2018

Measuring the Weight of Longing: Q & A with Gayle Friedman

Gayle Friedman is an artist who was raised in Birmingham, Alabama. She lives and works in Washington, DC. For the past decade she’s been a jeweler, teacher, and the founder of Studio 4903, a group art studio space.  Friedman received a DC Commission on Arts and Humanities Fellowship Award in 2017. In addition to her solo exhibition at Hillyer, Friedman also has work in the exhibition “Intimate Gathering” opening June 2, at WAS Gallery in Bethesda, MD. Friedman is an artist in residence at Red Dirt Studio in Mt. Rainier, MD.

gaylefriedmanart.com

You often present your ceramic work in tableaus inside boxes, much like jewelry. How has making jewelry informed your work?

I actually see a lot of jewelry in my work—some of it shows up in the techniques I use that are taken directly from metalsmithing, such as incorporating soldered chains in a piece, or using rivets to cold-connect things. I also use sterling silver and even gemstones in some of my work. Several of the pieces in this show incorporate wire to attach or wrap things—all common in jewelry-making.

In this show I’m working with a lot of previously used things—I find their historical and emotional content very compelling. I do the same thing with a lot of my jewelry. In fact, I love working with people who want me to take something they’ve got and transform it into something more relevant or that they can use in a new way. Several years ago I made a series of reclaimed fur pieces that began when a friend gave me a collar from one of her grandmother’s fur coats.

Finally, I think I pay attention to minute details much as a jeweler does, which is easier to do when a piece is small. However, I’m excited to be going larger and breaking free of some of the size, weight and even balance restrictions necessary when making functional jewelry.

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Tools are a dominant motif in your work. Can you talk a little bit about your fascination with tools in general?

The tools go way back to my early childhood. Summers in Alabama are hot and I’d go down beneath my grandparents’ house to the dirt-floored basement to cool off and play at Papa Izzy’s workbench. I can still smell it—that kind of musty, iron aroma. He owned a hardware store before the depression and had quite a collection of tools. Just the objects themselves fascinated me. I remember being especially fond of the vice and his hammers. After he died, dad got all of his tools and created a really cool shop in our basement, where I’d often go to seek refuge. Dad was always doing projects around the house but he never showed me and I never asked how to use any of his stuff. It sure made an impression on me, though.

And after he died, what I most wanted were some of his old tools. At the time I had no idea what I’d do with them. All of the work I’m doing now began when I made a mold of dad’s ball peen hammer and began casting clay replicas of it.

What does your process look like when making your Delftware pieces? Does your photography of decomposing and broken plant materials inform how you treat porcelain?

I studied Anthropology in college and did several digs in Alabama during and after school. I spent a lot of time in the dirt, searching for the tiniest pieces of information. Almost everything we found was broken.

Many of the things I make feel like artifacts, and while they’re not necessarily dirty, I often tear or break them because I figure that just about everything ends up that way. Sometimes I’ll break something on purpose and glue it back together again. Many of the delft pieces in my mom’s collection broke over the years, and one of my dad’s chores was to glue them back together. In fact, this week, a vase he had repaired broke apart again and I had to re-glue it. It was so strange to think that he was the last person to have paid close attention to this crack; his hands were the last to touch the glued surfaces and now I was revisiting them. It felt so intimate, like we were having a conversation.

I’m enamored with my compost pile and find the decay to be quite beautiful. The rust I use in many pieces is a part of that process of decay in metal. We tend to think of metal as dead, but I really like how inanimate materials also have a sort of life that shows up through time and their disintegration or exposure to oxygen.

Tell us about your experiences with Studio 4903. Does sharing studio space with other artists impact your work?

I am so happy to work in shared art studio spaces. I founded Studio 4903 12 years ago because I didn’t want to work out of my home. I wanted to be part of a community of people who I could problem solve with, bounce ideas off of, be inspired by. I also have a firm belief that many together can accomplish much more than an individual on her own. Interestingly, I’m now in two shared studio spaces! I’ve been doing an artist residency at Red Dirt for about a year and a half, and it’s there that I’ve expanded my process beyond creating jewelry.

I find it really interesting how working in proximity to others can affect my work in subtle ways: I’ll try a color of paint I’ve never used before, or tear something and realize that one of my studio mates tears and cuts a lot of her work. And then there’s the conversations we have, sometimes in structured meetings or critiques, but often over a quick lunch or chance encounter. The dialogue helps shape who I am as an artist. I’m curious by nature so I want to know what others think and feel—about what they’re doing as well as about my work. These moments give me ideas, things to incorporate or reject, often a new or better way of looking at my work. They can be very challenging and even crazy-making, but I love it all!

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How has your work evolved over time? What are your next steps in your body of work?

Many people don’t know that I was making ceramic sculpture back in the 90’s. I got lured away from the studio to help found an alternative school, Fairhaven School, in Prince George’s County, where I spent 7 years. When I left the school I knew I wanted to immerse myself in a creative practice again, but didn’t really know where to begin. My ceramic pieces had begun large but had gotten smaller over the years, so it seemed natural to explore jewelry. I loved the idea that I could create these intimate art pieces that people would literally carry on their bodies. Early on I made more conceptual jewelry, such as a series on waste and luxury. One example from that series is a pair of plunger earrings made of silver and terra cotta clay, with a tiny diamond hidden up inside the clay part of the plunger—as if any plunger could tuck away something as precious as that! But I really wanted to have a larger audience for my jewelry, so I began making more functional, accessible work.

More recently I’ve realized that I have different kinds of questions I want to try and answer. That’s where I feel most engaged right now. I’m interested in how people in other cultures treat, use and discard family items and heirlooms. I’m going to spend time doing some research on that and see how I might be able to collaborate with anthropologists and artists.

I’ve also been interested in doing more mantel installations. I think there are lots of people who’ve stored things in boxes because they don’t want to throw them away, but don’t know what to do with them. I’d love to collaborate with them and their stuff—to open those boxes and reimagine those things in new ways.

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Objectual Abstractions: Q & A with Emilio Cavallini

English | Italiano

A renowned fashion designer, Emilio Cavallini is known the all over the world for his innovations in stockings and hosiery. In a career spanning three decades, Cavallini has collaborated with design houses ranging from Mary Quant to Dior, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen, and more. Beginning in 2010, he gave up designing for women’s legs in order to devote himself entirely to designing on canvas and creating fine art, but not too much has changed—we can still find his unique artistic expression, dedication and elegance in his practice.

Cavallini’s fine art was first displayed to the public in early 2011 for a solo exhibition at the Triennale Expo in Milan. Emilio Cavallini’s masterpieces draw the spectator’s gaze into a new mystical world, seemingly comprised only of stockings. This trascendental effect is achieved by the perfect union between nylon thread, emptiness, mathematics and genius. In his hands, new mathematical discoveries, through complex processes, are developed into works of art.

In partnership with the Embassy of Italy and the Italian Cultural Institute, IA&A at Hillyer is currently exhibiting a retrospective of Cavallini’s works, including Fractals, Diagrams, Bifurcations and Actual-Infinity. Concurrently, the Italian Cultural Institute is exhibiting three stunning masterpieces inspired by the Italian Mannerist painter of the 13th century, Giacomo da Pontormo, creating an original union between old painting and new mathematical discoveries of our century.

Objectual Abstractions is on view at IA&A at Hillyer and at the Italian Cultural Institute (appointment only) from May 4-27, 2018. 

What makes nylon thread and stockings your medium of choice? Do you find there are mathematical principles inherent to the production of hosiery?

It was in designing and producing my first stockings that I identified the tools with which I have built my dream of creating art. The mathematical principles were applied after I designed and produced samples of stockings.

Do you draw your ideas before executing them? Can you tell us a little bit about how you go from concept to finished product?

The socks are designed so that they can be made by machines following my instincts for making fashion. All of my designs are also based on my knowledge about the world of art both ancient and modern.

What are your major inspirations? In conjunction with the exhibit at Hillyer, the Italian Cultural Institute is also showing some of your artworks inspired by Jacopo da Pontormo’s paintings. What drew you to these Mannerist works?

My inspiration comes from the street, commercials, movies, television, and from my fondness for art of the Greek Classical period and the Renaissance. Colors are important, and from the Renaissance I have drawn great inspiration from Pontormo, Rosso Fiorentino, Michelangelo, Raffaello, etc. Thus my colorful fractals were born, drawing on shades prevalent in those works.

You spend your time in Milan and New York. What has it been like to show your work in LA and now in Washington, DC?

Living in Italy, where art is very invasive and makes you lose your sense of what is modern, it was by hanging out in New York in the 60s that I gained strength and courage to undertake not only making fashion but also the creation of works of art. My passion for mathematics made my artistic work easier and more unique. Exhibiting my work not only in Italy but also in New York and Los Angeles and now Washington [DC] has been a great pleasure because I have been able to show my work to many more people.

What concepts are you exploring in your new work?

I am juxtaposing the mathematical concepts of my works with those of light and the colors of the rainbow of which it is composed.

OBJECTUAL ABSTRACTIONS: INTERVISTA CON EMILIO CAVALLINI

 

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Emilio Cavallini è oggi conosciuto in tutto il mondo prevalentemente in quanto stilista di moda di fama internazionale. Con una carriera che si estende per tre decenni, Cavallini ha collaborato con differenti case di moda, da Mary Quant a Dior, Balenciaga, Alexander McQueen e altre. Smise di vestire le gambe delle donne a partire dal 2010 per dedicarsi completamente al vestire tele, ma poco cambia; continuiamo a trovare la stessa arte, dedizione ed eleganza.

Per la prima volta nel 2011, le sue opere vengono finalmente mostrate al pubblico in occasione di una mostra personale offertagli dalla triennale di Milano. I capolavori di Emilio Cavallini cuciono lo sguardo dell’osservatore in questo nuovo mistico mondo apparentemente costruito dalle sole calze. Basta poco, peró, per realizzare che questo effetto trascendentale è dato in realtá dal precisissimo accostamento tra calze, vuoto, matematica e genialitá. Così le nuove scoperte matematiche, attraverso una elaborata sfida con la complessitá, diventano finalmente oggetto artistico.

A IA&A at Hillyer sono esposte venti delle sue opere inclusi Frattali, Diagrammi, Biforcazioni e Attuale-Infinito, in collaborazione con l’ambasciata italiana e L’Istituto Culturale Italiano dov’è possibile trovare tre grandi capolavori che prendono ispirazione dalle opere dell’artista manieristico italiano del sedicesimo secolo, Pontormo. Così ci viene presentato questo originalissimo sinolo tra vecchi dipinti e le nuove scoperte matematiche.

Objectual Abstractions è in esposizione a IA&A a Hillyer e all’Istituto Culturale Italiano (solo su appuntamento) dal 4 al 27 maggio 2018.

Cosa rende le fibre di nylon e i collant la tua scelta attraverso cui realizzare opere d’arte? Trovi la presenza di principi matematici anche nella realizzazione di calze?

È Stato disegnando e realizzando le prime calze che ho individuato nelle stesse gli strumenti con cui costruire il mio sogno di fare arte. I principi matematici sono stati applicati dopo che ho disegnato e realizzato i campioni di calze.

Disegni le tue idee prima di realizzarle? Ci diresti qualcosa in merito al processo da concetto a prodotto finito?

Le calze vengono disegnate, in modo che possano essere realizzate dalle macchine, seguendo il mio istinto nel fare moda. Tutti i miei disegni seguono inoltre la mia conoscenza del mondo dell’arte sia antica che moderna.

Quali sono le tue maggiori ispirazioni? Contemporaneamente all’esibizione a Hillyer l’istituto culturale italiano sta esibendo alcune delle tue opere d’arte ispirate dai quadri di Jacopo da Pontormo. Cosa ti ha condotto a queste opere in chiave mannieristica?

Le mie ispirazioni vengono dalla strada, dalla pubblicitá, dal cinema, dalla televisione oltre che la mia passione per l’arte classica greca e rinascimentale. I colori sono importanti e dal rinascimento ho tratto grande ispirazione come da Pontormo Rosso Fiorentino Michelangelo Raffaello ecc. Sono nati così i miei frattali colorati attingendo opera per opera i colori predominanti

Passi il tuo tempo tra Milano e New York. Com’è stato esibire il tuo lavoro a Los Angeles e attualmente a Washington, DC?

Vivendo in Italia, dove l’arte è molto invasiva e ti fa perdere la cognizione di ció che moderno, è stato frequentando New York dagli anni 60 che mi ha dato forza e coraggio di intraprendere oltre che fare moda la realizzazione di opere d’arte. La mia passione per la matematica ha reso il mio lavoro artistico più facile ed unico. Esibire il mio lavoro oltre che in Italia a New York e Los Angeles ed ora Washington [DC] è stata una grande soddisfazione poter far conoscere il mio lavoro sempre a più persone.

Quali concetti vorresti affrontare per le tue opere future?

Sto affiancando il concetto matematico delle mie opere a quello della luce ed ai colori arcobaleno della sua composizione.

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Drift: Q & A with Carrie Fucile

Carrie Fucile is an intermedia artist focused on sound, sculpture, installation, and performance.
She has exhibited and performed at numerous venues in the United States and abroad including The Walters
Art Museum, The Red Room, the (e)merge Art Fair, Vox Populi, VMK – Gönczi Gallery, and Casa Contemporânea.
Recent honors include a 2016 Maryland State Arts Council Individual Artist Award and a 2015
D’CLINIC residency in Hungary. Her recordings are released through Ehse Records and Protagonist Music.
Fucile lives and works in Baltimore, Maryland and is a Lecturer at Towson University.

carriefucile.net

Sound is integral to your artwork. Can you tell us how you began to discover sound as a medium to incorporate in your work? What are some of the challenges of working with sound?

As a young person, I was trained classically as a pianist and a vocalist. I first became aware of alternative modes of music-making in high school, when I was introduced to 20th century composers such as Samuel Barber and John Cage. Seeing and hearing a prepared piano was likely the source of my enthusiasm for sound. Later, when I was living in New York in my early 20s, I started to witness “sound art” at various museums and galleries. I very distinctly remember sitting in the dark at the Whitney Museum, wowed by a Maryanne Amacher piece. Later, in graduate school, I began making videos, and people often commented on the strength of the sound. I became drawn to professors, courses, and venues that emphasized sound art and experimental music. This was the jumping off point for my subsequent work. In retrospect, it seems natural that, as both a visual and musical person, sound became the focus of my creative output.

Sound can be challenging because things can go wrong. Therefore, anytime I do a performance or an exhibition, there is a chance something might not work or that things could break down. I have learned to expect these setbacks, but it does not make me any less anxious!

How do you relate to improvisation in your work?

Improvisation factors into my performance work. I always have a structure for what I will do, but I allow room for improvisation so that things are fresh, exciting, and interesting.

Can you guide us through your creative process? Are there other artists (visual, musicians, writers, etc.) that influence your work?

My creative process involves a lot of thinking and then an “a-ha!” moment where I realize something I want to try out. I then go make it or propose it and make it. Usually there is a part of the work that I have no idea how to do, and I end up teaching myself how to execute it. I think that it is really important that I consistently learn new things.

I have been influenced by countless artists through the years. Currently, I am very inspired by the work of Gianni Colombo, Rolf Julius, and the writing of Hito Steyerl.

In “Drift” you are dealing with a lot of big issues—territorial and bodily boundaries, political upheaval, and global capital. How do you bring all of these topics together? Is it important for you that the viewer understand the background and intent of each piece while they experience it?

As an artist, I posit myself as an outside observer who makes connections. I see certain patterns that exist and I explore them. It is great if the viewer gets my intentions, but not necessary. Once the work is out there, it is up for grabs and I am always thrilled to hear other interpretations.

How has Baltimore’s art scene influenced your work?

Baltimore’s art scene has always allowed me to be myself. I am very grateful for such an inspiring, open-minded, and supportive community. People here are interested in making art for art’s sake and engaging with each other. I love how there is always a welcoming venue for a project. People are genuinely excited to share work and foster a dialogue.

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Lines, Folds, Bends, and Matter: Q & A with Anne Smith

Anne Smith is a visual artist and teacher in Washington, DC. Her art practice
spans disciplines of drawing, sculpture and printmaking to study variations on boundaries, paths, and
divisions of space. Her subject matter has included her childhood home, the side of the road, and other
spaces entirely made up or imagined.

Smith is also a teaching artist at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC, and has taught drawing at
George Mason University in Fairfax, VA. She has been an assistant to artist Lou Stovall since 2010, where
she has assisted with framing, art installation, silkscreening, writing and a variety of other jobs around the
studio and the DC area.

Your works in To Bend / To Fold focus heavily on the use of black, which seems like a heavy contrast to your more colorful Potomac Prints series. How did you arrive at this mostly monochrome body of work?

For some reason, I have tended to make dense images (that is, with lots of material) for quite a while now. The first drawing I ever did that involved a really dense application of graphite was in 2005, and although the subject matter was very different, it took on this reflective quality with light, setting up a situation in which the image would change depending the viewer’s relationship to it and the light. So, I was hooked then on that interest in light reflection as well as density, and eventually have found myself in the place where I am now—making these charcoal and graphite drawings.

But, I don’t like to work on the same thing for too long! Sometimes I need a break, which is how I might end up making something really light and colorful, like the Potomac Prints series. Even though the bodies of work might look very different, often I find myself circling the same big ideas, just from another perspective.

What is drawing to you? How do you personally define a drawing?

Drawing comes back to the extension of a line. That line has the potential to exist in more than one way – it is first a deposit (or removal) of material on or into a surface, but it can also convince our minds to read more into it, like a line that becomes a road or a house or a shadow. So the line is both the thing itself and (in some cases) the image of a thing.

I think of my linear sculptures and some of my etchings as drawings, too. This has to do with the directness of the processes—working directly into material—as well as the linearity and plasticity/changeability of the materials. Conversely, I often imagine the structures in my drawings as objects, though I would only ever call these drawings. Printmaking can feel downright sculptural, too!

You seem to be inclined to minimalist structures and your works seem to allude to Richard Serra and other modernist heavyweights. Do you consider your work a continuation of the minimalist tradition or is it totally new to you? What other artists or artforms inspire you?

It’s true that in this series of work, I am trying to use as few lines as possible to create a complex structure, but at the same time, I’m doing this with an excess of material (lots of charcoal, or even in the quantity of loose lines that hum in the background of the images). When I’m working, the goal is to follow my own line of curiosity and questioning—if I find myself comparing my work to others’ or thinking too far down the line of how the piece will end up, I know right away that I’m not in the right place for making. What I strive for is to be in a state of making in which I’m trusting my hand and my process and my instincts to lead me to a place I cannot yet imagine.

I do like Richard Serra’s work, and people do make that association sometimes. But I find that I most connect with others whose working values and ways of approaching questions seem like my own, for example Martin Puryear or Janine Antoni. There are also several people locally or from other places I’ve worked and studied who have had huge impact on me. Talking to them is like a breath of fresh air and always resets me whenever I feel lost in the studio.

How do you go about getting ideas? Do you keep a sketchbook? How do you go from idea to final piece?

Ideas come from working! My sketchbook is mostly filled with writing and notes, or with line drawings when I am trying to work out a specific form. I also love taking walks and using my phone to photograph things that pique my interest. When I can, I print these out and tape them into a sketchbook for just this purpose—I like having them in physical form where I can flip through the pages, rather than taking the photo and then never looking at it again. So, walking and looking are forms of work as well.

Of course, there’s no substitute for just working with your materials, encountering problems, and working out solutions. Most of my ideas come not from planning or “brainstorming” but from being there in the moment working on a piece, paying attention as much as possible to where it wants to go. I don’t ever want to fully understand a piece before I’ve finished it (and maybe not for a long time after that). Otherwise, it’s not an interesting idea to me anymore.

You said that sculpture was going to be your next step. How do you see yourself approaching the concept of space with a 3D medium in the future?

I want to spend more time working sculpturally because I’ve always started with the drawing on paper and then moved to sculpture. I want to flip that around, or at least see where it takes me to start by working in three dimensions. In the latest sculpture that I have in the show, Reach, I use plexiglass for the first time and I’ve got a lot more to discover about working with that material. There are other materials that I’ve been attracted to for a while that I haven’t quite gotten myself to engage with physically yet—things like gravel, brick, roofing shingles and other materials more associated with building. I love working with wood, but I’d like to expand my vocabulary and see what happens.

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Ubiquitous Imagery: Q & A with Sarah Jamison

Sarah Jamison’s series, Ubiquitous Imagery, is inspired by the amount of time people spend absorbing images on their digital devices. Each piece is a tribute to scrolling through apps, a testament to the fact that through our perpetual media engagement, there is a universal visual language, where everything from cat videos to Kim Kardashian’s  “Breaking the Internet” is immediately understood. Born out of her own revulsion for and dependence on her phone, Sarah seeks to reorganize and reinterpret these digital images, laboring in traditional fine art media to depict the absurdity of our fascination and consumption.

Originally from small town Virginia, Sarah moved to Washington, DC in 2006 to attend the Corcoran College of Art + Design, where she received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in 2010. Sarah finds the act of careful rendering both meditative and motivating; she delights in the level of control and precision offered by colored pencil. Sarah is inspired by color, media culture, and whimsy.

sarah-jamison.com

Having a body of work that pulls all sorts of humorous internet icons and languages together, what do you think is the role of humor and satire in contemporary art?

Humor and satire, to me, are important vehicles to deliver a point, in contemporary art and otherwise. I believe when something is funny or fun, you capture people’s attention—it is the perfect segue to deliver your ideas to an open and receptive audience. In Ubiquitous, I wanted my drawings to have recognizable, comedic elements, but I equally wanted to discuss the darker parts of digital culture—how unkind, obsessive, vapid and disturbing it can be. The internet, as a space for conversation, can be heated, contentious and divisive. Humor is important because it helps to poke at the absurdities of the internet in an accessible way, and hopefully, allow us to relate to it in a way that is more light-hearted and reflective.

How did you find that colored pencils, markers, and gouache were your material of choice for your work? How do they conceptually fit into the ideas you want to portray?

For this series I wanted to use traditional fine art media and specifically chose mediums, particularly marker and colored pencil, that any viewer would be familiar with and likely have used themselves. In doing this, I hoped to reinforce the concept of relatability and common experience. Additionally, my intention in “Ubiquitous” was to create juxtaposition between pop culture or lowbrow imagery and established, time-honored technique. In choosing highly rendered drawing, I intended to elevate imagery that is typically associated with impermanence to the strata of art history. I have a deep love for drawing and my hope was that even if people didn’t understand the references in my works, they could appreciate the artistry.

How do you go about getting ideas for your work? Can you go into a little detail about your process of going from research to idea to rough sketch to a final piece?

Like anyone, I interact with digital media every day. I find my inspiration when I am thinking consciously about the images and language that exists on the web pages, social media apps, comment threads, or wherever I may be on the internet. I am always on the lookout for notorious and iconic images and when I see something that resonates with me, I save it to a digital folder so I can use it to compose “sketches” for my drawings in Photoshop. Often, I start the creation process with a specific concept in mind and know exactly what I want my piece to look like, but sometimes it evolves through experimentation. I use Photoshop because it allows me to immediately edit and refine my drawings before I ever touch pencil to paper. Once I am happy with my design, it is used as a reference for my actual drawing. My process begins with a base layer of marker and the rest is rendered primarily in colored pencil with white and light values reinforced with gouache.

You were educated and have begun your art career here in DC. Do you think that living in this particular city has played a part in influencing your work?

Living in DC has absolutely influenced my work. The accessibility to museums, galleries and fellow artists has had a profound effect on me. DC offers countless opportunities to learn from, research and be inspired by the creativity of others. Specifically, DC public transportation has helped influence my current body of work. Over the years riding on Metro, I’ve watched people glued to their cell phones, filling every quiet moment with constant stimulation. Noticing this reliance on digital culture in others helped me to notice it in myself—which ultimately acted as a catalyst for this series.

What do you think is the next step in your body of work?

In general, I am still thinking about my next steps. I am interested in exploring the lifecycle of digital content as something akin to contemporary artifacts. Social Media and digital content is both fleeting in its relevance, but also seemingly permanent—the internet is an immediate archive. How we interact with these extreme timelines is, to me, compelling. I am so fascinated by our collective digital experiences that I plan to continue to explore and evolve these themes in my artwork.

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