PJ: Has Division grown on you with time, how is it different looking at it now?

Brandi: It has grown on me. I created ‘Division’ about a year ago for my senior show. I thought this was one of my strongest pieces. My math teacher ended up buying it. Division-haha. I haven’t seen it in person in about a year. Knowing a piece isn’t mine anymore always changes my experience of it. And not seeing this or even really thinking of it at all for so long makes me see it with fresh eyes. I think I always understand my work more with time. At first creation I wonder, ‘where’d that come from, what’s that about?’

PJ: Can you describe one part of it you really enjoy, or dislike?

Brandi: The architectural sketches in blue pen are my grandfathers–on an envelope from the 60’s. This piece was built around and inspired by his drawing-very sentimental. A collaboration across time and space, neat-o.

more art by Brandi Strickland

PJ: How do you decide where to go with your art or music?

Bruce: Pete, I work and work and work. I have a system, called the neo context system, where one medium influences my response time to help me act faster in another. Basically my arts cheat off of each other and are jealous of each other, but won’t admit it.

PJ: Why are you doing collage now?

Bruce: I am the best of Bruce when I do collage, and when you see it you’ll know why. All decisions, no wasted time. Scissors, glue, exacto, and like a computer it is all yes’s and no’s. 1’s and 0’s. Elecctric!!!!!

more collage by Bruce Sherfield

PJ: We have curious clues on the table before us, but I’m more adrift in her daydream, which eludes me like a mirage.

LM: This work is designed to tell a story but not the whole story. It all depends upon the viewer’s experiences. A viewer might look at the work and see the predecessor of a significant event or maybe the aftermath. Either way, the viewer is the voyeur of a private moment and is entranced by this individual stealing long glances across a crowded restaurant.

This is the story of a girl who is waiting for someone special. She is full of love and hope. She has been hurt by something yet hangs in there – waiting. She looks to the distance with hope, as if seeing a glimpse of the future while she gingerly twirls a necklace between her fingers which represents a part of her past.

more art by Larissa Meek

PJ: I don’t know what to call these curls and strands, do you have terminology to talk about them? Or do you prefer to see this assortment all at once, all by itself? The elements seem to have various characteristics that play off each other, which is fun and draws me in.

Lisa: I think about ’spill’ as an explosion of strands, a language of fibers I had been working with for a couple of years prior to this painting. I see ’spill’ as an accumulation of discreet hairs that pour into a unified amalgamation. I had worked with similar mark making and imagery before painting ’spill’. However, up until this point, I’d been exclusively drawing tiny, meticulous animal and hair imagery on large expanses of white paper. I had been working with such a minimal palette, values limited by graphite on white paper, and with such a somber and melancholic presentation that I was ready to pan out the same concepts with color, paint, and bolder gestures. Thanks for describing it as fun – fun and humor were definitely motifs I was interested in incorporating into my work.

PJ: Memories surface all the time. Maybe as we age we remember more places we’ve been because we’ve been more places? Could you share any memory or place or situation that surfaced while painting “spill” or were you totally engaged with the paint and the brush or are you thinking only about the subject of the painting, or the structure of it?

Lisa: Memory is one of the issues central to my work. A dynamic process of fabrication rather than a storehouse of fixed images, memory depends on your current emotional state and is therefore a system of creation in a constant state of flux. I probably relived countless memories while working on ’spill’. I remember thinking about a certain recurring childhood dream and lessons by Arnold Mesches about the composition of “The Raft of the Medusa”. But I also remember feeling very present with the painting and attempting to engage various characteristics of the paint I was working with in terms of opacity, transparency and layering.

Thanks Peter, talk to you soon,
lisa
www.LasHermanasIglesias.com

KB: it’s no. 2 of 1 so far. there may be more. i’m RIGHT in the middle of all this collage madness.

PJ: I’m wondering, do you spin the Spirograph disc first, cut out the model first, find the background first, or “D” none of the above?

KB: i usually have a huge collection of people, places, textures, etc. cut out and filed away for a rainy day so to speak. literally, they are filed… the spirograph thing i usually do last so that i can pick paper colors and ink colors that match the subject. it’s really a fast process once i figure out what i want to go with what. some of the images i have have been filed away for years and months. i just lay stuff out and find something that works and it’s “EUREKA!!!”

more of Kerri Blackburn’s art at Flickr

For those of you who are able, please join me for an art opening at the Soap Factory in Minneapolis on Saturday, September 2 from 7-10pm.

Exhibition Project Room “Homestead”
Soap Factory
520 2nd St. SE
612-623-9176

Paintings open up the artist’s Minneapolis family-built home like a dollhouse detailing playful family lore in the form of romanticized objects and candid snapshots. Lovingly dedicated to Evelyn Schiele.

Painting detail: “Prospect Park” mixed media on canvas, 2006

KL: “April in South Dakota” is about a culmination of memories for the trip that I took to the Black Hills and Badlands region of South Dakota. This is one of my favorite places to visit that is about a 9 hour drive from Minnesota. Several of the images represent actual places while other forms were created as I worked with the piece. I utilize a personal method of imprinting stimuli to my memory from specific locations and then pausing in my mind to reflect and nearly meditate on the stimuli for a few moments so that I may take that reflection back to the canvas. I have been working with this imprinting method for many years and it has just evolved with me. Recently the images are reflecting more of the stimuli itself rather than the abstract representation of it. I brought all of my canvases with me on this specific trip with the intention of working more plein-air. The work however, didn’t formulate in my mind until I returned home. There is simply an over stimulus occurring there for me and it made it difficult to sit down and paint. This is one of the reasons I enjoy it so much there.

PB: What do you think of Takashi Murakami’s paintings? I read he draws in his computer with a vector program and then hires someone else to do the actual painting. Now your painting here is in acrylic. These shape contours appear carefully painted to me. To you, how important is the medium?

KL: I believe that each artist finds their own way to the creation of work and the theories and belief that go behind them are as different as each person in the world. It is truly the path to get there that is exciting. The medium to get there is another story. I fought utilizing acrylic for many years and felt I could only communicate my thoughts through the beauty of oil paint. I would today only find frustration if I attempted the manner in which I paint now with oils. I feel that my work has evolved as I worked with acrylic. The blending and pushing of the medium is no longer attractive physically or visibly. I feel it is at its strongest use when I can separate the planes and the areas with the forms. Acrylic dries quite fast and it has lead me into having very accurate lines. This has caused me to complete a painting in nearly triple the time as an oil painting as I have become so specific.

PB: It’s surprising that you are able to deliver such great distance in this series using such flat shapes. Was that important? Did you think about it, or did you know ahead of time that you would capture such expansive spaces with flat shapes? Do you tend to focus your attention on the surface, the space in the picture, or some combination?

KL: I feel this entire series is representing an evolving style. The work I was doing only a few months before was more of a bridge to this current style. I had been working toward such a flatness with my work in 2005. Now perhaps the size of the pieces themselves, being much smaller than work that I typically do, I wanted to feel more information and depth. Perhaps it has more to do with being out on vast landscapes. In the state of 10,000 lakes and trees abound it is difficult to see vast distances.

PB: Now that it’s finished, do you have more of a relationship with the actual place you painted, the painting itself, or are you altogether somewhere else as you experience this painting now?

KL: Because these pieces are fairly recent, I definitely have a strong association with them. It takes me nearly a decade to separate myself from the work that I have done. Even then, so much of my work is based upon an experience that it helps me to remember it even more. It is generally the strong relationship that I have with a place that creates the need to paint it. For example, I lived in Finland for a while during college and the work simply transformed me as an artist because of the impact the location had on me. This impact is what gives me the most momentum for creating work.

more art by Kim Leonard

The serendipity and abstract expressionism of MySpace — Levinsohn said it reminds him of a Jackson Pollock painting — so far has been able to translate universally. “In many ways, that is the Internet. You throw things up there and see what works. That is why MySpace, Google and YouTube come from nowhere,” Levinsohn said. “That’s why a Silicon Valley blogger can have more traffic than Time magazine.”

Jeffrey Deitch isn’t looking at new art online, but I am.