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

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.

On the 4th of July, we headed to FJORD Gallery in Philadelphia, PA for an early look at their latest show, ‘Body Without Organs.’ ‘Body Without Organs’ is an installation showcasing the material-based paintings of Sean Robert Fitzgerald alongside the playful unconventional sculptural work of Alex Da Corte. Together, the work is playful but the colors and materials combined create an eerie dream-like environment. We were able to talk with Sean and get his insight on working collaboratively on the show while simultaneously running a gallery space and curating shows. After our interview, we wondered around upstairs to the studio spaces where Sean’s own studio is located.

Fjord Gallery is the creation of Philadelphia-based artists, Lindsay Chandler, Liam Holding, AJ Rombach and Sean Robert Fitzgerald along with Natessa Amin, Cameron Masters, and Justine Jividen. The 3-story building holds a gallery on the ground floor with studio spaces on the 2nd and 3rd floors. ‘Bodies Without Organs’ is FJORD’s 13th show in the gallery’s 1.5 year history and is on view from July 5-28th.

Courtesy of FJORD Gallery

SF: The show is a collaborative work in progress between Alex and I, who met about a year ago and really hit it off in an artistic way. We quickly found that there were a lot of weird parallels between our work that we never even expected because we both work in very different ways and with very different subject matters. We collaborated earlier this year on a project for Title Magazine called ‘A Love Sonnet for Jack Smith’, which was a lot of fun. We made these short little animated GIF’s that were structured as a sonnet and inspired by imagery culled from some of Jack Smith’s films. We’ve had the idea brewing for this show for a while now, where Alex would basically make these props for my paintings. And by doing so, the paintings themselves are inevitably changed through the very act of collaborating. I came over to his studio and brought 15 or so paintings and told him he could choose whichever ones he wanted. We’ve been throwing these ideas back and forth for a couple of months and here it is!

F: How did you and Alex work together to create the final pieces? Did you re-work the paintings after or did you give Alex complete freedom to do what he wanted with your paintings?

SF: Some of them were more like – “You can do whatever you want,” whereas some of them were much more collaborative. Or sometimes I’d provide him with a loose sort of guideline for how I wanted the piece to be displayed. For example with this piece, the only real requirement I had was that both sides of the paintings had to be visible because a lot of the times, I re-work paintings by flipping the canvas around and re-stretching it. This one, I really liked from both sides. But, for example, the trapdoor piece In the other room we built together and it came about in this really almost unspoken organic way when Alex and I were hanging out in his studio one day. The show is very much about theatricality and parlor tricks so we thought how perfect to stick this little painting in this trap door hovering over this piece of black velvet.

Courtesy of FJORD Gallery

F: It has that cartoon humor, but in this super physical, textural and constructed way. It has this weird mix.

SF: That’s something that I found really interesting when working with sculpture and collaboratively with Alex. As soon as you turn something with this cartoony aspect into something physical it becomes really uncanny and strange. Have you ever seen when they turn things we know as cartoons into real life? It becomes really disturbing. Everything about it feels just wrong and I love it.

F: How do you feel about your canvases and these paintings that are very formal? You can look at them as image driven pieces but the way you are presenting them completely negates that.

SF: I actually really like that. Any opportunity in which an artist gets to see their work in a new context is automatically helpful. Even if you don’t like how you’re seeing it, it helps you think about it in a different way. I like how my paintings become objects in a very different way than if they were stuck on the wall. They have a completely different physicality in the space as part of a sculpture.

F: Was there one particular piece that you see totally different now?

SF: Yeah, this one over here is really cool. So going back to the idea of trickery or theatricality and parlor tricks, this one, I now see completely differently. First of all, the yellow wall completely sucks out this actually bright cadmium yellow and makes [the painting] into this poopy green. So that totally changed and the fact that this painting was re-streched over another support. The whole thing is really disturbing in that magic-trick or cartoon way because it looks like it’s floating when actually, if you look closely, the entire piece is supported against the the wall by this crystal heart at the top. It’s nice to give the viewer these extra little nuggets of detail that they can notice should they want to really engage with the piece in a more than superficial way.

F: The illusion is broken by having the heart there. It’s a smack in the viewers face which is great. How did you determine what the color of the wall should be? Did you create the pieces and then choose a color from
the objects?

SF: The wall colors came from a couple of different things. In certain aspects, the choices for the wall colors were formal, but they also help to relate the pieces back to each other and form this sort of narrative throughout the show. Also, this Grace Jones album cover was a big inspiration for a lot of it which really just clicked as soon as Alex showed it to me and then everything came full circle and made total sense.

Courtesy of FJORD Gallery

F: Yeah For sure! This is exactly like the promotional image with the figure in black tights.

SF: Absolutely, which goes back to the Grace Jones cover, which goes back to this figure sculpture, which goes back to the title, which goes back to the ‘body without organs’ idea and the act of collaboration. It’s all a big circle.

F: There’s also this domesticity about the objects as well. I feel that this is a strange out of place apartment that I’ve walked into. The space feels like an apartment. Was it ever one?

SF: Yeah I think it was before it became Fjord. There’s actually 9 studios upstairs but it probably was an apartment and probably will be again which is really weird to think about. There’s definitely this really uncomfortable stage set thing going on. We made the installation and set the lighting knowing it was going to be primarily viewed at nighttime, so the lighting is very specific. For example, The other room is terribly uncomfortable in the way its lit. There’s only 2 lights and they’re really dim so it feels like you’re on the set of a David Lynch film or you’re stuck in a bad made for TV movie. In this space with the plant, you get the impression you’re in an office waiting room and everyone else waiting is smoking these cheap cigarettes and you just want to get out but you can’t.

F: All the details have been stripped away where this is a stand-in for an entire space stripped down to its very basic parts. Also with the idea of a cartoon, the logic of when you make a caricature, you draw certain attributes to create an intimate recognizable thing and this has the same vocabulary.

SF: I agree, especially because everything is a prop for itself. The clock doesn’t work and the palm tree doesn’t grow. It’s a really good way of thinking about it.

F: When you look at the space that way, you seem to notice the construction of the building too.

SF: Its funny, all of those things disappear when the walls are painted white. As soon as you paint them a color you’re transported to that house that hasn’t been built yet and you start to notice that the ceilings aren’t properly finished and maybe all of these things are actually floating off the ground a few inches.

F: All the objects feel like they came out of this apartment too.

SF: Yeah, this apartment that doesn’t actually exist. Or this cartoon apartment turned into this real-life nightmare tragicomedy with a man that you can only see out of the corner of your eye. Dressed in black, moving things around.

F: Also you have the transparent brick pattern over brick.

SF: A fake of a fake. The show is very much about things you’re not actually supposed to see. As if we were watching a magician from behind.

‘Body Without Organs’ is up until July 28 at FJORD Gallery. You can see more of Sean Robert Fitzgerald’s work at www.seanrobertfitzgerald.com.

We met with Bradford Kessler at his live/work space located in Bushwick, New York. His work, comprised of pieces from installations and performances, were organized to one side of the loft. During our conversation, we gathered around his computer screen to view his extensive body of work.

Bradford Kessler is currently in his second year of grad school at the School of Visual Arts. He received his BFA in sculpture from the University of Kansas. His work has been exhibited at Tokyo Big Site, Taipei Film Archive, Central Academy of Fine Arts, Beijing, and Electronic Arts Intermix. He has also collaborated with AA Bronson at Art Basel Miami with Esther Schipper, Berlin and Anthology Film Archives, New York.

Bradford is currently in a show titled ‘MATERIAL CONCERNS: Three-Dimensional Objects by Seven Artists’ at Rare Gallery. Referencing Eric Drexler’s idea of “grey goo” microscopic robots consuming the Earth, Bradford’s ‘GAR[ ]DEN’ utilizes “garden ornamentation, primitive fetish objects, and landscape painting” to create a garden, or in his words “a an interface between the privacy of the house and the civic property of the street. It is a space onto which others can look, examine and judge. It is a liminal space, a paradise and a prison.” The grey primed canvas is reminiscent of an old Master painting technique where old pigments were mixed together and re-used to create a “perfect ground.”

Photos courtesy of the artist.

F: How long have you been in New York and what were you doing before??

BK: For 2 1/2 years. I was in Asia for 6 years before here. I studied Japanese for 2 years and went to China and studied Chinese. In Beijing, I worked for Ai Wei Wei. I made art all the while and showed with a gallery there at the time.

F: And now you’re currently at SVA for graduate school. Do you work here [in this studio space] or do you work there [at the grad studios]? How does that work?

BK: I work here most of the time. I’m there one day a week. I work in the biolab there … it’s the nature and technology lab actually as an Assistant and Researcher. Before grad school, I was teaching at Parsons. I wanted to do a MFA but didn’t feel like I could really commit to a full time program with all that was going on and [at SVA], the low residency set-up really made sense and the list of faculty was really exciting.

F: Can you talk a little bit about your work and what you’re doing now and how it’s changed since going to school and before school?

BK: Since 2005, my homepage was never a portfolio site. It actually functioned like a blog. There’s a lot of Photoshop and Illustrator images that were put together and you can scroll through it. I set it up as if they were these wall works and this guy was looking at them. It was kind of just for fun but then I use a flickr page to show my actual work. So I use my homepage as a blog and a blog as my homepage.

Saving the Planet from Bradford Kessler on Vimeo.

For the past 2 years … I guess I should start here. This was in Beijing. This was a solo show called ‘Monumental Ghostly Heights’ that was full of suicidal references and escaping bodily and phenomenological restraints of humaness.. When I came to New York about 2 1/2 years ago, I got on this bio-exorcist kick which was influenced by Beetlejuice. In the film, his job is as a bio-exorcist. The ghost world can hire him to exorcise the living from the house.

One that most embodies that role was Charles Darwin. His ‘Theory of Evolution’ sort of exorcised humans from the spirit realm by placing them on the same level as the animal kingdom in the hierarchy of ‘spirit’ so I made this video. For the animation, I hired this voice actor in LA who did a perfect impersonation of Michael Keaton’s Beetlejuice to read this transcript of George Carlin’s stand-up, ‘Saving the Planet’ and then animated Darwin’s face. So from there, I was like a colorist in a way. I got really obsessed with green. Especially in cinema history, it has always defined the exotic “other,” the evil “other”, aliens, and Frankenstein. It goes on an on, think about the ooze in Ninja Turtles, Slimer, Reanimator…

F: …or the Matrix.

BK: Exactly. If you look over there. I made some of my own ooze. It’s set in … it contains various components of my own DNA and a lot of different things. It’s kind of one of these things that I do that is similar to the things that I would do as a kid like make my own ooze. It’s a fulfillment of my curiousity and playfulness. So the next project I did sort of in this bio-exorcist legacy if you will, was this … it’s called ‘Accident Study’.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

There’s an air blower inside of there that shoots air out and the ball hovers above the cube. The headlamps shine on it and casts shadows all around it. I took the title from Aristotle’s claim that there is no study for the accident. So I was thinking of my own art practice as being the exploration of the unknown, researching all the elements of this world that we live in, that can’t really be defined through systems of logic like science and math. So, there’s a lot of references to metaphysics and the paranormal in my work. In this particular work, those are plastic casts of my face, that I was melting over these skulls. I was painting this green effect and thinking of these as the children of the Wicked Witch of the West and so, I was referencing a continuation of manifest destiny. You know, asking the question, “What’s the motivation behind art and technological pursuits?” I was thinking of the Wicked Witch of the West as this intelligent demon lurking in the west. The “civilized” world moved all the way to the west and now with Nasa and the cybernetic age, it’s looking up into the sky. The use of the floating ball was inspired by Primum Mobile which was the black planet that early Greek philosophers thought all the other planets rotated around. It was like the mother planet.

F: It definitely has this X-files/science fiction feeling to it.

BK: Yeah, there definitely is a sci-fi aesthetic to it. The floating ball, you know, you’ll see it at kid’s exploration centers. There are these cliches or tropes of science and art that you’ll find throughout my work. It’s there intentionally. I compare it to David Lynch’s films. His actors will always be delivering this really cheesy dialogue but there will be this suspense music playing behind it and that juxtaposition is so unnerving. So it’s that kind of visceral flavor that I really try to get at. The cliche is there. David Lynch is a big influence. I grew up in a small town in Kansas where there’s always that evil lurking behind the white picket fence.

Photo courtesy of the artist.

This was at Art Basel Miami with Esther Schipper Gallery this past year.

F: Is that a performance piece?

BK: Actually, it was from a short film work but we [AA Bronson and I] took a still from it and had it produced into a large lightbox.

F: Was it life size?

BK: It was almost life size. It was 4ft by 2ft. We shot it on Super 8. It was for a show at Anthology Film Archives which was based off of the old porn cinemas of New York. It was kind of a divine bukkakae film and so again the slime. Did you grow up watching ‘You Can’t Do That on Television’?

F: Yeah, that Nickelodeon show? It definitely has that influence in it.

BK: Well in that show, the students would get slimed only after they said the key phrase, “I don’t know.” So it was punishment for ignorance and it came from this unknown source above. This all developed from conversations between AA and I. One of Rembrandt’s last paintings is ‘Return of the Prodigal Son‘ which depicts a parable from the Bible of a son down on his knees begging for forgiveness and his father is embracing him. So we were making a blasphemous take on this with the idea of the divine bukkakae.

There’s quite a bit of my work that’s really rooted in blasphemy which mostly stems from my upbringing in a Baptist church in small town Kansas. Almost all my ideas are drawn from philosophy and psychology. Freud and Lacan have played a role in my work but also Nietzsche and Heidegger. Those guys were tearing a part technology, spirituality, and the pursuit of knowledge itself. You can notice these epic Nietzschean and Freudian themes in my work.

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To see more of Bradford’s work, visit his flickr page. You can also visit his “website” at www.bradfordkessler.com and his “blog” at www.engulfer.tumblr.com

James Payne is a sculptor with a particular interest in light, space, and texture. We’ve visited his studio several times before while James was working, but for this visit, he cleared out his in progress concrete molds and set up his space to showcase his more completed works. The only sources of light in his basement studio, came from his concrete light pieces and a single clamp light to illuminate specific works during our conversation. James went to Bennington College for Architecture and Sculpture and received his MFA at the Cranbrook Academy of Art for Sculpture. James is currently living and working in Brooklyn, New York. His studio is located in the same building as Michael Aitken’s.

F: Did you go to school originally for printmaking?

JP: Actually I did my ungrad in Vermont at Bennington College and I did mostly sculpture and architecture. At Cranbrook I did mostly sculpture but in my last year, I did a lot of printmaking.

F: Why did you choose to focus on printmaking in grad school?

JP: I started to work with flat image when I was at this residency in Michigan. I did these prints first. They’re relief woodcuts. Then when I got back to school, I tried a different process with silkscreen stencils and layered image and I sort of tried getting back to where the light-based work is. I see these as related to the light-based installation in terms of capturing direct light and atmospheric field and the process of layering the screens. I’m working towards how the viewer perceives perceptual shifts within a flat image and using a lot of metallic inks and paints to achieve these effects.

F: The materiality of the inks are very integral to the piece. It makes it very object oriented in a way.

JP: They’re definitely more dimensional and I’m working on making them ephemeral in a way.

F: Did you create the light-based work with the lampshades before the prints?

JP: I’m sort of getting back into this work right now. In my first year of grad school, I pretty much only worked in light-based installation. A lot of it started with a loose collection of objects or materials (a lot of porous and reflective skins and membranes, screens and 2 way mirrored glass) that sort of become the work. My studio is in a dark basement, and my first year of grad school it was too. I had complete control over my environment in terms of light and so I just started moving lights around to figure out where I wanted to go.

F: It’s interesting though that you have come back into a basement setting. Has it attracted you? Your materials are so heavy and enclosing and the space that you work in reminds me of a place or a big part of your concrete and aluminum sculptures.

JP: Yeah, it’s nice to be back in an enviornment where I have control over the light and it has gotten me back into working in this way. I’ve really been thinking about light and perception and more moments of – I can go after a paticular moment of a perceptual shift or a condition of light that I am interested in and work with it and push it. With the concrete and foil, I made a little work in grad school but I never really pushed it and so I’ve had some ideas about how to pick it back up. They’re becoming more volumetric now. I’m using the containers I’m casting them into and the foil itself in a more volumetric way. Both things sort of find their own volume and form when I set up some conditions and parameters for working with the material. The heaviness or gravity of the concrete interacts in its own way with the fragility and sensual aspect of the foil.

F: It’s interesting. We were talking earlier about the duality of your work, and how it has this light and this kind of ephemeral-ness juxtaposed with this extremely heavy material in terms of the volume and the way the viewer looks at these things – vaciliating between the two extremes. The prints also relate to this juxtaposition. Can you talk about that a little bit?

JP: The solid mass sort of plays off of that relationship with the light being ephemeral. Suspending the pieces help deal with the gravity of the objects and complicate it.

F: They pieces are hung at this very specific height. It’s kind of at a human scale and the pieces become extremely apparent when they’re hung up versus when they’re rested on the ground. It’s almost as if I see certain personification aspects to them like this totem lampshade becoming a body. Each of these things to me represents, and I think it has a lot to do with the light, but these kind of stand ins for something or someone or representations or at least a nod towards representations of the figure. It’s really interesting especially when it comes down to the material as material which seems to be the opposite – how it melds together so well. You have also been working with the wooden peices for a long time ever since you moved to your studio.

JP: I worked alot with frames and framing as a device especially with loosely organized objects, artifacts and materials that help give it context. I became interested in frames and framing in arcitecture which also has a lot to do with the study of light. I look a lot at how architects use light as well as landscape painters. I was just looking at this Turner, Whistler, Monet book today. I saw the show in London in 2005 and they all have this relationship to how they paint light. Monet is with an almost textural way with gesture and with Whistler, it’s more dark and emotional and with Turner, it’s ghostly. These are all things that I’m looking at in my work in terms of light.

F: You can describe light so many different ways.

JP: They’re all painting the same thing but there are slight differences. The frames in the painting are something that I’m working on. This is a raw frame and I’m okay with leaving it like this for now. I see my studio as a testing ground, trying a lot of different things, pushing things around, figuring out through trial and error and looking at the paticular moment or condition of light and framing.

F: You mentioned when talking about these pieces, your architecture background and just in general with all of these the materials, they’re used in the creation of – building supplies. They’re almost all contruction materials, and I know you cast these pieces and they are specific to certain things but they remind me of re-appropriated or found materials.

JP: They are construction materials – like the molding. It’s molding but it’s more related to the visual pattern. They might become more structures or armatures for the concrete work.

F: The series was on the ground before. This is the first time I’ve seen them leaned up against the wall in this space but they are still very much objects. I find that they are completly different from your other work. I don’t know if it’s the red clay material that makes it seem that way.

JP: The patina allows you to see more of the pressure and weight of the material in these. They are more like frames in a way in terms of how I constructed them. The interiors of these comes from the center. Originally I saw them as more wall pieces but I see them as something bigger.

You can find more of James Payne’s work at www.jamesedwinpayne.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/

F: Have you been focusing more on sculpture than painting? I know that you were painting from your sculptures at RISD but now it seems to be primarily about the sculpture.

SW: Right, the sculpture has kind of taken over.

F: Theres this juxtaposition from this nature and this found automotive aspect but then this [the sculpture from the Brucennial] is very nature oriented versus this even though its anthropomorphic, it’s still seems machine driven. Is there that conflict?

SW: Everything is about the natural things and human made things and our relationship to nature and I guess the idea of this was to try to make this really synthetic looking plastic into a really organic form. By taking these two opposite things and trying to bridge them and seeing what that synthesis turns into.

F: It almost seems like this isn’t anthropomorphic at all. It almost has nothing to do with the figure in some way and from what I remember from RISD, it was almost these kind of landscapes and this kind of ‘peering through different passages’. These automotive parts become “natural” but how did that make its way into the figure?

SW: It was kind of an accident. I have been on this path of making representations of water to paint from. I made an aquarium that turns into a coral reef in my studio, I made a pond and I did paintings of that and so then the next thing I wanted to make was a waterfall. And so I had to figure out a way to keep the water up in the air.

I came up with the idea of making columns that would hold it up. The columns would hold up this basin and then the water would cascade from the basin. So I saw this [second styrofoam column] as futuristic and I saw that [first box column] as modern. I was thinking of these columns representing art history and I wanted to make one that was Classical. I started thinking about this thing holding up the basin kind of like a Caryatid (Grecian women who are the support for architecture). I started thinking about that idea but mainly its this thing that unifies the American perception of landscape through the car. The anthropomorphic perception of cars. The bilateral symmetry of cars that mimics the figure. Cars that are people. Plus, this previous idea of this being a ruin in a jungle.

I have a lot of visions of what this [sculpture] is going to become. I want to make my studio into this ultimate landscape where I would want to paint from. This [photograph seen below] is a place called Las Pozas which I went to when I was in Mexico. This is why I wanted to make a cement statue in a jungle.

F: So these are ancient ruins?

SW: No, these were actually built from 1949-1984.

F: So do you think you’ll create more than one figure? Once this figure is complete, would you create more figures because of the architecture that you’re referencing?

SW: I can’t imagine there being more than one figure.

SW: I don’t ever like to paint sculpture, I paint color through light.

F: Getting back to the whole reason to why you’re creating this and how you wanted to represent a waterfall and how you needed a way to do that, would you then go back and paint from this? If so, what would be your final product?

SW: Well I am a landscape painter but it began to feel kind of limiting to paint the existing landscape from observation. I started building landscape-esque environments in my studio on eye level platforms so there was that depth. I painted from those but I never made a really large painting from observation because working outside, the scale is sort of limiting. So I thought that a way for me to make a really large painting from observation was to make a really large set-up and that’s what this is. I think it would be really great for it to be one to one.

F: Also in terms of water and movement and the ephemeral nature of it, your documentation of it is like creating a moment in time as opposed to creating a sculpture thats always moving. Are you interested in water because it’s hard to reproduce? Can you talk about that?

SW: I think part of it is because I’ve used watercolor a lot. I did a big project with swimming pools. I don’t know but I’ve always been very attracted to water. I just think its one of the most interesting things to paint. I especially want to recreate water and mist and light. It’s such a challenge.