Interviews by Brainard Carey

Hilda O'Connell was born in the Bronx of Irish immigrant parents. She received a BFA degree from Pratt Institute and in her senior year, she was introduced to painting by her teacher and future mentor, Jack Tworkov. After graduation, she continued her studies with Jack at his studio on the Bowery.

In the late 50’s she moved to a loft on East 10th Street which housed the studios of Wm de Kooning, Milton Resnick and Esteban Vincente. Located across the street was the Aegis Gallery where she became a member and exhibited from 1961-1967. In order to develop her skills as a painter and to deepen her knowledge about art, she enrolled as an art history major at New York University. Later she received a scholarship to Yale University where she received her MFA. Upon graduation she continued painting and worked as a part-time teacher.

Her subject in painting is language. She begins her paintings free from any preconceived plan, which allows different possibilities to emerge. A large stencil letter often initiates her process, setting off a series of transformations of random marks and clusters of fragmented letters. Disruptive techniques like collage and the palimpsest, a form of overwriting, contribute to the enigma by the blurring of forms beneath. This strategy of chance in an indeterminate world, represents a freedom of choice and opens possibilities otherwise smothered by calculation.

The books she is reading are; Anton Ehrenzweig, The Hidden Order of Art, Lynn Gamwell, Exploring the Invisible (art, science and the spiritual) and Rollo May, The Discovery of Being.

Linguistic Decay (Collage), 38”x48”, 2015

Fragment,(Oil & Collage),18”x24, 2018

Paul Rucker in Visual Art and Sound Studio at Creative Alliance. Photo by Mike Morgan

Paul Rucker is a visual artist, composer, and musician who often combines media, integrating live performance, sound, original compositions, and visual art. His work is the product of a rich interactive process, through which he investigates community impacts, human rights issues, historical research, and basic human emotions surrounding particular subject matter. Much of his current work focuses on the Prison Industrial Complex and the many issues accompanying incarceration in its relationship to slavery. He has presented performances and visual art exhibitions across the country and has collaborated with educational institutions to address the issue of mass incarceration. Presentations have taken place in schools, active prisons and also inactive prisons such as Alcatraz.

His largest installation to date, REWIND, garnered praise from Baltimore Magazine awarding Paul “Best Artist 2015.” Additionally, REWIND received “Best Solo Show 2015” and “#1 Art Show of 2015” from Baltimore City Paper, reviews by The Huffington Post, Artnet News, Washington Post, The Root, and The Real News Network.  Rucker has received numerous grants, awards, and residencies for visual art and music. He is a 2012 Creative Capital Grantee in visual art as well as a 2014 MAP (Multi-Arts Production) Fund Grantee for performance. In 2015 he received a prestigious Joan Mitchell Painters & Sculptors Grant as well as the Mary Sawyer Baker Award. In 2016 Paul received the Rauschenberg Artist as Activist fellowship and the Smithsonian Artist Research Fellowship, for which he is the first artist in residence at the new National Museum of African American Culture.

Residencies include MacDowell Colony, Blue Mountain Center, Ucross Foundation, Art OMI, Banff Centre, Pilchuck Glass School, Rauschenberg Residency, Joan Mitchell Residency, Hemera Artist Retreat, Air Serembe, Creative Alliance, and the Rockefeller Foundation Study Center in Bellagio, Italy.  In 2013-2015, he was the Robert W. Deutsch Foundation Artist in Residence and Research Fellow at the Maryland Institute College of Art.

He was most recently awarded a 2017 John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship, TED Fellowship, and the Arts Innovator Award from the Dale and Leslie Chihuly Foundation.

This fall, Rucker's work will be featured at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University in its inaugural exhibition, Declaration.

Paul Rucker is a iCubed Visiting Arts Fellow embedded at the Institute for Contemporary Art at Virginia Commonwealth University.  

Birth of a Nation Project - Detail, Mannequins, Kente Cloth, Camouflage, Spandex, Satin, and Artifacts, 2015Birth of a Nation Project: During 2015, I created at least one new Ku Klux Klan robe a week. I re-imagined KKK robes in Kente cloth, camouflage, white satin, and other fabrics. I created robes for infants, toddlers, teens, and adult men and women.

September 15, 1963 Birmingham, Alabama, 16" x 48" x 2", Spruce, Purfling, Acrylic, 2013One of a series of wood sculptures I created to acknowledge victims of racially motivated violence and significant civil rights events. This work represents the Alabama church bombing and deaths of four young girls.

Joan Waltemath, born in 1953, grew up on the Great Plains where her German ancestors settled in the late 19th century. Her early experiences in nature and looking at native geometries inform her subsequent abstract paintings and guide their complex use of materials.   As her multifaceted 2 dimensional surfaces unfold in time, their spatial voids constructed of harmonic progressions emerge to facilitate an interaction with her audience and allow for a reflective response from a sustained engagement.

Waltemath holds a BFA from the RI School of Design, an MFA from Hunter College, CUNY.  She has lived and worked in New York city since 1977 and collaborated with filmmakers, musicians, and writers in collective groups and through special projects since the early days of the downtown No Wave era.  “Ok, Today, Tomorrow” a film produced out of her studio was shown at MOMA and archived in their collection as part of a recent survey of the LES 1980’s.

Shown in New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Houston, Portland, San Diego, Omaha, London, Basel, Amsterdam and Cologne, her paintings and drawings are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery of Art, Yale University Art Galleries and the Harvard University Art Museum, among others. She has written extensively on art and served as an editor-at-large for the Brooklyn Rail since 2001. She taught at the IS Chanin School of Architecture of the Cooper Union from 1997 to 2010, at Princeton University and has lectured widely. She is currently the Director of MICA’s MFA program, the LeRoy E. Hoffberger School of Painting.

M’s Crossing (1,2,3,5,8 west) 2015 -17 172” x 168 ½” Oil, lead white, marble dust, haematite, cooper iron oxide, aluminum, interference, florescent, mica and phosphorescent pigment on prepared natural and black canvas sewn from individual pieces.

right arm 2014 thread and pencil on natural and black canvas 21 3/8” x 3” left arm 2014 thread and pencil on natural and black canvas 22 ½” x 3 ¼ ”

James Hart Dyke’s work is centered on his passion for ‘landscape’, from the domesticity of paintings of country houses to paintings generated from physically demanding expeditions over remote mountains. At present he is working on a group of paintings from a climbing expedition to Patagonia.

He has also undertaken a series of projects including accompanying HRH The Prince of Wales as the official artist on royal tours, working as ‘artist in residence’ for The British Secret Intelligence Service, working as an artist embedded with the British Forces in war zones, working for the producers of the James Bond films and working as ‘artist in residence’ for Aston Martin.

James studied at the Royal College of Art, Manchester University and The City & Guilds School of London School of Art.

Follow him on Instagram.

 

Sketch study of Fitz Roy 2018, acrylic, pencil and chalk on paper 20x15cm

Dark on light, Fitz Roy, Patagonia, 2018, oil on canvas, 120x120cm

laub, photo by marbles

laub is an artist living and working in Los Angeles using glass, ceramics, sculpture, video, drawing, performance, and music. He pulls traditions from an idealist, southern, Christian upbringing and meshes this with a colorful, queer, angst to construct and deconstruct patterns of Utopia.

laub graduated with an MFA in Glass from the Rhode Island School of Design in 2012 and with a BFA in Craft/Material studies from Virginia Commonwealth University in 2008. He studied Design at Bornholm School of Glass and Ceramics in Denmark in 2009. If you have any questions for laub about his practice or what he currently has going on please contact him at 562 583 5773.

The act of dying upon one’s self and other remnants of a rebirth Armory Center for the Arts: photo, Ian Byers-Gamber

The act of dying upon one’s self and other remnants of a rebirth (detail) Armory Center for the Arts: photo, Ian Byers-Gamber

The act of dying upon one’s self and other remnants of a rebirth Armory Center for the Arts: photo, Ian Byers-Gamber

Arny Nadler is a sculptor and associate professor at the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts at Washington University in St. Louis, where he chaired undergraduate art from 2013-2018. He earned his BFA in Sculpture from Washington University in St. Louis in 1991, and his MFA in Sculpture from Cranbrook Academy of Art in 1994. Nadler has been awarded a George Sugarman Foundation grant, a $20,000 Regional Arts Commission Fellowship and two Faculty Creative Research Grants from Washington University. In 2012, Gallery 210 at the University of Missouri-St. Louis commissioned him to create the permanent, site-specific sculpture Whelm. He has exhibited his work at venues across the country, including the Newport Beach-California Civic Center, Evanston Art Center, Turchin Art Center, Sculpture Key West, Kingston Sculpture Biennial, Maryland Hall Center for the Creative Arts, Millikin University, Western Michigan University, the Catherine Konner Sculpture Park, the University of Alabama-Huntsville, and the Mitchell Museum. His work has been reviewed in Art in America and other notable publications. He moderated the panel Material Poetics at the 2017 International Sculpture Conference in Kansas City, MO. He has presented at the Foundations in Art: Theory and Education Conference and the Mid-America College Art Association Conference, and he has been a visiting artist at several universities and colleges.

Nadler’s work explores the predicament of the human form, both its fragility and its dominance in the environment. As the son of an immigrant tool and die maker, he was trained at a very young age to look carefully at how things work—to steal with his eyes (as his father put it). For many years, he worked in the materials of industry, creating sculpture and installations almost exclusively in steel. Since 2012, Nadler has shifted his attention to ceramics, wanting to delve more into the plasticity of form. His latest series investigates the body in a state of ambiguous metamorphosis. Irregular outgrowths in the material signal erratic germination or atrophy—a disfiguration of appendages. What happens on one side might be wholly unanticipated on the other. By working against symmetry and toward precariousness, Nadler challenges the expectations of wholeness for the body. Influenced by the particular uncertainty of contemporary culture, these strange bodily forms defy disambiguation. Their stilled and puzzled nature is a grasping for truth or a viable belief system.

Firstling No. 2, 2017 painted ceramic, 29.5 x 30 x 15 inches photo by Richard Sprengeler

Firstling No. 10, 2017 painted ceramic, 31.375 x 15.5 x 11.5 inches photo by Richard Sprengeler

Michael D Price in his studio

Michael D. Price was born in Stoke-on-Trent, England in 1951. He studied at the London Central School of Art and Design (now Central St. Martins) and graduated in 1974. His studies of European art took him to Holland from 1976 to 1977 and Munich, Germany where he settled from 1977 to 1999. Between 1991 and 1992 he made regular working visits to the Provence in southern France and between 1994 and 1995, he spent six months in Austin, Texas. In 1999, he moved to New York and became a citizen in 2010.

At the end of the 1980's, through an invitation from the Doerner-Institute in Munich, the world renowned conservation institute, the artist became acquainted with a geometrical puzzle relating to compass holes and compositional marks revealed in the infrared examination of a Tintoretto painting. This, however, led to the artist's epiphany with natural colour - the luminous natural mineral pigments of the Renaissance palette. He was able to buy some of the historical pigments from a shop, Kremer Pigmente, opposite the museum. However, working with the pigments bound in oils did not produce anything near to the colours of Hans Memlinc or Raphael! Years of research followed.

In 1997, the artist experienced a major breakthrough with preparation of the blue mineral pigment azurite. In 2000, the preparation protocol was published in the journal "Leonardo" (MIT press).  Eventually, after years of further research, he published a comprehensive two volume book in 2017 financed by Kremer Pigments titled "Renaissance Mysteries, Vol. I, Natural Colour and Vol. II, Proportion and Composition". The artist has exhibited works in Europe and the U.S. over many years and continues to discover the endless possibilities of natural colour on a daily basis in his Manhattan studio.

Resurrection Adventures No. 2, Jacob's Dream 2017. Gold leaf, natural and mineral pigments in casein distemper, Strasbourg turpentine and oil on linen on panel. 162.8 x 128 cm / 64.1 x 50.4 ins.

Evolution of A Myth No. 9, Carousel: Time to Change the Gods 2016. Gold leaf, natural and mineral pigments in casein distemper, Strasbourg turpentine and oil on linen on panel. 139.8 x 152.5 cm / 55 x 60 ins.

Lehmann’s first serious photographic work was a series of photographs of professional, middle aged couples at home in San Francisco. These portraits, done in the early 70s, mirrored troubles in her own marriage and documented a moment in American history when the institution of marriage became problematic. After two years on the project she became convinced that all marriages were full of irony and humor. She stayed married. Those photographs won her a National Endowment award, which made her legitimate enough to teach at SF State, SF Art Institute, and UC Extention for 20 years.

The second serious photographic work (1977 to 1981) were a series of photographs which show people alone and naked, struggling with shame and self-revelation. From her point of view, these formal, frontal, black and white photographs portray liveliness and presence. The photographic events became a part of an optimistic attitude stemming from the 60’s liberation movements.

In the nineteen eighties, while teaching, Lehmann underwent a re-education. Reading postmodernist theorists, Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin, and Julia Kristeva, and collaborating with the performance artist, Linda Montano, Lehmann did Spoken-word performances. During these Feminist times, she engaged with Yvonne Rainer and Jane Gallup. Her work was influenced by Cindy Sherman and

Sherry Levine’s fictional photographs and appropriations. The camera became her dedicated copy machine.

Straightforward copies of comic book and pulp magazine covers were her next project. For Lehmann, these cartoons were a treasure trove of universal, unconscious representations. Interested in the coded discourses represented on the covers, Lehmann found a wealth of archaic wisdom and stupidity.

After an exhibition, Gory Allegories, at Media Gallery in San Francisco, Lehmann began to cut up and collage the material. In 1991 Lehmann had a show, Thin Skin, in the Grey Gallery at NYU where she collaborated with her eldest daughter, Barbara Lehmann, who had by this time become an East Village artist and writer. Barbara’s early bout with cancer made both of them familiar with the horrendous anxiety that could invade a home.

Invited to mount a retrospective exhibit called Amazing at The Lab in June of 2000, Lehmann refined a method of transferring the collaged cartoons onto large pieces of heavy weight drawing paper which she then colored with pastels. As the work expanded to a study of the history of art, she rethought her work and life: her daughter appeared as an ancient Egyptian funeral portrait. After preparing this exhibit Lehmann began to paint. Without a camera or computer between her and what her eyes and hands conspire, Lehmann says she feels a sense of freedom.

A Woman Straight Ahead, 2017, 30” x 30”, acrylic

The Manifestation of Outrage (Page from A Treatise On Man, 1984), silver gelatin

 

Jennifer L. Knox is the author of four books of poems. Her work has appeared four times in the Best American Poetry series, as well as in The New York Times, The New Yorker, The Washington Post, and American Poetry Review last summer.

The New York Times said of her most recent book, Days of Shame & Failure (Bloof, 2015), “Knox’s poems hit, with deceptive ease, all the poetic marks a reader could want: intellectual curiosity, emotional impact, beautiful language, surprising revelation and arresting imagery.”

She teaches at Iowa State University and is currently at work on a culinary memoir.

Kang Seung Lee is a multidisciplinary artist who was born in South Korea and now lives and works in Los Angeles.

The primary focus of his work is the creation of critical/cross-cultureal/queer histories by re-imagining archival information - art/artifact collections, publications, libraries, etc. His work comes from the desire to challenge the narrow perspective of the biased mainstream knowledge and places emphasis on marginalized individual experiences and personal histories. Lee works in multiple media such as graphite and colored pencil drawings, tracing, embroidery, collecting, wall installations.

Lee has had solo exhibitions at Artpace (San Antonio, TX), Pitzer College Art Galleries, Pitzer College (Claremont, CA), Commonwealth and Council (Los Angeles, CA), Los Angeles Contemporary Archive (Los Angeles, CA), Centro Cultural Border (Mexico City), and group exhibitions at Weatherspoon Art Museum at UNCG (NC), Centro Cultural Metropolitano (Quito, Ecuador), SOMArts (San Francisco, CA), LAXART(Los Angeles, CA), Raymond Gallery at Art Center College of Design (Pasadena, CA), among many others. His work has been reviewed and featured in Artforum, The New York Times, New York Magazine, Artnet Magazine, LA Weekly, Hyperallergic, Artillery Magazine, KCET Artbound and Glasstire.

He is a recipient of Rema Hort Mann Foundation grant and International Artist Residency/Fellowship from Artpace San Antonio. Lee received an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts (CalArts) and is currently Visiting Faculty at Art Center College of Design, Pasadena, CA.

The book mentioned in the interview is Waiting To Be Interrupted, Selected Writings 1993-2012 by Jimmie Durham.

Untitled (la revolución es la solución!), 2017, Installation view, Artpace, San Antonio (Photo by Adam Schreiber)

Untitled (Leonard Fink_Pier 48 Interior_1980), 2017, black and white engineering prints on wall, approx.13 x 9 feet, Installation view at Commonwealth and Council Los Angeles (Photo by Ruben Diaz)