Bow and Arrow: Q&A with Suzy Kopf

Originally from Silicon Valley, CA, Suzy Kopf was a resident of NYC for eight years and currently lives and works in Baltimore, MD. She completed her MFA in studio art at the Maryland Institute College of Art in 2016, and holds a BFA from Parsons and a BA in art history from Eugene Lang College. She is the recipient of numerous residency fellowships, including Kala, The Studios at Mass MoCA, Playa, VCCA, Byrdcliffe, Hambidge, Elsewhere, and the Vermont Studio Center, among others. She has received a Design History Society Travel Grant, as well as several research grants to support her practice. Kopf is a cofounder of the Gowanus Swim Society, a Brooklyn, NY-based art collective. In addition to her own studio practice, Kopf is the Director of Sales and Marketing for BmoreArt, a regional arts publication and website. She also teaches watercolor painting and museum studies at Johns Hopkins University and the Maryland Institute College of Art.

Bow and Arrow was on view at Hillyer on February 7 – March 1, 2020.

Tell us about your solo show at Hillyer, Bow and Arrow. What was your intent behind the materials used and the combination of the sculpture and 2D works?

I saw my show at Hillyer as an opportunity to experiment since I had about 14 months from when I found out I had been selected for a solo show to when the show opened. I had already made the oil paintings but knew I wanted to make some watercolors as well. I hadn’t made a sculpture since undergrad, but I thought a three-dimensional element could really activate the center of the gallery in a compelling way, and get visitors to walk the entire room and spend more time with all the work.

Studying midcentury building and design decisions, I have been obsessed with breezeblocks, the decorative cinderblocks made of cement. They are used to promote airflow and create a sense of partial privacy between public and private spaces. They are a shorthand for midcentury leisure and design ideals. Breezeblocks are also a study in contrasts; mass produced yet difficult to make and transport, they are heavy yet incredibly fragile, functional yet decorative. Once widely available, breezeblocks are now made by only a handful of companies globally, providing yet another contrast of scarcity in abundance. I recreated a breezeblock pattern Bow and Arrow in Foamular that I learned how to cut on the CNC router. It was important to me that the sculpture be made out of a lightweight readily-available housing material, so Foamular insulation seemed like a poetic solution that connects to the breezeblock walls seen all over the world. Hilariously, it might have been too convincing! A lot of visitors to my show assumed it was cement and got way too close.

In preparation for Bow and Arrow, you returned to Puerto Rico in February 2018, 18 months after Hurricane Maria to continue a series of work, Dream House, you’ve been developing since 2014 on planned housing suburbs in the United States. What drew you to create work focusing on Puerto Rico’s Levittown?

I first visited Levittown, Puerto Rico when I was in PR to attend a wedding in 2017. I had read that it is the best preserved of the 4 original Levittowns (the others are in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York) and I was immediately struck by how eerily similar and different this Levittown was from the other 3. Sure, there were about 5 different house layouts repeating through a neighborhood but the use of cement breezeblocks, the fully grown tropical plants and the vibrant colors homeowners have used to decorate their homes root this place as firmly in the Carribean. It felt familiar but contrasted so much with the neighborhoods in the states I knew immediately it was a compelling subject for me.

The history of Puerto Rico is deeply immersed in colonization and Levittown, PR is a midcentury reminder of that— these single family dwellings with a fenced front and backyard and a carport speak more to mainland values and commercial interests than Latin American ones. Still, I love it as an example of how planned housing can be adapted to how people actually live in a place. In the years since Levittown, PR sold its first house in 1963, the place has been reclaimed by the residents from the developer’s plans— it is their home and they have altered it to serve them. 95% of what I saw in Levittown 18 months after Hurricane Maria (when the power was still out in San Juan) was rebuilding and reclaiming space.

Has the work and research from Bow and Arrow led to other projects you are interested in exploring? What are you working on now?

When I am working on a series for exhibition, I typically spend at least 6 months learning as much as I can about my chosen subject, which involves traveling, visiting archives and libraries and talking with people to get their first hand accounts whenever possible. I have my next 2-3 research subjects picked out but much of that work is impossible or would be extra challenging with COVID-19 restrictions, so instead I have been focusing my energy in the first few months of stay-at-home on some of the admin tasks involved in being an artist. I wrote a piece about actionable steps anyone can take with my colleague Mary Negro. I recently concluded a large sale of 103 works on paper to benefit the USPS and the #artistsupportpledge, a pledge any artist can take to spend $200 buying the work of other artists for every $1,000 they make. Just now, as we get into week seven of stay at home, I’m thinking about painting and collaging again and being in my studio creatively. I have a commission to complete and then I’m ready to take out some LIFE magazine cutouts and get to work experimenting. Like Mary and I say in our article, now is probably not the time to start a really big project, but a good time to try something new that feels fresh.

Since the end of your exhibition, the world has seen drastic changes due to the COVID-19 outbreak. Many artists we have heard from are just starting to deal with what this might mean to their art-making practice. Have you had to adjust your studio practice in any way?

The way I think about my work hasn’t really changed but my motivation to paint as the world falls apart has been rather low. Being an artist is a lot of things and there are seasons of production and seasons of where it makes more sense to reorganize your work space and do Youtube pilates videos. Like everyone else right now, I am trying to be gentle with myself and not focus on what is or isn’t getting done too much. This has been hard for me but luckily, I’m still over-employed right now and have had lots of WFH tasks everyday.

When we were looking for our house, my partner and I knew we wanted at least a two bedroom so one bedroom could be my studio and that has worked out really well. It’s been harder to focus during stay at home because he’s downstairs in the living room on his WFH Zoom calls and I’m upstairs in my studio on mine with our dog, Theodore Roosevelt running between us asking to go on a long walk but I am grateful for the company of this small chaos. I used to have to spend so much money on studio rent, utilities and transportation/parking; having a home studio has been a significant savings for me! I tell all my artist friends, crammed into shared spaces in Brooklyn and DC—”Come to Baltimore! We have space for you!”

You founded an art collective Gowanus Swim Society in 2014 with your cofounder K Haskell and ten other Brooklyn-based artists. Can you tell us about how that came about and what it means to be a part of this collective?

K and I were both members of a shared studio space in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Gowanus which has since relocated to Sunset Park due to gentrification. I told K that, despite living in New York City, the assumed art center of the world, for seven years, I was having trouble meeting other artists and wanted to create a sense of community where we were. We wrote up a manifesto and asked some acquaintances to join us for drinks and Gowanus Swim Society (GSS) was born. Since 2014, we’ve met monthly to organize exhibitions of our own work, curate other artists and hold one another accountable to goals in our own practices. We share resources and connections and go on an annual retreat together. Collectively, life has changed a lot in 6 years—we’ve seen several marriages, babies, a divorce, job changes, and many, many moves but our commitment to making work and meeting up remains. I think every artist should be part of at least one collective. In Baltimore, I’m part of Fluid Movement, a performance collective known best for our annual summer water ballet. Collectives are essentially big groups of chosen family who share an interest– what could be better?