Lisa Sanditz Lecture at A.I.R. Gallery
Annie Ewaskio and A.I.R. Gallery present:
Artist Lecture with
Lisa Sanditz
Wednesday, May 30, 6:30 - 8:00pm
@A.I.R. Gallery
Frit-o Lay Factory, oil on canvas, 30” x 40”, 2012
A.I.R. 2011-12 Fellowship Artist Annie Ewaskio has invited painter Lisa Sanditz to give an artist talk at A.I.R. Gallery on Wednesday, May 30, from 6:30 to 8:00pm. The talk will include a slide lecture followed by a question and answer period. This event is free and open to the public.
Lisa Sanditz is an American painter who considers the economy’s shifting impact on land use by exploring interactions between built environments and landscape. She employes saturated color, wild scale changes, imaginative perspectives, and paint’s own limitless materiality. Her paintings are bright, sophisticated and engaging images that ask us to give pause when thinking about our surroundings. A “painter’s painter,” Sanditz dexterously manipulates her medium with great, curious glee.
For a press release with more information, please click HERE.
Evah Fan
House-O-Rama, 2011
Gouache on paper
Source: potatohavetoes.com
Evah Fan
Mr. Lazarre Left and Right
Source: potatohavetoes.com
Karla Black
Expressions are hurting, move outside, 2008
Cellophane, sellotape, petroleum jelly, paint, plaster powder, glass, polythene bags, concealer stick, lipgloss, hair conditioner, bath cream, tracing paper, glitter hair spray, lipstick
(via Karla Black - Expressions are hurting, move outside (and details) - Contemporary Art)
Source: saatchi-gallery.co.uk
Interview with Painter and Printmaker Gissette Padilla
Gissette Padilla was born in Coro, Falcon, Venezuela, but moved to Houston, Texas at the age of 8. She received her BFA in Painting from UH and her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from UTSA. Below is a recent interview with the Houston-based artist. For more information on her work, check out her website here.
Stacy Kirages for Fyeahwomenartists: You moved to Houston when you were fairly young, correct? What do you remember about your childhood spent in Venezuela?
Gissette Padilla: Yes, I was 8 years old when my family migrated here from Coro, Falcon, Venezuela. What I mostly remember from living there was the overall pace. When I first moved to the states I thought it was so large and fast. While Coro is a city, it has a very small town feel. The pace is slow and laid back. Everyone takes breaks and naps in the afternoon. It’s always hard to find any businesses open because everyone is at home resting. It has such a different way of living. While working hard is understood, having time to enjoy the fruits of labor are emphasized a lot more.
Coro is one of the oldest cities in Venezuela. So it lends itself to a lot of history, stories and folk lore. All the buildings are old and have been there for many years. I remember playing a lot in the old rundown houses that were by my grandfather’s house that was in ruins, yet never cleaned or cleared out to make new. For example, my grandfather’s house is very old. It was one of the first houses built in Coro that still exists. The bathroom was added later and separate from the house. The house has its own array of stories that people have added to it throughout the years. It had a very creepy feeling to it when I was young. All the houses have bars on the windows and are made of cement, so it’s kept cool in the heat. I remember La cathedral we would go to on Sunday, and the stone roads near it. The shaggy taxi cars, that sometimes would be missing seats and we could see through to the road while they were driving.
I remember the beaches, and how clear and beautiful they were. Coro actually has a small desert in the city; I lost a shoe in it. The sand just sucked it up, and if you weren’t careful it would swallow you up too. But needless to say, I remember quite a bit of Venezuela even though I was so young when I left. I have my entire extended family there and have visited a few times but would love to visit again as an adult. Life there has totally changed with the political uncertainty. And I will make more work about what’s happened to these places and those people when I’m ready to dwell into the political history of it. It’s a part of my work that has always been on the back burner. Not because I’m not interested in talking about it, but because you have to be ready to deal and talk about it respectfully, visually and intellectually; it’s something I have to grow into to.
Desde Cabimas, 2011, Mixed media
FY: What do you enjoy about living and working in Houston?
GP: Houston is so eclectic. You can experience the city totally differently depending on which side of town you’re on. For the arts, Houston is great. It offers so many great venues for arts, music, theater, and fashion. Pop-up galleries come up all throughout the city, followed by a new crop of emerging artists. Houston is home to a great dubstep following in which my brother is a part of as a DJ for the Gritzy party. From places like Box 13 or El Rincon to the galleries off of Main and Montrose, Houston is unlike any other city in Texas. I get to see works from internationally and nationally recognized artists as well as local artists. Houston has a very trendy vibe, which I believe it’s one of its best strengths and biggest weaknesses.
Here, There, And Who Knows When, 2011, Acrylic, indian ink, prisma, graphite, varnish and airbrush ink on birch panels
FY: Can you talk more about your Many Mini Residency at Skydive?
GP: The Many Mini Residency was great opportunity to work through an idea as quickly as possible. At the time of the residency, I had just graduated from UTSA with my Masters and had to abruptly move back home and wait for my working visa to go through. I needed to work with artist on collaborations that had nothing to do with what my usual work looks like, and /or is about. I kept meaning to work with a few artists before and the Many Mini Residency offered the perfect opportunity to do so. I did collaborations with the Houston comic-strip artist Patrick Hall, German artist Katrin Keller, San Antonio artist Megan Harrison, Waco artist Jennings Sheffield, and screen-print artist Aaron Munoz.
The collaborations had a great impact on my work and lead me to do more collages. The only artists I worked with in person were Patrick Hall and Aaron Munoz. The collaborations with Megan Harrison and Katrin Keller were exchanged via mail. While I knew Megan from graduate school, Katrin and I have never met and decided to play off that and only communicate with the work, which made for some interesting possibilities. The collaboration with Jennings Sheffield was one that had been in the works for about 6-months before she moved to Waco and was recently shown at this year’s Luminaria event in San Antonio. I’m excited to show a version of it in Houston in November at Box 13.
The Not So Distant Yesterday, 2011, Woodcut, stencil, monoprint and indian ink
FY: Describe what a typical day looks like for you.
GP: I wake up, eat breakfast. I check my email and messages. I look up articles on Printeresting, Temporary Art Review, and Glasstire. I look at whatever I was working on the day before and start to finish what I have started. I have to say, I do spend a good portion of the beginning of the day just looking at what I have done the day before and figuring out what I want to do next, or how I want to continue. Then depending on what happens during that time, I work on the pieces accordingly. I go workout in the afternoon. Take a break till the early evening, and then I start to do the mundane and tedious work of cutting stencils or sewing. I’ve always worked better at night and early day, when there are absolutely no distractions. I usually fall asleep around 4-5am. And start the day all over again.
Diverge From The Familiar, 2011, Woodcut, stencil, monoprint, indian ink and chine colle on rice paper
FY: Describe the room that you are in right now.
GP: I am visiting a friend in San Antonio, so I’m on the laptop in her apartment. This is in the same apartment complex I lived in when I was in graduate school, so it’s a bit of déjà vu for me. It is a two-story town home with cream colored walls. I am sitting on the red ochre hand me down couch with the laptop on my lap. The TV is on a random channel and I’m listening to the Alabama Shakes as I type out the answers to these interview questions. There are a stack of newly burned albums on the coffee table along with three half full plastic bottles, and a shot glass with three quarters in it. There are four different pairs of sneakers on the brown carpet floor. It is a typical college apartment, not much on the walls but posters of randomness. The furniture is rundown and mix matched.
There is nothing particularly interesting about this place, but I do have a lot of memories of my old place here. It had the exact same layout, but my apartment had my first semesters work on the walls. I had three roommates and they liked having the work up even though I hate seeing my work up in my space. I would put other peoples work up, so it would diverge from my own. Every semester when someone would graduate I would trade or ask for a small piece of theirs, and now I have a bit from all the grads that passed through the program while I was there. I’m not a fan of having my work up where I spend a lot of my time in. Once I’m done with something, I need to clean and clear the space for the new work. Nothing is worse than making the same type of work over and over again. Without growth or new development everything becomes stale and it starts to lose any reminisce of importance. So while moving forward from one series to the other, I have to clear my physical space and mind of what I have just finished.
FY: What are you inspired by?
GP: I’m inspired by a lot of things. It’s hard to pinpoint something in particular. I’ve always been interested and inspired by films and music. The music I listen to while working has such a great influence in the way I work and how it all comes together. I can tell you four bands I listen to on repeat while working on my thesis work: Muse, Arcade Fire, Sufjan Stevens, and Queen. Every now and then when I hear any songs from those artists, I immediately know what piece I was working on at the time.
While I do believe that the idea is incredibly important, an artist has to not just be aware of what their interested in saying, but also how the works come across to the uninformed viewer and how to bridge that gap as swiftly as possible. The process of figuring those ideas out is by simply working it out. You must play and work through all the ideas in your head in order to figure things out. Once the idea is reached, then the real work begins on how to bring that idea into clear fruition.
But, the thing that always gets me hyped on a new piece is materials and techniques. For me, the introduction of printmaking was such a mind opening experience. I hate to sound a little idealistic about it, but working in the print studio is when I’m at my most peaceful. I go out and find new materials I haven’t used, or learn about a new technique, and I go to the studio and play. That’s when the work is at its most honest; when it just comes out of you without any premeditated force.
Transitory Spaces, 2012, Video projection on hand-printed woodcuts on fabric
FY: What other pieces/projects are you working on at this moment?
GP: At the moment, I’m working on a couple of stencils and some new woodcuts. Since my work incorporates printmaking with drawing and painting, I’m always trying to get new plates to play with. I enjoy building surfaces and layers to the point that I loose myself in them. The new pieces I’ve been working on continue where I left off in my last series. The gap between my paintings and prints is much less than it once was and the visual vocabulary has become much more open than before.
I’m also experimenting with some new surfaces and ways of approaching the layers I built up on the surface. The new works are relatively small in size, but I would like to start making some larger pieces soon. I’ve been trying to make a large multi-panel piece in which the panels can be interchanged to make different images. As it happens with memory, one recollection leads to another and I want the piece to be a prime example of that. This can be easily achieved in a digital media, but I want to do it with painting.
FY: What is something that you are looking forward to?
GP: I’m excited to see where I’m at by the end of this year. At 25, I’m at that point in my life where I really don’t know where I will be at next week, nonetheless where I’ll be at a year later. And that’s ok with me. That’s the exciting and terrifying part.
What I am most looking forward to is getting my US residency to go through this year. I don’t know when that will happen, but I hope that by the end of the year I can work and travel. But, I’ve made it work so far and just hope to continue making it work.
Thanks for taking the time to answer some questions, Gissette!
Polly Morgan
Study for Rest a Little on the Lap of Life
Source: Flickr / polly_morgan
Polly Morgan
To Every Seed his own Body
Source: Flickr / polly_morgan
Interview with Martha Clippinger
Our first new contributor is Jessica Scherlag who interviewed artist Martha Clippinger. You can find Ms. Clippinger’s work on her website, www.marthaclippinger.com.
———————————————————————————————————
Jessica Scherlag for Fyeahwomenartists: How has growing up in Georgia influenced you as an artist?
Martha Clippinger: While I was growing up in Columbus, Georgia, I encountered eccentric artists who were operating without the support structure of galleries and institutions. I was inspired by their dedication to making work and I admired their resourcefulness with materials, their willingness to experiment, and their openness to sharing their works with others. Another important influence was Pasaquan, the self-made world of Eddie Owens Martin aka St. EOM. St. EOM created a place full of colorful patterns, totems, and various architectural details where the past and future could come together. It must have contributed to my interest in the environmental and architectural application of color and geometry.
FY: You use such wonderfully bold and interesting color combinations in your work. What is your artistic process like?
MC: It’s totally intuitive. The colors are usually imagined combinations though I have utilized colors from memory (a bittersweet encounter with Dr. Pepper and lime sherbert), or recorded sites of inspirations (vecinos throughout Mexico City). Sometimes my colors are carefully mixed by hand—I like to mix at least three colors together to make one, though I’ve also accepted house paint donations and use “as is”.
let water be the other half, 2011, The Doo-Nanny, Seale, AL
FY: Are you more interested in making site-specific work or work that can function anywhere and everywhere?
MC: Sometimes I make a work as a response to a site, but more often I make a work in the studio and then complete it through its placement (or its “site”). Both approaches lead to mutable works. I find it interesting to see how artworks transform according to site. I enjoy working with “universal sites”— natural/architectural elements that are practically everywhere. I have used this approach with windows, trees, doorways, lakes, shelves, and floors.
delusion, 2010, acrylic on wood
FY: The Dirty Dirty is a gallery in Ditmas Park, Brooklyn that functions as an alternative exhibition space for artists to work outside of their everyday studio practices. How did you come to found The Dirty Dirty? Why an alternative art space?
MC: I created The Dirty Dirty as a way to bring artists together in a laid-back atmosphere where artistic exchange and social interactions would take priority over the edited, curated exhibition space. Exhibitions here are generally open calls, meaning they are open to whoever wants to participate. Parameters are given that hopefully inspire the artists to create something new or perhaps expose something already made that had not been exhibited or shared with the outside world. I also like to suggest a relationship to the South (aka The Dirty Dirty), so the outdoor sculpture exhibition “The Yard Show” was inspired by vernacular yard art. I wasn’t thinking about an alternative space when I created The Dirty Dirty. I just wanted to get folks together and celebrate what we do.
FY: It seems like collaboration is an important part of The Dirty Dirty and I’m drawn to how you invite participation from the community. Who or what would your dream collaboration be?
MC: My interest in collaboration is not only rooted in the sharing of ideas but also in the discomfort that can come with sharing. I hope that by creating shows that force the artists to be present, the party can bring us outside of ourselves. So much of our process is solitary, so this creates a social environment where we expose ourselves, converse, exchange thoughts, and ultimately gain a better understanding of what each of us is doing and find encouragement. Last summer’s event, “Off the Hook!” was an exhibition inspired by the game “telephone”. Each artist created a new work that responded to the work made by the preceding artist, then passed it on, thereby creating a chain reaction of artworks. Many of the artists did not know one another, so they came to know someone else’s work through the creation of their own work, and then they were asked to pass their work on to the next artist who would scrutinize it in an attempt to create a new version. The lineage was fascinating! As far as a dream collaboration goes, I’ve already experienced a “dreamy collaboration”! Last summer, my poet-friend Urayoán Noel and I spent many days on the beach finalizing our e-constrained/post-card/accordion book about the surreal coastal Queens neighborhood of Edgemere, NY. Check out our website and buy a book! www.theedgemereletters.net
studio wall, 2011
FY: Many galleries and project/art spaces are run and founded by men, has being a female artist and founder of an arts organization informed your approach or thinking in any way?
MC: No, The Dirty Dirty was developed out of a personal need and belief. I wasn’t modeling its program off of anything from the past, and I don’t know that I ever really programmed its future.
FY: What upcoming projects are you working on?
MC: “On the Fence” at The Dirty Dirty will be Saturday, April 28, 2012 from 5-8pm. Urayoán and I have been discussing another collaboration, but first, I’m off to Florida, to the Atlantic Center for the Arts. I’ll be working with Joanne Greenbaum and can’t wait!
scott, 2010, acrylic on wood
Polly Morgan
Rabbit on Hat
Top hat, taxidermy rabbit
Source: Flickr / polly_morgan
Anna Showers-Cruser
Where We Are Both and Neither
acrylic, ink transfer, embroidery, fabric, antique frames
Source: annashowerscruser.com
Polly Morgan
Claustrophilia and Claustrophrenia, Both 2011
Taxidermy birds, painted resin, glass, wood
Source: artnet.com
Polly Morgan
La Petite
Chick, matchbox
Source: Flickr / polly_morgan
Fragment of the Cast: Liliana Porter at Sicardi Gallery
“Fragment of the Cast: Liliana Porter at Sicardi Gallery” - Stacy Kirages
In her own words, 71-year-old Argentinean artist Liliana Porter is “something of a domestic philosopher.”[1] Well versed in a variety of mediums, including painting, drawing, collage, installation work, photography and video, it does not seem like she will stop making things any time soon. Porter moved to New York from Buenos Aires in 1964, where she has lived and worked ever since. Her studio is located in the town of Rhinebeck, which is about two hours away from Manhattan. In 1980, she was a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, as well as many other awards in subsequent years such as the New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship, the Mid Atlantic/NEA Regional Fellowship and the PSC-City University of New York research award. From 1991 to 2007 she taught art at Queens College, CUNY. In addition to multiple solo exhibitions, she has also participated in many group shows, both nationally and internationally, created public works of art, and even completed a web project for Dia Art Foundation in 2008.
Keyholder, 2011
Durflex
She currently has a solo show up at Sicardi Gallery in Houston, Texas, a space that focuses on exhibiting contemporary Latin American art. Fragment of the Cast consists mostly of photographs, mixed media pieces and an installation. Upon entering the gallery, you are greeted with a photo of Jesus on a keychain. If you are new to her work, the solitary figure in Keyholder is the perfect introduction to Porter’s somewhat humorous tone and sets the mood for the rest of the show. In each piece, she utilizes inanimate objects, toys and figurines, which she has carefully curated from countless trips to flea markets and antique shops. Regarding her chosen objects, she states that “I don’t alter them in any way – I don’t have to. They act by themselves.”[2]
Wind, 2011
Duraflex
Although Porter says that she does not alter the objects, her photos display a calculated placement of assemblages throughout and upon closer examination, the items appear to be in dialogue with each other. These particular juxtapositions reveal her concern with creating relationships in a space for the viewer to project their own personal narrative. In Yellow Duck for example, there are many objects in the photo that resemble old, forgotten toys. Perhaps while reflecting on these toys, the viewer remembers a childhood scenario where he or she was playing with a similar object. This nostalgic feeling is coupled with a sense of frustration however, like in Wind, where we observe a fluffy toy duck almost being blown away by a strong gust of wind. We know that the duck is inanimate, yet there is an urgency that is apparent in the piece because we are unsure of what will happen next in the situation. Through these paradoxical feelings Porter is able to construct an atmosphere of disorientation with a little bit of humor on the side.
Yellow Duck, 2011
Duraflex with assemblage and acrylic paint, Unique Framed on UV Plexiglas box
The title of the show takes its name from the installation piece, Fragment of the Cast, which is on the far right side of the gallery on top of a hanging shelf. To the left there is a group of characters of various sizes with a teacup and mirror, and to the right there is a tiny figure holding a broom, sweeping up a trail from a pink figure that seems to be “melting.” Like in the photos mentioned above, the narrative in this installation is a little unclear. We might be able to discern what took place here, but there is still an air of mystery for the most part. In the end, it is up to us as viewers of these selected insubstantial objects to develop our own unique story based on what we each know and feel.
Fragment of the Cast was on view at Sicardi Gallery in Houston, Texas from March 15, 2012 to April 28, 2012.
Fragment of the Cast, 2012
Installation
[1] Faye Hirsch, “The Domestic Philosopher: Q+A With Liliana Porter,” Art in America (2011): accessed April 26, 2012, http://www.artinamericamagazine.com/news-opinion/conversations/2011-05-24/liliana-porter-new-museum/.
[2] Ibid.
Eleanor King
Cuppa Cups Collection, 2007-2010
Source: eleanorking.com
