Stephanie Scott_Artist Talks

Stephanie Scott ART 333: Photo Book Artist Talks Camilo Sanin Camilo Sanin is an artist from South America who was the Artist-In-Residence for the 2013 Spring semester. He lived in Columbia, South America with his mother until he was eleven years old. He then moved to Washington, D.C. to live with his father. His father was an avid art collector who was deeply interested in South American art. His aunt, who lives in New York, is a painter. Her art focused on pattern and rhythm, which was a large influence on Sanin and his works.

In high school, Sanin took various art classes. In one class, he created a project that focused on sequencing and patterning. He continued with this theme throughout high school and beyond. As years past, he began to place more emphasis on line, working on processes that would transform lines into larger forms, which would later add grids to his later paintings. With line, Sanin used positive and negative space to create a larger sense of space within his paintings. He also began to experiment with surface development, transferring his lines from the simple surface of the canvas to other mediums.

In college, he changed his perspective on the possibilities of color within his paintings.

He visited museums, looking at older paintings to observe the changes in perspective and abstraction as the years progressed. He experimented with the plasticity of his preferred medium of acrylic paint. He integrated optical qualities in his paintings, which included applying 20th century minimalism to his works.

While in graduate school, Sanin focused on experimenting with architecture. These included blocks that were decorated with various lines and/or grids, “constructing� a painting, or the ability to navigate spaces with lines.

Natalie Gonzalez Natalie Gonzalez is an interdisciplinary artist from Bolivia. She is heavily invested in the concepts behind time and space. She states that, “Time is irreversible, that it implies space and vice versa, and that space lies between art and everyday life.” During her talk, Gonzalez explained her processes as she creates a work. This included the ‘traces’ of her work, meaning the records of interactions and the residue that they leave behind.

She also presented some of the works she had created over the past few years. In one piece, she wanted to focus on delimiting and boundaries. To accomplish this, she drew attention to the limits of the art gallery in which the piece was presented. She used a large window in the gallery as the axis for a video performance. In another work, she wanted to focus on the chance occurrences that appear within the art world and reconstruct the aftermath of those occurrences. To achieve this, she used the act of filming as part of the performance, which would record responses in immediate action. In other works, she left many variables in her pieces up to chance.

Over the years, Gonzalez has used less and less materials as she creates her works, relying more on videos and projections.

Glenn Shrum Glenn Shrum is an artist who works with light through installations, video pieces. He currently teaches at a school in New York. Originally trained in architecture, Shrum discovered he had a passion for lighting and that light could be used an artistic medium. He is deeply interested in the interaction between light and space. He said that, “Light works have the most impact when experienced firsthand.”

In his works, he focuses on approaching light as sensory. During his talk, he described three considerations he would make as he created his works. One was flux, which observes the changes in light over time. Second was visual space, in which he observed the environment in which he would place his light installations and what it contains. Third is the idea of ‘un’commonplace, in which light is no longer a common entity within the space. As he described each of these, he presented one of his works that illustrated them individually.

One of his works involved the natural light of the sun, reflected off strategically placed mirrors. At certain points of the day, the targeted beams of light would land on various points of a building they were placed in front of; a variation of a sundial.