Traveling to rural Connecticut to see Ted Gahl’s studio, further and further out into the northeast landscape, I witness dilapidated factories scattered in between the hills of towns that have long been abandoned by thriving industry, and over time have gradually started to fade back into the surrounding nature. I realized through this emptiness what this place was about. It was an echo of its past, the furthest place from New York. A place to focus, a place to paint. This was exactly what Ted is here to do. I finally get to his space, which is in an old stocking factory adjacent to a river. We walk into his studio, where he is gearing up for a solo booth presentation with DODGE gallery at the Expo Art Fair in Chicago.

F: I like this ‘sailor’ one.

TG: Oh yeah, that’s a reef knot. Its like a really simple sailor knot and the idea was that it was also kind of in the shape of a sailboat.

F: You know what it reminds me of? It reminds me of the framed knots that you can buy at a gift shop.

TG: Oh yeah! Or like at a seafood restaurant. That’s kind of like the nautical equivalent to being in Texas and seeing wagon wheels on the wall at a barbecue place. That’s really funny.

F: Yeah. Its almost like that knot becomes a mark.

TG: Yeah and again, that’s a thing that no one probably will get. That’s okay, I guess. It’s more for myself.

F: I think its pretty clear with the context of the other ones.

TG: Yeah and that’s one that, you know when I show stuff like that, I like them to throw it off a little bit. Five of these (more traditional paintings) and one like that in a row of six.

F: So is it a constant reevaluation of “this is an image” and “no, its an object”

TG: It’s like a comma in a sentence. It’s a break. I like showing them all in clusters. I treat my smaller work a lot like the drawings I do on napkins or paper. I almost look at them as sketches more than I look at them like singular paintings. The ones I just did in California are a good example of that. You know, that’s like working for a week – Some are made at night and some are made in the morning. They’re all a bit different.

F: It seems like they’re the same idea executed differently. Some of the ideas pick up other ones.

TG: Definitely. I got a lot of sunglasses going on in there [painting]. In LA, they’re so obsessed with sunglasses and sun. Everyday it was so nice.

F: Did you paint the larges ones after or before?

TG: Before. I didn’t want to come back and totally rush so I did these three roughly before I left.

This one is called ‘Tuesday Ideas.” I went to a bunch of shows before I went to L.A. Basically all the drawings and the paintings are quick sketches of actual images in shows. This (pointing to sections of painting) was a show at Gavin Brown where there was a really great Carroll Dunham so this was the arm in the Carroll Dunham painting and the guy with the gun behind himself. These are all little details. They all become pretty abstract now but this is just a woman looking at a painting, and a woman looking at another woman’s hat in one of the galleries. They’re quick drawings. So this essentially, you’re looking at my Tuesday in the context of a fictional studio and here’s the easel. This is the painting on the easel, and this is the painter in the studio with the arm relaxing, looking at his painting with his fishbowl-a little Matisse reference. All these different things and this mirror, tools and stuff and the paint rag hanging off of the easel and the floor with paint spills all over it and the mouse hole, so… I’m sure some people look at it and they just see a bunch of shit, but that’s where it’s derived from, it’s not completely arbitrary.

F: It’s interesting, looking at an older painting at your house, which was so figurative, and then looking at the ones you were cutting apart at RISD where you peeled stuff off. Those were very abstract and now it seems like your work is somewhere in the middle, back to being entrenched in imagery, and at the same time, kind of hidden or subdued.

TG: Yeah I think what I’ve been trying to do in the last couple years is to find a balance within those two ideas. I think when you’re a young person painting there is always this pressure, whether brought on by peers, faculty, etc,. If you’re going to paint abstract, you can only do that. If you’re going to go figurative, you have to stick with that. I employ both modes in my work, and the scale tips one way more on some than others. It’s really fun to try to do and that’s what I’m going for. I also got to the point where doing this stuff, the abstract ones with the paper and stuff was getting too far away from actual painting. It got to be almost too much about placement and collaging, with an outcome more based on the material. From here on out I just want to make paintings. With the small ones, there’s definitely stuff going on where it goes off the path a little bit, but when it comes down to it, 90 percent of the work is just painting. Paint on canvas. That was a big thing for me the last couple of years, just to try to keep it bare bones and not go crazy with the materials.

F: Right, not leaning on the materials.

TG: Right, and when I showed you the back of that card (undergraduate work at Ted’s house) you had a really good point. It’s really funny that those were so different and figurative, but even then you could see how they were the basis for my current work, this collaged, drawing-based imagery becoming a painting. It was just a little bit more blatant, the image was clearer for people to read. Now you have to do more work when looking, and I like that idea. I want it to be more difficult to pick out what’s going on, because otherwise I might as well do screenprints, or make a logo or something.

F: The napkin ones: do you do sketches and then put them together?

TG: Yes, and you can see I literally do them in the shapes of a canvas. I’ll do a shape that’s a 48×72 inch shape, but basically done on a napkin. Sometimes four drawings will turn into a painting where they literally snap together in four pieces, like a window. Or, what I’ll do is go in and say “I really like this kind of chest shape, or this weird shirt thing, or this head silhouette.” Basically pick and choose. This painting (60 x 72 inch painting in progress) was based on drawings I did of a Bastille Day party I was at. I was wearing this shirt that had these pipes and cigars on if and kept looking at the shirt upside down. There where these patterns and leaves – and croissants in this bag. So now I have that for half of this painting, maybe I will keep it, maybe I won’t.

F: So with all these ideas from the napkins, do any paintings ever get made that depict one singular image?

TG: That happens in smaller work, but hasn’t happened yet with the larger paintings. I think it takes a long time to do a painting like that, kind of like Alex Katz does. I don’t feel like I’ve done enough yet to do that kind of painting. I admire that, but I can’t do that yet, I think I have to work up to it.

F: Do you play your VHS movies while you work?

TG: Yeah, that’s all I do! A lot of titles and little nuances in the movies I watch are put into the pieces. I used to listen to music, and still do, but I find that I’m tired of my iPod because I haven’t gotten any new music lately. So, I just put in a VHS. Obviously I’ve seen all these movies, but I love to listen to the dialogue. You can tell by my movies that I like dialogue. I could listen to the scenes in “Jackie Brown” all day.

image courtesy of artist
F: Did you ever paint in oil paint?

TG: Yeah, I took oil painting courses when I was at Pratt junior and senior year, and did a lot of still life paintings and stuff like that, but as far as making my own work, no I haven’t used a lot of oil. Mostly because of space issues and chemicals, but I’m getting pretty close to giving it another go.

F: You should, but its interesting the way you use acrylics it feels so much like oil.

TG: That’s what Seth (from Nudashank) was saying when he was here the other day. “This looks like oil, this one looks like oil.” I don’t work in an impasto style, but I do layer a lot of paint at times. You can see a chalkiness or tackiness from the layers, but there is not a lot of paint coming off the canvas, I keep it pretty flat.

F: How long does it usually take you to do one of these small paintings?

TG: I find it’s interesting to talk about how long work takes, because you make paintings too, and it’s a lot of fun when you’ll be messing around, and you have an idea and do it and it comes out just the way you want it to on the first try. Then there is other work that is cursed, and no matter what you do to it, it never works. You have to literally throw away the stretchers. No matter how many layers of gesso or how much cool shit you do to it with whatever, it just doesn’t work.

F: Sometimes for me I have to get acquainted with the canvas, break it in a little. But foryou it seems like, and maybe because the repetition of some sizes, you can attack it and get what you want out of it.

TG: I think it’s always hard. Regardless of content, I think one of the hardest things for artist or painters or whatever, is to realize what you should be doing. Realizing what your strengths are. What you’re best at, or what you enjoy, or a combination of both. At the end of the day, all my work is based on these drawings on napkins. Like I was saying before, you have to try and search for that balance. This is what I always do, what I have always done and probably what I will keep doing, so why not pay attention to it?

You can see more of Ted Gahl’s work at www.tedgahl.blogspot.com.

F: Do you mainly work in oils?

APJ: Now I just do oil paint. I make drawings with charcoal and pastel but when I use paint, it’s just oil.

F: I think its really effective. From the sketches, do you create the painting or do they come together by themselves like painting as painting?

APJ: I’ll make sketches in my sketchbook just to figure out ideas of things I should paint. I’ll make drawings from that just kind of working out ideas further than the sketches. From that, I actually…I make models. I have to paint from life so I make models and then I paint them. The beds series – that started out…I had ideas of what I meant to do and I had ideas of how that image could be created. Each painting was a different way that I felt like that could happen and I built a model at first to see how light would hit it if it were made a certain way. Then I kind of went away from the model because I was taken with how flat I could make it. It was this funny thing where it turned into an abstract painting. Then I found myself hitting a wall cause I felt like I wasn’t painting anything anymore so then I made a big model and I painted from that. I mainly do it [paint] from models.

F: For all of them? Even the food ones?

APJ: Yeah, the food ones specifically, I have to make myself because there’s information there that I couldn’t make up.

F: You were talking about the bed series. Was that the first time you made the models?

APJ: Yeah, I think the first one that I did isn’t here. It’s the one that’s on the postcard. The first food one was the cheeseburger and I made a very small model for that. I cut squares out of a piece of paper to see how light would hit it when you fold it up from the right hand side. That was the first one and then the other ones came and then the final one is that one with the blue and the yellow stripes. That’s the one that’s more directly from a set up.

F: Are they all from the same model? Are they just paper and objects that you find or…?

APJ: The food paintings are all made by cutting and folding paper. Thats the only time I use acrylic anymore is when I paint the models themselves. I’ll paint like, to make a pepperoni or a tomato or a chicken nugget, I’ll cut a circle out of stonehenge or some heavy printmaking paper and its larger than I want the actual chicken nugget or pickle or whatever it is to be. I’ll cut fringe, like lines and fold those over so it kind of stands up but before I do that, I’ll mix a color that I want it to be in acrylic and take my brush and paint them all individually. For the pepperoni, for example, I don’t have to make this cadmium red with alizarin crimson in it because I just paint it all cadmium red light. I light it and the rest of it happens and that’s stuff that I need to make a painting.

F: I guess when you’re with the bed one for so long, you change up the scene in a sense by changing the sheets or whatever you do to it. You’re working on the painting but you’re also working on the model as well.

APJ: Yeah, you got to change your sheets. Yeah, it’s like however many ideas I have of making that one thing. They’re all kind of different based on different ideas. That one’s called Nightlight. That one, I was thinking about this flatness again, but there’s a light source right here in the painting and I broke it up into those radiating circles but then it becomes flat. It becomes some sort of strange color wheel. Its like in a fight with itself because it wants to be flat but those circles don’t meet up so you see these layers of flat plains. If you look at it pictorially, its kind of what I was working with and that’s kind of where the beds were going. If you look at anything from above, you flatten it out so its kind of what happened with those paintings.

F: The bed is like this living situation and the burger is sustenance. Is this almost a documentation of your life in a certain sense? Like everyday things?

APJ: Right and yeah definitely. My thesis show was called ‘Eat and Sleep’. For awhile its all I could do. That’s when I say to myself, “Oh, the day is done. The day is beginning. Oh, I have to eat now.” Its just kind of those fundamental things that you don’t really pay a lot of attention to but I feel like they kind of dictate the way we function. Its also, I was thinking about them as, sometimes I think of them as rewards. I’m not making a painting of a slice of pizza, I’m painting a model I made of a slice of pizza. The same thing with my bed. I’m not painting my bed, I’m painting a model I made of my bed. So, its like never there and its also, its always the idea of what everything is. I kind of like playing with that more than being literal because I like the idea of looking at this and being like, “Wow, that’s a really fucked up way to see a hamburger.” But its because I’m looking at a hamburger but I like that kind of play with perception.

F: You’re like looking for these different layers then the idea of a hamburger or a piece of paper through a painting.

APJ: Right. I also like how absurd that is.

F: Right. You have to work so hard to get to a hamburger but it’s just a hamburger.

APJ: I think that’s funny.

F: So the small ones…are they studies? I noticed the green texture one showing up in that painting over there.

APJ: Those ones were kind of the last ones that I was doing. They’re ways for me to carry on the ideas that I had while I was making the larger paintings and you kind of see them more so. The ideas that I had weren’t dead to me yet. They’re still stuff that I need to resolve. When I was doing that painting with the clothes, I made that big green rug with that wood floor and I was like, “this could be a painting” and I really liked how that looked but I wanted to make it the painting that it was supposed to be. At the same time, I didn’t forget about the painting that it used to be so I wanted to do that again in a different way. It might happen again. These motifs, these sleep motifs like symbol objects, like that bed, it was always a reoccurring thing. I had many ideas about what anything could be. It could’ve been one painting and I could’ve just worked on one painting for 6 months. I could’ve worked on a painting for 2 years but I have so many ideas when I’m painting, I just – as soon as I see that, I’m just, “Oh, I should just stretch another canvas.” I usually have a few going at the same time. When I was thinking about the light happening, it gave me another idea.

F: So painting is kind of like your ability to work through that.

APJ: Yeah, it’s like putting up a thing of canvas as a necessary thing so I can lend another thing from it. The ideas just keep coming as I’m working – which is a good thing. Its like one thing leads to the next. Not always but sometimes. I made this painting called “Weave” and it was a painting of the weave of a canvas like if you zoomed in and I thought that was what painting was – just layers upon layers and just assembled in a certain order. That started happening and then I thought it was too much surface and there wasn’t anything to the painting but the surface. In a lot of ways, that’s all that painting is but I like there to be something there – some upheaval, and for there to be some kind of decision made. That’s why I got into these paintings. That has been reworked several times and stretched on two different stretchers. They always come out of some kind of struggle and I like that in a painting. I like that I can see the work and I like how the painting ends up being the result of something that went on and not just something that was just executed. That’s when I thought I was backing myself up in a corner when I was painting some of the beds, cause I wasn’t painting anything and that happened to me a lot before this body of work. I feel like this [the models] opened that all up for me. I can just make whatever I wanted to paint. I like that. I like that everything comes out of my hand too. I’m not painting a real thing. I’m painting a thing that I made and painting my thing. It’s like making my own world.

F: In terms of the space, has that changed the way you work? Can you talk about your studio and how you work in it?

APJ: Before here, I was in a space that was much bigger. It was like a warehouse space. As soon as I got there, I had enough space to make a huge painting – not just a big wall but enough space to look back. So I went into my studio and stretched this huge canvas. It was like the size of half of this [current studio] wall. I was making paintings like that. When I moved here, I started to think about scaling down and really honing in on the craft that I was doing – starting to pay attention to mixing color, starting to pay attention to what I was doing with the space and that led me to making the models too. I also have a door now. Before it was just open space. So a lot of people would come in and talk. I would have critiques in school and I just wasn’t finished with work. I feel that that could really screw you up really bad. It takes me a while to make a painting. I need the space. I need the privacy. I like this place. I like feeling like I can spill a bunch of paint on the floor and not worry about it. I have an easel. I like to paint on an easel. I like to paint on the wall. I like to just have a bunch of stuff everywhere. If I feel like making the cheeseburger today then I can do that and its already set up and ready to go. I don’t have to put everything away and put back up. No one else is going to come here and use it so I don’t have to worry about it. This is my place. Normally I’ll have stations. I’ll have a station where I’ll build all the models and a table where I have all my paper and acrylic paint. I have my oil station with my glass palette and all my paint is organized so I know where everything is. I’ll have a drawing station where I keep all my drawings. There’s a definite organization thing that needs to happen so I know where things are and I can do whatever I want that day.

You can find more of Anthony Palocci Jr’s work at www.anthonypaloccijr.com

F: I know your background is in architecture. Can you talk about how why you decided to enter painting?

NN: I started in Milwaukee at an architecture program, setting up to be an architect and after the first semester, I was like, ‘Yeah, I don’t really care how a building stays together’. I’m more interested in conceptually how these things happen. Then I switched to fine art. I still have a minor in art history and theory and architecture. I figured I might as well just do it. I think a lot about buildings that exist in the world and the idea of them being physical places and then I take them and make them completely not physical and they become this illusion on a 2-D surface. That interests me and also thinking about, specifically now, buildings Communist and Fascist architecture. Prisons are really interesting to me. Construction sites are pretty interesting too. So that’s where I’ve been kind of focused recently.

F: In your work, you have these very specific hard edges and in that sense, can you talk about how you went from architecture to painting in your work?

NN: This painting and that painting and I have a lot of other ones in the kitchen. They’re taken from the neighborhood. These are brownstone façade as you would see them as you’re walking down the street. What it is, is just a section cut of just the façade and then what I do is, I extract them and I connect them. In that piece, they’re more specifically the frontal piece of this and they do look really hard edge and pristine but I don’t use tape. I hand paint them. For me, it’s really important because, I think, its that futility of the mask. How the mask of the building are the details of the façade and how upon closer inspection, that façade is really deteriorating because of the weather and the things that happen to it over the years. That’s why I don’t use tape.

F: So its about this imperfection from the hand and the obvious materiality of the paint.

NN: Yeah, from far away it does look perfect but upon closer inspection, you can see the build up of paint where I’ve really tried to get that edge to be as crisp as I can or where I might’ve missed the paint because I always start with an underpainting of bright orange or yellow. Its always the complement of the primary color that I’m using. This painting is purple so I used yellow as the base. Not that it does so much because it gets completely covered but it definitely influences the colors that come on top of the surface.

F: Is it oil based or acrylic?

NN: Its acrylic.

F: You even see these subtle shifts in hue but not really in tone. So that gives it that fuzzy look in terms of space. Does that come about naturally or are you very conscious about how the next one is going to be this and the next one is another hue shifted?

NN: I put down a color. I see what it looks like and I’ll mix another color from the color that I’ve already used and I’ll see like ‘Okay, maybe it should be just a little bit lighter or a little bit darker’. I kind of work that way but then then I also do that Albers thing where I play with making one color look like two colors. So in the center of this painting, the center black is the same black thats on the outside. I’m conscious of that. I’m playing with those sorts of color. The technical things are something thats interesting to me. Specifically when I look at buildings, its more at twilight when the light is hitting them depending on where they are on the block. The light is different but then theres the light that’s being cast from the outside to the inside. There’s this idea of privacy and not privacy. That’s where the colors stem from.

F: In this one, its not as much about the silhouette. It becomes something completely different and it almost becomes unrecognizable. I can’t read where the building is versus the space. Can you talk about that?

NN: This [Façade 12] is a later painting. I was taking the façades and I was starting to connect them and creating large squares so that there would be four façades connected. Where the stairs connect, there would be the upper portion of the cornice. I would start to create these different abstractions with just a variation. Some of the blocks overlap one another and interact. There’s this idea of inside versus outside but then also what shapes are created out of these built shapes so that they create their own spaces. Its a question of what’s positive and what’s negative and what’s inside and what’s outside.

F: Which is going back to that one with the color and the lighting but in this one, it’s more about the shapes and the composition. Now in this one, this is interesting too because its drawn on the wall so its directly referencing space and your studio too.

NN: Its something I’ve wanted to do because these exist in smaller drawings and I have this large wall. I worked for Pat Steir on a wall drawing that she did on the Lower East Side and I was like, “Well, maybe I should try and do a wall drawing’ because I used to make drawings that were pretty large. They were about 7 ft by 10 ft long and I was like, ‘what would happen if I did it directly on the wall’. So, I feel that by doing it on the wall, for me, it has more of a relationship to our body because its starting to get closer to our scale. Obviously it isn’t exactly our scale because I can only go so big in here but I think it opens up a lot of possibilities for me as to the tools that I use and how it interacts with the actual space versus a space on a paper and how the viewer interacts with it. What that relationship is becomes a little bit more visceral than having to imagine being inside one of the smaller drawings.

F: You’re kind of doing it for yourself in a sense because its in your studio.

NN: Yeah, absolutely. And I would be more than happy to do this any other place too but this is the support that I have and this is the space that I can do it in.

F: Its interesting because, getting back to the previous conversation, about how these studios were actually dorms. You’re creating these things in this living, or past living environment and then you’re painting living environments too.

NN: Yeah, I’m actually going to paint this over tomorrow and then do another one because I want to get another one done before I don’t have this studio.

F: These two panels and the drawing too, those are graphite as well?

NN: Yeah, everything is graphite.

F: Do you draw it out first before you paint it?

NN: So, what I do is, I do draw it out. The first layer that I do is obviously gessoing. Then the color ground and then I build up on top of that with a soft pencil because it just mixes into the paint. I don’t have to worry about it coming through and then I paint it. They’re all different. I guess that’s another thing that I didn’t really mention. They look symmetrical but they’re not. Everything is completely different. The space is different. The façades are different. Everything is different.

F: So for this, they’re actually taken from around the neighborhood?

NN: The dark paintings are. They’re from the neighborhood: Bedford-Stuyvesant, Clinton Hill and Fort Greene.

F: But then these, the linear ones are a lot more imaginative.

NN: Those come directly from my head.

F: It seems that its attacking the same thing but from a different kind of point.

NN: Yeah, they have similarities in conceptual issues but I feel like the drawings which I call ‘Constructions’ are speaking to something that’s a little bit different in a way than the paintings.

F: In talking about the support because you’re painting on canvas versus painting on a panel. Is that because you’re doing very linear drawings so you need that surface or…?

NN: I used to draw always on canvas. I would do fine drawings on canvas and then I kept getting questions, ‘why are you drawing on canvas?’ and I was like, ‘well, I like drawing on canvas’. I guess what happened was, I was taken to a place where I really wanted to paint again and I hadn’t painted in 3 or 4 years. I was doing drawings, just constantly doing drawings on all sorts of supports. I didn’t actually think at all about painting the paintings on panel but I felt that these drawings specifically felt like the panel would work for them. I like the fact that the panel, unlike the canvas, because I’m using a hard pencil (I’m using like a 7H pencil), it becomes a little bit incised into the board because it accepts it. If the light is hitting it just right, you can see that there’s these incisures in them. The other thing with the drawings is like the paintings, they look perfect but they aren’t perfect. There’s a lot of overdrawn lines. There’s a lot of erasing marks and I can’t get rid of them because they’re incised.

F: Can you talk about your space a little bit?

NN: This was the second space that I had at Pratt. The first one was also in the dorms and it was a space that was shared between me and five other people which was kind of weird. It was the only studio in the dorms. It was one of the big dorms. It was on the 17th floor, so it was kind of nice to come over here and have a door that I could lock and just be in here. I think this space is really interesting because its kind of the same era of the dark paintings that I’m doing. It has the same sort of old decrepit feeling like the ceiling is falling apart. It has this homey feeling in a weird way.

You can see more of Nick Naber’s work at www.nicknaber.com.

F: Tell me about your most recent work.

KM: For my thesis show, I did an installation and a lot of the stuff that’s in here was part of it. I had half of the gallery and you had to take your shoes off to come into it. There were all these blankets and pillows and stuff on the floor and I had this table with all the artist books. I had these really big collages on the wall which are actually all rolled up in there right now because my studio is pretty small. I can’t have everything out all at once. Then I also had some smaller installations on the floor. I had two videos that were playing. They were stop motion animation videos. That was pretty much it. Oh, and I had a couple of these fans in there too and the lighting was kind of low – kind of like a bedroom. I had like four lamps…that were decorated and the overhead lights I had sort of dimmed. I sat in there the whole time. It was kind of like a performance. I received people and they could stay as long as they wanted. I had food and stuff out constantly and so, it was sort of about the conversations that I had with people when they were in the space and while they looked at everything. I sort of achieved everything I wanted to in one installation.

F: And you would acknowledge these viewers and talk to them about whatever you wanted to? What did you talk about?

KM: Yeah, I didn’t have a script or anything. I was basically being myself and inhabiting that space. People would sometimes talk about what they saw or ask questions about the work and they’d also ask questions about me and then we’d always start talking about random things, whatever they felt like talking about.

F: So, it’s almost in a weird sense, creating this comfort zone in a gallery setting and transforming it from a place that might not be the most comfortable.

KM: Yeah, I was thinking about two things- first of all, whenever you go to an opening, its kind of awkward like you don’t know what to do with yourself or your body. So I thought if I had a space where everyone could just sit on the floor, then people would want to stay longer and actually talk about stuff instead of just small talk. I was also thinking about myself and how for all the thesis shows here [at Pratt] are one person, one week shows and you have to be your own gallery guard. If I have to be in this space for a whole week by myself, who knows if people will come by. What kind of space would I want to be in?

F: In terms of the work because I see almost all of it as one single object. There are all these little objects that make up this one thing. Do you see it that way or do you see it as individual objects or finished pieces? How do you go about that in creating your work?

KM: I guess I think about them (like most things I make), they could be separate but they could also be part of something larger too. I think the book is a good metaphor for my work. You have this one object but within it, it contains multiple pages so you could tear them out or you could keep it all together.

F: You reference a lot of products that you find interesting and then, in turn, you’re creating products out of products. Is that a viewpoint of life in general? Can you talk about that?

KM: I’m definitely interested in consumerism and that was, maybe a few years ago, when that was a major conceptual component of my work. I think it’s sort of expanded out from that because it’s also about collecting and saving things and I’m also interested in the idea of souvenirs or objects containing memory or referencing the past.

F: I see a lot of these patch quilt things that become tapestries on the wall. That also in a way, becomes a metaphor.

KM: Yeah, everything is composed of little miniature things coming together. Also, the idea of being comforted by something. I’m also really interested in repetitive action too.

F: I would almost see that if you were to turn on that fan. It has that movement and the repetition that you were talking about in the fan. Back to the idea of the studio space… Being at Pratt, has that changed how you work in terms of your studio or being in different studio spaces. Do you do something over and over at each studio that you have?

KM: This is my second studio at Pratt. I had a smaller one my first year. I try, in all my studios, sort of divide materials that are waiting to be used and stuff that’s already being used. There’s half the space that I’m working in and the other half of the space is containing things to be worked with. I always recycle things in my work so if I build an installation then I can take it apart and use it again and sort of catalogue it. I always have things divided in different areas or bins by what they are. Usually above my desk area, where I make my books. I want to have lots of things to look at and those things I can use in a piece but then if they’re not being used, they come here for me to look at. I want to be able to see everything at once so that I can know what I have and be inspired to use it. I also like to watch TV while I work so I always have a TV and a DVD player and I’ll play a lot of TV shows.

F: Do you think that even though you’re probably just listening and glancing over, that watching tv changes your work?

KM: Yeah, depending on what I’m watching, it changes what mood I’m in and how I make things. I usually try to watch things that I’ve already seen before so that I don’t have to pay attention to it but that I can still follow it.

F: In terms of the objects, how do you choose what you want. Is it more of what interests you or are there certain colors or aesthetic that you choose that reminds you of something? I almost see a childhood, like these would be the things that I would find under my bed 10 years later. Is there something where you used to have these toys and you’re trying to come back to it?

KM: Well, everything that I use in my work with the exception of maybe 2 or 3 things that I’ve ever used, is stuff that I’ve collected now as an adult. None of the things are directly from my childhood. A lot of times when I’m looking at something, it reminds me of something and that’s why I gravitate towards it. I want the things to be universal, like you said, something that anyone can gravitate towards. I am really drawn to things that you would forget about or are sort of unimportant in a way like packaging from things that you would throw away after you open it or stuff that you would get in the mail. I think there’s something about them where…I kind of think about what I do as making something out of nothing. All of the things are kind of forgettable in a way but when you bring attention to them, they change.

Image courtesy of Kelly McCafferty

F: I was reading an article and it was about this drugstore that they closed in 1992 but all this stuff stayed the same. They just boarded it all up and then they opened the store and its exactly the same. All these products from 1992, including magazines and that type of stuff were still there. There was this one thing that really caught my eye though. It was a box of bandaids in the tin metal box. It just reminds me exactly of what you’re talking about. These very specific things that are associated with certain memories.

KM: Yeah, I like what you’re saying about the store. I think about stores a lot having worked retail a lot in my life. Also, theres this five and dime store in Kentucky, where I grew up, that still exists. They keep the same products on the shelf and keep adding new things in. Every time I go in there, I’ll find this thing that’s from 20 years ago that’s still sitting on the shelf. I think that’s sort of how I think about my work because I use old things and new things. A lot of the new things that I use sort of make you think of old things so everything is sort of stuck in time somehow.

F: Do you consider what these objects would be like 20 years in the future?

KM: I haven’t thought about that before. I’ve been making my work in this way for about 5 years now. I used to make paintings before that. It’s been pretty consistent over those 5 years. I’ve been drawn to the same kinds of objects and using them in different ways and surprising myself. It’ll be really interesting to think about that. I think time in general is pretty important to me. A lot of things I think about are trying to hold on to time and stop it from going. I think that’s where a lot of the childhood ideas come from.

Image courtesy of Kelly McCafferty

F: Its interesting to see the drawings versus the collages. Do you see those as almost the same thing in a certain sense or different? I see the collages as paintings quite frankly. What’s your connection to the paintings you were making and the collages that you’re doing now?

KM: I started off making paintings. That’s always been what I’ve been drawn to. There’s a lot of things that I love about paint and paintings in general. When I was an undergrad, I first did paintings and they were oil paintings and then I did encaustic paintings. I got really sick from the process and inhaling the pigments. I became allergic to paint and solvents that I were using. I really had to change what I was doing. I couldn’t use the materials anymore. So, I started doing a lot of collages and drawings which I’ve always done. I love the idea of collage like finding something and finding a new home for it or reusing it and making it important again. I do feel that way too. I think about color and the relation of shape when I put things down. It could be painting in a way. Even when I’m doing an installation, I feel like its meant to be seen as a whole from above like one giant painting.

Update!
Kelly McCafferty will be in a two-person show alongside Panini Malekzadeh at Freight + Volume. She will be showing an installation and a video/installation. The show will be up this summer from July 5-August 11, 2012.

You can find more of Kelly McCafferty’s work at kellymccafferty.net/