ERASE R
ERASER
CURATING CONTEMPORARY
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Emergence of the Black Shining Star There is no need for atrocity against this Full fathom, it achieves The look of accomplishment And looking forward, rest comes nearer And summer comes stealing away sins Dispelling out secrecy Pushing against Protestants, Catholics, as well as the non believers They wonder how does blackness shine Is it the metallic, is it? The magnetic draw, power A surge within an urge giving off light? Black as a beating fist, cold as a Christ Here is a block of ice For the eye-sore--- what ends This mourning is a star, black, shinning To wonders, no worries, no need to ask Nothing surfaces form These dreary explanations? They are what they are, and nothing else ~ Gerald Delmar Ratliff
ERASER VOLUME 3
VOISINE HALL VISSERS THOMAS KAROLAK WITMER R AT L I F F
CURATING CONTEMPORARY
Contributors
Melissa Staiger is a New York City based artist, independent curator and educator. She has a BFA from Maryland Institute, College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland and an MFA from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York. She was nominated and attended the Robert Rauschenberg Art Residency located in Captiva, Florida in 2013. Selected Solo and Group exhibitions are ABC No Rio, American Abstract Artists, The Bruce High Quality Foundation, Cementa Festival, Equity Gallery, Ground Floor Gallery, Kent Place Gallery, Renée Riccardo of Arena, Trestle Gallery, Transmitter Gallery, TSA, Underdonk and the Wassaic Project Festival. Tina Ruggieri is an Assistant Curator at the University of Alabama at Birmingham’s Abroms-Engel Institute for the Visual Arts since 2019. She received her Bachelor of Arts with a concertation in Art History from UAB and is currently working towards her Masters in Art History with a concertation in Comtepnoary Art. She has curated shows such as Shona McAndrew: Wednesday Night and Jiha Moon: Chasing Spirits and co-curated Quentin Morris and A la carte: A Visual Exploration of Our Relationship with Food. Will Sears was born and Raised in Philadelphia, Sears now lives and works in South Portland, Maine where he moved after having received his BFA in Painting from Syracuse University. He exhibits nationally and his work is held in several private and corporate collections. He has attended residencies at the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, Hewnaoks, The Quimby Colony, and Vermont Studio Center where he was awarded a Wolf Kahn & Emily Mason Painting Fellowship. Jeffrey Cortland Jones is a painter, curator, and professor who lives in Southwestern Ohio. His work is represented by Galleri Urbane, Dallas + Marfa, TX; Gallery IMA, Seattle, WA; Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, New York, NY; TW Fine Art, Brisbane, Australia; and &Gallery, Edinburgh, Scotland. He received a Master of Fine Art from the University of Cincinnati’s College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning and a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, both in Painting and Drawing. Jeffrey was the inaugural curator-in-residence at the Contemporary Dayton, is currently the director and curator of Divisible Projects, and is a Professor of Art at the University of Dayton where he heads the Painting program. Brian R. Jobe is an artist and Executive Director/ Co-Founder of Tri-Star Arts based in Knoxville, TN. Jobe’s studio practice is focused on sculpture, installation, and public art. Jobe’s studio practice is focused on sculpture, installation, and public art. His solo exhibitions have been on view at venues such as Mixed Greens Gallery (New York, NY), Blue Star Contemporary Art Museum (San Antonio, TX), University of Wyoming (Laramie, WY), Alabama Contemporary Art Center (Mobile, AL), and McNay Art Museum (San Antonio, TX). Jobe regularly serves as a visiting speaker, conversation moderator, and juror across the Southeastern U.S. Brian Edmonds is an artist, writer, and curator based in Alabama. His work has been exhibited nationally, including New York City, Los Angeles, Miami, and Nashville, and internationally, including London, Paris, Marseilles, and Cyprus. Brian started Curating Contemporary, an online exhibition space, in 2012. Since its inception the site has hosted over 50 exhibitions. In 2019, he began publishing Eraser, a biannual book featuring the work of contemporary artists.
DON VOISINE Will Sears: As President Emeritus of American Abstract Artists, you must have forged
some amazing friendships and had great dialogues with incredible artists over the years. Can you talk about the value of fostering community as an artist? Were there any artists in particular in your life that influenced or challenged you more than others?
Don Voisine: I am my own biggest challenge to myself as an artist, always coming up against
and pushing the limits of my talents and abilities, the shortcomings of my education and economic restrictions. I am generally not a joiner of groups but I have a strong interest in history. The AAA’s link to the development of abstract art in America was why I accepted the nomination in the first place. One of the original founders, Esphyr Slobodkina, was still around and occasionally came to meetings. Ed Ruda had stories of the meetings at The Club where the Ab Exers and Tenth Street Artists held court. I value my friendship with Thornton Willis, who I met there as well. One of the things I always liked about being in NY was the large community of artists. Regardless of what was trendy, whether your ‘type’ of work was being shown or not, or had critical support, there were still enough other artists working in a similar vein, or sharing a number of concerns, that you were not alone. I think the internet and social media has changed this to a large extent, in that people in smaller remote areas are no longer as isolated as they once were. Artists are always looking for ways to present and discuss ideas. (Note the current interest by the art community in Clubhouse.) Finding people to communicate with and share ideas is a little easier.
WS: Maine has historically been a haven for artists, whether they call it home or a summer
getaway from city dwelling. You grew up in Maine, and have been in New York now for 40+ years. I have read interviews in which you said your work is no longer about specific places so much. Despite that, I was wondering if Maine’s historic lineage of artists have helped shape your work in any way throughout your career. Don Voisine: When I was referring to place in those interviews, I was talking about the sources for my early floor plan paintings. Small places, a few hundred square feet of an interior space or
Photo by Brad Ogbonna
Wall (2019). 30 x 24 in. Oil on wood
facade,nothing as large as a geographical region. Aside from a few watercolors of the seashore I made in art school I don’t believe I have ever made a painting that directly references Maine. Perhaps in a title, now and again. My influences are wide-ranging, from early Renaissance predellas to Chinese painting from the Song, Yuan and Tang Dynasties that I first encountered at the MFA in Boston. Individual artists important to me include geometric painters such as Mondrian, Friedrich Vordemberge-Gildewart and John McLaughlin. Other important artists are Newman, Guston, Diebenkorn, Beckmann - the list is long. My teachers at the Portland School of Art were always citing Marsden Hartley as one of Maine’s great artists. The work I saw at the time in local museums and galleries did not stir my imagination, but when I saw a retrospective at the Whitney Museum in 1980 I finally saw what they were talking about. I had to leave the state before I was able to see a local treasure. My peers in art school were equally influential; Gladys Manchester for opening my eyes to Agnes Martin, Marcel Duchamp, and feminism; Michael Weindling for introducing me to Beuys, Judd and a myriad of other artists; Maury Colton and William Manning for showing me what was involved in being an artist; James Wilkinson for seeing a kernel of possibility in my naive early efforts; Kathy Bradford for being a longtime friend, supporter, fellow traveler on this lifelong quest to be an artist.
Brian Edmonds: There is a commonality that runs through your work. The palette,
forms, and spatial concerns form a tight vocabulary. Works appear to inform one another yet you never seem to repeat yourself. Like Harvey Quaytman, you seem to rail against static painting. You continue to mine away at shapes like the X, rhombus, square, and rectangle, though I don’t recall ever seeing a circle. How do you continue to find new ways to approach painting while keeping it fresh and new each time? I realize you don’t think in terms like “fresh” or “new” but, really, how do you continue to find new ways to explore shape, form, and space? DV: Given that I spend more time with my own work than anybody the last thing I want to do is bore myself. There can be a certain tedium in making work, certain processes just take time and are necessary to getting somewhere in a work, but as a visual artist I want the end result to be something interesting to look at, something visually compelling. You as the viewer may not see it (and as the artist I may not let it be seen) but there is lots of repetition in my process. In reality my work changes slowly, through repeated explorations of variations and forms, until I can crack it open in some way. There are some forms I’ve used I have never been able to find openings to enter new territory with. Not yet, at least.
Something Jasper Johns said - “Do something, do something to that, and then do something to that” - is a handy daily reminder for the studio. I constantly try things out and I have to see them, I can’t just conceptualize a form and know if it is of any use to me. This past winter/ spring I took elements that are usually found on the perimeter of my compositions and moved them to the center, some I flipped around.
BE: When I see your work I think of Malevich, the black X and cruciform, Harvey
Quaytman and John McLaughlin, color and spacing. Who were some of your early influences? What drew you to abstraction and minimalism?
DV: My influences have changed as my needs have changed. I’m not a storyteller so ab-
straction seemed a more appropriate approach for me than figuration. I have always liked the openness of abstract art. I didn’t start out wanting to make hard edged reductive paintings, but as my work progressed, it led me there. In the early 80s, when I was first beginning to find my own way, Guston and Diebenkorn were very important. Then in the late 80s Mondrian became very important but only when I realized that whenever his theories caused him to “paint himself into a corner” he would adjust his theory and keep painting. Given the weight theory carried in the eighties this realization was a major source of comfort to me. I began seeing McLaughlin paintings at the Emmerich Gallery in the 80s and immediately responded to the quiet presence of his work, which was very different from that of the New York School painters. He didn’t make extremely large paintings, he had a different sense of scale from East coast painters. His work was influenced by early Chinese painting which interested me a lot when I was in art school. The Boston Museum of Fine Arts has a major collection of this work and I got to see it often, Boston being where we went to see exhibitions and stock up on supplies. Portland Maine didn’t have much to offer in those days. I didn’t get Minimalism until I experienced a Tony Smith sculpture called “Die” in the mid-seventies. It is a six foot metal cube that elicited a very visceral reaction when I stood next to it. For the first time I felt I “got” it, or at least found I could relate to minimal work in a meaningful way.
BE: The black square in “Wall” is monolithic, appearing to hover above the painting.
Do the black forms represent a void or negative space or a way of entering the painting?
DV: All of the above. The black square does hover above the painting, but if the light strikes the painting from a different angle the black square could appear to sink into the painting. Positive and negative forms can flip back and forth depending on one’s viewing vantage. I once had the chance to work in the Park Avenue apartment of a major art collector. In the morning light a red bar in her Rothko was the predominant element in the painting. By late afternoon the red had receded and the blue and green forms came forward. One rarely gets to experience a Rothko in this way, as it is always displayed under very controlled lighting at a museum. Out in the world a painting can live and breathe, rewarding extended viewing in constantly changing ways.
BE: I don’t remember seeing a sketchbook in your studio. Does the painting unfold
organically as you work or do you approach each painting with an idea in mind? How do you approach color and form? Which comes first, the color or the form? Is there a favorite color or form that you keep coming back to? If so, why?
DV: You’re right, I don’t keep a sketchbook. I don’t work from preplanned drawings but work everything out on the panel. There is a vague idea that unfolds organically in the process of making a painting. Generally, though there are always exceptions, I establish the central forms first, then the color is found intuitively. The color is subjective and worked out by trial and error. It just has to feel right for the painting but the odd thing is what feels right one day won’t on another day. While the color that felt right on a finished painting at an earlier time still feels right for that one, I probably couldn’t make the same decisions work today.
Noir(Time). (2014). 24 x 24 in. Oil on wood
On Point (2020).16 x 14 in. Oil on wood
The Conversation (2019). 32 x 32 in. Oil & acrylic on wood
Citadel (2018). 26 x 22 in. Oil on wood
Vise (2019). 24 x 24 in. Oil on wood
Blues for Popova (2018). 26 x 24 in. Oil & acrylic on wood
Svetlana (2018). 22 x 18 in. Oil on wood
Roundabout (2019-20). 40 x 40 in. Oil on wood
Above Board (2018). 36 x 32 in. Oil & acrylic on wood
Standard (2019). 32 x 32 in. Oil & acrylic on wood
JON THOMAS Brian Jobe: Your forms seem to offer old and new histories through the sublimation of
industrial materials into textures, patterns, and sequential orientations. Could you discuss your material choices and edits you make in the studio?
Jon Thomas: I enjoy working with a number of key contemporary materials. My favourites are the off the shelf sheet materials, routinely found in the building & industrial trades. These suit my purpose and more importantly fit my small studio where space is very limited.
BJ: Looking at surface changes and stair-step forms in your work, I think about the act of
going within and beneath in architecture/ the built environment. Particularly, it reminds me of the design of human dwellings in the ancient settlement of Çatalhöyük, where you would enter through an opening in the roof and descend down into the home. Do those primal analogies resonate?
JT: There is indeed a deep & very symbolic link between my practice, the earth and our ancient ancestors. I have discovered this connection whilst exploring archaeological sites around the world. The geometric blocks I work with contain a similar sort of language and subliminal power. They have a peculiar visual presence that speaks instinctively.
BJ: Your gestural take on architectural models takes me to a very introspective space to
consider material analogies. How do you consider the telescoping possibilities of scale in your practice?
JT: I look forward to having more space in order to create large scale sculptures. I see the works
I am currently producing on the wall as fragments of something much larger to follow. I am excited at the potential of scaling up my building blocks. Using thicker sheets to make large scale blocks & structures is something I have been working towards since 2017.
Jon Thomas’ studio, 2020.
Untitled (2020). 11.8 x 17.75 x 6.7 in. Green paint on EPS
Brian Edmonds: At first glance, the material appears to be concrete or something
similar. What drew you to EPS and like materials? How do you create the forms you use in your work? Would you please take me through your process?
JT: To avoid procrastination any material with which I can shape and work with at pace is my
preference. I can cut, carve and arrange dozens of my blocks into structures in a matter of seconds against my studio wall. Speed is a fundamental part of my process as forms and shapes develop. I have found that EPS is an ideal material to work with for these very reasons. If you spend too much time shaping & preparing the materials that makeup the final object you inevitably start over thinking. Which is exactly what I want to avoid. Blocks are sometimes pre painted and lie jumbled up in piles around the studio. They must be stacked and balanced instinctively, the process will not work if I set out to try to design something. Each sculpture starts the same way. I begin by carving dozens of building blocks from large slabs of EPS (polystyrene). These blocks are all cut to the same size. I use several geometric shapes in my sculptures. All are carved by hand enmasse. After I have cut enough shapes I will begin stacking them against my studio wall using a time based system. This step can take several sessions before I feel the object is realised. After a successful session I will then glue the blocks to their plywood backboard and begin the next step in the process which is painting - I will apply paint and plaster in several coates over the following days. I then bend an acrylic sheet over the front of the sculpture. This signals the end of the entire process.
BE: Do you think about the forebearers of minimalist sculpture, like Carl Andre and Donald Judd? Have they influenced your work or mindset?
JT: Yes to a certain degree. I guess their work gave me the confidence to follow my own ideas
for my practice. Brancusi for me is the reason why I began sculpting, he is by far my biggest influence. His work resonates deeply within me, his work unleashes the unboundless power of symbolism. It is in this spirit that I too am working towards.
Sunshine (2018). 78.7 x 78.7 x 11.8 in. Marble, plaster & acrylic
First Light (2019). 17.7 x 12 x 2.75 in. Translucent acrylic, EPS, & plywood
Untitled (2021). 28 x 19.7 x 4.75 in. EPS, plaster, acrylic paint, acrylic 5mm sheet, & plywood
CE5 (2020) 11.8 x x 7.9 x 4.75 in. Acrylic paint & plywood
Phase 3 (2019). 19.7 x 15.75 x 3.15 in. Fluorescent & translucent acrylic, EPS, plywood, & hardware
Dark Place (2020). 13.4 x 6.7 x 5.1 in. EPS, acrylic sheet, & plywood
L01 (2020). 11.8 x 6.3 x 6.7 in. EPS, paint, fluorescent acrylic, & plywood
Analog (2018) 16.5 x 9.8 x 1.97 in. Italian marble & acrylic
Pitch Black (2019). 39.4 x 21.25 x 2.75 in. Fluorescent acrylic, translucent acrylic, EPS, plywood, & acrylic paint
Pig (2019). 9” x 11” x 2” in. Wood, various paints and glue
Development shot showing two red acrylic sheet and grey EPS sculptures in the studio.
ALISON HALL Melissa Staiger: Your titles are compelling. Can you tell us more about the “Water
Witch”, “On the Borderline”, “Faraway Eyes for the Sleepless”, “Faraway Eye, for the Birdwatcher” and “Annunciation, the Visitor”? Are the titles all connected in one storyline?
Alison Hall: Titles come from lots of different influences, from very personal ones, my memory,
to art history and things I’m listening to or reading. To me it is one storyline; I love that you used those words specifically in the last part of your question, it’s the continual connection of life and practice.
The Waterwitch titles come from searching for forms in drawing like my father would search for underground water sources by ‘divining’. Isn’t that a great term? I’m from the south, so you have to stretch that word out for greater effect, ‘deeeeeviiiiiiniing’. With a forked peach branch in his hands (gripped like bull horns) he would march around our property on the hunt for natural water sources. The peach branch would tug towards the earth with great force, towards water that you could not see. I remember feeling the power of that force as a young girl, I was mesmerized. I like the idea of searching for something with an old-fashioned method, something that seems ancient and utterly unexplainable. Drawing feels like that. On the Borderline is a title that comes from a Bob Dylan song, Girl from the North Country. I have an affinity towards any poem or song that mentions the night. And this one, just holds so much-wonder, memory, true love, prayer. I’m a-wonderin’ if she remembers me at all Many times I’ve often prayed In the darkness of my night In the brightness of my day So, if you’re travelin’ in the north country fair Where the winds hit heavy on the borderline Remember me to one who lives there She once was a true love of mine
Annunciation, The Visitor (2017). 96 x 77 in. Oil, graphite and plaster on panel
Temple (2019). 40 x 32 in. Oil, graphite and plaster on panel
I listen to that album on my record player in the studio quite a bit while I’m working; I like the intersection of hearing this album from the 1960s while thinking about what borderlines (the edges of the picture plane!) in frescos from 1300 indicate. I’m enchanted by the Venetian red and terre verte painted frames around the frescoes of Giotto—they each hold a singular moment of a very long story, usually an entire life. These borders contain only one part: a birth, a death, a vision, a dream. For me, these borders hold time in a very strange way, they encapsulate the most memorable, mythical flashes of a lifetime. Thinking incessantly about these frames—how a singular image can hold intangible before and after moments, that the viewer doesn’t even see, but perhaps they feel—the mysteries. I like the intersection of Dylan and these ideas. Dylan and Giotto -- storytellers, mystics. The Faraway Eyes paintings--I see all of these points as constellations, in reference to Giotto’s night sky in Padua, something at a great distance-- the feminine, constellations. I also think of the Rolling Stones singing (in the best southern accent they can muster), “if you are down on your luck and can’t harmonize, find a girl with faraway eyes”. I think the year I made these paintings I certainly had faraway eyes, that line struck me but that painting also looked back at me. The Birdwatcher and The Sleepless both refer to a character in my story. I like how specific those names can be, how they name exactly who I am recalling but also how universal and incredibly general they can be. . Annunciation (the Visitor) has several influences, one being the annunciation painting in San Marco, there’s a presence in the painting that can’t be seen. This painting in particular was made for my best friend that passed away and as I was making it, the pattern shifted, it was as if she was announcing herself, her presence.
MS: In the detail image and full image of “Temple” the gestural marks that are a contrast
from the detailed patterning makes it feel like there is a presence there coming in and out of the space in the painting. When painting the idea of presence (if this resonates) is this an imagined experience or one from life?
AH: The idea of the presence comes both from life and from imagination. I have this old photo
of my mother from when she was about 3 standing in front of the two room shack she grew up in. I like thinking about the form of the house as a piece of architecture in a Giotto painting. The door is ajar and through the door is the faint light of a window with a curtain that’s blowing so that it looks like an apparition. It reminds me of one of my friend Sally’s photographs. When I made these paintings with the gestural marks, that photo in particular came to mind. During this period, a bit before the gesture arrived white birds started appearing in my daily life--not images of
birds, actual birds. Those encounters have had great significance to me. The gestures in the paintings occurred before the visitations, the paintings knew the birds were coming
Tina Ruggieri: Can you discuss how you make the connection between the frescoes
you frequently visit in Assisi, Italy attributed to Giotto, to the minimalist paintings of the the1950s?
AH: I think it’s about humility. They are both so elemental, I like this term in reference to poetry,
and in this way when speaking about painting, in that only what is necessary is utilized. It’s also about human sensitivity. There’s a humanity in how such reduced means can communicate such deep feeling. I want to make a correlate, when I speak about this, to the south, to give you an example of the sensation Giotto and minimalist paintings both give to me. A clipping from our wild rose bush, before the school bus arrives, my mother would wrap the single stem in a wet paper towel, and a scrap of aluminum foil that had been reused many times. It was the color of coral, carried with great care, all the way to the hands of my elementary school teacher--a wild schoolbus journey through trailer parks, riding behind dump trucks filled with coal--a gift so beautiful, so simple, delivered with the deepest affection, wrapped in a soggy paper towel and aluminum foil. It’s something I am thinking about alot in my practice--the juxtaposition of transcendence, the divine and humility.
TR: Your use of subtle color changes and light affects viewer’s experiences; tell us your
intentions for your viewers when they see your work?
AH: Tenderness.
Faraway Eyes (for the sleepless). 40 x 32 in. Oil, graphite and plaster on panel (detail) -->>
On the Borderline II (2020). 9.5 x 7.5 in. Oil, graphite and plaster on panel
On the Borderline I (2020). 9.5 x 7.5 in. Oil, graphite and plaster on panel
On the Borderline III (2020). 9.5 x 7.5 in. Oil, graphite and plaster on panel
Faraway Eyes (for the birdwatcher). 40 x 32 in. Oil, graphite and plaster on panel (detail)>
Water Witch I (2019). 30 x 22.5 in. Gouache and graphite on paper
Water Witch II (2019). 30 x 22.5 in. Gouache and graphite on paper
DOUGLAS WITMER Melissa Staiger: I absolutely love your color - your palette! I am never disappointed
when I see your paintings! Can you tell us how you choose color? Is it from the gut?
Douglas Witmer: My approach to color is entirely intuitive. I don’t feel very sophisticated about color at all. In my mind I’m just trying to do my best. Sometimes I observe a color and I think I want to remember that and use it in a painting. But almost every time I forget, until I happen to make that color and then remember that I forgot that I was going to make it! I also think sometimes I’d like to focus on a color for a series of related works, but so far I haven’t done that with any degree of intentionality.
MS: The horizontal bands in your paintings push the horizon line aside for me. However,
do you think the landscape is present?
DW: I love landscape paintings. I love looking out to sea from the beach. I would say to a degree I am an observational painter. But it has to do more with a color and less about a scene. I would say that I often use horizontals as a way to orient a work…”settle” it, if you will. And if you sense a kind of gravitational tendency in my paintings, part of that has to do with how I frequently make areas of color in controlled downward flows. Perhaps that has to do with the feeling of a landscape. I do also reference nature in painting titles sometimes, but I would say I am not setting out to explicitly reference the landscape.
MS: “Moon Shadow” feels out of this world! Today as I am writing, there is a rover on
planet Mars. Do you think about the contrasting colors from a lunar landscape?
DW: I’m not a stargazer or into astrology or a NASA enthusiast. I’m just a guy who likes the way
the moon looks...beguiled by its glow like everybody else. But your question prompts me to think about painting titles of mine that reference the moon. Off the top of my head I can think of five, four of them are titled after songs--”Moon River,” “Marquee Moon,” “Moon Palace,” “Moon Shadow”--and the other one is called “Gibbous.” “Moon River” was made over twenty years ago but the other four were made just in the past few years. In the case of the painting
Untitled (2018). 12 x 9 in. Acrylic on canvas
“Moon Shadow” that you ask about: I normally don’t think of grey as having a kind of glow. But this painting does for me...and the bottom half evoked both the idea of what we observe from photos of the moon’s surface, but also the way shadows appear when there is an eclipse.
Jeffrey Cortland Jones: I’ve had the privilege of living with your work and seeing it
grow over the past 15 or so years. While color appears to be in the forefront and shifts from a bright electric blue, to an acidic orange, to a dense yellowish green, the one thing that has remained constant is grey. Can you address the importance of “grey” in the work?
DW: In late 2005 two things came together in the studio and they have formed the bedrock of
my painting ever since. First is a particular kind of thin canvas called “watercolor canvas.” It’s thin like portrait linen, and it has a sizing formulated to accept and respond to water-based media. The second is using black gesso in various concentrations as a wash. Originally I cascaded the wash down the entire surface to create an atmospheric ground and then placed opaque color on top. The earliest group of paintings I made this way I called “Cloud Cover.” Painting for me is a seeking process and, as I remember, when I was first able to make the wash technique work it evoked a feeling of being enveloped in a dense fog. For me that is not a foreboding feeling. It’s an activated kind of calm. I can see and feel air. The light is soft. Things come into focus as I search them out. I’m still really attracted to this. Grey has made its way from simply being the ground color to playing a role in the development of every color in my current work, since now there are many layers of color and grey and they are all transparent and interleaved. I aspire to be known as a colorist. It’s somewhat strange to me, but inflecting my colors with grey is how I find clarity with them or bring them to resolution. Maybe instead I will become known as a greyscalist.
JCJ: There is a “thinness” to the work that I find honest, direct, and beautiful. These thin, translucent veils build upon one another to create a vast depth to the work. The work is labored and yet not. It’s full of effort but feels effortless. Walk us through how a painting is built.
DW: About twenty years ago I had a daydream in my studio about a certain kind of painting
surface. In my head I just called it “giant watercolor.” It wasn’t about the size so much as the physicality of the painting. You and I have talked about how we both love that line in the song “Downhill Racer” by Everything But The Girl: “all the effort that it took to get here in the first place / and all the effort not to let the effort show.” It has only been in the past 2-3 years that I feel like I’ve been able to bring the elements of that daydream together in my painting. And you’re right that I do want for them to look rather effortless. It has been important for me in my own relationship with painting that the process be an additive one...the record of an accrual of direct actions over the course of periods of my life, whether that be 10 minutes or 10 years. While I am always working to bring things into a state of harmonious balance or resolution, I want the paintings to feel eternally open. Both as a point of entry for someone looking at them, and for me as a reminder the work is episodic, not necessarily finished, with the possibility of being revisited.
JCJ: From random polaroid of Lake Michigan sent in the mail, to your “Neighbor : Who”
and “Forty, For You” projects, giving and connecting to the community is really important and personal to you. Why?
DW: I can only think this comes from the way I was raised in a tight-knit and sheltered
Mennonite community. In that context I was taught to keep and maintain connections, practice humility, and serve others...just kinda always be showing up and trying to do your part. In the case of the larger scale projects you mention, because I’ve experienced discouragement and self doubt when it seems like my work is dismissed because it’s out of step or detached from our time, I’ve become interested in trying to explicitly create experiential contexts that highlight contemporary reductive abstraction as a direct response to conditions in our world.
Moon Shadow (2019). 35 x 28 in. Acrylic on canvas
To Land (2018). 14 x 17 in. Acrylic on canvas
Untitled (2020). 12 x 9 in. Acrylic on canvas
Untitled (2020). 12 x 9 in. Acrylic on canvas
Dawn (Frozen) (2019). 17 x 14 in. Acrylic on canvas
Out There With You (2020). 35 x 28 in. Acrylic on canvas
Untitled (2020). 12 x 9 in. Acrylic on canvas
Untitled (2019). 12 x 9 in. Acrylic on canvas
Untitled (2017). 17 x 14 in. Acrylic on canvas
CECILIA VISSERS Brian Edmonds: In a previous conversation, you mentioned how you are influenced by
the landscape. Is there a particular landscape or topography you look to? Is it emotional or visual? Do you keep a sketchbook or take photos?
Cecilia Vissers: Although my steel sculptures appear to be abstract, each piece invokes my own landscape experience. I have a fascination for remote and wild places like Achill Island, on the west coast of Ireland, and the Scottish Highlands. These landscapes reveal a fundamental truth. The power and serenity of nature brings me closer to the essence of life. Knowledge emerges from these experiences in nature rather than from reason. The influence of the landscape on my work is both visual and emotional. The emotional sensation of standing upright in high winds on a narrow coastal path is what we feel right away, before the mind has time to come in and consciously analyze the experience. My work is about that open feeling, a feeling of freedom. Intuition is our first instinct and the highest form of intelligence. It leads me to where I need to go in my process of making art. I don’t use a mathematical system. It is more important to look, register, and adapt very carefully. My black and white photographs of landscapes are part of my process of making new work. The photos, taken during my travels, are my sketches and serve as a memento of my landscape experiences. Most titles refer directly to the places I love. For example, ‘Duvillaun’ is the name of a cluster of islands lying south to the coast of North Mayo in Ireland and ‘Blue Mull’ refers to the strait between Shetland’s North Isles. BE: Do you seek to create a narrative through the use of specific shapes, titles, or color? I’m interested in how the works are shown. Are works exhibited in close proximity or spaced further apart? Are you looking to create a narrative? CV: My sculptures are arrangements of rectangles and square plates, some plates show curved excisions from their edges. They hang exactly 10 millimeters apart from the wall, which accentuates the thickness of the steel or aluminum. There is an interaction between the parts of the artwork that have excisions and the parts that are rectangular. The rectangular parts are the unaffected (whole) parts. By using just one color I accentuate the spatial arrangement and the rhythm. Belmullet (2014).15.7 x 22.8 x .6 in. (overall measurement 33.9 x 98.4 x .6 in.) Anodized aluminum
Sea Mist I, two-part (2016). Each part 14 x 16.5 x .5 in. Anodized mill aluminium
Sea Mist I, two-part (detail, side view)
I like to use orange because it draws attention and generates positive energy. Most of my works come in pairs or a series. By varying the size and location of the cuts, as well as by controlling the distances between the plates, I create rhythm and a narrative. Quite often, the space in between the plates is a potential space; the starting point for my next artwork. Richard Serra said it very well, “work comes out of work.” I see a connection between everything, every small intervention or shift has consequences for the total experience of the artwork and its surrounding space. When I exhibit my work, I see all exhibited works in space as a whole. You can say it’s a conversation between the works themselves. One of the most impressive works of art I know is the 30-minute-long movie ‘The Way Things Go’ (1987) by the Swiss duo Peter Fischli and David Weiss. The film presents a sequence of events, if one object moves, a chain reaction occurs. This interconnectedness between individual objects is fascinating, nothing exists in isolation. Tina Ruggieri: Can you discuss your reference to nature and how it differentiates from the ideas of minimalism? My sculptures have much in common with the pared down language of American minimalism. I admire the work of minimalist artists such as Judd, Andre, Kelly and Flavin. The work of Ted Stamm (1944-1984) is also worth mentioning. I admire his clear and consistent form language as well as the way his work is installed in space. My special interest goes to the work of those artists who balance between the second and third dimension. There are more similarities than differences between the ideas of the minimalists and my work. Minimalism is about the simplicity of forms in space. Many minimalists have a close relation to the natural landscape or the urban landscape. Robert Mangold is a good example. When he first moved to New York he felt attracted to the buildings and the empty spaces between the buildings. He noted that the bridges and the roads are not only structures, they’re forms in space. It’s not a secret that the paintings of Kelly are not purely abstract but are representations of forms he found in nature. In 2012, I visited his Black & White exhibition in the Museum of Wiesbaden, I remember Kelly’s gelatin silver prints of forms in the landscape. A shadow under a bridge, the curved roof of a shed and the structures of farmhouses. Last but not least I’ve to mention the work of Donald Judd. On the occasion of my solo exhibition at inde/jacobs gallery in Marfa (2015), I visited this small town in the high desert of Texas. I was very lucky to get the opportunity to visit Judd’s remote ranch house, annex studio, ‘Las Casas,’ in the beautiful Chinati desert. Back in the seventies, Judd bought this land to protect it and live there with his family. I’m convinced that his love for landscape was an important source of his inspiration. He had a need to withdraw from society and purely focus on his art. The visit was a life-changing experience, seeing Judd’s artwork in the incredible desert light is beyond words.
TR: Can you discuss your interest in steel and aluminum and what first attracted you to this material? CV: When I went to the Academy of Fine Arts I immediately felt attracted to working in this hard and heavy material. After a visit to the blast furnaces based in the city of Ijmuiden, I decided to only work in metal. I saw the intense orange glow of the molten material that was rolled into giant sheets of steel. The hardness of this material is a challenge, you have to put a lot of energy into the metal to get something out of it. It also requires specific material knowledge, the forging, the welding, patinating and the knowledge of various tools. The material also has a kind of inexorability, it resists and has a will of its own. Once I put my saw in the metal, the process is irreversible, an error is difficult to fix. I’ve to make a well-balanced choice. First, I make my models in cardboard and hang them on the wall of my studio. Then I make small changes; the curve can shift a few millimeters to the left or right. I also determine the thickness and color of the steel I will use. Even a small change affects the whole. My first studio was an old forge, a very dark and cold place with horseshoes hanging on rusty nails on the beams. The blacksmith taught me how to use the fire, to understand the glowing coals and how to form the steel on an anvil. Later, I focused more and more on industrial processes, I went into long-term collaborations with companies that could execute parts of my work. It’s very important to be present and make sure that everything goes according to my plan. I work with a waterjet company close to my hometown, they cut my designs out of special plates of steel. The director understands my love for steel, when he receives a special plate of steel with an exceptional patina, he decides to call me to come over and take a look. These collaborations are very important to me. I’m grateful to the people who have so much technical knowledge and patience. TR: Do you consider yourself a painter or sculptor, or does your work fall somewhere in between? CV: Without doubt, I consider myself a sculptor. When I have an idea, I can see it in metal. I don’t see clay, wood, plastic, or any other material; it is just metal. The material is the basis. The plates have a ‘patina’, each one very unique. The color of the plates varies dramatically, sometimes it is bluer at the edges and grayer in the center of the sheet. I do a lot of work in series and editions, still, it’s impossible to make an exact copy of a work. Sometimes I use chemicals to intensify the colors and patterns. It is essential to choose the right plate, when I go to the metal supplier, he displays a number of plates on the floor. Each plate can weigh up to 200kg. Then I select a beautiful plate with an interesting pattern. The plates must be undamaged, each scratch interferes with the final artwork. Some years ago, I applied for a working grant, the members of the commission rated my work as a painting. It indicates that one is inclined to see a painting in an object that is flat and hangs on the wall. This is a misconception. My recent book is titled ‘Flatness in Space’ referring to the flat character of my sculptures and their placing in space.
Wald, two-part (2013). 18.5 x 60 x .5 Anodized aluminum
Curve No.5 (2020). 4.7 x 24 x .4 in. Hot rolled steel, patina, wax
Curve No.3 (2020). 4.7 x 24 x .4 in. Hot rolled steel, patina, wax
Curve No.4 (2020). 4.7 x 24 x .4 in. Hot rolled steel, patina, & wax
Curve No.6 (2020). 4.7 x 24 x .4 in. Hot rolled steel, patina, & wax
Blue Mull I, two-part (2020). 2.75 x 11.25 x .5 in. Steel & black patina
Blue Mull I, two-part (2020). 2.75 x 11.25 x .5 in. Steel & black patina
Goath, four parts (2018). 15.7 x 22.8 x .6 in. (overall measurement 15.7 x 98.4 x .6 in.) Steel Patina
JASON KAROLAK Jeffrey Cortland Jones: In your past work, you would place vibrant “drawn” marks on a solid dark field. Recently, these solid fields have been broken up into multiple subtle gray, blue, and violet imperfect geometric shapes making the work so much more complex and appear to digitally “glitch”. Can you talk about how these developed and how they have changed the work?
Jason Karolak: I came up in a generation of artists that were contending with ideas of appropri-
ation and how to process culture within a painting language. I have always been very grounded in abstraction, but this relationship to images and pop never left my practice. In the past few years, my drawings have incorporated more “sources” and I became interested in how these get filtered in the studio. What residues remain in the paintings, so to speak. I did not set out to make reference to screen technologies, but I can see it there. As the paintings have become more complex spatially, new associations have accumulated.
JCJ: You grew up just outside of Detroit and now live in Brooklyn. I’m interested in if your
surroundings, both as memory or the present, influence or impact the work and how they are made.
JK: I actually grew up in a rural area of Michigan with forests, lots of space, and not many people
around. This foundation may have something to do with my interest in being an artist and my comfort with spending long hours by myself in the studio, haha. I have now been in Brooklyn for more than half of my life and consider it home in a deep sense. New York is pervaded by a crazy quilt of geometric strata, sounds, and people that I am continually looking at and absorbing. I see myself as a member of a community of artists in the city and more specifically within my neighborhood. However, the lingering sense that I am an outside observer remains fruitful for my practice.
Untitled (P-1914) (2019). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Untitled (P-2010) (2020). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Will Sears: From what I can tell, your drawings appear to be fairly direct mark making,
and therefore can exist on a blank page as a complete thought. In your paintings however, especially your more recent work where there are slight tonal shifts, It seems that the field on which the line-drawings appear becomes equally vital to the painting as the line work itself. For me, as a viewer it serves to activate the conversations happening with color. Can you talk about your use of color and in particular your choice to gravitate heavily to setting your paintings in a dark field?
Jason Karolak: My work is heavily rooted in drawing and line, as a way to generate im-
age-forms and structure. As you point to, the paintings are large drawings in color, but with much more complexity. Each painting deals with a color set or color problem, and the drawing process is a way to organize and code those decisions. The dark fields began as a way to elevate the strong color and fuse it with the line. More recently, these spaces have expanded with a kind of low luminosity. I want the strong, assertive color to be balanced by a sense of quiet and air. The dark spaces take the paintings out of the physical world for me, into an alternate or interior region.
WS: It seems as though your work is an iteration of an initial idea. There is an evident
editing process almost as though you have shifted marks from their original location to a place where they serve a new purpose. Is there any intentional space created for chance in your process, or are those moves and edits more controlled with a particular intention in mind?
JK: I make work as a way to process information and concrete experiences in the world. Draw-
ing moves a specific, initial source through a series of iterations that are not pre-planned. This distills but also fractures, and a new logic may emerge. I am interested in morphology as a way to shift from a beginning to a usable painting idea. I make a “planning drawing” for each painting, setting up boundaries and rules. Despite this level of detail, there are many open decisions and chance elements that persist, such as where the color ultimately emerges through the linear structure.
Untitled (P-1903) (2019). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Untitled (P-2001) (2020). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Untitled (P-1904) (2019). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Untitled (P-1907) (2019). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Untitled (P-2007) (2020). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Untitled (P-1915) (2019). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Untitled (P-1916) (2019). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
Untitled (P-1909) (2019). 66 x 58 in. Oil on linen
G DELMAR RATLIFF Young and Innocent The meaning to die young pushes Against a blank space; The area of denial, places No soul knows of death dates. They are simple, numbers Of calendar as time escapes Drawing light to ignorance. We know everything, Naivety; nothing Until the innocent hour marks sight, The time glass flips foggy. Its graduals fall Beneath to a drizzling, The last silence never dreamt. Here are our Eyelids, Young, shutting resty blind By aerial, misty, their last Autumn.
All The Beats Have Gone On the road from that weekend Weekly trip, once flipped The mind’s eye a tear: Ginsberg is dead Some cheerful broadcaster Radioing in my ear As the pavement kept grooving. In a lifetime, one, a few held on Cultivating chances Where eyes meet grief: A saddening to cleanse souls Those characteristics, Rapping guard at the door Flown from the North toward war! Rattle tap of a gasp to the Jazz Horning in a Kick Ass Light of a New movement. The thrill of Dicks Cocksuckers the atmosphere Weighing meaty As shells drop to dispel incidence. Still, steadily beating watchful Black the coffee pours, Houses fill, feels shifty, Voices from another darkness Of microphones snapping. Crackling full, scenes to see Nineteen fifty, a break, fancying.
The early day, San Francisco, New York down, dawning From Boston Harbor Ferry to New Jersey shores Burning the lamplights Rocking Lowell back Cold to the Mills, Massachusetts. Kerouacing lines through lives And bottling empty Half Gods, Damn to Alcohol, Bitter's taste, words Regurgitating coffee's gulp. Sipping shops; gratitude Claps, sealing off their own lives. The last of the Beats have fallen Howling their ways, Burroughs’ induced trips Wide scene scrambling Mouthfuls of Baraka, Corso, Snyder, beatless, Di Prima, Ferlinghetti, now dead! From these speeches, Cassady Dreaming Prankster’s ride. One drop, two drop The eyelobe is at emptiness Here, fondling lyrics, That sweet knock at doors With cocks off all their hinges.
The Clockmaker’s Wagon No Siren tolls the rings As his blacks drop and drag. I hear the gongs, Those of Grandfather; That solid soul to restive places. After the noise, I wake To sleepless days and yearnings, Places of disgrace. Unsettled minds keep time, The bells dong, I am not dead yet. No pendulum stops Nor chimes to the burial’s call. The wagon keeps hour; I clock the phrases through life, I did not ring nor welcome the stopping.
The Red Bottles They are always annoyed! You talk too much, Then not enough When off cusp Remembrance occurs Strangling thoughts: UnGodly forgiven deeds Done no more. While swallows crawl, Chills endure Bed sheet soaked And steadily perspiring. In this absence Everything is dying; Calling back The full stock shelf. Silence loses over death, And they are talkative: Adrenaline drops From the bottoms; The last of the glass barrel.
Kidnapping The Kidnapper Here lies oracles beyond faith, A disparity, enamored Mental, the axis of breaking points Where radii of minds congeal, Stiffening, harsh abandonments; A lose of affixed controls. Riding the rhythm of sutures These nerves turn Churning excuses incapable of life; The wife, husbands, lovers From misconstrued and absorbing, Telling fortune, a lost crime. Pathways open wide, fires A clicker to neurosis Batting one eye after eye another; I am battling conscious. To points of guard, spinal Breaking back to reapply depth. These hands, this mouth Off limits for moments Bound and gagged now persevering And we tie cerebellums To a fine grasp, each departure I capture; now me, now you!
Blue Sunday, what a mess becomes The lazy haze in an eye Catching full the aura caste, Surrounding kaleidoscope-fear. I have no patience for blindness; It ridicules my second nature. The birds of the morning sing; Whistling a morbid tongue To break yet another sense So delicate the decibels adhere. My cognition encompasses, Ringing my mind, melancholic.
The Garden Of Neglect Docile, through Winter’s stampede Where sunlight dares to dazzle A rejection of seeded origins Submits to nature’s inbreeding. At this annual conception, Persephone, Demeter, Hold menstruation Orange as their gowns darken To rust and brown As mass becomes frozen And moons wax and wane; However never to fulfillment Nor uncomplete of light. The night eye keeps watch For any moment of discharge. Hellebore, ghastly a mouthful, One Venus Flytrap never opens, Wilting such less a catch, eats Not, yet somehow engages The most populous of plates Around which feeds About weeds overgrown; Without edge or shadowing But takes face in brutality Against virgin turf. Within this very center, forces Centrifugal a birthing space. So goes the nature of tundra; A barren untapped span, The coagulated cold unbled land.
CURATING CONTEMPORARY