april/issue 09 by FORGET GOOD

f_rget g__d April Issue 9

Big thanks to all participating artists! Feature Interview: Allie Dougharty Editor in Chief: Kylie Gava Managing Editor: Tara Mahadevan Designer: Tuan Pham Interview Editors: Kylie Gava, Steph Haines To be considered for our next issue, please visit our website www.forget-good.com Cover: No Pain No Veins by Tom Toye

Corydon Cowansage 4

Maura Kelly Doyle 10

Michael Cappabianca 16

Sarah Leflar 22

Marisa Takal 28

Samantha Hookway 34

Sophia Heymans 40

Rebekah Callaghan 46

Ryan Nault 52

Tom Toye 58

Corydon Cowansage Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice? I live in New York and work in Brooklyn. My studio is pretty small since space is expensive here and it’s caused me to really think about scale. I’ve had to start making more practical choices about when to scale down and when it’s ok to make a 9 or 10 foot painting. Working in Brooklyn is great though because there is such a dense population of artists in the area.

What is the best job you have ever had? I’ve been doing AutoCAD drafting work since I was in high school and I actually really enjoy it.

Do you make work for yourself, or do you often think of your viewer? I guess both. I always think about how the viewer will engage with my paintings and how they’ll occupy a space. My work tends to locate the viewer in some kind of weird or uncomfortable spatial situation, for example they might be looking down onto a roof, pushed to the ground, or pressed against a fence or wall.

Name your favorite dessert and least favorite food. Chocolate is my favorite. Tomatoes are my least favorite

What has most influenced your work? I’m usually influenced by my immediate surroundings and by the suburbs where I grew up. Lately I’ve started experimenting with materials that are found in the residential landscape. I’ve been looking at artists like Richard Artschwager, Phoebe Washburn, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Frank Stella, Bridget Riley, Letha Wilson, Chris Martin, Lisa Sigal, Gordon Matta-Clark, David Hockney, Agnes Martin, and Alex Katz

Fence #5

Patio #1

Fence #24

Roof #11

Roof #9

Maura Kelly Doyle Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice? I live in Minneapolis right now, which is the best city that I can imagine being as a young artist fresh out of school! The art community here is incredibly accessible yet conceptually challenging. It’s almost like a large small town, you see the same faces over and over at gallery openings, so it’s not hard to strike up a conversation and make connections with other artists and curators. I feel like young artists here are really excited about supporting one another and there’s a lot of “Do it yourself” mentality when it comes to creating opportunities to show work. We have an abundance of pop up galleries in storefronts and apartments that help to foster experimentation and independence in the arts without the pressure of working within a commercial gallery space. Right now I don’t have a conventional studio space, which has definitely changed how I work. I live in a one bedroom apartment but use the bedroom as a working space, which also occasionally doubles as a gallery. It’s tough because in my living space I like to be very organized and clean but when I work I need to be able to make a monumental mess. I’m still trying to figure out this balance, and looking forward to having a real studio again in the near future!

What is the best job you have ever had?

Name your favorite dessert and least favorite food.

One of the jobs I have right now is handdown the best job ever! I work for an artist-run cleaning service, which doesn’t sound very glamorous but it’s such an amazing gig! I keep telling everyone I know to get into cleaning! I get to set my own schedule with my clients and get paid a great wage that in turn allows me to support my art practice. Most importantly, while my hands do all the work my head gets to just think about future projects and daydream.

My sister makes a mean tiramisu! I’ve always been picky about eating seafood – especially shrimp. I don’t know if I’ve ever even eaten one, they just freak me out! I think that they look like little embryos, which isn’t very appetizing.

Do you make work for yourself, or do you often think of your viewer? I don’t think I could make work and ignore the idea that other people will be viewing it and interpreting it. I always want to have somewhat of a playful relationship with whoever is looking at my work. Or maybe even tease them a bit – give a couple little nudges or hints but also be elusive enough to keep them guessing! Sometimes I like to throw in what I consider to be little jokes, and am thrilled when others pick up on that. Of course, I make the kind of objects and images that I want to see, but I also feel a strong responsibility to the viewer when I am presenting my work.

What has most influenced your work? Travel – and the current desire to be traveling - has had a huge impact on my work in the past few years. I’m interested in the time spent getting from one place to another, the liminal space between destinations. In contrast, I’m also intrigued by the moments and objects present in everyday life and how those can be extended or duplicated into magical and serene moments.

What Stands Between the Artist and His Model

It Took Time (getting to know you)

Two For

Escar-mothafuckin-got

Untitled

Michael Cappabianca Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice?

Do you make work for yourself, or do you often think of your viewer?

I’m currently traveling between Cambridge and Marshfield, Massachusetts which is just south of Boston where I have my studio. I’m from around here originally and being steeped in the history of New England has always has some sort of effect on my work. I feel keeping a connection to where I’m from finds its way into my process. It’s hard to escape the colonialism around here. The architecture, furniture and of course the weather. My studio is in a very old barn and the frigid winter months definitely impact the work.

I think ultimately I try to make work I will find interesting first. Of course when editing down a selection of images, what flows well or will cohere for the public enters into consideration.

What is the best job you have ever had? I used to work for Powells Books in Portland, Oregon. It was here I learned to research and describe rare books. My whole job was to process, catalog, price, and photograph rare book collections. It was an incredible learning experience and great co-workers.

Name your favorite dessert and least favorite food. A Middle-eastern dessert called Kadaif, just amazing. My least favorite is probably Brussel Sprouts.

What has most influenced your work? Tough one. Books may definitely be up there. Being able to look at work, read, and digest the world through printed matter is important. By bringing your own experience into the mix and making work helps to feel like you’re adding to the conversation.

Bedroom

Ornament

Seam

back/drop/ground #6

back/drop/ground #3

Sarah Leflar Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice? I am currently living in Yokohama, Japan. My husband is a law professor, and his area of research is Japanese health law, so we have lived here at several times during our marriage. This is the first time that I have worked as an artist here—I have a studio in an arts complex called Koganecho Bazaar. I have always been drawn to Japanese visual culture and I think that the sparseness and uncluttered quality of Japan’s art, decoration and architecture influenced my work before I even started coming here. I am endlessly interested in Japanese writing and typography (although I only read at a very primitive level) and graphic design. I draw a lot here, and kanji (Japanese ideograms) and kawaii (cuteness) are fun to work with. There are differences in the way that the Japanese view contemporary artists-there is less pressure to be cool and celebrated, less of a contemporary art market, and less pressure to be original. It creates, at Koganecho, a busy, sturdy, unselfconscious work ethic that I am very comfortable with. We are leaving at the end of June, to return to the US, and I will miss working in Japan.

What is the best job

you have ever had?

and least favorite food.

Without a doubt, teaching drawing. I love teaching drawing. I think that I remember every drawing of every student that I have ever taught, and that was a long time ago (the 1980s!).

Japanese confectionary is incredibly gorgeous. Both traditional and western-influenced desserts are beautiful and subtly delicious. However, to my mind, nothing beats a Nutty Buddy from the gas station on a hot August afternoon in Arkansas. There is only one food in the entire world that I’m not particularly fond of and that is canned pears.

Do you make work for yourself, or do you often think of your viewer? I am an artist pretty much because I can’t really do anything else, as art is always there in my mind, waiting to take me back from other pursuits; reasonably speaking, the world doesn’t need any more art or artists. I also love making, and love the feeling of making something that I think is good, and that is what I wanted it to be like. So, in that sense, I do it for myself. However, I believe that art is a kind of communication, and I am very conscious of trying to communicate something with my work. It is meant to be seen by other people. I am constantly aware of this, both while making, and after. I want to make things that will have meaning for others.

Name your favorite dessert

What has most influenced your work? First, my own emotional life, the things that I have felt and experienced. Second, the work of all the other visual artists in the world. I mentioned above that I want to communicate meaning through my art, and I am very much aware of the fact that it exists in a huge sea of art-making, and art-made, and that in a very big way its meanings depend on all the elements of that great ocean.

Untitled

Marisa Takal Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice? I live in San Francisco but grew up in New Jersey which definitely has had an impact on the way I make art. The transition from East Coast to West Coast has been exciting and silly and long but I feel like I’ve finally come into my own as a person/artist. San Francisco makes me wake up early and head to my studio and have good mornings. I’ve surrounded myself with positive hardworking friends which keeps the passion and productivity going.

What is the best job you have ever had? I work in the AV checkout office at my school and so far it is the best job I have had. I get to sit in a low lit warm office all day, completely alone with a bunch of cool equipment and computers all around me. Plus no one ever checks anything out so I get to draw, read, watch movies and relax as much as I want.

Do you make work for

yourself, or do you often think of your viewer? I make work for myself but sometimes I feel a like I do a little too much! But when I do think about the viewer, sometimes I get self conscious that my paintings come across as too selfish, or that I deliberately don’t want the viewer to be able to access the work (especially when I use text). I try not to think about that too much and just let myself go nuts when I’m working and figure things out later. Usually after a couple of hours of non stop painting, I step back and realize I have do idea what just happened. Which, in a way puts me on the same level as the viewer (kind of).

Name your favorite dessert and least favorite food. Ahh I have a lot of favorite desserts so I’m just going to go on the last dessert I had which was ice cream and waffles/pumpkin seed brownie. I like all foods so it is really hard to say but I guess the food I would least likely want to eat on my own free will would be seven layer dip? Pork chops? A frappuccino?

What has most influenced your work?

Most recently the idea of routine and leisure have been most influential to my work. So much of my time is spent deliberating ways to switch up my daily routine that even that has become part of my routine. It gets so tiring but is also so good because by the time I start painting I have no structure and let myself run free which ends up being so relaxing. But generally looking at art has most influenced my work. When I am feeling low or if I am on a nonproductive streak, the first thing I do to get my butt into gear is head to the library or look at art blogs. I literally “snap” into gear when I see something I like. I’ll be flipping or scrolling through pictures and whisper to myself “Aw shit,” snap my fingers, put my computer away and head to my studio.

You Wanna Be Me

Pink and Blue, Bottom of the Kitchen Sink

Friendship/Loyalty/UNITY

Do You Know What a Kangol Hat Is?

Stroking My Ice Cube Watching You Eat an Imperial Roll

Samantha Hookway Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice? I currently live in Gothenburg, Sweden. I have been here for about 6 months and I am just starting to understand that there is a transformation happening in my work (also I am just starting to understand the language). So with that said, Gothenburg is clearly influencing me and my practice but I am not sure how to define it in any specific way at this time.

What is the best job you have ever had? My most favorite job I have ever had is the artist residency at the MAD Museum in NYC, where for 3 full months I commuted into the city from Philadelphia every Tuesday and made my work in the museum’s studio. The conversations I had with the visitors were invaluable and transformative. I still cannot believe they paid me to make my art at their museum. I would have paid them! My second favorite job is teaching glass at The Ohio State University. I love encouraging creative problem-solving in my students and myself. And my third favorite is working in gallery as a gallery assistant. More specifically it is delivering and setting up the art work in the collectors’ homes. I rather like seeing the intimacy that is created when

someone lives next to a work of art or even better when a grandkid/kid grows up experiencing a piece of art. Sometimes I think it is easy for us artists to have such utter focus on getting the work inside the gallery space we can forget that the art itself could have a long life beyond that point.

Do you make work for yourself, or do you often think of your viewer? Most often, I make art to satisfying some sort of curiosity of my own. Yet, here in Sweden I am working on a couple of big scale public work proposals and so my attention is shifting away from making work for only myself to considering the public’s needs first and foremost. So, I guess, I make work with both in mind and depending on the piece, the idea and the situation I focus more on my viewer’s point-of-view or my point-of-view.

Name your favorite dessert and least favorite food. My favorite desert is called “kladkakka” (Swedish for Chocolate Cake- sometimes they translate as “Mud Cake”). It is chocolate, a lot like a brownie but a bit fudgier. It is delicious. It can also be layered with cheesecake!

What has most influenced your work? Life influences my work greatly. This is probably why I am feeling there is a new shift happening with my work right now after the move to Gothenburg. I always find ways to connect to my surroundings through making artwork. For example, when I lived in Sweden the first time (2006-08 as a guest student at The Royal Institute) I made work about Pippi Longstalking which is a Swedish storybook character of a young girl who has no idea how vulnerable small girls are in the world. In fact Pippi is not vulnerable, she has the strength to lift a horse over her head. Then after my time in Stockholm, I went to graduate school at Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia, PA. There, Dr. Benjamin Franklin started appearing in my artwork... Yet, it is not only just the places where I live that influence. It is what I read; what I watch; what i listen to that creates inspiration and influential connections in my work.

Truly Historical

Social Networth

Upward Mobility The Billboard Art Project San Bernardino CA, USA, Photo: The Billboard Art Project

This is Not a Church Photo: Justin Luna

The Overseers

Sophia Heymans Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice?

Do you make work for yourself, or do you often think of your viewer?

I have a place in Minneapolis, but lately I’ve been spending most of my time on my family’s farm outside of St. Joseph, MN. There are three houses on the farm. One belongs to my parents, one to my father’s sister and her husband, and the other to my father’s brother and his wife. Together they have 80 acres of prairie and wetlands. I adore the farm because of all the space I have to work. My family always has interesting projects going to keep me motivated and inspired. My uncle built a furniture studio in one of the barns and I am able to build stretchers and painting surfaces in there. My work can become too muddy, claustrophobic and repetitive in a small studio in a city. When I paint on the farm it feels like I’ve been transplanted to the real ground from a clay pot. It’s too great. It’s hard to want to leave.

I always make better work when I can successfully pretend nobody else will see the painting, though it is challenging to keep myself from thinking about an audience on some level. The paintings in which I can forget about the viewer usually turn out fresher and braver, and most people prefer them.

What is the best job you have ever had? When I was in school in Providence I worked at the Athenaeum, one of the oldest libraries in the country. It looked like a mausoleum and Edgar Allen Poe used to hang out there. Plus I worked with the coolest old ladies ever.

Name your favorite dessert and least favorite food. Dark Chocolate and Key Lime Pie. I don’t like Cheetos, at all, and I don’t like the cheetah with sunglasses on the packaging. He doesn’t seem like someone I want to get to know.

What has most influenced your work? It’s too hard to name one thing, there are just so many factors, most of which I’m sure I’m not even aware of. I’m always inspired by watching the landscape out the window on road trips and train rides, seeing the different kinds of lighting during different seasons at different parts of the day during different types of weather… simple things we all understand but don’t think too much about.

Field of Lilacs

Spring Rain

The Lake

View from the Highway

Wetlands at Dawn

Rebekah Callaghan Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice?

Do you make work for yourself, or do you often think of your viewer?

I live in New Brunswick, NJ where I am working to earn my MFA at Rutgers University. Naturally, being in grad school has greatly influenced my painting. Nearly all aspects of graduate life have contributed to my education and development as a painter-- from taking classes to teaching classes, producing work to observing the works of others, as well as maintaining on-going dialogue with peers. Most importantly, the unique combination of time and space available in grad school has created an environment in which I can try to interrogate my paintings, while still engaging with them organically.

Both! I find it pretty difficult to paint unless there’s something exciting in it for me, but I want my paintings to be available to as many people as possible. Growing up with 9 brothers and sisters I was very fortunate to be constantly surrounded by great friends; I’d love it if my work could hang around similar company.

What is the best job you have ever had? I don’t know about the best, but one of the most enjoyable jobs I’ve had was working on a permanent wall painting for Odili Odita. I was part of a small team of assistants and we worked for several weeks on an extensive painting stretching through seven walls of a building at Princeton University. It was pretty wild to be involved in each stage of the process and see the transformation from conception to completion. Plus working on a painting all day isn’t so bad.

Name your favorite dessert and least favorite food. Any dessert and anything that is not dessert.

What has most influenced your work? Most recently it’s been the plants I’ve collected from Home Depot’s nursery, painting from paintings, chatting with my studio neighbor Celia Gray, looking through windows, and having tea with new friends.

Tilton

Untitled & Sprawl

Pals

Family Tree

Stonewashed Spring

Ryan Nault Where do you currently live, and how does it affect your art practice? Currently, I live in Chicago Illinois. I couldn’t have made these paintings anywhere else. Before anything my paintings are a reaction to my daily encounters. Chicago just happens to be the stage.

What is the best job you have ever had? The worst job I’ve ever had was lifeguarding at an indoor YMCA pool. I still have nightmares.

Do you make work for yourself, or do you often think of your viewer? A year ago I would have probably said I painted for myself. I would give my paintings these really personal, secret titles, that I never told anyone. I’m trying to take more responsibility for the images I make. I’m always thinking about the viewer, but I try not to let that cloud my judgement. You have to consider the viewer right? Arts about communication.

Name your favorite dessert and least favorite food. My Aunt Kathy’s pumpkin pie. Egg salad sandwich

What has most influenced your work? video cameras, polarized sunglass lenses, stray dogs, things that frighten me.

What Weâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;re We Doing in There

Fredâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Garden

Fl창neur

This is It

Under Water

Tom Toye AD: Do you want to introduce yourself? TT: I’m Tom Toye. I live in Brooklyn right now, but I live upstate too. I commute back and forth. I’m a printer and a comic drawer and sometimes a sculptor. AD: Cool. Where did you go to school? Were you “formally trained”? TT: Yeah, I went to Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. And it was a pretty good experience. AD: What did you study while you were there? TT: Illustration. AD: Ok, so you’re in between Brooklyn and Upstate? TT: Yeah, I stay at my parents house cause I’m paying off loans. Then I come down here [Brooklyn] and stay with my brother. AD: So you work in Brooklyn? Where? TT: Oh, yeah, Endless Merch. I do all the t-shirt printing. AD: And it’s a record label? TT: Yeah, and it’s a distribution/record label. We just put out a thrash-metal album but we also do some indie rock stuff.

AD: You do print and comic stuff? TT: Comic stuff. That’s a really great way of phrasing it. AD: Do you prefer the term “comic” or “cartoon”? TT: Either one is fine. AD: Ok, so did you get into illustration stuff first or did you want to do narratives first? Does that make sense? TT: Yeah, I know what you’re talking about. I don’t know when. I just always thought about comics, like doing shitty ones in high school. And then it just made sense in school, because people were doing them anyway. AD: Did you read comics in high school or as a kid? TT: Yeah, all through my life. AD: What are your favorites? TT: I grew up reading super hero stuff, and I still read that stuff. In middle school I started reading a lot of Giant Homicidal Maniac and was into weird, goofy shit like that. And now it’s just really independent, homemade stuff. That’s kind of what I follow now. I still have this giant stack from all these fests I’ve been going to that I haven’t read yet. AD: Yeah, I’ve been getting more into independent comic stuff since getting to Brooklyn. I just went to a Jonny Negron opening a couple weeks ago. And something for Printed Matter. There seems to be a cool community growing around comics. Is that an emerging or growing thing, or am I just really late on that? TT: Haha, I think it’s just that new people keep

Choose Your Warrior

Free Snakebomb

filtering in and keep revitalizing it. It’s a really active space, and you can do whatever you want. No one is really gonna shut you down. AD: Yeah there’s some pretty crazy stuff. I just read a really short comic called Hammerhead? TT: I don’t know about it. AD: It’s just about a really ugly guy with a hammer coming out of his head who moonlights as a super hero. But anyway, you do sculpture as well. Are your sculptures related to the cartoons you’ve drawn or from imagery you’ve used in prints? TT: When I do sculpture it’s a figure, but like real bad anatomy. Like, it doesn’t make sense. I just made it out of pipes and paper mache and shit. Then I also try to make action figures out of wood and wire. That came from doing puppet animation in school, and I see it as a continuation of that. AD: That’s a good segway to ask what mediums you use for your drawings and prints. TT: It’s all pretty hands on stuff: ink and paper, watercolor, acrylic paints, balsa wood. Maybe wire and stuff. It’s all pretty basic. But I know my way around Photoshop, and it’s pretty useful in screen printing. If I have a design, I can dissimilate all the layers and turn it into a five color print. That’s really helpful. AD: Ok this is a hard question, but if you had to choose your biggest influence, what would it be? TT: Something I’m always thinking about is John Carpenter horror movies. So I guess that. Old horror and sci-fi movies I watched as a kid are my principle influence.

AD: That’s a good one. And I can definitely see that in the content of your cartoons. Can you tell me a little more about your story lines? TT: A lot of it tends to be things turning into other things by violent means. Transformation and people melting and shit. Gory stuff. AD: In terms of process, is there an image or a story initially in your brain? TT: I mean, when I decided that I was going to make a 50-page comic I wanted it to be more of a drawing process. Instead of making a story and then creating images for it. I wanted to make a character, but make the character be affected by what ever I drew around it. Like changing forms. It’s definitely an interplay. It’s pretty organic. AD: Do you do work here or Upstate? What’s your work environment like? TT: It’s where ever I am. I’ve been trying to work here more, because I have the space. At home, it’s a desk. At my brother’s, it’s a coffee table. Where ever I can. AD: Ok. Now I’m gonna ask you cheesy questions. TT: Ok. AD: What’s the best trip you’ve ever gone on? TT: That’s hard. Going to Chicago last year was pretty cool. Going to comic fests are always great. In 2010, my brother and I went around to colleges and sold posters. Like pop culture stuff, Lil’ Wayne and shit. AD: Oh, you were the guys who sat at the tables and you could buy like Marilyn Monroe posters or a Grateful Dead. TT: Yeah, that was us! We went to North Carolina

and South Carolina and Tennessee, around there. We brought a bunch of our own prints with us, and I think maybe one person bought one of mine. A couple of the stoner-seeming kids were all like “woah, these are crazy”. AD: Ok, next one. What is your favorite dessert and your least favorite food? TT: Favorite dessert is definitely cookies. I could eat cookies all day. Or chips. AD: But that’s not a dessert. You gotta be careful. TT: It’s a snack food though. That counts? I’m having trouble thinking of a least favorite food. Actually, my friend gave me some type of fucking dried prune the other day. It was Japanese. AD: Oh yeah, umeboshi! It’s like a pickled plum. TT: Yeah, they’re little and red. She said she loved them, but it was the grossest thing I’ve ever had. And I couldn’t spit it out cause we were in a public place. AD: Last one, what was the last time you got really hurt? And what happened? TT: Like how hurt? So I was, like, useless afterwards? AD: I’m not sure. I fell and scraped my knee the other day, but that doesn’t count. TT: Well, I got really hurt the other day on that big 8-arm screen printing press over there. It’s like a big robot. These girls were teaching me how to use it, and I was standing too close to it. The palates swing around and my wrist got caught between the palate and the thing that holds the screen. It bent back a bit. AD: Ewwww.

TT: Yeah, I thought I broke it but I didn’t, but my arm got kind of punctured. That whole month I was useless, my hand got all infected. I was a mess. AD: Holy shit. Yeah, that counts. That’s a good one. I don’t have anymore fun questions. Is there anything else you want to be in this thing? Like, about your work. TT: I guess going back to my injuries and stuff, that’s a big part of the stuff I draw. Like, weird fucked up body parts or rotting skin. But I guess that goes back to the horror movies, like transformation through mutation. That’s what comes up all the time for me, without even thinking about it. AD: I saw your print that was a SHOWPAPER cover. TT: Yeah the SHOWPAPER cover was a 10-layer screen print. I don’t really know how they found me. Todd P just called me up one day. And I gave them that image. I had made it right before that poster tour thing. AD: Todd P is fucking everywhere. That’s great you did the SHOWPAPER cover though. They’re a pretty great resource for finding artists. But, oh, I forgot to ask you some basic stuff. How old are you? TT: I’m 25, born in 1987. AD: Where are you from originally? TT: Queens, NY. I’ve pretty much lived here my whole life. We lived in College Point, Queens until 1999. Then we moved upstate to Putnam County, and I lived there until I lived in Providence. There was a ton of Fort Thunder stuff, which was fucking crazy and awesome and had a big influence on me. And now I’m sometimes in Brooklyn.

Tarantulanator

God Head Dance

AD: Ok cool. I think thatâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s all I got. I have to go type this up immediately. Thanks for talking to me. TT: No problem.

Engineers

Fright Fridge pg 2

Snake Ski

No Pain No Veins

Hidden Enemies