Accretion with Julia Betts

1. Could you tell us a little about who you are and how you became an artist?

I was interested in art in high school, but I didn’t seriously consider art as my focus or path till college. At the University of Pittsburgh's Studio Arts Department, I found my love of being creative and independent through art. After graduating in 2014, I did residencies and shows in the Pittsburgh and Columbus area for a year. Since the fall of 2015, I have been living in Providence, Rhode Island and working towards earning my MFA at the Rhode Island School of Design’s sculpture program.

2. What is the concept behind “Accretion”? What experience is the installation bringing to the audience?

In “Accretion,” rolls of masking tape transform into wild cellular growth. Growth is tempered with a sense of the ephemeral through the perishable, throwaway nature of the material. Scale and repetition transform the material and shifts the viewer's perception of masking tape.

3. I understand that a lot of your work (e.g. Vessels and Accretion) deals with the body and organic forms. From where specifically do you draw inspiration?

I draw inspiration through an intuitive understanding of materials and processes. Starting with a curiosity or a feeling about an object or technique and then working with that technique or material over time, I make conceptual connections to it that inform the way the project progresses. Specifically, my work often considers skin and its role as as permeable membrane, boundary, and connection.I utilize bodily processes to make artwork like picking, plucking, or layering. I am interested in labor and when using labor to mark time, create traces, and transform.

4. How did tape become integrated into your installation work?

Tape first became a part of my practice during a project called “Sticky Pixels” in which I applied scotch tape squares to my clothing creating a pixelated effect. After experimentation with scotch tape, I moved forward to working with masking tape.

I am drawn to tape because it reminds me of skin. Tape reminds me of skin because of its physical properties like flexibility and translucency, but also because, when you use tape, microscopic amounts of your own skin are stripped and collected on the tape. I am also interested in the ephemerality of tape and the way it breaks down over time, like skin.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment? And where can we follow your work?

I am experimenting in my studio right now with new techniques. I recently finished a piece where I picked all the walls and floors of my room to different depths. From there, I’ve been experimenting with bleeding things through the wall. You can follow my work through my website at www.juliabetts.com

5. Where do you see your work going next?

Its really hard to say because I am in the midst transitions now in graduate school. But, currently, I am interested in site specificity and installation. Also, I recently took a performance class and I'm thinking about my work more in relation to performance.

Encapsulation: CFA Group Exhibition 2016 with Audrey Banks

1. Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

I am Audrey Banks. I was born on Christmas Eve, which, for optimistic and spoiled girls like me, was a tiny travesty but has since positively affected my artistic practice. I was always alone on my birthday or on an 8-hour train ride, traveling. It was on my birthday that I started drawing horses and watching Dragon Ball Z. At age 7 I began making oil paintings of Dragon Ball Z characters and decided to become an artist. I haven’t wavered since. Thanks, Dragon Ball Z.

2. What is the concept behind your work? What experience/message do you want to communicate to your audience?

My work is a search for an instance of what some refer to as the “whole” -- a succinct summary of being. My process is geared toward creating methodologies for mapping or encasing a being, no matter how ephemeral -- determining the best way to represent a memory, a feeling, an experience, a relationship, or one’s entire mind, their personality. How do you measure a person, a time, a place? I attempt to deliver these maps -- representations and instances of a person -- to the public in physical form. To add context, my work is an alternative approach to the modern-day notion of the “quantified self”, the idea that a human being can be broken into several, quantifiable data points from which one can deduce that which makes them happy, that which makes them sad. My work stands as contrary to this notion, exploring a much more ephemeral approach to deducing one’s happiness and personhood and very much serving as a critique of such a deductive approach.

3.What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

Subtle gestures and interruptions of the absurd inform my work. I am greatly inspired by the work of Francis Alys. His work focuses on subtle poetic gestures that are quite beautiful and succinct in their abstracted relevance.

4. Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

Most of my work usually comes from one question, questions such as ‘what has absolutely nothing to do with time?’, ‘how do we measure a year?’, ‘what is the most perfect thing?’, and so on. Sometimes my work will come from a stupid looking object, or a cell-phone picture I took years ago of something that’s not quite right. From these, I normally take a few hours to contemplate and to wrap my head around what sort of idea is attracting me to these objects or questions and produce something from there.

5. Talk about a time where your experience in Pittsburgh or at Carnegie Mellon helped shape your artistry.

Carnegie Mellon has helped crack me open and fill in the gaps. I was, like many students prior to attending college, resolved to be a painter. However, CMU has brought me to an incredible variety of media such that I don’t work in any one medium anymore. In medium my work is incredibly different, the unifying quality of my work lies in concept...I hope.

6. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

In 5 years I hope to see myself in some sort of performative art collective. Much of my work engages the public, thus I wish to form a group that ritually engages with the public sporadically. That, or I’ll be in China. I’ll just be in China.

Encapsulation: CFA Group Exhibition 2016 with Hannah Gaskill

1. Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

I grew up in a small beach town in Maryland. It’s a pretty popular tourist spot, so it was difficult to call it a “home” in the sense of a place that was my own, a place of calm; it was a home more in the sense of the solitude: I was a wallflower plopped down in the middle of a three-month-long party that I did not feel invited to--a place so small that the closest shopping mall was forty-five minutes away. There was no school for me to go to on the actual island, so I went to a science and math-oriented private school about twenty-five minutes away. Art always interested me, and I would draw and paint constantly as a kid, though I wouldn’t have called myself gifted, rather interested. Funnily enough, it was a fundraiser thrown by a girl a few grades above me for children in Malawi that introduced me to the idea of actually being an artist. At this fundraiser, there was a silent auction; one of the prizes was a portrait of whatever/whomever you chose painted by Max Perim, an artistically gifted member of the senior class and Carnegie Mellon alumnus. My mom (for whatever reason) entangled herself in a pretty heated bidding war over this portrait, which I thought was maybe the most embarrassing thing in the whole world, but she eventually won. One holiday weekend, she and I went to the local university to have my picture taken as a reference for the portrait. The professor that Max studied under, a painter named Jinchul Kim, was taking my picture, all the while asking me about my interests. When I told him that I liked to draw and paint, he asked me if I would be interested in studying under him. I obviously said yes, and after two years of travelling about an hour and back every weekend covered in oil paint I applied and was accepted to Carnegie Mellon, and the rest is history.

2. What is the concept behind your work? What experience/message do you want to communicate to your audience?

I would like for my work to dialectically convey a sense of heaviness through lightness, and a sense of loss through presence. These objects that I’ve made, in a personal sense, are simulations of past experiences, ghosts of what was previously there, and shells of what is left behind.

3.What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

Much of my work tends to be autobiographical. I wish it weren’t, but I’m a horrible liar. I hate to sound cliché, but a lot of my best work has come from when and where my heart has bled the most. Aside from that, however, I like to leave people guessing. I try to never to reveal too much information. A lot of what interests me in a piece comes from how long the artist can leave their audience standing there trying to figure exactly what’s happening. Some artists that I have been looking at lately include Janine Antoni, Louise Bourgeiose’s drawings, Frances Stark, Cara Benedetto, Juno Calypso, Julie Schenkelberg, Ann Hamilton, and Ana Mendietta, among others. I’ve also been reading a lot of poetry by Russell Edson, and have recently fallen in love with podcasts (mostly This American Life and Savage Lovecast).

4.  Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

My creative process at this point in time is hard to explain because I’m now actively seeking to not go into every piece in the same mindset I did with the previous one. I’m beginning to learn that if I go into a piece sans expectation and with an open mind, I feel more at ease and free to experiment. I’m teaching myself that not everything is going to be a masterpiece, nor should it be. I’m trying to do more research before I begin working, and am also pushing myself to look at other artists’ methods for inspiration. I also refuse to limit myself to any one media, and allow my work to manifest itself in whatever form is necessary.

5. Talk about a time where your experience in Pittsburgh or at Carnegie Mellon helped shape your artistry.

There is one particular critique in my more recent personal history that has taught me an invaluable lesson about being an artist. In my Lust and Loss drawing class that I took last semester, I had been making a lot of art that I didn’t feel came very naturally. I felt like I was forcing myself to make drawings because I was trying to please someone else and merely fulfill the expectations of a drawing class, and I quickly learned that doing things like that leads to nothing but heaps of anxiety and little self-satisfaction. (That’s not THE experience I’m going to talk about, but a valuable lesson and a preface nonetheless.) I finally decided that after the mid-semester mark, I was going to begin making things that I cared about and was interested in, and that as long as I was pushing myself it did not matter what anyone else said. For our second-to-last critique the prompt was personal loss. This is a topic that I likely could make art about for years and years until the end of my life (amen), so I was feeling a little confident that I would make something really genuine and heartfelt. After being so afraid that I wouldn’t do justice to myself and would make something shitty and have a horrible critique, I told myself “ya know, fuck it”, and began to experiment with the idea of making a life-sized sculpture recalling a very personal, very traumatic experience. After extensive trial and error and some physically taxing labor, I created one of the only pieces I have been satisfied with since I came to college. It was a fragile piece, so I took great care in moving it and letting people touch it (I definitely yelled at a few people that got too close). Critique day came, and our professor decided to try a new critiquing method where the artist would talk about their work for five minutes, the rest of class would comment for the last two minutes, and then we would move on. This was really frustrating considering the prompt and the fact that this was extremely short notice. I was the second person to be critiqued, and when we got to my sculpture the professor looked at me and asked me to begin explaining. I gave a really quick bullshit explanation, to which my professor said “keep going.” I was silent for about thirty seconds until my friend put her hand on my knee and I immediately starting crying and a long, semi-vague explanation came spewing out of my mouth like vomit. After being asked and answering a question by every person in the class, my professor looked at me and said that that would have been a great artist statement for the piece, and I finally realized the purpose of this whole experiment. That was the day that I began to learn a lesson that I will probably keep learning for the rest of my life. I began to realize how to properly talk about my work.

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I will probably (hopefully?) be in graduate school.

Encapsulation: CFA Group Exhibition 2016 with Max Emiliano Gonzales

1. Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

 Hi There! My name is Max Emiliano Gonzales! I am a Southside of Chicago original now residing in the Bloomfield area of Pittsburgh. I am in my last semester at Carnegie Mellon University as a Fine Arts major and I plan on staying on with the University next year to work for their digital and traditional print shops. Like most Art majors, drawing has always been an important part of my self-expression; however later on in life, with my exposure to printmaking and sociopolitical issues, I have found alternate outlets for these expressions. Rather than just understand my political activism and printmaking techniques as two completely separate factions of my personal makeup, I decided to allow the two to work together to enable each other’s fullest potentials. It’s pretty hard for me to think of any of my works, no matter what the medium may be, as not being influenced by my sociopolitical concerns.  

2. What is the concept behind your work? What experience/message do you want to communicate to your audience?

 I try to let my work function as another outlet of pre-existing sociopolitical concerns. They most often deal with issues of race, culture, sexuality, and gender, as these are all issues that I find very important within my own personal identity as a mixed race, queer person. 

3.What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

 I have to admit that I don’t really have too great of an interest in any other artists as I am more often fascinated with political activists, revolutionaries, and politicians. However, I do recognize that there has been an obvious aesthetic influence on my pieces from artists like Mark Bradford, Basquiat, Keith Haring, and Mike Kelley.

4.  Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

 Most of my pieces typically start from two places of inspiration, my personal experiences and social media. The amount of information that can be consumed and dispersed through the means of social media is pretty incredible, so it’s almost impossible for it to not influence my personal opinions and my art practice, especially when my art practice is largely political. I usually pick one influential moment from the life that was important to the construction of my personal identity and then expand on that moment through a much larger, sociopolitical and historical lens. With additional research applied to the chosen subject, I then select text or imagery, or both that I think will best represent my opinions on such.

5. Talk about a time where your experience in Pittsburgh or at Carnegie Mellon helped shape your artistry.

 If it weren’t for my move to Pittsburgh I would have never had such a strong exposure to black communities and their culture, as I now work and spend a large amount of time in Rankin and Braddock. I have always had a strong tie to Mexican American culture through the family I have and the neighborhoods I grew up in, however I had always experienced a social exclusion and resistance towards African Americans. This exposure has provided me a greater insight to African American culture and people in an unbiased and real community setting.

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I plan on going into the print shop industry possibly as a University Technician, however I have always desired to run a community based print shop that provides affordable access to digital and screen print services for the community and for lower income and previously incarcerated peoples.

Encapsulation: CFA Group Exhibition 2016 with John Choi

1. Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

My name is John Choi, and I am just a guy who loves building robots and video games.

2. What is the concept behind your work? What experience/message do you want to communicate to your audience?

Ambassador Robot No. 001, also known as Halley, is a 2.6-foot humanoid automaton built for the sole purpose of exploring what it means to be human from a non-human perspective. The primary means of achieving this is through human-robot interaction, where the robot, Halley, emulates as many human functions as possible while interfacing with another person. In order to connect with the idea of being human, a humanoid shape is deemed necessary, along with an array of face-to-face communication techniques. A speaker, camera, and microphone satisfies the need for basic sensory input and output. Gestures, such as raising hands to ask questions, are supported by Halley's movable arms and legs. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the ability to express emotions will be achieved through the clever use of an Android phone as a face. The ultimate goal for this project is to have Halley take the place of a student in a classroom.

3. What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

Art is in the eye of the beholder, and for me, I am very inclusive in what I accept as art - everything can be art. Whether it be a classical painting from the 1600s, or a common toaster for preparing breakfast foods, somebody from somewhere had to energize a creative spirit to make it happen. That being said, I am inspired by not only the works of those who claim to be artists, but also from artists who do not realize they are. Preston Tucker was an entrepreneurial carmaker from the 1940s, and the two qualities that I admire most are his vision, and perseverance. Tucker sought to create the car of the future, and he really did. Named the Tucker Torpedo, Preston's car was outfitted with features revolutionary at the time, though standard today. For doing this, Tucker was greeted with enormous resistance from the established industry. In spite of these setbacks, Tucker did everything to make his dream come true, and that tenacity is priceless.

4. Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

The key to creating good robotic art is to use a rapid iterative design process, separated into 4 major components:

[Design:] Computer Aided Design software is used to design the work, fix any notable mistakes from the previous iteration, and make improvements to various components on the robot.

[Build:] Additional parts are collected and custom pieces are fabricated through the use of a laser cutter and 3D printer. Once all the components have been laid out, the next version of the work is assembled.

[Testing:] Once the hardware has been set, software for direct control of the various components of the robot is created to test its basic functionality.

[Exploration:] At this point, the work is fully ready to use. Capabilities of the robot are explored by pushing it to its limits with a variety of interesting behaviours.

5. Talk about a time where your experience in Pittsburgh or at Carnegie Mellon helped shape your artistry.

I specialize in building robots and video games and combining the two mediums into one. I chose this major because robotics and video games are extremely multidisciplinary fields that require skills in almost every aspect of engineering as well as a strong sense of artistic design. Only the BCSA program gives me the flexibility to learn everything I need at a pace that is personalized for me. With this, I have personally trained myself in mechanical, electrical, and software design as well as game development for the last 8 years. I understand full well what it takes to create, manage, and lead innovative hardware and software projects either independently or as a collective effort.

6. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I intend on launching a startup with the mission of making large mobile helper robots accessible for all. In every hardware startup, there are three major points to accomplish: the product, marketing, and communication. All three are equally critical to the startup’s success. I have a strong understanding of the first point. I must learn how to do the other two if I am to accomplish my goal. If my startup survives long-term, I will focus on growing it to become the world’s premier supplier of large mobile robotics research platforms at affordable costs. If it does not, I will figure out something else.

Encapsulation: CFA Group Exhibition 2016 with Swetha Kannan

1. Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

I am a Senior in Carnegie Mellon’s School of Art and am an Indian American woman from New Jersey. I have been interested in art ever since I was young since both my twin sister and I seemed to have a talent for drawing and although I never had the intention of being an artist as a child, I ended up pursuing the subject in later studies.

2. What is the concept behind your work? What experience/message do you want to communicate to your audience?

I hope the concept will be obvious to anyone who sees the piece. Much of my work focuses on feminism and relating certain everyday experiences from a feminists’ point of view. With this particular piece featured in the show I wanted to relate an anecdote that can force my audience to reevaluate the way society teaches, nurtures, and sexualizes young girls. In this instance, I feel that we are all both victims and accomplices in a demoralizing system that teaches women to fear and monitor their bodies.

3.What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

Many of my professors are a huge influence on me both for the insight they can provide and the work they themselves do. Otherwise I am also inspired from current events (the recent movements meant to increase social awareness) and second wave feminist essays. Social media such as tumblr and twitter are also ‘go to’ places for me since they provide a quick way to view many different art pieces from my favorite artists in a small amount of time.

4.  Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

Most of the time, I need to know what it is I want to do before I do it. Nothing too specific just an idea of a story I want to tell or a topic I’d be interested in talking about. If it is a topic I am uncomfortable about I do a bit of research before actually deciding to commit to it. Afterwards is the hard part. I can have wonderful ideas linger in my sketchbook for years if I do not push myself to completing them. If I am not 100% inspired and committed to an idea, it is easy for me to drop it. Perhaps this is my personnel way of making sure only good ideas get produced? In any case, if I push beyond this point then the idea tends to go through transformations based on who I feel comfortable showing it too for a critique. In the end, my art becomes a culmination of the advice, research, critique, and passion that went into it’s creation.

5. Talk about a time where your experience in Pittsburgh or at Carnegie Mellon helped shape your artistry.

Coming to Pittsburgh has actually surprised me in many ways both for the better and for worse. I’ve never lived in a city before and the town I come from has a very large Indian community. Because of this, I was very surprised when I was grocery shopping in Pittsburgh one day and someone greeted me with ‘namaste’ (an Indian greeting for ‘hello’). I was a bit perplexed and I found that my heritage has drawn much more attention here than it did elsewhere; men would try to impress me with Indian lingo, Haram pants suddenly made me seem exotic, and I was constantly being asked if I was Indian. Experiences such as these and many others have shaped the things I want to communicate in my art. I have become much more aware of what sort of impact my appearance and words can have on the community around me.

In other instances, I found that working in Pittsburgh has put me in contact with great people and families. I briefly worked with children and I loved the people I worked with and the experience I gained. Carnegie Mellon has especially introduced me to great people; the students in Carnegie Mellon are so hard working and ambitious it was easy to surround myself with amazing positive people that inspire me every day to do the best I can within my own creative practice.

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Where ever I end up, art will definitely continue to be a part of my daily life. I’m actually not too sure where my life will take me (probably no one my age knows much about how we’ll survive post- college). I’m very blessed to have a supportive family and wonderful friends so wherever I go, I know I’ll have wonderful people behind me.

Encapsulation: CFA Group Exhibition 2016 with Miranda Jacoby

1. Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

My start as an artist came from the classical background of doodling in margins. Somewhere along the way my fascination with animation, birds, and narrative turned into a study of how people relate to character and create emotional connections.

2. What is the concept behind your work? What experience/message do you want to communicate to your audience?

I strive to create emotional connections using character. If you look at or interact with something I’ve made and are affected by it, than the work is a success.

3. What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

I’m fascinated with suspension of disbelief, and how it allows us to get lost in fabricated worlds.

We get so much meaning out of the real world around us that we search for and expect the same level of meaning when introduced to a made-up one. This gets especially interesting when the fabricated world is minimal in design; the significance and consequence of every element is incredibly emphasized. (I also think it’s cool that, in service of creating more realistic fabricated worlds, a greater focus has been put on studying the real one in order to best simulate it.)

In the past few years I’ve been looking at a lot of digital work that shows how much a character can be stretched or simplified. One of my favorite animated shorts is “WAND’S WANDER” (2014) by Nadya Mira (and a bunch of other people), which uses a combination of exaggerated movements and angular characters to tell a story about a boy discovering the source of his power.

I’m also a huge fan of “The Monster Project”, where children are invited to draw a monster. Then a professional artist recreates that monster, and sends it back to the child. The goal is to help kids recognize the power of their imaginations, and showing them that their creative potential is also a viable career path.

4.  Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

I read widely, and I read a lot: books, blogs, biology, sci-fi, economics, anything. I also try my best to keep tabs on what’s happening in the animation and video game industries, since both revolve around creating meaningful connections with the viewer.

Then there’s the doodling. I always keep a sketchbook, and I have a stack of them I regularly reference to re-visit ideas and discover visual themes.

Another thing is being aware of the physical world around me. “Salamoose” happened because I had an embroidered scarf that was incredibly uncomfortable to wear, and I thought, “This would work much better as a dragon.”  

Once I’ve decided to make something, I make a small scale version or a drawing that sums up the idea, and start bouncing it off of friends, getting feedback to shape the project.

5. Talk about a time where your experience in Pittsburgh or at Carnegie Mellon helped shape your artistry.

I love Pittsburgh’s National Aviary. They’ve got an amazing variety of birds that you can get close with and study in detail. My favorite is the Argus Pheasant named Gus. He makes the best sound, and you can hear it from the parking lot.

The best thing about being at Carnegie Mellon University is the variety of people with diverse skill sets. If I want to make a piece in a medium I haven’t tried before, I can find someone who’s done it, and can show me the ropes on how to go about doing it. I didn’t even know how to work a sewing machine when I came up with “Salamoose”. Yet, after taking Soft Sculpture, a mini course taught by Casey Droege, I made a six-foot-five stuffed dragon.

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Between collaborating on creative projects and being Treasurer for CMU's Game Creation Society, I seem to have achieved some level of competence at project management. Career-wise, ideally I’d find my place as an artist and/or creative production manager in the context of animation/games/interactive media.

At the end of the day, I want to make projects that bring joy to people, and allow me to support myself. (Because I’ll definitely have student loans to pay off.)

The Escape Artist with Savannah Schroll Guz

1. Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

By day, I’m a freelance copyeditor and fact-checker for presses based in New York and New England, but I’m also an artist, who sells work in galleries in Pennsylvania and North Carolina. For example, some of my works are currently at GalleriE CHIZ in Shadyside. 

I intended to be an artist since I was very little. In fact, I don’t remember a time when I wasn’t drawing. My Mom tried swimming, ballet, various music lessons, and theater, but the only thing I was ever genuinely and consistently interested in was creating things. My first works were pictures of stick-figure princesses drawn in ballpoint pen on tablets that Formica salesmen brought my father. When my father worked on cabinet orders in the shop on the weekends, I made flake-board, nail, and screw sculptures on the low worktables right beside him. I’ve taken some detours over the years, including writing some books of short stories, but I’ve always been making things. It’s truly my form of relaxation, even a kind of meditation.

2. What is the concept behind “The Escape Artist”? What experience/message is the show aiming to bring to the audience?

 “The Escape Artist” started as a concept when I was teaching literature and composition at a local community college some years ago. I often taught Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s “The Yellow Wallpaper,” which chronicles the mental unraveling of a woman following the birth of her first child—something we now recognize as post-partum depression. In order to provide a wider cultural context for the story, which was written in 1892, I would often bring in period advertisements, much like those in the framed collages that are part of the installation. 

While the debate over the use of Photoshop in advertising currently rages, during Gilman’s time—when the feminist movement was in its incipient stages—Victorian ads featured drawings of women with impossibly small waists. Similar to Chinese foot-binding traditions, tight-lacing practices made many women incapable of moving around easily without the corset, and in order to wear it, one required help to put it on properly (something that some of the images in the installation collages also depict). Once the corset is tightened, breathing is restricted, since the lungs are compressed. This makes any significant activity, sometimes even sitting, difficult—hence the liberal use of the elongated “fainting couch” in the Victorian era, which allowed women to catch their breaths or slightly recline to somewhat relieve pressure. This, in many cases, imprisoned women in a way similar to the captivity of the central character in “The Yellow Wallpaper,” who was trapped by social expectation and personal circumstance. I’ve titled the work “The Escape Artist” because around the time women’s clothing and foundation garments were beginning to change, Houdini was at the apex of his popularity. In the same way he defied death (which the corset truly did precipitate in some women), womankind finally liberated themselves from the physical constrictions of the corset…but maybe not the emotional ones, as evidenced by our continued obsession with slender frames. 

3. I understand that a lot of your work deals with the individual histories of women, particularly in the Victorian era. What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

Oh yes, I love vintage photographs, especially Victorian cabinet cards, some of which appear on the cage crinoline of the central element in the installation. (This part is my tribute to, as Beyoncé would say, “all the…ladies,” or at least all the ladies who had to wear a corset!) I actually go antiquing and scavenging at flea markets just for these pictures. To me, these are windows on another time, fascinating social and psychological portraits. How these women carry themselves in the photos and the details of their clothing are fascinating to me. I began using these photos as a springboard for ink drawings, a series I called Women in Water—a metaphorical and literal reference to being in it up to your neck. Several of these have appeared in several literary journals, like Boxcar Poetry Review (http://www.boxcarpoetry.com/main_033.html) and Your Impossible Voice (http://www.yourimpossiblevoice.com/issue-3-spring-2014/). Fear not, gents, I’ve started a Men at Sea series, too.

In terms of influences, I studied art history—specifically, the era between 1898 and 1930—so I’m sure there are so many things that I’m not even aware of that are creeping into my works. My thesis, for example, was on the social satirist and Dadaist George Grosz. However, there are so many contemporary artists that amaze me. I keep regular tabs on the production of British illustrator Ruben Ireland, US artist Bret Pendlebury (who also uses vintage photographs for inspiration), and the truly amazing work of US illustrator Kelly Louise Judd (who goes by the artist name “Swanbones”).

4.  Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

 I work art-making in whenever I have free time, and while I have a studio here at the house, I sometimes don’t get that far…I do a lot of work in the living room, so I can be near my husband in the evenings. More than once, I’ve been hand-dyed sewing lace onto a cabinet card or seed beads onto the corset (which appears in the installation) while we’re watching Gotham or Agents of Shield. I have completely taken over the coffee table, which is where I do a lot of my drawing and much of my fiber art and cabinet card work. As I write this, my coffee table has: a Tupperware container of sequins; a giant Ziploc bag of seed beads; four glass bottles of metallic ink; a bag of embroidery thread; embroidery thread snippets (all over the table cloth); and a coffee can with various pens, brushes, and implements, including a wire-cutters and a miniature hole punch. Often, I will start something, and even if I don’t care for it at first, I will continue to work with it, so I can turn it into something that has the ‘yum factor’ (because it sounds odd, this is not a phrase I usually ever say aloud)—what I mean is, the point at which the work becomes a delight to look at, and keep looking at, as the eye searches for detail. That’s when I know the piece is complete. 

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

Right now, I am working on a series of drawings of the characters from Thomas Wolfe’s Look Homeward, Angel. So far, I’ve finished W.O. Gant and Ben, characters based on Wolfe’s father and older brother, respectively. (You can see them here: http://www.savannahschrollguz.com/menatseaseries.html ) My goal is to show all of them, when complete, at the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Museum in Asheville, North Carolina, although the museum doesn’t know this aspiration yet.   My website is located here: www.savannahschrollguz.com, and I often tweet about new projects, with pictures, on Twitter @ssguz. I only just started using Instagram, where my handle is: savannahschrollguz. More pics of my process will appear on Instagram soon. 

6.  Where do you see your work in 5 years?

In five years (if not a bit sooner), I hope to have entirely completed my Radium Girls graphic novel, titled The Color of Silence is Radium Green, which I started in 2013. I also have a series of vintage dresser’s mannequins from the turn of the twentieth-century that I have the seeds of an idea for, which will likely involve collaboration with my niece who is a fiber artist. So definitely within five years, I would like to bring the idea I have of melding language, fiber, light, and these mannequins to fruition. And, of course, I hope to show those Look Homeward, Angel portraits at the Wolfe Museum in North Carolina. Once they are all complete, I will work on seeing if I can make that happen.

Traffic Lights with Jakob Marsico

Jakob Marsico is an interaction designer and media artist. He runs Ultra Low Res Studio, an arts-engineering firm that works with developers and architects to integrate dynamic, experiential installations with the built environment. Marsico currently holds an adjunct instructor position at Carnegie Mellon University and is a member of the CoDe Lab in CMU’s School of Architecture. He has a BA in Religious Studies from George Washington University and a Masters of Tangible Interaction Design from Carnegie Mellon University.

1. Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

My name is Jakob Marsico, I grew up in Pittsburgh, left for a while and moved back four years ago. I started playing with photography in my 20s, mainly because my father is a photographer and I had access to his old cameras (he is the 2015 Pittsburgh Artist of the Year and has a concurrent show at Pittsburgh Center for the Arts that is beautiful and worth checking out).

I started exploring interactive technologies four years ago as a way to augment a show I was working on at the Butler Institute of American Art, in Youngstown, OH. The show compared the Tahrir Square revolution that was happening in Egypt at the time to the anti-collective bargaining legislation that was being pushed through Ohio and Wisconsin. The whole show was meant to mimic a dream; imagining a possible future of our country’s trajectory of anti-middle class law making.

That project encouraged viewers to “join” the subjects in the portraits by sitting on a sensor-embedded couch that then triggered a pre-programmed light and sound narrative. The idea of forcing viewers to become a part of the piece intrigued me. Since then I’ve focused on designing projects that encouraged people to see themselves as an integral part of the system they’re experiencing.

2. What is the concept behind “Traffic Lights”? What experience/message is the show aiming to bring to the audience?

The software driving Traffic Lights was built to extract temporal patterns from video. Its goal is to expose the patterns and rhythms inherent in our built environment. In a way, it’s an experiment to see if those patterns have any affect on us. In this case it’s an experiment to see whether or not an abstract light pattern based on cars moving through the city resonates with us in any meaningful way. It’s meant to elicit a feeling similar to watching waves come in, or watching trees sway in a forest; a kind of natural repetition that is calming.

3. I understand that a lot of your work deals with the crossover between art, architecture, and engineering. What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

Over the past five years I’ve become attracted to more abstract workst that don’t contain an obvious narrative but are still able to evoke some sort of emotional or bodily response. I believe that technology will help us do that in new ways.

4.  Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

Most of these projects start with experimentation in software or material and evolve from there. Once an idea has hatched, I usually develop a software sketch to mimic what that system might look like. From there, I usually develop the software, electronics and physical components in unison. Software is unique in that it becomes a functional component of the system, but is also a tool to tweak, manipulate and iterate within the system. For this project, the central piece of software was developed to include very detailed controls to manipulate the small details of the project.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

I’ve just finished a very large collaboration with SHO Architects. It is an interactive landscape at Radcliffe Yard at Harvard University. The installation will be up for two years and consists of 1600 synthetic scapes. The scapes light up and react to people as they walk through the landscape. It’s gorgeous. We’re working on final documentation now, but a photo can be seen HERE. I’m also working on a hanging glass piece that will be installed at Butler Institute of American Art. It uses live video to create patterns through a set of switchable glass panels. It should be installed by the end of August. You can see my portfolio at www.ultralowres.com or follow updates at www.facebook.com/ultralowes.

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

This year I started an interactive design studio called Ultra Low Res Studio. We work with architects and developers to bring this sort of work into the built environment. In five years, I see Ultra Low Res being successful, with projects throughout the mid-Atlantic, a long list of collaborators and a portfolio that isn’t stale and that I’m proud of. Five years from now I want to be working on things I can’t imagine now.

inti.mate with Sidney Mullis

Sidney Mullis is from Spotsylvania, VA. She is currently pursuing her MFA with a concentration in sculpture at Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA. She received a BA in Studio Art with Honors at University of Mary Washington and graduated Summa Cum Laude. She is the recipient of the Graham Fellowship and Melchers Gray Purchase Award. Her work has been exhibited in a number of locations including Berlin, Germany and Tokyo, Japan.

Mating Ritual of the Lumpbutt Bouncer by Sidney Mullis

1.    Could you give us a brief introduction of who you are and how you became an artist?

I grew up in a military family moving from place to place during my childhood. Despite frequent relocation, I was always enrolled in dance lessons. During my last few years of high school, I got more involved in my art classes and made the switch from the performing arts to pursue the visual. I thought I would study art history when I started college. However, the itch to engage space not as a dancer, but as a maker, was strong. I have been scratching that itch since my freshman year. My undergraduate career was a transformative four years for me. The sculpture studio was a communal incubator for my peers and me. I am forever indebted to my mentors who lent their support and care to us.

2.    What is the concept behind “inti.mate”? What experience/message is the show aiming to bring to the audience?

I watched a video of artist Tino Sehgal being asked a similar question about his work that has stuck with me since. He simply answered that the “artist proposes and the reception decides.” While I have questions that I ruminate on and ideas that I aim to communicate visually, what I hope for is that the audience is somehow responsive to my “propositions” that I want to share with them.

But, if you want get further into those propositions…

I believe that I live in a space where my gender is culturally dictated for me and simultaneously conflated with my sexuality. As a means to understand pre-existing constructions of how woman is realized, and, furthermore, performed, I don the guises of invented animals of various sexes and genders to build a domain of alternative biology and culture.

I have memorized the scripts in which it is acceptable to perform my gender. Having danced my entire childhood, I am sensitive to the choreographed acts of speech, gesture, and movement that constitute appropriate gender identity. Despite their memorization, these performative scripts have never felt fully comprehended or entirely natural. Therefore, I play dress-up, a formative activity regularly engaged by children, to re-enter those moments of tender growth and rouse those coming-of-age curiosities to yield a deeper understanding of what it means to be woman.

The show consists of these invented animals’ mating rituals, as well as some new objects and sculptures that are being shown for the first time. With these new works, I wanted to see if I could transform existing costumes used in the video projections into objects. I wanted to see if I could infuse static objects with gesture/movement in space. As for the title of the show, I am interested in the homograph intimate/intimate. These pieces are intimating, or signaling, the desire to be intimate whether it is in the form of video projection or sculpture. Because, that is what “woman” is right? A friendly, inviting, warm, and sexual gender.  

3.    I understand that most of your work deals with notions of gender and sexuality. What inspires your work? Do you draw inspiration from/admire any other artists?

I always come back to these three situations/people in my personal history. These have really shaped who I am and how I make.

a. My German grandmother was a seamstress. Due to a language barrier, many hours were spent silently watching her cut patterns. While too young to understand the cultural connotation that sewing was women’s work, I understood it as a skill that provided for her. In my young eyes, sewing embodied creative and financial freedom. I use sewing as my main method for making and I intend to fuse my questions about womanhood into every hand stitch.

b. Many of the men in my family are in or have retired from the military. I grew up understanding traditional modes of gender, i.e. the soldier and his housewife.

c. I attended a liberal arts university for my undergraduate degree. The school originally opened in 1908 as an all-women’s college. While it is now a co-educational institution, the residue of this legacy remains. For example, the book, Home Handicraft for Girls, can still be checked out from the library.

Artists I am obsessed with right now are Lara Schnitger, Clarina Bezzola, Beverley Semmes, the makers behind the Institute for New Feeling, and, as always, Mika Rottenberg.

4.    Can you talk a little bit about your creative process?

My creative process includes working in the studio, reading, writing, rinse, repeat.

 5. In most of your videos, you used yourself as the main performer. Was there a specific reason for that decision, and do you also participate in other artistic productions as a performer?

It is important that it is the same body projecting different, invented “scripts.” I came across this formula, of sorts, on gender performativity in Judith Butler’s “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory.” It goes:

The act that one does, the act that one performs, is, in a sense, an act that has been going on before one arrived on the scene. Hence, gender is an act which has been rehearsed, much as a script survives the particular actors who make use of it; but which requires individual actors in order to be actualized and reproduced as reality once again.

For me, that means you have a script and a bunch of actors that perform it. The script is foundational while the actors are replaceable. I wanted to inverse that formula. It had to be one actor that was foundational or irreplaceable that could propose many, many scripts that are fluid, flexible, and contradictory.

Reason why it is my body is that I really, really enjoy performing whether it is in front of an audience or camera. Right now, I am not performing in other artistic productions, but would love to!

6. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

I am about to begin my final year of graduate school at Penn State University, so I am continuing to develop this body of work. Currently, I am writing my third artist book entitled Crooked Nails: Grappling with Feminism. It consists of drawings of feminist stereotypes and journal-like writing on my relationship to feminism at this moment. I hope to write subsequent volumes of this book throughout my life to archive how my thoughts change in both drawing and writing and convey a lineage of feminism’s reception within the general public and academia.

I am a contributing writer and guest curator for Maake Magazine, an online gallery and quarterly print magazine. It showcases the work of emerging artists. Emily Burns, founder and editor, is amazing and has wonderful plans for this magazine!  

Follow my work at sidneymullis.com and look for interviews of amazing, emerging artists at maakemagazine.com!

7.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

The cool thing about tomorrow is that it is tomorrow, and I can make it mine.

inti.mate will be at Future Tenant until August 9, 2015

Future Tenant presents: 2015-2016 season

PHOTOS AVAILABLE UPON REQUEST: [email protected]

PITTSBURGH, PA –Future Tenant is excited to announce their thirteenth season, which will incorporate a diverse platter of themes. A total of 13 major exhibitions and performances make up this upcoming season.

inti.mate, a solo group exhibition by Sidney Mullis, focuses on a fictive animal kingdom, where invented animals perform mating rituals. Born in Virginia, Mullis is currently pursuing her MFA with a concentration in sculpture at Pennsylvania State University in State College, PA. She is the recipient of the Graham Fellowship and Melchers Gray Purchase Award. This exhibition will be at Future Tenant from July 10 – August 9.

Our annual sought-after Trespass series, offers a residency for artists or groups who put their exhibitions at the space for a limited amount of time. Our first Trespass artist, Jakob Marsico, uses patterns created by traffic cameras to create a light and sound installation, called Traffic Lights. Jakob, a graduate of Carnegie Mellon University, is also an adjunct instructor there, and a member of the CoDe Lab in the School of Architecture. This exhibition will show from August 14 – September 13.

Future Tenant is a space for art, and it welcomes all types of art forms at the space. Throughout our season, Future Tenant holds their Open Mic Nights, which gathers local Pittsburgh artists to perform their musical arrangements. The first Open Mic Night will be held at Future Tenant on August 21, from 7-10 PM.

As a part of the Southeastern College of Art Conference Future Tenant will be hosting a Juried Show curated by Jessica Beck, Assistant Curator at the Andy Warhol Museum. Works selected in this year’s show represent the broad creativity of SECAC member artists from thirteen different states. This will be at Future Tenant from September 25 – October 25.

Arguably considered one of the more popular shows at Future Tenant is the annual ten-minute play festival, Future Ten. This year, Future Ten will embark on a comedic route and host six ten-minute plays. Ticket prices for Future Ten is $12, and performances will be held on November 6 at 7 pm; November 7 at 7 & 9 pm; November 13 at 7 & 9 pm; November 14 at 7 & 9 pm; and November 15 at 2 pm.

In addition to live visual exhibitions, Future Tenant gives two visual artists a chance to have window installations. The first, The Escape Artist, by Savannah Schroll Guz, shows the history of body alterations caused by corsets over hundreds of years. This window installation will be at Future tenant from December 11 – January 5.

New Year’s Eve is celebrated worldwide, and Future Tenant aims to contribute a lasting memory for families in Downtown Pittsburgh. This year, Future Tenant will host a performing group as part of Highmark’s First Night Event on December 31.

As a part of long-standing tradition with the Carnegie Mellon School of Art, Future Tenant hosts the CFA Show, which displays students’ artwork. This show is at Future Tenant from January 15 – February 14.

From February 28 – March 23, is our second window exhibition, Accretion. Produced by Julia Betts, Accretion is a life-size, fibrous sculpture made entirely of masking tape. Masking tape initially interested Betts because of its accessibility and affordability, but, while working with the material, it became attractive as a vehicle for repetition. Julia Betts is a Pennsylvania native who is completing her MFA in Rhode Island School of Design.

Creative Byproducts is a visual collision of the work by artists Anna Brewer and Sam Berner. The collaborative installation is the immediate extension of their regular conversations about a stifled American dream and its byproducts of social inequalities, environmental devastation, and creative voids. The exhibit would include colorful, interactive and fun work from each artist as well as one or two large collaborative paintings they have completed over the past year. Creative Byproducts will be at Future Tenant from April 22 – May 21.

Future Tenant’s final visual exhibition of the 2015-2016 season, New Order: Collage Now, is a group exhibition curated by Sonja Sweterlitsch and Mundania Horvath. This exhibition presents a group of artists that create new meanings through juxtapositions, finding relationships and contrasts in the world around them to form fresh ideas. This exhibition will be at Future Tenant from June 3 – July 3.

WHERE

Future Tenant

819 Penn Avenue

Pittsburgh, PA 15222

COST

Free except for Future Ten

GALLERY HOURS*

Thursday and Friday: 4-8 PM

Saturday: 12-8 PM

Sunday: 1-6 PM

*Additional gallery hours may be in effect during other arts festivals around Pittsburgh. Please refer to www.futuretenant.org for updated hours. 

Bedtime Stories with Christopher Ruane

Christopher Ruane specializes in digital photomontages, sometimes with thousands of individual layers each photographed and created separately. Thematically, his work focuses on the spiritual and existential. His piece for Bedtime Stories titled Lady of the Mantel depicts a child's emotional processing of the concept of death. "For each of us in our youth, a seed is planted and in the darkest hours of the night we will either be comforted or haunted by the moment we realized our own mortality," says Ruane. 

Courtesy of Christopher Ruane

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist?

My name is Christopher Ruane and I am a photographer and artist located in the suburbs of Pittsburgh. As long as I can remember I loved creating images. I started out with crayons and moved to cameras and computers. I guess I became more serious about my craft as a purist photographer at Edinboro University. After exploring large format printing and experimental toning techniques I realized I wanted to have control over every aspect of my work. When I found that I could create anything I put my mind to, I moved full force into the digital art realm.

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

My image Lady of the mantel is part of series about our first encounters with the idea of death. The new project explores the way the mind of a child processes these emotions, oftentimes recreating events into stranger than life experiences.

3. What is your creative process?

It starts with a good story and then moves into the photographing stage. Some images are partially set up and parts of the images are from my extensive photo library of everything from leaves to skyscrapers. somehow through the layering of photographs, like sifting through thoughts and memories an image emerges that hopefully pays tribute to these intimate experiences.

4. Do you admire any other artists?

Certainly, there are too many to count. It is really the artist spirit I admire. The drive to create despite all obstacles. If I had to name just one, it would be Eugene Smith. After seeing one of his photographs in a book in college I realized I would be a photographer for the rest of my life.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

I am currently working on my ongoing series of modern interpretations of Biblical stories and events entitled Sacred Art Modern world. The next piece to be completed is called The Lions Den and it speaks to the persecution of Christians.

You can follow my work on Facebook, my blog and follow my instagram project @thruwindows

https://www.facebook.com/pages/Christopher-Ruane-Photography-and-Fine-Art/158034510894154?ref=hl

http://www.christopherruane.com/Modules/Site/Blog.aspx

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Hopefully, spending time making art with my wife Stefanie, son Isaac and baby number two due in July.

edtime Stories is at Future Tenant until June 28. 

Bedtime Stories with David Stanger

David Stanger's pieces for Bedtime Stories are part of his ongoing body of drawings and paintings inspired by his wife and son. Stanger's work has been exhibited at Manifest Gallery, the Salmagundi Club, the University of North Carolina Asheville, the Mattress Factory, the Butler Institute of American Art and the Westmoreland Museum of American Art. Stanger's work can be found in many private collections and is most notably in the collections of the Carnegie Museum of Art. He is an Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing at Seton Hill University. 

Courtesy of David Stanger

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist?

My name is David Stanger and I am a painter and native of Pittsburgh.  For as long as I can remember I’ve had the painterly impulse to make marks and images, but I do have vivid memories of a transformative visit to the National Gallery when I was around 13.  We had been before but this time I saw things differently, maybe I was ready to let it all in.  It floored me.  

From that experience on, painting was not just about images, it was about paint.  I was intuitively aware of the power of this primitive material and saw how it could be simultaneously humble and unspeakably beautiful, mindless and full of wisdom.

By the time I hit college I knew I was hooked.   Studying painting at Syracuse University with Jerome Witkin really opened things up for me.  Life drawing was central to his courses and made the history of painting accessible in the studio.  My time with Syracuse University in Florence, Italy deepened my understanding of figurative painting traditions.  These were crucial and formative experiences for me.

After taking a year off, I went on for my graduate degree at MICA’s Hoffberger School of Painting where I studied with Grace Hartigan and Raoul Middleman.  MICA is a hothouse for young aspiring artists and I met some wonderful artists and writers there.  My work for next few years was more of a struggle for me, jobs intervened and I lost a bit of my focus.  When I returned to Pittsburgh in 2005, I was fortunate to serve as the Director and Curator of the American Jewish Museum in Squirrel Hill until 2008.  It was an enriching experience and one that ultimately showed me that teaching and a return to a studio centered life was unavoidable for me. 

I am currently on the faculty at Seton Hill University where I teach painting and drawing. 

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

The three pieces on view offer a window into my ongoing body of drawings and paintings.  My son and wife have been central to my work for the past several years.  I often depict them resting or deep in slumber, in the quiet and contemplative moments of our lives.  Thought these are private moments for our family the works also live in a more universal way.  I do hope that viewers will enter the works and recognize the commonalities of human experience, in a way sharing my eyes for a time.

3. What is your creative process?

My work is often born of unexpected visual encounters that fascinate and tug at me.  I trust those rare moments of heightened visual perception, when I’m shaken out of my daily concerns.  It is this trust in a glance that leads to sustained observation and enduring, meaningful experiences. 

As a painting develops in and out of months, the surface gains a history and begins to hold a measured intensity and an increasingly complex technical narrative.  Paintings carry a physical index of the painter’s accumulated decisions and are both objective records and a distillation of memories.

4. Do you admire any other artists?

In recent years, I’ve been particularly interested in the contemporary painters Antonio Lopez Garcia, Vincent Desiderio and Israel Hershberg whom I have had the great pleasure of getting to know through his summer painting program in Civita Castellana, Italy.  Though they are each approaching observational or realist painting from unique perspectives, they have all helped me to maintain my bearing as a painter.    

My view of art history is not necessarily linear and I often collapse large distances in time to preference visual connections or visual threads running through painting.  I have an affinity for the contemplative and distilled pictorial worlds of Vermeer and Hammershoi and they feel as relevant and accessible to me as Michaël Borremans or Ann Gale.   

To develop as a painter, work at the canvas is primary, but it is also necessary to seek out great paintings.  This holds true of other creative disciplines.  To be a great writer, for instance, you can’t just go and read a dinner menu and expect to grow, you need to seek out other writers who have or are reaching for something significant and honest.  I’m always looking at paintings, but over the years, I have become more sensitive to what works I truly connect with.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

Painting is a true joy for me and I work as much as possible.  I am currently deep into a painting and drawing of my son in the summer garden, and am also in the beginning stages of a larger interior composition.  I work primarily from direct observation of my motifs, so I often have two larger pieces developing at the same time, one I work on during the day and the other at night.

My website is the best place to follow my work and stay connected through a variety of links on the site www.davidstanger.com  

My life as a professor at Seton Hill grows richer by the year and with the opening of our new beautiful Visual Arts Building this fall I anticipate continued growth for the students and program alike.  http://www.setonhill.edu/academics/undergraduate_programs/art

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Throughout my student years I experimented a great deal with modes of visual expression, including forays into installation, sculpture and video.  But painting and drawing always occupied a central place in my studio practice.

About 5 years ago when I made a painting of my newborn son, swaddled in a yellow blanket, I found myself reassessing my thoughts on contemporary painting and challenging my expectations about what painting could be or ought to be.  It was a sort of homecoming; an accounting of what has been consistent throughout all of my experimentations.  As I approach 40, with years of exhibitions and professional growth behind me, it’s thrilling and humbling to know I’m just at the beginning of a life’s work.

Bedtime Stories is at Future Tenant until June 28.

Bedtime Stories with Wanda Spangler-Warren

Wanda Spangler-Warren creates what she calls "Luminescent Sculptures," three-dimensional paper, wood, reed and fabric sculptures incorporating translucency and light. These abstract curved forms, lit from within, express feelings of comfort, security, and beauty. 

Courtesy of Wanda Spangler-Warren

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist? 

I’m a mixed media artist, and I’m primarily self-taught, with my experience beginning in my childhood. I grew up in rural East Tennessee and have a B.S. in Business Administration. I was an accountant for many years, then a production and inventory control specialist. I also have an AAS in Architectural Design and Drafting with CADD, and I worked in an architectural firm. I have always loved what I call an additive approach to art; putting together many things to create something more substantial. Textile and needle arts enthralled me. I found it fun to work with stitch of all types, particularly embroidery and quilting. I also have some experience with stained glass and paper collage. Again I wanted to bring together little pieces to make something more interesting. Abstract doodling became a way of creating forms upon which to impose a theme, and I had some fun with abstract drawings on paper of ink, marker, or colored pencil. I have been studying watercolor painting. 

When an artist talked about his paper sculpture technique several years ago in a television interview, I decided it was a beautiful and practicable art form for me to try. I began these pieces in 2006, and I call my sculptures made using this papier mache technique Luminescent Sculptures.

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

The concepts of quiet calm and intrinsic confidence are what I set out to express in my pieces “Cardio” and “Speak”. “Cardio” has a gently curving, elongated heart motif, with playful, feminine inclusions indicative of corset lacing and paper clothing patterns. “Speak” is a large oval form done in white paper, conjuring for me the purity, freedom, and simplicity of power when one confidently says what needs to be said. “I am here. I have ideas. Here they are. Give them the respect they are due.”

3. What is your creative process?

My creative process begins with reflection in the quiet times of the day and night to conjure images and forms which have perhaps mulled their way into my subconscious mind and are breaking the surface of thought. It’s a process of teasing out somewhat thin or ghostly concepts or emotions and deciding how to translate them into my sculptural language. Just before sleep I often work out these ideas which make their way into sketches, then into full-sized cartoons. 

The cartoons on the work table provide the pattern on which to build the three-dimensional object in the form of a reed armature. Wooden framework supports the structure and the optional lighting. Upon the armature I place several laminated layers of paper, perhaps finishing with laminated or sewn pieces of silk fabric and other inclusions.

4. Do you admire any other artists?

Artists from the Post-Impressionists to art eras more modern tend to draw my eye. I love Modern Art’s collagists and assemblage masters. Locally I continue to be awestruck by the work of talented fiber artists in the Fiberarts Guild of Pittsburgh, and by the great visual artists in the Associated Artists of Pittsburgh. I am a member of these two organizations.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

I am working on entries for the upcoming 2016 Fiberart International to be held here in Pittsburgh. I enter Associated Artists of Pittsburgh exhibits and also regional exhibits. My website is easilyamusedstudio.com, and my work is on FaceBook at Artwork of Wanda M. Spangler-Warren.

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years? 

I plan to be traveling the world and returning to Pittsburgh to reinterpret what I’ve seen in my artwork.  I intend to acquire some unique papers, textiles, and objects in my travels and to use them in my work. I hope to keep exhibiting and to have an internet presence.

Bedtime Stories is at Future Tenant until June 28.

Bedtime Stories with Sherry Rusinack

Sherry Rusinack is a mixed media artist whose work is categorized as a steampunk and outsider. She uses found objects to create imaginative and eco-friendly works of art. Her piece Drinking Town comes from a series of assemblages constructed primarily from painted cardboard, a miniature town of crowded together houses complete with telephone poles. Windows are haunted by black-and-white visages, resides of Drinking Town. 

Courtesy of Sherry Rusinack

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist?

I am a self-taught artist that has been living and working in Pittsburgh since 1997. 

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

One day I was sitting in my studio staring at some cardboard, and I imagined a cardboard figure climbing out of the pile of boxes. Since that day, cardboard has evolved into 3D masks, shadow boxes, and animals. Sometimes these images first present themselves to me in my dreams, other times they just pop out of my imagination as I study different materials and objects. From my cartoon houses, horses decked out in multi-colored strings, dolls wrapped in chains, or dioramas of animals wearing costumes, my art does tend to have a playful dream-like quality to it.

3. What is your creative process? 

I'm proud to call myself a dumpster diving, trash night loving, thrift shop junkie, junk artist working to create whatever artful thing I can think up! From cardboard to watch parts, I like to transform mundane materials - often thrown away - into art objects that are anything but disposable. 

4. Do you admire any other artists?

Moebius, H.G. Giger

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

I continue to make my artwork for exhibits at The Clay Place and BoxHeart Gallery. You can follow my work on BoxHeart's website: http://www.boxheartgallery.com/available_works/rusinack/s_rusinack.html

6. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Making more art!

Bedtime Stories is at Future Tenant until June 28. 

Bedtime Stories with Josh Mitchel

Josh Mitchel, a former high school teacher, describes his painting Oedipus as a depiction of repressed internal struggle, and that vulnerable moment between consciousness and sleep. A figure wrestles with the feeling of suffocating under self-imposed expectatinos that are ultimately insatiable. 

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist?

I like to think I have been an artist my whole life but i took quite a bit of time off from making art. The last three years however I have been much more prolific and have devoted a huge portion of my time my career as an artist. I am currently almost finished with my MFA. Subsequently school has really served as a catalyst for my work and my creative process.

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

My piece Oedipus is about a repressed  internal struggle, and that vulnerable moment between consciousness and sleep. A figure wrestles with  the feeling of suffocating under the self-created expectations that are ultimately insatiable.

3. What is your creative process?

I aim to achieve a disquieting tension which serves both as a metaphor and as symbol for empathy revolving around the human condition.

4. Do you admire any other artists?

The artists I have been looking at most recently are contemporary painters as I have been putting most of my energy into investigating painting.: Alex Kanevsky, Michael Borremans, Jenny Saville, Nickolas Uribe, Costa Dvorsky, Lucien, Freud.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

My most recent work (the last 3 years) can be viewed at http://www.joshmitchel.com/

Bedtime Stories is at Future Tenant until June 28.

Bedtime Stories with Victoria Mills

Victoria Mills exhibits two portraits, a painting and a photograph. Her mysterious painting  Girl holding DVDs represents "the memory of a morning after, questioning where we were, and why we were there on a particular Saturday morning," says Mills. Her photograph Could I be Delicate Part 1  is a self-portrait of a nineteen year old girl in her bedroom "waiting for the blue of the late day to calm her, saying 'Today is over, the room is yours.'"

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist?

I am a 23 year old artist, working as a therapeutic support staff in Franklin County, PA. I spend my days working with children on the autism spectrum, reading, and painting.

I began as a photographer, in my teen years, becoming fixated with light and how it fueled a good photograph. Often I found that different light at different times of the day inspired my moods.  As a young adult, photographs lent themselves to 'moody' oil paintings and inkings of intimate moments with friends or myself. I guess this is when I felt like an artist, when I became addicted to communicating moments of time next to windows.

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

The photograph,"Could I be delicate part 1" is of me, taken on self-timer, at a time in the evening. I was feeling particularly depressed this day, I found myself alone in my bedroom, waiting for the blue light of the evening to signify the end of the day.

The painting,"Girl holding Rob and Big DVDs" is in memorium of the crazy mornings in college, the hazy feeling of a hangover, after spending nights in different places with my nearest gal pal of the time.

3. What is your creative process?

Finding or taking photographs, which then become paintings. I often write a small poem while I am working on a painting, mostly the affect of being enthralled with the subject.

4. Do you admire any other artists?

For sure. A few I am specifically looking to in new works: Richard Diebenkorn, Alex Kanevsky, Paul Gaugin, Agoera.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

I am currently working on a few oil paintings that are slightly bigger than a sheet of paper, the subjects either include windows, or are lit by windows. I am looking more closely at form, making it believable while still keeping a hazy, dreamy feel. You can follow me on my website, http://mil9849.wix.com/toriswindows

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I see myself delving more into photography again, hopefully continuing into night scapes, and forms at night/ in the early morning. My other passions include working with children on the autism spectrum, and I hope to still be doing that, I like to feel helpful in my everyday life, and selfish when becoming creative. I hope to be a homeowner, in a house with big windows with inspiring light. All hopeful. Mostly the same.

Bedtime Stories is at Future Tenant until June 28.

Bedtime Stories with Michael Koehler

Michael Koehler is a painter and graphic designer whose illustrative paintings feature strange dream imagery. "While visiting the astral space realm I woke to discover I had become Pizza," says Koehler of his acrylic on wood painting titled  And Then I was Pizza...Space Pizza. Brightly colored and disturbing, his second painting in the Bedtime Stories exhibit, titled Nice Night for a Knife Fight: The Addict shows the internal struggle of an addict, an "insomnia fueled by madness." 

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist?

My name is Michael. I was born in Pittsburgh. I started painting shortly after graduating with a degree in graphic design. This was around 2006. I learned as I went and was never really shown how to paint.  My early paintings were pretty crude, using whatever materials I could find, like house paint and old planks of wood. I’d paint about my boss telling me he used to skate or how my car caught on fire. I eventually caught the attention of a couple galleries around town. At that point I was beginning to focus on themes of transformation and the sub-conscience landscape.

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

“And then I was Pizza... Space Pizza” is about waking up to find that your whole life has changed and you have changed and everything is new and strange. Like traveling through a dimension that turns everything to pizza, when change comes it can be terrifying but you have to roll with it.

“Nice Night for a Knife Fight: The Addict” is about addictive personalities. It struggles with itself and the raging battle inside endlessly, eventually driving it to madness. It has this nagging voice that sits on it’s shoulder making excuses and whispering lies. The addict has a hundred eyes but not one is willing to look at itself.

3. What is your creative process?

Spending time in nature and working with my hands allows my mind room to wander around. I usually make lists of different themes or ideas I’d like to see then begin drawing from there. On wood panels I’ll create loose backgrounds then transfer or sketch the drawings. The paintings are series of countless layers. Other times I just wing it.

4. Do you admire any other artists?

I do! Pittsburgh is home to a lot of great artists such as Masha Fikhman, Joe Mruk, Seth LeDonne, Caldwell Linker, Lizzee Soloman, Brian Gonella, Jes LaVecchia, Dave Slebodnick, Reba Jay, Dave Watt and so many more. All of these people work hard at what they do and I’m forever inspired and motivated by them all.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

I’m currently working on a body of work incorporating archetypes and ecosystems. The idea is: Every archetype has a distinct persona. Given the persona and conditions that an archetype displays, what would an archetypal ecosystem look like inside of them? I’m exploring what physical and imaginary manifestations appear with certain personality types using folklore, myth, psychology, and my own experiences.

My work can be found at mrkoehler.com and facebook.com/theartofmichaelkoehler

6. Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

A lot can change in five years. But I’ll still be painting and creating and pushing myself. That’s my thing. I just want to continue to build upon everything I've learned so far and see where it takes me.

Bedtime Stories is open until June 28.

Bedtime Stories with Gary Duehr

Gary Duehr's Bedscapes is a series of photographs of a bed with shifting sheets and pillows that at once become both a topographical landscape and a portrait of the state of a relationsihp. Gary Duehr has been chosen as a Best Emerging Artist in New England by the International Association of Art Critics, and he has received an Artist Grant in photography from the Massachusetts Cultural Council. His work has been featured in museums and galleries including the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA; MOMA PS 1, New York, NY; Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Lost Angeles, CA; and Museo Nacioinal de Bellas Artes, Havana, Cuba, as well as exhibitions in Tokyo, Venice, London, Dublin, and Barcelona. Past awards include grants from the LEF Foundation and the Rockefeller Foundation. 

Courtesy of Gary Duehr

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist?

I live and work in Boston, where I teach writing and digital photo at local universities. My BA is in photography and my MFA is from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop in poetry.

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

I took a photo of our unmade bed every morning during the spring of 2014 - because I thought it looked like a landscape and reminded me of Steiglitz' Equivalents cloud pictures. Plus how they suggest the nature of a relationship.

3. What is your creative process?

I like to take photos of many different things; I allow myself to be pretty eclectic. New projects go through a fairly long incubation process of trying different media.

4. Do you admire any other artists?

I enjoy work by many modern sculptors, painters and photographers. Any work that pushes the boundaries a bit or makes us think about who we are or our place in the world. One show that recently knocked me out was Isa Genzken at MOMA, and right now there's a fascinating show of Japanese photographers about 3/11 at the MFA in Boston.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

Right now I'm making images of madonnas and saints in the front yards of Somerville, where I live. I'm also taking pictures of people looking at paintings in galleries and museums. You can see my work at www.garyduehr.com

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

I plan to keep working and exhibiting artwork, while based in Boston.

Bedtime Stories is at Future Tenant until June 28.

Bedtime Stories with Eric Dickson

Eric Dickson is a social scientist and installation artist, and a professor of politics and psychology at New York University. He lives and works in New York City. His audio installation for Bedtime Stories titled It Was Like a Strike of Lightning From Within blends first-person recollections of dreams with synthetic dreams, recorded by actors and scripted using recycled parts from the "true" dream recollections. His piece explores fantasy and experience, and blurs the distinctions between the truly experienced, the unconsciously imagined, and the consciously constructed. 

1. Could you give us a brief introduction to who you are and how you became an artist?

When I was seven, I really wanted to be a private detective like Sherlock Holmes.  When I got older, I realized that private detectives spend most of their time sitting in a cold parked car, drinking bad coffee and waiting to take a picture of some married person as they leave their lover's house.  So I gave up my dream of being a detective, and as a result here I am talking to you today.

2. Can you talk about the concepts behind your pieces in Bedtime Stories?

Sure.  "It Was Like a Strike of Lightning From Within" is an audio installation, composed of three different kinds of stories.  First, people talking about dreams they've had at night; second, people recalling dreamlike waking moments that actually happened to them; and third, "fake" dreams that I wrote, using images from and fragments of the "real" dreams and dreamlike waking moments.  These "fake dreams" are performed by actors.  These little stories float out over the gallery in clusters of five, with each cluster forming its own little idiosyncratic, interwoven dream world, hinting at some kind of mysterious underlying reality.  But you can't be sure which parts of it are "real" and which aren't -- and are dreams "real" anyway?  So there are these philosophical questions kind of tugging around the edges of the piece, about the natures of reality and experience.  But they're also, I hope, interesting little narratives in themselves.  Some of them are lyrical, some of them are hilarious, some of them are pretty frightening, some of them are just totally odd.

3. What is your creative process?

"Creative process" sounds so organized, like an assembly line or something.  I just go out and do a lot of different kinds of interesting things and eventually ideas bubble up from somewhere as a result of that.  A lot of new discoveries -- in art, in science, personally -- come from unexpected juxtapositions and cross-pollination.  If you manage to get out of the house in the morning, continually go new places, and keep your eyes open, I think creativity flows naturally enough.

4. Do you admire any other artists?

Too many to mention, but I'd surely travel far to see Janet Cardiff, George Bures Miller, Tino Sehgal, or Haroon Mirza.

5. Are you working on any new projects at the moment?  And where can we follow your work?

I have a solo show in Nashville this autumn, an audiovisual installation about foreign and security policy that is triggered by an array of motion detectors installed in the gallery.  I also have a few more text-based pieces in the pipeline.  If you want to follow what I'm up to in general, www.ericdickson.net is the place to go.

6.  Where do you see yourself in 5 years?

Isn't the thrill of life the fact that we really can have no idea?

Bedtime Stories is at Future Tenant until June 28.