create drama. In my new pieces there are layers of polyester mesh, so there are a lot of visual incidents happening. I think of my work in terms of dualities: materiality and ephemerality, cohesion and fragmentation, object and image – all these are interesting to me. I’m drawn to work that’s a bit jarring in one way or another.
MH: The layers of fabric and mesh may be read as veils which evoke a sense of mystery and a desire to know who or what is behind the curtain. Is there an element to your work where you’re either concealing or revealing something?
GP: I like the mysterious quality that I get from the translucent layers, so you don’t know what’s happening where. There’s the interaction between major gestures and forms, and then there’s a background noise that comes to the surface and sometimes recedes. I’m more interested in a phenomenological approach or presentation to the work, so mystery is important to me, and it’s what I’m drawn to in other peoples’ work.
MH: Your work seems to embrace ambiguity in all its forms, from the material to the conceptual.
GP: Yes, if something is a declarative sentence, it’s less interesting to me than a sentence that has many meanings. I think of all these materials as a way for me to investigate and figure out what I’m doing. But the main objective for me in the studio is to try to get out of my way, to just make the work and not think about it too much.
MH: Your work is very personal, but it also seems to have a universal quality. Is there a particular place where you feel that it crosses over from your experience and connects with the viewer?
GP: I hope so! You want the viewer to connect with the work in some way, but it’s not a didactic or depictive process for me. It’s all about transformation, right? So, for instance, my ideas about gravity – physical, metaphorical, or emotional – can be conveyed through the materials and mark-making. I'm keen on the way manipulating simple materials like polyester mesh and plastic garbage bags can be incredibly evocative. And the dualities I'm interested in function in the same way. Ideally, the "incidents" that I develop in the work can be seen as forensic, theatrical, cinematic, or almost anything, depending on the viewer.
MH: Your installations have a cinematic quality, but they’re not exactly rom coms. They’re more like film noir, with layers of intrigue and elusive narratives that beguile the viewer. You mentioned that you’ve been interested in film since you were a child, and I’m wondering how that shows up in your work.
GP: It’s always there because I’m always watching movies and thinking about them. I’m especially interested in shadow and psychological unease, and that’s a large part of noir. But I don’t feel that my work is about anything in particular; it’s not a one-to-one relationship with any movie. There’s a type of infusion of that feeling that you get in noir, that uncertainty, mystery, anxiety, where you don’t really know what’s going on, people aren’t what they seem, and all that is part of what I’m trying to get at in the work. In addition to humor and other things! There’s a little bit of everything in there.
MH: Your work embodies an exquisite, timeless beauty, but it needs time to reveal itself. Like a film or novel, it unfolds slowly, so one needs to be present and engaged to fully appreciate it. How do you think about the levels of engagement that you present to the viewer? Are you attached to how the work is received and/or interpreted?
GP: My work is a slow read. It’s not immediately accessible, but it works on you for a while, and the longer you look at it, the more it presents itself. As far as how it’s interpreted, that’s out of my hands. I once had a studio visit with an established artist who said I needed to decide on one thing my work was about before it would be any good. I was devastated! Fortunately, I was never able to do that.
MH: Everyone has a past, and we have family histories that, for better or worse, come through in our work. Does your personal narrative inform your work in a significant way? Or do you regard it more as a thread that weaves in and out of your larger body of work?
GP: I’d say that it’s an undercurrent. My family history and my personal history are present in the work, but it’s nothing explicit. Like so much of my work, there are things beneath the surface that are working on the viewer in some way, but I’m not trying to reveal anything about myself to anyone. It’s there in the mark-making and the materials, slicing, cutting, and tearing things, and these are all very personal ways of working so one could find reasons for this kind of approach, but it’s just what I do.
MH: As you move close to the finishing stages of a piece, what does the home stretch look like? What kind of decisions, aesthetic or otherwise, go into your process?
GP: The hardest part for me is to start. I have to throw something on the fabric, put some staples in it or something, and once I get to a certain stage in the piece, I’m also taking things away. It’s this big, confusing collage and I’m constantly rethinking and reconfiguring – that’s my process. It's about the confluence of gesture and the elements relating to each other. I think of the work as being very active, one element working on another, and when they’re all working together the piece is close to being done. Someone once said that you know when a piece is done when you can’t do anything to make it better, and that’s the operative strategy that I use as I finish a piece.
MH: Most artists I talk to have the vague sense that as they work on something in the studio, they’re also working on themselves. Not just a superficial scratching at the surface, but a deep, committed dive into their personal narrative and how it connects them with the great mystery. What does your studio practice give back to you?
GP: In the best of moments, it helps clarify or at least makes it easier to make the work. It allows me more freedom to work without worrying about how I’m doing or how it’s being received. I don’t think of it in terms of a personal or revelatory thing; making the work helps me make the work. That’s what I’m going for. Making is thinking and thinking is making; they’re completely intertwined.

“Making is thinking and thinking is making;
they’re completely intertwined.”

MH: That’s interesting. I know you don’t think of your work as therapy, but do you ever feel like you’re unconsciously working out something in your psyche as you’re making these aesthetic decisions? Does one’s studio practice at some point become an agent of self-improvement or self-awareness?
GP: No, I don’t really like that idea. My family was interested in psychology and my brother was a psychoanalyst, so there’s the tendency to see things in that way. But I’m not expecting the work to make me a more well-adjusted person. Does self-doubt make the work more interesting? Maybe. I want to make compelling work, and whatever helps me do that is fine with me.
MH: So what do you get out of your studio practice? You’ve been doing it for a long time, and I assume that you see your work as more than a product. The process must be giving you something.
GP: Well, don’t you think that most of us have found that we either can’t or don’t want to do anything else? (haha) It’s kind of a process of elimination!
MH: Ouch!
GP: It’s not a bad thing! It’s just as important to figure out what you don’t want to do as what you want to do. Making art is a very particular thing and I don’t know that any of us would get the same satisfaction from another field. Besides, there are a lot of "ifs" in this kind of question. Maybe if I had bigger hands, a better memory, and no stage fright, I'd have become a pianist!
MH: Given that artmaking is such a personal, soulful process, how do you regard the commercial aspect of art? Is the creative process affected negatively when we start thinking about our work as “product”, or when we refer to a new series as “inventory”?
GP: I stopped worrying about that some years ago because whenever I tried to make something more commercial, I couldn’t do it. For example, I had been making these large, ephemeral installations, and I thought I’d make smaller pieces that might be more marketable. So I made these long, vertical pieces that became my Phantom Series, and the bottom of each piece came out from the wall and rested on the floor. (haha) I couldn’t help myself! That’s how it had to be. What could be worse for a commercial gallery or sales than a piece that came out onto the floor? And honestly, I don’t care anymore. I’m not a particularly commercially minded artist.
MH: Do you think that if a person starts thinking in that way it affects their work? Like, if you were serious about selling, maybe you’d stop making work that came out onto the floor, and your creative process would somehow be stymied?
GP: The problem is that I tend to be contrary, so the work probably wouldn’t be as interesting. I do think my work has a commercial component, but I just want to make the work that I do and let the chips fall where they may. And what does commercial mean, really? If someone loves the work and wants to show it or live with it, then it's commercial, no matter the challenges.
MH: I’ve heard blue chip galleries described as graveyards for art. Do you think there’s any truth to that? Does art world success tend to suck the soul out of pure creativity?
GP: Ha! No, I don’t think so. I mean, there are so many great artists who show at blue chip galleries, and they’re still making fabulous work. It just depends on the artist. There are always going to be bad shows, and artists are always going to get into ruts with their work, but then their next body of work will be better.
MH: That’s generous of you. I suppose when an artist achieves a level of commercial success that demands more and more of their “product”, there may be less time or incentive to experiment. I see a lot of shows where it looks like the artist is doing knockoffs of their own work.
GP: Yes, well you want to be able to keep moving in whatever direction your work is going, and I’m sure the constraints are more difficult when you’re dealing with a gallery that’s selling your work faster than you can make it. But there are other models of showing your work if you’re afraid of that happening. I’ve shown my work in college galleries, museums, and other non-commercial institutions.
MH: What do you hope to communicate through your art practice? Have you achieved it, or is it a work in progress?
GP: For me, it's all about transformation, reformulation, and metaphor. Ideally, it’s always a work in progress. But I feel like I’m where I should be – not that I’m going to stay here, but I’m more comfortable with what I’m making now than I was many years ago. Anyway, it’s all a mystery. 
MH: It seems like the theme of mystery keeps coming up, and there are so many mysteries in the art making process: how to make it, what to say with it, where to show it, how the work is going to be received. We work in such a difficult field where there are only unknowns! Are you comfortable working in such an environment, steeped in uncertainty?
GP: I don’t know if comfortable is the right word, but I’m at peace with it. We need to make the work, and we like people to see it. And because I do installation work, it’s useful for me to show it in different venues, so I can see it out of the studio. It gives me ideas and shifts my perspective when I’m back in the studio. So for me, showing the work isn’t just about sales or reviews, but having it out there and being part of the conversation.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
GP: You have a space, literally and figuratively, where you can always go and make stuff, even though it’s not always easy or peaceful or without anxiety. The surprises that happen there are a big part of the satisfaction, as well as the ability to change anything you want anytime. A place to keep asking questions is a gift.

www.gelahpenn.com

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Susan Mastrangelo

Susan Mastrangelo is a figurative painter, but not in the traditional sense. There are no facial features or fleshy limbs to entice the viewer; no nostrils or nipples thrown in to suggest anatomy or skin. Mastrangelo’s interest in figure drawing began to wane a decade ago, when her focus shifted from the external form to how it felt to be inside the body, among its organs, sinews, and coiling viscera. Her medium expanded when she began using materials found in fabric stores, gluing industrial upholstery cord and scraps of fabric to wooden panels. Mastrangelo “draws” with the thick cord, outlining large areas that she fills in with paint, textiles, and fragments of yarn. Her process is deeply intuitive, as she relies on natural impulses and decades of figurative work to express that which is hidden in the recesses of the human form. In the final stage of her process, Mastrangelo connects the various sections with loose sheaths of knitting that she stitches in synchrony with the body’s natural rhythms. Indeed, when she knits for extended periods, the repetitive stitching begins to align with her heartbeat and breath; it becomes the tissue that repairs, heals, and connects her with the painting. This is the soul of the artist’s work, where she projects herself into the painting through her materials, focus, and sheer labor. By dissecting the figure, Mastrangelo exposes its concealed cavities with their vital organs and tortuous piping, the essential fabric of our physical form. Mastrangelo’s relief paintings transcend the individual, directing our attention to the biomorphic structures that sustain us and make us human.

MH: As a child you explored a variety of creative expressions, including the clarinet. What made you settle on the visual arts?
SM: My parents were artists, so I was exposed to it at an early age. Music and acting lessons were also important to me, but the visual arts spoke to me the most. I loved the physicality of the process, and I could hide in it because I didn’t have to be in front of people.
MH: In your studio practice you work with unusual materials: yarn, wool, upholstery cord (aka piping), and recycled fabric, along with traditional paint. How did these materials find their way into your work?
SM: Everything is gradual with me. After years of figurative work, I began to slowly reduce everything to abstract shapes that resembled the figure. I started adding strands of yarn to my work, and in a yarn store I discovered these big ropes that turned out to be upholstery cord. It came in different thicknesses and was much more stable than the yarn, which kept fraying after I applied it to the canvas. Then when Covid happened we were living upstate, and I started knitting. I felt like the knitting was holding things together, like I was containing things, and I added it to a few of my pieces. I liked how it looked and got great responses, so I went forward with it. The knitting has become a meaningful part of my work.
MH: It’s often assumed that craft-based materials belong to the realm of the feminine, and therefore the artist’s work must be feminist. Is this stereotype annoying? And is your work overtly feminist?
SM: No, I don’t see it as feminist.
MH: It’s so refreshing to hear you say that! I find it mildly irritating when people assume that if you’re a female artist, you must be doing feminist work.
SM: I know that my materials are indicative of women, and early on I used feminism and repurposed materials as reference points when I talked about my paintings. But I don’t think of my work as feminist. It’s just me.
MH: It’s interesting that knitting is a skill that was passed down the generations through women. Maybe women of our generation don’t knit as much, and possibly our mothers didn’t knit, but I don’t think anyone has a grandmother who didn’t knit, right? Who taught you to knit?
SM: My grandmother taught me how to knit when I was five, so the act of knitting has always brought me great comfort. Throughout the years I would knit when I was under stress, and it has been both meditative and calming.
MH: So you gradually started losing the figure because you sensed that there was something underneath it that was much more important. What have you found in your exploration?
SM: What I’m exploring has to do with what’s inside, with one’s spirit and biological makeup. It goes beyond what overtly represents us in our body, face, and skin. It’s a form, it has circulation and a heartbeat and palpitations and blood, but it’s much deeper than that. It has to do with my feelings and how they connect to the outer world. All the various shapes in my paintings are attached to each other; they’re one form, and they’re an expression of what’s going on internally.
MH: It sounds like you’re expressing what it feels like to inhabit a body, rather than what it looks like. Not an easy task!
SM: Yes! When I’m knitting, I start working with the beat of my heart and I can go into an almost meditative state. It’s like I’m building tissue, repairing organs, connecting valves or shapes that are all working as one big form. The knitting connects everything and makes it whole.
MH: Your intuition that there is something underneath the figure makes me think of Plato’s concept of universal Forms. He stated that the individual forms that we encounter in this world are shadows of an eternal, perfect Form that exists in another realm. By departing from a literal representation of the figure, are you searching for something timeless and unchanging?
SM: Yes, I suppose I am, in the sense that the inner working of the human body is timeless and indistinguishable. At some point I could no longer represent the figure in a literal way; it had become too painful. It became more and more abstract until finally I took the leap into total abstraction. Once I did this, I found my way, but it was a painful transition for me.
MH: Why was it so painful?
SM: I no longer physically and emotionally identified with the human figure, and I knew I was moving into something else, but I wasn’t sure what that was. After I had made the transition to abstraction, I realized that it wasn’t full abstraction, but forms based on the inner workings of the body. I had moved from the external to the internal, and I was experiencing a deeper connection to what is felt rather than seen. This transition took a couple of years.
MH: Figurative work can be specific, as in portraiture, or loose, expressing the human condition in general terms. As your process becomes less literal, do you find that it grows more profound in some way?
SM: Yes, definitely. It goes back to Plato and essential, basic form. I feel we are just an extension of that form, and it can also be found in nature, in high math, and in philosophy. But it’s not only the form, it’s also about how it all fits together. I’m deeply connected to my work – it’s the inner workings of my mind, and that’s what I try to tap into.
MH: It sounds like you’re tapping into something raw and unadorned, without regard for outer appearance. Your work probably wouldn’t be a great candidate for home décor.
SM: I try to steer clear of decoration. There have been times when I’ve tried to make my work more attractive, but I found that it’s not something I’m into. If I use brightly colored yarn, it has to do with something inside me rather than a surface choice. But I don’t think of my work as pretty; in fact, a lot of my work isn’t all that attractive. I don’t know if anyone’s going to hang it in their bedroom!
MH: Maybe Plato. What about your choice of materials? How does the industrial piping cord fit into the picture?
SM: I communicate well with these materials. I feel that I’ve mastered them. For years I made sculptures and they were huge, but I had to stop because I couldn’t go any further with them. I didn’t know enough about the materials, and they became too heavy to move around. But these materials are manageable and they’re a direct link to my brain, my creative soul, my energy. I draw with the cord, fill it in, and connect the shapes with the knitting.
MH: You talk about your process in instinctual terms, and I get that your process is very intuitive, gut-based, spontaneous. In the absence of objective criteria, how do you know when a piece is finished?
SM: When I like it! When I feel that it does what it’s supposed to do. When there’s something in the piece that resonates with what’s going on with me.
MH: This is a quote from you: “The best work is a revelation of something that’s deep inside you, what makes you you.” Would you elaborate on that?
SM: All of a sudden you feel deep inside that the piece is yours. It happens when you’re working and not self-conscious; you’re just having a great time and then suddenly you feel at one with your piece. It’s why I keep doing it. It makes me live! You look at your piece and know that it’s touching something within.
MH: Does the painting become a reflection of you in some way, like a self-portrait?
SM: Yes! I feel like they’re my friends. I come into my studio, and I feel like I’m surrounded by my friends, and they’re all me.
MH: When one’s work is deeply subjective and intuitive, it’s not easy to talk coherently about its meaning. Do you consider this an impediment to a deeper understanding of your work? How important is relatability?
SM: It’s an impediment to explain my work to other people, and there are many artists who won’t talk about their work. I can understand that. I can talk about the material and physicality, but the deeper it goes, the harder it is to talk about. It’s important to me that people understand the work, but I know that a lot of people won’t really get it.
MH: Learning more about an artist’s work usually doesn’t make the viewer like it less. I’m wondering if it behooves the artist to open up and talk about their work even a little, just to give the viewer some context and a way in.
SM: I think so. I know that when I talk about my work and relate it to the figure and what lies beneath, it gives the viewer something to hang onto and allows them to go deeper.
MH: Does this circle back and add something meaningful to your studio practice?
SM: Yes, but it’s a thin line between connecting with yourself and crossing over that line with an audience. But it’s meaningful to get the work out there and feel like you’re part of the bigger conversation.
MH: What do we contribute as artists? If we’re not cranking out home décor or curing cancer, what do we add that’s meaningful?
SM: We make the world a richer place. Where would the world be without art? It would be terribly boring. Why even be here?
MH: You left teaching a few years back, and get to spend a good amount of time in your studio. Everyone has good studio days and bad studio days, so I’m curious what you consider a good studio day.
SM: When I come in and I’m able to connect with my work. I have to work through days of not connecting, and that’s very frustrating, but once I get past a certain point, I’m on the road and I know it’s going to work. There’s hope and there’s a full connection.
MH: Haha! There’s reason to live.
SM: Yes! But there are plenty of days when the forms are just not working for me so I have to yank up the upholstery cord and sand the glue down, then start over.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
SM: You can do whatever you want. It’s wonderful to have these ideas in your head, and then be able to put it down on paper or canvas or whatever your medium is. Self-expression! We’re lucky because we have a way to express ourselves. It gives our lives meaning.

www.susanmastrangelo.com

CURRENT SHOWS
SLIP/SLIDE
with Larry Greenberg
490 Atlantic
through Nov. 3
490 Atlantic Ave., Brooklyn, NY

This Is Not A Rope
solo show
Field Projects
through Oct. 19
526 W 26th St., #807, NY, NY

Check out Susan Mastrangelo’s Wikipedia page here.

David Provan

Earlier this year, we were deeply saddened by the loss of a friend and fellow artist, David Provan. His absence is still a shock, and a reminder ­– as if we needed one – that life is fleeting and unpredictable. Those who knew David appreciated his warmth, humor, and intellect; those familiar with his artwork know him as a brilliant, consummate artist. David was a sculptor who worked in steel, wood, and clay; he was a potter whose vessels are elegant and understated; he was a painter and draftsman, a furniture designer, and, most recently, he was exploring mosaic as a medium for his two-dimensional designs. Everything he made possessed a quality that all artists strive for and therefore rarely achieve, that singular fusion of skill, depth, and effortlessness. David’s work was deeply influenced by his extended travels in Japan, India, and Nepal, where he lived in a monastery in Kathmandu and became an ordained Buddhist monk. His immersion in Eastern philosophy is manifest in all his work, where his innate Western classicism merges with an open-ended Asian aesthetic. It makes for an intriguing dialogue within the work, where the artist implicitly poses the questions, but instead of responding in the classical tradition, David leaves it unresolved and open to interpretation. Indeed, his work seems to eschew a facile reading, leaning into an Eastern tradition that favors subjectivity and mind-bending koans. Many of his sculptures are perforated through to the other side, as though he wants us to see beyond the solidity of Western thought and puncture the illusion of permanence. Imagine the Greek sculptor Praxiteles completing his masterpiece, Hermes and Dionysus, then drilling holes in the marble so you could see clear through. David seems to suggest that the Western paradigm is but one of many options, and the least aligned with science and contemporary thought. A year ago, his solo show, Barely Not Impossible, was on display at Garrison Art Center in the Hudson Valley. (Read my review in Chronogram here). For his artist talk at the gallery, David asked me to lead him in a conversation about his practice and ideas. In preparation, we had a conversation on Zoom where I asked the questions, he responded, and we jumped into some interesting rabbit holes. The following is our conversation, edited for brevity, but true to the spirit of our exchange. It was an honor to take a deep dive into his work, and to have known David Provan as an artist, seeker, and friend.

MH: When you were in your 20s, you spent some years traveling in Japan, India, and Nepal. How did Asian art impact you while you were there, and how did it influence your direction as an artist?
DP: I was aware of the art as I was traveling around the East, and I visited the museums, the caves in India, and all that. But it wasn’t the art that interested me as much the philosophy of Buddhism, yoga, and the duality of the universe. They were more influential than the art itself. Then after I came back to the States, I became interested in studying Asian art.
MH: What were you drawn to in Eastern philosophy?
DP: It was how the Asian culture was so different than the way I’d been raised in America. I saw how I’d been conditioned by my upbringing, and that there were other options available to me. It made me realize that there was room to reinvent myself, and that was more valuable to me at the time than looking at thangkas and mandalas.
MH: Did you have an art background?
DP: Yes, I was born into an art family. My dad was an artist, so museums, galleries, and studio visits were natural to me, but I didn’t think about being an artist myself until much later.
MH: So after traveling in Asia and studying under various spiritual teachers, you returned to the States and decided to go to art school?
DP: Yes, when I got back to California, I went to Santa Barbara City College. I found that I had some facility, but I hadn’t found my voice yet, so I basically followed what everyone else was doing at the time.  From there I went to Yale and got my B.A. in Art and Architecture, and it was there that the ideas around the duality of existence started to percolate into my work. Then I went to the Royal College of Art in London and got an M.A. in Painting, and I began to explore these ideas in two dimensions.
MH: How does the Asian aesthetic differ for you from Western art? Does it have an emotional appeal or is it primarily a cerebral connection?
DP: When I look at Asian art, I’m thinking more of the philosophical implications than what it looks like. And that filters down into my work, which is diagrammatic and about symbolic structure rather than emotional appeal. I’ve collected a lot of Asian art and am most attracted to the Tantric diagrammatic paintings rather than thangkas or figurative pieces.
MH: It seems that from the beginning of your creative path, you’ve been interested in the concept of emptiness. What attracted you to this exploration, which is essentially an investigation of nothing?
DP: Well, first I’d say that it’s not an investigation of nothing, it’s more about the interrelationship between nothing and something. Emptiness is the main theme of my work, but not the only theme. The key to all my work is the Chinese concept of yin yang, the tai chi symbol. This concept has been the continuous thread throughout my work, as I’ve tried to find more refined ways of demonstrating it, instead of the familiar white dot and black dot. I’ve explored how it applies to other things, like birth, death, and the cycle of life, as well as figure and ground, presence and absence. All these elements come into my work to some degree in my studio practice. It’s often very subtle, but it’s there.
MH: Why are you so drawn to the concept of yin yang? What meaning does it have for you?
DP: When I came to feel like I really understood it, I was living in a monastery in Nepal, and there was a purification practice that we had to do to show that we were serious about our practice. We had to do 100,000 prostrations, and then when we finished that, the next practice was a meditation on the male/female principle in sexual union. As I performed these meditations, I gradually started seeing everything in pairs, everything working in opposition to something else. Political parties, nation states, I began to see how everything balances each other out. This is the essence of yin yang.
MH: Have you found that emptiness has meaningful variations? Or is emptiness just emptiness, end of story?
DP: I see emptiness as an absolute, the base foundation of everything. And then permeating it are these flickerings of atomic particles that come together and gel into something, and you get a star or a planet or infinite variations. But I think of the void as the base condition.
MH: As you’re working are you thinking of it as a void or as emptiness?
DP: I consider them the same thing. There’s a great underlying futility in my studio work because it’s very hard to illustrate the void using steel as a medium. It’s sort of antithetical, but I’m working symbolically, trying to indicate a volume out of steel that’s perforated. You can see inside and through it, so it has a lacy, open, not-quite-there presence. In a way it’s a failure, especially when I’m using 200 pounds of steel to illustrate nothing. I’m talking about emptiness but I’m filling it up with all this hardware! (haha) Not only do I miss the bull’s eye, but I miss the target altogether.
MH: Well, you’ve got to do something, right? It’s an interesting paradox to try to portray emptiness, because if you do nothing at all, not even make random marks or use impermanent materials, then you’re left with performance art.
DP: Yes, then there’s nothing there and there’s nothing to respond to. I want to at least put something out there that you can contemplate.
MH: It’s hard to talk about emptiness without bringing up Buddhism. Do Buddhist principles play a role in your work, or do you prefer to steer clear of spiritual connotations?
DP: I don’t quote Buddhist concepts directly in my work, but the influence is there. The Diamond Sutra explains the void not so much as volumetric emptiness, but in the fact that nothing is permanent.  Everything is in a state of transition, and there are no autonomous objects; there is growth, peak, disintegration, and regeneration ­– an ongoing procession.
MH: Is a void easier to express than infinite emptiness?
DP: I’m trying to emulate the idea of a void, but of course it’s not true emptiness. Even when I make it open-shaped, it’s still full of air, which violates the voidness since air is just another material. I want to jolt myself and other people to think about this, and to viscerally have the experience of emptiness. But I can’t weld together a bunch of steel and create a void, I can only make a symbol of it. So I create this steel contraption that’s hollow inside, and I see it as a symbol of the way that all material things are. Because everything is made of atoms, which are emptiness with just a little spark of subatomic particles flying around.
MH: So your sculptures are in fact about the empty space.
DP: Right, the metal is just there to define the emptiness.
MH: At the heart of Asian aesthetics there’s the concept of impermanence. Does this idea influence your work, and if so, how does it show up?
DP: Definitely. Everything is in a state of transition; a steel sculpture is rusting or deteriorating in some way, even if minutely. Everything is falling apart all the time, which you already know if you own a house. (haha) There’s nothing that you can pin down and say it’s permanent.
MH: This points to an underlying paradox in your work, because you’re using an extremely durable material to talk about impermanence.
DP: That’s what I love about it. It’s so illogical.
MH: I think of someone like Serra, whose sculptures are monumental, but like anything, they’re subject to the laws of entropy. At some point they’ll disintegrate, but we’re talking about millennia. Technically it’s impermanent, but it’s geological time.
DP: It’s still on the spectrum, but it’s one of the slower examples of it. Even glaciers are on the spectrum.
MH: Your 2D works are densely layered with patterns, creating visual effects that tease the eye. They often leave very little breathing room, and the eye has no resting place; no emptiness, as it were. How do you see this space? Is it the flip side of emptiness? Emptiness filled to the brim? 
DP: I hadn’t thought of that, but yes, there’s no horizon line, no way to get out of it. But again, I see it more as a diagram or map than a picture of something. I look at it in two ways: the figure/ground relationship is a concern of most artists, because traditionally you do a portrait of someone, and there’s a background behind them. Mona Lisa poses in front of an Italian landscape, but she’s also a product of that landscape. Likewise, my 2D work is an artistic device, but it’s also a metaphor for the individual as the product of his or her background.
MH: That’s interesting. So we’re all basically figure/ground relationships with arms and legs.
DP: Right. My DNA, language, nationality, race, gender, socioeconomic class, education ­– all these various threads weave together to make David Provan here in 2023. I am a product of my background, as was Mona Lisa, as are all of us.
MH: There’s a contrast between your 2D and 3D work, both in concept and spatial expression. There are similarities in the shapes, but the space is quite different.
DP: Yes, the figure/ground relationship can only be expressed in 2D, because in 3D, the ground becomes the surrounding world. So the 2D work tends to be more diagrammatic, while the sculpture expresses more about space and emptiness. It’s interesting because my degree is in painting, but over the years I realized I had to move into three dimensions to express the void, then around 2017 I realized that I needed to go back to painting to express the figure/ground relationship. So I have two studios and I go back and forth between them. When I have a bunch of ideas for paintings I go in one studio, and when I’m thinking in 3D, I go in the other. There’s not really a hierarchy.
MH: You use the Tibetan symbol of the endless knot in both your 2D and 3D work. What does this symbol refer to? And do you ever think about cultural appropriation when it comes to using esoteric symbols?
DP: It’s open to interpretation, but I see the continuous loop as a symbol of the continuity of life. It alludes to the way life keeps rolling on, despite asteroids, dinosaurs, climate change, and so on. I’ve done a lot of endless knots as drawings, paintings, and sculptures, and as a symbol it ties together some of the ideas that I think about. I have some misgivings about cultural appropriation, but I feel like I’ve paid my dues. I’ve done my 100,000 prostrations! (haha)
MH: Right, there’s always that pesky issue of using another culture’s symbol. The problem is that our American culture doesn’t have that many interesting symbols, unless you’re into painting eagles.
DP: That’s true! My ultimate opinion on cultural appropriation is that culture belongs to everybody. I don’t believe in these nationalistic or religious boundaries; it’s all my heritage, whether it’s a crucifix or a yin yang symbol. It’s open source.
MH: I’m curious if you’ve ever finished a piece and thought, by George, I’ve done it! This piece perfectly expresses everything that I’ve set out to do as an artist, and I’m now complete.
DP: Yes, every time! I think it for about 30 seconds, that this is my ultimate expression, I’ve done it, I’ve said it. And then I think no, this could’ve been done differently, I could do that better, and that projects me into the next piece.
MH: Haha! So true. We’re so delusional when it comes to seeing our art as great.
DP: I think to be an artist you have to be delusional to some degree. Or even to be an operational human being, a little bit of delusion can help you a lot.
MH: So is that 30 seconds of fully embracing your finished piece a helpful part of the process?
DP: Yes, it’s dependent on that, in fact. As I’m working toward concluding a piece, I have to think that this is going to be the holy grail, this is going to answer everything. You have to have that kind of confidence, and then you finish it and it’s either really great or pretty good, but there’s always the feeling that you can do better. So that spurs me on to do the next piece.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
DP: It provides you with a reason to live and something to do that is independent of everyone else. Of course, you integrate with the outer world to be part of the conversation, but you can be a very good artist without the need for outside validation. And I love thinking about time and existence and how it flows and repeats itself, and then translating it into my work. I’m always trying to perfect my language, to make it more succinct, more articulate, more efficient, so there’s always room for improvement. I hit high points with a piece when I’m completing it, but then I always see that there are even higher points, like climbing a mountain. You reach the top of a ridge, only to discover that there’s a higher point on the mountain.
MH: I guess that could be depressing, because you could feel like there’s no end to it, that you’ll never find perfection. So you have to have a certain temperament where you’re okay with never reaching the summit.
DP: Yes, exactly. In Islamic art there’s a rule that you can’t even aspire to perfection because that’s the exalted realm of God. But that’s the beauty of it too, that you can aspire to it, knowing that there’s so much room between here and perfection.

www.davidprovan.com

IMAGE LIST
  1. Radial Displacement, 2021, waxed steel, 18.5 x 23 x 7 in.
  2. Breath, 2023, enamel, corten steel, 33 x 20 x 8 in.
  3. We Live Within Each Other’s Wounds, 2020, corten steel, 39 x 25 x 9 in.
  4. Ohhvoid, 2022, corten steel, 49 x 76 x 22 in.
  5. Fundamental Structure, 2023, enamel, steel, 26 x 21 x 23 in.
  6. Space Splice, 2022, waxed steel, 22 x 15 x 10 in.
  7. Monitor, 2003, steel, 17 x 16 x 5.5 in.
  8. The Great Ongoingness, 2023, waxed steel, 23 x 25 x 7 in.
  9. Route Cause, 2022, corten steel, 24 x 12 x 15 in.
10. Grooved Cylinder, 2004, welded bronze, 8 x 8 x 8 in.
11. No Brainer, 2021, corten steel, 26 x 12 x 10 in.
12. Time Grinder, 1991, enamel, steel, 42 x 35 x 21 in.
13. Pocket Cosmos, 2020, enamel, steel, 23.5 x 18 x 12 in.
14. Dark Rainbow, 2022, enamel, aluminum, 18 x 17 x 4 in.
15. Golem, 2008, stoneware, 11.5 x 9.5 x 5.5 in.
16. House of the Sleeping Woman, 2020, porcelain, 17 x 16 x 4 in.
17. Pompeii Plumbing (PorSer 16), 2013, stoneware, 15 x 18 x 6 in.
18. Totally Else, 2017, stoneware, 15 x 10.5 x 5.5 in.
19. Devpath #102, 2011, carved poplar, 11 x 8 x 6 in.
20. Something From Nothing, 1990, steel, wood, 106 x 74 x 74 in.
21. As If Forever, 2018, India ink, 22 x 15 in.
22. Diamondback Checkerboard, 2019, India ink, colored pencil, 22 x 15 in.
23. Bliss Wish, 2019, India ink, 22 x 15 in.
24. Hypno Ecstasy, 2020, India ink, watercolor, 22 x 15 in.
25. Personal Infinity, 2018, India ink, watercolor, 22 x 15 in.
26. Diagram of the Before and After, 2020, India ink, 23 x 15 in.
27. Promising Conditions, 2020, watercolor on paper, 23 x 15 in.
28. Cyclogasm, 2023, glass mosaic, 20 x 30 in.
29. Ego Agency, 2023, glass mosaic, 20 x 15 in.
30. David Provan, 1948 – 2024
31. The artist in his studio.
32. The artist on his table..

Ruby Chishti

Ruby Chishti is a Brooklyn-based sculptor who collects discarded clothing and alters them into architectural forms and figures. She cuts recycled fabric into strips and sews them by hand, stacking them in layered striations like geological records of time. Usually modest in scale, her sculptures feel larger than life due to the bulk of the forms, as well as the substantial presence that can be felt in all her work. Chishti’s work expresses a breadth of emotions, from the anguish of loss to the discovery of joy, the latter derived from deep immersion in her creative process. Memories from childhood are woven into Chishti’s textiles as she recalls her experience of growing up in Pakistan, later in turmoil by military dictatorship and suppression. Her monochromatic sculptures speak to the life she left behind, with its collapsed buildings, abandoned homes, and broken windows. A striking aspect of Chishti’s work is her understated feminism, remarkable less for its might than its dignity and grace. As a “fourth daughter,” a disparaging term less familiar to those raised in the West, Chishti fought to be seen and heard by her family, and the psychological repercussions have haunted her into adulthood. She explores this theme by depicting the female figure in its fullness of power, unfazed by the sexual overtones of an overbearing patriarchy. We witness ordinary women accomplishing everyday tasks, naked warriors who are the monoliths of family, community, and culture. Chishti transforms vulnerability into empowerment by honoring the labor and love of all women, regardless of their marital status or breeding potential. Through her laborious process of cutting, folding, and stitching, Chishti has overcome loss and found expression through transforming discarded clothing into timeless architecture. By integrating body and structure, and indeed by wearing her sculptures as she is wont to do, Chishti reimagines herself and all women as modern-day caryatids, pillars of strength who support each other through hardship and tragedy.

Congratulations to Ruby Chishti for being selected as a
2024 Joan Mitchell Foundation Fellow.
* * *

MH: You work with mixed media, but your primary material is fabric. What’s the story behind that?
RC: I have a long history of working with fabric. When I was a little girl, I didn’t like my clothes, so I altered them into what I thought my clothes should look like. Also, at that time in Pakistan there were seamstresses who would come to your home and sew clothes for you, so you could sit by them and tell them how the design should look. This was a common practice – people didn’t go out and buy readymade clothes. And then my grandmother taught me how to make dolls by stitching and stuffing fabric. It was a very crude way of doing it, but it gave me some ideas of how to make my own dolls. So from a young age I was very comfortable with hand stitching and altering clothes.
MH: Did you experiment with other materials in art school?
RC: When I went to art school at the National College of Arts in Lahore, there were only traditional sculpture materials like clay and bronze, so I didn’t work with fabric at first. Then my mother became very ill so after graduation I was her caretaker for 11 years. There were heaps of discarded clothing from my family in the house, and I started working with this fabric by hand sewing it. I knew that my mother wasn’t going to be around much longer, and I wanted something to remember her by, so while she slept I started making hand sewn dolls that looked like her, with round curves and a long braid.
MH: In your process you meticulously cut clothing apart and then sew it back together in monochromatic striations of fabric. What’s the thinking behind your labor-intensive process?
RC: When I moved from California to New York in 2009, I was overwhelmed by the world of fashion and textiles, and I was looking for different ways of manipulating the fabric. I came up with the idea of layering cloth, and I used clothing from my family that I had brought with me from Pakistan. I cut the clothing into long strips, folded them, and sewed the strips together by hand. Around this time, I returned to my family home in Pakistan, only to find that it had been destroyed. It affected me deeply to see that my house that held so many memories did not exist, and there was only wilderness in its place. I thought about all the people who were forced to leave their homes because of war, and how I was able to leave of my own free will. In the villages of Pakistan there are mud houses built with layers of clay and bricks, so I began to think about my layered fabrics in this way. Eventually I ran out of my family’s clothing, so I bought clothes from thrift stores in New York, and I always bought faded textiles because it reminded me of the colors of the architecture in Pakistan.
MH: Your work is an exploration of the body – usually female – using architectural, often masculine forms. It’s an interesting dialogue between the feminine and masculine, and I understand that your personal history plays into these choices. Would you talk about that?
RC: I find architecture and the body to be similar because both occupy space. In architecture people live and leave, but memories live in the body. So I was thinking about how to express this, and I made a dress that was like an architectural structure. I constructed it with wire mesh, then I removed the wire so I could wear it. I wore the dress during an art fair in 2013, standing on different intersections in Dumbo as a way of integrating my body with the architecture of New York City. It expressed some of the anguish I felt over the home that I left behind in Pakistan.
MH: Windows are prominent in your architectural forms. I feel like I’m looking into a doll’s house, but one that was vacated long ago. What significance do windows have for you?
RC: Windows are a very specific part of architecture, and whenever you see a demolished building, somehow the structure of the windows is still hanging from it. For me windows represent the desire for other life forms to come in, so I put lots of them in my pieces, most of them open.
MH: All your forms, no matter the size, have a monumental feeling. It’s like your work is larger than life, both figuratively and literally. There’s also a weight to them, a gravity in both senses of the word. Would you comment on that?
RC: I’m not aware of the monumentality, but maybe since I reference architecture so often, this gives it that larger than life feeling. I also think that making a piece of clothing that’s larger than myself has a psychological impact, because we all share the desire to be bigger than we are. And because our associations with clothes and the body are different from other objects, they have greater impact.
MH: I’m thinking of the oversized men’s overcoat that I saw a few years ago at Hudson Valley MoCA. It was a remarkable piece and had a huge impact because of its size and bulk.
RC: That piece was related to issues that I was dealing with at the time, having to do with my desire to be loved and protected by a God-like father figure. I bought a men’s wool coat from the 1940s, cut it apart, and enlarged it by adding fabric. The coat was over 8 feet in height, and added various things to it, including a small tricycle.
MH: You mentioned that you were a fourth daughter, and I had to think about that for a minute before I got it. Giving birth to a fourth daughter in Pakistan is probably not occasion for great celebration. Do you think this position in your family contributed to your becoming an artist? More importantly, did it fuel your exploration of the feminine?
RC: This is a key question. There was an older brother, then 4 daughters, then when my younger brother was born it was a big event in the family. My grandmother told everyone that God had answered her prayers and given her a pair of sons. It’s such a cruel society, and you feel it every day as a girl. But it gave me some freedom because no one paid any attention to me, so I could climb trees and be a tomboy and no one cared.  All my life I’ve struggled with this issue, trying to prove that I’m not lesser than anyone.
MH: And yet you’ve become an artist who creates images of empowered women. Your women are helmeted warriors! They’re regal, fleshy, fully confident beings. How did you evolve from fourth daughter to these expressions of the empowered feminine?
RC: I started out by making figures that were submissive and tragic, with heads buried in their hands. But over the years I saw how I and other women struggle each day just to be ourselves with our families and with society. I’m drawn to express the female body not as sexualized, but as bodies that have given birth, have lived a life, and sustained all of it. These women are the ones who are doing the hard work; they are the pillars of everything and give so much so of themselves: time, energy, love. Society doesn’t give them credit for all they give, and they become invisible as they grow old. So when issues come up having to do with women’s rights and patriarchy and men making decisions about women’s bodies, I get very angry. I want my female figures to look like they’re doing their daily tasks as warriors.
MH: That’s wonderful. An ordinary woman doing ordinary tasks is transformed into a warrior.
RC: Yes, absolutely. They are helmeted warriors, and I imprint Islamic designs on their helmets.
MH: Some of your works are overtly feminist, and you mentioned that your expressions of the female body are from a female perspective, without sexualization. In a patriarchal culture like Pakistan, this must be a radical expression for a female artist. What does this work represent for you?
RC: My work was very accessible in Pakistan. People understood the figures, and the fabric was not an elite material. In Pakistan, when the female form is represented it’s always sexualized, so my non-sexualized figures stood out powerfully. Pakistani women understood where I was coming from, and it was read with the same intention that it was made. This felt very successful to me.
MH: I can understand why it would be appealing to Pakistani women, because you’re choosing empowerment over sexualization.
RC: Right. My figures are inspired by Lucien Freud, who painted figures in a very non-sexualized way, even the fleshy, voluptuous women who are in sexy poses. He just paints them as they are without sexual overlays. His women seem to be liberated from all those things.
MH: How does your immigrant experience affect your work? Is there a tangible sense of “otherness”? Or perhaps it’s the same “otherness” that most artists feel; that awkward feeling of being from another planet.
RC: It’s interesting because my immigrant experience as an artist works in my favor. There are so many good artists here in the U.S. but because they’re from here, they’re not considered exotic, and their art is often not appreciated or seen. But I never wanted to use any of the exoticism from my country like so many artists do. I wanted my work to have a universal appeal, so that it could be from anywhere. So as an immigrant, I struggle like all artists. It can be very brutal, and I’ve had to navigate everything on my own.
MH: You’ve had many challenges in overcoming the loss of your home in Pakistan, providing long-term care for your mother after a paralyzing stroke, the untimely death of family members, and the fragmented memories that have been difficult to negotiate. Has your studio practice helped you to sort through your life experiences?
RC: It’s the only thing that kept me going. When my husband and I came to the U.S. in 2002 we were in California, and I couldn’t do my studio work for a couple of years because I was working in a corporate job. Even on my days off when I tried to work, I had no connection to my work, and this feeling would just kill me. This went on for years, until I left my job and we moved to New York, and here we created a different life. Not being able to work in my studio makes me anxious and unhappy, because it takes me away from myself. For me, being an artist is not a privilege, it’s a need.
MH: When it comes to art as a form of therapy and personal transformation, wherein does the healing take place? Which part of the process?
RC: I think healing happens when you make your work. It comes from everything, from choosing your materials to deciding how you’re going to use them, and then knowing what you want to express with them. Healing takes place when you are your own master, when nobody is dictating to you what to do and how to do it. I think the best way to process the things that happen to you in your life, no matter if they’re sad, tragic, or happy, is by working with materials and process. This is the contribution that artists give.
MH: Do you think that having one’s work seen by others is an essential part of an artist’s process? Say an artist completes a beautiful body of work, takes a victory lap, then throws it on the pile and starts a new series. Is that enough or is there something inherently meaningful about sharing one’s work/self with others?
RC: To some extent it’s enough when you know that your work is good and that you’ve created what you wanted. But I also think that art is meant to be seen and shared, so if you toss it aside without showing anyone it would be tragic. It would be very sad that no one else would have the opportunity to connect with it and know who you are. I make my work accessible to people and it’s not too abstract because I want the work to be meaningful. We have a deep connection with the rest of the world through our art.
MH: Looking back on your life, do you think the personal losses and suffering show up in your artwork? And if so, does it feel tragic, or is there a beauty in it as well? Have you been able to transform the loss into something else?
RC: Oh, definitely. My early works were very tragic, because I had suffered huge loss, and maybe I was indulging in my sadness. So I learned a language to express that sadness, and I felt that it was really good work. But the work has grown with me, so as I’ve grown out of grief and struggle, the work has grown as well. My older work was always made with materials like muslin, black cloth, and dyed grain sacks, but my current work is bright and beautiful, and the materials have their own language – there are sequins and other materials that I hadn’t thought of using before. Whatever you feel, that’s what you create. And eventually when you grow, your work becomes that new expression.
MH: But it’s not all sequins and butterflies now, right? Because the sadness will never go away, but you bring joy to it as well. That’s the fullness and depth of art, music, literature, and so forth.
RC: Yes, exactly. It’s not that my current work has no sadness, but there’s so much more than that, and it can be experienced in the work.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
RC: It’s the freedom, the space that you enter, both physical and psychological, where you can express anything – visible, invisible, or abstract. And then there’s the vulnerability that an artist experiences when they step into the unknown and they don’t know what it’s going to look like, whether the material is going to work, or if a piece will be successful. When you put yourself there, knowing that failure is a possibility, those are the moments that I think are so precious. If you know everything ahead of time, where is the joy? As life is unpredictable, as life is vulnerable, so is the artist’s journey.

www.rubychishti.com

Josette Urso

Josette Urso is a Brooklyn-based painter who thrives on the pulse and rhythm of the city. She draws inspiration from construction sites with their giant cranes and fluorescent helmets, the clashing of colors and shapes on the subway, and the ubiquitous laundry hung out to dry, where distinct patterns overlap and ‘clothes encounters’ abound. All of this is condensed into a visual sausage that is at once chaotic and controlled, its myriad ingredients encased within the overflowing canvas. Urso states that her new series of paintings, currently on view at Markel Fine Arts, mediate the interior and exterior, by which she means everything inside and outside her studio. Indoor succulents merge with urban skylines, only to be eclipsed by a rogue patch of plaid that devours everything in its path. Meanwhile, unruly scribbles are herded into a corner where they unionize and create their own ecosystem. It’s easy to get lost in Urso’s worlds within worlds, where a dozen languages seem to be spoken simultaneously, each demanding our undivided attention. This is perhaps a byproduct of Urso’s working method, where she begins by blocking in large shapes of color, resisting the urge to go granular too early in the process. As the painting evolves, her marks accumulate and the disparate voices begin to emerge, an atonal symphony that grows increasingly loud and complex as it builds momentum. The composition comes full circle when the initial broad strokes reappear through the layers of pigment, at which point the painting takes on a separate identity. Urso labors hard for that moment of recognition, when the painting comes alive and seems to gaze back at the artist (has the work of art become a separate being, or are we looking into a mirror?) Her work is astonishingly alive, shimmering with vitality and tenderness, like an exotic fish caught, examined with curiosity, and gently released back into the sea. Indeed, Urso seems to gather the vast, chaotic universe into a celestial net, closely scrutinize it while imposing a modicum of order, then cast it back into the radiant night sky.

MH: Your paintings appear to be nonobjective, but I see landscape references, and sometimes I catch glimpses of the figure. Are you influenced by your environment, or does your work come straight out of your head?
JU: I’m completely influenced by the world around me. If I rely solely on what’s in my head, my vocabulary is somewhat limited, so I need something to respond to. When I’m in my studio in New York, the view from my window is a great jumping off point, and I get inspiration from my interior space as well. I’m always rearranging things in the studio, resolving the space between the inside and the outside. I live and work in Bushwick where there’s a lot of construction happening, and I love seeing the giant cranes, the deliveries of bricks, and all the workers with their fluorescent helmets ­– their movement and activity inspire me.
MH: So what happens? How do your paintings take shape?
JU: I work from general to specific, and I do this by using large brushes and big, swooping shapes. I just need to get something down on the canvas to respond to, to break the ice. I try not to see imagery too quickly, because as soon as I see something, I can get stuck. I thrive on the unexpected collision of elements that are happening on the canvas. Then slowly things start to get more particular, and as I build up layers, the figure and ground starts shifting.
MH: When I asked how you begin a painting, you said a bird might fly past your window, or a cloud move across the sky, and those become some of the initial marks. I love that. It feels at once simple and profound, like haiku. Do you ever think of your paintings through the lens of poetry?
JU: I think of my little collages in that way, but not so much with the paintings. But yes, I think poetry is closely related to painting.
MH: As you’re working on a painting, you said that it starts to have a presence. It catches you off guard and makes you laugh. Would you elaborate on that? Why laughter?
JU: When the painting makes me laugh, I feel like it’s taking on an individuality and becoming a separate being. When I take a step back from it, it’s become enticing to me, and at that point I can trust that it’s close to being resolved. It may still need some fine tuning, but my moves start to slow down, and I know I’m almost finished. It’s funny, I can’t quite understand it other than it feels like it’s alive, and it’s something beyond what I could have predicted.
MH: Maybe it’s good that you don’t understand it. It’s like dissecting a magic trick, or reading the ingredients in sausage – best not to know.
JU: Exactly! And no painting resolves itself in the same way for me. I really don’t know, and there are a lot of agonizing days in the studio, chasing something down, waiting for that moment when something surprises me. I don’t have a formula, other than how I start a painting, the brushes I use and so forth. But I don’t have a method where I move from A to B to C; it’s always unpredictable, but that’s what I like about it. It’s such a challenge! Painting is incredibly difficult, that’s why I find it so engaging and exhausting.
MH: Right, formulas are fatal to good art. When an artist discovers a formula to make a good painting, their work starts to decline. You can tell that their search is over.
JU: Yes. Anyone looking at one of my paintings in progress might think that it looks done, but for me, I need that other thing, and I can’t leave it alone until I find it.
MH: When an artist starts a new piece, there’s this sense of mystery, of not knowing what lays ahead. It can be unsettling because part of us wants to know, but then there would be no journey. When you approach a new painting, do you experience this tension, or is it straight up sunshine for you?
JU: Sometimes a painting sneaks up on me and it comes together right away, and I don’t know why it happened so effortlessly. But usually it’s a process of hunting, exploring, not settling, not being completely satisfied. It’s hard to satisfy myself! It’s like I’m looking for something, but I don’t know what it is. But sometimes I can be in love with the process, the hunt, even though nothing’s really happening in the painting. So the activity of working is sometimes sunshine, but it’s also agonizing.
MH: Does the opposite ever happen? Where you feel like you’re painting the worst canvas that’s ever been painted, then you go back the next day and you love it?
JU: Yes, and sometimes the part that’s really bugging me, that’s unresolved or not working, turns out to be the most exciting part. But it’s when the painting starts to settle down that I can feel if it’s sound. I rotate my paintings a lot during my process, to give myself a fresh vision and not to get stuck in any one area. Often when a painting works from multiple viewpoints, I feel like I can start trusting it.
MH: Is it the tension that makes a good painting? Without the struggle, do paintings become facile or toothless?
JU: Perhaps. Within the painting there’s tension between the elements, the way they play off from one another, like when everything can be read in multiple ways. This kind of tension contributes to the overall orchestrated painting. And then there’s the tension of the artist, who’s on a journey and doesn’t necessarily know where they’re going to end up.
MH: How do you experience time when you’re in that creative space?
JU: Lately I’ve been aware of this strange compression of time when I’m painting for a long stretch, where time changes and compresses. It’s like I’m in another place, where 8 hours can go by in an instant. It’s fascinating to me.
MH: Is it because you’re so absorbed in your work that you lose track of time/space?
JU: Yes, it happens when I’m so engaged that the work becomes all encompassing. But I have to create the situation where I can have time happen that way, because if I have other things that I have to tend to, it won’t happen. Louis Pasteur said that chance favors the prepared mind, so I have to carve out days where I can be in my studio without interruptions or commitments. Those are the best days, when I have complete freedom to follow a thread of exploration.
MH: Creativity and artmaking can be overwhelming at times because there are no rules, no instruction manual to consult. Do you ever create your own set of guidelines just to have something to push against?
JU: I often see something out in the world, like a color combination on the subway, or when I’m hanging my laundry and there’s a color collision between two patterns, that triggers an idea, and that gets woven into my painting. I love the activity of finding contrast, contradiction, and similarities – odd things that relate, not in a logical sense but in a way that makes sense to me.
MH: Does there come a point in the painting where the guardrails get in the way? When do you jettison your vision and let the painting take the driver’s seat?
JU: Almost immediately! I just need a place to start, but once there’s something on the canvas to respond to, the painting starts to have a big voice and I can’t tell it what to be or where to go. Once the first mark is on the canvas, I can’t completely impose what I want it to be.
MH: That’s interesting. It’s not what I thought you’d say. I think most artists spend quite a bit of time putting down paint, imposing their will on the canvas for an extended period.
JU: Whenever I impose my will, it gets painted out completely. It just feels too contrived, like I know it too well. I’m not as interested when the marks are self-conscious or literal; I like a shape to be implied.
MH: It sounds like one of your objectives is to get out of the way as quickly as possible.
JU: It is, and that’s a good way of putting it. It’s funny because in the rest of my life I like to be in control and my studio is fairly organized. But I want my work to be more free, more unexpected. I don’t want to be the manager of the painting.
MH: Your paintings appear to be chaotic, like 4 or 5 languages being spoken at once. But there’s a unity to them as well, where the disparate voices are saying the same thing, or pointing in the same direction. Do you think of your work as chaotic?
JU: Maybe an organized kind of chaos! (haha) I love music that has many different layers of sound and rhythms and volumes that work together. So I feel like the painting is orchestrated, but shifting, so things can be read in several ways. It feels chaotic in the beginning but then it sorts itself out.
MH: Is organized chaos a thing? To me chaos implies a total absence of control, otherwise it’s like chaos lite. But I see chaos in your work, don’t I?
JU: Sometimes I feel like the whole painting is chaos, like I can’t quite bring it together, and in the end some areas are still chaotic. If you zoom in on a detail it may look like chaos, but it’s contained within a shape that relates to another shape and ends up looking less chaotic when you see it as a whole.
MH: The general assumption is that chaos leads to order, but for some artists, it’s the other way around. Chaos imbues vitality into their work and their lives, while order sucks the life out of their creativity. Where do you stand on the chaos/order spectrum?
JU: I’m drawn to chaos and complexity. When I’m out in the world I like things that are unexpected and alive, but I feel the need to impose some order and logic as well. If everything was tidy it would be boring, but I need my life to not be chaotic so I’m freer for my work.
MH: Well, you live in Bushwick, which is the most chaotic place I’ve ever lived. How does that feed into your work and creativity?
JU: I love my studio and the light in my space. It’s like big sky country for me. Sometimes I feel like I live in a tree house! Bushwick can get really chaotic, but I’ve always responded to the speed of the city and felt connected here. It’s an energy that feeds me.
MH: Would you talk a little about your show at Kathryn Markel? What are you exploring in this new body of work?
JU: The new paintings are influenced by my experience in the city, and the sky is contributing in a big way. The work mediates the inside and the outside, that space in between. I call the show Wildcard because I was thinking about the element of chance and unpredictability. I’m always gambling as an artist and stepping off the path, so I like the play of the title. The paintings are new and still revealing themselves to me, sometimes slowly and in ways that I didn’t anticipate. There are also some collages in the show that influence the paintings. It’s not so much that they’re studies for the larger pieces, but they can inspire combinations of shapes and colors.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
JU: Being in the studio and in that place where you’re totally free, exploring and discovering things and messing up along the way. The gift of being in the studio uninterrupted – for me, that’s the best part about being an artist.

www.josetteurso.com

Wildcard is showing at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts in Chelsea through July 26th.
179 10th Ave., NY, NY 10011

IMAGE LIST
1.  Corduroy and the Fern, 2024, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
  2.  From Here, 2024, watercolor on paper, 30 x 24 in.
  3.  Run With You, 2024, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
  4.  Super Bloom, 2024, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in.
  5.  Poolside, 2024, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
  6.  My Stars, 2024, oil on canvas, 48 x 60 in.
  7.  Sundial, 2024, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in.
  8.  Cascade, 2024, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in.
  9.  Full Sun, 2024, watercolor on paper, 24 x 30 in.
10. Landline, 2024, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in.
11. Landline (detail), 2024, oil on canvas, 48 x 36 in.
12. Daybreak, 2024, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in.
13. Elsewhere, 2024, oil on panel, 30 x 24 in.
14. Silent Afternoon, watercolor on paper, 2022, 6 x 6 in.
15. Summer Rain, 2022, watercolor on paper, 6 x 6 in.
16. Blue Shade Red, 2022, paper collage, 36 x 36 in.
17. Freeway, 2022, paper collage, 48 x 48 in.
18. Cadaques D, 2020, pencil and collage on paper, 3 x 3 in.
19. Yellow Fern Green, 2022, oil on canvas, 36 x 48 in.
20. Snow Through, 2011, oil on panel, 20 x 16 in.
21. Blue Rhubarb, 2009, oil on canvas, 30 x 24 in.
22. The artist in her studio, Brooklyn, NY
23. The artist in London, England
24. The artist in San Francisco, CA
Images 1-8, 10-15 and 18: Courtesy Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY
Images 16, 17, 20, 21 and 22/center canvas Daisy And The Rose: Private Collections
Images 19 and 22/left canvas And There You Are: Courtesy Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Kent, CT

Preeti Varma

In her new series of paintings, New York artist Preeti Varma distills her experiences of movement and migration to take us on a journey through unfamiliar territory. A native of India, Varma has traveled extensively in the East and West and knows what it is to be the other, accepted but not fully integrated into a new culture. Her paintings convey the multicultural experience with bold gestures, combining the subtle transitions of Eastern aesthetics with the formal structure of Western classicism. Varma depicts the psychological space of the migrant in constant motion, with flat areas of color that read as geographical expanses, offering respite for the eye as it traverses the canvas. Varma is attracted to ordinary objects that are all but invisible to the rest of us, depicting them with a life force so animated that we forget they are encrusted fire hydrants or rusty drains. The stark figure/ground relationship of these “portraits” suggests the immigrants’ social limitations, invoking compassion for their enduring sense of isolation. But these figures are not destitute; they are hopeful and courageous, reinventing themselves to reflect their changing environment. Varma paints with the joy and optimism that can only be known by one who is intimate with the outsider’s perspective; indeed, her work is a celebration of the itinerant nature of human existence. In her paintings and works on paper she creates a simulacrum of the outsider’s experience, a small taste of what it is to be in continuous transition. And as we’re drawn into her narrative, we come to understand that the hardships of the migrants’ circumstances compel the traveler to find beauty in the fleeting moment, that narrow slice of experience that, like Varma’s paintings, is in a state of perpetual flux.

MH: Your abstract paintings are vaguely representational. Sometimes they read as portraits, and more recently they appear to be still lifes or landscapes. How do you feel about content in your work? Do you want people to read into them and see subject matter? Or would you prefer that they view them as pure abstraction?
PV: I like people to see my paintings as pure abstraction at least to start with, but then at some point I like them to know what the subject matter is. I want my work to inspire the intrigue that everyday life possesses, the magic of the moment.But I’m happy for people to take away from them however it makes them feel.
MH: Is it easier for you to begin your paintings with a subject in mind, or do you work better without any preconceived content?
PV: My creative process is a journey of absorbing the world around me, which is part of my subject matter.  I don't start with anything set but begin by taking in my environment through my experience of walking around the city. I encounter seemingly ordinary things that exist without anything remarkable happening to them, and then something sparks my imagination. I photograph it, and then stories start to build up in my head, and it all comes together in the work.
MH: You expressed that you find inspiration in everyday objects. How do these ordinary objects inspire you? 
PV: I’ve always felt for the underdog, and I sometimes wonder if I’m looking at these things because no one else looks at them. So that’s one school of thought, but then I started looking more deeply into it, and I saw the contrast of the many places where I’ve lived. When I moved to Singapore, for example, everything seemed so clean and perfect compared to India, but then the imperfections started jumping out at me and I found them intriguing. And that made me think about how in India those imperfections were always there, but I never noticed them. It’s the context that makes us see what we see and how we see it.
MH: You’ve moved many times in the last decade, leaving your home in North India and eventually ending up in New York City. This must have had a profound impact on your studio work.
PV: Yes, the changing environment has completely informed my work and has given me an outsider’s view. I have that ability to look at something with fresh eyes, from a certain angle, with a kind of novel experience that natives don’t have. Like a fire hydrant. It may not be special to anyone who sees them all the time and who grew up with them, but I see a fire hydrant and I see a unique identity. They stand on each street, separated by their own experiences, exposed to the ravages of tim­e – to me it’s fascinating. I feel like everything is living and has life.
MH: It’s funny how of all things, fire hydrants stood out to you.
PV: Isn’t it? (haha) I started painting them as portraits, taking my inspiration from traditional portraiture, which were painted for people of status. So I elevated fire hydrants to similar levels of importance by painting their portraits, and I made the ground behind them very flat.
MH: Are there other ways that your work been affected by living in so many places?
PV: I was painting when I lived in India, then when I moved to Singapore, I started working with rice paper. I was inspired by the Asian art of storytelling and calligraphy on paper, so I was using my photographs and responding to contemporary issues through that tradition. I did that for 4 years, but when I came to New York the energy of the city was so vibrant and noisy that I couldn’t express myself in the same way. I would sit down with the paper and images, but I couldn’t express how I was relating to my new environment using the same materials, and that was when I felt that I had to paint. The work that I was doing in Singapore was much quieter, but in New York my paintings became more vibrant.
MH: In moving around for so many years, you undoubtedly had moments of feeling like the other, the outsider. Do you feel a connection to the migrants who share that profound feeling of loss?
PV: Yes, I do, and it stood out to me a lot more after moving to New York with its rich migrant history. As artists, we experience life deeply, and our compassion helps us express our artistic intent to reflect our collective humanity and resilience.
MH: When I spend time with your paintings, I feel like they take me on a journey. It moves from left to right, but it also seems to move away from me, migrating into the two-dimensional space. Is this sensation intentional, and if so, where do you want to take your viewer?
PV: It’s a lovely question. Movement has always been important to me because even when I lived in India, I was constantly moving within the country. I try to express this movement in my paintings, and I’d be so happy if someone felt like they were going on a journey with me. I always start with strokes from left to right, and then everything starts slowly, magically building around it. I want the viewer to keep travelling with me, to keep moving in and out of the painting. I don’t want them to stay in one place, so there is no static point in my work, even with the works on paper.
MH: That’s interesting. The viewer becomes an essential part of the painting, holding it together, as it were.  
PV: Yes. I sometimes refer to my work as experiential, because it comes from these experiences that I’m constantly documenting. It’s a distillation of many experiences, which means that each work is unique; there is no template. I’d die if I had to work with a template! Formulas feel like death to me.
MH: Haha! Death by template. But is the artist the best judge of her work? Sometimes what we see as formulaic failures turn out to be what others like best.
PV: I don’t’ know about that. My work needs to be authentic to myself first before it’s true to anyone else. I need to be able to own it.
MH: Your work is so much about movement and rhythm. If you were a writer, your language might be based in verbs rather than nouns. How do you feel about your work being described as a verb?
PV: Interesting. I can totally relate to that because it’s in constant movement, and the moment you rest your eyes somewhere, you feel the need to move to another place. But there’s also an interconnectedness of the elements, of one thing leading to another. It’s a formal element that I want my paintings to have, like building a visual story, and all the elements are characters in the story.
MH: It makes sense to think of your paintings in terms of writing, because they often read as narrative. It appears that the color and calligraphic marks are telling a story in broad strokes, and I’m curious if this narrative is your life story? In other words, are your paintings autobiographical?
PV: Maybe they are. It would be hard for me to separate the movement of my painting from my unique way of looking, which comes from my shifting perspectives. So in that respect I’d call them autobiographic. I can be a private person, so being an artist gives me the ability to share my life.
MH: On a similar note, you mentioned that your paintings express the subject matter from the inside out, which makes me think that they’re self-portraits. Is this how you view them?
PV: I’ve asked myself this question for the last several years and I struggle with it. It may have more to do with my search for identity as an outsider. Maybe immigrants share this experience, a sense of an environment reflecting who you are at this time, in this moment, in relation to the space you currently inhabit. In my paintings there are passages that I think of as geographic because I have a relationship with spaces and how I relate to them. It’s reflective of how I’ve felt over the years of moving from one environment to another. When you go to a new land the first thing you notice is how different it looks. The second thing you notice is how different the people are and their language is. So I think my work has always been steeped in those contrasts, going from the outside in, and does the outsider ever become an insider? That’s difficult. It takes a while.
MH: You seem to embrace the imperfections in your immediate surroundings and find most of your inspiration in the urban landscape. You said that you’re “…elevating the ordinary to a level of significance and reconsidering what beauty might be.” Would you elaborate on that?
PV: The eye is trained to think of beauty as having a completeness to it. It wants to rest on things that appear to be whole, where nothing is missing, and we elevate symmetry. But we can see beauty in anything, and find meaning where we are, because it’s all around us. There can be moments of contemplation and beauty in very banal things.
MH: Have you always seen the beauty in everyday objects? Because when you’re constantly moving you have no home base, so you might be more inclined to find the beauty in fleeting moments and everyday objects.
PV: Yes, 100%. I’ve always gravitated towards beauty, and living in so many places has made me a keen observer of my immediate surroundings. I’m a very curious person, so I’d be intrigued and appreciative anywhere you put me.
MH: It’s an interesting inversion that the migrant’s experience becomes so focused on the present, the immediate, the now. You’d think that someone who’s traveled the world like you have would find beauty in the big, wide space of existence, but instead your focus is on the narrow slice of experience that comprises the present moment.
PV: It’s due to the realization that these ordinary things exist everywhere, and they have a similar ordinariness to them. Looking at these elements brings a sense of familiarity, even though they look slightly different from place to place.  But they have the same feeling about them, and the way they’re neglected and overlooked is the same everywhere. So my concentration on this makes me feel that there is a universality of experience for those of us who move around. An outsider is an outsider is an outsider. It doesn’t make any difference if you’re an outsider in your own country or in another country. And if I focus a little inward as I move around, it’s because that’s where the truth lies, in the end.
MH: As someone who’s lived in Delhi, Bangalore, Bombay, Singapore, and New York, you’re uniquely positioned to draw upon both Eastern and Western aesthetics in your studio work. How do you approach this? Is it something that you premeditate, or do you let it find its own expression?
PV: The latter. But I’m aware of it, and I do not suppress it because I want the work to have the best of all worlds. I hope it adds rich layers to my work. India is a land of color, which comes through in my palette, and I always want my work to be contemporary. The color is not static, it’s part of the present, and it’s a language that I use so people can take the journey with me.
MH: A lot of artists still think that art is suffering, and that if you can pay your rent, you’re probably not a serious artist. This doesn’t seem to describe you and your approach to art making. How do you regard your art practice?
PV: I know, it's such a struggle, right? People think if you can afford your paint, then you're not a real artist! (haha) It's strange to hold onto that kind of suffering in today's world with all kinds of complex issues, including unprecedented mental stress, which people suffer from, and that's real, regardless of their ability to pay rent. Many artists find their artistic expression and inspiration through their personal trials. My work and process are not to focus on the suffering itself but to ask how you rise and what you do today to lift yourself and your life a bit. I tend to be very optimistic, so I think beyond the suffering. One of my gifts is to put things in perspective and then say okay, how do I move forward? So again, the movement is very important to me. In every way, I'm a person who needs movement, and that's what you also see in my work. Sometimes, I wonder if I'm an escapist, trying to lose myself in my artwork. But I don't want to focus on the darkness; there's too much focus on it already.
MH: Is escapism through art a bad thing?
PV: It’s not bad, because art can be something that takes you to such beautiful, soulful places. But art also needs to raise questions, and it needs to uplift humanity.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
PV: I feel fortunate that I’m able to be who I am and express my unique point of view with full freedom, and with no obstructions. I want to inspire people to look at their world with intrigue, wonderment, and a different perspective, and I’m so grateful that I’m able to do that. Art has always raised the level of human consciousness, and I’m honored to be a part of that process.

www.preetivarma.com

Preeti Varma’s solo show Maelstrom of Memory is currently showing at
Perry Lawson Fine Art in Nyack, NY
from May 3 - June 16th.
COFFEE & CONVERSATION WITH THE ARTIST:
Saturday, June 1 at 11:00 a.m.
Visit their website to RSVP.

Pearl Cowan

Pearl Cowan’s landscape and figurative paintings entice the viewer with their classical realism and masterful palette. Seductive flora and suggestive mushrooms allude to a hidden narrative lying beneath the surface of the paint, waiting to be penetrated by the discerning eye. The symmetrical lines and shapes that integrate the composition are oddly satisfying, like an alien language resonating on a primal level. Formerly an evangelical Christian, Cowan explores religious painting without the dogma, substituting geometry for Christ and void for presence. In the absence of a Savior, our devotion turns to nature, where we discover its sacred geometry from our privileged position at the center of the composition. As Cowan diverts our attention from Christ to the Radiant Void, we wonder if it is blasphemous, or if this is what religion has been trying to tell us all along. In her recent figurative paintings and drawings, Cowan comes out as a trans woman in a series of timeless narratives that unfold like so many Bible stories or Greek tragedies. A cursory reading speaks to the torture and suffering of these latter-day martyrs, but a more considered interpretation sees the humanity in their afflictions; indeed, they don’t seem to require intervention or sympathy. Like the iconic saints depicted in classical painting, they embody a transcendent calm that borders on rapture, and the Greek myths that Cowan often quotes are those with happy endings. The presumption of adversity is an ironic mirror that reflects our latent impulses, and Cowan taps into the depths of desire with compassion and wit. Her work is not intended as an apologia; rather, Cowan shares her experience with generosity and candor, using a classical medium to express nontraditional and queer subject matter. This juxtaposition, along with the humanity that emanates from her paintings, touches us at our deepest core, where we are neither male nor female, but a little of both.

MH: Your work is beautifully rendered, and it appears that you have a background in classical painting. What made you decide to go toward realism in your work?
PC: I was always drawn to realism and the Old Masters. I went to art school, but they don’t teach you how to paint, so for the most part I’m self-taught. When I was in New York I went to museums more than galleries, and my work was probably the most abstract that it’s ever been. Then when we moved to Boston, I spent a few intense years going back to the basics. I spent a year just drawing, then a year painting with watercolors, then during the pandemic I taught myself to paint with oils. I spent a lot of time online, watching YouTube videos on things like “How to Layer Paint”. It’s just in the last year or two that I’m able to do with paint what I want to do. I hesitate to say that I’ve mastered it, but I have enough control over the medium that I can have an idea and express it. It’s a new thing for me, being able to use paint in a way that I feel satisfied with.
MH: I’m inspired by your recent paintings where you scale up your small works. That’s hard to do, but you made it work in a powerful way.
PC: Yes, I wasn’t sure if my small paintings were going to scale up, and I was happy that it worked so well. That said, I still like to work small. The art world says that you have to make big paintings, which makes me want to work small. (haha) But I do like working large. They take a lot more work and a lot more resources, which has taken some adjustment. I had to scale up on everything: paint, brushes, palette, marks, storage.
MH: Your paintings and drawings are traditional in style but mysterious and sometimes challenging in content. It makes for an interesting juxtaposition, and I wondered if there’s intention behind this.
PC: Yes, I’ve studied academic painting and have learned a lot from these painters, but I want to speak to something more than painterly skill. Lately I’ve been painting about gender identity issues, so I’m taking a traditional visual language and adapting it to my reality. In that sense I’m pushing the medium somewhat.
MH: They could be called landscapes, but it seems as though you’re using the landscape as a vehicle to explore something more complex. Would you talk about that?
PC: With the landscape artists I’m drawn to in art history, it’s never just about the landscape. They give you beautiful scenery to look at, then there’s something more for those who want to look deeper. When I started painting the landscape, I was looking at the Last Judgment and wondering what it would look like without the figures. I was very religious for a long time, and this was at a time when I was leaving my church, so I was trying to communicate both the absence of faith and the desire for it.
MH: How did that show up in your landscape paintings?
PC: Leaving the faith was painful for me because it was something that I had really believed. It left a void, and in a very simplistic sense that’s what I was trying to express. The thought was, if you take the figure of Jesus out of this painting, what do you put in its place? And I was studying how artists constructed their paintings using geometry in the composition, so I put the geometry in instead of the figures. My thinking was that I wanted to paint religious paintings without the dogma.
MH: They totally embody that mystical feeling. Do you think the geometry transmits something even more profound than straight-up realism?
PC: Yes. The way the Old Masters painted religious scenery is very loaded and intentional; they place things where they do because it’s what they want us to see. Like, why do we think of God when we see a triangle? Why does geometry speak to us in that religious way? I’m not sure if I know the answer but it’s something that’s there, in classical as well as contemporary painting. It’s powerful, but I also became aware of a layer of manipulation. I went to Rome in 2018 and saw some of this art for the first time, and there was something profound about being in these incredibly beautiful cathedrals, but it felt like they were using persuasive advertising techniques to make me want to go to confession or become a Catholic.
MH: Haha! Reverse backsliding. How did this affect your work going forward?
PC: Among other things, it made me think about who I’m making my work for and who can afford to buy it. It’s out of reach for a lot of people, and I question whether I want to spend my life making trinkets for the wealthy. It’s one of the reasons I like to paint small, so more people can afford it and enjoy it in their lives. There’s something about the small scale that actively resists the commercialization of art. There’s only so much you can charge for a 5-inch painting!
MH: You did a series of embroidered paintings around 2013 that I was smitten with. They had craft references because of the embroidery, but they were also luminous like Renaissance paintings. What inspired that series?
PC: My mom died that year and most of the embroidered work was done after her death, using her sewing machine. I was thinking about her absence and about death, and I was in tears a lot of the time while I was making the work. I was also thinking about deferred dreams, because my mother told my wife that when she was young, she wanted to be an artist, but her parents wouldn’t let her. Which really surprised me because my mother never told me that, and she was always against me being an artist.
MH: We have a similar Christian background, which we’ve touched on in the past. How do your evangelical roots show up in your studio practice? Or have you thoroughly exorcised those demons?
PC: Haha! I don’t know if you can thoroughly exorcise them; I’ve certainly tried! For a long time I was very bashful about using religious themes in my work, but I finally got to the point where it felt okay to be open about that part of my life. It’s a true part of me and if I want to make art authentically, I need to own it.
MH: Your newest work is about the trans experience. What inspired this amazing body of work?
PC: Well, being trans was a big inspiration! There was a big shift in my work in the beginning of the year, from painting landscapes and flowers to figurative work. I wasn’t exactly hiding with my previous work, but it was more like I was encoding it, and with the figurative work I can be more explicit. Last year I came out fully and it’s been rejuvenating, so there’s something about being more open and authentic about who I am that’s reflected in my work.
MH: Yes, I was wondering if your work feels more authentic as a trans woman than when you identified as male? Do you see a difference in your work?
PC: Yes. I was recently looking at a portfolio of work from 2006. I was 23, I’d just moved to New York, just graduated from college, just gotten married to Vanessa, and the work I was making was so queer! Looking at this stuff now it’s like, how did anyone look at this and think I was a straight man? I don’t think I would have said it like this back then because I was deep in the closet, but the landscape work was an attempt to suppress the queer aspects of my work and to suppress it in myself. There’s a lot more authenticity now. I don’t think the work I was making then was necessarily good, but it speaks to the power of art, that it knew who I was before I did.
MH: So your art is a little bit ahead of you!
PC: Yes, and looking at that work gave me the courage to make what I’m making right now. If I’d been more tuned in to what I was doing back then, I probably would have come out a lot sooner. Artists learn about themselves by making things – abstract painters, conceptual artists, hard edge painters, there’s always something of them in their work. You can’t really get yourself out of your work.
MH: The trans women that you’ve depicted often appear as so many saints and martyrs in classical painting, and I’d love to hear you talk about this aspect of your work. I can imagine that trans women experience this kind of persecution in their lives.
PC: Yes, definitely. Those stories of saints and martyrs speak to very human struggles, and for trans people, that’s all part of it. There’s something deeply human in those stories that repeat themselves in every culture. But I don’t want to make it just about suffering; I’ve tried to be ambiguous about whether the person is enjoying what’s happening to them. There’s pleasure, there’s pain, and there’s the ecstasy of pain. Those connections are there for me now but if you talk to me in 20 years, I may say something entirely different.
MH: Our country is going through a painful time, where a large portion of the population wants to expand into greater open-mindedness, while a small group wants to contract and return to the “good ol’ days”. How do you see this transition? Is it a temporary state, or the initial stages of a permanent split?
PC: I hope the former but fear the latter. There’s a group of people who’ve always been in power, and they don’t want to share their power or give it up. Going back to the good old days means that they want to go back to when the world was focused on them. But most people are open to diversity, so I don’t think there’s going to be a permanent split. Young people are very open-minded, and they know that it’s a better way to live, to embrace differences and let go of the toxic beliefs about superiority. In my own experience, the majority of my friends and acquaintances were supportive of me coming out.
MH: It’s a slow grind when these tectonic shifts happen in a culture, but do you think that over time our society recalibrates and embraces each other’s differences?
PC: I think so. I’m an optimist, but I’m also a realist. The threat is real, and the pushback that’s happening with conservative white men is a real problem. But the way the world is now, with access to so much information, I don’t think the cruelty is going to last. Like with overturning Roe, we see women dying again and it’s tragic. People don’t want this to happen to themselves or to the people they love, so I don’t think that it can be suppressed for long.
MH: What role does art play in the process of normalizing a taboo?
PC: I think art is humanizing. It creates empathy, and it’s a way for people to feel connected. You look at a painting from hundreds of years ago and you can relate. Or you read a book that has characters who are gay or trans, and you realize that they’re just as human as you are. That’s why they ban certain books, because they don’t want kids reading about someone who identifies differently than they do and find out that they’re just like everyone else.
MH: It’s interesting that you have the benefit of approaching your work from both a masculine and feminine perspective. Is there a notable difference or is it all coming from the same well of creative expression?
PC: My work has always been a bit feminine, and I embraced that side of me in artmaking long before I embraced it in life. I feel like I’m catching up to where my art has been for a long time.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
PC: My favorite thing is community. I’ve met so many great people through being an artist. I like making work that people connect to, and I’m always excited to hear what people have to say about the work and how it connects to them or doesn’t. As artists we make these things and hope that it has impact, and having people reflect that back is always so moving to me.

www.pearlcowanart.com

Pearl Cowan: Metamorphosis is on view at LABspace in Hillsdale, NY through April 28. On view Saturdays + Sundays 1-5:00.

Pearl Cowan will be in conversation at LABspace with Jacqueline Cedar of Good Naked, Sunday, April 28 at 2:00 p.m.

Margaret Lanzetta

Margaret Lanzetta’s work is inspired by the patterns and textiles that emerge from diverse cultures, from the ancient past to the multicultural present. The graphic symbols and motifs that dominate her work have circled the globe for millennia, clashing and converging in their tribal, religious, or political affiliations. Through a process that involves screen printing, layering, cutting, and sewing materials, Lanzetta recontextualizes patterns to explore their long history of associations. She has spent extensive time in foreign countries, including Japan, India, Syria, and Morocco, where she immerses herself in the rhythm and heartbeat of the culture. Lanzetta’s sources include Buddhist iconography, Hindu nature-based patterns, Islamic geometry, and countless motifs that represent forgotten dynasties or conquered lands. Familiar symbols appear in the silkscreened layers, and a narrative emerges that speaks to such timeless issues as migration, land acquisition, and political alignment. What appear to be decorations are in fact declarations of privilege, victory, or the aspiration for greater power and wealth. But there’s also a thread of humanity that runs through Lanzetta’s work, the voice of the nations, tribes, and individuals who created the distinctive patterns – someone had to come up with the design, after all. The rich visual vocabulary speaks to the universal need for ownership and identity; indeed, humans like to own things and imprint their personal stamp on them. Lanzetta stamps and screen prints onto existing patterns, adding her mark to the countless narratives embedded in the fabric. Through her repetitive and meditative process, Lanzetta creates a multicultural tapestry composed of organic and geometric forms, like opposing cultures that come together and, in their synthesis, produce a more powerful alliance.

MH: You’ve been working with patterns and layering for a long time. When did you first become interested in this, and what were your early influences?
ML: I’ve always been interested in patterns and textiles. My grandmother sewed, and I started making my own clothes in sixth or seventh grade. I drew and painted from when I was a kid, then I took art classes through grammar school and my parents sent me to oil painting classes. In college I started making collages out of patterns cut from magazines, then I made paintings based on them. So patterns and layering manifested themselves early on in my work.
MH: It sounds like when you found patterning, you knew that was the direction you wanted to go.
ML: Yes, it was always something that I really responded to. Even before I thought about what patterns were or what they meant, I was interested in their repetition. I was also influenced from a young age by my love of nature. I’ve gardened since childhood, and I have a garden outside my studio in Long Island City. My current work skews a bit more geometric, but organic and floral shapes have transformed into patterns that have been an enduring source of inspiration. I often photograph plants in my own garden, digitally transforming them into silhouettes for use in my work.
MH: Talk a little about your creative process. You use silk screen, right? How did that become your medium?
ML: Yes, silk screen is my primary medium. I silkscreen onto patterned fabric or Japanese paper, and I prepare the materials by cutting and layering, then reassembling them. I like the physicality of it, and it fulfills my need to work more sculpturally. I painted in college, but I never felt like a painter’s painter. I don’t think about the things that many painters think about, like space or light or illusion. When I came to New York I went to Parsons and gravitated to sculpture, which I did for about ten years, layering and stacking, cutting up and reassembling wood and industrial materials. When I started to work two-dimensionally again, it always included processes like printing and stamping. It’s the same as what I was doing with sculpture: cutting materials into strips and putting them back together in the way of repair or mending.  The image comes about by accretion, layering and building the elements, and the repetitive process is a form of meditation for me, like a physical mantra.
MH: Your most recent work seems to be more monochromatic than in the past. What’s behind that choice?
ML: My shift toward a more monochromatic palette is related to the revisiting of my large-scale, two-dimensional works from the late 90s. The silvers, blacks, and metallics dominated my work then, and referenced industrial materials. I’m interested in reinvestigating this palette and approach in my current work.
MH: Your work has a lot to do with cultures coming together and influencing each other either positively or negatively. How does this cross-pollination come through in your work?
ML: It comes through in the textiles that come from all over the world, and I’m not hierarchical about that. I’ll often use textiles that I buy in New York, some of which are cheap. I don’t subscribe to using pure cotton or silk because that isn’t the reality of what’s being manufactured today or commonly used. A lot of sari fabric in India is rayon or mixed fibers because synthetic fibers are cheaper. Unfortunately, this contributes to environmental degradation because they’re not using natural dyes anymore. But all those drawbacks aside, the textiles can be stunning. I’m interested in patterns because they have a long history, and I mix them from all over the place. For example, the interlocking knot from Ireland is a well-known pattern, and is also found in Asian cultures. And in the U.S., the western bandana pattern that’s so familiar originated in India. I love this idea that there’s a visual vocabulary that circles around the globe through time from the ancient to the present, mixing these recognizable patterns.
MH: You sometimes incorporate patterns that clash on a cultural level, or that undermine existing political systems. Can you give me an example of a piece that embodies conflict?
ML: Gueliz is a piece I started when we were in Marrakesh. (see below) I wouldn’t say that it embodies conflict but expresses a rich confluence of patterns. The silvery fabric is from Burma, but the pattern is rectilinear, with a floral piece in the middle that’s straight out of the Mughal period. This was the period when the Muslims invaded India and brought their bold geometric patterning. The Hindu patterns were much more rooted in nature, so it evolved into a marriage between Islamic geometry and the nature-based patterning from Hinduism. The Taj Mahal is the crown of the Mughal period, and this pattern is also found on the façade of the royal palace in Fez, Morocco. So the Hindu/Muslim patterns found their way to North Africa and were translated into Moroccan handicraft tiles. Gueliz is the name of the neighborhood where we were living at the time, and it embodies all these different currents.

Gueliz, 2021-22, acrylic on Burmese brocade and Japanese papers on panel, 24 x 24 in.

MH: It seems that there’s conflict encoded in the design, even though the conflict is from the distant past. I find it fascinating that these gorgeous patterns that are now part of the Mughal and Moroccan heritage are rooted in conquest and pillage. You must go down a lot of rabbit holes when you’re doing this research!
ML: I do. One series that I did was based on the symbolism found on crowns. I was at a residency at Greenwich House Pottery, and I decided to make crowns because I had been collecting crown imagery for a long time. So I went to the New York Public Library and started researching crowns from 1300 up to 1969, and I found that the symbols that are put on a crown can be placed into two categories. The first are symbols from a country that they’ve conquered, and the second are symbols from a country they want to form an alliance with. So there’s this massive dichotomy between symbols of power and symbols of alliance.
MH: Your patterns often reflect the geopolitical past and present. Would it be possible to layer them in such a way that the design could infiltrate an existing conflict and create a new dialogue? Say you came up with a design that layered Palestinian and Israeli motifs. Is it naïve to think that the patterns could influence an outcome in the war, or are they better suited to reporting what’s already happened?
ML: Doing a piece that married Israeli and Palestinian patterns? I wouldn’t touch that one right now. I don’t believe that art can solve complicated problems like that. I’m interested in the current of how people are using new patterns and sources and readapting them, but doing anything further in terms of infiltrating or changing things politically, that’s not something that I’d feel hopeful about.
MH: It’s interesting that something as innocuous as patterns printed on fabric can instigate life threatening conflict. I think of the Confederate flag, which symbolizes brutal racism to some, privilege and ownership to others, and wistful nostalgia to others still. How do we determine whose interpretation is correct when we’re making political decisions?
ML: In terms of the meaning, that’s in the eye of the beholder. To a Confederate soldier they’re prized flags, but to others, they symbolize horrific injustice. There are a lot of symbols that have opposing interpretations. Another that comes to mind is the swastika, which is reviled by most people, but there are some who find it meaningful.
MH: Your work isn’t only about conflict, it’s also the celebration of cultural heritage and the intersection of histories. Can you talk about that?
ML: Yes, I’m interested in how patterns migrate. What that usually brings to mind is the Silk Road or the early colonial trade from Europe to Southeast Asia, but it’s still going on. It happens in a different way now because pattern migration mirrors economic worker migration. People are constantly moving textile production factories, looking for cheaper places to manufacture. So people are migrating across borders in search of work, and it’s sad because economic migration often leads to worker exploitation, and the people are often working under rough conditions. And in a lot of these countries the environmental standards for production are very bad, so these countries that are producing magnificent fabrics are also polluting like hell.
MH: Beyond the concepts and experimental nature of your practice, are you searching for something more elusive in your creative work?
ML: When I’m making work it’s physically soothing, and the repetitive action and motion of cutting becomes a sort of meditation. I notice that when I’m not working and I get to the studio, I take a deep breath, like I’m glad to be there. But I don’t go to my studio to have “fun”. It’s definitely work!
MH: Does your studio practice ever feel like a carrot/stick situation? Like what you’re searching for is always just out of reach?
ML: Sometimes. I see a piece in my mind, but I can’t seem to realize it because the work veers off in its own direction, with its own mind. But this is how artists make art!
MH: There are a couple of terms that pop up when talking about artists. One is referring to someone as an “important artist”; the other is labeling someone as a “serious artist”. What do you think is meant by these distinctions? Do you find them elitist?
ML: Taken at face value, an important artist may be someone who’s making some commentary or talking about critical issues, like difficult social or environmental concerns. Or it may be an artist who makes a major shift in their work, an important change that influences how people look at art, like Pollock, for example. In other words, someone whose work breaks with the paradigm and moves to a different level. And a serious artist is someone who’s committed to making thoughtful work. I’m not sure if they’re necessarily elitist terms.
MH: Do you think the work you do is important? And do you think of yourself as a serious artist?
ML: I consider myself a serious artist. I’ve dedicated my life to doing this and I’ve eschewed doing a lot of other things with my life. An important artist? To me it’s important, but I try to have a little perspective on that as well. I see a lot of work that’s amazing and maybe better than mine, so I try to keep my sense of importance in perspective with a bigger world, and a bigger arena of artists making work. There’s a lot of really good art being made, and there are a lot of artists making interesting work who aren’t household names, but that doesn’t mean their work isn’t great.
MH: Do you think your work is conveying something important?
ML: Yes, I think it’s conveying issues that are important to think about. We ought to be aware of how all these global cultures are swirling around and are not isolated, and how that shows up visually in our everyday lives.
MH: Does being a serious artist has a compulsive quality that involves a degree of obsession? Sometimes it can even show up as an addiction.
ML: Yes, I think being obsessive about working is common to a lot of artists. There’s a strong pull to be in the studio and to make work. Creative people are different than those who have an office job, and artists can be obsessive, for good or bad. I just accept this aspect of myself, even though I don’t quite understand it.
MH: What’s the most important thing that people take away from your work?
ML: I’m not hierarchical in what I want people to take away. I prefer that my work has different entry points so that viewers can enter it on different levels and take from it what’s important to them. I like it much better when people bring something of themselves to the work, and then take from it as they interact.
MH: We’re having this conversation via Zoom, while you’re at an artist residency in Bangkok. Tell me a little about that.
ML: My husband and I are artists and we rent a studio and living space where we can work and be away from our day-to-day responsibilities. I’ve been to Bangkok many times since 1982, so it’s a city that I’m familiar with. I love New York but I find that my responsibilities there and the social connections draw on my time, and I feel like I’m never catching up. So when I go away I have these blocks of time to make work without distraction, plus it’s warm! And I’m comfortable working on the road, so I can easily pack up my studio, and as long as I have a flat surface, I can work.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
ML: I wanted to be an artist from the time I was five. I wanted to have an airplane and fly around the world, so I guess I’m doing that! I like looking at work and seeing what other people are doing, so if I wasn’t an artist, I probably wouldn’t be doing that as much. It opens my mind to see how other people think and the ideas they come up with.

www.margaretlanzetta.com

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UPCOMING SHOWS
Anywhere But Here, Project: ARTSpace, NY, NY, May 8 - July 7, 2024
Travelers, Liars, Thieves, Garrison Art Center, Garrison, NY, May 25 - June 23, 2024
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IMAGE LIST
  1. Same Winter, 2010, oil, acrylic, and enamel on canvas, 56 x 40 in.
  2. Cultural Instruction I, 2001, oil and enamel on canvas, 56 x 40 in.
  3. Jorhat 0376, 2008, oil and enamel on panel, 24 x 24 in.
  4. Plan or Leaving, 2023-4, acrylic and flash on cotton textiles and Japanese paper on panel, 24 x 24 in.
  5. Left Branching Language, 2022, acrylic on cotton-nylon blend, polyester and sari fabric, 34 x 34 in. (title courtesy of poet Judy Halebsky)
  6. Bullet School, 2022, acrylic, sari fabric, Japanese paper on panel, 24 x 24 in.
  7. Light in Wartime, 2022, acrylic and crystal mica on rayon, satin, and sari fabric, 34 x 34 in.
  8. Under My Gender, 2021, acrylic, Japanese paper, and sari fabric on panel, 12 x 12 in.
  9. Ballary 0839, 2008, oil and enamel on panel, 24 x 24 in.
10. Empire, 2010, oil and enamel on canvas, 62 x 52 in.
11. Lust Card, 2003, oil and enamel on canvas, 56 x 40 in.
12. Lust Card, (detail)
13. Glassblower II, 2006, acrylic and pigmented pulp on canvas, 24 x 36 in.
14. Smart Luck Road, 2018, oil and acrylic on sari fabric: rayon, cotton, raw silk, polyester, site specific installation for MAIN WINDOW Gallery, Brooklyn, New York
15. Kochi-Muziris Biennale (India), 2016, Collateral Projects, installation shot Left: Shift, 2016, oil and acrylic on sari fabric: rayon, cotton, raw silk, polyester, 120 x 60 in. Right: Folded Language, 2016, oil and acrylic on sari fabric: rayon, cotton, raw silk, polyester, chiffon
16. Not Waving, 2023, acrylic on cotton-nylon blend, satin, Chinese silk and sari fabric, 44 x 34 in.
17. Waving, 2023, acrylic on cotton-nylon blend, satin, Chinese silk and sari fabric, 44 x 34 in.
18. Some Worlds, 2018, acrylic ink/silver mica on cotton rag paper, installation 96 x 132 in., each work 30 x 22 in.
19. Almost Enlightenment exhibition, 2021, installation view, Russell Janis Gallery, Williamsburg, Brooklyn, porcelain crowns and monoprints
20. Monarch VII, 2021, paper and mylar relief monoprint on Rives BFK paper, Unique (from a series), 30 x 22 in.
21. St. Edward’s Crown, UK, ca. 1661, 2016 porcelain, 14 in. diameter, 20 in. high
22. Studio Wall, 2024, Long Island City, Queens, New York
23. Artist at Let the Sky Soak In exhibition, 2020, Kenise Barnes Fine Art, New York, left to right: Forever Flâneur, 2020, oil, acrylic and silkscreened Japanese and Thai papers on canvas, 56 x 40 in.
24. Trade and Belief, 2020, oil, acrylic and silkscreened Japanese and Thai papers on canvas, 56 x 40 in.
25. Applaud All Songs, 2020, oil, acrylic and silkscreened Japanese and Thai papers on canvas, 56 x 40 in.
26. Studio Portrait, 2023, Long Island City, Queens, New York, works left to right: Black Angel, 2022, flashe and acrylic on panel, 24 x 24 in. Bullet School, 2022, acrylic, sari fabric, Japanese paper on panel, 24 x 24 in. Straight Flush, 2022, acrylic on Japanese paper on panel, 24 x 24 in. Raw Materials Route, 2023, acrylic on Japanese paper on panel, 24 x 24 in. photo credit: Ellen Dubin Photography

Susan Luss

Susan Luss is a multidisciplinary artist who excavates her personal history to create complex psychological environments. She incorporates draped canvas, dye, and found objects, arranging and rearranging them in compositions that point to desire, connection, and transcendence. Like the subterranean networks that connect trees and fungi, Luss establishes spatial relationships between found objects, some visible and some felt. As we wander through her installations, we create our own connections between the disparate elements, leaving traces of ourselves in the process. The space is further animated by natural light that filters through colored gels placed in the windows. As with stained glass, the suffused light transforms the architecture into a sacred space, enhancing the desire to connect and comprehend. This is a transitional space, one in which we’re inclined to pause but not linger. As Luss places the found objects in meticulous arrangements, she creates meridians with which we may align, immerse, and integrate. A tall order to be sure, but Luss’s work is powerful and empowering, offering the prospect of personal transformation. Its larger-than-life scale sets the stage for dramatic psychological shifts if the participant is so disposed, and if not, there’s plenty to gaze upon. The urban detritus placed about the floo­r ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­– rusted machine parts, bricks, ragged cardboard – are outward manifestations of Luss’s internal process, in which she recalls aspects of herself through collecting and engaging with the various objects. Her dye-stained canvases are draped, not hung, evoking the veils and shrouds of classical painting. Luss often brings these oversized canvases outdoors, where they interact with the landscape and the subtle movements of her body. As she lifts the heavy fabric at its edge, it catches the wind and finds equilibrium for a moment before succumbing to gravity and settling back to the earth. Perhaps this is an apt metaphor for Luss’s inspirational work: a fleeting moment of transcendence, followed by a gentle return to the earth.

MH: Your work is difficult to place in any of the usual categories of artmaking. Painting, performance, and installation come to mind, but those labels limit its breadth. How do you think about your work?
SL: My work is a compilation of my life experience, a way of connecting the scale of my body to the scale of the environment. It’s about process and movement and transformation over time, and the work reflects forward movement and expansion. It deals with a longstanding desire to be deeply rooted and attached to something outside of myself, but absolutely free. My work is also about the relationship of the parts to the whole.
MH: The different mediums, you mean?
SL: Yes, the different mediums act as tools that provide me with material for my work. I take a lot of walks in the city, during which I collect objects that I use in my assemblages. The thought process of putting these little parts and pieces together into a new kind of relationship is an important aspect of my work. So the different mediums are the parts of the whole, which is the whole self.
MH: You don’t seem like the kind of artist who’d be happy just painting or sculpting or doing one thing. It seems like you need to do different things to be fully engaged in your practice.
SL: Yes. I don’t think I could be limited to one art medium, it’s more environmental. I’ve painted before, and I painted the environment of my experience within the borders of the canvas, but everything outside of the canvas also become part of it. And this is what I’ve learned over time, how my work is expressed through these different mediums.
MH: When one enters your studio, it’s like entering an installation. As I wandered through and got my bearings, it slowly emerged that I was an integral part of it, and without my presence, it wasn’t complete. Do you feel that as well, that your presence is essential to consummate the piece?
SL: I do feel that I’m an integral part of my work because it’s coming through me. I’m part of the whole experience, and when I leave the studio and come back, I’m more aware of my connection to it. When I’m inside it, I’m less aware of that. I’ve become keenly aware that when people visit my installations, either in my studio or out in the world, they became a part of the piece. Their history is embedded in it, and even when the installation comes down, those peoples’ experiences are still there.
MH: For me it had the feeling of having unwittingly wandered onto a stage, and in the next moment I realized that I was the lead actor in this performance. Except that I didn’t feel that I needed to perform; I simply needed to be present.
SL: It’s interesting, each person who comes into my studio or who sees a performance comes in with their own life experience. Someone once said to me that when she came into my studio, she sensed everything there was resting and waiting to be activated. It’s not uncommon that visitors feel they’re part of it, but it doesn’t require anything of them.
MH: I would guess that everyone who comes into your studio animates the space in a different way.
SL: Yes, and it can only be that way because their life is unique, and they can only animate it from their own life experience. That also happens when I’m with the work outside and someone spends some time watching what I’m doing. The canvas is an extension of my body, so every time I do a performance in Central Park or in the city, the wind blows through it, and the ground becomes a part of it, and the people walking by or watching become an active part of it.
MH: When someone walks into your studio, they basically enter your painting, your world. And it takes a minute to realize that they’re not just looking at a painting, they’re in it. Is it important to you that the visitor becomes present enough to realize this?
SL: When I’m making my work, it’s the most present I am in the world. But I don’t set things up so that the viewer needs to be present, it just happens. It’s like when I leave my house and go out into the world, I’m either present or I’m not. But I don’t have to go to my studio to do that. I can do it in the world every day.
MH: Your work seems to be highly orchestrated, with the various elements arranged in a tight composition. There’s the sense that they’re in dialogue with each other, and I’m curious if you know what their conversation is. Are they talking about you? With you?
SL: They’re talking with me, less about me. I make a mark, and the mark talks to me about the next mark, and I get into this relationship with the lines. It becomes a dialogue where the language isn’t definable, but it’s visual and physical. I found out by accident that all the floors in my studio have a bit of a tilt, so there’s some gravity at play in my work. I use what’s available like the slope of the floor and respond to it by orchestrating the composition with that in mind.
MH: When you’re done working and leave the studio, do you think the elements continue talking to each other?
SL: Yes! I say goodbye to my studio every time I leave, and I set it up to be ready for my return. I imagine things happening and energy flowing when I’m not there. I’ve been thinking about setting up a time lapse camera so I can see what happens when I’m not there. (haha) I know it’s kind of woo-woo!
MH: Yes, but it’s also an interesting concept. All artists have that experience where they hate what they’re working on and want to shoot themselves, then they go back to the studio the next day and the piece has come to life. So what happened? Has the painting rearranged itself during the night? Or in your case, when you leave the studio do all the objects strike up a conversation? Like, “Hey everybody, she’s gone! Let’s get to work!”
SL: Yes! I like that idea. There aren’t very many times that I leave my studio feeling disappointed, but when I do and I come back the next day, I feel grateful that it worked out.
MH: I’d like to hear you talk about the canvas. You paint on raw, unstretched canvas, which you describe as an extension of your body. I find this interesting because your canvases are so huge. Why are you compelled to work on such a large scale?  
SL: I work on a very small scale as well, but I started working on unstretched canvas when I was at Pratt because it felt like freedom and expansion, since the edges were no longer confined. The canvases got bigger and bigger in relationship to my body, and the larger canvases got me physically engaged. It felt like a heavier container, a physical and emotional weight. So it has to do with expansion and weight and a mental space that can spread out.
MH: Your work is an interior process in that it’s an expression of an interior state. But then you take it outside and let the work interact with nature. Would you describe your experience of taking the canvases to Central Park? How did that change your relationship to the work?
SL: Before the pandemic I started taking canvases outside and grinding them into the dirt, then I’d dye them and drag them around Long Island City. Then the pandemic happened, and I had to get outside, as that was the place where I felt safe. I took one of the canvases to Central Park and walked around with it, and no one was around. I went to Sheep Meadow and started working with my body and the wind, bringing the canvas out in the elements, and letting the rain alter the canvas. The performative aspect was like a ritualized intervention, and I became aware that by caring for the canvases I was caring for myself. So the isolation of the pandemic opened me up and moved my work forward.
MH: That’s interesting. Do you think of the canvas as a second skin?
SL: No, that doesn’t resonate with me. But when I stain the canvas, I feel like I’m staining the body, so it’s a metaphor for the life experiences that get imprinted on us over time. That’s why I love the dye on raw canvas — it’s like breathing.
MH: I’m interested in how an artist knows when her piece is finished. What do you think? Does it have to do with the execution being complete? Or is it more about the successful communication of a thought or feeling? Or maybe it’s simply the urge to post it on Instagram.
SL: Usually what happens is some chatter in my body or brain, and I sense when something is getting to its apogee. I’m aware when a work is close to that, because the canvases contain the energy of whatever I’ve done with them and they’re ready for me to go on to the next work. Sometimes the works aren’t finished, and I can accept that, because sometimes things can be left incomplete.
MH: When an artist has been doing her work for a long time, it’s no longer about making a likeness, or even making a statement. It becomes something else – a search, or a longing – something ineffable, but we all seem to agree that the compulsion goes beyond the activity and technique. What is it that drives you in your creative path? Do you know what you’re searching for?
SL: I would say wholeness, the body/mind/spirit connection. As far as the compulsion, I know that I have to do what I’m doing, and create for myself first, because I’m searching for self-awareness and knowledge and clarity. And I don’t believe that’s necessarily going to be answered through the work, but through my life. I think I’m driven by the desire to be as aware as I can be of the reality of living.
MH: I know that you don’t regard your creative work as therapy, but is there a healing aspect to what you do? You’re translating your complex psychological makeup into an external visual form and in the process is there some sense of relief, as in releasing long held beliefs or burdens?
SL: Yes, there is a release. I don’t think about it ahead of time, and I didn’t start making my work for this reason, so I experience my work as I’m making it for what it is, a creative process. When I step back, I see the work more objectively, whereas while I’m in it, it’s more subjective. This has nothing to do with healing, it’s more like poetry. I’m translating my experience through a medium. But the part about healing is a troublesome concept for me. I don’t feel like I need healing; I feel like I’m okay just the way I am.
MH: As visual artists I think we make work in part so we can work on ourselves, because it’s difficult to work out our issues when they’re in the shadows. So we project our issues outside of ourselves, and we make stuff by painting, scraping, splashing, erasing, carving, whatever, and in the process of engaging with these tactile materials, we establish a sense of equilibrium. Does that resonate?
SL: It does resonate, but I do it differently. The things I collect are representational of something inside me, that’s a part of me, but I don’t have a language for it yet.  So in collecting these objects, I’m collecting myself, and then using the materials to help me recognize the parts of myself that I had suppressed. I didn’t have access to my inner person, but through the visual creative process I’ve learned to recognize myself in the world.
MH: It’s an unconscious process, but in some ways that’s better, otherwise you’d get in the way. The whole thing feels like this huge, interactive process of healing or transformation that’s making you fundamentally whole.
SL: Yes, and when my life is over, all those things will be connected. I’ve felt for a long time that death is a culmination of a life that has been lived to the extent that it can be, and at that moment in time when I die, I’ll have learned everything I can in this life.
MH: I know you came to your practice later in life. Do you have any regrets around this, or does the timing feel right?
SL: I have no regrets. I have some sadness that because of my parents’ lack of nurturing and involvement, I had no way to recognize myself. But I accept that, and my potential is embodied in the work. I got a huge amount of life experience and satisfaction in working with people for most of my life. I’ve loved that kind of engagement, and it laid a different foundation for what my experience is now.
MH: We started this conversation last June, and I know your life has been very full in the last year. Has your work shifted in relationship to these recent experiences?
SL: One thing is that I’m working on a smaller scale, using canvas remnants, which is an aspect of my broader practice of reuse. It’s still a scale in relationship to the body, but more intimate. I’ve also been incorporating new textiles. One is border lace, which I came upon when cleaning out my mom’s house in January 2023. By attaching the lace to the canvas by hand, it acts as a real border delineating the landscape while adding new textural relationships. I remembered recently that sewing was important to me when I was growing up and I’m finding intriguing correlations from past to present along with pleasure in returning to this craft. 
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
SL: The opportunity to recognize myself through my creative work, and then to recognize myself in others and others in me. The creative process feels to me like I’m home, like this is the person I’ve been all my life who was hiding in plain sight. I feel so much gratitude to be where I am now, even if it took 50 years of my life and all the drama. It just added to the well that has no bottom.

www.susanluss.com

CURRENT SHOWS
Shadow Selves
with Hannah Ehrlich, Susan Luss, Louise Noël
M. David & Co.
Bushwick
through March 3

This Is the Future of Non-Objective Art
Atlantic Gallery
NY NY
through March 2

Mind Leaves Body
with Elisabeth Condon, Susan Luss, Alyse Rosner
Westbeth Gallery
NY NY
April 3 - 21, 2024

Caroline Cox

Caroline Cox is a multimedia artist who works with spatial dynamics to connect the external world with our internal experience. She activates the natural phenomena that surround us, creating tension by manipulating spring steel, gravity, refracted light, and other processes based in the physical world. The work is made of translucent materials that are suspended in space, creating kaleidoscopic effects as light passes through a string of lenses or bounces off the glass tubes used in laboratories. Like a scientist conducting quirky research in torque and texture, Cox investigates the tensile properties of her materials, pushing them beyond their normal capacities to find their highest form of expression. Indeed, the unorthodox sculptures and installations have a scientific vibe, as if Cox is exploring the effects of friction, gravity, and movement in a controlled environment. Once we recognize that its construction depends solely on physics (no glue, no duct tape), we experience the work’s energetic presence and radiating properties. By interacting with the processes that govern the planets and solar systems, we become an integral part of the piece, held together by the same invisible forces. The constant motion, vibration, and mutating light creates its own gravitational pull, drawing us into the present moment again and again. This experiential aspect is the essence of Cox’s work, and a large part of her practice is devoted to configuring her materials in new ways that allow her to see something fresh and compelling. Cox’s absorption in her process is as dynamic as the natural forces that it engages, and we’re drawn into its orbit by sheer curiosity. There are many layers in the work, some revealed and some veiled, as Cox weaves her private memories and associations into the fabric and forces of the physical universe.

MH: Your work is unusual in its absence of traditional art materials. Did you relinquish them because they got in your way? Or did you never use them in the first place?
CC: I started out as a painter, so I used traditional materials when I was a student at Sacramento State. One of the assignments that my teacher, Oliver Lee Jackson, gave me was to attach an object to the surface of my painting, and that launched me into working in space. I loved the physicality of the object on the canvas, so I started using found objects and bas relief. Now I use magnifying lenses from the Dollar Store, black mesh used for vegetable packing, glass tubes that are used in labs, and spring steel that has a lot of industrial uses. I like that they retain a bit of their past utilitarian use, which adds to the content. But even though I use these nontraditional materials, I see my work through a painter’s eye.
MH: Your materials are very tactile, textured, and ephemeral, which has the effect of bringing the viewer into the present moment. Is this a conscious decision?
CC: Yes, particularly since I started using the spring steel, because everything is friction fit. This entire piece is being held together by tension. So all of these wires that you see are straight, but I put the ends into glass tubes and bend the wire, and the shapes are formed through the interaction. I like that the tension is happening in the moment, and by being present, we share the space where it’s happening. It’s the same with the lens piece, the way the elements take the shape in space; it’s the pull of gravity that creates the tension in the strands, which is the only thing holding them together. By engaging the natural phenomena that’s surrounding us, I make the connection between the physical world and our internal world and the way we perceive it. This is why I use materials that are translucent and transparent, so when you look through the lenses, everything is like a kaleidoscopic transformation with all these mutating refractions.
MH: I understand that you don’t make preliminary sketches or maquettes, which speaks to a process of discovery and curiosity. Can you talk about your creative process?
CC: I don’t work much with tools, so basic hand work is essential to my process. I’ve sewn since I was a child, and this is a big part of how the work is put together. I don’t have any tables in my studio because I prefer to work on the floor, and this allows me to be physically active and involve my body in making the work. So when I start holding the materials and trying to understand their qualities, it’s very transportive. I start thinking about connections, like where physics and biological forms meet, or how the movement of the planets is connected to our solar system. And then there are the personal memories and associations that I respond to that are an important part of my process, but not as apparent. I’ve developed a way of shaping my forms that’s referential on one level, then there’s the utilitarian associations of my materials on another level, and then the way they act as objects in space with gravity or light which is a phenomenal level. So there are all these different ways of working, through which I can interact with all the elements simultaneously.
MH: It sounds like your process is highly intuitive.
CC: Yes. Whenever I was given an assignment in college that was very defined, my mind would turn off. I don’t function well like that. But if I can relate to something in an open-minded way, then I get transported and everything starts happening from there. I’m drawn to optical experiences or occurrences, which is why I work with translucent materials, because you can see the layers. It’s important to me that you can see the whole form as it rotates in space. I’ve used glass spheres and placed objects in water, which led to taking videos of the cast shadows as they move around. This kind of discovery is an essential part of my process.

MH: A painting or sculpture requires an investment of time to execute, and when it’s finished, it becomes a relic, in a sense. The creative act is over, so its presence is rooted in its past. Your work defies that in some way because it’s so much about the present moment. Does any of this ring true for you?
CC: I think it’s absolutely true, and that’s why I use tension, because it takes place in the moment.
MH: So when we’re in the presence of something under tension, like your installation, do you think we feel it? Or when we drive over a suspension bridge and there’s that massive amount of tension, do we experience it on some level?
CC: I think we feel it, even if we’re not conscious of it. And we can experience space as well if we’re attuned to it. As a painter, space was something I moved through to get from one activity to another, but when I started working in space, I became aware of what it felt like and what was transpiring. The way that I experienced the things around me radically changed, and I realized that I am immersed in space, which is a very different thing.
MH: Your work seems to be deliberately ambiguous. There’s a suggestion of something nautical going on, but it’s not as if you’re suspending sea urchins or starfish in the netting. What are your thoughts around keeping the work mysterious and/or impenetrable?
CC: My work is open-ended because I want people to have associations, but I don’t want to dictate anything. I want them to enter the work on their own terms and experience it in the way that they choose. For me, when something is named, I might stop relating to it because I already know what it is. I’m interested in creating these various optical occurrences in space that elicit numerous types of responses. This is more in keeping with what I think is interesting in life.
MH: How do you feel when a viewer gets it all wrong, like if someone tells you that you need to add some starfish? Are you good with whatever a person takes away from your work?
CC: I am. Honestly, nothing would surprise me. I’m so hypercritical of my own work that I’ve probably already thought about everything they could say. At one point it did bother me, but I want the work to be open-ended enough that people can come to it on their own terms. That’s important to me, and that’s all I can really ask for.
MH: Does art suffer when the artist explains her work? I think of the magician who reveals how she performs a trick. Is it better when we’re kept in the dark?
CC: I think it depends on the work and the relationship to the work and how interesting it is. My working process goes in a million directions, so it’s challenging for me to write about, but I think it can be good to try to understand where an artist is coming from.
MH: If you’re willing, I’d like to give you my unsolicited interpretation of your work: The forms, shadows, and refractions construct an indeterminate language that’s visually based, but your work may be more closely aligned with music or maybe poetry. There’s no attempt at linear thought; instead, the work is constructed as a series of moments strung together in a nonlinear model. Its primary aim is light refraction and self-reflection. What do you think?
CC: Not bad! That’s pretty good! But I would add that there is a referential shaping, where the objects have some grounding in nature and the built world. I structure my working process ahead of time, like I select materials with certain properties because I know what I want them to do and why I want them to do that thing. I don’t try to enact nature too literally in the work, but I hope they’ll appear in altered ways that are related to the initial sources. And that’s where a lot of the associations come from.
MH: There’s a feeling of generosity in your work that’s hard to define. I feel like if I spend time with it, something slowly reveals itself, like a gift. Do you ever feel this way about your work, that you’re offering something of great value?
CC: That’s a lovely thing to say. I hope so. As artists, we try to give what we can. I know I do, and that’s what I want to put out into the world, the things I find so mesmerizing and challenging and beautiful.
MH: Have you ever experienced that in a work of art? The feeling that you’ve received a gift of some sort? Either a transcendence, or a sense of being pulled into the present moment? 
CC: Yes, I have. I saw this show at MoMA a few years ago by Shigeko Kubota. The show was called Liquid Reality, and she combined sculpture and video in a narrative in a way that was astounding. I felt such an affinity for her work. Another artist is Jackie Winsor, whose piece #1 Rope, 1976 winds forms from wire and raffia. Her work has a power that won’t let you go.
MH: A unique quality of your work is that it’s always moving and existing in the present moment. When I look at your suspended lenses, for example, I see them as these refracted moments in space, and it feels like you’re creating an experience.
CC: Yes, absolutely! I’m so glad you brought this up because that’s an important part of it, the experiential nature of the work. It’s the core of it, that part about being in the moment and using materials that are always expressing themselves. And that’s a big part as well, finding the elements that are particular to these materials, and then finding the interaction that creates the experience that I’m after.
MH: I keep coming back to presence. Not only that the work has a presence, but you have to be present and engaged to receive it. Is the work that affects us most deeply the one that brings us into the present moment?
CC: Maybe, because we’re attentive and we’re allocating all our effort to engage it, and we know the exchange will be short lived. There are paintings that do this for me; every time I go back to them, I’m completely in awe. One of them is Monet’s Water Lilies at MoMA. The layering of gesture, how they sink and emerge, just the beauty of them. I always feel like I see it in a new way.
MH: Have you ever considered another art form, perhaps one that is less material than visual art? I’m thinking of performance, poetry, maybe some form of music?
CC: Well, I’m currently learning the theremin to go with the videos that I make. My husband Tim Spelios is a drummer, and we often play music casually with our friends, an impromptu way to make sounds together. That’s been a part of my life for a long time. I also played in a noise band, The Chairs, (with Tim, David Weinstein, Laurie Szujewska, and John Sherman) when we first came to the city in 1980, and we performed at Roulette in Brooklyn.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
CC: Being in the studio and making the work is without a doubt the best part about being an artist. It allows me to respond in an unstructured way and to be completely absorbed in the materials and natural phenomena. The work comes through directly and reveals itself to me in ways that I haven’t seen before, and that’s what I find to be most compelling.

www.carolinecox.com

IMAGE LIST
1. Glittering, 2019-2022, glass lenses, monofilament, 120 x 96 x 156 in.  
2. Criss Cross, 2024, glass lenses, monofilament, 99 x 80 x 168 in.  
3. Shimmering (wall), 2018, glass lenses, monofilament, 144 x 300 x 96 in.; Orbits (floor), glass balls, monofilament, 6 x 56 x 132 in.
4. Shimmering, detail (wall), and Orbits, Detail (floor), see above
5. Criss Cross, detail, 2024, glass lenses, monofilament, approx. 14 x 32 x 27 in. 
6. Shoaling, 2021, glass lenses, monofilament, 84 x 96 x 3 in.
7. Circuity, 2023, buttons, mirrors, spring steel wire, beads, monofilament, 12 x 10 x 12 in.
8. Strung, 2024, buttons, wire, beads, monofilament, 12 x 10 x 12 in.
9. Linear Buttons, 2024, buttons, wire, beads, mirrors, monofilament, 12 x 10 x 12 in.
10. Looping, 2020, ink, paper, 148 x 57 in.
11. Looping Two, 2020, ink, paper, 48 x 64 in.
12. Opposite Directions, 2020, ink, paper, gesso, 44 x 36 in.
13. Sepals and Petals, 2020, ink, paper, 36 x 44 in.
14. Circling, detail, 2022-2024, monofilament, glass tubes, spring steel wire, approx.11 x 8 x 11 in. 
15. Circling, detail, 2022-2024, monofilament, glass tubes, spring steel wire,70 x 83 x 30 in. 
16. Circling, detail, 2022-2024, monofilament, glass tubes, spring steel wire, packaging mesh, 33 x 17 x 22 in. 
17. Circling, detail, 2022-2024, monofilament, glass tubes, spring steel wire, packaging mesh, 27 x 24 x 9 in.
18. Circling, detail, 2022-2024, monofilament, glass tubes, spring steel wire, packaging mesh, 22 x 27 x 23 in. 
19. Circling, detail, 2022-2024, monofilament, glass tubes, spring steel wire, packaging mesh, approx.120 x 148 x 197 in. 
20. Circling, detail, 2022-2024, monofilament, glass tubes, spring steel wire, packaging mesh, approx. 92 x 100 x 135 in. 
21. Cox in her studio with Criss Cross, 2024
22. Cox in her studio with Circling, 2024

 

Wendy Klemperer

A few years ago, my husband and I were driving along the coast of Maine, when we came across an outdoor sculpture in a clearing. We pulled over to check it out, and what we thought was an abstract sculpture turned out to be a life-size elk made of welded rebar by Brooklyn sculptor Wendy Klemperer. The encounter was magical, not only because we knew the artist, but it was an experience, like a fortuitous sighting of a live elk. Had we come across the sculpture in a Chelsea gallery, the white walls would have diminished its impact, reducing it to an intriguing but relatively inanimate object. Klemperer’s animals come to life when encountered in their native habitats, where light and shadow play off the surfaces to create a haunting presence. Her work carries the majestic quality of an animal in the wild, embodying the dignity and freedom that humans yearn for in their gentrified lives. But her sculptures are also markers of absence, as the rebar defines the animal’s contours without filling them in. Klemperer says that welding rebar is like drawing in space, and indeed her process allows us to see through the spare lines of the form into the surrounding landscape, connecting the animal with its environment. Her watercolors similarly camouflage the creatures within their natural habitats, mimicking nature and capturing their essence with masterly brushstrokes. (Check them out—they’re absolutely stunning). A distinctive aspect of Klemperer’s work is its complete absence of anthropomorphism, a singular feat given the subject matter’s propensity for abject cuteness. There are no fuzzy foxes, dewy-eyed does, or whimsical porcupines to tickle our fancy. Instead, she portrays everything from grazing fawns to predatory beasts with a reverence that honors their authentic, untamed nature. Klemperer reveals the intrinsic qualities in each animal, embeds them into her sculptures, paintings, and drawings, and allows us the privilege of experiencing them through her unique vision.

MH: Your sculptures and drawings are inspired by your love of nature and animals. How and when did that show up in your life?
WK: As early as I can remember, I had an affinity for animals. I was always fascinated by them and wanted to be around them, and when I played, I pretended that I was a horse. Like a lot of girls, I was obsessively in love with horses, and I first got on one when I was 4 or 5.
MH: Did your parents encourage it?
WK: They didn’t discourage it. They couldn’t afford to buy me a horse, so I cut out pictures of them and plastered them all over my walls. We had a dog, cats, and I once gave my mom a mouse for her birthday. My pets through childhood included gerbils, parakeets, a baby alligator, an injured bluejay, and a rabbit that I got when I was around 10 and was still around when I went off to college. We spent summers in New Hampshire, where I spent a lot of time catching frogs and snakes. I had a pet garter snake that my parents allowed me to take home at the end of the summer, and it had 26 babies, so my parents were tolerant of all this stuff. When I got a little older my mother and sister and I would ride horses near where we lived, just outside of Boston.
MH: I see that you have a BA in biochemistry from Harvard, which could have led to a very different career. What led you to leave that behind and pursue an art career?
WK: My parents were scientists and chemists. My father taught chemistry at Harvard and my mom worked there for over a decade, and then did research throughout her life. Science was almost their religion, and they encouraged me and my siblings to pursue it as a career. But I didn’t have a great ability for it, other than my connection to the natural world. I was always drawing and painting in high school, and I was interested in literature and languages. But then when I went to college, I kind of fell in love with biology. I was fascinated by DNA and how it reproduces itself, and unlike philosophy or psychology which tends to go on and on without resolution, science gave me answers that made sense. But each semester I took an art class, mostly painting, and then in my junior year at Harvard I took a sculpture class. That’s when making art really started to click. So I completed the biochemistry degree, but I was falling in love with art by then, and right after Harvard I went to Pratt to study art.
MH: It’s magical and/or fortunate when an artist links one of her passions to her studio practice; it effectively links two paths into one. When did you connect your love of animals with your creativity?
WK: When I was a kid, everything I drew was an animal, so the connection was there from the start. When I moved to New York I was influenced by the gestalt of the time, and at Pratt I got swept up in neo-expressionism. I painted large landscapes with animals in them that kept getting more abstract, and I was making small clay and wax sculptures of horses. Later, at a residency at MacDowell, I started making animal sculptures out of tree branches, which was tedious because I was wiring them together. I hadn’t yet learned how to weld.
MH: I’ve been reading Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees by Lawrence Weschler. This is about the artist Robert Irwin, who died recently. Irwin had an intriguing quote: “The object of art may be to seek the elimination of the necessity of it.” What do you think about this statement?
WK: I think what he’s saying is that when you’re making art, you can get into a certain state where you’re very connected to what you’re making, and that is the art. You’re in a state of heightened awareness and perception, and that’s as important as the art object that comes out of it. That’s where I go with it.
MH: That’s interesting. So as artists evolve, they may value the process of creativity over the making of more objects. The art object would conceivably become obsolete?
WK: Right. You may be in your studio making stuff all the time, but those moments when you’re really connected and in the flow aren’t always there. It’s something that you’re always trying to get to, and there’s all this time spent trying to get into that state of engagement. I remember seeing Irwin’s work at the Getty in California, where they have his garden design. I had this moment where I couldn’t tell if I was looking at an object or a light, and it threw my perception off. It seemed to be more about the experience.
MH: My read on Irwin’s quote was that the objective of art may be to eliminate the artist’s need to create it. Would there ever come a time when you no longer needed to create art? Or is art making a necessity for you?
WK: I think I’ll always need to make art. It’s an uncomfortable necessity in a way because I’m always searching for something and trying to express it, and there’s no plateau; it’s always slipping away. It’s part of the nature of artists. I feel like I’ll always want to make things, and recently I’ve been getting excited about painting again.
MH: Many artists say their studio practice is a form of therapy. Is that true for you?
WK: I have mixed feelings about that. Sometimes people who don’t do art as a vocation think that art is so therapeutic and relaxing, and I find that to be a hobbyist attitude. I don’t find it relaxing; for me it’s physical work and can be exhausting. I can get into a flow when I’m warmed up and physically engaged, but it doesn’t just happen­­­­­­­­­­­­­—it’s work to get to that point. There’s a lot of anxiety and disappointment and frustration in art making.
MH: Right, and in that way it’s like a spiritual practice, in that it’s not all peace and unicorns. But when I go into my studio and engage in my process, it’s a form of therapy in the sense that I’m pushing up against all my demons.
WK: In that context I’d say yes, a studio practice is a way of working through to something deeper. I find that when I’m working and connected there’s something magical that happens, when you feel like you’re not in charge anymore and something is pushing you along. Some artists think of it as a higher power, but for me it’s more about pushing away all the barriers, all the nay saying, and getting to a part of myself that is deep and true and free.
MH: In traditional psychotherapy, one of the objectives is to bring the analysand to a place where she no longer needs therapy or therapist. From that angle, Irwin may be correct that the artist could achieve enough psychological equilibrium that she no longer needed to create art.
WK: But maybe you can only get to that state of mind through making the art, so why would you not make it? Because the equilibrium is always a process; it’s not like it’s just there. You have to get to it. I have a practice and a process, and I’m not floundering the way I was in my late 20s. I have a confidence now that I didn’t have back then, but there’s still an element of searching and questioning because as an artist you always want more. You always want there to be development.
MH: I think it was Rilke who said he never went into analysis because he was afraid that he’d exorcise his demons and no longer need to write. Do you need your demons, or shadowy self, to create the work you do?
WK: When I was younger I needed my demons and all that struggle, and my sculptures were often aggressive or violent. But in the last 15 years or so that’s changed, and I’ve been trying to struggle less and get out of my own way, especially with my paintings, which are more elusive and fragile than the sculpture. I can allow the image to be serene or even gently appealing, which I used to avoid like the plague. Animal sculptures are always in danger of being interpreted as cute! I hate it when people use the word “whimsical” to describe my work.
MH: Another interesting Irwin quote vis-à-vis the art objective: “The experience is the thing, experiencing is the object.” What do you think about the idea that art is more about the experience?
WK: I agree with that. The artwork is something that excites thought and conversation, but it doesn’t inherently contain those things. I also find that as a viewer, art is very mood dependent. If I’m in a right state of mind it can be an amazing or ecstatic experience to look at art, but other times it’s just not there, because I’m not receptive to having that experience.
MH: A few summers ago, Kurt and I were driving north along the Maine coast, and we pulled into a campus or recreation area. In the distance we saw this intriguing outdoor sculpture, and as we got closer, we saw that it was a Klemperer. Coming across your work in an environment, as opposed to a gallery, feels like an important aspect of your work. it creates more of the experience that Irwin refers to.
WK: I think the piece was probably Calling Elk at College of the Atlantic in Bar Harbor. I had a sculpture exhibit on the campus, and they eventually purchased that piece. When I was first making work, I naturally wanted to put it in galleries, and I was showing in a gallery in Soho in the early 90s. But it was when I started showing in outdoor sculpture shows that something started to click on a lot of different levels. The landscape created a context and narrative for the work and allowed it to be seen in a particular way. And then being outdoors and physical is important to me. I’m very connected to nature and that’s where I feel free.
MH: It’s hard to imagine your work in a slick, white-walled gallery. The sculptures would almost feel like taxidermy, and maybe that’s what Irwin was getting at—that art as an object is lifeless, like a stuffed fox. It’s only when we have the experience that it comes alive for us. But then the next question is, what does it mean to experience art?
WK: My rebar sculptures can be difficult outdoors because they sometimes disappear if they’re against a shadow or tree. So even though they’re metal, they’re super ephemeral, and I feel like that’s important to the work. I think the experience that Irwin refers to may be the discovery. You may not see the sculpture at first, but then the light shifts and you see it. It’s going to be dependent on the site and the lighting and all that stuff. It’s not always the same, and it’s not the same as if it was sitting in a gallery or museum. I’d still love to show my work in a gallery, but it’s true that in that context, it wouldn’t have the reverberation that it does in nature.
MH: It really wouldn’t. When we saw your work in Maine, it wasn’t just that we came across this outdoor sculpture in an environment, it was also that it was an elk in its natural habitat. There’s something special about that. As opposed to running across it in a Chelsea gallery.
WK: Yeah, I have to agree. Whenever I try to photograph my sculptures against a white wall, they seem to lose some vitality. But photographing them outside is really challenging.
MH: Do you experience your work as an experience? And do you object to it being seen as an object? (haha)
WK: It’s funny, I have this ongoing issue where people are compelled to put Christmas lights and wreaths on my sculptures. It’s a pet peeve of mine. They wouldn’t do that to an Irwin sculpture, that’s for sure! I bring that up as an example of how people sometimes objectify my work. What’s interesting for me is when the buyer has an outdoor space that they want the sculpture to live in, and they also want to live with it. That spot on their property becomes a home for the creature, in a way. I like that because the people are looking to experience their home life in a different way or in a way that’s enhanced
MH: Maybe the deeper question is can we really control why people like our work? We make our work to express something in particular, but if someone buys it because they see something else in it, we can’t control that.
WK: Right, and we can’t control how they display it, either. I haven’t always been happy with how my sculpture is placed, and in one instance the collector grouped my sculptures with other artists’ sculptures in a way that I felt diminished all the work.
MH: I’m sure that biochemists don’t have these issues. Any regrets over the path you chose?
WK: No, I don’t think I could have been a scientist or a biochemist. I didn’t have the aptitude for it. But it has given me a framework for empirical thought, and evolutionary theory is the underpinning of how I see the natural world. Making art is different than science in that it allows for an expression of how I see the world, and making art is the connection that I seek. I don’t know that I could have found that in a regular job. The creative life is something that I need and thrive on.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
WK: Those moments when you’re working in the studio and the flow is happening, and the piece is magically taking shape. To me those moments are exquisite and wonderful, and you feel truly alive when they happen. And then knowing that you have that possibility within you is a lovely thing. There are a lot of trials and tribulations to being an artist, but when you realize that you have this thing that you can do, that you can make something out of nothing, it’s magical.

Wrought Taxonomies is an exhibition of the artist’s outdoor sculptures and works on paper at the Suffolk County Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport, NY. It opened on Earth Day, April 22, 2023 and will close on April 22, 2025.
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Uprising is an artist residency and solo show at Big Arts, Sanibel Island, FL from March 15 - April 28, 2024. The exhibition will feature drawings, paintings, and sculptures of the local wildlife.
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www.wendyklemperer.com

IMAGE LIST
1. Kudu, 2023, salvaged steel paint, wood, 120 x 108 x 48 in. Part of Wrought Taxonomies at the Vanderbilt Museum in Centerport, Long Island.
  2. Pegasus/Gericroix, 2005-2023, salvaged steel, 132 x 132 x 80 in. Part of Wrought Taxonomies.
  3. Elk Return, 2019, salvaged steel and marine epoxy,
  4. Fallen Horse, 1998, salvaged steel, 216 x 144 x 160 in. Made during emerging artist fellowship residency at Socrates Sculpture Park.
  5. Blueblood, 2023, salvaged and stainless steel, paint. Part of Wrought Taxonomies.
  6. Chain Hound Vll, 2000, salvaged steel and marine epoxy, approx. 72 x 44 x 65 in.
  7. Chain Hounds, 2000, salvaged steel and marine epoxy, dimensions variable. Four sculptures mounted on entrance walls to DeCordova Museum and Sculpture Park, Lincoln, MA.
  8. Circle of Wolves, 2001, salvaged steel and marine epoxy, dimensions variable. Each sculpture approximately 72 x 144 x 60 in. Commissioned by Henry Lay Sculpture Park, Louisiana, MO.
  9. Porcupine, 2009, steel, paint, 30 x 30 x 30 in.
10. Undersea Install Photo. Part of Wrought Taxonomies.
11. Salvage What You Can, 2017, paper silhouettes, monofilament, projected light, dimensions variable. A solo show at Studio 10, Brooklyn, NY.
12. Raven Cawing, 2023, salvaged steel, soot, oil, approx.. 15 x 34 x 14 in.
13. Cool Grey, 2005, colored wax, wire, steel, approx. 30 x 28 x 10 in.
14. Tiger Drinking Night, 2011, ink on paper, 11 x 14 in.
15. Elm Brook Fall Evening, 2023, watercolor on paper, 14 x 11 in.
16. Hooded Crow, Rome, 2018, watercolor on paper, 6 x 8 in.
17. Frog, Silver Lake, 2018, watercolor on paper, 6 x 8 in.
18. Fish, Red Bowl, 2002, oil on canvas, 16 x 16 in.
19. Major Deegan Evening, 2023, watercolor on paper, 12 x 16 in.
20. Tabby, 2019, watercolor on pape, 8 x 6 in.
21. Tile Fish Head, 2002, oil on canvas, 16 x 20 in.
22. Abstract,1990, oil on paper, 40 x 40 in.
23. Untitled, 1990, oil on paper, 48 x 48 in.
24. Welding Ram, work in progress.
25. Welding Nest, work in progress.
26. Drawing from about age 7. 
27. Riding Mimzical. Competing in a local horse show in 2019.
28. The artist in Rome, 2018.

M Pettee Olsen

M Pettee Olsen’s sweeping brushstrokes are at once spontaneous and choreographed, suggesting a painter who confidently engages her whole body in the creative process. As a former dancer, she states that she’s painting the dance in her bones, infusing her large paintings with the grace and fluidity of motion that comes from years of disciplined training in ballet and modern dance. She uses a variety of paint media, including some with reflective properties, to play with luminosity, depth, and perception. Indeed, Pettee Olsen is interested in how we perceive the world, how we interpret it through our respective lenses, and finally, how we form narratives around our subjective experiences. These stories are passed on through oral tradition, dance, theater, and the myriad forms of storytelling through which humans tell their version of history. The discord arises when our narratives clash, often resulting in conflict and tragedy on a global scale. Pettee Olsen invites us to lose the stories that undermine meaningful connection and fuel dualistic thought. She superimposes value scales and geometric elements on her canvases, disrupting the painterly dance/narrative to introduce a more open-ended conversation. By letting go of self-serving storylines, we open ourselves to the common humanity that supersedes the desire for power, marginalization, and war. Pettee Olsen’s gestures are soulful and profound, but they can also be unsettling, as if reflecting our darkest self. The alternating shimmers and shadows in her paintings speak to the best and worst of who we are, as our stories realign to narrate a more faithful portrayal of ourselves and the human condition.

MH: You paint with acrylic on large canvases, using extra-wide brushes and bold, sweeping strokes. Has this always been your style, or did you just bust loose one day?
MPO: I’ve always worked on largish canvases because of the nature of how I paint, which comes out of dance. There’s a different kind of sensibility that happens when I’m making a sweeping gesture compared to when I’m working small. It moves from a kinesthetic level to a more intimate movement of the hand, and it comes from a different place in my head. But I also use smaller brushes when I get to the more detailed mark making in my paintings.
MH: How do you see your work in relationship to Abstract Expressionism? Does the comparison make you cringe, or is Ab Ex your tribe?
MPO: Obviously there are roots there, but anytime someone places you in the past is not a good thing, and yes, it can be cringeworthy. I don’t think about my work in the studio as Ab Ex because my intentions with my work are so different than what they were after. Also, I use reflective pigments that read differently from different points of view. That is not a tool set the Ab Ex artists used, and it distinguishes me and places me squarely in the forward-facing present.
MH: You were on track to become a professional dancer when you were younger but had to stop due to physical issues. Were you already a painter at that point? Or did you turn to painting when dance was no longer an option?
MPO: I was taking company classes with American Ballet Theater when I was in school and to me, this was the company to be with. My teacher was from Odessa, and I got so much from her, that sense of love and passion for the arts. Visual arts were also an important part of my life back then, and I had a portfolio of drawing and painting toward the end of high school. So when I got injured and the dance thing fell apart, I fell apart with it, and it was then that I knew that I’d go to art school.
MH: If you’d never studied dance, do you think your paintings would be what they are now?
MPO: Probably. There was always a part of me that was interested in going beyond the physical into the psyche, and on some level the dance took me there. But I always knew that I was searching for something else, a tool set that lived a lot longer than the brief career of a dancer.
MH: When you told me that you were a dancer, your paintings came to life for me. A dancer uses her body to make graceful, sweeping gestures, which is exactly what you do in your paintings. How do you regard your painting process in relationship to dance?
MPO: It’s funny, whether you’re a painter or a dancer, you go into your studio to engage in this physical process. People say that the body is in my painting, but I have more concerns with time and space, self and no-self, than I do about the body and dance. There are beautiful gestures in my paintings, but I also want there to be a foil against that, so I add rectilinear elements that are about thought and other interruptions. So I’m compressing spontaneous and choreographed moves into flat space, and in the process, I’m painting the dance in my bones, a choreography that’s 3.7 billion years in the making, and filtered through my distinct lens.

Falling Away, 2022, synthetic and luminous paint on canvas, 60 x 144 in. (triptych)

MH: You also talk about your work in relationship to poetry and allude to “the collapse of absolute meaning.” Would you elaborate on that?
MPO: Whenever we speak or write, we dial down experience and eliminate all these other choices and perspectives. But I compare my work to poetry because it has this multivalence about it: the word blue may be a color or it may be a mood. We’re living in a time when we need to be more open to multiple ways of seeing things, and I think abstraction lends itself to that wide openness. My sensibility of the world feels Buddhist in a way, and I resonate with a lot of insight that comes from that practice.
MH: I’m quoting you here: “Some people say that painting can take you to the places that writing can’t. But to me what painting can do (…) is put you in five places at once, collapsing time and space.” Would you say that your paintings are anti-narrative?
MPO: Well, yes. Our brains naturally make up stories. I’m particularly aware of this because my father was a neurologist, and I was brought up with science rather than religion. I was taught that the world is a changeable place, depending on what’s happening in your brain. An injury to the brain can cause you to perceive the world very differently. And yet the brain tries to cobble together a sense of the world, whether real or not.
MH: I’m curious why you see this as a negative? You talk about the desire to “implode narratives”, so you clearly think they’re damaging.
MPO: I love stories as much as the next person as a way to connect with people, but I think there’s something missing when all we’re doing is telling our little stories. I associate stories with wars, so the more you cling to your story, the more you’re gearing up for dualism. Us against them. The balm I can bring through my work is an alternative way of looking at narratives. It’s not so much that I’m anti-narrative, I’m just against clinging to our stories.
MH: That’s interesting to think about stories as the initiator of wars. There’s a lot of truth to that. Stories and myths are also the birthplace of religion. I mean, what is religion if not a story?
MPO: Exactly! And people think their religion is a sacred thing, but how do they think their religion was spread? It wasn’t through some great love of humanity! It was spread by telling stories that were created by a few men who wanted power, and who were willing to go to war over it.
MH: Is it possible that instead of no-narrative, your paintings express a narrative from multiple points of view? A hyper-narrative, as it were, in which the various perspectives are equally true?
MPO: I agree with that up to the “equally true” part. I don’t think about them being true or false; they’re perspectives. One of the ways that I express this in my paintings is by superimposing value scales that disrupt relative truths and narratives. I don’t mean to say that there are no relative truths, and I have my stories as well. But I think the further back you step when looking at things, the less you hold onto a singular lens through which you approach something. You don’t cling to it in the same way. So I suppose you could say they’re equally true, but it feels more like a question of values.
MH: I think you’re talking about value from two different angles, as chiaroscuro or gray scales as well as values in terms of shared morality.
MPO: Right. The gray scale is a metaphor for ethics, morality, and even critical thinking. I think critical thinking is important and there’s not enough of it in general, but that’s not what my work is about. It’s about letting go of certainties. I’m interested in what’s beyond critical thinking. To me the unknown is more fascinating than the known.
MH: What’s beyond critical thinking?
MPO: The whirling dervishes, or Thelonius Monk spinning to music. Sometimes he spun around slowly on stage to another’s solo, sometimes in a parking lot, to some internal song. Dervishes whirling, and even my own dancing early on, have common roots in this sort of centering and expansive feeling state. They’re not thinking, they’re connecting with something that makes them feel integrated with everything else. I'm interested in the relationship between unbounded awareness, perception, and categorical thinking.
MH: Back to the idea of narrative, I think a hyper-narrative painting would be apropos in our current culture. There are so many conflicting stories that objectivity and truth are like so many relics from a bygone era. But instead of jettisoning narratives altogether, do you think there would be a benefit in giving them space to exist simultaneously?
MPO: I would suggest a meta-approach that transcends and includes the narratives that came before it. It doesn’t devalue or dismiss human experience and perspective, it just recontextualizes the story.
MH: I see parallels in your work with Cézanne and the Cubists, who shattered single point perspective and portrayed multiple views at once. Would you say that your paintings shatter one-point narratives in a similar way?
MPO: Yes, but what it means now to shatter perspectives is something different than when Cézanne was working. The shifting planes in his paintings are interruptions that ask us to look at the physical world in a different way. But the territory I’m going into is more conceptual, a shift in perception but also a letting go of narratives.
MH: So Margaret, all this is fun and compelling to talk about, but you know and I know that when someone stands in front of one of your paintings, they’re not going to be thinking about imploding or exploding narratives. How important is it that someone understands the conceptual nature of your work?
MPO: Roberta Smith wrote a while back that artists have to understand that they do not own the meaning of their own work. Does that mean that writers and authors and critics don’t own the meaning of their work either? I have a little beef around that, but I understand that the completion of an artist’s work is when an audience views the piece and responds to it, and of course people see different things. I’ve imbedded my concerns for time, perception, and movement into the piece, and that’s all I can do.
MH: As artists, we’re infatuated with our concepts, which give deeper levels of meaning to what we do. But to everyone else, does it matter what the work is about? In other words, is the conceptual nature of our work mostly for our own inspiration and fancy?
MPO: I don’t think of it in that way. Maybe in reality I have to understand that someone will interpret my work differently than I’d intended. But this is my contribution, my gift, and it’s important to me that the intention is there. At the end of the day, I have to be okay with it and hope that a few people get it. We all have these moments when people connect with our work and it’s very meaningful.
MH: Last question: what’s the best part about being an artist?
MPO: Being alive! As an artist I’m alive to the world and really looking, not just living a rote life. I’m the sanest and most centered when I’m in the studio, and if I’m not making work, everything else seems pointless. Honestly, I can’t imagine not being an artist.

www.petteeolsen.com

IMAGE LIST
  All images are synthetic polymer and reflective pigment on canvas unless otherwise noted
  1. Twists and Turn with Value Scale, 2018, 40 x 60 in. (diptych)
  2. Truest Blue, 2020, 48 x 60 in.
  3. Centered, 2021, 52 x 48 in.
  4. Flash, 2023, (WIP), 60 x 48 in.
  5. Red Turn with Value Scales, 2019, 60 x 48 in.
  6. Flagged for Content, 2020, 48 x 60 in.
  7. Distraction with Orange Redaction (Orange Turn), 2018, 60 x 56 in.
  8. In the Thick of It, 2023, (WIP), 60 x 48 in.
  9. Blue Black Green Turn, 2023, 48 x 68 in.
10. Flash Reflect, 2019, 60 x 48 in.
11. Complicated, 2023, (WIP), detail
12. Return to Raw, 2023, synthetic polymer with interference and reflective pigment on canvas, 60 x 48 in.
13. Dark Light Turn, 2022, detail
14. Flip and Shine, 2023
15. Getting Someplace, 2022, 48 x 48 in.
16. Value Scale, 2018, 60 x 80 in.
17. Yellow Slip, 2019, synthetic and luminous paint on canvas, 60 x 48 in.
18. Revolution Still, 2022, synthetic and luminous paint on canvas, 60 x 48 in.
19. Studio shot.
20, 21. The artist in her studio.

Lisa Kokin

Lisa Kokin works in a variety of materials, from books to buttons to shredded currency. While the materials may derive from many sources, the consistent thread that runs through her work is its connection to sewing and needlework. Kokin comes from a long line of sewists: her Romanian grandmother worked in a New York tie factory at the age of 14, her parents had an upholstery shop on Long Island, and Kokin received her first sewing machine at the age of 9. She describes sewing as a means of attachment and embellishment, and uses it to address social, political, and gender issues that are often at odds with mainstream thinking. Through a labor-intensive studio practice, Kokin expresses her views in a visual language that is at once alluring and tendentious. Indeed, her finely crafted work has an obsessive quality that entices us to move in closer, only to find that the content may be challenging. But Kokin doesn’t shy away from controversial themes. Her current series, Red Line, addresses the ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine; her series Lucre, made with shredded money, makes a bold statement about greed and capitalism. Kokin is a master of her craft, but her superpower rests in her ability to challenge the status quo with grace, humor, and unflinching honesty.

MH: Your work varies from series to series, but there’s a consistency throughout that is recognizable as your voice. How would you describe your overall body of work?
LK: My imagery can vary a lot, but there are certain elements that unify my work. There’s the presence of sewing in one form or another, which I use as a means of attachment and embellishment. In the past I’ve made books, sculpture, and installations that have a social justice or historical component, and I’ve expressed my various experiences of being Jewish, being in a same-sex relationship, and my affinity with the underdog and marginalized. There’s also an ongoing investigation into Jewish history in a way that makes sense to me as an adult, as opposed to how it was taught to me as a child. So there’s a consistency of looking critically at the outer world and commenting on it, not heavy-handedly or didactically but often with humor.
MH: Your work often includes zippers, buttons, and needles, and you incorporate a lot of sewing and hand stitching. Weren’t your parents and grandparents in the sewing business? This must have influenced your work.
LK: Yes, it has. My grandmother immigrated from Romania to New York at the age of 14 and worked in a tie factory, then my parents had a small upholstery shop on Long Island where I spent a lot of time. These were the days before daycare, so I was around fabric and sewing ever since I can remember. When I was 9 years old, I was given my first sewing machine, this big hunk of cast iron, and it still works well. I also have my parents’ industrial sewing machine which put me through college twice. So sewing is in my blood, a congenital condition, and it connects me to those who went before me.
MH: I love the precision of your work, which has an obsessive quality. I see it as a modern-day version of the “fancy work” that ladies did back in the day: embroidery, lace, tatting. Why do you think you’re drawn to fine detail work rather than, say, large, drippy paintings? What does your process give you?
LK: I’ve never been drawn to paint. I’ve done a lot of drawing, but my thing is materials and materiality. I draw with thread! Regarding the obsessive thing, I don’t have a diagnosis, but I think that when you look at my work you probably would think I have some form of OCD.
MH: You must really enjoy that kind of detail work.
LK: I feel like it's my way of meditating. I’m fully present, in the zone, and I like the effect of it. The only way to get this detailed work done is to sit down and do it. So on a good day it’s meditative, but on a not-great day it can be monotonous. 
MH: If you didn’t have a studio practice, do you think you’d be locked up somewhere?
LK: I like to say that if I didn’t have my art, I’d be a menace to society. I go crazy about the state of the world, but my studio is my refuge, a place where I can go to do what I have to do. It keeps me relatively sane, to the point where if I don’t get into my studio for a couple of days, I start to feel untethered.
MH: I’m quoting you here: “I try as much as possible to relinquish control and let my inner intuitive voice guide me.” How does that work in practice? Your work is very tight and controlled, so how and where do get yourself to let go and let the materials take over?
LK: It’s funny that you say that my work is tight and controlled, because I don’t think of it that way. My current series is The Wandering Alphabet, and it may look organized but it’s completely unplanned. I start with a piece of industrial felt and use the programmed alphabets in my sewing machine, but I manipulate them to create unpredictable patterns. It’s completely spontaneous.
MH: What about content? Are you comfortable with ambiguity? Not the kind where this shape could be a cloud or it could be a bear, but serious issues with conflicting perspectives?
LK: I’m very comfortable with ambiguity. I don’t want to spell things out. If someone misinterprets my work, I’m okay with that. It’s illuminating to hear what people see in the work, especially when it has nothing to do with my intention.
MH: I wonder if as we mature as artists, we move away from black and white and embrace gray scales. It’s like we get more comfortable with ambiguity, not just in art but in life.
LK: Yes, I think so. I don’t want to hit people over the head anymore. I used to think that art could change the world, and I considered myself to be a cultural worker. Now I feel like this is just my take on things, and if you can connect with it, that’s great.
MH: I find some of your work to be subtly subversive, and I wondered how important that is to you. For example, I found an interesting snippet buried in your website, where you refer to “…my divergence from an all-or-nothing stance towards Israel.” How is that expressed in your work?
LK:  I like my work to be subtly subversive because I think it’s important to question the status quo. I have issues with our capitalist system that privileges money over everything, which I address in my series Lucre. And I have issues with xenophobia, racism, and all the other isms, so I like to critique these disparities whenever I can, either obliquely or with humor. I like the quote by James Baldwin, “The purpose of art is to lay bare the questions that have been hidden by the answers”. To me that encapsulates what we’re talking about.
MH: Your current work indirectly touches on the situation in the Middle East. Would you care to talk about that a little?
LK: Yes, a couple of pieces that I’m working on now are connected to what’s currently happening in Gaza. I grew up in a Jewish family, very secular, but I went to Hebrew school which was an indoctrination into a certain way of thinking about being a Jew. I accepted it all until I became an adult and started thinking for myself, and eventually realized that I couldn’t accept the whole package. I was proud to be a Jew, but I didn’t feel that it was the same as being a Zionist. I’m very distressed by everything that’s happened: October 7th as well as the subsequent bombing in Gaza and the genocide of the Palestinians. I know that among Jews I’m a minority and I want to be respectful, so I express my viewpoint through my artwork. My new pieces are like aerial maps, and I’m calling this series Red Line, which is a reference to the red line beyond which it’s not acceptable to go. I feel that we’re beyond there already.
MH: Thanks for sharing all of that. It makes sense that you’d express your viewpoint through your work, given that it’s such an incendiary subject right now.
LK: So much of it has to do with binary thinking and conflations: Jews with Zionists, support for Palestinian self-determination with anti-Semitism, Palestinians with terrorists. It’s not a black and white situation; there are many shades of gray.
MH: In your series Lucre, you stitched shredded currency into ornate patterns and large wall hangings that are incredibly detailed. I read this as a commentary on unharnessed materialism, and yet the work was dazzling and probably expensive. I thought it was subversive in that you were wryly poking fun at the wealthy art collectors who couldn’t resist buying a piece for their collection. What were you thinking about while you worked on this series?
LK: I started the series when Trump became a candidate, and if you look at some of the titles, like Let Them Eat Cake and Cold Comforter, it’s a commentary on the capitalist system, where money dictates everything, including our health. I used shredded money that I bought from the government at $45 for a 5-pound bag, then painstakingly stitched it together to make a statement about capitalism. I loved the paradox and all the connections that were made in the work. Plus, it’s a beautiful material!
MH: By using shredding money, you shred it of its value, right? But then you repurpose it into a luxury item that only affluent people can afford. I love the way you play with the concept and turn it back on itself. Do I also read some self-deprecating humor in it?
LK: Oh, always! I laugh at myself whenever possible. For example, I made a book called Bisexual Behavior Patterns, and it’s all about my former dating experience of being bisexual and trying to date lesbians. I also did a book called Irritable Vowel Syndrome, where I took all the vowels out of a cookbook and put them back into an intestinal tube that trails out from the book. My humor comes out the most in my books, and I have no quality control when it comes to puns.  
MH: It seems like when we repurpose something, even an object as benign as a book or button, we’re undermining its accepted meaning or intention, which is a subversive act. It may not be seditious, but it creates tension and upends value and content. How do you think about altering and repurposing?
LK: I love using things in a way that decontextualizes their original use. I use a lot of sewing notions to make asemic text, and I appreciate those objects for their aesthetic value. By isolating a button and placing it in a different context, it becomes a beautiful little gem.
MH: Hands down, the thing that I think you do so well is to camouflage challenging material in a seductive visual language. Your work is beautifully crafted and appealing, and yet it has this undercurrent that only reveals itself when you get in close. Do you think about this as you’re working?
LK: Yes. I love that. I’m not intentionally trying to deceive people, but I like the contrast that happens when you’re up close versus far away, discovering different aspects of a piece depending on your physical relationship to it.
MH: What would you most like to accomplish through your art practice and career? Beyond the gallery shows, sales, and reviews, what do you want to communicate?
LK: My art practice is the way I synthesize and process my feelings and viewpoints, and if other people see it and can relate to it, I feel good about that. I always tell my students that art is the cake, and the recognition and awards and sales are the icing. The whole process of making stuff is a reward in itself.
MH: What’s the best part about being an artist?
LK: The privilege of being able to spend my life doing this. I feel so fortunate to have a way to process my experiences and feelings in a visual form. I also teach art, and I consider that to be an outgrowth of my studio practice; it’s not a vocation, it’s a calling. And for me, who’s not religious or even spiritual, my art is the closest thing I have to a spiritual practice. It’s the thing I do every day where I’m in the present moment. Creating something from nothing is a sort of transcendent process that I love, even when it’s not going well. I just keep showing up and I know that something will happen.

www.lisakokin.com

IMAGE LIST
All images by Lia Roozendaal
1. Brokeade #2 (detail), 2017, shredded U.S. currency, metallic thread, 26.5 x 26 in.
  2. Brokeade #2, 2017, shredded U.S. currency, metallic thread, 26.5 x 26 in.
  3. Cold Comforter, 2018, shredded U.S. currency, metallic thread, 67 x 44 in.
  4. Cold Comforter, detail
  5. Attachment Disorder, 2017, shredded U.S. currency, metallic thread, 42 x 35 in.
  6. Attachment Disorder, detail  
  7. Red Line, 2023, machine stitching on industrial felt, 28.5 x 29.5 in.
  8. Red Line, detail
  9. Other, 2023, thread, cord, linen, mull, industrial felt, 13.25 x 14.5 in.
10. Sobrante, 2023, thread, fabric scraps, industrial felt, 18 x 18.5 in.
11. Incursion, 2023, thread, mull, industrial felt, 17 x 17.5 in.
12. Who Knows, 2023, thread, trim, pompoms, synthetic felt, industrial felt, 19.5 x 17.5 in.
13. Territory, 2022, thread, mixed media textiles, found objects, 49 x 80 in.
14. Territory, detail
15. Warp #9, 2020, shredded U.S. currency on Canson watercolor paper, 9 x 12 in.
16. Warp #2, shredded U.S. currency on Canson watercolor paper, 9 x 12 in.
17. Shpilkes, 2017, broken sewing machine needles, thread, wood, industrial felt, 36 x 26 x 3 in.
18. Shpilkes, detail
19. Practice, 2015, safety pins, thread, industrial felt, 22 x 15.5 in.
20. Synopsis, 2016, thread, metal, hemp, 23. x 19.5 in.
21. Synopsis, detail
22. Interjection, 2020, thread, industrial felt, 30.25 x 24 in.
23. Interjection, detail
24. Bisexual Behavior Patterns, 1998, altered book, magazine pages, photocopied text, 7.5 x 6 x 1.5 in.
25. The artist and Austin in her studio.

ART SPIEL: Martha Bone and Janice Caswell at Garrison Art Center

ART SPIEL: Martha Bone and Janice Caswell at Garrison Art Center
August 2023

CHRONOGRAM: David Provan at Garrison Art Center

CHRONOGRAM:
David Provan at Garrison Art Center, Oct. 2023
Barely Not Impossible

ART SPIEL: Susan English at Kathryn Markel

Art Spiel: Susan English at Kathryn Markel
The Interaction of Light and Shadow
November 2022