august/issue 12 by FORGET GOOD

August 2013, Issue 12

Big thanks to all participating artists! Feature interview Tara Mahadevan Mini interviews Kylie Gava Interviews edited by Laura Stamm & Tara Mahadevan Designer Tuan Pham Founder/Editor in Chief Kylie Gava Managing Editor Tara Mahadevan To be considered for our next issue, please visit our website www.forget-good.com Cover: The Excitement of Something New by Monique Atherton

Trey Wright 4

Calvin Ross Carl 12

Steven Gee 18

Justyn Hegreberg 26

Danielle Levine 34

Matthew Yaeger 42

Denia Kazakou 50

Monique Atherton 56

Trey Wright What is your day job?

If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to be?

I work during the week as a framer. It’s a mixed bag sometimes we get things that are really cool to frame like awesome world war two memorabilia, but other times I’ll be framing things to go over somebody’s toilet. The uninspiring day job just makes the time in the studio even more precious and exciting. I also freelance. It’s the same situation, but I really do enjoy getting to work with people on different projects; sometimes it leads to something in my personal work. I was commissioned by artist and photo editor Anna Jay to do a photo illustration of products and it totally lead to a lot of the work I’m doing now.

If I wasn’t an artist, I don’t really know what I would do. Maybe I’d be one of those people who comes up with the color names for house paint or nail polish.

It can be difficult to balance everything. I just try to take advantage of any free time I do get, even if it’s researching imagery or reading. I don’t think there’s any mystery to it; you have make yourself work because sometimes there isn’t time to wait for inspiration. I’m not too strict about it, though. Sometimes it just isn’t possible to work everyday, but I just try to stay vigilant about how I’m using my time. What was your after school routine like in high school? I haven’t thought about that in a long time. My after-school routine was pretty boring: I usually went home and watched the Golden Girls and ate cheesecake with them. I was pretty shy in high school. I do remember pretty vividly looking at the sidewalk a lot and the little bugs and details on the ground.

What are your most frequented online sites? I have terrible A.D.D., so it can be hard for me to focus. Often, I’m on social media websites where there are tons of pictures updated constantly. When I can find enough energy to muster some focus, I will read some articles on Forward Retreat, Actual Colors May Vary, Ain’t Bad Mag, and Feature Shoot Do you have any advice for other artists? My advice is what my dad always told me growing up: “Throw enough stuff on the wall and something will stick.” So, be persistent. And you can’t do it alone. You have to reach out to your peers. Surround yourself with people that inspire you, even if those people live on the opposite side of the world.

Ally

Angie

Couple

Ethan

Joel

Grant

Jamie

Calvin Ross Carl What is your day job? How do you balance it with your studio time? I’ve worked in design firms since I was a teenager doing different branding and web design projects, so finding the proper balance between work and studio has been nearly impossible. However, I’ve learned to think of my studio practice as a second job with just as much importance as my day job. Also, remembering that no one cares about an artist who doesn’t make art instills me with enough guilt to always get me into the studio. What was your after-school routine like in high school? Growing up in a household of musicians meant that I spent most of my free time playing guitar in our house and with various rock bands. I also painted quite a bit, and like most high schoolers, showed way too much interest in Salvador Dalí and other Surrealists. Otherwise, I did everything you’re supposed to do as a teenager. If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to be? Regardless of what I was doing, I’d likely be making something with my hands. My father is an outstanding carpenter, so I’ve always had an appreciation for working with wood, which has shown up in my artwork occasionally. There’s something magical about seeing a well-crafted piece of furniture or a well-built home.

What are your most frequented online sites? Sadly, I’m sure the site open most often in my browser is Facebook. Besides that, some of the regulars are: Tumblr, Digg, NY Times, Contemporary Art Daily, Bad at Sports, Cargo Collective, Hyperallergic, Daring Fireball, SiteInspire, and a ridiculous amount of RSS feeds in Digg Reader. Do you have any advice for other artists? I’ll give the very advice I wish I would follow through with: Write about your work and the work of others more often.

Broncos Versus Bears

Fleet Week Boys

Club 21 Matchbook

This Is Their Last Day

Red Fanged Maw

Steven Gee What is your day job? How do you balance it with your studio time? Currently, hopefully for not too long, I’m working in a coffee shop. Over this summer, between finishing my BA and starting my MA in September, I’m taking a break from making artwork. However, while working on my BA, I worked on Saturdays and a couple of weekday evening shifts. I’m sure once I’ve completed my MA, the difficulties of balancing a probable full-time job with studio time will be an immense challenge. What was your after-school routine like in high school? I don’t think I had a strict after-school routine. Although, I remember doing my art homework or various self-proposed projects every evening. I prioritized my art homework over every other subject. I was very positive and stubborn about what I wanted to study in higher education and beyond. If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to be? From a young age, I’ve had a strong love for animals and wanted to be a veterinarian. I undertook a week of work experience in secondary school at the local veterinary - a week that began with excitement and jubilation and unfortunately turned traumatic through a series of eye-openers. A couple of examples being: witnessing a dog’s balls being sliced open and watching a healthy cat being put down, purely because the owner couldn’t look after the cat anymore. I realize now these situations are just what happens in life. Perhaps, I was too young at the time, with rose-tinted glasses.

What are your most frequented online sites? Shamefully, I think it’s the NME, but the reasoning is wholly to just keep up with the news in the music industry. Other than that, it’s various gallery websites, looking at current and upcoming shows. I also often visit my peers’ websites, and distant contemporaries’, as I find it refreshing and engaging to see what’s developing and coming to the forefront in the art world. Do you have any advice for other artists? I don’t feel that I’m at the age or maturity yet in professional terms to give first-hand advice. However, I can pass on certain points people have made to me. The one that sticks out mostly to me is that to become a “successful” artist you have to be stubborn in terms of what you want to do as a professional; many people or distractions in life will try to divert you down a “safer” professional route. But as long as you are doing what you want to do, and are happy in said profession, then you will be successful in one form or another. And don’t make work you think people want to see. Make work you want to see.

Degree Show Installation

Bouncers

Bouncer Who Is Compensating

Curly Wurly

Top Heavy(Stretch Armstrong)

Painters Trough

Justyn Hegreberg What is your day job? How do you balance it with your studio time? I work at a grocery store. Four days on and three days off with a set schedule of morning shifts. My studio work is usually experimental and full of uncertainty. This freedom can be nice, but it can also cause my mind to spin out. My job is a healthy counterpoint - steady known patterns and physical engagement provide a natural balance. What I find most difficult is divvying up time between the studio and other art activities. Applying, submitting, looking, documenting and writing are the things that can eat up studio time. What was your after-school routine like in high school? I would walk home from the bus and close myself up in my room. There, I read for hours: Vladimir Nabokov, Milton Erickson, Franz Kafka, James Joyce, Karen Horney, Gerard Manely Hopkins, and others. I wrote nearly everyday, alternating between imitations of E. E. Cummings, Radiohead lyrics, and my own particular brand of impenetrable verbiage. I was also very interested in fashion design, so I would buy magazines and remove the pages. My walls were covered with groupings of designers and shows that I rotated regularly. In the evenings before going to bed, I would watch late night television with my dad. One of my teachers graded papers based solely on whether or not the empty spaces on the worksheets were filled, so I would fill those spaces with things from the shows that I was watching. The most memorable one being a David Letterman bit called “All Things Yellow.”

If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to be? A writer. Though I stopped writing for some years, I’ve picked it up again. I enjoy painting, but the experience of painting and writing are very different. I feel as though painting is a narrowing from the mind filled with many options to a very specific, small fixed point outside of the mind. Where as language starts from a very fixed and small set of parameters outside of the mind to an expansive feeling/environment that the mind inhabits. There was a time when I did not title paintings. I did not want to append something to a piece that might distract from the visual effect of it. After a while, I looked at titling my work as using language in a way that I’d always enjoyed before but found difficult to implement. As I mentioned above, I really like dense language, but this becomes problematic. Try using the term “arsenic speciation” in a poem! What are your most frequented online sites? I would probably have to go with Tumblr and Facebook. These are the places where I see the most work and talk with people online. Computer screens make my eyes dry up into little balls of hate and give me a headache. More recently this has become too problematic to ignore. So, I also enjoy listening to podcasts like Modern Art Notes, which incidentally is also a Tumblr. . . Do you have any advice for other artists? Help control the pet population. Have your pet spayed or neutered.

Goal Refraction

Pink and Green with Masking Tape 4

Pink and Green with Masking Tape 5

Dropstone

Gonadotropin Agonist

Size Grouping

Danielle Levine What is your day job? How do you balance it with your studio time? For the past year I’ve lived in New York and hadn’t had a typical “9-5”. Instead – I’ll pick up a few part time jobs and snatch those odd jobs inbetween. Some months I’ll be working a lot and others I’m broke but painting. It’s not the most stable way of living but studio always feels like a privilege. What was your after school routine like in high school? In high school there was Chicken Grill. Chicken Grill is a walk in, order at the counter, grab and go—or stay— kinda place. They have a variety of dishes that deviate from their original “Natural Chop” which is composed of three main ingredients.

architectural planner. Not sure what that meant but I had a whole theory, it involved magnets. The idea was simple. Put them on everything; prevent collision. Cars, houses, buildings, people, ETC. In my world we would all live in this liminal magnet space where nothing actually touched. Just a ++/-- kind of world. I was ready to take it to the bank and spent hours in the shed making functionalist looking abstract shapes and gluing magnets on them so they would almost, but never, “crash”. I suppose that’s not too far off from what I did with the work you see here. Playing in studio with hammers and bricks, thinking about magnets.

1. Grilled Chicken 2. Yellow Rice 3. Mustardn’Curry Sauce

What are your most frequented online sites?

I went to high school in downtown Miami and there was a Chicken Grill just two blocks away from our building. It closed 15 minutes after we were let out and everyday I’d rush to that place. Get the last chicken on the grill – the one with all the extra grease and skin and proceed to smother it with double portions of that magical Cadmium - Naples yellow Curry sauce. That was my dinner and after school routine for four years.

Do you have any advice for other artists?

If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to be?

Also, don’t be afraid to deviate and make a lot of “bad” or “unrelated” work to get to the good stuff. If you have the impulse to do something, never suppress it. That feeling is rare and besides, you might find yourself closer to the original plan then you imagined.

This Question. I don’t know. When I was a kid I wanted to be an inventor/

I use the Internet to watch movies and check my email.

Fuck if I know. I’m 23. But I do believe this; never stop making. And when I say, “making”, that can be different for everyone; just do it. Even if you don’t have the “time, money, or space” (I hear those words a lot with recent grads) to do the exact thing that’s been picking at your brain – work around it. Seduce it. Flex the muscle and be ready for the moment you can make the work.

Hit and Miss

XY Brick

Sticks and Stones

Final Sunset 1

Final Sunset 2

Matthew Yaeger What is your day job? How do you balance it with your studio time? I serve tables at a restaurant two blocks away from my studio. It gives me a lot of freedom in regards to when and how much I want to work. Most days I can head to the studio in the morning and stay through the afternoon, and with a quick change, I can go right in to work for the night. What was your after-school routine like in high school? A group of us would usually pile into a car and go skateboarding in the summer, snowboarding in the winter.

If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to be? I’ve always had a magnetic attraction toward fishing, so I think I’d be a fishing guide. The last few years, I’ve been really into fly fishing for smallmouth bass. What are your most frequented online sites? Facebook is an easy go-to, and an easy way to end up on other websites. Do you have any advice for other artists? Push yourself to do things you’re not sure about. I think our instincts come out of reoccurring thought or experience that we’re not consciously aware of. I try to trust moments where I venture into the unknown.

A Levitation

A Rock is a Rock Until Turned Over

Compactor: As Seen on TV

A Quick Fix for Comfortable Living

Repeated

Denia Kazakou What is your day job? How do you balance it with your studio time? I’ll try to keep this answer simple. In my final year of studying Fine Art, I opened my own art-focused public relations company, RedD PR. We focus on gaining publicity and organizing events for individuals and organizations in the creative industry. It’s a company based in London, but we’re already trading on an international level with extremely successful artists, photographers, and designers. Seeing as though I also work part time in Harrods on the weekends, I generally try and juggle quite a few things simultaneously, so I make my art work whenever and wherever I can. What was your after-school routine like in high school? Luckily, I went to high school in Crete. In the summer, we used to just go to the beach after school and just relax. Chania has a very small community and everyone trusts and knows each other. We all had a lot of freedom when it came to “curfews” and things like that. We were all rebels in school, though. We used to protest and argue about everything. If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to be? I always wanted to either be an artist or work in a biomedical field. I actually studied Biomed for several years before switching to Fine Art. I was in my final year of Medical Microbiology and Forensics before I accepted that the labs were simply not for me. I still love watching surgeries, though.

What are your most frequented online sites? I’m always on Facebook and Instagram. I actually use social media a lot in my work and have been getting new clients and interest from it, mainly because I keep people informed about what I’m doing either with my artwork or my PR company. I find people like to see the process of making things as well as the final result - the work that goes into certain events and exhibitions is always surprising to some. Do you have any advice for other artists? I’d say always keep an open mind and always remember to breathe. The art world is very competitive, so try to go to as many events as possible and never be afraid to ask genuine questions. You never know when you’ll meet the right people who can really help you in your career so don’t give up, sooner or later we all find our niche.

Waste

Residue

Frustration

Monique Atherton TM Would you like to introduce yourself? MA Hi! I’m Monique and I’m a thirty-something artist living and working in Brooklyn. I grew up all over the place and the closest thing I have to a hometown (where I spent most of my teenage years) is Bangkok, Thailand. I’m really interested in creating photographs that investigate the worlds we create for ourselves, as well as our relationship to the people and spaces in those worlds. TM What’s your day job? How do you balance it with your studio time? MA I’m lucky for the moment, as I have the chance to work as a full-time artist. It really makes all the difference, so I’m trying to take advantage of it while I can (it won’t last forever!). Of course, this hasn’t always been the case. Until May of this year, I was an Executive Assistant for about three years at a large Fortune 100 company. It was great. I simply scheduled my studio time around that, and was able to get a ton of work done during the weekends, vacation, and the evenings. I was also very lucky to be working with colleagues and bosses who were super into what I was doing, so it worked out great. TM What microcosmic state are you depicting with your series “Sometimes We Go Out” and “Tacoma”? MA Those two bodies of work are very related – they are about the world that we create with the person we are romantically involved with. When you are with someone, you develop your own primal

language and behaviors that are unique to that relationship – you exist in your own little microcosm. TM Do you want your viewers to find these microcosms for themselves? What do you want your viewers to see? MA I started becoming interested in portraying microcosms in my work about three years ago when I was introduced to Vipassana Meditation. For ten days, I went to a retreat at the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. During this time, I did not speak to or look at anyone. We had no phones, TVs, or radios. We weren’t allowed to read, write, or exercise. From 4 AM until 9 PM, all we did was our meditation practice. It was during this retreat that I found a world within myself; it was a world within our larger reality. This experience made its way into my work, so I decided to explore the other microcosms that I create within myself and other people. I also became interested in our relationship to the physical earth. That said, I want my viewers to be able to relate to the work and find similarities within their own lives. TM What narrative are you trying to reveal in these series? MA I wouldn’t say that I’m trying to reveal a particular narrative. The base of the work is that it depicts two people in a romantic relationship, but I like to leave it ambiguous.

Sometimes We Go Out

Untitled, From an ongoing series of homes after owners died

The Excitement of Something New

TM Many of your series seem to contain both naturally shot and staged photographs. Do you prefer one method to the other? MA I like both, but I like to incorporate staged work into the series because it adds another dimension to the work – one that moves away from just documenting the superficial. I like to dig up the underlying tensions that exist between people and places, and staging the work is a tool that helps me accomplish this. TM Although none of your photographs exhibit you, do you believe your work is inherently a self-portrait? MA Actually, the foundation of my work is self-portraiture. I am the central figure to most of the work and up until recently, I heavily incorporated my physical image into the work. I guess in “The Excitement of Something New,” I appear only once. That’s because I’ve been challenging myself to move away from blatant narrative/documentary style photography and push myself to create compelling series with minimal human forms. TM What roles do nature and animals play in your work? MA For me, nature has turned out to be a recurring theme in my work. It probably has something to do with the fact that, when I was seventeen, I was moved from a posh expat life in downtown Bangkok to a double-wide trailer in Deer Park, WA (pop. 2,000 at the time). I think this traumatic relationship to rural America has somehow embedded itself into my subconscious and is forcing its way out through my work. Animals have a strong thread in my work, not only

because I love them and am around them a lot, but also because we sometimes forget that at the core, we, too, are animals. We have primal tendencies that we often overlook. The big dog in my photographs is a metaphor for that. TM You photograph a lot of empty spaces. There’s something to be said about empty spaces – perhaps about the absence or remnants of people, or observing the state in which people leave their spaces. What are you trying to say in these photographs? MA When I photograph empty spaces, I search for a particular feeling of nostalgia and mystery. I’ve moved around the world since I was six months old. I’ve moved in and out of homes, entering empty ones and leaving them empty. I always wonder about who was there before and after me; I am fascinated by sharing such intimate spaces with someone, even though you never meet in person.

Speaking of abandoned spaces, for years I’ve been working on a series of photographs of homes taken shortly after their owners died. For me, abandoned spaces present both loss and opportunity. I don’t have the work online, but I’ve included one of the images here for the interview.

Sometimes We Go Out

The Excitement of Something New

TM Some of your photographs are blurry, show movement, or contain dust. What’s your intention behind these elements? MA Since photographs are just fractions of seconds, I use blurs to add a little extra time to the image. I also feel like motion blurs help to create a dreamlike and/or intoxicated feeling for the viewer – there is something very fun about that, feeling intoxicated just by looking at something. As for the dust, I like it too – it adds character. TM To me, your series “Holding Pattern” captures the minute details and monotony of a 9-5. What are you trying to convey in these photographs? MA I was working at a company and our division was being sold off. I had known for months that I was going to be let go, but I chose to stay on. It was a surreal experience, and I decided to do a series about it. While this was my original intent, I think that the monotony of a 9 to 5 did end up coming through...because let’s face it: office jobs are pretty monotonous. TM How do you develop an idea for a series? MA It depends, but I generally shoot and then edit down. I know kind of what I want to do, but I don’t know the details or have a definitive artist statement. I shoot for a feeling, and after several thousand photographs, I have an intense editing process where I lock myself in a room and don’t talk to anyone for a few weeks, or months, until I get a story and solid understanding about the work.

TM If you weren’t an artist, what would you want to be? MA I’m what I want to be! I only started taking art/photography seriously about six years ago. Prior to that I worked in a retail brokerage firm for about four years; got a degree in International Relations and worked in international trade policy for about five years. While they were both interesting fields, they were unfulfilling. I was super depressed and always searching for something else. After an epiphany in 2007, I realized that I’m only in this life for a limited time, and I was tired of spending it depressed and working for someone else’s agenda. A year later I was enrolled at the San Francisco Art Institute and haven’t looked back! Someone once asked me how I knew if photography was what I wanted to be doing since I had done so many other things. Well, when you sacrifice everything you have for your practice, you kind of know that’s where you want to be. In the five years that I have pursued art as a career, I have not once regretted the decision. TM Do you dabble in any other art forms? MA Yes, I like to paint, draw and do silkscreens, but I don’t show them very often. I look at them as my hobbies. TM Which do you prefer – analogue or digital? MA Digital. Because I love the instant gratification and the ability to be completely self-sufficient with the processing.

Tacoma

Sometimes We Go Out

The Excitement of Something New

TM What was your after-school routine in high school? MA I was involved in a lot of extracurricular activities (drama, art, choir, yearbook, etc.), but then I’d come home and spend a lot of time alone. I would just quietly sit and draw, read, or think. TM What are your most frequented online sites? MA YouTube, where I like to look at stupid/weird/funny videos to distract myself from what I’m supposed to be doing. I also check out art sites such as ArtFile Magazine, Don/Dean, Dead Porcupine, Tiny Vices, HyperAllergic, Featureshoot, Lenscratch, and ArtForum, to name a few. TM Do you have any advice for other artists? MA Keep doing it, even if you don’t feel like it or even if it’s not fun. You’ll never regret making work, even if it isn’t your best. Keeping at it during the tough times is what distinguishes a practice from a hobby. TM Ask yourself a question and answer it. MA What do you hope to accomplish in the next year?

I’m developing a new series of work involving strangers on the outskirts of town, which I hope to release by this time next year.