We met with Josh Sperling in his Industry City studio in Sunset Park, Brooklyn. To get to his space, we passed through a furniture studio and walked into his meticulously organized studio reflecting the precision in his work. Each piece is carefully planned out to the wooden structures underneath to how he stretches the canvas on top. There were pieces in mid-process laid out on the tables like puzzle pieces as completed interlocking canvas works hung on walls. We talked to Josh as he was getting ready for his two-man show with his childhood friend Sam Friedman at Joshua Liner Gallery.

‘From the Cradle to the Grave’ opened January 7 and runs through February 6, 2016 at Joshua Liner Gallery.

F: What is your process?

J: I start with an idea and then begin drawing it on the computer. I do not hand sketch. Once the overall composition is finished each individual piece is designed to minimize weight while maintaining strength. All the pieces are layed out on a 4’ x 8’ file and sent to a cnc machine to be cut out of plywood. I receive the shapes, assemble the parts, and then stretch the canvas by hand. This is the most challenging part of the process. After the canvas is stretched it is painted and varnished with acrylics. Finally each part is attached to others to assemble a whole painting.

F: Do you see your work as more sculptural or painting?

J: If they live on a wall and are viewed head on they are paintings. If they live in the middle of a room and are viewed from multiple angles they are sculptures. Up until this point I have concentrated mostly on wall pieces made of acrylic on canvas over wood. I consider these paintings.

F: Does the wrapping of the canvas dictate what the shapes will be or the scale at which they can exist?

J: Yes. Any shape is possible to stretch with canvas if you cut the sidewalls. I have been opposed to this because it has helped me better understand the stretching process and it is cleaner. I design my shapes to be able to stretch without cutting the sidewalls. This in general means larger, curving shapes.

F: I notice that you do not paint the sides of your objects, keeping the the unprimed canvas exposed. Why is that?

J: I do not paint the sides because I want my work to be considered paintings. This is an older tradition in painting. It also shows off the craftsmanship of the stretching.

F: What’s your process for the larger interlocking works? How do you take in consideration wrapping of the canvas within the interlocking structures?

J: I design the shapes with the slightest bit of play between them. When the canvas is stretched it fills these small spaces between shapes and the pieces interlock perfectly.

F: Do you see the shapes that are created by the stretching of the canvas as linear moves almost akin to drawing?

J: Yeah. Certain shapes, especially the squiggles, definitely give that feeling. The movement they create is a direct reference to drawing.

F: There is a certain amount of satisfaction that I get by seeing the structures pre-wrapped, Obviously, I have the chance to see them this way in your studio but have you ever thought about presenting them without the stretched canvas? Or would this change the conversation you want to have about painting?

J: At this point in time I do not want to reveal the structures underneath. I feel that I have yet to fully explore or simply get bored with the canvas wrapped structures. I have thought about exposing them at a certain point down the line but not yet.

F: Do you determine the colors in the digital stage or do you construct the objects first and then determine the colors?

J: I determine the colors digitally but inevitably about a quarter of the colors change once I begin to see how the colored shapes interact in real life.

F: The local color of the object and the shadows are determined by the lighting situation. Some colors seem flatter; the neon colors seem to flatten out the whole shape while other colors give more depth. How do you determine the color and depth you want in each painting?

J: I choose the colors based on their interaction without taking into consideration their individual ability of showing light and shadow. I am beginning to understand individual colors ability to reflect and absorb light but have not fully reached a complete understanding. In general lighter colors have more contrast with their shadows and darker shadows have more contrast with their highlights. This aspect of the work is extremely interesting to me and I strive to create the most dynamic shades within each color.

F: With the wall piece are they each individual shapes or are they recurring? Is it considered one piece or multiples (like prints)?

J: The squiggle wall piece is considered one piece. Each piece was designed individually but arranged on the wall specifically to interact within the whole. After this the colors were chosen also taking into consideration the whole piece. It is a giant painting made up of individual marks that just happen to be paintings.

F: Can you talk a little bit about your studio? How long have you been here and what do you look for in a studio?

J: My studio is in Sunset Park, Brooklyn in a complex of large buildings called Industry City. I have been in my studio for a year but I have had other studios in Industry City before this one. I share a large wood shop with a group of cabinet makers. Within that wood shop I have a private space. These 2 spaces are what I look for in a studio. A dirty wood shop space where I can build my structures and a separate, clean space where I can stretch, paint, and store my work.

F: You work alongside furniture and cabinet makers, do you feel that that has influenced your work?

J: In a technical way. I observe the materials, tools and joinery techniques they use and occasionally adapt one of their building methods.

F: What is a typical day in studio like?

J: Typical is sipping on small black dunkin donuts ice coffee and listening to outlaw country music

F: Your work is very concise and methodical. What’s the most satisfying part in your process?

J: The most satisfying part is finishing a painting and seeing it for the first time. My paintings are made from multiple parts that do not get assembled until the very end of the process. I see the separate parts progress but I never see them assembled on a wall until the last step. After all the hard work suddenly having your idea come to life is the best.

As an artist, Jennifer ties in ‘bad humor’ through the use of found material and working on top of it with an almost academic execution. She appropriates these different vocabularies like inkjet printouts and cartoons found online, and combining them in the work. At first, these different vocabularies seem haphazard but on closer inspection the work is extremely meticulous and specific. Jennifer’s work talks about proficiency and brings about a sense of nostalgia by her use of appropriating these high school drawing aesthetics and twisting it with a bad joke.

Jennifer Lee is an artist living and working in Bushwick, Brooklyn and you can take a look at her Sister window project across the street from the Maria Hernandez Park off the Jefferson L stop. ‘the beautiful room is empty’ featuring the work of Daniel Fairbanks is currently on view until May 17th at Sister.

F: Can you talk about your process?
J: My process is varied in terms of how it starts out. Sometimes its how something is going to look, sometimes it starts with the object itself. I always try to find humor in my work. It gives me a sense of perspective and a clear way to understand the relationship between art making and the way it is received. One of my early pieces I did in high school was this bad pastel drawing of Dr. Kevorkian. It was kind of accidental in that it ended up looking like a joke, but there was this light around his face that made him look god-like, and doing the portrait in pastels made this association more clear. It wasn’t meant to be irreverent towards him but for me, it ended up being pretty funny. I do love bad jokes!! I guess you could say that cliches enforce a type of complacency and working with the obvious “bad-joke” type of material you are dealing with that complacency in some way, or at least calling attention to it.

Image courtesy of the Artist

F: Your work is very meticulously and academically done but at the same time, you’re appropriating objects such as cardboard from a cat food dispenser and giving it the same amount of importance. Can you talk about that relationship?
J: I wouldn’t say that I consciously affect an academic style, more that I am trying to paint neutrally, which I guess has that kind of history to it. Although I will say that I think academia was something to rebel against in the early part of modernism, then it went back to academia i.e. Baldessari style in the late 60s, so maybe I feel like we have had an “academic moment” in this stage of art history. It is hardly as defined as that for me though; like if i find something peculiar at a thrift store, or on the internet, then I might want to add to it or accentuate its weirdness via superimposition. Like the cat food dispenser juxtaposed with a medieval video game image, I really have no idea what the relationship means, but it struck me as I was culling images alongside this cat-box and it seems to work intuitively. As far as the tightness in my work, again I strive for a neutral style, but also enjoy the contradiction in appropriating or collaging an image “by hand”, like it would be so much easier to just stick the photo on the box or silk screen it or something but it gains a humanness that I think has more potential for comedy.

F: Where are you finding your references from?
J: I’ll take materials from anywhere really but I love searching at thrift stores for bric-a-brac and of course random google searching.

F: Can you talk about your live/work space?
J: I live in a two bedroom apartment that I share with my partner Zuriel Waters who is also an artist. We sleep in the living room and use the two bedrooms as separate workspaces. We have lived here for about 5 years, we moved to NYC after grad school in 2010 and this was our first apartment.

F:Can you talk about your ‘Sister’ window space gallery?
J: Sister lives in my studio window which is ground level and facing the street. It is on the corner of Starr and Irving in Bushwick. At 5pm (4pm in the winter) we have a light that turns on which is technically when the gallery opens. At night the window lights up and the artwork becomes very easy to see and illuminates the street almost like a beacon. The physical gallery space is remade for each project but the window itself is about 30” square, so obviously the work we show has to be pretty small. Because of this the shows end up being more collaborative and site-specific. Also that means we are limited in terms of what we can show (small things) but on the other hand we can very easily do projects with artists that live far away since the shipping is so affordable.

F: How does this project relate to your own work?
J: I think that the first impulse for me to make Sister was actually humor, the old ‘NY real estate is so expensive we could rent out our window’ thing; like it could be a new yorker cartoon or something. Now it has become much more than that but the absurdity about it is still there which is important. More importantly though is the act of collaborating and connecting with other artists which is a really enriching experience. The fact that I can go on with Sister really without anyone’s permission and that I can offer shows to people who I think deserve them is amazing and genuinely uplifting!

F: The idea of a window is to look out of and instead, your ‘Sister’ window gallery project is allowing people on the street to look in. Can you talk about how this idea came about?
J: My neighbor a few windows down started putting things in his window like an Elvis bust, and I always thought it was a funny idea, and impressed at how actually visible it was as a thing. I thought that it would be conceivable that a small space lit up with some of the signifiers of a gallery could possibly exist in a way if it took itself seriously enough.

F: You personally don’t get to see and interact with your window project works. Do you keep these pieces in mind when you work or do you consider it a separate entity?
J: I do consider them separate when i am in my studio, only because there is a glowing box in my window that feels more like a giant lamp. But every month I have to start preparing for the next show which does take a lot of studio time.

F: How do you choose and curate the work that goes into the window gallery?
J: Well the project sort of originated with conversations I had been having with my friends Terry Young and Christina Fisher who were the first two shows. Not all artists would be interested or have a flexible enough practice for the window so whenever we see something that would work we try to pursue it. So far we have shows lined up through the end of the year including Peter Wilson, Lisa Cobbe, Faith La Rocque and Cooper Holoweski who are all people that we happen to know socially or through school, but we are not opposed to submissions either.

F: Can you share the response you’ve been receiving with this project?
J: All the responses so far have been great, especially from my landlord’s mother

You can see more of Jennifer Lee’s work at jjlee.org and learn more about Sister at sisterbushwick.com

Peter is currently preparing for his upcoming solo exhibition in the at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (DCCA) in Wilmington, DE which will run from April 8th through May 11th.

F: Can you talk a bit about your process with your paintings and drawings? How do you start?

P: I usually begin a small drawing (5×5 inches give or take) in crayon and colored pencil. I remember going to a fantastic Roy Lichtenstein retrospective and was blown away with how much of the final imagery of his paintings were all basically thought out in his little sketches, usually no bigger than 6 x 6 inches. When I do begin a drawing, I usually start with looking at older paintings for something that can be pushed further or commented on in a new work. Pizza slices, fingers, toes, arms, and legs have been populating my paintings and drawings for the last year. As a painter, I am constantly aware of my hands, and as an art handler, I’m on my feet most of the time, and I eat more pizza than I should. If I’m away from my studio, I try to make a drawing or two for the day, usually making them in front of my computer while glancing at past images of my work. Then I’ll tack up the more successful drawings in my studio and give them a shot on a 2 x 2 foot canvas, my current size of choice.

F: Your palette consists of bright unnatural colors giving off an alluring yet toxic vibe. Can you talk a bit about that?

P: Last summer I started using these neon orange, red and green gouaches. I dove right into using them to paint a series of works on paper, entitled “summer dudes” depicting fat, redneck men with pizza slice faces. I wanted to explore the use of garish, synthetic colors in depicting naturally occurring hues of grass, sky and skin. After completing the “summer dudes” series I began thinking more intentionally about the role of these new shades in my work. I began juxtaposing these lurid paints with my previous vocabulary of neutral and primary colors. Frequently I paint one arm or leg in a middle value, while the other is pulsating with an almost off the charts vibrant neon. These discrepancies in color emphasize the fact that the arms or fingers are striving to connect.

F: You work really thin and build up the paintings into these thicker surfaces. How long do they take to paint?

P: Most of my paintings get blocked in with in a two-week period, and then I will put them aside and revisit them intermittently for three or more months. Much of the time bringing these paintings up to my standard of finish is inactive. They hangout on my studio wall (or floor) with little or no progression. When something clicks while I’m lying on the couch, I make the next move. During this period, I determine what elements are resolved and what needs more attention, fully articulating the role of body parts and background in each painting.

F: How many paintings do you do at one time?

P: Typically, I work on up to ten paintings at a time. In any given week I will focus on three or four paintings to push. I prefer to work on multiple pieces simultaneously since it gives me time to think about the next move while not putting too much pressure on any particular painting.

F: Upon close examination I realize that they aren’t taped but rather meticulously painted free hand, allowing for the paint to lip up making this hard edge but juicy quality. Is it important to you to show the paint being paint?

P: Correct, the edges are free hand. In previous works I sometimes taped edges.
I’ve gone back and forth with using tape and what that means to the viewer. I’ve found that my hand does naturally want to tighten up the edges of things, but I’m beginning to slow down that intuitive process if I think a part of the painting can benefit from a brushy or softer edge. That juicy lip quality you mentioned is something I am consciously pursuing in my work. Similarly, Elizabeth Murray’s late work flirted with machinelike execution, while creating a deft comedic lightly-quivering line. This seemingly perfect yet intentionally flawed surface creates a visual reference for an exacting yet personal touch. While in the past, I have relied on a mechanical approach to how I build up my surfaces, I am now interested in creating a dialogue between stark seemingly taped areas and lighter, more fluid textures to show that the paint, is in fact, paint.

F: Some paintings are done in thin washes and others have really juicy paint. When do you know that the surface works in the painting? Does it depend on the image?

P: It often does depend on the image. Currently, I am enjoying the play of combining thick, juicy oil paint with areas of thin, washy acrylic and gouache. Often, it is the figurative elements in the painting, such as the paw-like hand (a nod to Philip Guston) that are painted with a juicier texture, while the background or a pizza pie wedge is painted with a lean, acrylic gesture. The reason I treat these areas differently is to focus as much attention on the figure as possible.

F: Do you use your drawings as a color and composition tool only or are you directly translating the markings into paint?

P: Initially, the drawings were meant as simply a color and composition tool. That was the idea over a year ago when I began painting directly from the drawings. However, right now is a really exciting time for me in the studio because I am making it a point to translate the crayon and pencil marks into the paintings themselves. It is interesting to blow up a pencil or crayon mark that began within a 5×5 inch square onto a 2×2 foot canvas. I recently began a few 4×4 foot canvases, to explore reproducing the markings on a larger scale. For a long time that didn’t occur to me as something that was acceptable for my paintings, but now I’m using crayons and colored pencils, in conjunction with paint to further reference their origins.

F: The paintings make allusions to phallic objects, hands, feet, arms, legs and greasy late night pizza. There’s a built in narrative, journaling or chronicling certain events or ideas. How does this play a role in the work?

P: Yeah, there are some weird things in these paintings. For the last few years, I’ve been interested in referencing the body without having to paint the whole thing. I mean once you paint something resembling a hand or a foot, there’s the body. Sometimes I like to use a pizza slice as a stand in for a head or a torso, but it’s also clearly just a stupid slice of pizza. It happened by chance that I kept rounding the ends of my “legs and arms” and they then resembled phalluses. I often paint late into the night, and that’s as good a time as any to think about failures and triumphs in love and friendship, these paintings deal with a lot of those experiences. How these hands and feet touch each other, or fail to touch each other, are taken from my own life and helps me process relationships.

F: The square orientation of the canvas is reminiscent of a pizza box or record album. At the same time they relate to a small portrait. Are you consciously making a reference to these other objects with your paintings? What about the square format interests you and what is its relationship to your imagery?

P: I wasn’t initially thinking about the shape and size of a pizza box when deciding on the 2×2 foot canvas, but I think it’s great that it came to mind when you looked at my work. The fact that the canvases could be a reference to a pizza box, which is usually resting horizontally (on a table or my chest), but then mounted vertically on a wall is something weird and funny to think about it. Also, interesting that they remind you of the scale of a small portrait. Whether there is a more blatant reference to a head or not, these images are portraits to me. It’s also a conscious decision that the hands, arms, heads, etc. are close to human scale.

As for the square format, I’ve always just found it to be a very pleasing shape to populate with my imagery, but it became important for my body of work entitled “One More Slice” that I created last spring. In this body of work, I repeatedly placed a large circle in the center of the canvas and then carved it up as I saw fit in order to reference parts of the body, a slice for a head there, a slice or two for a plaid shirt here. I wanted each carved slice, in the center of the picture, to immediately draw the eye to the outer corners. The best way to do that was to use the square, and now I’m too stubborn to change.

F: There’s a great deal of humor in the way you paint as well what you paint, this kind of signature heavy-handed mark that describes your
“hands” grasping for things. How much does humor and the role of the hand matter in your work?

P: My wheelhouse is a brand of humor in the vein of the tragically sad Charlie Brown. My characters and their hands never quite resolve their desires or know how to express themselves fully, but they still want the chance to succeed! These grabby hands are happy to take center stage, but then find it difficult to simply clasp the other just three inches way. When one paw does actually manage to locate and press its nuclear glowing skin onto its more subdued counterpart, there isn’t any clear evidence of reciprocation, only acquiescence. The tenderness and vulnerability coming from one claw to the other is coldly shut down or at best, acknowledged with only apathy. Humor matters a lot in my work, it’s what makes the complicated life experiences palatable enough for me to depict on my canvases.

Peter is currently preparing for his upcoming solo exhibition in the Art Lounge Project Space at the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts (DCCA) in Wilmington, DE which will run form April 8th through May 9th. You can check out more of his work on his website at www.peterschenck.com

Located in the Brooklyn Fire Proof building, Mike Schreiber’s studio is found just beyond a wall, inside the Group Club Association (GCA) gallery. The front half of the space acts as a gallery space that he runs with his partner, Mary Kosut. To get to Mike’s studio, we first have to walk through the gallery. When we visited, the show ‘Viewing Room’ with work by Cooper Holoweski and Clive Murphy was on view. In keeping with the shows theme of domesticity, we walked over pristine white high pile carpeting specifically installed for the show. Beyond the gallery space, we entered Mikes personal studio. In contrast with the white space that is GCA, Mike’s studio is clearly a workspace with multiple “stations” located around the room where he can drill holes and paint.

Can you talk a little bit about your process? Your work seems to tread between printmaking, painting and sculpture.

I’m a painter. We take a lot for granted. However, I believe that every aspect of an object
must be considered. For example, painters tend to make major decisions without stressing the things a sculpture-oriented person would be concerned with from the start – like scale, materials, placement, and space. I care about these things more and more. All of it nags at me. I’m always playing with ratios and the way my work interacts with the viewer, and connects to other works, and the way it changes the space it occupies. My recent stone paintings solve a lot of problems for me.

Immediately when I walk in the room, I’m confronted by these slabs hanging on the walls but I’m not sure what the materials are. In closer examination, I realize that they are all marble slabs. Is the material intentionally obscured with the process?

I love that idea of obscuring. I hadn’t thought of it that way. The slabs are actually a quartz material used in residential kitchens. And these lozenge shapes are the cutouts of sinks. The stonemasons around here have no use for them, so they put them out on the street. That’s how I originally found them.

There seems to be this built in narrative with the materials. Can you explain your process with the slabs?

I’ve been calling them tablets. They started last summer when I used a lot of this stone cutoff for an installation “Counter Culture,” a floor mosaic people had to walk on in order to view the other works in the show. It was for the exhibition ‘In Every Dream Home…’ here at GCA. The show was about the rapid turnover happening in this neighborhood, materiality vs. materialism, and loss. While making the mosaic I kept noticing the recurring shape of these sink cutouts. They’re like tombstones, or vanity mirrors. Each one represents some kind of void.

Holes and rivets open the surface of the tablets. Are the holes already present when you find them or are you creating them?

I add the holes. The quartz is just soft enough so that I can get through it with a hammer drill. The holes are paradoxical in that they literally represent absence but they add up in other ways. I think about them as negative points, or locations. Each painting has three points and together they create an invisible shape – a triangle – the simplest shape. The invisible triangle is a constellation, a kind of map. Then I add these grommets as value referents or correctives. The reflective metal shows the brightest whites and the darkest blacks. I use grommets because they’re typically used on fabric and these refer to the printed image of fabric on the stone. They also make me think of drain holes, or bushings that act as guides for your eyes and thoughts.

How do you achieve the black paint patterns on the surface? The buzzy texture that occurs reminds me of the Moiré effect seen in multiple screens overlaying each other.

The image is mono-printed. I use matte black gesso. I paint the gesso onto the surface of grid textured foam carpet padding and then press the stone onto it with my full body weight. If I do it well I get a very crisp image. But no matter how well I do it the image is always unique and singular. It becomes a snapshot of itself, or a record of a moment captured in stone, like a fossil.

Do you see this body of work as an extension of your other work on canvas or as a separate entity?

It’s definitely an extension. Different materials, same sensibilities. Different bodies of work, but maybe they’re more like limbs on the same body. Lately I’m freeing them up or liberating them – seeing what the hands have to say to the feet, or what the feet want to do with the head.

Your studio is split into two distinct spaces, a gallery (GCA) and your work space. Do you find your curatorial projects in GCA influencing or informing your studio practice? For instance with the floor mosaic piece or your tablet paintings?

Absolutely. GCA has been really generative that way. And the spatial arrangement here has worked well because there is a direct link between public and private. The GCA side is like a test-site for artworks and exhibitions. In turn, the studio side has somehow become better equipped for making things. In a tangible way, I’m in conversation with my artist friends. My studio is a private space, but I don’t want to work in a silo where I am shut off. I guess this is why I deal with the innumerable difficulties of living in NYC. Its important for me to be surrounded by my peers – and that includes not only painters, but musicians and writers as well.

I’d say what’s been most informative personally is the challenge of doing right by other artists. It can be difficult to talk about an artists’ work and do it justice. I’m sure you can relate. And getting it wrong or misrepresenting someone is the worst thing you can do. I’ve had nightmares about it.

GCA is run by Mike Schreiber and his partner Mary Kosut. Their next exhibition Deep Space/Shallow Grave opens Friday March 27th. More info at groupclubassociation.tumblr.com

More of Mike’s work can be viewed at his website www.mikeschreiber.info

Walking into Austin Eddy’s studio, you get the impression that he is constantly producing. There are stacks and stacks of drawings, piles of in progress and completed paintings on canvas and sculptures lying neatly in piles in all areas of his small studio space. Even though his studio is a relatively new one since his move from Atlanta, it is evident that there was no time wasted in making work and there is a general sense of energy and movement in the studio.

Austin Eddy’s work is composed of different assemblages from old paintings and drawings that he reconfigures into a new piece. The way in which he works transcends beyond just painting into drawing and sculpture. The same sensibility in how he approaches his bleached and adhered scraps of paper and canvas paintings is reflected in 3D through his metal and ceramic sculpture pieces.

During our studio visit with Austin, we got to talk to him about his day to day and how his work in different mediums inform each other.

F: Can you start with describing your process?

AE: I ride the train a fair bit, and on the train if its not the L first thing in the morning I like to get a seat. I draw a lot on the train and fill up note books with lots of thumbnail sketches of shapes and figures and ideas for paintings and sculptures. Eventually I go to the studio and bring those note books with me, somedays I make sculptures and refer to the shapes in the books. Other days I make lots of drawings using scraps from the paintings or just drawing or taking the sketches and using those as the drawings. gluing them down, finding lots of ones that are similar and combining them. Most of the time I make paintings, sometimes I look back at the sketches and the other drawings and use those and starting points for the paintings and other times i just start with no end goal. I can’t really tell which I like better, since somedays it’s hard to get started with out the sketches and drawings other days they feel too much like a crutch. Once the ball is rolling regardless of the medium its all very intuitive.

F: You work a lot on raw canvas and using different materials to define color and texture through additive and subtractive processes. Can you talk about that?

AE: I do work on raw canvas. It’s very unforgiving, there is often no going back. I like that about it, it creates an environment for creative problem solving.

I also do use a lot of materials to provide colors and textures. I let things be what they are and am not trying to hide the materials, but make them work together. Recently I started working with bleach which is one of the few ways I have figured out how to start and work with reductive surfaces since the process is so additive.

F: We’ve noticed that your work is mostly monochromatic but there are some pieces that have specific uses of color. Do you lean on the materials in your painting in terms of color direction?

AE: Often the colors are determined by the materials. Pinks from pencil erasers, yellows from wood glue or the reaction of gel medium and news print a whole range of colors from various linens and papers and how they change with the gel medium or bleach, whites from bleach, blacks from charcoal, grays from charcoal dust residue in the gel medium. I will sometimes use white paint, and I often mix blacks to be sprayed.

F: Does the different processes affect the color such as the process of gluing paper to the surface? Over time do you anticipate this and repeat certain found processes?

AE: Yes, most of the time the process affect the coloration of things. Before when I was making the work a lot of the yellowing happened accidentally, but now I am consciously looking for those mistakes to reference color and time.

F: There are several pieces with simplified bird shapes, abstracted plants, and figurative shapes. How do you land on the imagery you use in your work?

AE: The simplified shapes are usually drawn from my life. Often autobiographical or referential to a personal felling or situation. Sometimes though I like a shape and I work through it over and over again, looking for some sort of understanding.

F: What role does figuration play in your work? Is it a launching point or does it evolve into these different subjects?

AE: I have always wanted to be a wild abstract painter like Motherwell, or DeKooning or something like that, but I could never do it. I have a hard time letting go of something solid right now. I am in this weird limbo between wanting to represent a figure while also trying to let go and push the figure into obscurity. But at the heart of it all, the figure is ever present and always the armature for how the painting is constructed. The figure is always the launching point to some degree, but there is always a decision being made about wether or not to tell a story or just make the shape in the most interesting way possible.

F: Before you had a live-work space but now you have a strictly work studio. How has changing studios changed the way you work?

AE: I had a live work situation for a few months when I was living in Atlanta sharing the studio / apartment with my Girlfriend Shara Hughes. Before then, and during, I had a studio in the Brooklyn Navy Yard. So for those few months when I was not living in BK and walking for an hour each way the live / work was kinda nice. It was also a little bit of a drag. Living in the studio makes it harder to turn off. I felt at times when I was living where I worked the work was never done (it never is, but..), like I couldn’t wash my hands and walk away and try to forget about it. On the other hand no commute and constant immersion made it so starting work was less of a process, no transition from studio time to home time to commute time or anything like that. But it never really changed how I worked, It just affected the amount of time I did work.

F: What is a typical studio day like?

AE: A Typical studio day… usually involves waking up getting it together enough to go over there. It’s close now, so its easier, but once i get there i putz around for awhile, sweeping, wiping things down, un-stretching the paintings i made the day before, re-stretching blank ones, once things are in order and clean again i like to try and go for a run, I’m not in the best shape, but i do it and when i get back i drink some water and then i jump into it. What i work on sort of is just a feeling, a lot of gut decisions are made and i work. I spend the whole time there, i don’t leave once i go in, and i don’t have any chairs so i don’t sit down. continually moving helps me keep my brain from slowing down i guess. So I work usually till i burn out and cant make any more good decisions, and then i sweep and wipe things down and throw away dirt rags and paper towels scraps from the paintings etc. take the trash out feeling frustrated and knowing i am going to go back tomorrow and fight the good fight another day.

F: How long does it take to produce a painting?

AE: It really depends on the day or the week or the month. When I am going to work a lot at my day job, I get less done. The paintings take longer to make with less time spent working on them. But usually I try and spend 8-10 hours working in the studio. On those days sometimes i can manage to finish a painting in a sitting. But most of the time the works takes a few days to feel resolved. I feel like I have slowed down and am taking more time with the paintings. Now that there fewer elements in them, I spend a lot more time considering how things lie.

F: In terms of your drawings and sculptures, do you see them as separate practices or do they all influence each other?

AE: They are all one practice i think, they are all made with a similar sensibility. I think a lot of it is trial and error especially when it comes to the sculptures, I am not a sculptor, I am a painter making sculptures, so there is way less pressure and that feels freeing to me. I try and bring that mentality to the other works, always try to use new tools materials marks etc. to make the paintings and drawings. I’d like to think I take that from the sculptures. As far as the paintings go, I am working on making paintings with out paint so there is a far closer relationship with the drawing. Mostly similar in materials and process used to make them, but not so much in scale or anything like that. But that could be subject to change. It all kind of is right now, really feels like a period of fluctuation.

You can see more of Austin’s work at austineddy.blogspot.com

We had been following Shara Hughes’ work for quite some time but had never seen her paintings in person nor met the artist herself. It was by chance that we ventured out for Greenpoint Open Studios and walked into her shared studio space where we instantly recognized her work. During our studio visit, we talked a lot about her paintings and her drawing practice and what it was like to move studios from Atlanta to Brooklyn.

Shara Hughes’ work draws you in to look longer and investigate deeper on what is going on in each painting. Each piece is loaded with layers of colorful combinations of paint and a variety of marks making up the abstract imagery of figures, portraits, and objects which are all loosely based on Hughes’ life. What is also interesting to see in conjunction with Hughes’ paintings, are her stacks of crayon drawings which feel very much “finished” and complete in their own way. Hughes uses her drawings on paper to make “formal decisions” in a more immediate and less precious way and to inform her as she paints. Shara Hughes is a RISD graduate who has also gone to various artist residencies including Skowhegan. She is currently living and working in Brooklyn. Her work has been exhibited in MOCA GA as well as exhibitions internationally.

F: How do you come up with the imagery? Can you walk us through your process?

SH: The imagery is all based on what is happening in my life, but I never know where it’s going to go when I start. I start very abstractly with some kind of wash background and begin to pull out shapes formally. The painting begins to take a life of it’s own and eventually some kind of story comes out of where it’s going and pulls it down to a solid idea. This may not happen until the middle or end of the painting. Some times I’ll have a title in mind when I start the painting and it builds around that idea, but most of the time that changes too. Working abstractly until the painting is kind of ready to take on a life is a way for the work to be more open and evolve organically as opposed to some idea I just come up with and then execute.

F: How long does each image take to build up? Do you ever revisit a painting once it’s “completed”?

SH: If I work on a painting for a week and have enough time in my studio to stay in there all day, an image rarely comes up immediately. It usually takes a day or two of me flip flopping on how much ‘fun’ I’m having when I ‘don’t care’ about where the work is going and how terrible I think it’s going. The extremes of those two thoughts are pretty frequent until I’m in a gray zone of something I can work with.

SH: I have revisited a painting once or twice after it was completed and it was kind of a disaster. If it doesn’t really work in the first place, I think I just suffocate it. If I revisit the piece a year or so later once I’ve kind of moved on from the first, it turns into a not so great painting. I think it’s hard to let something die, so there’s some kind of hope in revisiting something but for me it usually just makes it worse. In a way, the ideas are always getting revisited, so it makes less sense to work on a mistake when I’ve already gotten over it.

F: The drawings seem to get looser, exploring more of the mark and color relationships and less about a defined space. Can you talk a bit about how your drawing practice influences your painting practice? Do you paint from your drawings or use them as exercises informing the painting later? Do some of the same marks internally work their way from the drawing to the paintings or is it by chance?

SH: I keep the work on paper practice separate from the painting practice because my state of mind when I’m working on both is very different. There’s a feeling of looseness with the work on paper partly because I haven’t made many drawings in the past few years and also because theres an ease of getting rid of paper whereas a stretched and prepped canvas seems more important. The drawings are a really great way for me to get out of my head and think about formal decisions in a more immediate way. I’ll make drawings for a month or two and then have them around to inform the paintings, but I rarely work directly from one drawing to a painting. Actually, I have one painting I just finished that I made directly from this series of drawings. I think there’s an interesting connection between the two but they also seem different.

F: The imagery in some, especially the larger works, seem disconnected when you look at each specific image. They look put together almost like collage because of the breaking up and confusing of objects and subjects but also from the textures and colors that create a multitude of different vocabularies. I see a lot of different types of textures and marks in your paintings other than marks that obviously look like they’re made from oil paint, what other materials do you use?

SH: I use oil, acrylic, spray paint, paint chips, airbrush, and oil bars. I like the thought that one specific instance in one painting can be something like a hat, but if placed in the painting next to it, it may turn into a hallway or part of an arm. This kind of idea speaks to how thoughts are formed. Much like a sentence to a story … you change one word, and it means something different. You change one thought pattern and it feels different. You change one thing formally, and it looks different. That kind of awareness is something I’m interested in.

F: Do you have a “vault” or grouping of different painter moves and marks that you use in a given canvas? How often do you find a new one? Is it through the description of objects that you determine the mark? Are you more conscious of how you set up your vocabulary to the point of “Wouldn’t it be funny to paint fingers this way” or is it a process of more unconscious decisions?

SH: Actually I feel like sometimes I use certain things too much. I think there is a large vault of painter moves that maybe everyone uses but to find something that surprises yourself is interesting. It’s nice to have something to use throughout the body of work to make it consistent at times, but I think it’s good to make sure you know why you are using it and not just as something to lean on. I think it’s tricky to get out of thing things you know that work, and I don’t think you have to. I guess since my work is particularly made up of different types of marks, I’m especially aware of being ok with using something predictable and being aware of it’s over use.

F: You recently moved from Atlanta, GA to Greenpoint. How was that move?! Moving your studio and apartment up here probably was a shock in terms of the small spaces. How did you find your current space and how long did it take you to settle in and start painting?

SH: I feel like I’m still settling in. I’m sure my experience will all reveal itself in the work at some point. Last time I lived in New York I was making work about being trapped and crammed in small closets. I’m hopefully out of that feeling this time around as I definitely feel more regular as a person. The space thing is different, but something I was expecting. Theres a shifting work around dance that happens too much and I think would take up less time if there were more space, but it’s not a huge deal. I really love being back in Brooklyn but miss Atlanta as well.

F: What are some things you had to do to make your studio, your own?

SH: Well, I’ve done a lot of residencies so the moving around thing to make work is something I’m pretty comfortable with, but the permanent move feels different than the thought of leaving in a few weeks. I have a big rolling palatte my moms neighbor made back in Atlanta that is really nice. Otherwise, I just bring my dog to my studio.

F: Have you seen any change in how you are working in your studio or has your work changed at all since the move?

SH: I haven’t seen much change yet, but I haven’t really been in there too long. I think the drawings are different and I will probably make more of those this year.

You can see more of Shara Hughes’s works at www.sharahughes.com

Alexandra Phillips’ work reexamines disregarded every day objects. She’s able to repurpose old toys, discarded signs, and materials that are specific to her surroundings to give them a sense of materiality and to create a platform to examine the excesses in every day. She defines her role as a “cultural worker.”

During our many conversations, we had a chance to talk to her and see her studio practice at her Bushwick basement workspace and to see her work out of context of her working environment and in a show at her residency at Wave Hill.

Phillips’ work has been included in exhibitions at the Emily Harvey Foundation, White Box and GoodWorks Gallery.

In 2013, she was the first artist to participate in a residency at The Vyrodepseio in Athens, Greece. Most recently, she was a 2014 Van Lier Visual Artist Fellow at Wave Hill.

Philips’ work is currently on view alongside Christine Heindl in a 2-woman show at Songs for Presidents through November 9th.

F: Your surroundings seem really important in your work. Do you seek out objects in your surroundings or travel to find these objects?

AP: I think I seek surroundings that seem to have the potential to contain the things I want to use. I have come to realize that a big part of my practice is meeting and engaging with other people who have access to the materials I seek. Basically I like people, I am curious about others; I think there is a lot to learn in a casual conversation.

This translates to my work as being curious about the materials that inhabit their respective worlds. By being open to interacting with all types of people that hang around here, or work here, or live here, my knowledge of what materials may or may not be available expands and in turn my perspective on my surroundings becomes better informed.

F: Can you talk more about how you find your materials?

AP: Lately I have been replacing found object with acquired object when I write/talk about the materials in my work. It seems a little semantic but I think acquired is a more apt word in my case because it suggests a level of chance while also suggesting a clear act or intentional effort. So I am using things that exist before me, but in most cases there is some obstacle to overcome or some exchange that has to happen before I can get the thing for my work.

AP: I am particularly attracted to materials that are by products of other activities (the cardboard angles used to pack heavy appliances very specifically designed but always thrown away). I have a desire to participate and this is my way of inserting myself into the ebb and flow of the happenings in my neighborhood.

AP: I like things that seem in unlimited supply (egg crates outside bakeries in Chinatown evening, grocery store coupons in your fence) I am puzzled by the insane amount of materials and goods that human beings put into the world. We have this tendency this need to fill up our surroundings with something, anything! I am interested in that cycle and that compulsion. I look upon it fondly, it has brought forth some of the most pointless things as well as the most useful.

F: There’s a conscious decision about where these things have been through the way they are presented. Can you talk about the different modes of presentation you employ like the platforms to the wall pieces?

AP: I work with such a broad range of materials because I like my studio practice to be fluid. When I am making a piece, it feels similar to solving a puzzle. I’ve already made the choice of what is available to work with during the collection process. Next it is a matter of taking advantage of the inherent characteristics of each thing, I try to find a place where material and idea meet and that’s how I know the form a piece should take. I think about my freestanding pieces as containing their own presentation method. So even though the work might take the format of pedestal and object, I think of the thing as being an autonomous work, top to bottom. I think the space between floor and object is an exciting place and I have come up with various methods of activating it, such as the plaster covered cardboard “pedestals”.

“Photo by Stefan Hagen , Installation view, Sunroom Project Space, Wave Hill, Bronx, NY

AP: I go back and forth between making works that are self-contained and things that are more dependent on the space they are in and the architectural elements in it. So a lot of works in my low ceiling studio span floor to ceiling and depend on those as a method of support (see any pics from TempWork).

AP: I think I am guided by the condition of the thing I am working with. I find myself doing a kind of restoration, not to make the thing look new necessarily, but to highlight its condition at the time.

You can see more of Alexandra Phillips’s works at www.alexandraphillips.net.

Inside Cooper Holoweski‘s studio, there are multiple pieces in progress and it seems as though he has his hand in almost every type of medium including music, film and painting. Cooper’s paintings rest on the line between the digital and physical constructions. From first glance, the domestic imagery looks pretty straightforward but after a second much closer look, the subtlety in the layers of paint applications and transfer processes indicate a much more labored process. With each added process or step, each painting becomes more in depth with more detail emerging. After talking with Cooper, we discover just how much planning and thought is involved and the exactness of each step. There is a linear methodology to his process which reflects his MFA printmaking background at RISD.

Unstructured with works by Cooper Holoweski is currently on view until September 1 at Yes Gallery

F: Can you talk about your process and the medium you use? There is a push and pull from the paint and the transfer process and it’s hard to tell which steps come first and which come after.

CH: There are a couple of different things going on and each piece is different but for most of them I started by staining the canvas and transferring the still-life via acrylic gel, then lots of masking, painting, and blending to make things cohesive. I add a lot of really thin coats of paint that I wipe away in areas that I want to glow. I really want them to look unified from a distance but break apart the closer you get. They have this old-masters vibe about them at first then you start to realize that all the pieces of furniture are digital 3D models and the rocks are photo transfers and candles are inkjet prints and they reveal themselves as a weird stack of collaged materials.

F: How are your images conceived?

CH: They all come from a pretty intuitive place. I mean, the imagery is undeniably loaded but the overall compositions are all from sketchbook drawings that start off really playful. The first one I made was the one with the Noguchi table on top of the cinder blocks and I just had that image in my brain for a while and I wasn’t sure what it meant our how it should exist in the world. It was like that scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where Richard Dreyfuss is making the plateau out of the mashed potatoes. At one point it just struck me that the furniture elements should come from digital 3D models. They are such idealized objects and it felt really appropriate to pull them from that realm where everything exists as a perfect version of itself. So there is this push and pull between logic and intuition in how I build these things and that seems to carry into their final state.

F: How do the video pieces and digital prints work with the paintings? Do you see them as separate and equal or more of one influencing the other?

CH: All of the work has a similar process of combining digital 3D models with photography and something more tactile (paint, clay, ink, etc.). The prints are really different thematically though; they come from very specific places and are loaded with personal narrative. The print series is called “Memory Palace” and each one is a mental reconstruction of a place that I’ve lived or spent formative time. So one of them is a scene of my dad’s apartment in 1989 and it has all these elements from that space that I remember. I’m sure I’ve missed some things and added others to these spaces and that’s the point.They’re very flawed reconstructions that are cobbled together from Cinema 4D and SketchUp and digital photos and scans of ink washes and google images and a bunch of other sources, and it all adds up to this vivid and surreal image.

My video piece Katabasis and the paintings come from a similar place to each other though. They’re imbued with personal narrative too but it’s a lot less specific. To me, the video and paintings are responses to “what happens after the collapse?” They both situate you in that aftermath. The cause of the collapse is not really important but the tour of the wreckage is, and so are the weird beliefs that people hold onto and the objects they find sacred.

F: With the video work, there is a performance element alongside it. Can you talk a bit about that?

CH: The video (Katabasis) comes in two forms, and it sounds silly but I think they are distinctly different even though they are visually the same piece. So there is a version of the piece with a recorded soundtrack. It’s a self-contained video that can be screened anywhere and as a viewer you can walk in and out of it, and considering that it’s 40 minutes of a single tracking shot you probably will.

CH: The other form of the piece is to have it screened with a live band performing the soundtrack. For me, the live instrumentation makes it less about the formal aspects of the video and more of an emotionally cathartic experience. The drums are loud and the three of us give it our all every time we play. We also tend to change things up musically for each performance it so there is this ephemerality that contributes to that feeling too.

CH: There are 3 movements to the piece and if you see it performed with the live soundtrack, I think you’re more likely to experience the piece from beginning to end. That’s just the nature of things, people are more likely to loose themselves in the experience of a performance than a looped video. That being said there is a certain intimacy in the experience of watching the piece with the pre-recorded soundtrack. The piece itself is based on the cyclical narrative of death and rebirth so I also happen to really like the idea of it being looped and people only catching parts of it at a time.

You can see more of Cooper Holoweski’s works at www.thisisprogress.net.

Stephen Truax invited us into his expansive shared studio space where we got the opportunity to get a better understanding of his process. Truax’s small intimate works were lined up on the wall, drawing us in to look closer at his “beautiful surfaces”. At first glance, the marks appear effortless like happy accidents and in a way, they are, though not without (a lot of) effort. The surfaces go through a process of building up and tearing down until they are finally considered to be finished works. The final pieces contain an ephemeral quality of what Truax calls “light” or “air.”

Stephen Truax is an artist living and working in Brooklyn. When he’s not painting, he’s curating shows or writing about art.

F: There’s a lot of history behind each of these canvases. There’s a lot of washing off, applying, building up and tearing down. How long does it take for you to make each painting? Can you describe the process for me?

ST: I have been working on the paintings in large groups, ten to twelve at a time, looking at them all at once, trying to make them work within the group, to build a network of relationships between the paintings. I don’t have a plan for what the paintings will look like in the end, but I try to not repeat the same color palette, composition, mark-making, or technique in any two paintings. It’s kind of the opposite of professional production.

Images courtesy of the artist. Photography by Jason Mandella.

Each painting presents its own set of problems and concerns. They’re linked by identical sizes and materials, high-key color, the level of finish, and the overarching concern of “light coming from within the painting,” which comes directly from Modernism. Working in series this way frees me up to treat each image as a proposition within the group. It forces me to challenge my conception of the kind of paintings I see myself making, or being able to make.

When a painting gets stagnant or starts to look overworked, I wash the gouache off in the sink, leaving only the pigment stain on the gesso or the painting is sanded down and repainted entirely. There is a build up of the paintings underneath the final pass that I think is so valuable in terms of “making light,” or “space,” or “air,” or talking about painting as a medium, or the history of each individual image.

My friend Matthew Miller makes fun of me for repainting them over and over, to avoid “ruining my perfect surfaces,” and my friend Nathan Dilworth loves to say in studio visits that my paintings are merely an excuse to hang a “beautiful surface” on the wall.

F: That’s interesting. How do your “beautiful surface” paintings relate with your photo work?

ST: This particular group of photographs, “Studio Shots,” were taken in 2008 in my apartment-studio in Bushwick, Brooklyn, so in that sense, they’re literally images of my paintings, or actions in the studio. But I only developed them in 2013, and started the project last fall. I am working with a professional photographer, and a friend of over ten years now, Scott Tavitian, who is currently an MFA candidate at Columbia College in Chicago, to color correct and print the images.

Because the images are double exposure film photographs, they are so over-exposed that there is extremely high saturation of color and information, which leaves the final image largely open to interpretation. Through a dialog with Scott, the color and transparency became the most important issues, and final result had a strong formal relationship with the paintings.

Images courtesy of the artist.

In addition to merely looking like one another, the two projects were made in tandem, and I hope that one will inform the interpretation of the other. I want the photographs to position the paintings in a critical, or at least a self-aware stance. Making paintings for me is a part of a larger project that is sort of me figuring out what it means to be making paintings right now, in the context of so many other artists (in Brooklyn) making abstract painting right now, and so much ongoing critical dialog and discourse that’s come out in the last few years on painting. Conversely, I hope the paintings color the photographs in a specific way that is about the concerns of a painter.

F: There seems to be a ‘wait time’ between each of the moves you make through the application or the removal. Is each move calculated or is it more of an intuitive gesture?

There is always a certain level intuition in every studio practice, particularly in the open-ended way that I am working. But the wait time you’re talking about – I call it ass scratching, which I take from Robert Irwin talking about painting – is I think the real work of the project. Rearranging the paintings into different groups, reworking the paintings that don’t fit, completely changing or painting over them is a very fast process. But getting all these elements to function as a whole is a challenge.

For me, these paintings ask a lot of questions about what constitutes a “finished painting,” and how a value judgement can eventually be assigned to a painting without many parameters about how it should look. I want these to stop when there’s just enough information to hold an image together without “completing” it. It has also been really interesting making all these different kinds of abstract paintings, and realizing that some were better than others, and trying to understand why. It makes for a lot of ass scratching.

Image courtesy of the artist. Photography by Jason Mandella.

F: There’s quite a bit of humor in each of these from the palette painting as a painting and the haphazard paint splatter on the photos after years of being in a studio. Where does this fit into your work?

ST: I love stand up comedy. I have been thinking about it pretty seriously for a while. I really feel that the job of the stand up comic is analogous to that of the artist. I love that metaphor. I really see Louis C.K. and Doug Stanhope as artists.

I use humor in my work as a way of visualizing or formalizing a healthy amount of skepticism about painting in 2014, and self-criticality, which is so closely related to the self-deprecating joke. I want the paintings to be able to be funny, as easily as they can be earnest, or sincere.

Of course, the funniness of my work is really understated, and actually might only be funny to me. Or maybe to me and my closest friends – like this text message exchange between me, Matthew Miller, and Sam Adams.

While this insider-humor might be lost on some audiences, I feel that the attitude with which they’re made could be picked up on by my mom, someone who has no formal training in art or theory.

F: Your scale is rather small and personal. There’s an intimacy with your work that only scale can achieve. Can you talk about why you chose the scale?

ST: There are practical concerns behind making small paintings. I want to be able to make global changes to a painting very quickly and see if it works – like experiments.

But additionally, they underscore handmade, individual production. I see it as an economic, if not political position. In a recent dialog, Lauren Portada said that she felt this was a “radical” departure from the commercial art world – mega artists, galleries, etc. – rather than the readily salable objects these small paintings appear to be. I really agree with that.

Images courtesy of the artist. Photography by Jason Mandella.

F:You mentioned that you use gouache. Do you use any other types of medium? How do you create those textures?

ST: All of the small paintings are made almost exclusively with gouache on primed canvas or linen. I am experimenting now with Guerra acrylic and Flashe. But the small ones are gouache, which is a high-pigment content matte designers’ paint, dries to the same color as it was wet, and is reworkable.

There is a dryness about them. The pigments sit on the surface. Some of the marks almost look like spray paint or airbrush. Is this a conscious “trick” or is it more about letting the medium react freely?

I use a lot of different techniques in all the different paintings: resists, pours, washes, wet-into-wet (bleeds), dry brush, scumbling, salt resists, and washing them off in the sink, Mr. Clean Magic Erasers, the list goes on. There is no build-up of paint because I paint thinly and erase so much.

The dryness you’re seeing is the gouache – the gum arabic binder – sinking into the gesso and canvas. I see this in direct opposition to the sexy, slick oil painted surface, which is so beautiful, but to me feels cosmetic, and possibly even gendered (male). I want my paintings to be “in” the canvases, not just on top of them.

You can see more of Stephen Truax’s works at www.stephentruax.com.

Zuriel Waters’s self portraits are earnest investigations in painting disguised in flamboyant sexual figures. His paintings border on the grotesque and yet they attract the viewer to look beyond the man boobs and the penetrating hand gestures, to the marks and the history behind each brushstroke.

We first met Zuriel Waters at RISD where he got his MFA in Painting and we were interested to see where his paintings would take him. Waters invited us to his live/work studio where we got a chance to view his new body of work for his show ‘Bad Boys’.

In the gallery almost life size paintings are hung in typical gallery fashion on white (#ffffff) walls and with enough space to give each painting room to breathe. The various personalities of each ‘Zuriel Waters’ portrait create a dialogue with one another. The most interesting arrangement is of two paintings that are hung together and touching corners which give the impression of being just a smidgen too close to each other’s personal space.

‘Bad Boys’ is currently on view until February 16th at Group Club Association (GCA)

F:How do you start approaching your paintings? Do you start with the figure or the space?

ZW: I usually start with drawings, very fast line drawings and more recently colored pencil drawings. Sometimes these can actually function as studies for paintings but usually it is just a way to get myself into the mindset for working. In terms of space, I guess the figure creates the space you know, and sometimes it comes out of it. It’s hard to say.

F: Does the (self-portrait) subject matter propel the painting or is it more of a reaction through the movements of painting?

ZW: The subject matter is kind of all important at first and sometimes, I’ll have a very clear idea of what I think the painting should be about. Sometimes this works! I love it when it works, because usually it does not work. Most often the initial idea gets painted over but maybe some small part of it will inform the next layer, like a general compositional idea or something. It’s funny, the ideas that will work in a painting, sometimes they are so dumb and simple, and sometimes just awkward overwrought pun-like things.

I think jokes and paintings are really similar. There’s this weird pdf I found online called “Greg Dean’s Step by Step to Stand-Up Comedy” that basically outlines jokes in this insanely formal way that ends up looks like lines of code or a math problem. It doesn’t exactly produce funny things, but if you follow the rules, you definitely end up with something that feels like a joke. Sometimes that’s the best kind of joke though. Rodney Dangerfield seems to do that all the time in his stand-up. There will be this litany of one-liners that are so off the mark but you end up laughing because of the constructed-ness of the situation, where you begin to see yourself almost as the laugh track and less of as a discerning audience member that gets to vote with their laughter. Tig Notaro too; her jokes are kind of the opposite in a formal sense because they are so long winded that finding the conventional joke structure within her stories is somehow really part of the humor about the situation. It seems like these kind of comedians are using the ‘joke text book’ in a more abstract way, something to work against. So yeah, I think you can look at art-making like this. There is a sense of standard expectations that we have when we go into a show and that creates opportunities for artists to hit them or play with them or intentionally completely avoid them. I guess this is all a way of saying that the subject matter is completely embedded in the formal structure of the painting. It’s like if paintings are people, then you wouldn’t say (anymore) that you know, you have your brain and then your have your body and there’s this cartesian split between them, because now I think we know how constructed and physically molded our identities are. I mean unless you are a religious person. I guess it’s easy to take atheism for granted in the art world though.

F: I have to know. Are your self portraits painted from life or from a reference?

ZW: Well, not really either. At one point I did take some photos of me to use as a reference, and it was a really cool body connection to have with the kind of posing and attitude that I was going for. Maybe it’s something I should do more, but usually, if it is a reference then they all come from those little drawings I make.

I’ve been thinking about getting a big mirror though…

Courtesy of the artist

F: Your paintings are overtly sexual in nature and there’s a conflicting ambiguousness in the subject matter’s gender. Can you talk about the feminine and masculine qualities found in these figures?

ZW: If you google search for my name ‘Zuriel Waters’ there is this cheesecake style photo I took of myself as an art piece during grad school that comes up really high on the list. I’m just wearing frumpy socks and rolled up underwear and Im trying my best to have this lolita like victim/aggressor attitude. I don’t know why, sometimes you want to feel edgy and sexy, you know. So, I started adding boobs to my body. There’s this painting I did for Steve Mykytien’s Orgy Park show that is me in this sort of painful orgasmic rapture clutching my tits and having an aching hard-on that was really inspired by that photo. The boobs afterwards ended up being this almost like cartoon character uniform symbology. In other words they started as a way to amp up my ability to sexualize/objectify my body and are now these almost like dumb appendages. I also have boobs in real life too, I mean not me especially, but men have boobs too obviously and sometimes they are kind of floppy and misbehaving and I always thought it was annoying that we have no way of like claiming that body part in a non like body armor kind of way.

F: I feel that these paintings verge on the idea of painting as a form of masturbation especially since these are self-portraits. It’s as much about you masturbating by making the work as it is masturbating for the viewer visually. Either way, we’re all getting off…

ZW: Ew gross… I mean, totally

F: The colors are really great in these paintings. The thick paint and bright colors really pop off the gray surface which in turn, invites the viewer to peer closer at each individual mark. Can you talk a bit about your process and decision making within this?

ZW: Um… color is so hard. It’s such a weird thing to think about. It’s really important to me, because it is so associative and really connected to the way we get around in the world. I noticed in this show that I use a lot of green, but it’s not something I really ever thought about before. Paint is hard too, I mean just getting a color from the palette to the surface and have it be anything like you want is a challenge, and it’s so physical the way that certain pigments are really aggressive and others are so passive. I guess in terms of color and paint handling I just do the best I can, because I am so mystified by it. Growing up with Photoshop I think messes you up a bit when you think about painting and especially color, because it’s really the easiest thing to control on the computer and the opposite in paint. I feel like really primitive when it comes to it, like I have funny mythological explanations for it like as if it’s based on the weather or the stars or something.

F: How do you see these paintings evolving? What future projects do you have in store?

ZW: I mentioned the big mirror before, that could be one avenue. I know I want to get more deep into the space in the paintings, the most recent painting I made has the figure sort of painting on glass in the foreground with a super simple approximation of my studio in the background and it sort of opened up a different way of thinking about it all formally. So there’s that, but you know I wouldn’t really expect that anything like that will actually happen, it’s just a way to get started.

You can see more of Zuriel Waters’s works at www.zurielwaters.com