MOLLY HERMAN

Blue Streak, oil on linen, 24 x 24", 2011

What are you working on in the studio right now?

Currently I’m working in a small-scale with black and white (and grayed color) in something I’m tentatively calling “Milk-Paint Drawings”. I’m combining drawing techniques and process with painting media and attempting to blend the two.

Can you describe your working routine?

Ideally, a daily routine means I wake early, meditate, get to the studio, put on wordless music or a song in a foreign language I don’t understand ( ex: Nusrat Fateh Ali Kahn, Philip Glass, Virginia Rodriguez, or experimental sound works by my friend, Daniel Hill, etc…)If I’m working large I’m often on the floor (pouring paint, etc.) or if small-scale I work on a shelf – always mindful to step back and see the work in a fresh way.

At noon, I break for lunch and have time to just sit still and really look at what was done, scrutinize it. Recently, I found a small trampoline by the dumpster and brought it in my studio – I’m experimenting now with bouncing as I look – especially if I’m feeling restless. Sometimes I write notes – almost like poems in a sketchbook – but this is something only for me – it’s very personal, open-ended, associative kind of thinking, like a dream diary.

Can you describe your studio space, and how if at all, that affects your work?

My studio has a wall of windows facing north, with good, even light. The view is of another Pencil Factory building,-- not very spectacular or distracting. I have a decent amount of floor space and a large palette on wheels. I want to keep everything is easily moveable.  One wall is for storage of paintings and supplies. The other two walls are devoted for making and viewing paintings. I keep a full-length mirror to view my work backwards – a trick I use to surprise my view of the work and keep it vital. Also, my husband has the studio next to mine – (his sculptures and method are quite different from my work) during breaks, we’ll take a peek at one another’s studio --offer observations and encouragement. However, we try not to critique when either of us is “in process”. 

Silverpoint styllus, vine charcoal

& graphite on paper, 8 x 6 ", 2012

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve, etc…

I tend to create work in series, though not necessarily on purpose – by this I mean, I don’t wake up one day and set out to make a body of work, on “plant life”, but I actively invite and pursue inspiration by noticing what’s around me/ available. – I “trust my muse” and I keep working. Then, one day, looking back, I’ll say “Oh, this appears to make a group of a sort” --It happens organically. Often one series bleeds into another. I try not to worry over this anymore (as I used to)  – it’s how creativity evolves.

My latest work began during this past summer in France, with a pocket sketchbook. I had been intensely involved with color before my trip, but travel made me limit what I could carry and reduce my media to a silverpoint stylus, charcoal, graphite stick and eraser. The black and white became an interesting limitation. Thinking about it now, it also seems to signify the “memory of a time” to me.

These drawing-paintings I’m making in my studio now, come out of looking back on those sketches, but they are also their own things. Recently, I saw a terrific print show in Baltimore and I think this has been an influence on me as well, especially the lithographs by Odilon Redon. In some of my new work, I’m using birch panels so I can really wrestle with surface, etch into it, do some mono printing and even a bit of carving!

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

Initially, I had a hard time acknowledging this new shift --I thought: “OK, I’m working in black and white while looking at seed pods or drawings of plants.”—It felt like a big departure because I view of myself as a colorist who makes abstract paintings. Allowing a touch of muted color has helped. Still, I wonder how long I will continue in this vein. I’m itching to move into larger scale paintings and suspect I will want to involve more color (perhaps indigo dye) – and I want to continue to explore drawing space as well as light and value range. Additionally, I’m coming to terms with the jumble of re-occurring themes: Nature; landscape; pattern and abstraction. Sometimes my paintings may appear to the viewer as completely non-objective and at other times quite specific. Then I’ll think of those exquisite botanical drawings by Ellsworth Kelly and it brings confidence. In any case, I believe the debate of figuration vs. abstraction is a non-issue.

Duo, oil on birch panel, 14 x 11", 2012

Do you experiment with materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I love all paint media. – I love the malleability of paint and how its viscosity can go from watery to buttery, and the surface changes from chalky to juicy. I love the range and variety of pigments and their history – all of it is enthralling to me. However, I’m not so much a technician as an alchemist. As a gift, I received a book on paint recipes that I’m eager to try some involve eggs and various oils and vinegar emulsions, lavender spike, and that sort of thing. It may just be art lore, but I’ve heard that de Kooning tried all kinds of things in his paint – even mayonnaise! In fact, working within a narrow color-range has opened me up to even more experimentation with paint-stuff. I’m using milk-paint (which is a wonderful saturated, flat-matte surface made from lye) in combination with high-gloss enamel and graphite powder and even a little silver leaf.

What does the future hold for this work?

Well, I suppose I’ll post some of my new work on my website --and see if anyone salutes.





Is there anything else you would like to add?


Thank you Valerie, it's been a pleasure

Hay-maker Moon, oil on linen, 48 x 36", 2012

T. J. DONOVAN

Untitled, oil paint & rubber foam on board,

5.5 x 7.5", 2011

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I’m really excited about a diptych that I think I’ve recently developed to a point at which I can let it be. The piece is shown in the photo above and I think that it’s a breakthrough of sorts for me. So the story goes: I was in my studio with two blank 4 x 4’ stretched canvases. I began painting one of them (the entirely pink one on your right) and was getting my ass kicked badly. I couldn’t turn it into an interesting painting for the life of me. Well, 3 a.m. rolled around and I could hardly stand any longer so I decided to call it a night and leave tormented with my tail between my legs. I had just turned off the lights and was exiting through my studio door when suddenly I envisioned myself slamming the face of the blank canvas against the face of the painting that had been kicking my ass all night. It seemed like sheer desperation, yet I abided by the impulse.

I walked back into my studio, grabbed the blank canvas and slammed it against the painted one. I then rotated the more recently blank canvas 90 degrees CCW and slammed it against the ass-kicking canvas again. I then rotated the more recently blank canvas yet another 90 degrees CCW and slammed it against the ass-kicking canvas one more time. I then set the more recently painted canvas which now consisted of transferred impressions of the ass-kicking canvas down and became inspired to continue to paint on the ass-kicking canvas some more. At about 5 a.m. I had finally transformed the ass-kicking canvas into a very dark and strangely interesting painting and noticed that while kicking the ass of the ass-kicking canvas I had splattered paint all over the canvas that now consisted of the impressions of a former state-of-being of the ass-kicking canvas. I thought the canvas consisting of impressions of the ass-kicking canvas was beautiful yet need one more thing, so on its right side I added a pink square.

So there I was with two dramatically different looking paintings that were by process entangled. I lived with the paintings for a couple of months enjoying them mostly separately as I was very interested in their relationship yet felt very unfulfilled by the depth of their relationship. I felt that the relationship between the two paintings lacked reciprocation and closure in that the ass-kicking painting seemed to be of enormous influence on the painting consisting of its impression while the painting consisting of the ass-kicking painting’s impression didn’t have much influence over the ass-kicking painting. Anyway, while recently painting the ass-kicking painting pink I accidentally dropped my palette and splattered pink paint on the painting that consists of the impression of the ass-kicking painting.

Other than that, I currently have a variety of different focuses going on in my studio. From aggressively broken paintings on glass and plexi-glass to tight formalist sculptural abstract paintings to minimalist folded paintings on paper to found-object sculpture to collage. I try to maintain a studio environment that is conducive to continual discovery and surprise. I’m having a blast!

Can you describe your work routine?

I work as much as possible, whenever I have time. As a husband, father and artist who works a lot, I’ve managed to become quite good at juggling these three priorities. I usually work at night after the family has gone to sleep. I thrive in the solitude of the night. I am usually a sleep deprived mad man while making things.

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.?

That depends on what level of process we’re talking about. If I’m looking for a new process through which I can develop a new type of work, I consider everything around me as a potential medium that just needs to be manipulated through a just process. If I’m working on an individual piece, it starts with one decision and then another in response, and so on and so forth until the individual work possesses its own unique logic and enigma. I obsess over my work, so I’m thinking about it constantly. This obsession almost always leads to breakthroughs, as long as I’m on the right path.

work in progress

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

I am currently an MFA student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. My studio is on the 17^th floor of a building on Michigan Avenue. The building faces east and has panoramic windows, so the view of Lake Michigan is amazing. My studio is fairly small, maybe 15’ x15’, but I love it. I’m surrounded by very interesting artists with very diverse approaches to making things. I don’t think I’ve ever been so inspired. I’ve only recently moved to Chicago from South Dakota, so living and working within a major urban environment is quite exciting. I’ve made things here that I know I wouldn’t have made back home.

 

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

Words.

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I work with many different materials and am very particular about materials and the context in which they are used. In my mixed-media practice, material and process are inseparable in that a process is birthed from a material. In any case, this whole consisting of both material and process, must lend itself to a number of process/outcome-based experiential qualities such as, and in no particular order: immediacy, economy, uniqueness and believability, just to name a few. The process is the outcome.

Untitled, oil paint & rubber foam on board,

8.5 x 10.75", 2012

What does the future hold for this work?

I don’t know, that’s part of the fun of it.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thanks for all of your work Valerie. Thanks for having me. This is an honor. It’s been fun.

Untitled, oil paint & plastic frame, 12" tall, 2011

EMILY NOELLE LAMBERT

The Clearing, 2011,

acrylic & wood with canvas, 94 x 90 cm

What are you working on in your studio right now?

Always a number of pieces happening. Varying size, scale and material.  The work is made together and there is a conversation that happens between small drawings, large vibrant acrylic paintings and the sculptures.  I am interested in the making, the interior and exterior structure.  Playing with materiality, color, surface, process. Jumping between loose figuration and abstraction. I am curious how abstraction can be figurative. Old questions about painting! Thinking about talismans and how meaning is made with intention or a side effect.  

 

Can you describe your working routine?

A friend said it well, “It’s like fishing”… some days waiting and messing about in a small seeking way. Other days or weeks I can get caught up and it feels like a drive, full of purpose, a confident pushing forward.  In that kind of chaos, the walls and floors are filled with paintings, stacked against the wall alternating.  I do a lot of cross-pollination working big and small, 2d and 3d. 

The drive of the work is multifold.  Sometimes color steers the painting.  A slap of yellow violet with grit against a dull black/blue/ grey. The color speaks to me, the texture of the paint, the drip….they are a language. At other times an image or emotional quality will drive the work, beginning with a landscape like space but thinking about interpersonal space and relationships.  This changes when working with the figure, capturing that emotive quality within the known features.

Greenpoint Studio

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.?

There are a handful of ways I begin:

Sometimes I begin with color, and respond to the color empathically, it feels like a physical response to what I am looking at.

Sometimes I begin with an automatic or gestural painted line….there is a layering within my work, a masking and reiterating. Sometimes like a run on sentence, or a wandering journey, diaristic responsiveness.

Sometimes I begin with a vision of an end, or a scrap of a quality I am going for, inspired by a dream or anotherpainting or an experience or photograph, or emotional quality that somehow seems possible to manifest in color.

Sometimes I just begin a piece by making lines, like knitting or a purposeful quality that is going nowhere but where it is.

Can you describe your studio space and how (if at all) it affects your work?

I am very sensitive to my surroundings, which is one of the reasons I enjoy going to residencies and working in a new environment; both of the studio but also the landscape. The light and terrain, the quality of the space creeps in to the work.

I have been in my studio space in Greenpoint for ten years. It is a long skinny space, 12’ x40’. I have a window at the end and a big metal door that opens out onto the fire escape. I look over the low roofs of the surrounding buildings and purple “Eggs”, ( the waste treatment plant). A big piece of sky is visable from my window. I have seen many a double rainbow and moon rise over the waste treatment plant.

On paper

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

I turn over color and image, seeking something unexpected beautiful and ugly, raw and vulnerable. It is challenging to make work that is vulnerable, but bold and brave, that’s what I hope to do. I love finding the edge of my own sense of permissibility. When I locate it, it can send me into a tizzy, making me question the very act of making and image…. It slows me down and then often in an act of defiance I begin again. Begin again….important!

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

Lots of materials

What does the future hold for this work?

The work leads me somewhere new.  Not overly directed or determined.  I want to continue to learn and be surprised and energized.  I want to climb, jump, crawl, and ponder my edges.

 Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thank you for this great opportunity to ask these questions. I have mulled over them for several months, leaving and revisiting....perhaps the way I paint as well! I love your project! I enjoyed the intimacy of the questions and also reading the larger dialogue with other artists on your blog. Fantastic work!

Between, 2011, acrylic & wood on wood panel

CLARE PRICE

Phaedra, 153 x 178 cm,acrylic gouache,

 spray paint & household laquers on canvas, 2010

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I am returning to a larger format landscape canvas which I am trying out some new ideas on.  I have just completed a small work for a show called 100 Mothers curated by Harry Pye and am battling with some canvases that have been challenging me for a while.  I am playing with Helen Frankenthaler inspired wet in wet washes and being more free than normal with formats and outcomes.

 

Can you describe your working routine?

I don’t have a particular routine although in quite a Gilbert and George fashion the things I do before and after I leave the studio are quite ritualised (usually in terms of food and hot drinks).  I think this helps one deal with the intensity and the unknown that the studio holds.  I start to work as soon as I get in there either with the mundane aspects of the stretching and priming or the projecting and drawing up of the pixels.  When I am in the midst of a painting it can be very fast and frenetic. As they progress and resolving them becomes more elusive, time is spent just sitting and looking. Paintings are faced against the wall when  they feel unresolvable. The studio is very sparse in terms of home comforts just a kettle and little else.

work in progress

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My studio is an Acme space in an old factory building in Deptford (a former ships' propeller foundry), its wonderful there because where it is is pretty desolate so in that way it is quite a haven.  Its rough and ready with patched up broken windows and a very distressed floor. I can make as much mess as I like which is important to me.  It is in what I consider to be a brutal yet beautiful urban environment and this informs my work to a degree.  Although I love it for the solitude I have also been fortunate enough to meet some very interesting other artists there who have been very supportive and inspiring. 

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc

I start my paintings  on an antiquated computer drawing program.  The pixelated lines are carefully edited, projected and drawn with pencil onto the canvas creating a grid or skeleton. This drawing creates a structure that can be disrupted using analogue gesture such as choreographed drips and sprayed marks. The mark making explores the intersection of something that is visceral with something that is controlled and designed.  I use metallic sprays, garage door paint, Japlac high gloss enamels, Hammerite, Japanese acrylic gouache and oil paint.  In some parts the paintings are flat, stark and graphic. In other parts paint drips voluptuously over the drawn lines, breaking the spacial arrangement  and reopening the composition. I imagine the structures are taken to a point of collapse hanging by their own pixelated threads.    

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

Pretty much everything! it’s mentally all consuming at the moment. I feel like my brain is racing ahead and I am trying to catch up with the progress in my thoughts in formal terms.  There is a shift in the work, I am interested in making the work more spare and reductive and focusing more on the romantic element to the paintings.  I am experimenting with new materials and palettes and creating unexplored compositions in terms of the original drawings. 

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain parameters?

I always clung to familiar parameters in terms of materials and was very rigorous about this. I worked always with Japanese Acrylic Gouache, household paints (B&Q garage door paint being a favourite) and montana sprays. Of late however I have opened up to new ways of working and new materials.  I have been working with oil paints for the first time, although I still work with the gouache for wet in wet “grounds”.  I am working with new palettes and have just discovered white gloss paint as opposed to my traditional black.  It feels uneasy to veer away from the familiar but necessary also.

What does the future hold for this work?

I have a sense that it is on the edge of something new, it is unknown but open and full of possibilities. 

 Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thank you so much for asking me to do this interview.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah 

260 x 169cm, acrylic gouache, spray paint

& household laquers on canvas, 2010

JULIE ALEXANDER

Wayfarer, oil on canvas, 36 x 36", 2011

What are you working on in your studio right now?

I just finished a couple 36” square paintings. And I’m still digesting them. I hope to do some more of that size but first I am going to shift over to works on paper. Ideally I like to shift back and forth, keeping both surfaces, or ways of working, in the same conversation. Sometimes though, the idea that I know what the conversation is seems contrived. Perhaps the paper, being a different size, substrate and applied with different media should be different? I am less interested in a consistent body of work these days.

Can you describe your working routine?

I always start with a pot of tea tucked under a painting rag like a tea cozy and from there one of the key features to my routine is a battle or dance between focus and distraction. I am attempting to start my painting day with some meditation to help bring a more rooted clarity to my practice but my desire is to straight away pick up a brush and start painting. Anything that gets in the way of that frustrates me. That said, my focused painting periods are rather short. I get distracted. I spend a lot of time in contemplation. I zoom in and out of engagement with the work.

Can you describe your studio space and how, if at all, that affects your work?

My studio is a 400 square foot garage in the back yard. There is a 10 by 3 foot table down the middle where most everything ends up, a rolling cart for a pallet and, near the door, some shelves and a small cabinet also with piles on it. There are piles on the floor as well. On rare occasions I clean. The chaos and the order IS the studio. It is ideas building and flowing and a grand excuse for a mess.

Tell me about your process, where things begin, how they evolve etc.

A blank canvas is an opportunity to play. At this point I am not much burdened with what I mean to say. I lay down paint as if it mattered but knowing I will cover it up. It’s an unfettered beginning. I start a new piece with a synthesis of ideas derived from art I see, visual input from walks, abstract notions of chaos and order. I may be aiming toward a certain color or light, a relationship to the edge or a desire to use tape. I don’t think it through much. The big angst is the falling in and out of love along the way. I will fall in love with a color combination layered just so or the way the edges are happening or a texture and t hen I think the painting is done. I’m elated and then some time passes, a day, a week and I can’t understand why I thought the painting was any good. So I paint some more, fall in love again and most likely repeat the same elation and humiliation/defeat. It’s such a crazy ride.
Currently what engages me is an unfinished, vibrant, and clunky beauty. To get there I need to keep the path open ended. I need to have as few rules as I can bear.

Small pink window, tea, ink, flashe on paper, 7 x 7.5", 2010

What are you having the most trouble resolving?

The value of art. The value of my voice. The value of metaphor. The value of the repeated gesture. These things have tremendous value and worth but than again not so much. I’m very interested right now in small, abstract tantric images. I am interested in the backgrounds they used and manipulated, the relationship of the image to mantras, and their ability to jump beyond their cultural context.

I’m having trouble resolving meaning.

Do you experiment with different materials a lot or do you prefer to work within certain
parameters?

Working on canvas I usually stick to oils. I think incorporating other materials takes a plan, a calculation. I have to think about what I can do under and over a material. I don’t know what I am going to do next so don’t know if the other material will work. Working on paper my material selection is opened up. I have used tea, flasche, gouache, watercolor, inks, latex, spray paint, sandpaper – anything but oil.

What does the future hold for this work?

A couple of my new paintings are in a December group show and I will have my own show coming up in February both at Gallery IMA in Seattle. It will be a combination of paintings form 2011 and drawings from 1999.

In the studio I could head different directions within the vein I am currently mining. My goal is to keep redirecting my focus, my activity and attention, to the background.

Is there anything else you would like to add?

Thank you for this opportunity.

One´s part, oil on canvas, 36 x 36", 2011