Resident Spotlight: April Childers

April upstairs at Stove Works. Photo taken by William Johnson

Resident Interview:
April Childers (Sept-Oct 2024 Resident)

Interviewed by Olivia Tawzer (Programs Fellow)

April Childers (born 1979) is an American artist, curator, and educator. She is known for including humor and craft in her work. She combines a variety of art historical, and popular cultural references that accentuate an inherent despondency in their merger. 

Childers’s work has been presented in an exhibition at BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music), NY., VSOP Projects, Greenport, NY., CR10, Linlithgo, NY., Vito Schnabel and Bruce High-Quality Foundation, NY., White Projects, Paris, FR., Imersten, Vienna, AT., Kurant, Tromsø, NO., The Carnegie Visual and Performing Arts Center, KY., Contemporary Art Museum, Tampa, FL., Atlanta Contemporary, Atlanta, GA., The Mothership, Woodstock, NY., and many others.

She lives and works in Strawberry Plains, Tennessee.

INTERVIEW

Olivia Tawzer: In your talks, you've mentioned altering objects by enlarging, replicating, or combining them with other things. And I was thinking of this “Follow Your Dreams” rug that you found downstairs that you incorporated into that wall hanging piece. You call them “junky little things”. How do you source your objects, and what draws you to the commonplace, “junky” things?

April Childers: Hmm. How do I say this? I think it comes in a bunch of different ways, but I think what first comes to mind is usually there's something wrong; well, wrong is usually understood as a negative thing, and I don’t mean that here, but usually there's something “off” about it, or it's been overly used. 

Like the rug I found downstairs here at Stove Works, it has just been used to death. But what solidified by attachment to the rug was the out-of-context phrase that it proclaims. And the rug itself has been just used to death. The backing on the rug is gone so you can really tell how it's made, the edges are all worn and tattered– it's falling apart. FOLLOW YOUR DREAMS!

I’m always asking ‘what's wrong?’

So I like that discarded kind of love. Finding a little treasure and thinking of how to reappropriate its original context, but have it still retain its thingness of the life it previously lived. I often reincarnate, reanimate, and reappropriate. 

Photo by William Johnson, depicting an in-progress work by April Childers. Stove Works, October 2024.

OT: You mentioned loving the Dollar Tree in your artist talk, and that stuff is made to be used once and thrown away. They're these plastic things that fall apart and are flimsy. Things can only get that “used to death” feeling if they have some kind of substance or quality to them so they can endure time versus these Dollar Tree kind of things. And you use both types of objects in your work. 

AC: Well, now it's a dollar 25. 

OT: I know, yeah. Inflation tree. 

AC: Inflation tree. Let's get a tree on fire. That's pretty good. It's about the price at the Dollar Tree or other similar stores. Items are more attainable. Having a mass of objects has always felt really good, and it's something that I've explored in my previous sculptural work. However, I am always questioning myself and trying to strain things out. I try to make the shortest sentence possible, as opposed to something like a giant rotted tabletop at a flea market on the side of a highway. Piled up, but less piled up. It's about finding a place for things– that was a title of an old piece. A place to put things. And it was just this mass of objects that I had organized on this table– there's a coffee maker percolating, a dead bluebird preserved in a jar, a Trump board game, and all of these in-process works and materials from the studio. So much stuff. All odds and ends, or maybe I should say odds with no ends. It was just a piece of plywood that sat on two sawhorses that I had made to look like they were built like Oreo cookies. It reminded me of an outdoor flea market on the side of the highway. I used to go to those all the time growing up and still do, if I can find them.

April Childers, Detail of “A Place to put Things (Whose Fault is it for Livin Anyways?!)” 2013, various materials, 125x64x132″

OT: You also have a curatorial practice, and if you view other artists' work as objects that you're putting together, it’s pretty similar to the way you combine objects in your practice.

AC: Yeah. There are a lot of similarities to that. The exhibitions that I have curated have absolutely been pretty much rooted in that intention. I just don’t have any other way of doing it. And I've always been pretty direct with the artist about that. But sometimes, no matter how direct you are with artists or how direct I think I’ve been, it can be a little off-kiltering to take their work and place it, or at times shove it, into a different context or contention. Like, “We're going to do this show, and I really want for this work to be included, but I'm going to cover the entire exhibition space in aluminum foil, there’s gonna be a wall with a person-sized hole through it, and I’m gonna write about buttholes for the exhibition text.” These are the things I think I convey and try to convey to the other artists involved, and sometimes, I get too caught up in the making to remember to do so. I am grateful that all of these people have rolled with me through these ideas and haven’t come for me yet. Hahaha (nervous laughter), I can’t say that I would have been as cool in similar situations. My need for them to trust me overrides reality sometimes. Also, working and functioning within any sort of institution, big, small, for-profit or not, is a whole other tangle. To be clear, everyone is great forever and ever! I’m laughing at myself right now. 

Details from exhibition at Take It Easy, Atlanta, GA., 2022. Full Circle, curated by April Childers. Artists pictured L to R: Natalia Kraviec (hanging) , Zack Rafuls (wall), RB Erin Moran (floor), and Vabianna Santos (hanging).

OT: It can be displacing. 

AC: Displacing is a good word. 

OT: I feel like a lot of artists think about the space that their art is shown in as neutral, so when you're changing up the space the narrative shifts. It can be exciting and also confusing for artists to have their work be, not misinterpreted…

AC: Used as material. Used as material in another artist’s language. Absolutely. And I think pushing that even further with the last couple of exhibitions that I have curated was good, at least for me. I hope for the other artists as well. All of the curatorial work definitely came from a spot of just not having a space to curate and understand my own studio practice. Not to mention being frustrated by previous interactions with large institutions and whatever the status quo was or is. When I did the curatorial project in North Carolina with artist Maria Britton: LOG (Low Occupancy Gallery), we knew we wanted to work together in a curatorial way, but we didn't have the means or even just space. We did, however, have an old shack on the property in the farmhouse that we were living in at the time in North Carolina. The situation was hilarious (in the true sense of the word) and really great in a lot of ways. Maria actually fell through the floor of the shack at one point. The structure basically sat on two toothpicks and was scotch taped to the side of a small mountain overlooking a creek just above the James Taylor Bridge in Chapel Hill. We did nothing to the space but throw up some clamp lights. We were putting art in a shack in the middle of the small wooded area where the elements, bugs, the opossums, and raccoons, anything could come in and be involved with it.  And oh, they did, so it was a forced context in that way. I really liked that. The process of staging something outside of its traditional context to create an environment that has never existed before and do so for actual, real-life purposes with meaningful intention. The conversation about getting out of the white cube…I think it is an old one now, but it will always be important, and it doesn't get done a lot of times in that sort of off-kiltering way. 

L: Entrance to parking area for L.O.G. circa 2015. R: April Childers and Maria Britton inside the L.O.G. exhibition space, circa 2015.

OT: Looking through your work, one of the first things that comes to mind is humor and playfulness. I'm thinking about the Chick-fil-A piece that you did. It stirs up multiple feelings in me because, in one way, I almost feel bad for people because of this false hope, but also there were signs it’s not real. Like ‘original’ being spelled O-R-G-I-N-A-L. I also just like people on Facebook calling it like God's chicken. 

AC: Oh yeah, Jesus’ chicken. And meaning it. Yeah. 

Image: April Childers, “Coming Soon”, paint on canvas, originally installed in Strawberry Plains, TN., 2022.

OT: It also makes me think about the discourse of the far right and fake news. If you look at it and actually pay attention, you could see the things that show itself to be not legit, but at a quick glance, just the recognizable font of the Chick-fil-A registers. There's a lot of humor there, but there's kind of this darker undertone. So, I guess my question is: What do you think about humor and sincerity? If you want to talk about the Chick-fil-A piece, we can.

AC: We can start there. I think that there is absolutely deviancy in it. And when I made that piece, some of my friends who are artists were like, “You're just poking them.” At first, I thought, who is “them”?! And how dare they (my friends) simplify this effort! Hahaha, jeez. In that reaction, I was (now) obviously trying to deny my assumptions about the location to which I had just returned after 20+ years. I’ve since come to terms with most of my assumptions being validated in those and similar ways. However, that did cross my mind…right? I, rather quickly, came to terms with that part of my intention. But for 0.01 seconds I did have a negative emotion for giving as you stated “false hope”. That emotion ran faster away from me than I can describe. It makes me really dismiss any sort of bad feeling for someone believing it. There are jokes, there is humor, and there is a comedic presentation in my work through nods, gestures, and misplaced references. None of it comes from a pleasing state of being. I won’t go much further into it than that it has really gotten a lot more complicated over the past 5+ years. 

OT: I was thinking about how after Hurricane Helene, there was this AI Trump image that was circulating of him in the water saving this man, wearing full riot gear, and he had a crab hand. And it was posted. And then some people didn't realize it was AI at first, and when it was brought up.

AC: Like a crab from the ocean?

OT: No, it was like a human hand, but you know how AI can't do the fingers? So it was the same thing as the Chick-fil-A piece, where if you looked at it, you could see that it wasn't real. It had signs of its fabrication, but some people still believed it. But even when it was pointed out that it was fake, I saw people saying, “Well, it doesn't matter that it's an AI image because he actually went there, and the meaning behind it is still there.” 

AC: That goes back to humor as a tool for disarmament, right? But in the midst of being disarmed, hopefully, that gives a gap or a space that can allow for even, just even, a little bit of time for the opportunity to process things differently or reconsider something.

I've been avoiding teaching my whole life, but when I moved back to the southeast, I was like, “Okay, this is what I can do, and hopefully, it won't drive me as nuts as working a nine-to-five” or whatever. I'd always had assumptions from reports while I was living elsewhere, but I quickly realized firsthand the lack of arts education and education period really.

Arts education should be mandatory (although I might take issue with that word, haha) from an early age on. It doesn't matter if you want to be an artist, work in the arts, or anything directly related to the arts. To be introduced to different ways of thinking and thought processing is the root of all. It allows you to see all things from multiple views, to consider and question, to problem solve, to be able to exist in various types of environments, to evolve and communicate. I don't care what job one has or what job or life someone wants or has, it is imperative. A scientist, a dog walker, a laundromat owner… it is absolutely relevant to every existence. This education doesn’t even have to take place in academia. Ya, I think it can solve all problems. So, a scientist, a dog walker, and a laundromat owner walk into a bar…. just kidding. Follow your dreams?

Miranda July has this video about workers in the city whose job is to paint over the graffiti and how artful that is. Have you seen this? 

OT: Yes, like painting a white square over a brick wall where it's not a restoration of the original wall. It's just covering the graffiti.

AC: Yeah, I love that and I try to show that to all my students. It's all there.

OT: What made you want to be like an artist or showed you that was a path you could take?

AC: A long time ago, I heard somebody say, “If I could do anything else, I would.” I can't really even imagine it. When I was in elementary school, the teacher one day went around and –this is kind of messed up now that I think about it–  the teacher went around and told each student what she thought that student was gonna “be” when they grew up. She got to me, and I was cutting something out with some scissors, really zoned in on it, and she said that she thought I was gonna be an artist. And I leaned into that and was like, okay, what can I do with this? This feels right. I wanted to question everything as it was anyway. I figured things out as best as I could because nothing made much sense then to me, and it still doesn’t. And as you know, you never  “figure out” anything. It’s just attempts at figuring stuff out, finding answers but with more questions, feeling closer, and new mental architecture and languages to convey. Finding what might not exist. I should have just said “Aliens”.

OT: What do you think is the best and worst thing about being an artist? 

AC: The best is the same as the worst thing. Going up against something. One thing is that you are always having to defend yourself, or I am, at least. That sounds really stressful, but you do find answers and new existences within that. You know, “Why are you doing that, April?” Or, “It's not worth your time, energy, money.” That it's not worth it. And I've heard that a lot in my life and have always been able to navigate those statements with little to no question in regard to my being. Unfortunately, I feel like I have been listening to statements like that a little bit more in the past 2-3 years since moving back to where I grew up. My attention has been pulled away from where it usually resides to take care of some necessary things. In this, I’ve positioned myself in an odd state. This is why I am so thankful to have been at Stove Works for the past two months. I've realized how much that kind of thinking has snuck in. I’ve realized how harmful that way of thinking has become to my practice and just overall state of being. Sometimes it takes a long time to figure out who you really are*...sometimes you’re just an asshole, but I hope that's not my case.

I've also known people who are artists who stop making art once they get out of an academic system or even just later on in life, and they say, “It’s too hard.” I don't know if I ever really understood what that means. Don’t get me wrong, it is hard. It’s really hard, but everything else seems too hard for me.

*nod to artist Paul MacMahon

RESIDENT SPOTLIGHT: JUAN-MANUEL PINZON

JUAN PINZON, INTERVIEWED BY EMMA WOMBLE

Photographed by Jo Silver for the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation

STATEMENT - My practice centers around objects that have fallen away from their original use. The sculptures of varied scales relate pedestrian materials, focusing on the way they engage and distort each other and our preconceptions about them. The forms defamiliarize the familiar materials and evoke a sense of otherworldliness, awe, and reverence for things that would otherwise be overlooked.

Informed by new materialist theory, ecological and scientific research, and a practice of receptive observation, each piece emphasizes the subtle vibrance inherent to matter. The use of discarded organic and inorganic materials engages the tension between the short-sightedness of human actions and the longevity of their impacts. Currently, I am investigating the narratives that emerge when bivalves are considered beings that have borne witness to and been objects of our consumption throughout human history. Bivalves are masters of alchemy, their incredible filtering abilities are critical components to their ecosystems. The dissolved minerals they filter allow them to build their shells, which eventually appear in our cities’ materiality, such as food and limestone. I have been working on a series of vertebrae and wing-like formations made from cut and stacked clamshells that, through their form and material relationships, create a sense of myth around these creatures in pursuit of a renewed relationship between the viewer and the things that surround them.

Emma: In your artist statement, you talk about evoking a sense of otherworldliness. I am curious about what that looks like through your lens. 
Juan: It's both about trying to identify something that is unfamiliar but is still rooted in the things that we know. So it's both otherworldliness and very much of our world. That is the quality of the objects I am finding and the point in time and the decomposition they are in. They are frozen to the point of going from new objects to fossils almost or dirt. That in-between stage is something that we don’t tend to look at, and it is unfamiliar because it is very much of our world.

photographed by Jo Silver for the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation

E: So you are looking more at giving it another context in which to view it? 
J: Yeah, like in the objects that I am finding and trying to retain that in the work that I make. Let the objects still be that strange thing that first struck me so that I was like, what is that? Trying to present them in a way that also does that for the viewer. Instead of being like here is this explained nice and tightly fit thing now. That has been an interesting line to try and figure out.

E: Research, materialist theory, and observation feel like key components to making your work. Is there any specific literature or media that influences those ideas? 
J: Yeah, definitely, there are three very important books. The first one is a materialist text that most people know about, “Vibrant Matter” by Jane Bennet. She talks about matter as this vibrant, agentic force that engages with other things and has power or as she calls it “thing powers”. She talks about this puddle of pollen and a few other dispersed trash objects that created this atmosphere, which is exactly what I am going for. I'm trying to describe it in a way that isn't animistic, but at the end of the day, all materialist theory is animism. So, I am trying hard not to be, but she is really important. 

The receptive observation comes from Jenny Odell who is an artist and author in California, but she might be around anywhere. Her work is great, and she wrote this book called “How to Do Nothing,” where she talks about birdwatching as an example of a non-goal-oriented activity. The goal is to see birds right, but you have very little control over which birds you are going to see or at what moment. Your job is maybe to go to a specific place and then just have an open, receptive stance to the world and be ready to hear them, see them, see any little movement, and then focus. The way she describes the granularity of her attention becoming more and more refined. Bring able to discern from just general birdsong, which it was at first, into Oh, that is that bird. Being able to do that, but my birds are this trash stuff you know. Then it's much bigger, and it's something that I can’t bring home with me that sticks. She is super influential, and her artwork is cool, too. She has a couple of projects that do this thing where she is showing you something and stripping away some of the context or adding more context that gives that thing more presence in a particular way. She has this one project at this residency at this place called “the dump.” I forget what it’s called, but it is in California. Basically, you do a residency, and you can go collect things from there and find incredible stuff, from Eme's chairs to an old cell phone. Her show was just a bunch of shelves with these objects on it, and she would do intense meticulous research on them, and you could use your phone to scan a QR code. You could see the factory where they were made and instances of them in culture. She had this one cell phone that you could see in use in movies, and it was like, that is that cellphone right there. Or that type of cellphone and that way of making this mundane thing have a full life was really interesting. The other stuff I like that she does is landscape images of Google Earth of big infrastructures like water treatment plants, waste management, that kinda thing. They are usually secluded and removed from our day-to-day. You know they're usually behind a bunch of trees. You don't want to see them, but they're like so critical to the way that we exist in the way that the city's run. She takes that image and then strips away all the green. So you just see this network of like a power plant and they're striking and huge in a way. They almost

look like I think she calls them satellite landscapes or something like that. But they almost look like constellations also. And there's this funny project where she took a road trip on Google Maps, and it was just like frame by frame going to places on Google Maps. But her ability to connect things to their history or place and stip that away so you can kind of see them more nakedly is an interesting thing for me, too.

photographed by Jo Silver for the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation

E: Using bivalves in your work seems significant. Can you talk about that initial influence, if there was one? 
J: Yeah, I've been trying to figure that out. The shells, and I'm just going to be more general because it's been these clam shells more recently. The beachy shell has been in my practice for a few years now. At first, it was just something that I had. I was doing a lot of this, like nesting stuff, at first, and it wasn't as intentional as it is now. I've seen them collect and collect and collect in my studio. I've been reading about them a lot more and just starting to establish a structure of what these objects are doing for me. 

There's another important book for me called A Time for Everything, a novel by Carlo Van Huskart. It traces this guy's life who became interested in angels because he saw them in his youth. It was like this shocking moment because he had just done this terrible thing. He'd been like poking at an ant hill and was overcome with that feeling of both guilt and destroying it but also being unable to stop. Then he gets lost in the woods, and that kind of does it. So, throughout the book, the narrator kind of retells some classic bible stories, like Cain and Abel or Noah's Ark, and the characters are really complex and interesting, but the stories are much more nuanced. I was interested in the way that the angels existed in this story, especially in the beginning. Where they are supposed to be removed from people and enacting the will of God. Over time, instead of just observers and actors, they start to sympathize with people and indulge in a lot of human consumption. At the end of the day, that's what leads to the fall, right? So they end up stuck on earth and become more dependent on people. I mean, these are all kinds of spoilers, but they transform the way that they look, and they can't go back. As they become more and more dependent on people, they start turning into chairs, this kind of cutesy thing, gets them invited to the home. Then people start getting annoyed with them, sick of them, so they have to take a step out. Eventually, you get to this place where seagulls are contemporary angels, and they're still around as they eat their food. They're always like circling a human boat. I tried to extrapolate that framework for what these angels are doing, their relationship to people, and their consumption of these bivalves. Trying to create a similar sense of reverence and history around them.

My interest now in bivalves is their ability to filter entire bodies of water and how it is critical to a healthy ecosystem. Whatever they're filtering is an incredible alchemy that turns it into this hard shell, right? As that hard shell deteriorates, it turns into limestone which is an important ingredient in concrete that builds all our cities. In some ways, all our cities are built on clamshells. We have a very close relationship, and they're so mundane and looked over that if we could just look at them, just that slight little switch is exciting. Formally, the way that they stack and all these little details in them, when you look at them closely, start to emerge was exciting for me. I've tried to skew away from scallop shells or oyster shells just because scallop shells are overtly beautiful. It's the shell that Aphrodite emerged from; they got their own thing going, and they're fine. Oyster shells are just like, I don't know, kind of sexy, you know? Whereas these clam shells are just like the leftovers of food. It's what you find on the beach, and they become staples. To be able to push them out of that into something a little bit more intriguing. In some ways, what I'm doing with the shells is what I'm hoping to do with all the other stuff. I would like to look at it closely and differently because these have a real affinity to them. I think they're just beautiful, especially that little cross-section right in the middle. 

E: I mean, they're gorgeous. I'm a big shell collector, too, whenever I go to the beach.
J: What kind of shells do you collect? 

photographed by Josh Blankfield

E: I've found a lot of spiral little shells, those are cool. I'll usually like go in the water and look through like the sand and stuff to like find them. 
J: Have you ever cut one in half? 

E: No. Most of the ones I think I've found are already either like one part. Do you have any specific sites or areas you lean towards in, like sourcing materials? 
J: When I started this practice, I was in Richmond. I've learned Richmond has the perfect amount of trash because you would always find something. It wasn't an overwhelming amount and stuff. I had just started this journey, away from being broken off its original body and now just tumbling through time. I would always collect, but even in Richmond, I started to gravitate towards specific sites. There's this place called Belle Isle, which has a lot of history, and now it's a park. When people go there, they go swimming on the James River, but it has been a bunch of things throughout history. Among them, it was a small town for a little bit and had a small community and school. It was also a water treatment plant or maybe a hydroelectric plant. Even before that, it was an internment camp during the Civil War, and now it's just a park. It's been growing and reclaiming

spots, so you have all these places where nature is like growing, but the human infrastructure is becoming nature. It's that tension. There are all these stimulating moments that you'll find. My northern star object is this little piece of barbed wire driftwood from there. That was striking because I just found that sticking out of this fallen tree. What was cool is that it clearly showed this extended life of something after an original human action that's completely out of the logic of that action. I don't know if this story is about someone wrapping a tree in barbed wire, and then that was it. But that was the whole point. Or the tree grew around the barbed wire, then the tree fell into the river and was eaten away by termites, and 80, 100 years later, we end up with this perfect object. That's become the connecting point that makes that place special. I don't go there very much because I'm in New York now, but since moving, I've been walking around a lot and have been overwhelmed by the sheer amount of trash. It's all fresh, and it's too much. Bit by bit, I'll find little neighborhoods where the walking feels right, which works. In New York, I've been going to this place called Deadhorse Bay, which is relatively well known. It is similar to Bell Island it has a pretty good history to it, and it brings a lot of energy to the objects that are there. But, it was once a glue factory, hence the name. Then after a while, they turned it into a landfill, I think in the early 1900s, and they covered the landfill with topsoil. Now that the topsoil eroded you get all this 100-year-old trash that's been rolling around in the sand and the ocean washing up on the shore. You get these incredible objects that are human-like because they're all manufactured, so there's a lot of plastic, metal, and shoes. Since they've been tumbling and cleansed by the ocean and the sun they start to become organic. I have a couple of pieces of like that, PC or rubber. There's a piece over there that just looks like a bone, but it’s a big hook that's plastic. 


E: It's plastic? I was about to say it looks like wood. 
J: You'll also get these pretty amazing things like this newspaper rock. It is just a newspaper, and you can get little bits of comics or text that are different. 

E: That's crazy. I never knew objects could transform into that. 
J: Right. It's just plastic. 

E: Plastic is one of those materials that I have never thought about eroding. 
J: Right. Nicely, it is eroding or a forever material. That's a bit of my interest with the silicone stuff. These things are making their way into our waterways, the food we eat, and our bodies. They're now becoming part of the material makeup of the planet. There's a lot of climate anxiety that comes with it. It's a process of becoming part of the

earth, which is exciting. I was talking to someone recently about this idea of there being other intelligent species on Earth before humans. Thinking about how long it would take if people were to just disappear. For all of this to just really disappear and become a thin layer of sediment. You'd probably find a couple of incredible little things, but at the end of the day, it might be hard to identify. At some point, we'll have this little Anthropocene strip and then there will be something else that emerges after it, right?

photographed by Josh Blankfield

 E: Do you have any, favorite materials you've found, or worked with? I know that's, might be a hard question, because all of them have their special qualities. 
J: Yeah, they're also special. I mean, that piece of barbaric driftwood has made its way into some works, and I was reclaiming it afterward. The wax has been exciting just as a base for these things. At the end of the day, my background is in woodworking. Woodworking, just being really precious and considerate with this material, I think, was a perfect place to start this path. It's something that I still hold very dear. Wood is important because it has an obvious form of life as a living, breathing organism. Even in its non-living tree state, it still expands and contracts. You have to consider that when you're working with it and allowing for it, so it doesn't bust out of the panel. Every hand plain stroke with the grain it starts to shift a little bit, depending on the way that it's going, so it has this infinite depth that I've come to appreciate. I’ve been able to extrapolate to other things that aren't as immediately obvious, like more uniform materials, wax, and metal, and I recognize that I am shifting things with these qualities. Wood smacked me in the face with that. It was a good starting place. 

E: Were there any specific projects that you wanted to do while you were here at Stove Works? 
J: There were a few. I was interested in working on these wax panels because they felt like a step towards making something that was frozen at that point of thinking. I haven't made many of them. I made a couple of pieces with wax or a lot of work with wax. But not in this way, so trying to see what it could do and the different ways to push it was exciting. 

This summer, I'm a fellow at Socrates Sculpture Park, which is exciting for us. That's a big thing to work towards. There's been a lot of technical problems to figure out. I learned how to cast some of this stuff in meta as a mockup to see what these clam fronds look like. Because they'll be cast in iron and be much bigger, three or four feet long. Being able to get my hands on it and trying to see what these things do and how it's gonna work was an exciting thing being here.

E: What are your plans after this? Because I know it's coming to an end.
J: Yeah. 

E: And you just said you're a fellow at the Socrates Sculpture Park. 
J: That's my most immediate plan. I'll be at Socrates, an upper sculpture park in Queens right on the water. It's beautiful, I like that place. I'll be there all summer. We start the fellowship in early June and work through the whole summer. Then, in early September, the opening will occur, and the work will stay up from September through March. You’ll get to see the work through the seasons, which is exciting, and I like being able to play with some of that seasonal change and what becomes visible when the leaves drop. When things become a little bit more gray adding a little pop of color will just make that a little bit brighter. That's my main plan, but besides that, just get back to my life. 

E: Yeah, I gotcha. That sounds exciting. 
J: Yeah, I'm stoked.

RESIDENT SPOTLIGHT: HARRISON WAYNE

Harrison Wayne interviewed by Kate Greenwell

Harrison Wayne in his studio. Photo provided by De'De' Ajavon, 2022.

Harrison Wayne, INTERVIEWED BY KATE GREENWELL

Harrison Wayne is a working artist from Atlanta GA, with a degree in chemistry. Harrison uses his background as a chemist and his experiences emerging from the South as a guiding hand to his artistic practice.

Kate: Harrison, you’ve described yourself not only as an artist but also as a chemist and a poet.

How do you feel these three identities form your practice?

Harrison: Yeah, the longer that I practice, the more I develop this understanding that having a creative output or studio practice is ultimately taking the skills that you've learned throughout your life and applying them to whatever obsessions or preoccupations you have naturally. And so, for me, these mixed identities of poet, chemist, artist, and even southern woodworker are all tools I gained throughout my life experiences. I try to coalesce them in the studio to tackle whatever problems I'm confronted with or whatever objectives I want to complete in the studio.

For me, they're identities, but they're also positions that give me a unique set of tools.

Chemistry gives me a perspective on material interactions, and it gives me a unique body of informal knowledge that I can draw on whenever I have ideas for sculptures or concepts that I want to express with those chemical materials. The identities of the poet and southern woodworker are similar. If I had a concept in my head, I intuitively would have because I have those experiences in my life that have given me these tool sets, gone to those identities, and tried to figure out how to tackle these concepts.

K: I feel like poetry and woodworking come together in your cross pieces a lot. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?
H: For me, crosses involve the methodical action of joining two pieces of wood at a perpendicular intersection point and repeating the process hundreds of times to make hundreds of crosses. My practice began with the cross in the traditional form of the Christian Baptist faith, a cross with two intersecting bars, but it began to expand into batches of more expansive cruciforms.

Creating these crosses started to have a rhythm to it and that rhythm reminded me of poetry. At some point throughout the process of making these wooden multiples, I started assigning them poems.

Two images from: Untitled, (Bulgakov, 1917) label on cedar, 60” x 14”, 2023.

K: Are these cross-installations site-specific?
H: No. I like to install them very intentionally on outside sites or field installations. The pieces aren't conceptualized or executed with a particular site in mind. Usually, I'll make the piece, and I'll carry it around for a while; sometimes, my trunk is just full of them. And then, when I'm out and about, if a site calls to me and it resembles a certain poem, I do an installation and document it. I consider them sculptures. But, like a lot of my sculptures, they usually don't exist in a gallery context. I try to take them to other places.

Untitled, label on cedar, 70” x 5”, 2023.

K: It seems like a part of your process is to live with the works and let them develop alongside you.
H: Yeah, 100%.

K: Another work that seems to relate to them developing alongside you is the wedges. Can you tell us more about that? I know that it began with your time at Stove Works.
H: Yeah, it did. I came here with a very emotionally charged project that I wanted to start, but I was hesitant to begin developing it. I began to notice that this building was beautiful, but so many of the floors were uneven by the nature of being old and a renovated building, so I started making shims, just very simple wooden shims that I had seen my grandfather make for cabinets over the years, just to level out the furniture in the room.

K: And your grandfather is a carpenter, right?
H: Yeah. My grandfather learned the basics of carpentry from my grandma's father and has been teaching himself and learning from different sources for the past four decades. When he was 35, he and my grandmother owned a house, they had my mother and my uncle at the time and they had to repair things around the house. He would pick up skills along the way to solve the problems at hand, essentially.

I've seen him make shims to balance furniture, for antique sales, or for whatever it is over the years, so I started making shims. Then, my door in my studio wouldn't stay open properly, so I scaled up the shim, but I recognized that it was the same object. Similar to the cross pieces, it became an obsession with multiples, especially wooden multiples. The landscape of the material is comfortable to me, because of my woodworking background, it's definitely a preferred material.

Harrison Wayne and his grandfather Wayne Meers in Meers' basement workshop in Stone Mountain, GA. Circa 2011, photo taken by Wendy Meers.

H: The more that I worked with the wedges, the more I realized they were initially intended to be purely structural stability for my swinging door and my wobbly nightstand, but they also have a second life. Objects that can be played with and rearranged on the workbench. I started leaning into the poetic aspect of a wedge being the archetypal shape that drives things apart but also stabilizes things. A close buddy of mine commented on the wedges, saying that “they keep doors open,” and I started thinking about the poetic quality of the wedges. Ever since then, I've been obsessed with making them. The process is incredibly simple; it is very similar to the cross in that it’s made with one repeated action. Once you get that action down, you can iterate a plethora of forms. For the wedge, it’s just a single cut in lumber, and because it’s so simple, it becomes a vessel to project into emotionally or narratively.

Wedges in Harrison's stove works studio - lumber, latex paint, various collected objects in built box on top of built furniture dolly, 2024.

K: Back to what you said about the wedge as a form, it can open up doors and separate things. I think a lot of your practice has to do with reflection but also destruction, in a way.
H: These two ideas of preservation or destruction are present within a lot of my projects, including the wedges. The wedge does divide, and the other side is keeping the door open. They have a similar double life to the chemical jars in that way.

K: Yeah, can you tell us a little bit more about the chemical jars, how they function, and how you make them?
H: The jars that I've been creating for the past year and a half are typically antique canning jars. I fill them with different objects, objects that have personal sentimental value for me or for my collaborators. Then, after I fill these cannon jars with these objects, I'll fill the remaining volume of the jar with industrial hydrogen peroxide at various concentrations. Then, I situate the jars carefully and set them up to allow for pressure regulation as the oxidative process progresses.

The performance evolves for however long the jar is sealed. Typically, any kind of object that goes into the jar, the organic component of that object will be oxidized violently but very softly at the same time over an extended duration of time. Oftentimes in gallery contexts, these jars exist for two to three months at a time, they're full of say flowers or photographs, and those objects evolve very slowly, day by day. For me, I think that these performances do emulate these ideas of preservation and destruction because a lot of the objects that go into these jars are objects that typically someone would want to preserve or save or hold on to. But I'm trying to explore these notions that the act of holding on to the object is maybe less important than the energy of the object. This idea is that you can have an important family photo. You can hold onto that for the rest of your life. It has important values, but I like the idea that instead of centering the object, you can have a moment of monumental importance by destroying the object or getting rid of the object very intentionally. I think that just comes from the Southern American identity of hoarding and collecting.

Untitled (Collective Telling), January 2024. Industrial Concentration Hydrogen Peroxide, canning jar, images shared by exhibiting artists. Dimensions variable.

K: It seems like you're not only collecting things to make your art, but you're collecting a community while you make them. There's a specific project where, and this is the first time I have ever met you, you asked me to sign a piece of paper.
H: I think that what's crucial to that project is realized by anybody who goes through a monumental loss. The networks of social relations that we exist within often feel very permanent or very steadfast, but they can dissolve very rapidly. People move on, people move away. The project started when I realized that a lot of my friends in the emerging art ecosystem in Atlanta were constantly talking about moving to other places to seek opportunities where their practices would be better supported. I became very aware of the fact that the network of relations that I exist within as an emerging artist in Atlanta is very tenuous. It could change at any time. So, the sentimental artist in me and the sentimental person in me wanted to capture these very imperfect recordings of moments when we're all together.

The project is organized by a very simple rule. Whenever I'm in a room with peers, I ask anybody in the room to sign a sheet of paper. I like the fact that it becomes a drawing, and I'm just setting the conditions for the drawing to happen. It's a way of collecting, but I like that it has an unbiased nature, a very flawed and imperfect way of collecting. There's no context as to why we're together, and sometimes people don't sign the paper. There's no record of where you were or when you were there, but it is a sentimental way of trying to document the relational networks that exist within the art ecosystem of Georgia. And now that I'm in Chattanooga on residency, the project has shifted to be a representative of the networks that I find myself in here.

Four excerpts from Qualitative Observations, created during Harrison's first month in residency at Stove Works. 2024.

K: How has your time in residency at Stove Works changed or furthered your practice?
H: I think it's important to say that I'm somebody who has had to nurture my practice alongside a full-time manufacturing job for the past five years. The opportunity to come to Stove Works and be here in a phenomenal environment and practice in this studio and to have access to these workshops and this incredible equipment 24/7 has completely shifted the way that I create. I've never before in my life had an opportunity to wake up, walk into my studio in the morning, and work on a project and not be interrupted by regular day-to-day routines of life and work. Being in a community where I didn't know anybody coming into it and being surrounded not only by the thriving arts system of Chattanooga but also by artists coming in from across the country and across the world has been such a phenomenal experience. I think it's really important for artists to experience what it's like to work with peers, have studio neighbors, or even lose mentor figures in my life. As somebody who's somewhat of an outsider artist, it's been a phenomenally enriching experience and has also just given me a way to improve myself and my practice.

Harrison and the rest of the February Stove Works cohort enjoying a gourmet dinner, photo provided by Waffle House Employee. 2024.

K: Is there anything exciting coming up with your practice in the next few months that we should be aware of?
H: I will be wrapping up my residency with an exhibition at Stove Works called A Joy That Could Not Be Replaced on the weekend of April 20th. Open studios are also on April 20th, so it's a phenomenal day to visit Stove Works.

Harrison Wayne Self Portrait, Taken on Galaxy S21, 2024.

You can follow Harrison’s practice through Harrisonwayneworks on Instagram or www.harrison-wayne.com

RESIDENT SPOTLIGHT: NANI LEE

nani lee, INTERVIEWED BY emma womble

STATEMENT - Emanating as sculptures and collaged airbrushed paintings on both paper and canvas, my work investigates socioeconomic status. By personifying teeth, I demonstrate the individuality of people within various social statuses, exploring the inequality of dental care throughout history. My work is contemporary and surreal, as I revisit and critically analyze the residual impacts of my childhood experiences with being unhoused, domestic trauma, Latin heritage, and sexuality, as well as reimagining moments of my everyday life and fuzzy memories that have lingered. I have explored the narrative of feeling small due to childhood trauma and have come to understand the lack of resources within mental and physical healthcare, education, economics, and race that have perpetuated this hierarchy in Western Society. Through my work, I am becoming more aware of the complexities in my experiences and creating a new narrative that invites class consciousness. In particular, I focus on exploring the nuances of the Latin diaspora and its relationship to classism, in addition to examining the systemic oppression and marginalization experienced by minority communities. I am passionately exploring my understanding of society through my personal experiences and inviting others to gain insight into my humorous ways of digesting the past and present.

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Emma: In your artist statement, you mention the idea of “creating a new narrative that invites class consciousness.” Could you elaborate on what that looks like for you?
Nani: A lot of it has to do with background and upbringing, making my passion and drive very personal. Inviting others to look into and be aware of their surroundings. The economic state and social state of everything at the moment. To realize things aren't as equal or black and white as they seem. There are many different levels to the pyramid of socialism and where everyone fits in our Western society. 

E: Is it more about bringing awareness? Because it seems very personal?

N: Yes, it is mainly about inviting others. I want to approach a series topic or series statement to make it light-hearted and digestible. Through my paintings, I aspire to achieve that as well as inspire others to think critically. My teeth paintings have to deal with environmental surroundings and what it is like to live in our Western society. And how that fits into different places in the social hierarchy. Like living in our Western society and living in a lower-income or a higher-income environment, working to contrast that and dissect it. A Lot of times I will place my teeth characters into these settings. Because I want people to look at the details and really think about what it would be like to be put into that environment. As I dive deeper into that series of work, I want to get more serious about it and approach heavier topics. I am approaching it at a slower pace because it is heavy for me to dive into. 

E: Teeth, specifically, seem to be a common theme in your work. Do you find any other imagery as an inspiration source? 

N: Yes, I draw a lot of inspiration from weaponry and everyday objects like trash cans for some reason. I really like painting a trash can. I like teeth, obviously, because it is a thing that a lot of us have. I started a different series recently with these star bodies. Taking the shape of a star and compacting the human body, mainly the feminine body, into this figure has been fun. I really like anything that is appealing to me, specifically the outline and shapes of weaponry. I tend to focus on that and include that in my work. Even though it doesn’t necessarily tie into the narratives per se. A lot of times, it is for fun or to contrast. 

E: After reading your Stove Works application, there was a question about listening and its importance to you. You had an intriguing response. So, how are listening and social interaction a part of your practice to get other perspectives on class? How do you think this has shaped your practice? Do you pull from any interactions for inspiration? 
N: Absolutely, I find most inspiration from human experience. The experience of my peers, close friends, and loved ones, as well as strangers that I meet. Sometimes I pull from random people I bump into or not even people I bump into but I observed. I view myself as an observer of people. I tend to go out into environments and watch what's going on. That inspires me a lot because observing how people maneuver daily life will tell you a lot about them without necessarily talking to them. I also talked with them and heard their backgrounds to see how that has influenced where they are today. I pull a lot from that, probably the most. Because I think that's the beauty of being alive. We have had different evaluations of different lifestyles and things that we have been through. That is what inspires my work the most, besides my own human experiences. 

E: You work with both sculptural elements and two-dimensional paintings. I am curious if you lean towards working with one material over the other?
N: I felt like I had to focus on one thing because I have a genuine love for everything art-related, not even art-related, but making-related. I love just making things. When it comes to painting or sculpture, it's whatever I feel drawn to. If I have an idea or something I really want to make, I will go for it. Recently, I have been working on combining the two. To the point where my paintings have a sculptural element to it. Like actually putting texture on the frame to bring it out more. 

As far as the storylines, I am telling or building up layered pieces. I feel like there is more freedom in sculpting because I do not do it as often. When I work with sculpting, it’s very peaceful. I try not to apply a lot of pressure since I don’t know what I am doing as far as sculpting. As far as painting goes, I think it's more mentally taxing because there is more going on. I feel like I put a lot of pressure on myself to where there are certain elements that have to be displayed in a certain way for me. But that is just me being picky. 

I think it can be more freeing for sculpture, but I love both so much, too. Which is why I am trying to combine them. I have been working on pieces that are on a wooden panel, and then I will create an image, sculpt over the image, and pull the image out of the panel. That's been really nice because I got to sculpt and paint for the same project. I really like how that's been playing out. 

E: That tooth painting behind you, which is popping out from the canvas, is really nice. 
N: Yeah, I really like dimension and texture, but I am really particular about them. They have to be a certain way. There's a fine balance in my head between clean and messy or grainy and sharp. 

E: So, there are certain formal elements that you want to be included in your work? 

N: Yeah, so when incorporating sculpture, there can't be too many sculptural elements, or everything will be washed away and won't stand out. I am aware of where I want the image to come out. So, in the tooth painting, the background is very flat and composed together. The other elements are on canvas, so they will be layered on top of each other. It's like a collage, but it also adds a little bit of shading that I don't have to paint, which is nice. Especially the texture and how it feels like it is coming towards you. 

E: Is that mostly airbrushed in your tooth painting? 

N: Yes, so the foundation of my paintings is always airbrushed. Once I finish the image or feel like I have painted as much as I can, I will go in with last-minute decisions. With a colored pencil or trying to etch something with a blade and scratch into the painting itself. Which is kinda nice, because it’s like I am destroying something which is risky. I will also take paint pens or colored pencils to do small details. Those are my favorite things to go over with. 

E: Do you have any specific ideas or projects for your time here at Stove Works? 

N: Yea, I came here with a specific idea of what I wanted to do, and I feel like artists always say that and it changes when you get to the point of doing it. I thought it was not gonna change and it did. I started having so much fun with my star characters and portraying the feminine body in very grotesque but pretty ways. I am leaning into feeding more storylines of them right now, playing around with them and seeing where that goes.

I have held back my focus on the heavier topics that I wanna speak about, but then I got here. I was in a really good headspace and having a nice time here. It can be a little taxing to focus on the heavier topics especially when you are in a good headspace, because it feels draining. I am trying to go a little more lighthearted, and then revisit the heavier topics later. 

Check out more of Nani’s work -
www.bynanilee.com
@sudokuintheclub

Resident Spotlight: Jules Jackson + Will Sutton

Will Sutton and Jules Jackson, interviewed by Kate Greenwell

Will was a resident at Stove Works this past February, and Jules is a former resident (2023); each of their practices involves identity, expression, and masculinity and how they explore those aspects in today's world.

Will Sutton

Jules Jackson

Kate: Will, you just started your residency here at Stove Works, but you've been involved with them in the past. What are you gonna do with your time here in the next month?

Will: I think before I came here, I was feeling a lot less energized. And I think the Chattanooga Arts scene is kind of supported by Stove Works in a really strong way. As far as the city's art culture, I was feeling isolated, and Stove Works is a place that I align myself with and can successfully work within a community-based practice.

Jules: I agree; I think the community really helped, too. There is time here when you're receptive to the thoughts and perspectives of others. And if you play by yourself too much, I guess, in the studio, then you can get in your own head. There are certain things that you're not thinking about or considering, and you just don't know how to think about them. There is a kind of osmosis that takes place when you're in a group with other artists where you can influence each other in unsuspected ways and can see a different viewpoint of your work.

K: Will your work largely deals with identity and how that stems from community. I feel like you're largely integrated into the skate scene of Chattanooga and the art scene of Chattanooga. Do you feel like it's hard to blend those two things into your everyday practice?

W: As I'm working now, I'm personally interested in what people and artists do outside of their art practice. I think when I was in college I separated my identity as an artist from that of a skateboarder, or a music enjoyer, or as part of the local music scene.

It was not until I finished my senior thesis that I ultimately started combining those identities into my work. The aesthetics of skateboarding, the aesthetics of graffiti, and the aesthetics of aggressive music are the things that brought me into art-making. Those are the things that pushed me and formed my identity into becoming an artist. And then the fine arts provided me an opportunity to express those interests in a way that I think was academic. So I started in this skate culture, and then I ended up in fine arts. It's been about my journey to becoming who I am, what is my work about, what is my community, and how can my work exist in my community.

K: in your artist statement, you talk about young men struggling against masculinity and patriarchy in that skate community. How do you consider largely gendered activities in communities around you whenever you're making your works?

W: I think one experience that has changed me a lot is when I started working at the public library. I think I'm the only guy on the floor, and working in a space where I'm around troubled kids, the way that I respond and the way that young men respond to me, I was able to understand, or maybe kind of think more deeply around what are the reasons that cause those situations to arise, problematic behaviors of, you know, young men in general.

It's a difficult spot to be in because I love skateboarding but every culture has this kind of bad end and good end. Hardcore music, graffiti, and skateboarding all attract people that have a few screws loose. And being at Stove Works, working with other young artists, I feel like we can all relate to having a few screws loose.

The generation we’re in right now, we're all kind of working towards something together and I feel like with young men right now, it's a critical moment to try to think about what's going to happen to the future. I hate to bring it up, but you think about all the Andrew Tates and how young men are ingesting that media, and as the future of masculinity and gender changes, I hope there is a political pushback from the scenes of the hardcore world and music and graffiti to celebrate the disassembledge of gender norms.

Will Sutton, Boardslide, 2023, graphite on paper

K: Jules your work discusses masculinity as well, transmasculinity specifically. How are you processing those ideas through your practice?

J: It started from a place of wanting to make work about my own experiences as a trans man and looking to my own life to inspire the work because I feel like art is in dialogue with the rest of your life. As Will was saying, you have everything going on in your life outside of practice too. I'm interested in the bodily aspect of transition and making work about that and that ties in with my interest in cartoon forms, the cartoon body. I feel like this is maybe a little cliché to say, but I've always loved cartoons.

Jules Jackson, Foreshortened Jules, 2024, oil on canvas

J: It's been relatively recently that I have figured out the connection between my interest in cartoons and my interest in making work about my embodied experiences. Because during transition, you're autonomously taking the lead on the destiny of your own body and what happens to your body. If you're doing things like hormone replacement therapy or having surgeries, you're playing an active role in the kind of creation or recreation of yourself. I feel like that connects to kind of cartoon forms because the cartoon body is very round, it's very like, you know, bends and stretches, it occupies this unreal sort of place where it can be transformative, and that's one of the major ways that I'm exploring transmasculinity in my work. It's interesting to compare and look at the two of us and our work in dialogue because I feel like your work [Will] engages with some of the cultural signifiers of masculinity.

W: I think a lot about your [Jules] thesis work and how the werewolf was a signifier for masculinity, almost this Jekyll and Hyde, or werewolf aesthetic of American masculinity. This thing is so relevant to our social sphere; it has such a violent presence in American media. I think about my work through the lens of an adolescent teenager; how a teenage boy sees through this environment, and that’s where the claws come out, the werewolf comes out.

J: grrrrrrr

W: I think I lean towards cartooning as well because it’s a vessel that oversimplifies something complex.

J: Exactly. It has a flatness, and that flatness brings out a lot of complexity. By simplifying complex ideas, I feel like you can connect with people on a different level. And I think Scott McCloud's work and how he talks about the masking effect, how when you see a cartoon character that's more realistic, his theory is that you relate to them less because you perceive other people in those terms. You see other people as a sort of fully-fledged, realistic, three-dimensional being, but from the inside, in your own perspective, you kind of see yourself as a simplified entity, more of a conceptual entity. By simplifying the body, I want to give people an inroad.

K: Yeah, just like what you talked about earlier, leaving viewers to imagine their own identities.

J: For someone to be able to put themselves into someone else’s position, that's a path towards fostering empathy. In my case, foster empathy for the experience of undergoing gender transition. It's an unfamiliar kind of perspective for a lot of people to consider. So people have, at times, this reaction to seeing these images of surgery or bodily alterations. They almost cringe away from it a little bit at first. And there's nothing wrong with that. I think that that's a natural reaction to people; by bringing it out in the open and having a conversation about it, people can come to an understanding of the experience of going through a gender transition in surgeries. Talking about using the werewolf symbol as a symbol for masculinity and transmasculinity. It is a complex cultural symbol and often has violent connotations with media, like horror movies and popular culture. So, I wanted to bring it in and address that by getting away from its violent connotations and leaning more into its spiritual and transformative aspects.

W: The spiritual and emotional part behind the rebellious culture within skateboarding, graffiti, within heavy music. People are looking for expression and escape, looking for a way to speak and make their presence known. I think it goes back to transmasculinity and how you deal with moving into a masculine space that can be seen as violent and that is uncomfortable. The basis of masculinity is uncomfortable, the way that emotions are cramped.

J: I appreciate what you said about the problematic ways that masculinity exists within our society. I think that in my work, as well as my life, I want to imply a masculinity that doesn’t have that and to show that it can be done. I want to discharacterize traditional masculinity. There is a kinder way to live.

K: It seems like both your art practices have to do with a healing process and a reflection of your past.

W: Figurative social expression can respond to the world. I think within the language of visual arts, you can express the inutterable. A lot of the work I make, I do not have the words for it; It captures a specific idea. I think my practice has been a way of thinking through this complicated social sphere that we live in. In the end, we’re all just trying to cope.

J: I’ve always admired your [Will] ability to deal with change. I feel like your work entertains multiple possibilities at once.

W: I feel like my drawings are maps of experiences, maps of future, past, and present, and how they all happen within the same space. It’s about a visual residue that can be captured by drawings. This is a space I have struggled with in painting, there's something about drawings where I can stack and stack, and through that layering, I encapsulate the properties of honesty in my work.

J: In painting, when the image starts to become believable, you lose a lot of your plausible deniability; you have to make a decision and stick with it.

W: I think your work offers a really interesting, weird spot ….

J: Are you saying I'm a weirdo

W: haha, yeah. Your work is really cohesive in its cartoon style yet deceptive. This traditional American approach to a cartoon representation but it's painted under the guise of realism.

J: The work kind of mirrors something that I think about in other aspects, which is the ability to make a decision, and then you just kinda have to stick with it. It connects to the subject of transition. If you decide to do hormone therapy or gender replacement surgery, you're taking a bold stand. You're in it, and you're occupying a different place in society than you were before, and there's no real walk back. You're taking a bold, decisive stance within your society that gives society opportunity to define you as queer. Boldly and visually queer.

K: Thank you guys for letting me have the opportunity to have this conversation. Is there anything we should be looking for from you guys in the coming months?

J: I will have my work on display at Stove Works on May 3rd, and I will have my work at Coop Gallery in Nashville on June 1st.

W: Keep your eye on St. Andrews Center; we are trying to build some new art spaces in Chattanooga, so look out for that space.

Jules

Jules working in Stove Works studio space, 2023

Will working in Stove Works studio space, 2024

Jules and Will both help to run a collage workshop at St. Andrews Center, for more information visit exquisite_corps_ccc on Instagram.

You can follow their practices through
Willsuttonstudio on Instagram or www.willsuttonstudio.com
Julesinspace_ on Instagram

Resident Spotlight: Zach Hill

Interview with November 2024 Resident Zach Hill.
Interviewed by Savannah Hodges, Fall ‘24 Intern.

Zach Hill

Zach Hill is an interdisciplinary artist, educator, and curator working between sculpture, drawing, and moving image. He has been awarded the Mary L. Nohl Fellowship and Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship along with residencies at Vermont Studio Center, Bunker Projects, RAIR, Elsewhere Museum, and Stove Works. His work has been exhibited and screened at Haggerty Museum of Art, Milwaukee, WI; Frontera Garibaldi, Mexico City; High Tide and Peep Projects, Philadelphia, PA; Skylab Gallery, Columbus, Ohio; Studio 10, Brooklyn, NY; Comfort Station, Chicago, IL; James Black, Vancouver; and VisArts, Rockville, MD. Hill holds a BFA from the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design, an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and is currently the Digital Arts & Sculpture Technician at Haverford College. He is the head chef and owner of Zach's Crab Shack, a queer contemporary art gallery hiding within the facade of a campy, beach-side crab stand. Hill lives and works in Philadelphia, PA.

Artist Statement (Brief)

As an interdisciplinary artist, I create sculptures, drawings, and videos that play with material identity, visual perception, and speculative utility. Formally my work uses a queer logic of assemblage to reference various devices or infrastructures coalescing with anthropomorphic objects and iconography. These human-scale hybrid forms enact gestures of looking, pointing, or signaling through their imagined functionality and imply a relationship between the “operator” and subject of said operation.

My sculptural process involves material misuse and mimesis, combining mass-produced items such as furniture parts, metal poles, lawn decorations, and jewelry with fabricated appendages and video monitors….

My drawings, mounted in shadow box frames of various depths, textures, and colors, layer charcoal and colored pencil to carve out ambiguous images. Similar to my sculptures, these energetic fields of mark-making intertwine to hint at the recognizable while teetering on the edge of total abstraction. The framing of these works on paper has grown increasingly sculptural….

In these multidimensional transmutations, I present objects and images that actively misbehave, challenging perceptions and expectations of function, form, and material. This misbehavior encapsulates my practice, which at its core, physically manifests a type of innate, undeniable, and unable-to-be-hidden queerness.

Read the full statement and view more work at: https://zach-hill.com

Interview

Savannah: In your artist statement, you mention that your work “actively misbehaves”. Can you elaborate on this? How do you think your work benefits from “misbehaving?”

Zach: Three words that I often use to describe my practice are misbehavior, misuse, and mimesis. These words all relate back to my experiences as a member of the queer community. Mimesis being something that queer people do to avoid being outed, to blend in for safety, or to learn from one another. Misuse being something we are perceived to do with our bodies through sex. And misbehavior being the way that many people around the world perceive queerness. I take these notions and apply them to the materiality of my work in a variety of ways. I’m interested in faux or confusing surfaces, combining found objects with fabricated elements, and, in general, finding unexpected ways to subvert traditional perceptions of everyday objects. In general, I see sculpture as a type of misbehavior; there’s not always a straightforward logic or reason for my forms to exist, but they do anyway.

Work in Progress in Zach’s Stove Works studio.

S: You utilize many methods of making in your practice. Do you have a favorite material or method to work with?

Z: Found objects and materials play a huge role in my practice, both as actual things I'm working with and also in the creation of moving images. I’d say that the found or the “surprise” item is my favorite material in the sense that it typically sparks a new project. I’ll often get a bit obsessive, keeping an eye on something for weeks to months before dragging it into my studio. I often walk around and pick up discarded metal or cords I’ve taken the base off of my kitchen table, and I once even stole the old TV antenna off of my apartment building for a sculpture. These objects are like armatures that I can build off of, adding more fabricated elements or combining them with other found materials. The way that I make video work has a lot to do with gleaning or collecting as well. Like most people, I use my cell phone to film all sorts of things that I encounter day-to-day, both mundane and spectacular. Sometimes I do this thinking it will be for art, and other times, I’m just documenting my life or something cool I saw. For example, I’ve animated a screenshot of wildfire smoke radar, worked footage of a burnt-up three-wheeler motorcycle into a sculpture, or simply used these images as formal references to construct my forms.

Muddy Puppy
cast resin, wax, copper paint with green patina, wax, bronze powder, screws
13" x 5" x 7" 2023

S: You use such a wide variety of imagery in your works; from dogs, houses, and umbrellas to less identifiable things like steel apparatuses and assembled kites. Where do you get your inspiration for the imagery?

Z: This is an interesting question because I often feel like my imagery finds itself. I like to start working on something and build up its “ness” throughout the process. I’ll often reconfigure things until they look like something or at least look like something to me. There’s a moment where I go “Oh! That’s a weird spaceship hot rod motorcycle” or “Look, a puppy!” I consider many of my sculptures, particularly those working with larger found metal, to be imagined implements or infrastructures that are also figurative characters. They have functions as well as desires and emotions. I’ve been inspired by a wide variety of things from Galileo thermometers, microscopes, electrical poles, vintage lighting rigs, and everyday objects like a lamp shade, handheld mirror, or fishing rod.

Animality has always been of interest to me and I’ve used representations of domestic and wild animals in various ways. Dogs have popped up most frequently and I think that’s due to their incredibly long history as domesticated animals and the huge place they hold within past and present culture. Canine iconography can be found in every corner of art history so I see depicting these furry friends as a continuation of that. In the USA, the dog is part of the perfect portrait of a nuclear family. My version of a dog is more of a deviant, the animal in the family that kind of resists domestication and tries to return to a type of wildness.

The variety of imagery I use is reflective of this point I’m at in my practice right now of not limiting myself when it comes to anything. If I want to make abstract work I can and if I want to make something representational I can. I’ve developed a lot of different approaches and my use of imagery is part of that.

Spiraling Jewel Girl
looping HD video, outdoor TV antenna, rubber, cords
92" x 50" x 40"

S: Do you have any specific plans or ideas for your time here at Stove Works?

Z: I’m currently working on a drawing and two sculptures. The sculptures are both too large to work on at my home studio so it’s been nice to utilize the space Stove Works provides. One of these pieces uses a vintage lighting rig I thrifted a couple of years ago. The other uses the old base from my kitchen table and has grown into a kind of futuristic motorcycle hovercraft sculpture. I’ve also been developing a couple of drawings that use multiple sheets of paper.

Hot Rod
metal, wood, epoxy, selenite, fuax leather, rivets, reflectors, looping hd video
92" x 80" x 65"
2023

Resident Spotlight: Andrew Scott Ross

Andrew Scott Ross received his BFA from the Atlanta College of Art and his MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He subsequently studied at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Ross has exhibited throughout the United States and abroad including; The Museum of Arts and Design in New York, The Building for Contemporary Art in Geneva, Switzerland, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, The Guggenheim Museum's Peter Lewis Theater, The Ben Gurion Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, The Knoxville Museum of Art, The Hunter Museum of American Art, The Weatherspoon Museum and the John Michael Kohler Arts Center. His work has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum Magazine, Art in America, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Sculpture Magazine, and Artsy. In 2016, Ross's installation Dry Erase was presented at the Atlanta Contemporary Art Center for the Atlanta Biennial. He was included in the exhibition Appalachia Now! An Interdisciplinary Survey of Contemporary Art at the Asheville Art Museum (image above) and selected as the 2019 Tennessee Fellow from South Arts. Opening in December, 2021, Ross will present a new version of his Century Zoo installation at the two-person exhibit Symptoms of the Future: ANCIENT WORLDS at OUT OF SIGHT gallery in Antwerp, Belgium. A concurrent event with his video work Curatorial Drift will take place at The Royal Academy of Belgium.

Interviewed by Cass Dickenson.

C: Why don't you introduce yourself and talk a little bit about what you’re interested in?

A: Hello, my name is Andrew Scott Ross. I'm originally from New York City, but I currently live in Johnson City, Tennessee, which is not far from here. I’ve been teaching at Eastern Tennessee State University for 11 years. I’m an interdisciplinary artist interested in the language of museums and how we represent history, which I've been focused on for roughly 20 years now. My methods span everything from sculpture to drawing, installation, video art. So it's very interdisciplinary.

Riding, charcoal on paper, 44 x 30 inches, 2023
Work completed during Andrew’s residency at Stove Works.

Riding (detail), Charcoal on paper, 2023.

You talked about the languages of museums, can you expand on that?

I grew up in New York City in a family of artists and jewelry makers, and museums were a big part of my life. We were raised Jewish, but we weren't very religious. But I spent so much time in the museum and the museum was the one place where there was a unanimous agreement that this was something that you could be faithful about, that everyone could come together for. Art and culture felt cherished. Specifically, institutions in New York, like the Metropolitan Museum, and the Museum of Modern Art, almost became like holy places for my family. When I started to grow up, museums were something that I started to question when I was questioning the structures that I was within, that I believed in. When I was just leaving my undergraduate degree, I started deconstructing my faith around museums and representation of history in earnest. Because of this history, museums are something I approach very personally. How I as an artist can be responsible to these institutions, and the relationships of these institutions to ideas like truth or fairness. What gets exhibited, what doesn't get exhibited, how an exhibit can present a personal psychology–my own concerns, my own baggage and my own biases. 

How has your relationship to museums matured? Is there a sense of nostalgia for you?

I think I feel nostalgic in some elements of my childhood, like many people do. I have a love for those experiences. But just as much, I feel a lot of distance from my childhood.

I believe in museums. I believe that these places are capable of great things, and can bring our community together and in ways that allow us to navigate very challenging topics. And I do think being able to physically see things that are outside of your own culture is a very powerful thing. That can be a powerful experience in positive ways. But it can also be powerful in negative ways. Institutions will probably never be perfect, but our efforts to make them better is, I think, worthwhile. 

Right, that potential is powerful both ways. As far as the work you're making, how is the work you’re making engaged with ,

So I’m currently making two new series, though. One series is kind of the very end of a body of work that I've been producing since 2011. In 2011 I made a piece titled Century Zoo. That piece was the genesis of this decade-long project. It all started from hundreds of drawings that I did in the Metropolitan Museum directly from the objects on display. I’d take them back to my studio and I kept drawing over and on top of them, to the point that it corroded the images. They got so messy, and so filled with my own imagination, my own fan kind of fantasy of his objects as I moved through that process, that they became fairly unrecognizable. And then I used all the detritus of that project as material for further installations. This created a dynamic where every time I would reinstall that exhibit, I was quoting it further and expanding on it with new information that I was learning about, about history–specifically, the very Eurocentric approaches to organizing space and time inside of encyclopedic museums. 

Century Zoo VII (Detail), Mud, Paper, Charcoal, Acrylic and Wood, Dimensions variable, 2011-2018. Photo from installation at Gallery Protocol.

I took a short hiatus with that work and decided I was going to make a final group of sculptures that would hold the very last remnants of those worn and weathered objects that I have affected for 10 years. It's almost like a mausoleum for the remnants of my memory. Some of the experiences of these objects have these histories. And I was going to kind of encase those inside of this. So I've been working on those here.

With the other series, I’ve been playing with the idea of keywords within databases of history objects. Words that are supposed to indicate what you’re looking at in place of a title. So I’ve collected the words writing, lying, hiding and searching. I’m essentially going through historical databases and sourcing images using those keywords, and that information is what I use to construct an image of my own–in this case drawings. I'm very interested in how those words might affect you when you're looking at these drawings, and the play between the different objects. This lets me see the politics that determine what objects are presented within databases, as well as which objects I personally react to in this context. So far, I've done the drawings for “Running” and “Writing” and I’m moving onto “Hiding” now.

With your first project, you’ve conjured images of corrosion, detritus and mausoleums, which is sort of dramatic and macabre. At the same time, you're also starting this other work that is based on actions and processes, things that are actively being carried out. I’m noticing these projects are both exploring progress in different ways. Is this something that’s important to you?

Yes, this current project is much more active and alive in its processes. This work is serving as a break from my previous project, like where I wanted to put those elements from my previous work to rest. But I also want to recognize with my mausoleums that these images and fragments of history linger like residue in our bodies and minds. When it comes to history, we don't have control over the images that linger on with us before we were conscious that it'd be possible for that to happen.

The new work is active, but it's also representing the way I'm exploring images now, which is online. I'm looking at things not in museums but through a museum's digital collection. We're searching and we're looking for things in different ways now. But also I want to represent the dramatic changes that are happening in how we represent history right now. There are things that I'm so excited about, I would have only dreamed about happening 20 years ago. So I think with all of that turbulence and excitement, I want to talk about these things going on right now, but I also wanted to keep it open-ended because I have a bit of a distaste for closing arguments or for anything to be finalized. So I feel like the idea that these things are in motion or that it's at least trying to capture motion feels more comfortable for me in relation to representation and truth.

Thick Drawing (Heads), Wood, Polystyrene, Plaster, Paper Clay, 25 x 94 x 6 inches, 2023
Thick Drawing (Hand), Wood, Polystyrene, Plaster, Paper Clay, 44 x 62 x 6 inches, 2023

These works were developed during Andrew’s time at Stove Works.

So with these new projects, what is your time at Stove Works allowing you to do with this new body of work? How has your residency with Stove Works helped you?

So much! In every way, being at Stove Works has been wonderful. I have been extremely productive because of the balance Stove Works’ residency program manages to walk between the freedom and trust in their residents versus the resources and attention given to us. I feel like there’s just enough programming involving interaction with people from the community, some visiting critics that come here and speak to you, but that’s also balanced with having a live workspace that is extremely functional, clean, private and well lit. I also enjoyed the amount of residents and the scale of community that that created for us as well. And with all of the facilities downstairs, I’ve done a lot of the sculpture work that I don't always have access to. So I think it's been excellent. I’m sad to be leaving.

Is there anything we can look forward to from Andrew Scott Ross in the coming months?

Well, I have. I'm one of the current Art Fund grantees this year, and some of the work that I'm producing here is being produced for that. I’ll be presenting some of these works in public spaces in Johnson City, where I live. 

That’ll be all. Thanks Andrew!

Resident Spotlight: Carrie Fonder

Carrie Fonder is a sculptor, installation, and video artist whose work uses humor to play with issues of power. Fonder earned her MFA in sculpture at Cranbrook Academy of Art and her BFA in sculpture at Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design. She is a Fulbright Nehru Award recipient and is currently a member of Good Children Gallery in New Orleans, Louisiana. She has exhibited her work nationally and internationally from Detroit to New Delhi. Fonder is an Associate Professor of Art at the University of West Florida.

https://www.carriefonder.com/

Interviewed by Cass Dickenson

C: Why don't you tell us a little bit about yourself?

CF: My name is Carrie Fonder, and I'm an Associate Professor of Art at the University of West Florida. I’m a sculptor, video and installation person.

Jerry/Carrie is Up to the Task or How to Be an Art Critic, video still, video runtime: 4:44, 2020

C: So what kinds of ideas are you working with? What are you interested in?

CF: Largely, I'm interested in using humor as a strategy within art to investigate an array of topics, but art and power are things that I've come back to rather frequently. Formally, within my work, I've moved between two-dimensional and three-dimensional work, not just in terms of broad mediums like video and sculpture, but also within singular works,  I'll experiment with the relationships between 2D and 3D. So, for example, I might make an object that then reappears within a video, or then parts of the video that reappear within a two dimensional word that I then collage onto, and so on, and so forth.

C: So what is humor for you? Why humor? What does it do for you?

CF: Well, let me back up. When I was in my early 20s, I was told to go check out a Tim Hawkinson show. And it was so quirky and hilarious, and diverse. And it kind of worked against the seriousness of art school, which I was in at the time. I went to a lovely school, but at the time, it was fairly traditional. He had such an interesting practice that moved in so many different directions and felt like the humor, the experimentation, and–dare I say–joy seemed apparent within it. And that really calls me and through my own work. I mean, it took me years to come to a point where I started to think about humor in the context of my own work. It definitely did not happen at that moment. But within my own work, I started to think about humor as a tool to examine things in a way with some levity where I feel like it can become a lens through which we view things that are actually pretty serious. So humor allows me to look at things through a different lens, which makes them easier to view through a shift in perspective.

C: So what are some funny things to you right now? Politics? A good joke you heard recently? Is anything funny right now?

CF: Funny to me right now? I think I'm kind of forced to admit that I love things that aren’t funny. It's not that I find something funny, and then from there choose to make work about those things. It’s more that I find something terribly unfunny and choose to make work about it. A recent example within my work would be the art critic Jerry Saltz who wrote a book called How to Be an Artist, which I think is really ironic since he always talks about how he's a failed artist. And of course, he's an art critic. So I think it's very funny that he is writing this book. And so for me, that’s an opening to poke a little fun at that idea someone who positions themselves as an authority.

Little Laborers, Installation view, Good Children Gallery, 2020.

C: I feel like it’s a calculated rhetorical device.

CF: Calculated and Jerry are good words to put in the same sentence. Yeah, there’s definitely a schtick that he's very aware of. He's aware of the cards that he's playing for sure.

C: So it’s not Jerry Saltz, then? You’re poking fun at this authority he embodies?

CF: In a way, but then ultimately what I do is I dress up in drag as him. And it's not good drag.

He likes to talk about how writing is like getting naked in front of someone for the first time. So within my Jerry drag, you can hear that I'm typing on a computer, but you can see me just from the shoulders up. I'm not clothed other than a baseball cap that says PACE. And then when it cuts to a different view, I've gotten a still of a man's chest, off of the internet. And then I put my hands in front of that still image pretending to type through a really bad green screen. And the proportions are all off. I allow those kinds of wonky things to come into play with the work to point to that I'm approaching it with some levity.

C: So essentially, you're treating Jerry as a costume. Has he ever seen it? Has he ever acknowledged you dressing up as him?

CF: Well, I don't know if he’s seen that particular piece, but I know that I was in a show recently with a pair of panties I’d embroidered his face onto, where someone at the exhibition took a photograph of those. She sent them to him and his response to her was something like “bam, that'll stop anyone!”. And he wanted to see more of the work. So she forwarded that to me, he wanted to see more of the work and left his email. So she forwarded that to me so that I can then forward some of my work, which was very nice to not just send him random phone pictures. I sent him the work, but he never acknowledged that he had received it. Now, if his inbox was full at that moment, he never got around to it, if he found it offensive or just not worth commenting on, I’ll never know!

C: What a missed opportunity.

CF: I know, right? I had other people suggest that I should send him the panties. But frankly, there's so many labor hours that went into those pants.

Work in progress while in residence at Stove Works

C: So what work are you making during your residency at Stove Works? I don't see any Jerry Saltz in here.

CF: Right now there's no figures. I mean, I have a collage with tube socks here, which is a figure reference. The piece that I'm working on now is a geodesic dome structure. I’m still figuring out where that’s headed. I'm playing around with an Elvis song, “Summer kisses, Winter Tears”, which to me feels like the end of the world. And there will be a variety of things happening within it that are hopefully humorous, and will do the same things that my previous work has done without the cast of characters being quite so specific.

But then in a bigger way, my time at Stove Works has allowed me I've definitely been pushing ahead on that on the geodesic dome piece or what may become the geodesic dome piece. But I've also been really just affording myself an opportunity to play a bit and to experiment with more collage type work and photographing sculptures and then recontextualizing them in collages and doing some work with some flash and just playing with some different things that if I were at home, I would feel like I needed to, you know, do work in a, in a more linear way and focus on the next project and the next show where I'm allowed, like this month to kind of allow, I've allowed this month to be a time in which I can focus on the next show, but also a time in which I can play and experiment and that sort of thing.

C: You said you’re thinking about the end of the world. What’s causing the end of the world? Are you thinking about it as a narrative background for you or something really happening? Or is it the idea of The End of the World that you're just joking about?

CF: So, it's not actually the end of the world. I’m still making the work, so anything could happen at this point. But I'm really thinking about that song as a point of departure, because it's a song about love gone south. For me, I see a lot of people nostalgic about the status quo, at this point when things feel like they’re going south. So what potential  is there for change beyond that?  So the exhibition that the show will be in will have multiple rooms. So my hope is that within the first room would have the dome or whatever form that structure ends up taking, and then you will move beyond it. And in the back room. One of my influences is I have this bin, I started a worm bin during the pandemic, and then we feed them our compost.

C: Sounds like a weird sourdough project.

CF: Yeah, I dodged the sourdough for the worms. Maybe this is humorous or ridiculous, but I'm thinking about my worms and the cycle of decomposition and material cycles. I feel like some of that happens within my work, where one thing becomes another thing becomes another thing and… And the output becomes unintelligible as it goes through the cycle. So my worms are probably going to be making some cameo appearances, not physically, but in terms of video in the secondary room of the exhibition. So thinking through change. So rather than the end of the world being final, there's just an ending that then allows for change.

C: Is there anything we can look forward to in the coming months?

CF: Yeah, I have a show coming up in July at Good Children Gallery in New Orleans, so that’s where this work will find its momentum!

C: Great to hear. Thanks Carrie!

Resident Spotlight: Ryder Richards

Photo credit Joshua Simpson

Ryder Richards was born in 1977 and raised in Roswell, New Mexico. He currently lives and works in the Dallas area as an artist, writer, and occasional curator. He earned a BFA in Painting with a minor in Architecture from Texas Tech University and a MFA from Texas Christian University. He is the co-founder of the RJP Nomadic Gallery, The Art Foundation, and Culture Laboratory Collective. He is also the founder of EUTOPIA: Contemporary Art Review (2014-2020), wrote a series of essays titled “The Will to DIY,” and in 2020 launched “let’s THiNK about it” podcast. Ryder has participated in many national and international exhibitions and art residencies and continues to examine power structures and social/political interactions to consider bias.

Interviewed by Cass Dickenson

Cass: Why don't you introduce yourself?

Ryder: I grew up in New Mexico and have spent most of my life in Texas, and have been up until recently living in the Dallas area. I’ve taught college before but lately I have been working a corporate job, which has really changed my outlook on a lot of things regarding art and culture.

Graft, pine, baseballs and maple, 16x30x30, 2022

C: What are you interested in with your work?

R: Earlier, in my career, I was really interested in romance and violence and how those two become inseparable. And that has later led into things about concerns with power, concerns with institutional critique. So how architecture has embedded violence within it. So in that range, there's also the civilian rebuttal to both responses, which I'm quite interested in. Recently, I’ve started leaning into a Home Depot aesthetic–embracing the materials I can access, what I can easily buy. It’s a little bit DIY, though I’m still reliant on a system because I have to drive on the roads to get to that Home Depot. Through that there’s this strange sense of empowerment through spending money. What I can build on my own is a form of empowerment. So it's these kinds of small victories. But I think it sets up a paradigm that can allow people to experience something themself instead of being completely reliant on a system.

C: So you see yourself as a small winner.

R: The small wins, yeah. I'm a big fan of the small wins and these processes refer to the small wins. When you're looking at the big ideas of success and winning, you have to wonder how those broad goals get put in your mind. Like, why do you want the things that you want? So all of these things are shown to us, and they're easily commodified for us to consume. And so we tend to get competitive around these ideas and notions that are floating around. And yet, there's a whole other series of ideas and notions that are out there that we could be chasing, or pursuing that might actually have better odds of success. And a lot of this is because we sort of get trapped into where our attention goes and what is fed to us. So I'm really interested in sort of finding ways to break this cycle of how we attend to our own attention.

And that's where a lot of my work goes is trying to question these things and tease those boundaries. Those deformations that happen to individuals within a system.

Shield 6, found ball, wood, plexi, nylon, acrylic, pen and pencil, 72”x72”x8”, 2022

Shield 6 (detail)

C: You work with these drawings of sport objects, but it's really a reflection of us. There’s a very personal focus, and the bird’s eye view of society is put in the background of that.

R: It’s how an individual navigates within these systems and within these spaces. There's an idea called artificial negativity, where every form of resistance people can make is commodified by capitalism so that it can better control us in the future. I started realizing that all my efforts would be futile if I was in this cybernetic control system that's self-balancing. Well, then, if that’s the case, then the individual is all that's left as a malleable component. And if we're all programmed at some point, how do you deprogram yourself so that you can actually desire and value different things?

The art features all these sorts of beat-up objects that I've been drawing lately–these sports balls or found objects that I collected during the pandemic. I have these discarded sports objects that, usually, kids had thrown out into a creek bed or a drainage ditch. I’d bring them back home, and start trying to build works to sort of protect them and shield them and give them a different type of life.  It's a little bit romantic, but it also sort of deals with childhood in general, a throwing away of dreams.

C: I imagine a reliquary for these objects, you’re giving them the gravity of the fingernail of Christ.

R: Yeah, exactly. It’s like I’m saying “this is the pinky bone and you touch it”. There was an energy given to them at some point. And even after their obvious life is gone, you still have this object, and there’s the embedded energies and hopes and dreams that we put into it. Are they still there? In some sense, right? Like if you touch the bone of John the Baptist, it doesn't actually heal your wounds or your illness, but treating these objects as relics hides that an object becomes sacred once you create that space around it. But then doesn’t that sacredness bleed back into you? And can that be healing?

C: So this work is new, right? What kinds of artistic turns are you coming into right now?

R: This work started in January, so it’s very new. I started collecting the sports balls over the past year, but didn't know what to do with them. I'm still feeling my way through what I'm trying to do with it. I’m not trying to intellectually map out the process, but letting it come to me almost as if I’m sticking out an antenna or a conduit, looking for something else. Letting those movements come into me and actually heeding them and paying attention to them, rather than mapping out what would be successful according to sort of market forces or intellectual academic circles.

[left] Found Dream (soccer), Graphite and lamp black pigment on paper, 22x30”, 2023.   

[right] Found Dream (volleyball), Graphite and lamp black pigment on paper, 22x30” 2023.

C: How are you using this residency to take advantage of this new artistic trajectory you’re making for yourself?

R: This is my second time coming to Stove Works. The first time was during the pandemic and pulled me out of a very dark space that I was in during that time, from isolating and then being able to have community. This second residency stay is like a resurgence of that feeling. I'm in the midst of moving. I'm in the midst of figuring out a lot of things, and the time and space to create work and yet also be around a group of compassionate and empathetic individuals is this really insane gift. I’m able to come in and out of solitude repeatedly, which wasn’t something that I was usually able to have, at least during lockdowns. Coming to a space like this, and having the ability to practice a process, and yet also getting the social aspect is just sort of a rare and fabulous thing. It’s nourished me as an artist and individual.

C: Is there anything with you looking forward to that we can expect from you in the foreseeable future?

R: I'm going to be traveling a lot. So I think maybe I'm going to spend some time in Mexico–brush up on the old Spanish, you know, little things like that. I have a couple of shows coming up. One out in Roswell, New Mexico, we've got another one in Missouri State, and another one in Fort Worth, Texas. Thanks to this space, I’ve been able to plan work for those.

Resident Spotlight: Rainn Jackson, Residency Fellow

Rainn Jackson is an interdisciplinary artist and political organizer based in Chattanooga, Tennessee. Their work has been shown in various galleries and publications including Amos Eno gallery in Brooklyn, Gallery Sabine in Chicago, IL, the Contemporary Cress gallery in Chattanooga, the Apothecary gallery in Chattanooga, the Activist magazine, and Chattanooga Zine Fest. They are concerned with class and LGBTQ issues. Their political and art practices inform each other and merge into one integrated practice; they reference sexuality, gender identity, kink, protests, and theory within their creative projects. This can be most clearly seen in their zine work, which aims to educate in creative ways about issues surrounding sex work, trans identity, southern culture, and similar topics.

Rainn is Stove Works’ Resident Fellow for the first half of 2023.

Cass: Why don’t you tell me about yourself?
Rainn: I’m the resident fellow here at stoveworks, I live on-site to work with the residents. My practice mostly involves video and photography, but lately I’ve also been exploring collage. My work is centered around experiences as a queer person in the South, which can kind of be a hostile experience.

C: You mentioned getting into collage recently. Have you been having any new artistic turns as you’re coming into your fellowship?
R: For a few months, I’ve been feeling stuck with the work I’m doing. I’ve been maintaining a daily project where I record monthly pictures of my body changing since I started taking testosterone. I want to explore new projects while I’m here, since that’s a side project. I’ve been thinking about the hostility towards trans people–like the recent wave of anti-trans laws. That’s something I’m starting to focus on in my practice, because it feels like basically only trans people are talking about this.

C: How is the current hostility towards trans people affecting your practice?
R: I think my art’s gotten a little more depressing recently, and maybe angry as I respond to the sociopolitical climate around me. I have some photos around here where I’ve been cutting myself out of photos and photo manipulating the empty space I left. Or others where I harshly oversaturate my body versus the rest of my surroundings. Recently, I’ve felt both invisible and overly visible as a trans person, because a lot of people don’t know about the legislation being passed against us. It’s made me more vigilant of my surroundings, too.

I’ve been watching the films of Henry Hanson, a Chicago-based transmasc filmmaker. He makes work explicitly for transmasculine audiences, which has me feeling really inspired to make work. I found this archive of queer and trans masculine filmmakers called the Otherness Archive, which is where I found Hanson’s work. I’ve been meaning to dive more into it, because unfortunately it’s really hard to find queer movies that are actually good. 

C: Between your monthly self-portrait series, films and collaging, I’m picking up on archiving as a theme. Do you consider that an important part of your practice?
R: You could think of it like that. I tend to be more documentarian in my life and work, where I want to document queerness and keep queer life around me. I’ve been recording my friends’ lives since my last year of undergrad, so that’s been, what, four or five years?

C: You’ve been moving into collage, which is a more active–perhaps destructive–process than your photography. What does that do for you?
R: I’m still figuring out what collage is doing for me. I wanted to try something different when I got here, and I had a bunch of collage materials. I ended up liking what I was making.

I still plan on doing my self-portrait work every month. I also have a larger video project I’m starting where I want to get a bunch of friends together to film them asking questions directed at cis people, flipping awkward questions that they ask us back onto them. Things like, “are you on viagra?”. 

I used to live farther out of the city, which would make a large collaborative project like that impossible. Now that I have this residency right in the middle of everything, I’ll be able to get people for that video project. Other than that, I’m just enjoying collaborating with the people around me. I worked on some projects with one of the January residents, Abby Banks, which I’ll be showing up in Chicago later this year.

C: Do you have anything for people to expect from you?
R: I’ve been submitting a recent series of photos about social media censorship to shows, but nothing yet! Other than that, I’m excited to be here at Stove Works.