Tag: painting

Interview with an art faculty member: Surabhi Ghosh

Posted on by karenjj@uoregon.edu

From January 21 to April 8th, the UO art faculty members will be showing their work in The Long Now, an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art from January 20 to April 8 in Eugene. Selected works by six art faculty members will be shown at the White Box in Portland from January 24 to March 24. To highlight the artists behind the art, I’m having conversations with several of the faculty in the show to hear more about their practice.

This conversation is with Surabhi Ghosh. Whether she is drawing, painting, printing, stitching, or bookmaking, Ghosh is always invested in the idiosyncrasies of visual language. Her current research centers on the meaning of pattern and decoration within spiritual, political, and domestic narratives. Focusing on ubiquitous motifs like the circle and the dot, she creates abstract compositions that blur the lines between painting, sculpture, and textile design.

Ghosh is also co-director of an international artists’ collective and annual publication project known as ‘Bailliwik,’ which she cofounded in 2004. Her work and collaborative projects have been exhibited nationally and internationally at venues including Western Gallery at Western Washington University (Bellingham, WA), NEXT Art Fair, MDW Art Fair, and Lillstreet Art Center (Chicago, IL). Her books are included in several collections worldwide. She has an upcoming exhibition at SideCar Gallery in Hammond, Indiana.

Dave Amos, A&AA writer: You’re the fibers professor, but a lot of your work is not in fibers. Why?

Surabhi Ghosh: My background is in fibers; I have a BFA and an MFA in fibers. I’ve been teaching in that field for the last six years at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. About three years ago I switched my focus from working with fabric and textiles.

I’m particularly interested in repeat pattern design. I started doing small-scale drawings and paintings, approaching them as sketches or experiments about color and pattern. I realized I liked doing those and that I wanted to get bigger, focus, and improve on my technique. Since about 2008, I’ve mainly worked in painting, so now I’m as much a painter as a fiber artist. I don’t mean to imply that I’m never going to go back to fibers. It’s in my bones at this point.

Pierced Orb, 2011 -- In "The Long Now" faculty art show

And I paint using a somewhat non-traditional process: I use paint as liquid color. All of my recent work is made up of accumulations of dots, and each dot is made by putting a little drop of paint down. I use a really small brush, load it up with paint, and make a little drop instead of a stroke.

DA: Why use this technique? Is it fibers related?

SG: Yes, the very small, repetitive mark that I’m drawing on is related to various fiber techniques. I connect it to embroidered stitches as well as quilt-making, where patterns are pieced together by combining many different pieces of fabric. I also think about crochet structures and woven structures when I make my work. I create these swirling micro patterns within the larger form, and I relate that process formally to crochet, which is really important to my experience with fibers.

DA: That makes sense. Are the designs themselves inspired by fibers?

SG: They grew out of my interest in decorative border patterns. In Indian textiles decorative borders are very common. Saris always have borders around the edge, and they are often very abstract, very geometric, very decorative. The edges are embellished, and that edge is embellished, and then that edge is embellished–a motif is always edged with another decorative motif.

In my work, I reflect on the way patterns build incrementally. I never have a plan, but I use a roughly geometric system, which, when applied dozens or hundreds of times, creates unpredictable patterns. These patterns emerge out of the simple system of dot placement I use. I’m interested in that process of handmade geometry.

DA: How do you choose the colors in your piece?

SG: My color decisions are intuitive. Because of how the dots are built, each line is building on what came before each. With each subsequent line I make a decision about color. Sometimes I decide I want it to be a gradation, and sometimes I decide I want a contrast.

DA: So you don’t decide exactly what the finished piece will look like ahead of time?

SG: I draw out the basic contours and make that shape into a stencil. I often work in series, so I like to have them as stencils so I can use that exact same shape again but in a different way. If you look at my work chronologically, you can see that I have been simplifying and simplifying, and what I’m doing right now is purely focusing on the circle and the oval.

Orb 1, 2010

This piece was a huge change (Orb 1, above). This happened at the beginning of last year. It’s essentially a circle I’m filling in with dots. I’m interested in evoking the similarity between macro and micro views. This piece can suggest a map of continents and bodies of water or an orbital view of a planet of some sort, while it also resembles a view through a microscope of a sample.

DA: You have also used formats and techniques beyond fibers and paint in the past. Do you still?

SG: I’m interested in the book form and I always make books; it’s a regular part of my practice. I tend to use them to conduct experiments, create samples, or research ideas. For example, when I started using the circle primarily in my work, I wanted to know more about the circle as a decorative motif. I did this project with my husband, partner, and collaborator called See Ouroboros Run (below), where we researched circular motifs and how they recur in obscure or ancient belief systems, what various meanings circles hold, and if is there a universal meaning behind the circle. Those ideas were housed in a book made to look like a teaching tool, maybe for kids, which established a fictitious belief system from a conglomeration of sources. I’m interested in visual storytelling and comic books are a big influence on my work. I tend to make two or three books a year like this, in small editions.

See Ouroboros Run

I’m also coeditor of Bailliwik. It’s an annual anthology that works as an artist cooperative — everyone in it submits work and chips in some money. My partner and I do the layout and have it printed. We encourage special projects and limited edition works to include along with the printed book and once everything is assembled we send copies to the contributors, who then distribute them however they like. All of the work is also published online on our website. It’s a total DIY artist project. We’ve been publishing since 2005 with eight issues so far. At first we put out two a year, but it almost killed us, so now it’s annual.

I love books as a venue for the arts – as an alternative to a gallery or museum. It’s something that people can take home and sit on their couch and look at. Maybe we can reach a different audience than people who go to galleries or museums. It’s more personal, more intimate.

Interview with an art faculty member: Sylvan Lionni

Posted on by karenjj@uoregon.edu

From January 21 to April 8th, the UO art faculty members will be showing their work in The Long Now, an exhibition at the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Artfrom January 20 to April 8 in Eugene. Selected works by six art faculty members will be shown at the White Box in Portland from January 24 to March 24. To highlight the artists behind the art, I’m having conversations with several of the faculty in the show to hear more about their practice.

This conversation is with Sylvan Lionni, a painter visiting the UO for the 2011-2012 school year. Lionni’s has been shown in New York, Washington, D.C., Boston, Berlin, Vienna, Stockholm, and Sydney. He has upcoming shows at Kansas Gallery in New York and Stene Projects in Stockholm. The interview below has been edited for clarity and length.

Dave Amos, A&AA writer: What kind of art do you do?

Sylvan Lionni: As tempting as it is to define other artists, I don’t want to do it to myself. Once you say ‘I’m this kind of artist’ you take away a whole range of choices and you limit yourself to just doing that one thing.

"Pick Six," 2005

DA: Where do you get your inspiration?

SL: I really love minimalism and geometric abstraction. When I was fifteen I fell in love with Mondrian and then later Frank Stella and this whole group of artists. At the same time, I had this problem with the arbitrary nature of painting. Why is this yellow and this green? Why is it this big instead of that big? That’s a problem that’s inherent with abstraction. You’re always going to run into that when making an abstract painting and I could never get over that. My solution was to find things that make me feel the same way that the art that I love feels, and then make those things. That’s what I do. It’s walking down the street and seeing something. You go into the deli and see the lottery tickets and, oh, that means something and that can connects to this and they look like buildings (above).

 

"Coney Island Baby," 2008

 

DA: Some paintings, like the faded American flags (above) have an obvious socio-political message. Others, like your painting of the dot stickers seem less obvious. Is there commentary or meaning behind all of your work?

SL: That’s a tough thing, meaning in paintings. I go back and forth on it. There’s the tendency in the art world to want to make a sound bite about your work to make it more saleable or to make you seem smarter. It’s always a bit of a problem. The flags — maybe I shouldn’t have made the flags. Right after September 11th and everyone had flag stickers on their cars. Then a couple of years went by and they had all been bleached by the sun and it seemed like a good metaphor for something. Art with messages, ugh. I don’t want to make propaganda.

DA: As someone who doesn’t study art, I have this idea that I need to figure out the meanings of paintings.

SL: F— that.

"Interregnum," 2005

DA: The paintings of the stadium diagrams (above). They weren’t meant to look good, but when you paint them like you did, they look great.

SL: Exactly. Meaning in art is a good way to get into making something. You have to go through those mental gymnastics to make something, but in the end it’s better without it. If you’re looking for meaning in art, I don’t know.

DA: Do you paint your work by hand? It seems like it would be painstaking.

SL: No no no. I draw everything on the computer. Depending on the piece, I’ll have a big sticker printed and then paint over the sticker and then peel the sticker off. Like those stadium paintings, if I sat there and tried to tape one off, it would be a nightmare. I just draw it with a computer.

DA: What’s your overall process?

SL: I make a lot of drawings. Walking around, I make mental notes. That’s interesting, or that would be good. I take a picture of it. I make a lot of drawings; I draw them all on the computer. Most of them I throw away because there’s nothing there. The ones that I think are kind of interesting; I’ll Photoshop them onto a wall, just to see what it would be like as a painting. I always have a folder of 30 ideas and maybe each will have 10 drawings that could possibly be paintings. It depends on if it’s for a show or something, or what I have money to make, as they can be really expensive.

So finally I get to a point where I have to make something new and I decide. There’s always the problem of what kind of panel, or stretched canvas. If it needs a sticker I get the sticker printed. I paint the background color. I put the stencil on, paint over it. That could take a long time. If it’s four colors its quick, if it’s fifteen it takes longer. I have to tape off each area over the stencil, paint, peel the sticker, and I’m done.

DA: You have a couple of pieces directly on to a wall. Could you tell me more about those?

SL: I did a couple of wall paintings. I did one for a show in Washington, D.C. I used to show at a gallery there. That was the carpet from ‘The Shining’ that was from a specific frame from the movie just with the boy taken out. I like the idea of making a painting of the floor on the wall. I don’t know, I just thought that was fun. The whole thing with ‘The Shining’ was interesting to me, too.

"Red Shift," 2010

DA: Some of your pieces don’t come from the every day (like “Red Shift,” above). What’s the thinking behind it?

SL: I was always so afraid of making an abstract painting. I could never justify decisions to myself. At some point, I said to hell with it. I should do it because I’m afraid of doing it.

DA: It’s refreshing to hear. In my first architecture studios I had a hard time justifying my decisions. I would ask questions like, ‘Why should I put a window here instead of there?’

SL: This is the first time I’ve ever taught. I was explaining to one of my students last week: take out everything in the painting that you want to be there and leave the things that need to be there. If you want to put a window there, it’s probably going to suck. If you need to put a window there it will probably going to be really good.

Art is supposed to be ugly. People have this idea that art is supposed to be beautiful, but it’s not true. I’m not saying I make ugly paintings — I wish. Cocteau said, ‘Fashion is what’s beautiful today and ugly tomorrow. Art is what’s ugly today and beautiful tomorrow.’ You look at photos of the people in the 70s today and they look ridiculous. You look at Picasso when he made the Les Demoiselles d’Avignon and people were like, that’s not even a painting, that’s hideous. That’s what you are supposed to do.

Visiting Artist: Donald Morgan. Nov. 29, 2007 @ 7:30PM. 177 Lawrence Hall.

Posted on by edparker@uoregon.edu

Donald Morgan received his BFA in painting from the University of Oregon in 1993 and his MFA from the Art Center College of Design in 2001 where he concentrated in painting and sculpture. While at the University Oregon he was a fellow at the Yale Norfolk painting program. He presently divides his time between Eugene and Los Angeles, where he is a sculpture lecturer at UCLA.His work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, New Art Examiner, and Art Forum.

Visiting Artist: Donald Morgan

Of his recent work which transitions from painting to sculpture, Morgan says:

As a result of reading a great deal about Antarctic expeditions I began to organize my sculptures around the categories pertinent to the scientific pursuits of those expeditions. Namely, the technological, botanical, geological and zoological. However, these categories provided a flexible framework or jumping off point rather than a rigid blueprint from which to begin making things. Indeed, much of my work fits awkwardly, or not at all, into these categories. While my work is affected by the aesthetic behind the ordering and categorization having to do with natural history, it is also heavily shaped by having been a furniture maker and by my experiences in nature.