Austin Art Talk

"You have to cultivate your own ability to be inspired. As I become more mature as an artist its how do I create the circumstances to cultivate the mood and the mental state I need to be in to really connect with my vision as an artist."

She had wanted to be an artist from a young age and always had a strong compulsion to create. As she rebuilt her life even if she couldn’t create artwork she did at least something small everyday to keep her creative spirit and thoughts progressing. Previous to this time, studying art in school, she developed her survival instincts and knew the art world was competitive. She also was not afraid to experiment and throw work away if it didn’t make the cut. Starting from scratch she knew one of the important things to cultivate would be her point of view and how to convey what she wanted to say along with her ability to stay inspired.

No doubt Caitlin takes her craft seriously. Her paintings tell many different stories and are infused with spirituality, mysticism, jungian archetypes, and existential voids, to name a few aspects. Their creation is intentional but there’s also room for chance. The shapes are symbolic and so are the colors. Her ideas and inspiration come from a lot of research, reading, journaling, and just paying attention to her mental state and what comes up in life.

In this interview we talk about her art but also quite a bit about business, social media, and the kinds of advice she gives to her interns about being an artist. She talks about the tools she uses and why she decided to hire a PR firm. Her business utilizes a lot of Instagram and Facebook ads and she discusses many of her strategies for those. Feel free to contact her if you have any questions and enjoy this fantastic episode full of inspiring and practical information!

Early years

Upcoming Events:

Wonderwall Studio

Solo exhibition debuting an exclusive collaboration with Wonderwall Studio. A collection of original paintings and reproductions will be on view and available for acquisition.

Open Studio

Open Canopy is a fun free art event hosted by Big Medium and my studio complex Canopy sponsored by Tito's vodka and local breweries, I'll have my studio open for viewing, you can see the work in person and chat with me about what I'm working on.

916 Springdale Austin, TX 78702

VIP Preview

A grand reveal of new work for collectors, patrons, and press only. Sip curated wines and nibbles while absorbing the studio before EAST. Patrons receive a special promotion. Add a new painting to your collection before November to be invited.

916 Springdale, studio #122

Austin, TX

The Femme Abstract

An exhibition of 30+ female abstract artists

Curated by Moya McIntyre Featuring: Caitlin McCollom, Rebecca Bennett, Stella Alesi, Cherie Weaver, & Vy Ngo.

1300 E. 5th Austin, TX

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

Links:

• Caitlin G. McCollom - website

“My advice would be to work as hard as you can on your work and get interested. Use anything you can, get hold of anything you can. Study that and work at it. You have to work at it a lot. Research, do your work, and get as much knowledge as you can from as many people as you can. That’s about it.”

The Austin Critics Table awarded him Artist of the Year 2013-2014, and Solo Exhibition of the year 2017-2018 following a career retrospective at Co-Lab Projects. His work often looks at the passage of time and addresses natural disasters and other issues that have been exacerbated by the impact of man on the planet.

I love how dedicated Claude is to the Austin art community. You will often see him out at art openings and he does take a serious look at the work presented and researches and contemplates its meaning. It was an honor to interview him and it's wonderful to know an artist who is still so passionate about his craft and the issues that are important to him.

He is also working on a book that he summarizes here:

“Art, Creativity and Controversy, Why and How Artists Create Controversial Work is based on the premise that it is within the philosophy and zeitgeist (spirit) of the times that innovative artists develop new ideas and use the means most suitable to interpreting them.

By understanding WHY adventurous artists create unusual work skeptics will, (even if they still don't like the work) be able to discuss it intelligently and not denigrate it.”

Artist Statement

"TIMEKEEPER" a narrated slideshow of Claude van Lingen’s life and work from Co-Lab Projects on Vimeo.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

Links:

• Claude Van Lingen - website

"It’s easy to get stagnant with what you are doing. I just want to keep staying motivated and keep getting better. But also just not being so hard on myself. It’s easy to be your own worst critic and just think everything you are doing is horrible and getting in those ruts. But to be able to just pick yourself right back up and just be like, OK why am I like this. Why do I feel like this? What's the next step?"

Most of us have seen great live and behind the scenes images, or portraits and press photos of our favorite bands, but do you ever wonder who gets to take those? Pooneh Ghana is local but for the past 10 years she has been spending a lot of her time traveling all over the US and the world photographing at music festivals, touring, and doing portrait and video shoots. Many of the bands you have probably heard of but some maybe you haven’t. She is inspired to capture these musicians and events because of her love of music and to help share and support the community.

What if one photo could make someones day or inspire that person to check out a band she likes or get it’s name out there? She is a super fan with an incredible work ethic, full access, and a fantastic eye, always there to capture the images she knows that other fans would love to see. Often a fly on the wall during tours she captures the sometimes fun and crazy nights and the slow days of long distance travel and recuperation.

As a huge music fan she started out taking photos for fun but then at the very beginning of her career she found a love for film and Polaroids. Those mediums inspired her to experiment and enabled her to capture more fun and intimate moments with bands. Those first images caught the attention of some online music blogs and the rest is history. Over the years film has continued to help her develop her creative eye and being self taught has not hindered her one bit. Even though the life of a freelancer can be unpredictable Pooneh enjoys that aspect of her job. You never know who might call you up to do a photo shoot if they like your work. She is able to work consistently and aspires to be a photographer as a life long pursuit.

This is a really fun interview and Pooneh has such a great attitude. There’s definitely some wisdom to be found in the way she approaches her career and her joy for life.

Loving music

Check out this great video about Pooneh prodcued by Chaco Footwear

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

Links:

• Pooneh Ghana | Home

“In one of our early meetings I expressed to Rebecca that I was having some confusion around how do I continue to present things and ideas that I have worked on in the past. Working with this material of coal but also introduce something new and explore new territory. She really didn’t hesitate and was like, go wild, don’t slow yourself down. Just keep creating and keep making and explore, you know keep exploring. And so I think that is something I will take away from this show is that idea of just like you said not pigeonholing yourself but allowing yourself to be constantly influenced by new things and influenced by new people and new interactions that you have.” - William T Carson

William T. Carson got his start in the northwest US and still has a strong connection to his family’s cattle ranch in Montana. He didn’t grow up on the ranch for most of his life but has nonetheless has a desire to understand and experience that area, a landscape with vast natural beauty and a long history of coal mining. He passed much of his time before college drawing as a way to see and understand the world but at a certain point started to incorporate coal into his artwork. As an adult art has become a way to connect with others and he loves the community aspect around making art and the conversations about life that ensue. His current work incorporates various sized pieces of coal that are placed in a ground up coal and adhesive mixture. With each successive artwork he has learned to be more present and divisive and stay out of his head. The proccess of creation only allows for one chance to make each individual piece in that moment before everything solidifies. One goal of the work is to inspire viewers to come away from his work seeing the materials that he uses in a new way and rethinking their relationship to them and what they mean.

Rebecca Rothfus Harrel grew up in Pittsburg and had the great opportunity to attend art classes at the Carnegie Museum from and early age through high school. With that experience she learned a lot about creating art and education, which very likely led to her two current professions, being an artist and a teacher. Her early artwork in college not surprisingly was about education but after moving to Texas she found herself in awe of the big skies and evolving landscapes, especially those in west Texas. She transitioned to making more landscape work and for many years focused on the types of things people consider ugly or don’t pay any attention to but that also give a sense of the future or some kind of progress. Then she discovered an interest in rocks and minerals, which now most all of her abstract landscapes are based on. She uses matte opaque gouache and graphite gradients to render micro/macro worlds, diagrams of mineral structure that could also be perceived as vast landscapes. There is an ambiguity of scale in her work and you might while looking at it imagine you are an ant crawing on a geode or mineral, the inhabitant of antoher world.

June 16th - August 11th, 2018

CAMIBAart

Williams beginnings

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

Links:

• William T. Carson - website

"I just love learning from the work. Just leaving it open and learning. It’s part of my being in the world. I try to be patient with myself and my artwork. There were years where it felt like it didn’t connect to the larger art world. But I just had to keep working. And I think you never know what’s coming unless you keep working, unless you keep that thread going. I think developing as a person is a part of what goes into the work. Who you are and what you think about and what's important to you is what comes out in the work whether you want it to or not."

In addition to being an artist Madeline has also had many jobs in the arts including administration, teaching studio art and art history, being a curator, and as an arts writer and critic. She has always been curious and very much into reading and her upbringing simultaneously gave her a love of art and of nature. Those traits have kept opening doors for her and have helped her learn about herself and the world.

There is a lot of wisdom in this interview and I was excited to sit down with Madeline knowing the breadth of her experience in the arts. If you can be sure to check out her current exhibition in Ft. Worth listed below.

Artistic origins

"I am a multidisciplinary artist whose focus is the natural world. The ecological history of the oceans is the source of my current work. Covering 70% of the planet, the ocean is larger than we can fully comprehend, and one of the great unexplored regions of the earth.

I work intuitively and in partnership with natural elements, incorporating chance into the process of making the work. Salt and water are essential elements necessary for all life, and in my artworks they interact, creating the unexpected. I draw with a sea salt solution. As the mixture dries, salt crystals grow in reaction to their environment, leaving records of the process as they change from an amorphous liquid to light catching solids. I research the ocean at large, and it is the knowledge of how the ocean and its elements work that fuels my imagery.

The Buffer Zones exhibition concentrates on mangrove forests, one of the three buffer zones between ocean and shore. These fertile zones – coral reefs, giant kelp forests and mangrove forests – feed a huge percentage of marine life and protect our shores from the full force of the seas. Mangroves are extremely adaptive trees, and here I focus on their roots, which live undersea for half each day. During the ebb tide, the roots breathe in oxygen for the trees.

Since I began working with the ocean in 2013, climate change is rapidly changing the undersea landscape and life. Coral reefs (1/3 of the Great Barrier Reef, for example) are dying and giant kelp forests are endangered. The marine life they support is disappearing. It is my hope that with an awareness of the impact of climate change in the ocean, people will explore how they can make small or large changes in their lives to help preserve the natural world as we have come to know it. For now, mangrove forests are holding on, a beacon of hope in changing times."

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

Links:

• Madeline Irvine - website

"For me authenticity is being truthful, and just allowing yourself to be vulnerable."

"I express myself through fashion by just letting it flow and just walking into my closet and kind of treating it like a palette and just wearing what I feel and grabbing pieces that I feel work for me instinctively at that moment."

Punk Noir is such a fantastic exhibition and after I saw it I knew I had to interview Dawn. She is such a delightful person and really has a great work ethic and a lot of integrity in what she is trying to create along with the positive effects it could have. Please enjoy our conversation and be sure to get over to the Carver Museum before July 21st to see for yourself.

Exhibited from March 8, 2018 to July 21, 2018.

"A selections of monumental works that explore Afro-punk creative expression.

Featuring portaits of black musicians, filmmakers, photogaphers and other creatives -- Punk Noir revels in the divine feminine and masculine energy in her subjects. Through color, pose, and clothing, Okoro conveys a sense of grit, glamor, and grace. This is reincorced by her gestural use of copper to obscure the body and alludes to issues of erasure, self-agency, and resistance. Indeed, Punk Noir offers an alternative to life lived in a black body on stark white canvas. For Okoro, punk has always been black."

The George Washington Carver Museum, Cultural and Genealogy Center

1165 Angelina St, Austin, TX 78702

1-512-974-4926

M,T,W,F 10-6

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

Links:

• DAWN OKORO - website

"It’s not easy but for me it’s very enjoyable to put on these wigs and be these people. One mainly because I am an entertainer and I like to entertain people and I like what these characters do to people, and to me. But then in a deeper sense I’m very much exploring and reclaiming a lot things about myself that were taken from me as a kid. And that’s a slow, slow process."

Paul Soileau simply considers himself an artist even though he does practice and inhabit many different forms of art, theatre, performance, music, dance, and ways of self expression. More than creating a singular piece of art he is utilizing his body, voice, creativity, and soul to craft a unique and inspiring experience for his audience, one that he would want to witness himself. Rebecca Havemeyer and Christeene Vale are his most well known and traveled characters. They couldn’t be more different but the motivation behind them both comes from a simliar place. In addition to being very entraining and well loved, each character is a way for Paul to challenge his fears, expand his mind, and explore the deep, dark, and suppressed parts of his past and identity.

Rebecca is the wealthy old Hollywood grande dame and Christeene is a dark, dangerous, and sexual creature that challenges gender and societal norms with a twisted innocence. By trying to get out of his own way he is making room for these other personalities to have a life of their own. But at the end of the night when he takes off the wigs and makeup he’s back to just Paul. Acknowledging and exploring his own character becomes just as important, and is integral to inspiring and keeping the others alive. At the same time these others serve to force Paul to evolve more into the person he wants to be. And there is an integrity in what these characters say and do and a responsibility and commitment to walk one's talk, on and off the stage. He’s preaching to the choir of the audience and himself at the same time.

Surviving an intense previous two months has led Paul to a feeling of accomplishment and clarity. Christeene released a new album (Basura) at the same time that Rebecca had her first full-on one woman show (Winkie). Paul put himself through the gauntlet and in the process learned what is important to him. And the more he listens to the things he is making, and his gut, the closer he gets to better self acceptance and finding all of the potential he still has buried in the backyard of his restrictive catholic school years and the trauma of hurricane Katrina.

I think its fair to say Paul is a genius and is super talented. It was fun getting to know his work in anticipation of the interview. What he creates is appreciated and followed world-wide and he’s got a busy year ahead touring and promoting Christeene’s new album. Fans of Paul will very likely adore this conversation and those who don’t know him will I think come away with some new perspectives, quite a few laughs, and an appreciation for what he is doing even if it’s not your cup of tea.

I’m an artist

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

Links:

• Rebecca Havemeyer - Facebook

"I am generally not thinking about what it means because I don’t know that I am imbuing it with any particular sort of meaning. I’m more inclined to let the viewer take what they want from it. I’m not generally sending a message. Except, look at this amazing old stuff. That is the message. Look at this stuff that you walk by everyday and don’t care about."

Laura Caffrey has spent the last 20 years creating artwork out of junk. Well maybe not always what you might consider straight-up junk but often things that most people would not stop to pick up off the ground or buy from a thrift store. Laura on the other hand is always looking for what she considers treasures and materials to create really beautiful and thoughtful assemblages of those strange and wonderful finds. She has had a life long passion for seeking out and sharing curiosities and she knows the story and origin of every little bit that goes into each piece she creates. Minimalism is not a lifestyle that she would entertain or subscribe to in the least. It’s a cool idea but there are some pretty amazing old things whose material and physical nature excites her to no end.

Being a life long learner, higher education as a hobby, she has studied many different trades and subjects and has had numerous jobs in a diverse array of places. Architectural historian, picture framer, and now handywoman are a few of the most prominent professions she’s held. Her self-sufficient family upbringing taught her how to be independent and work hard. And her eclectic childhood home was the genesis of her fascination with things and the need to share her finds. And through all of her different jobs in different locations she has over the last few decades managed to continue creating artwork that is surprisingly consistent in it’s style and aesthetic.

It was so enjoyable spending time with Laura in her own home of curiosities and we had such nice conversation about her life and work. Her exhibit at the Dougherty Arts Center will be a sort of retrospective of the last two decades that she has been creating assemblages. Thankfully she is OK with selling her work despite the fact that she really loves and is attached to each piece. No doubt you will feel the same way after seeing them.

Some of the subjects we discuss:

Childhood

Laura Caffrey - Reject/Respect

Dougherty Arts Center

Reception: Saturday, June 16, 2018, 1pm – 3pm

Exhibit Dates: Saturday, June 16 to Saturday, August 25, 2018

"Twenty years of carefully crafted and intimate assemblages by Austin-based artist Laura Caffrey are influenced by her careers in picture framing, architectural history and handywoman. Her passions for collecting, recycling and meticulous organizing are evident in her work. Each careful composition is framed by the artist, providing a new context in which the viewer is invited to reconsider previously unappreciated materials."

DAC - Contact Info

1110 Barton Springs Rd. 
Austin, TX 78704

Open Hours:

When I was five, my family moved into the house where my grandmother had been born. The house had minimal electrical service, plumbing was limited to a single cold-water tap in the kitchen and heat was delivered by three coal stoves. Built around the turn of the last century, the house was an example of what is now politely called “vernacular” architecture, cobbled together from available materials. It was dark, filled with heavy, dusty old furniture and even dustier carpets. The unfinished basement was stocked with ancient canned fruits, mysterious medicinal preparations and rusty tools. The newspaper insulating the living room wall had an article reminiscing about the not-long-ago President Grant, family portraits hung under domed glass in tiger-striped oval frames, and buttons and bottle caps of several generations of my thrifty and resourceful ancestors filled rusted tins. This seemingly endless supply of bizarre old things was precious to me.

We lived at the end of a dirt road and if I managed to convince other kids’ parents to drive them to our house, I would spend most of our time together showing them all of my treasures. Many decades later, I find myself in a similar position. I find beauty in the intentionally discarded and the inadvertently abandoned, the crumpled and cracked, and the back sides of things. The detail and attention once lavished on the smallest item is not something many people now get to appreciate. I still play with the new stuff, too, but I get great joy from showing people all of the wonderful bits and pieces they may not have had the opportunity, or taken the time, to notice.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

Links:

• Laura Caffrey, Artist - Facebook

“This is what I want, this is what makes me fulfilled, is to make work. I need to do that. In order to go further, in order to grow, as an artist you have to do! You can’t ask why all the time. You can ask why later.”

He emerged from a fear of irresponsibility as an artist and the influence of pragmatic parents, having studied math in addition to art and working as a floor trader, to being a full time artist with a dream studio where he paints, creates box constructions, make scans, and works on photographs that he takes daily with his ever present camera. He is always looking with a curious eye for what is visually compelling and wants to share the beauty and magic he discovers. Fulfillment often comes from working consistently, always being prepared to capture moments, and searching for a way to add to the conversation and be in dialogue with other artists work.

Charles is such a thoughtful and deep thinker. I really appreciate the way his mind works and his reverence and commitment to being an artist. The discipline he has around his daily practices is inspiring and makes so much sense when thinking about how to keep progressing with your work and keep your head in the game. My favorite takeaway from our conversation is the idea of figuring out which artists are important to you and what conversation you want your work to be a part of. This is a great interview that I know many artists will derive value from.

Some of the subjects we discuss:

His work/philosophy

June 9th - July 21st, 2018

...of Warp and Weft

Opening reception: Saturday, June 9th | 7-9pm

837 W. 12th Street | Austin, TX | 78701

Hours: Mon-Fri 10am-6pm | Sat 10am-4pm

512-477-4929

Links:

• Charles Heppner - website

"Who are the people in your life that inspire you, that support you, that you can connect with on a regular basis, to keep that creative spirit going, to inspire you to explore things that you maybe never have?"

"If you have something that lights your fire, that really inspires you, find a way to do it and surround yourself with people who are doing it also."

I have known Jason and his wife Margery for many years and have seen him perform on a lot of different stages and even once in the front yard of his house. His confidence and creativity have always impressed me as well as his sincerity and the honesty in his acting. He is really a joy to be around and the conversation was thoughtful and inspiring. Please make a point to follow his work and get out to see him perform. You won't regret it.

Theater in H.S.

Capital T presents

Small Mouth Sounds

by Bess Wohl

Directed by Mark Pickell

May 17th - June 16th, 2018

Thursday – Saturday at 8pm

Hyde Park Theatre

Links:

• Jason Phelps Creates - website