Table Of Contents June 2012 6 Obie Simonis
22 Susan Strauss
38 Museum of Bad Art
Founder/Editor-In-Chief
Darius Loftis
Associate Editor
Claudia Puccio
Contributing Writers
David D’Alessandro Zoe Hyde Carina Wine
Marketing
Pete Cosmos Kevin Hebb
Graphic Designer
Darius Loftis
Web Designer
Nick Rachielles
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Nicklaus Pereksta
4 Abstraks June 2012
Obie 6 Simonis Written by Zoe Hyde
The past four artists I have interviewed have been at the Brickbottom Building in Somerville. The first time I returned there was a fluke; I had taken the train there once to interview Tim Fish, and without realizing it I had somehow taken the bus there a second time without ever realizing I had been to the building before. When I rounded some chain link fence and beheld the familiar vista in front of me, I was shocked. The Brickbottom building is a behemoth building consisting of artist studios, all rubbing shoulders with one another yet each studio as different as the artist (and art) it houses. This week, I had the opportunity to interview Obie Simonis, one of the creators of the Brickbottom building. His studio has been by far the largest, most impressive space, but then, as a metal smith; hooks, chains, and the various ephemera associated with metal sculpture dangle from the ceiling and clutter up the corners. Obie leads me upstairs to his office loft, where he sits in a high backed armchair covered in a quilt depicting his own name. At his sides, towers of stacked art books idle. Zoë: In your sculpture, you use similar shapes continuously, specifically the rectangle, the square, and the spiral. Obie: When I first started out, I used spirals or helices quite a bit, in kind of a pure minimalist form of just spirals and stainless steel. I’ve been working with that for some time. That was my first real body of work, and when I left college I was hired by another college on the west coast and I created a big, spiraled piece in front of their science center. Page 9: “flame” #1 1998 Page 11: Central Square Theater 2009
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Zoë: So it’s a shape that you’ve been working with for some time then? Obie: Yes, I have, and it’s from here to Cheyenne. I’ve had quite a few commissions of those particular kinds; downtown San Francisco, colleges in Oregon, Washington, and Alaska. Zoë: It’s seemed like your outdoor pieces were more on the masculine side of things, and the wall pieces were soft and feminine. At least, that’s what your work on the website seemed to reflect, I don’t know if you agree with that.
Obie: I do, at this point I’ve been working on both of those things. I concentrate on one, where I just discipline myself to only work with curved, flowing, organic or bio-morphic forms, and do the exploration of those and see the various expressions or emotions that I can bring out by using those forms. Of course, those forms are much more on the living side, less on the intellectual side or on the sensuous side. The forms come from plants, animals, human figure, and they’re an abstraction of generalizations of all those forms. Zoë: Is there a reason why the wall pieces are almost exclusively the more soft, organic forms? Obie: Only because that’s the body of work I was working on at the time. I had a few commissions that were pharmacological companies, biomorphic patent lawyers, for example, I did some pieces for them that were called “Bio-Muse” and I was trying to emphasize those rounded, curved organic forms, more sensuous forms, for those kinds of commissions. Although, I do these in spurts, actually. I did several like that, and then I stopped and I start doing strictly straight lines, more architectonic, more, you might say intellectual lines, more not of nature forms. Straight lines, geometry, mathematics; those
kinds of forms. Those are the kinds of forms you get out of straight line. So then I discipline myself to only use the straight line for some time, until I feel like I’ve spent that. Then sometimes I move to combine the two, and that is probably the ultimate objective; to get the biomorphic shapes and the linear shapes to work together in kind of a compatible or harmonious way. Zoë: I thought you did that pretty literally in the stone and steel work. Obie: Well, I did a piece for the city of Weston, for their public library; they gave me a grant, and I was to develop a piece that I presented to them, and that was the use of again, straight, technological form with, not biological or round form but forms from rocks. Raw stones, in this case, it was lava. That actual piece that went in front of the Weston public library, it wasn’t a permanent installation, they gave a grant and it was up in front of the library for two years. What I was trying to do was kind of get the extreme of an intellectual, high-tech form, where you have a really high-polished, angular, geometric, stainless-steel form, combined with raw, kind of primeval or primordial form, something like a meteorite. It was a volcanic stone that I got from some mountains in Eastern
Page 12: “Biomuse” wall sculpture s.steel and oil paint.2006 Page 13: “Chasing Wisdom” 33 Arch Street Boston City Center high rise
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Oregon where I grew up, there are a lot of old volcanoes around there, and stones, that are really exciting because they’re very much like the Chinese philosophers stones, or wisdom stones, where you have a raw stone that they appreciate and celebrate because of its [relation to] the beginnings of Earth and it’s wearing down with time. That piece is called “Heaven and Earth.”
Zoë: (referring to small painted canvases hung on the wall) Are some of these coated in a veneer?
Zoë: Did you find it difficult to work with the rock?
Obie: These are, these are coated in an epoxy, and they’re actually collages and acrylic paintings. It’s really nice stuff, actually. I’m trying to play with paradoxical and contradictory spaces, spaces that are both shallow and deep at the same time. There are a lot of contemporary artists that do that, or there have been a lot of them.
Obie: It was very difficult in the structural concern because volcanic lava like that, a red lava like that, is not structurally very sound, so to do the compositions I was doing I had to inject structural epoxy inside the stone, so that it would be durable. And so there are a lot of technical aspects that were difficult, but the actual stone is just delightful, visually. It’s very rich.
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Zoë: Do you do much 2D work? Obie: I’ve done a lot of paintings and I do a lot of my exercises for large pieces, which turn out to be more often three-dimensional, on the wall. I do a lot of my exercises in twodimensional works. Drawings and sketches of those pieces.
Page 14: “Code of Phylogeny” Lewis and Clark College Olin Science Center Page 16: “Dualism #7” 6’5” x 5’6” x 5” June 2012 Abstraks 15
Susan 22 Strauss Written by David D’Alessandro
I don’t know what it was about
Susan Strauss, but as soon as I met her, I knew that I liked her. Perhaps it was the paint splattered on her jeans and covering her fingers, or the box of paintings she gingerly carried in her arms. Maybe it was the slightly wry smile she flashed at me after my terrible directions added another twenty or thirty minutes to her already long drive from Westport to Quincy. Or maybe, just maybe, it was that she was exactly what I was expecting. When I first see an artist’s work for Abstraks, I instantly begin developing a mental image of what he or she is like as a person. I believe, perhaps naively, paintings, photos, or sculptures capture the soul of their creators and display their personality to the world. From time-to-time, the impression I get is right on. The first images I saw of Susan Strauss’ work (susanstrausspainting.com)—beautiful en plein air oil paintings—gave me a sense of a calm, down-to-earth, passionate painter who loves nature. The second group of images—remarkable decorative interior walls designs—expanded my mental picture to include a person with a tremendous imagination, artistic foresight, and a mastery of texture Page 25: Giving and Receiving 45” X 40”
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and color. Susan, and her newest abstract paintings she brought with her, encompassed all these characteristics, and more. Right from the beginning, Susan was easy to talk to and honest about her work, her struggles, and her successes. “I always wanted to be an artist. I grew up in New York, and my Mom and Grandfather really loved art and painted some. They would take me to see museums, and I would see the paintings for real, live. Those are great memories. The experience of seeing them live, not in a book or virtual for the first time, was great.” Susan followed this love of art through college. However, she did not receive as much instruction as she would have liked, and she really had to develop her own voice and carve out her own path. “I went to a school that did not have a lot of instruction. You had to find your own way. I was not sure how to get into the business of art. I went out into the world, and the world is very big. I went through a time with a lot of art, and then there were times without. I wanted to find what I wanted to say in the art.”
One of the ways Susan has found her voice (there are many) is through decorative art. She transforms plain, interior walls into bright, layered works of art. For instance, she can turn an ordinary room into a Pompeii Venetian plaster paradise or make a wooden wall look like it’s made of stone or marble. “If you gave me samples of things, I always saw the colors. And when I saw the interior elements, I was able to find the non-traditional color that fits. Color is very interesting to me.” Strauss has made a great number of works over the past few decades, but her plein air paintings are the most prominent on her webpage. Susan’s plein air (open air) paintings are made with oil and depict a plethora of amazing landscapes that cover winter wonderlands, streams, fields, forests, and so on. Due to the nature of painting en plein air, many of these are on smaller canvases. “Plein air is difficult because of the weather. You can’t bring a big canvas outside in the wind and rain. You can’t travel in all weather with a big canvas.” However, the relatively small size (many between 8’’ by 8’’ to 18’’by18’’) does not detract from
the paintings’ ability to inspire the viewer. Susan’s plein air creates an awe of nature that demands both an adventurous urge to get up, get out, and run through the wilderness yet, at the same time, lay absolutely still in the grass listening to the world as it chirps, babbles, or gusts around you. These paintings have a deeply personal meaning for Susan. “My father was a big gardener. He would grow flowers for my Mom to arrange. Mom gave me painting and Dad gave me a love of nature. [These paintings] are a memory to them.” For a glimpse at the kind-hearted energy that emanates from Susan, you don’t need to look further than where she has chosen to display bigger examples of these types of works: a hospice in Rhode Island. “[The hospice] is a great place for them to be all together. They’re joyful and will be good for people to look at who are in a hospice.” Recently, Susan has moved to making abstract pieces. Changing her styles and subjects of paintings is nothing new for Strauss. In fact, she has been doing it her whole career.
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“You make a series, and then a new series comes along. Some people stay in the same place. That hasn’t been my experience. It’s a lifelong process.” Part of that process was taking a workshop. Abstract art is not new for Strauss; it has been something that she worked with before. However, the work she is producing now is much different because of the instruction she has recently received. “I took a workshop and realized I could go out and make new art. This work is brand new, very fresh and very exciting. Last year was a revelation. With everything I’ve learned over the years, and with instruction, it has been so helpful.” Susan’s abstract paintings are a wonderful blend of landscapes and layered colors. When she brought them out in the coffee shop, I couldn’t stop looking at them (I caught some of the other patrons trying get a peek too, but they were too shy to approach us). Some appeared to be close-ups of trees, others looked like frozen ponds. However, the vast amount of color and layers really allow them to be interpreted by the individual. “I follow the painting. It’s like finding your way through the trees,” she said with a laugh. “There is no intention Page 30: Closer 12” X 12” Page 31: Seeing Into 12” X 12”
in them. You can take something real and make it into a painting. But, you can also paint without any outside references. They are almost like more of an inner landscape. They become landscapes without trying.” Although her excitement for her new abstract work was evident, she still works en plein air too.
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Museum of 38 Bad Art Written by Carina Wine Photography by Nicklaus Pereksta
In order to have good art, bad art
must exist. The Museum of Bad Art (MOBA) wants to remind you that while there are dozens of places to see good art in Boston, there remains only one place to lower your standards and laugh your ass off. Touring one of MOBA’s three physical locations, or their online art gallery, makes you think about how bad art has brushed up against your own life. My personal timeline would be: 1994- Found a painting of an obese blue man with no face or legs next to a dumpster; hung it in my room despite the revulsion of my parents. 2006- Helping a friend move, I asked him if he planned on taking the godawful painting in his living room that I had always admired for its complete lack of artistic merit. Him: “Why wouldn’t I take it?” Me: “Didn’t you find it in the trash?” Him: “I painted that last year…” 2012- Playing Draw Something on my phone where friends and strangers alike take the time out of their busy day to tell me my efforts at attempting to draw Lady GaGa are complete rubbish.
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MOBA is the curated public version of your parent’s refrigerator proudly showcasing that drawing you did of Batman shooting a mermaid in the face. MOBA is all of our mother’s outsized pride. Some mothers have even betrayed the innocent bond they share with their children by donating one of their child’s paintings to MOBA! Who are these people, and how do they sleep at night?! Works also come to MOBA from the artist themselves who know a good bad thing when they paint one. Art offerings make their way to MOBA from the museum’s extensive network of fans, patrons and friends all acting as scouts for the next ghastly masterpiece. Works have been mailed to MOBA from exotic kingdoms like Denmark, San Diego, and Framingham. Sometimes, paintings are even left on the museum’s doorstep mewling in distress. Of course, the most common sources for paintings are thrift stores, yard sales, estate sales, and trash days. With the booming crop of students and homegrown arty weirdoes that swirl through Boston, one can imagine bad paintings being ejaculated regularly into the environment like the spawning salmon of Capistrano. On moving days, especially in college neighborhoods, it is common
to see a warped canvas on the curb sandwiched between a three legged end-table and the corpse of a Christmas tree. In the space of MOBA, unhampered by artistic expectations, the abandoned artwork is allowed to bloom in glorious reincarnation. The depressed spider living next to the circuit breaker in your basement is reborn as a golden Buddha. Like the Reality TV genre, if there are enough human foibles on display, people will want to gawk at them. The paintings do not suddenly become jewels, but by earning a place in the public’s eye the work is at least worthy of whimsical consideration rather than outright ridicule. The garish and unpalatable suddenly becomes worthy of contemplation. If you do not feel that bad art can be taken seriously just know that somewhere right now a sociology student is writing a graduate thesis entitled “Dance Moms: An Examination of Attachment Parenting By Proxy on the Sexualization of Preteens Appearing on Niche Market Cable Television in North America”.
actual bosoms, as we know, is a staple of good art. Bad art is no different except that the artist painting bosoms has no actual knowledge of female anatomy. Paintings at MOBA feature purple nipples, breasts that hang from a woman’s shoulder blades like pocketbooks, and areola reminiscent of Direct TV satellite dishes. The paintings may come from all over the world, but the anatomy is strictly alien. At MOBA’s location in Davis Square (basement of the Somerville Theatre, next to the bathrooms) there is a lone male nude (or nood, as MOBA calls them). Fittingly, he is tucked away in a corner trying to hold on to the remaining shreds of his dignity. The artist who drew his junk was most certainly a dyslexic sock puppet gumming on a raggedy stick of charcoal. The first word that springs to mind when you think of the sock puppet art market is “untapped”, so you can see why MOBA is such an important institution for giving alternative artists representation in the mainstream market.
The original owners released their paintings into the wild and like Angelina Jolie scooping up children around the globe; MOBA gathers the orphaned artwork to its benevolent metaphorical bosom. Depicting
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The Museum of Bad Art has “bad” in the title, but that is where any hint of unkindness stops. I was relieved to learn this because I was initially put off by the mildly mean spirited name. I want my mean spirit like I want my coffee: scalding and thrown in other people’s faces. However, the more I thought about it the more MOBA's name seemed appropriate. The artist clearly acknowledges the badness of the art or he would not have shoved it into a Goodwill bin with a 28 baud modem and two left shoes. MOBA acknowledges the works are bad and still wants to share them with the world. MOBA is like the friend who pushes something half-eaten into your hand and says, “Taste this, it’s terrible!”
Also: “irony is very rude but criticize vigorously.” And: “irony is tragedy satire is a mock”
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Is ridicule the sincerest form of flattery? Checking in with our generation’s greatest repository of collected knowledge, we find that Yahoo! Answers has this to say: “Irony is a mask used to express the self-desired in a given moment. Satire also uses a mask to communicate but its mask is composed of ridicule, irony, sarcasm, hypocrisy and is used to express critique of a person or an institution.”
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