Resident Spotlight: Devin Balara

Devin in her studio. Photo by William Johnson. www.wmjohnsonphotography.com

 Saria: How did you hear about Stove Works?

Devin: I was friends with Mike Calway-Fagan, he was one of my professors in grad school. He came during my last year so I only really knew him for that year and afterward, we collaborated on a couple of curatorial things together and we decided to keep in touch and have been really good friends. I toured the building three years ago when it was just still bare-bones and I thought, “maybe one day I'll get to be here,” and here I am.

Saria: Where does the inspiration for most of your work come from?

Devin: I've gone through lots of similar ways of working but I've always drawn as a practice. Drawing has always been the way that I figure most things out and I think deciding to give the weight to just the drawing itself was something that I was interested in doing. Instead of the drawing being a plan to make something else that was a little more 3 dimensional, I like letting the drawings speak more for themselves and whatever style I have innately drawing-wise can really translate well into steel, using that line. It's cool too because ultimately the steel kind of does what it wants to do so it gives a little bit of control to the material. I think I get a kick out of that, in the kind of inconsequential way that I've always doodled. I really can take it to the next level and really commit to something that was maybe just meant to be silly or fleeting and take something that I drew in five seconds and then spend 20 hours realizing it.

Saria: How would you describe your style?

Devin: I've always been pretty meticulous. I think my work is always something I'm coming up against. It seems like things can sometimes look too finished or too polished but I think that's just me. It's something that I've always gotten criticism for. The ideas in my head are loose and I think that sometimes it can feel different for people who perceive it as being very skill-based. My style is detail-oriented and in my mind, I don't think that I come across as too much of a control freak with everything that I do but I think maybe that is something I just need to accept. I want to feel loose and I'm constantly trying to give myself that challenge to loosen up a little bit but the more I accept my natural tendencies. Idea-wise, that's where I try to insert the messy or silly, looseness. I definitely prioritize humor in my work. If my work is being its most honest reflection of me I want viewers to have a laugh.

Saria: Were you always interested in sculpture, how did you start working with steel?

Devin: When I was little I drew a lot, I was always fussing on making things like getting in the bath pretending that I was like a chemist and mixing all of my mom's shampoo together, and building things out in the woods. Coming of age I was way more into music and I played bass clarinet and I was in a band and the kind of school I went to, you were only allowed to do one creative thing at a time and I chose music. When I got to college I thought I was going to study psychology or some facet of sociology and for undergrad, I needed credit so I took a drawing class and I ended up meeting four or five people that I am still really good friends with. All of us burst out into different areas of the art world. During those drawing classes my teachers were like, “you're an artist” but I was like “I am?”  Then I took sculpture and I was shyer back then and it was an intimidating environment.  I was really intimidated working around these skilled people, luckily the metalworking area happened to be in the very back of the sculpture studio and I would pull the curtain and be alone and get to do my own thing. In the department, there were really incredible teachers. There was a husband and wife team and they are so encouraging and through that experience, I realize I love steel and it loves me back. It's such amazing material.

Saria: Some of your work like the pieces from your solo show, What Did You Expect? What More Do You Want? have a feeling of playfulness in them, you create these little characters who go on to have their own life. How do you see your sculptures as they exist in space after you’ve made them?

Devin: That body of work was definitely centered around the idea that if you go outside things are going to happen or if you go outside you're gonna see something. Outside meaning outside of your house or maybe hiking or in a space that you haven't been. In that show there's a snake coming out of a mailbox, there’s a narrative there, maybe a short one but it's there. That was an idea that I didn't see happen but I'm sure it has happened.  I like working the way I do because I like that you can see everything through each other and they morph and change as you walk around them. I like that each one comes with a kind of narrative.

with Dove Drury-Hornbuckle in "Faeries in America"

Saria: How does your personal identity factor into your work?

Devin: Humor, it's definitely the most “me.” I think I'm funny and I love to make myself laugh and it's a gift when I make someone else laugh too. First and foremost it has to do with what makes me laugh and then I think about the degree of laughter. Especially the work that I've been making here. I didn't work for almost a year before I got here. When you make work that's intentionally silly, it's really easy to talk yourself out of things. Like who cares and who is this helping and why bother? How do I reconcile making jokes when things are getting sad and scary? So, instead of making work, before I came here, I was by Lake Michigan at Oxbow and collected rocks. When I was young I always collected things. Then I got interested in teaching myself about these rocks and learning names and other information. I broke into it and saw how it was connected to everything, thinking about prehistory time. I drew from those ideas and also the object and tools of learning. I'm trying to pick from all the things I've learned. I have to think about what is the thing I care the most about lately and its rocks!

Saria: A lot of your work also stands on its own, seeming precariously balanced, is that a feature that relates to the meaning of the art or just a stylistic choice?

Devin: I think it's stylish in that I like the illusionary aspect of it. There are a couple of things I've been making that sort of deal with that. I made a couple of things that look like a table but it's a flattened drawing of a table where the legs are kind of floating, two are attached to the ground and two are floating. It looks like it's foreshortened but you come to it and it's actually flat. I also like magic in general so the magic aspect makes me want it to feel weightless. I also like my object to have a relationship with what they are shown with. The best exhibitions I've had have been with one or two other friends. I make my work so it can be around other people's work, and I like the way that it becomes a drawing that is superimposed on whatever someone else has made, at the same time it’s hyper present from one view and could completely disappear from the side.

Saria: How have you seen yourself grow as an artist since your time here at Stove Works?

Devin: Yeah, I don't often have the studio., I always have the metal shop but outside of institutions or some residencies, I've never had an actual studio that’s mine. I get to pretend and play artist and it actually does affect you, acting it out. Here is my desk, and I hang my drawing on the walls, and I have my coffee and here I draw and I look out the window. That's been a fun aspect of it, to embody and act like an artist. It helps. Also, it's nice to have people around you that are kind of doing the same thing. It's great always to have fresh eyes and opinions on your work, and you see people working with new techniques. I've definitely come more to appreciate this region and the many gifts of the Cumberland Plateau. I've done lots of long drives, looking in creeks for rocks. And it's great to have a studio just to feel like you can really look at what you made. I don't get that in the metal shop as much, there’s never quite the white wall to see something up against. I still always leave spaces like this feeling recharged, and I gain enough personal momentum so when I leave here it's not over. And I've re- fallen in love with drawing.

Saria: What are you doing after you leave Stove Works?

Devin:  I'm going back to Oxbow, back to the snow. The metal shop unfortunately is entirely outdoors, open-air so it won't be workable till May. But there's plenty of indoor spaces and many places to be. It's such an excellent place to live and work.

About Devin

Devin Balara is an artist who works with sculpture and metalwork. She has been working with metals for 11 years. She studied in Jacksonville at UNF and got her MFA in sculpture at Indiana University in Bloomington, where she saw snow for the first time. She has worked at the University of Tennessee in the metal shop and at the Ox-Bow School of Art in Michigan. Now she calls Ox-Bow home though she would say she feels very nomadic. She values humor in her work and is interested in working meticulously while still embracing the idea of looseness and fun. She is also interested in geology and collects and studies rocks which inform her newer work. She has a piece in the Stove Works gallery in our Resident show Hot Doughnuts which is up till March 27th. She was a resident here from December through the end of February.

http://www.devinbalara.com/

ABOUT ME, THE INTERVIEWER

My name is Saria Smith, and I am a BFA student currently working as a Curatorial Assistant at Stove Works Gallery. I am an artist and find joy in expressing myself through various ways involving, working with found objects, collage, and music. I decided to start these artist interviews as a way for the public to connect more with the residents who flow through Stove Works perhaps unseen, especially during this pandemic.

Resident Spotlight: Bradley Marshall

Bradley in his studio at Stove Works. Photo: William Johnson, wmjohnsonphotography.com

Saria: How did you find out about Stove Works?

Bradley:  I heard about Stove Works through some art friends in Nashville initially and then learned more about it through Mike Calway-Fagan. I came to a Stove Works’ show before they were in their current building and I spoke with Mike and he asked if I would give an artist talk that night, and I said, “No, I can't do that.” I had driven from Nashville for the day and he was like, “Okay. You'll do the next one.” So, I came back down for the Slideshow nights and I gave a talk and that sparked some studio visits.

Saria: Did you always feel like an artist?

Bradley: I would say no, I was actually reluctant to use that term for a long time, even when I was making art photography. I think I didn't have enough of a bearing on what that term would change about what I do. So, I called myself a photographer, and I was also trying to avoid some kind of pretension that I felt would come across if I claimed an artist with a capital “A.” Once I went to grad school I felt like I had to since I was getting my masters in Fine Arts.

Saria: When did you move from straightforward photography to the art you're making now?

Bradley: I initially started experimenting with video in grad school and that opened the floodgates of other potentials. Once you start to mess with 4D art, it breaks a seal. I got interested in how I can project video and different ideas around what our relationship to images are. I'm still interested in externalizing these images that were never deemed worthy of holding an objecthood.

Quarter Lever, 2019-2020, silver gelatin photograph authored by artist's paternal grandfather, epoxied potato chip, air wedges, pvc tubing and connectors, acrylic, aftermarket valve cover for 1957 Chevrolet, screen (HD video 01:27" looped, no audio), electromechanics, machined hardware, turnbuckles, miscellaneous hardware, miscellaneous wiring and cordage, various epoxy and adhesive, dimensions variable

Saria: Your website doesn't include a bio or artist statements for the artwork, why is that?

Bradley: Websites are weird in that sense because they're so often seen as being made strictly for an audience, it's very commodified in that sense so I hate thinking about it in that way. I want it to still be interesting for me and part of that is withholding some information. I'm easy to get in touch with, my email is on there and I'm willing to chat more. There's something about presenting art in a manner where it has some kind of quality that is not fully defined.

Saria: How would you describe your art style?

Bradley: I’m apprehensive to that term because of the way it is used to create genres in art and usually I think we tend to think about how our style is by someone telling us so I end up thinking about how other people have labeled what I do. There's definitely a movement of people making sculptural photographic works right now, but if I realize that I'm creating a style it's often in my best interest to break that.
 

Saria: Why do you choose to not include artist statements on your works as they are presented on your website?

Bradley: What I make has lots of context involved. They are conveyed in certain ways on my website that don't require any sort of institutional artist statement, which was definitely crammed down my throat from grad school. On my website, I think engaging in an explanation of how things work also with a materials list becomes more telling. Reading that to me creates a more rich space around the work. It provides most of the context for the viewer to create a narrative on their own. I have an artist statement for most of those works if I need to provide that context and that framework.

Saria: What do you find most intriguing about sculpture?

Bradley: Sculpture is most interesting because everything can be sculpture, it's much more about a heterogenous relationship between materials and finding these links between how two materials relate to each other to create meaning. It can create a kind of awareness to consumption recycling and waste and excess but also to things like labor and bureaucracy and politics and identity can coalesce through. Conversation is as simple as tracing the lineage of how one thing is made.

Console, Console (Diptych), 2020, Parametric speakers, speaker wire, proprietary amplifier, two-channel audio, OLED screens with micro controllers, three-channel bitmap animation, custom code, various adhesives and hardware

Saria: What enforces your choice to use certain materials?

Bradley: I use memory in my work a lot, so misremembering. How things may appear visually and not actually be so, kind of like magic, it's more about the sleight of hand, it's like an illusion through a kind of decoy. My relationship to materials shifts between the demand of a project and the ideas and the materials can be iterative, leading to another. Research rigor comes into play and reading about certain historical events. And also thinking about the materials that exist around imagery. My piece Quarter Lever especially is thinking about the way that images are presented at eye level especially on storefronts, and there is a video low on the ground which is dealing with the fact that video is clearly the most interesting thing you'd want to see and it only about 3 inches wide and above is a huge device used for showing imagery, but it just has these small pieces being smashed at eye level. So, I'm kinda playing with those contrasting feelings, the way that we feel about something that is factory produced and has been processed and things that are more raw and have more warmth to them.

Saria: Your work, An Imperfect Offering, A Windowless Room (Skeeeedaddle!), creates this sort of dreamy, disconnected space while using a can and pencil to mount it to the wall seemingly with magic. What inspired you to make this piece?

Bradley: Sally O'Reilly talks about a certain type of art that exists at the "edge of the credible."  The way that piece is functioning, there are some things that have a kind of anti-logic. That piece is about someone very special to me dying of dementia and so watching how memory starts to behave illogically and unexpectedly, it's interesting because someone's memory is different from what people say and whether or not they remember you. That was one of the major ideas going into that work and an influence about it. But It allows for inference too.
 

An Imperfect Offering, A Windowless Room (Skeeeedaddle!), 2021, Hand-cut MDF, inkjet print, steel, wax, tin can, pencil with lead replaced with steel, hardware and adhesives, 36.5"x26"x8"

Saria: Do you strive for perfection in your work?

Bradley: I do really like to strive for it but my work also thrives on the failures that happen, that are ultimately going to happen.

Saria: What's your most personal piece?

Bradley: An imperfect offering is my most personal because it's about that process of letting things go and settling for those imperfections of trying to represent them. I know that my sentiments and my attachment to the work I make is never going to be felt by someone else and can't. I use personal experience as a way to attempt to get to collective experiences. Creating shared empathy over an artwork.  That piece has the most earnestly behind it.
 

Saria: What is the best thing that this opportunity at Stove Works did for you as an artist during this residency?

Bradley: Two things: meeting new amazing artists and time, space, and access to tools and equipment is very crucial. With that comes making relationships with people who know how to use those tools better than me and learning from them.

Saria: What are you planning to do after you leave Stove Works?

Bradley: I don't know, looking for that first warm day of summer, maybe find a pool or swimming hole, that's all I have on the horizon.

About Bradley:

Bradley Marshall is an artist in residence here at Stove Works till the end of March. He received his masters at East Tennessee University and along with art making teaches photography Bradley is interested in sculpture that incorporates often photography and video and different ways of creating a narrative through artworks inspired by personal events in his life. After sitting down with him I've come to recognize that his work is very thoughtful and aims to allow space for the viewer to project their own understanding onto his work. He pulls from life experiences to create an object or collaborate objects that play with how we view objects and memory. He has a piece currently on view in our show Teachable Moment titled Console, Console (Diptych).

 http://bradley-marshall.com/

ABOUT ME, THE INTERVIEWER

My name is Saria Smith, and I am a BFA Student currently working as the Curatorial Assistant at Stove Works Gallery. I am an artist and find joy in expressing myself through various ways involving, working with found objects, collage, and music. I decided to start these artist interviews as a way for the public to connect more with the residents who flow through Stove Works perhaps unseen, especially during this pandemic.

Resident Spotlight: CC Calloway

Photo of CC in her Studio at Stove Works. Captured by William Johnson: http://www.wmjohnsonphotography.com/

Saria: How did you find out about Stove Works?

CC: I had a studio visit with the past curator Mike Calway-Fagen the last two weeks before I finished undergrad. Someone told me that Mike and I were a “similar kind of weird” and that we would like each other. They were right. We’re both freaks. After that, Mike helped me land my first paid writing job at Number Magazine, and he curated me into my first solo show at the University of Tennessee - Chattanooga. We kept tabs on each other as I moved around. At a really ideal time, as the world was shutting down, Mike and Charlotte asked me if I wanted to come to Stove Works.

Saria: What was the best thing about your residency at Stoveworks?

CC: Well, I was in graduate school at the University of Texas at Austin when COVID-19 hit. We got kicked out of our grad studios in March and I had to move home to Augusta, Georgia with my family. For the six months leading up to my time at Stove Works, I didn’t have the space or the ability to focus on work, there were so many distractions. So there were all these pent-up ideas that I couldn't make happen for months. When I got to Stove Works, with all the time and space they gave to me and all that pent-up energy, I was able to just explode here. I made so much work. 

Saria: Much of your work focuses on the technological age and how it impacts the human condition. How important is it, to you, to incite this conversation about technology?

CC: A lot of the efforts I make in my practice are to help viewers reconsider and look more deeply at elements of mundanity. Our relationship to technology, for example, could easily be one that involves a lot of blind faith, we have so much trust in these new inventions but we don't always consider how it changes our relationship to other people or how it impacts the world socially. I do hope that it brings up that discussion. I am also speaking directly from the lens of my experience growing up at the dawn of social media; I was in the first generation of teenagers that had social media. I experienced parts of adolescence with and without it. Watching the social fabric of our world shift, this was a huge cultural reset.

CC’s work in “Hot Doughnuts Now” at Stove Works. Curated by Ash Smith.

Saria: You have 4 books of poetry and one book of photography; What was it like to create and self-publish your books?

CC: For me, the basis of my writing practice happens on Twitter. I got a Twitter account when I was twelve. The goal of getting the account was to try and talk to celebrities, and of course, none of them ever responded. None of my friends were ever on Twitter, in those early stages, no one really knew what to do with it. So I had this account that none of my friends cared to look for and there was this anonymousness to it that really drew me in. I always wrote in this very vague style because I feared that my mom would find my account. It was like this kind of cryptic diary. I never thought of it as poetry until I got to college and saw Steve Roggenbuck's exhibition at the New Museum. That was when I realized poetry could be art, so I started mining that archive from my Twitter. I kind of think of this archive as a widespread epic poem of my adolescence.

Writing books just comes naturally to me. I’ve always been writing, even before I knew what I was doing could be called poetry. In terms of publishing, my background in printmaking really helps with that. I think reading a lot is the key to being a good writer.

Saria: Your work, Circular Score deals strongly with female virginity and innocence, what made you want to create art that dealt with that?

CC: Circular Score is about consumption of women in media, I chose to focus on the character Stacey Hamilton from Fast Times at Ridgemont High because the burden of double-standards placed on women’s sexuality is so clear in that film. In particular, the video focuses on the scene where Stacey loses her virginity to a 30 year-old man in a baseball dugout. Afterward her male suitor never calls her again. Stacy goes on to be continually crushed and disappointed by male sexual partners throughout the film, leading her to pregnancy and later abortion, then at the end of the film she eventually resorts to abstinence to find stability with a romantic partner. I saw that film for the first time when I was 16 and was always bothered that Stacey wasn’t able to have the sexual freedom she wanted so badly. 

In one of my other videos, My Loneliness is Killing Me, I highlight a similar theme with Britney Spears. Britney is the central victim of media consumption in my mind. She has been consumed and re-consumed endlessly during my lifetime. Images of her are constantly stripped of their origin and recontextualized to fit whatever narrative serves TMZ best. In the early days of her career, especially while dating Justin Timberlake the media was obsessed with her virginity. I used gum in that piece not only to directly reference consumption and the human body, but also because it is a nasty, yet oddly common metaphor for female virginity loss. When I was 13 while at summer camp, I heard this metaphor for the first time. In order to scare us into abstaining from sex until marriage, my counselors told us that if we did not wait, we would be as desirable to our future husband as a piece of chewed gum, “and who wants to chew a piece of gum that has already been chewed?” Unlike chewed gum, in Britney’s case, her image is more likely to be pulled off the wall, re-chewed then spat out again somewhere else. This metaphor really messed with my head growing up, not that I bought into it, it just disgusted me and never left my mind so I made a piece about it.

 There's a lot of abuse of women that goes on in the media that is very much a product of purity culture. The way we perceive our bodies, our sexual desires and our self-worth is based on what we see online and in films. It is a sort of ‘hyper-glamorization’ of a myth of what a woman is and should be. That affects all women.

Circular Score, four-channel video installation, rotating platform, 2020

Saria: How do ideas come to you? Such as with your piece Head, did you see the parts first and get a spark of were you already thinking of the idea?

CC: It's different for every piece, a lot of times with my sculptural practice I’ll find something really jarring, that feels like not a lot of people would acknowledge, something out of place, weird, yet beautiful. I'm a big collector of random objects. Being a sculptor is kind of like being a hoarder. All the materials I use for the most part are not brand new, I do very little fabrication and when I do it is usually just furniture to hold the object. I like to use material that has a life embedded into it. 

Saria: How does your art relate to your personal experiences and background?

CC: For me, art and life art are very much intermingled. I think there's no way my life could not influence my work. I think this is true for almost any artist. Our interests have a lot to do with how we grew up and who we are. In my work, it is a conscious effort to incorporate my personal life and background. It is also a therapeutic practice for me and involves a process of detachment that helps me see myself more clearly and understand what I am feeling. Sometimes the personal elements are obvious in the work and sometimes they’re not. 

I am a lot more detailed in my writing practice. I try to be straight-forward about my identity, often making fun of myself for being a semi-petty, emotional, wildly romantic, white girl living in America. I want to be real about where I’m coming from and who I am.

I classify my written work and the art sourced from it within the genre of Autofiction, meaning that the narratives I bring forward in my work are grounded in reality, with subtle elements blurred by fiction or exaggeration. In my writing, the character that I'm sort of playing is the most emotionally reckless version of myself. It’s all over-dramatic, but the feelings are real. 

The Twitter account is where I just like puke my feelings out on the spot. With the incorporation of media, those feelings go through many filters before the work gets released to the world. That said, I try not to take it too far away from the origin. The work I make has a lot to do with how I'm living at the time. I try to think a lot about the present and the work tends to come off as a response to what's going on in the world and the way society perceives it. 

I LOVE ME (IN ADVANCE), single-channel video installation on iPhone; 6 minutes, 25 seconds, 2020

Saria: Do you do a lot of planning for your writing and videos? Such as with I LOVE ME (IN ADVANCE)

CC: It depends on the work. I LOVE ME (IN ADVANCE) had no planning whatsoever. It's slow at the beginning because it's completely improvised and then when I say “IT’S ALL FUCKING SCRIPTED” I start just reading my unedited Twitter feed. Usually, there's some editing and reordering involved in my writing process, so making this video so improvisationally was new for me. Things don’t always come together that easily, but I will say in general sometimes the best things get made by accident. A lot of my work is made impulsively, I do it on the spot because I have to get the feeling out so I can look at it. When more complicated media gets involved that’s usually where the actual planning begins.

Saria: Would you explain the thought behind your sculpture piece  A Baby and a Sponge?

CC: That piece is a sculpture that also performs. It cries and cleans itself up. Every 45 minutes someone (usually me) has to squeeze “the tears” out of the sponge so the piece doesn’t flood the gallery. In the work, there is an image of my hand with a very subtle stigmata. In history, it has been relatively common for artists to depict themselves as Christ. Some examples include Kanye West and Albrecht Durer. This is something men do, it is not a common thing for females, so I decided to do it. I was thinking a lot about my Christian background and my relationship to faith when I made this piece. A long time ago I wrote this tweet that I saw to as the ideal mindset to be the best student possible, “just wake up every day and think of yourself as both a baby and a sponge.” You're ready to take things in, you're ready to learn what life is, everything is new, soak it up, spit it out. I made this piece a water fountain that drips into the sponge, so it basically cries and cleans itself up which I felt was a practice that is inherent to being female. We're always crying and cleaning ourselves back up, performing every day, holding ourselves together. 

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Saria: You are an interdisciplinary artist, do you feel like there are different ideas you can communicate through each? How do you incorporate that choice of medium into what you're trying to say?

CC: I choose media based on what I feel is the best outlet for the idea. I like to experiment with different forms of communication, both present-day communication technology, and early print media. I find that different media communicate differently. A book, for example, is an intimate experience someone can take home and read on their own time, no one is watching them watch it. And a video is something we're immediately attracted to because we're so used to looking at videos, it has a direct relationship to reality. Videos also have a digital form so you can post them online and reach thousands of people easily.  What I really like about fashion is that you can put art in the world and people will see art when they're not expecting to see art. I like to think of fashion as an alternative gallery model, one that brings the work into the work in a very direct way. Sculpture is more about the body and your body’s relationship to the object and the space surrounding it. It’s all about how it makes your body feel. In those pieces, the physical is part of the experience. I think I am attracted to print and books because of the intimacy of them, the quietness. I like to make people have to get really close to my print work to read the text, often I even have to include magnifying glasses. My work usually starts with the text and then I find the media that fits the message best.

Saria: What was the first kind of art you ever made?

CC: Painting and drawing I guess. In high school I did a lot of oil pastel portraits, they were like fauvist-looking portraits, really different from the work I make now, but certainly nothing I feel ashamed of. I wanted to be a figurative painter when I started college and then I realized that I could always be a painter, but inside the university, there were all these sweet machines I got access to. I got totally obsessed with machines and processes. My major in undergrad was printmaking and book arts. My interest in print started with a love of the chemistry and techniques. Then later, I made this connection between printmaking and the internet. Much like the invention of the internet, the invention of print was also a huge cultural reset. Newfound mass literacy connected the world and made it feel smaller. Information became accessible to the masses. Before printmaking was invented, books were handwritten and only the wealthy had access. As we know, information is power and the invention of print sort of leveled the playing field. When the internet was invented, the world got even smaller, connecting us globally at an instant. 

HEAD, two-way reciprocal mirror, time manipulated floodlight (6 seconds on, 6 seconds off), altered found object (road sign), steel, 2019

Saria: What are you doing after you leave Stove Works?

CC: I'm teaching at The University of Tennessee in Chattanooga and in March I’m doing an installation for South by South West specifically for TEDx annual conference, it's going to be a drive-through exhibition in a parking garage. The title of the exhibition is “Here and Now. I'm going to show that HEAD piece. Still working out plans for summer but I’m staying in Chattanooga for now. I'm also working on a new book of poems and learning a lot about teaching.

Saria: What has Stove Works done that was really good for you as an artist?

CC: Stove Works gave me security in a time that felt really insecure, during maybe the hardest moment of my career (really, the hardest moment of many people’s careers.) Graduating from my MFA program in the midst of a pandemic was totally destabilizing. I felt hopeless at times so having this support really helped me allow myself to do the work that I wanted to do. Sometimes that's all you need. One person who is down to help you out, some else’s confidence that your work is worth making. Especially in the midst of the pandemic, the support did a lot for me. I definitely made a lot of great friends here. This has by far been the most productive residency I've been to. I made everything I wanted.

MY LONELINESS IS KILLING ME, single-channel video; 3 minutes, 54 seconds, 2019

About CC:

CC CALLOWAY  (b. 1993, Augusta, Georgia) received her BFA in Printmaking + Book Arts from the University of Georgia and her MFA from the University of Texas at Austin. CC’s art practice is interdisciplinary, ranging from traditional printmaking processes, sculpture, and installation, to new media, sound, video, and web-based work. In her work and research, she considers technology’s impact on the human condition, communication, gender, and spirituality. CC has written and self-published four books of poetry, including one book of photography, entitled My Favorite Word is Nothing.

CC has exhibited widely across the US and internationally, most notably at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, Peckham Park in London, UK, and Jonathan Hopson Gallery in Houston, Texas. Currently, CC is an artist-in-residence at Stove Works in Chattanooga, TN. CC has participated in many residencies including the Ox-Bow Fellowship, Atlanta Printmakers Studio (EAR), the WonderRoot Hughley Fellowship (formerly known as the Walthall Fellowship), and the Ossabaw Island Residency for Arts and Science. Her work has been featured in BURNAWAY Magazine, Glasstire, Number Inc., LOCATE Arts, and GLITTERMOB Magazine. CC is also an arts writer and poet. She is currently the co-editor of Number Inc. Magazine.

https://www.cccalloway.com/

ABOUT ME, THE INTERVIEWER

My name is Saria Smith, and I am a BFA Student currently working as the Curatorial Assistant at Stove Works Gallery. I am an artist and find joy in expressing myself through various ways involving, working with found objects, collage, and music. I decided to start these artist interviews as a way for the public to connect more with the residents who flow through Stove Works perhaps unseen, especially during this pandemic.

Resident Spotlight: Victoria Sauer (Residency Fellow)

Interview between Saria Smith, Curatorial Assistant, and Victoria Sauer, Residency Fellow

Victoria in her studio. Photo: William Johnson http://www.wmjohnsonphotography.com/

S: Where are you from?                  

Victoria: I am from Hendersonville, Tennessee, and it's a suburb outside of Nashville. The only legacy is that’s where Taylor swift is from, so all her small town songs are written about that city.

S: How did you hear about Stove Works?

Victoria: I originally heard about it through school. It was kind of like a vague idea that was being formulated when I first moved here four years ago. They had a couple of pop-up shows during my time at school, and I heard about the sideshow slideshow, their impromptu artist presentations, and I was able to do that. Then I did a studio visit with them and got offered this residency fellow position, and while I was waiting for that, I became the curatorial assistant under the previous curator Mike.

S: What are some things that inspired you to this interest in real and surreal.

Victoria: Dreams. That's basically the short answer. In the last two years at UTC, we get a lot more free reign in our studio classes. So, I started making work about the everyday and mundane, like odd moments that people don't really pay attention to. It could be a scuff mark on the wall or something. Then I flipped it and started doing surrealist dreamwork, which the Cereal painting was the first in that area. I think of my work as being this point on a spectrum between ordinary and absurdity. The inspiration for the absurdity comes from my dreams. I use them kind of like source imagery for some paintings. Then, things from life are just inspired by moments from life. 

Cereal, 2019, oil on canvas, 30 x 40 in

S: You say you work with hyperrealism to “bring awareness to these moments we find familiar but frequently ignore,” but could this also not be achieved through photography? What is your argument for using oil paint to relay this message?

Victoria: It’s not a very deep answer because, for me, it’s almost nonsensical for me to assume photography is fine. For me, the photograph is so far from what I want to create. I do work from photographs, which I take for my reference, but I would never want to present those photographs. To my eyes, they're just not good enough. To the blind eye, they may say my work looks like a photograph, but to me, I've actually changed it so much. The way I work, photography is not fulfilling enough, I need to put my hand in it, and I don't want to lose the tiniest bit of error that I put into a painting. The “hyper” in hyper-real is that it's realistic, but it's just a little outside of our reality.

S: Your mixed media art also deals with this idea of mundane images. How would you say your mixed media work relates to your paintings and more well-known works?

Victoria: I’ve only done one book that is based on dream worlds, and that’s the book Recalling. Everything else has been more about identity and domestic spaces, which are ideas that come up in the paintings. Domestic spaces are the setting of a lot of my paintings. I have a lot of personal relationships to homes. My Piece (De)construction is deconstructing the top floor of my childhood home. That work is far more personal than my paintings ever get.  It’s about my childhood home and memories. The specific architecture of my house played a big role in a lot of my childhood trauma. It was therapeutic to physically deconstruct it and see different images forming. I've found that mixed media is more intimate, but commonly my first thought goes to painting.

(De)construction, 2019, matte board, permanent marker on acetate paper, book rings, 7x 8.75 in.

S: Why do you do what you do?

Victoria:  I do it for myself, but I also want to share my experiences with the world and other artists and other people. That's what I get out of viewing other people's work. It's like this exchange of humanity. When I see something that no one would ever look twice at, I feel like I want to share it. I want to represent it in a new way.

S: By using oil paint, you relate back to the idea from art history, but with a modern twist, which is likely most evident in your painting Reconstruction of the Female Nude. Do you seek to emulate age-old Western techniques, how much does that influence you?

Victoria: I don't really try to emulate that style. My work is pretty contemporary. That painting is an outlier because it's not about dreams or the ordinary, but it still is this reconstruction of a common thing. The way it’s presented is pretty absurd. It was a challenge presented to us in a figure painting class to study old classical nude painting of women and think about what that means today and how we can still paint nude figures without sexualizing them and appreciating them as a form. I aimed to bring attention to certain parts of the body that don’t get much attention, like knuckles or toenail polish or weird folds in the skin.

Reconstruction of the Female Nude, 2019, oil on canvas, 45 x 30 in.

S: What was your biggest fear after graduating with your BFA?

Victoria: I got the opportunity to be a resident fellow offered to me a few months before I graduated, but prior to that, I was lost. I was so scared. My biggest fear was that I would never pick up a paintbrush again. I love painting, but it's about accessibility. I don't have a space in my old house I could have painted. You don't have the same camaraderie you have in college. I would recommend to anyone just make it work, look into renting, carve out a space in your house, stay connected to your old peers and old professors. Thankfully being here right after graduation is the best thing that could happen to me as an artist.

S: What advice do you wish you had heard as a student in the Arts?

Victoria: I’d say I'm never going to make anyone go to college or say that you need a degree, but if you're in it, don't give up if you have the financial resources to stay in school. I get frustrated with how meaningful degrees are, but they are. There were so many times in college where I wanted to quit. Mentally and emotionally, I didn't know if I could handle it anymore, but I'm really glad I stuck it out because it really is worth it in the end. Fresh out of school, I feel thankful for everything I learned and all the people I met. I miss the critics and professors challenging me, but at the same time, it's been really freeing.

Night House, 2020, oil on canvas, 35 x 50 in.

S: What is something that you think Stove Works has done really well in your time here?

Victoria: I am super impressed with the show downstairs, Teachable Moment. That’s a lot of work to get together and installed in a short time frame. I’m also very pleased with how well and seriously they have handled COVID-19 and that they do their best consistently to make us all feel safe and cared for. Other than that, this entire organization is just really well done. To build a residency and gallery space up from nothing is so incredible and so necessary for this city.

S: What are you planning to do after Stove Works?

Victoria: That’s a really good question. That brings me back to January of last year where I just had no idea. But I've learned that especially now, after living through a year of COVID, planning sometimes means nothing. I've also learned that not planning is okay, and sometimes things just fall into your lap when they need to. I'm a spiritual person. I believe everything happens for a reason. I just have faith that everything will always work out for the best as long as I keep pushing myself and applying myself in the present day. So, to answer your question, I don't have immediate plans at all. I'm open to anything.

About Victoria

Victoria Sauer is an Artist and Resident Fellow at Stove Works. She recently graduated from the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga with a BFA in Painting and Drawing. She spends her time creating images that explore dreamlike, hyper-realistic scenes and aims to bring attention to mundane moments of life through oil paint. She has worked with mixed media and sculpture as well. She is inspired by the real and surreal and aims to create in the middle point between really real and moments just outside of our common reality. I was lucky enough to sit down with her as she finished her bagel and ask her some questions.

To learn more about Victoria and her work, visit her website: http://www.victoriasauer.com/

ABOUT ME, THE INTERVIEWER

My name is Saria Smith, and I am a BFA Student currently working as the Curatorial Assistant at Stove Works Gallery. I am an artist and find joy in expressing myself through various ways involving, working with found objects, collage, and music. I decided to start these artist interviews as a way for the public to connect more with the residents who flow through Stove Works perhaps unseen, especially during this pandemic.

Resident Spotlight: Sean Clark

Interview between Saria Smith, Curatorial Assistant, and Sean Clark, Artist-in-Residence.

Sean Clark in hist studio. Photo: @wolfrancis

Saria: Did you always think you were an artist?

Sean C: Not necessarily. I was definitely drawing superheroes out of comic books when I was in elementary school. Probably not till I moved to New Orleans in 2012 did I start considering myself an artist. That's the first time I painted consistently. I started in college as an outlet. The environment when I moved to New Orleans was rich with opportunities to see, experience, and make art. 

Saria: How did living in New Orleans influence your art?

Sean C: It's so rich in culture and different types of experiences that you can have. It's hard for me to explain, but it's just a magical place. There's no other place that I've been to like it. In terms of people, you can feel that creative energy in the air. It's everywhere. 

Saria: Was there anything specific in your childhood that sparked your excitement for art?

Sean C: Definitely. My love of X-Men and comic books. That, and my dad’s college roommate was an artist, and so our house had paintings, sculptures, and other stuff he had done. So I was raised in an environment where I was surrounded by it.

Saria: You minored in public health and African American studies. How does that inform your art now?

Sean C: Before I start a painting, I look at it through a certain lens of how the information that's contained within the piece is being seen. I think about what I am trying to communicate about what's going on in the environment. I look to a lot of public health issues and a lot of health practitioners to inform me of my subject matter. A big thing is thinking about mental health and working in public health; you encounter that all the time.

Saria: How does your personal identity factor into your work?

Sean C: I think that being a black person from the south is something ingrained into my everything, from the clothes I wear to how I paint. It's something that I proudly carry with me everywhere. There's a lot to that question. In terms of my identity, I look back a lot. I look at my family history; I look at my peers, my cousins, there are so many different components. I'm not sure how to hone it into one cohesive thought. 

NFS (Not For Sale). 12x12in, 2020

Saria: Do you use your art as a form of therapy

Sean C: Yeah, it's definitely therapeutic, just the act of painting even if what you create is not something that's necessarily aesthetically pleasing, just that act of sort of stepping outside of time and being in the zone for a while gives you a mental break. 

Saria: What attracts you to abstract work?

Sean C: I really like mark making, to make a mark and fill in the space. I studied biology, and one of the first things you encounter is talking about the cell and all these microscopic things that happen. To me, those abstract works resembled those sorts of cellular processes that power us. I think that's what's emerging from the abstract work, something that is within us.

Saria: What was the inspiration for the mask paintings? Where did the name meeting notes come from?

Sean C: I was working in public health. I spent so much time just in meetings, and I would be there doodling, drawing these little faces. They really started to look like my dad’s college roommate’s work. His name is Sammie Nicely. He used to do these big ceramic masks, and the ones I was doodling started to look like that. So later, I had all these meeting agendas and scrap paper with all these little mask-like things, and I took those little sketches and turned them into larger paintings.

Saria: Who were some major influences for you?

Sean C: My Dad got stuff from artists in the 80s, so a bunch of Sammie’s work and then an artist named Schroeder Cherry who still makes great work, these were the paintings I grew up around. Then just all the comic books, like Jack Kirby doing the early X-Men stuff, and one of my favorites is Bill Sienkiewicz, it's painterly but still a comic.

Meeting Notes 92, acrylic/oil pen on watercolor, 18x24in, 2018

Saria: What does the community mean to you?

Sean C: Looking out for each other, being considerate of the people you share space with. When people are just blatantly disrespecting the environment and the people within it, it makes me mad. Community to me is just being considerate and helping those you share the space with. It's as simple as I can put it.

X-Men #1, Acrylic and Oil Pastel on paper, 3ft x 6ft, 2019

Saria: What do you think is really good about this residential community?

Sean C:  I think everybody here has been respectful of the circumstances of everything that's going on, which I appreciate. Everyone has been kind and easy-going, and I enjoy being a part of the initial group that's still figuring it out. Hopefully, something from our experience will help future cohorts to come into this space with great ease.

Saria: What do you think Stove Works has done really well in your time here?

Sean C: They've done well in bringing us together. With things as simple as us having a fire pit to convene around, I appreciate that. If there were issues, they'd be on top of it. The staff and everybody work seamlessly, everything feels like it's flowing.

Saria: What are your plans after Stove Works?

Sean C: I'm going to see my friends and just chill out for a couple of weeks. Next month three pieces are going to be shown at the upcoming Trout Museum in Wisconsin and I have a big abstract piece going to Art Fields in Lake City, South Carolina.

About Sean 

Sean Clark is a self-taught artist from Chattanooga that now lives in New Orleans. Sean is greatly inspired by Sammie Nicely, comic artists and writers such as Ralph Ellison, among many others. Sean graduated from Morehouse with a Bachelor of Science in Biology with a concentration in Public Health and African American studies, topics that continue to influence his art practice. He has one week left at Stove Works, and thankfully I got time to sit down and talk with him about his life, his art, and his influences.

If you want to see more of Sean’s work and be inspired, you can view his stuff at www.sgclarkart.com

About Me, the interviewer

My name is Saria Smith, and I am a BFA Student currently working as the Curatorial Assistant at Stove Works Gallery. I am an artist and find joy in expressing myself through various mediums, especially music, printmaking, and painting. I decided to start these artist interviews as a way for the public to connect more with the residents who flow through Stove Works perhaps unseen, especially during this pandemic.

Happy Friday from Stove Works :) 

Resident Spotlight: io

Interview between Saria Smith, Curatorial Assistant, and io, Artist-in-Residence.

io in their studio at Stove Works. Photo: @wolfrancis

 The Interview

S: Where are you from?

io: My home is Abiquiu, New Mexico, where I've been living for the past few years. My former partner and I purchased a piece of property there, and have spent a lot of time fixing up the house and creating a space where queer and trans people can come and find solace together.

S: The oldest works on your website are photographs, was photography your first entrance into art?

io: Yeah. I started taking photographs when I was in high school. I was exclusively shooting in black and white and mostly working with my body. I was thinking a lot about the relationship between myself as a photographer, subject, and object; and what my responsibilities to each of those three people was. And what it would mean going forward showing photographs of my body as a teenage girl in my work. This was when I was starting to think a lot about my gender. It was intentionally very feminized.

untitled (self portrait), c. 2004, silver gelatin print, 3 x 2 inches

S: How did you go from photography to then making these creature drawings?

io: When I was at SAIC, I started feeling like I wanted to have a conversation that was more expansive than a sort of document of a trans body. I started thinking a lot about the way trans photography has been a process of legitimizing trans people and making us accessible. I felt at that time that photography was failing me as a medium. Because I wasn't interested in the static-ness of a moment or a body. The drawings are successful to me when they are in a space of being able to see multiple things over a span of time. Two little dots can be nipples or eyes, and elbows can be knees. There's a way in which they keep shifting and keep revealing things about themselves.

untitled, 2015, pencil on paper, 3 x 5 1/2 inches

S: How do you see your art?

io: One of the things that has become clear is that it's an articulation of a series of successive states; it's about the process of transformation. The drawings, in particular, are things I've been trying to make for like ten years. There's something I'm trying to capture that hasn't come. There's this other way where I almost feel like they are channeled through me. They come when they want to. I see them as having their own energies and life forces, and I feel in some ways I'm just helping manifest them in the world. My work is figuring out what it means to never be a static body.

S: Did you always feel like an artist?

io: No. My grandmother really influenced me a lot. She was like having a personal docent and having someone who always put materials in front of me. I worked with her with clay a lot, but I don't think that is why I became an artist. I think I became an artist to deal with trauma in a more somantic way. Especially as a younger person, there were some things that I just couldn't work out through language.

S: How does your identity factor into your work?

io: Firstly, it's me trying to figure something out. For myself and broadly in many ways, what it means to be human and what it means to continue to stay alive. and how to be in a body in the world and in relation to other people. It's an articulation of a deep struggle that I feel. My process with articulating my own embodiment has been very tangled up in my making process. 

S: What are you hoping your art does for people?

io: Part of disturbing subjectivities is that the subject gets kind of messy. I'm hoping that might evoke in the viewer a thought that maybe they're not just a linear person who has always been this specific thing and will always be this specific thing.

untitled, 2015, pencil on paper, 4 x 6 inches

S: What does community mean to you?

io: In particular with queer and trans community, its multiple things. What I feel is important to me about having created that space is that there are particular conversations that sometimes need to be had with people who have had similar experiences. It's important for people to have spaces with sameness. Going through grad school, I found that the conversations I wanted to be having, I wanted to have with queer and trans people. Having spaces where there are shared experiences is really important and can be healing as well.

S: What do you think Stove Works has done really successfully?

io: Stove Works has really honored the importance of space and time as incredibly valuable assets for people who are articulating something and also being in a community of artists and being able to have the space to have conversations about what I'm thinking and making. It feels in so many ways the same as doing healing work because we are all in our own spaces doing our own thing, and then we are coming together to validate and support each other. I think that is really special about this space.

About io:

io (fka Aiden Simon) is an artist in residence here at Stove Works with an aim to disrupt stable states and subjectivities, with playfulness being a key character in their work. Io uses photography, sculpture, drawing, and writing to explore what it is to be human and create safe places for each part of that experience. They received their BFA in Photography at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in 2009 and MFA at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) 2013.

They are a Resident at Stove Works through the end of January. Thankfully I get to interview them before they leave.

ABOUT ME, THE INTERVIEWER:

My name is Saria Smith, and I am a BFA Student currently working as the Curatorial Assistant at Stove Works Gallery. I am an artist and find joy in expressing myself through various mediums, especially music, printmaking, and painting. I decided to start these artist interviews as a way for the public to connect more with the residents who flow through Stove Works perhaps unseen, especially during this pandemic.

Each week, I will be conducting an interview with one of Stove Works’ Artists-in-Residence. This week I am in conversation with Le’Andra LeSeur, who has been a Resident since November of last year. Check back next Friday afternoon for my discussion with io.

io’s work installed in Hot Donuts Now at Stove Works, curated by Ash Eliza Smith

Resident Spotlight: LeAndra LeSeur

About me, the Interviewer:

My name is Saria Smith, and I am a BFA Student currently working as the Curatorial Assistant at Stove Works Gallery. I am an artist and find joy in expressing myself through various mediums, especially music, printmaking, and painting. I decided to start these artist interviews as a way for the public to connect more with the residents who flow through Stove Works perhaps unseen, especially during this pandemic.

Each week, I will be conducting an interview with one of Stove Works’ Artists-in-Residence. This week I am in conversation with Le’Andra LeSeur, who has been a Resident since November of last year. Check back next Friday afternoon for my discussion with io.

About Le’Andra:

Le’Andra LeSeur is an artist who was raised in the Bronx and Atlanta, both of which she calls her home. She is a visual artist who deals with themes of queer, femme, and black identity. Working mostly through video and installation art she presents her viewers with an opportunity to behold the slow steady movements of life and to contemplate the importance of being seen and accepted.

Le’Andra in her studio at Stove Works. Photo by @wolfrancis

The Interview:

S: Where were you before you came to Stove Works?

Le’Andra:  I was in Jersey City and working between Jersey City, NJ, and Brooklyn, New York.

My really close friend, Josiah Golson, was telling me about Stove Works and in late 2018 i had just won an award for my project Brown, Carmine, and Blue and he invited me to do a talk here in Chattanooga. That’s when I met Charlotte and I got the invite to apply for the residency and it was perfect.

S:  What made you gravitate towards video art?

Le’Andra: There’s something really beautiful about video in that it's not something that has been given a real standard besides technology getting better. How you utilize video in the context of art there are so many ways to experiment with it. I’ve been able to push a lot of different things with video which for me is very fulfilling and that is why I keep gravitating back to it.

S: Most of your video work uses a technique where one moment is extended for a long period of time, what causes you to gravitate to that certain style? 

Le’Andra: I started out in photography and with that background, I’m always thinking about this theme of stillness. That specific moment was always beautiful to me but I’ve always been pushing the question of what happens after that moment. With the video works, I'm pushing that question and that idea but also still trying to relate to the foundations. When I do the video work most of them are like self-portraits and in that moment of me being in front of the camera is actually me going through this meditative process.

S:  This idea of validation comes up again in your work, in reference to your live performance “Subject to Your Approval” where strobes are pointed at you and are triggered by the viewer choosing to come into your space. Again, where does the thought come from with that?

Le’Andra: I’m thinking of this process of validation. I’m standing there nude; these strobes are in front of me. When someone is not in the space you can’t see me. It’s completely dark, but when you walk in, that's when the strobes accentuate my figure, so you have to make the decision if you continue to stand there and expose me or if you leave and allow me to go disregarded. It’s interesting because we don't really need validation in life, in that moment you don't have to be seen because even in the dark you understand your body and form. Just by being you are validated. 

Subject to your Approval, 2018, Durational Performance

S: You wrote on your page a quote from Maybe Rainbows Do Exist At Night, “Beauty in blackness had to be projected in order to be accepted.” What does that mean to you?

Le’Andra: Rainbows are this thing that happens in light and not necessarily in darkness but why does it have to only happen in light? I was thinking of this idea how as black people we have to forcefully project who we are and our beauty. We have to prove ourselves to some degree. I should just exist, and you should be able to see it and that’s that. I'm trying to transcend into the existence of ‘just be.’ 

Maybe rainbows do exist at night, Microscope Gallery, 2019

S: You do deal a lot also with the themes of queer, femme, and black identity. How do you see your role since you have a voice that pertains to these marginalized categories?

Le’Andra: I feel like my role personally is to be sure that I'm challenging systems, structures, and the ways that we’re thinking about things and doing things; the way that we’re even seeing things. That’s why I insert myself into a lot of the work and I speak specifically about my identity as a black, queer woman. There has to be a way for us to freely exist without any feeling of being looked at a certain way or misrepresented in any type of way, for me that's very important.

S: What is your relationship with your art?

Le’Andra: My art is an extension of myself and my art is a way for me to process my emotions. When I first started creating I was always asking the question, who is this for and I could never fully answer it and I always felt like this kind of imposter. I had to start telling myself that when I make work I need to make it for me cause that’s when I know it's going to be genuine and true to everything I want it to be. My relationship is profound for me because it is an extension of myself.

S: What does community and specifically the community at Stove Works mean to you?

Le’Andra:  Community for me has always been people that just show up. You show up for them, they show up for you. Even if it's five people in your community as long as there’s care and mutual aid given to one another, that to me is important and that’s been a part of my community and part of my life. Here at Stove Works, even simple things like passing by and saying hi or making sure we’re cleaning up after each other, little things like that, that type of intention and making sure everyone feels comfortable is really important. It's been very nice to just have this nice collective care happening in this space.

S: How do you see your role in the art world as a whole? 

Le’Andra: I don't ever want to be an artist that gives into the ways of being an artist. There's a book I was reading called Tell Them I Said No and it's about an artist who said no to the system in place. I want to create art and reach the people that look like me, feel like me, that they can connect with it even if they know nothing about art.

S:  What have you seen Stove Works do well since you've been here?

Le’Andra: It's beautiful to be in a space and there not be any requirements of you and you are free to do what's needed. As an artist, it's nice to have the freedom to be in a space and process things. I think the team at Stove Works has been really positive in that regard, they've been good about reinforcing this idea that they want you to be here to experience Chattanooga and create friendships and build an artist network and community. 

S: What are you working on after you leave Stove works? What can we expect?

Le’Andra: Right now, I'm working on two large pieces, one is right after I leave stove work and I'll be in Atlanta for a month. I'll be a part of the Atlanta Biennial at the Atlanta Contemporary and I'll be doing a large 7 channel piece there. It opens on the 18th of February and is open till the end of May. I also have a show coming up in New York at The Shed. I'll be doing a 5 channel collaborative performance. That's what’s on the list for this year and then next year will be a whole other thing.

brown, carmine, and blue.
Public Space 415, SiTE:LAB
ArtPrize 10 Juried Grand Prize Winner, 2018

Thanks so much to Le’Andra for sitting and talking with me :)

If you, the viewer, want to learn more about Le’Andra and see her work you can visit her website Lleseur.com and satisfy your curious desires.

In the Studio with Mike, Josiah, and Charlie

Legacies of Making

In our studio visit with Charlie Newton, the artist expounds on the legacy of everyday Black cultural production that has inspired his artistic practice. Referencing quilt-making among a plethora of other crafts and practices, Newton explains how the act of making provides a sense of identity, community, and purpose. What might it look like for you to make a creative action that is inspired by existing crafts, practices, or legacies from your own family and community experiences? 

Activity Supplies:

1. Blank Sheet of Paper

2. Pencil or Pen

3. Several Colors of a Medium of Choice

Activity Steps: 

1. In your home or living space, identify one object or documentation of an object that was made by a family member, friend, or relative. It can be as simple as a small craft or frame, or as grand and elaborate as a quilt. 

2. Sit with this object and on a blank sheet of paper, make a list of thoughts, feelings, memories, and responses you have when contemplating this object. You can write from stream-of-consciousness or with as much structure as you like. Try to write for at least five minutes. 

3. After your writing, gather your media in color and color your sheet of notes however you feel inspired. Use the curves and spaces between the text as inspiration. Work on this for at least 10 minutes. Upon completion, reflect. How do you see yourself reflected in the response to the object? 

Visit Clip:

About Charlie:

Charlie Newton began drawing at the age of five years old.  "I saw the light of God coming through the window when I saw a drawn picture for the first time in my life.  From then on I was hooked" he exclaims.  Having received his BA from the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga, and his MFA from Old Dominion University and Norfolk  State University Newton also studied with the University of Georgia's Studies Abroad Program in Cortona Italy.   Since 1986 Newton has exhibited in London, Italy, New York, New Jersey, Washington, DC, Richmond Virginia, and numerous galleries in the South East including The Red Clay Survey, Huntsville Museum and Boundless Expressions, H. Lee Moffit Center, Tampa, Florida.   His work is represented in private and public collections in the US and abroad including The Hunter Museum of American Art, Chattanooga, TN, The College of St. Elizabeth, Morristown, NJ, Sun Trust Bank, Chattanooga, TN,  Wallace H. Kuralt Center, Charlotte, NC and  The Chattanooga African American Museum, Chattanooga, TN. In 2012 Mr. Newton and his wife painter Iantha Newton founded SPLASH a free art school for urban youth.  Mr. Newton maintains his art studio where he paints full time in Chattanooga, Tennessee.

https://artistcharlienewton.com/about.php

https://splashyouthartsworkshop.org/

ABOUT FOREVER PAINTING:

If all the paintings that have ever been made were compressed on to one canvas; every mark and brushstroke continuous, what would be its content, its sum total? What would this new, amalgamation say or describe or depict? This canvas would capture the past, the present, the future, as new marks are made they are added to the heap, an archive of perpetual presents. So Forever-Painting doesn’t care about asserting painting’s relevance, which signifies its importance, its gravity in that historical moment. Instead, these works attempt, move toward, and seek, totality, a genesis, that in its becoming defines both wholes and parts as not that what they seem, and definitely not what they are. 

In the Studio with Mike, Josiah, and Rontherin

Rosebud

Through his mobile-home work titled “Rosebud,” Rontherin Ratliff uses the process of deconstructing and reassembling a shotgun house to engage us to see and reimagine how our structures take up space. With a video that threads footage of multiple artists working in a 24-hour period, Rosebud invites us to contemplate our spacial needs and possibilities in tune with our creative professions and crafts. How might we reimagine our workspaces individually and collectively?

Exercise Steps:

Materials: Blank sheet of paper, Camera (the one that might be on your phone is fine), 2 colors of the medium of your choice (pencil, marker, etc) 

1. First, identify a room, space, or area in or outside your home that serves as a workspace for your art practice, craft, or hobby. Take a photo of this space as it is in its current state.

2. After taking the photo, sit with the picture and with one of your pencils (or chosen media), sketch the lines that emerge from the most prominent lines and edges that you observe in the photo of your workspace.

3. Study these lines that you’ve and the shape or shapes that emerge. What might this express about your work space, your work, and your body in this space at work?

4. With the second color of your chosen medium, replicate the original lines that you sketched, but draw the new lines differently. Try making some lines longer or smaller, add curves, improvise. Imagine this as a transformation of your space.

5. When finished, use your drawing and refer to the real life perspective of your space. The one that you photographed. How might the process of your drawing inform and inspire potential changes to your workspace that could enhance your experience in the space?

A Clip from the visit:

ABOUT RONTHERIN:

Rontherin Ratliff was born in New Orleans where he currently lives and works. He is a self-taught artist whose work explores the relationship between aspects of architecture as analogous to the characteristics of the human conditions. He is a member of Antenna and LEVEL Artist Collective in New Orleans. Recent exhibition venues include the Elsewhere Museum (Greensboro, NC), Art Route 2017 (Groningen, NL), Xavier University Gallery (New Orleans, LA), Newcomb Art Museum of Tulane University (New Orleans, LA), Diaspora Vibe Cultural Arts Incubator, Deering Estate  (Miami, FL), Governor’s Island, (New York,NY), 516 ARTS (Albuquerque, NM), Iris and B. Gerald Cantor Art Gallery (Worcester, MA), University Galleries, FAU (Boca Raton, FL) and The Ford Foundation Gallery (New York,NY).

Rontherin will be a participating artist in the exhibition Living Room which will run in our 2021 exhibition season AND in a two-person show with Rondell Crier in the Fall of 2021.

 www.rontherin.com

In the Studio with Mike, Josiah, and Matt

Work

In our studio visit with Matt Ager, both he and Mike spoke deeply and passionately about the meaning of life, work, and artistic practice, and what it might look like outside of the framework of commerce and the financial demands we have to meet. 

How might you imagine or reimagine the meaning of your work (whatever it may be, artistic or not) if it were not connected to sustaining your everyday needs? 

Try this exercise: 

Supplies needed: A blank sheet of paper or support, a pencil (any color), and an eraser.

1. First, on the piece of paper, draw a large shape that would represent your “day job.” 

2. Second, color the shape fully. Take your time doing this, and as you color, think of all of the things material and non-material that you take from this work. 

3. Third, within the shape, use your eraser to now erase what you’ve just colored, eliminating almost every mark except the original outline of the shape. 

4. Sit with this for a moment, and think of those things you identified while coloring...which of those things would come even if they weren’t tied to an economic resource or compensation? 

5. Write, draw, or symbolize these things within the shape. Add others that might come to you.
   

A clip from the visit:

ABOUT MATT:

Matt Ager is an artist based in London, making sculptures from ceramic, plaster, domestic materials, and found objects. He is particularly interested in fluidly composing works that address mimicry, design, and architecture. He believes that objects and textures carry particular identities which is continuously exploring through his practice. His primary focus is using making as a way of thinking. Through using a combination of existing materials alongside simple and sophisticated ways of fabrication, the work builds, nurtures, and embodies a social dialogue.

The work establishes a relationship with re-definition; it usually includes the use of the assisted readymade and builds narratives around social status and taste, constructing a crafted work out of something that may initially appear mundane. 

Matt will be a participating artist in the exhibition Anthropometry which will run in our 2022 exhibition season.

www.mattager.com
@matt.ager