Tag: #mkmARTconsulting

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Studio Visit with Linda Simmel

Linda Simmel

Linda Simmel (born in Los Angeles) is a Bay Area artist; her art practice includes painting, drawing and printmaking. Simmel’s dark landscaped-based paintings and historically-based etchings explore the influence of history on a psyche and subsequent feelings of longing. Simmel received her BFA from the University of California at Berkeley and was represented by Takada Gallery. She spent a decade traveling to and showing in and around Berlin, becoming an international participant in the newly formed artist collective “Atelierhaus Panzerhalle e.V., which was set in a tank repair workshop and ruinous surrounding barracks of a military base in the forests of Potsdam, Germany. In 2012, Simmel was an artist resident at the Baer Art Center in Iceland, in 2013 an artist at the Djerassi Resident Artists Program in Woodside, California, and she has been an artist in residence at the Kala Art Institute in Berkeley, California since 2007. Linda Simmel is included in the permanent collections of the Achenbach Foundation for Graphic Arts, Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco; the Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento; Saint Mary’s College Museum of Art, Moraga; and the Triton Museum of Art, Santa Clara. She currently lives and works in Sonoma, California.

Linda Simmel
Infinite Longing 10, 2018
oil on canvas
42” x 42”

An Interview with Linda Simmel

MKM: Tell us about your childhood, where did you grow up?  

LS: I grew up on the west side of Los Angeles, just a 10-minute drive from the ocean. The ocean played a large part in my growing up and reaching for something infinite/ineffable, outside of family and societal expectations. 

MKM: Were you always creative?

LS: Yes, I remember always wanting to make things. My first strong memory was when I was five years old. In Kindergarten we had an assignment to paint a valentine’s heart. The two sides of my heart did not match, so I kept going from one side to the other, attempting for it to mirror its other half.  Eventually the whole sheet of paper was red.  When I was 10 years old, in grade school I’d go to Betty’s art classes. I took 2 buses (one transfer) to get there. At 13, Betty told me I had aged out of her children’s art classes. I begged her to allow me to stay! (She did).  

MKM: When did you realize that creating art was something you had to do? 

LS: I attended University of California at Berkeley for two years as an undergraduate. I then went to Israel with the intention of immigrating.  After 11 months I knew I would be returning to the USA to settle and finish my college degree. I had to declare a major at that point, but I wasn’t sure what to do.  My father suggested I declare an art major as I had previously wanted to attend the San Francisco Art Institute. Then upon graduating with a BFA in fine arts, I realized my focus was art making and I’d need to try to find a way to financially support that. 

MKM: Did you have any memorable teachers?

LS: I was not able to relate much to the art department’s focus on Funk and the Light and Space movement of that time. However, I do remember a Professor Tibbs that offered a life drawing class; also Karl Kasten. I had a hard time painting in a room with 30 other people, so I spent most of my time in the ASUC darkroom that was manned by Roger Minick and Dave Bohn.

MKM: Did you focus on painting and printmaking at UC Berkeley?

LS: My first form of expression was photography. I guess I simply loved looking, seeing.  As I began combining negatives (yes! negatives at that time!) and wanting to create sets or props for the images, my photographic process became more and more complicated and so I switched to the direct method of mark making via painting.  The sensate quality of painting is what has kept me there.  The way my body feels when making something is like wearing a favorite very worn and soft cotton dress. It’s taken me decades to come around to what I’m trying to say conceptually.

MKM: What jobs have you held other than being an artist?

LS: After graduating from UC Berkeley I started off as assistant to the director of the Physically Disabled Students Program at UCB, which later became the Center for independent living in Berkeley. 

I went on to being a cowgirl in Colorado, taxicab driver, working in the darkroom at my local newspaper and finally becoming a free-lance bookkeeper for more steady financial support. Although with almost biennial trips to Berlin in the 1990’s for research and exhibitions, keeping the bookkeeping stream going was also challenging.  

MKM: When you’re creating what’s your daily routine, rituals, patterns?

LS: Lots of pacing!  Typically, I have to circle around doing house or garden chores before settling into the studio. Then if I’m particularly engaged with what is going on I have to pause to absorb it, as contrary as that sounds! Thereby more pacing around the property… suffice to say the works progress slowly. And works always have to lay about for a period of time until I’m sure I’m really finished with them.  And then often, I’ll take up a canvas started years earlier.  There are probably 5 paintings – 5 different iterations underneath every canvas I stop working on.  Now with the cell phone I can document as I go along and sometimes I wonder why didn’t I stop at that earlier state?

Linda Simmel in her painting studio

MKM: When do you know a work is finished? 

LS: As I am building up the canvas, certain sections may be coveted, but in the end the whole surface has to come together as a whole.  It’s an intuitive decision.  In my particular practice most times the surface doesn’t make sense to me unless it is densely saturated.  

MKM: Do you focus on a specific medium or multiple mediums?

LS: Painting, drawing and printmaking

MKM: Which creative medium would you love to pursue but haven’t yet?

LS: I’d love to pursue clay and glazes but feel taking that up would disperse my energies too much.  It would take years to master and develop a vocabulary and I wouldn’t want to give up my painting practice to allow time/energy for that to happen.

MKM: What is your most important tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio?

LS: Nothing is terribly precious; brushes are mostly from the hardware store, they are never cleaned, and they just stand in terpenoid for about 3 months. When it’s no longer easy to clean them as I’m using them, the brushes get tossed and off to the hardware store I go. My most precious material is the roll of gampi paper that I use in printmaking. Every print has chin collé. I love the stuff.  

Linda Simmel in her printmaking studio space at Kala Art Institute

MKM: How has your practice changed over time?  

LS: In both the painting and printmaking practices there is recently a return to starting with a photo as a jumping off point. I’ve begun to project images onto a canvas. Occasionally the painted image stays true to the projected image, more often it provides a jumping off point for composition. My paintings have always been expressive; however, they are a bit more content driven now.  It’s taken me decades to move from expressing pure sensation or inner emotion towards more of a narrative.

MKM: What themes do you pursue?

LS: The weight of history on our everyday psyches.  How that history can color interpretation of landscape.  

MKM: What art do you most identify with?

LS: Work that is quite expressive, painterly, bold, colorful.  

MKM: What memorable responses have you had to your work?

LS: After presenting a power point presentation of my most recent project at the time, a fellow resident at the Djerassi Residents Artists Program had tears when trying to express how moved he was by my large drawings of the sea.  He is someone I have greatly admired, and someone opposite my nature.

Linda Simmel
Book of Seas, 2011
(Top: closed view; center and bottom: open view)
Gesso/pencil on gampi paper, steel binding
28” x 40” x 3”

MKM: What do you like about your work?  

LS: The painterly aspect. Knowing how to move color around; feeling comfortable with color. 

MKM: What quality do you most admire in another artist?

LS: A commitment and drive to keep working.

MKM: What was your first work of art that really mattered to you?

LS: Of mine or someone else’s? (MKM: Yours) “Infinite Longing 1” has stuck with me and steered me down a path I still follow today (although that is fairly recent). 

Linda Simmel
Infinite Longing 1, 2014
oil on canvas
66” x 72”

MKM: What inspires you?  Other artists?  Your process?  A theme?

LS: Other artists’ work.  I get “art crushes” on work that I respond to strongly.  Something resonates when I look at their work and I want to go running back to my studio and start working myself!  I also get inspired when I hear of colleagues speak of a new project and are explaining their theme(s) to me.  

MKM: If there is an artist that inspires you, is there a specific work that you find particularly interesting?

LS: I am currently looking a lot at Joshua Hagler’s work.  I have been drawn to his work since I first encountered it a few years back when I went to a lecture at UC Berkeley given by Maja Rusnik (his wife, whose work I am also entranced by) and himself.  I was very taken by that first group of work I saw from both of them, however like even more the current more abstract work Joshua is doing now, from the look of his website.  

MKM: What are your interests outside of art?

LS: Gardening.  Lots of gardening.  Walking in nature.  

Linda Simmel
An der Nute, 1929/2019
photo etching
image size: 6” x 8″

MKM: What is the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

LS: “This too shall pass”

MKM: How has COVID impacted your practice?

LS: I was about to put painting aside and concentrate on printmaking….but the opposite happened as I hunkered down in my home painting studio and concentrated on painting and drawing.

MKM: What is your dream project?

LS: My dream project is to design a stage set for a dance company, OR to create a room installation, an installation that makes use of the whole space inside the walls & floor and that offers an immersive experience.

MKM: What can we expect from you in the next year?

LS: I am starting to lay out plans for an artist book that has been running around my mind for a very long time now, with parts already started.  It is something quite personal, using artifacts and letters from my father and great uncles during the time of fascism’s rise to power in Europe in the 1920s and 1930s.  It is really meant to be a piece for my daughter, so that she may ponder her history from my side of the family.  I will make a concerted effort this time to pull it together and have something cohesive within the upcoming year. Oh yes, and of course more painting; deeper dives into current themes. 

Linda Simmel
(Left) John, 2019
pencil, colored pencil, wax on paper
39” x 25”
(Right) Max, 2019
pencil, colored pencil, wax on paper
39” x 25”

The Hiking Club: A Vocabulary of Yearning

Linda’s upcoming solo exhibition, The Hiking Club: A Vocabulary of Yearning, will open spring 2023 at New Museum Los Gatos.

The Hiking Club: A Vocabulary of Yearning intertwines the story of being the daughter of an immigrant with landscape, trees and the sublime in nature. It pairs reverie of a father’s youth with a daughter’s yearning to walk in nature. The works in the show, Linda Simmel’s Infinite Longing series, are in part homage to landscape, trees, and the histories they’ve lived in, as well as to Simmel’s immigrant father and the time in which he lived. 

Simmel’s father wandered the woods outside of Berlin and greater Germany with his hiking club in the late 1920s. The trees, among which he and his friends wandered, were witness to their discussions about the possibilities of a new social order under the Weimar Republic. As we know, that progressive state did not last. As a result, her father had an intense idealism and large loss, a romantic pull as well as dark experience. Inherent in an immigrant story is the “if only” question and its subsequent residue of longing. What if there was no abrupt change, what would the story have looked like then? 

Before emigration it was among trees that the psychic tone of Simmel’s father’s life was formulated. Hiking in nature is a national pastime in Germany; May 14th is national “Hiking Day”. The forests provided the physical cauldron in which Simmel’s father developed his “Weltanschauung”, his philosophy of life. Simmel returns, or rather moves forward into that “cauldron” of landscape and trees; walking there to meditate on the gaps and absences in her own life and to simply walk toward her life. 

The Infinite Longing series has affinities with Romanticism of the late 1800s, an aesthetic that portrayed a metaphysical experience of nature. Likewise, Simmel values wild places because they inherently allow our minds and psyche to connect with the infinite; to be anchored in the universe and to surrender and rest in the power of nature. 

Linda Simmel
Dark Wood 1, 2019
oil, house paint, shellac on canvas
66” x 96” overall

To learn more about Linda Simmel, please visit: http://www.lindasimmel.com

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Interview with Content Magazine

Interview with Content Magazine

https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Zd1GOJ9A50xqsp5zOPBxp?go=1&utm_source=embed_v3&t=0&nd=1
https://www.content-magazine.com/articles/podcast-marianne-mcgrath/

Instead of me interviewing an artist, this time I was the person being interviewed! Many thanks again to Daniel Garcia from Content Magazine for episode #48 Marianne McGrath – Independent Art Curator and Consultant- MKM Art Consulting. Daniel, I appreciate your interest in my curatorial and consulting work, and your support of our local creative community.

Description of Interview with Daniel Garcia, the Cultivator at Content Magazine:
“Marianne K. McGrath is a Los Gatos, California, local who used her background in art and art history to build her own business, MKM Art Consulting, LLC., to practice curating, art consulting, and art education. Marianne holds a BA in art and 3-D design, as well as an MA in art history from San Jose State University. Her passion for art led her to a career focused on sharing art with the community, especially seen through her work with the New Museum Los Gatos (formerly The Museums of Los Gatos). Art exhibits and projects hosted by MKM Art Consulting include “To Hear and Be Heard” and “31 Women.” In our conversation, Marianne explains how her life path led her to be an art exhibit curator…
“I think art is a reflection of the community. Art gives us an opportunity to know each other better, and to understand ourselves, to make us think and ask questions…”
Find out more about Marianne’s work at: mkmARTconsulting.com
@theartistcollector 
Music for this episode is “Time Alone” by Mild Monk
Follow him at:
IG: @MildMonkMusic
Spotify: Mild Monk http://bit.ly/MildMonkMusicSpotify
Read interview with Mild Monk in issue 12.0 

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To Hear and Be Heard – Roberto Lugo

To Hear and Be Heard

Roberto Lugo

Roberto Lugo is an American artist, ceramicist, social activist, spoken word poet and educator. Lugo uses porcelain as his medium of choice, illuminating its aristocratic surface with imagery of poverty, inequality and social and racial injustice. Lugo’s works are multicultural mashups; traditional European and Asian porcelain forms and techniques reimagined with a 21st-century street sensibility. Their hand-painted surfaces feature classic decorative patterns and motifs combined with elements of modern urban graffiti and portraits of individuals whose faces are historically absent on this type of luxury item – people like Sojourner Truth, Dr. Cornel West, and The Notorious BIG, as well as Lugo’s family members and, very often, himself. 

Lugo holds a BFA from the Kansas City Art Institute and an MFA from Penn State. His work has been featured in exhibitions at the Houston Center for Contemporary Craft, the Clay Studio in Philadelphia, and the Museum of Arts and Design in New York, among others. His solo exhibition at the Walters Museum of Art received international acclaim, earning a spot in Hyperallergic’s “Top 20 exhibitions of 2018.” 

Lugo is the recipient of numerous awards, most recently including a 2019 Pew Fellowship, a Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize and a US Artist Award. His work is found in the permanent collections of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Philadelphia Museum of Art, High Museum of Art, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Brooklyn Museum, Walters Museum, and more. He is currently an Assistant Professor at Tyler School of Art and Architecture.

Tupac/MLK Tea Set, 2020
Glazed ceramic, enamel, and luster
Teapot: 6.75” x 9” x 5.25”
Creamer: 4.5” x 5” x 3.5”
2 Cups: 4” x 5” x 3.5” each
Courtesy of Wexler Gallery
Photo Credit: KeneK Photography

Tupac/MLK Teapot and Tea Set

The portraits on Roberto Lugo’s porcelain vessels feature athletes, actors and exemplary citizen activists like Harriet Tubman and Angela Davis, musicians such as Nina Simone, or paired portraits, as in this work with Martin Luther King and Tupac on opposite sides of a tea pot “in conversation.” Lugo reminds us, “Usually when people sit down and drink tea, it’s more than one person and it happens around a conversation. There’s more implied than just the consumption of tea.”1 What if we could sit down and have a conversation with these people? What would you talk about? More broadly consider what could we learn, what could we solve, if We the People sat together and listened to each other? 

1 Bessie Rubenstein, “Meet Roberto Lugo, the Potter Making Ceramics of Biggie and Basquiat”, interview with Roberto Lugo, Interview Magazine, March 17, 2020. https://www.interviewmagazine.com/art/roberto-lugo-vessels-biggie-basquiat

Tupac/MLK Teapot, 2020
Glazed ceramic, enamel, and luster
7.25” x 10” x 5.75”
Courtesy of Wexler Gallery
Photo Credit: KeneK Photography

Artist Statement

I am a potter, social activist, spoken word poet, and educator. All of these roles are rooted in my childhood. Having had no formal music or art training, I often practiced table drumming and writing hip-hop lyrics as it was customary to “battle rap” during lunch. Instead of art class, I drew in my composition book, and marked every wall that I could. “Graffiti” was a way to get my name into the community, to attain a local fame. 

Today my graffiti is defacing social inequality. I teach communities to make mosaic murals to honor victims of gun violence. I see my pottery as a process of transforming the ground we walk on into something we eat from; we search all day for the perfect spot to put it on display. In many ways this transformation of tragedy into triumph is a metaphor for my life’s story. 

My experiences as an indigent minority inform my version of Puerto Rican American history. With my education in critical theory, art education, art history and studio art I have developed a studio practice that fluidly communicates with diverse audiences. I bring art to those that do not believe they need to see it, and engage in deeper ways of knowing, learning and thinking. – Roberto Lugo

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To Hear and Be Heard – Alice Beasley

To Hear and Be Heard

Alice Beasley

Fabric is Alice Beasley’s chosen medium of expression through which she creates realistic portraits of people and objects. Beasley finds color, light, shadow, line and value in the pattern of ordinary household fabrics. From these fabrics she snips small pieces which are arranged and fused into figurative compositions. As such, the work grows from within rather than being applied to the surface of a canvas by paint, pencil or similar drawing tools. When the image is complete, Beasley sews the composition together; the stitch line constituting the final “drawn” line.

Alice Beasley’s work has been exhibited in many venues throughout the United States including the American Folk Art Museum in New York and the Smithsonian Anacostia Museum. Abroad, her work has exhibited in countries around the globe, from Spain and France to Japan and Namibia. Beasley’s work has been purchased or commissioned by a number of private collectors and public entities including the County of Alameda, Kaiser Hospital, Highland Hospital and the Sunnyvale Medical Facility.

Alice Beasley
Unidentified Black Male, 2015
Fabric composition of needle-felted wool, cotton and cheesecloth on gallery wrapped canvas.
“36 X 24”
Courtesy of the Artist

Unidentified Black Male

Alice Beasley was prompted to make Unidentified Black Male after the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown. Beasley states “As bad as Newtown was, the reality is that black children and teens are the primary victims of gun deaths. Of the 5700 children and teens who died from gunfire in 2008 and 2009, 60% were black, eight times the death rate for white children and teens. But, unlike Newton, these deaths are cloaked in anonymity and draw no concern from public or media.” 

While the original impetus for Unidentified Black Male was young unknown victims of gun violence, this work urges us to consider the many unknown victims of police brutality and the overwhelming magnitude of how many people of color have been abused or murdered over the centuries; the loss of life appallingly excluded from justice and history. 

Alice Beasley
No Vote, No Voice, 2014
Quilt composed of cotton and silk fabrics
60” X 36”
Courtesy of the Artist

No Vote, No Voice

One of our most important actions as citizens is exercising our right to vote. Over the years, the United States has taken steps forward in enfranchisement for citizens, as well as steps backward. Alice Beasley says she was inspired to make No Vote, No Voice when “In 2013 a conservative majority in the Supreme Court eviscerated the Voting Rights Act, thereby becoming complicit in the active suppression of the votes of minority citizens by state legislatures. Over the past six years—and for the first time since the Jim Crow era—nearly two dozen states have passed new laws making it harder to vote.” Voting challenges continue today and extend beyond legislative injustice with concerns about COVID19 and the US Postal Service. Nevertheless, we must persist! Your vote is your voice, so let it be heard. To register to vote, check your registration and get important voting dates, visit: https://www.vote.org

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To Hear and Be Heard – Brian Dettmer

To Hear and Be Heard

Brian Dettmer

Brian Dettmer (b. 1974, Chicago, IL) lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. He has been the subject of solo exhibitions at numerous institutions including the Hermann Geiger Foundation, Cecina, Italy, The International Museum of Surgical Science, The Museum of Contemporary Art of Georgia, and the Virginia Museum of Contemporary Art. His works have been exhibited at the Museum of Arts and Design, The Renwick Gallery of the Smithsonian Institute, The Chicago Cultural Center, The High Museum, and the Perez Art Museum among others. Dettmer’s sculptures can be found in the permanent collection of several institutions including the Smithsonian American Art Museum, The Art Institute of Chicago, The High Museum, and the Yale University Art Gallery. He has been featured in several publications including The New York Times, The Guardian, The Telegraph, Chicago Tribune, Art News, Modern Painters, Wired, The Village Voice, Harper’s, CBS News and NPR. 

Dettmer’s Problem Attic series was featured in the exhibition To Hear and Be Heard, which examines civility through the visual language of fine art. His work encourages us to consider the impact of information we willingly/unwillingly consume daily. In describing the inspiration and process for his work, Dettmer tells us, “Information is the raw material of today. We have an overabundance of text and imagery constantly at our fingertips. In digital media, it is often as fleeting as it is abundant, but when information is put in print we have a stronger sense of its relation to history and its stability for the future. In my work, I question this stability and ask what erasure and loss could look like through the lens of printed matter. Reference books have become almost extinct in less than one generation and we are at a pivotal time in the way we record and distribute facts. Without a stable home to rest in, our agreed truths have been uprooted and are now subject to distortions, erasures, and intentional manipulations. Through a meticulous process of sculptural excavation, I explore the inner contents of vintage books that have often been relegated to collecting dust or headed for a landfill. The work is both archival and anti-archival. It is a creation through consumption, an exposure through erasure. These sculptures break down historic narratives to offer a compression of ideas through a single surface, embracing us with a desire to reconstruct. This abundance of fragmented history reminds us that we are just one part of the bigger picture, as fleeting as the media we create and as permanent as the ideas we surround ourselves with.”

The Problem Attic Series

(Left to right, top row) Exotic, 2020, Vintage magazine, Acrylic Varnish, 7.5 x 5.125 x .25″
Conquers Plague, 2020, Vintage magazine, Acrylic Varnish, 7.5 x 5.25 x .25″
His Hand, 2020, Vintage magazine, Acrylic Varnish, 7.375 x 5.5 x .25″ (Left to right, bottom row) An Out, 2020, Vintage magazine, Acrylic Varnish, 7.375 x 5.375 x .25″
To Stay Young, 2020, Vintage magazine, Acrylic Varnish, 7.5 x 5.375 x .25″
Prove There is a God, 2020, Vintage magazine, Acrylic Varnish, 7.5 x 5.375 x .25″; Courtesy of the Artist and Nancy Toomey Fine Art

The Problem Attic Series – Artist Statement

The Problem Attic series revisits a handful of publications of Coronet, a small general interest digest magazine from the 1950’s and 60’s. With Rockwellesque style pin-up covers, semi-salacious short stories, general non-fiction, and advertisements for everything from cigarettes to appliances, the magazine paints a picture of an ideal mid-century suburban lifestyle that is extremely problematic from today’s perspective. Sexism and white male conformity saturate the pages, and unfortunately much of the text and imagery found and revealed echo many of the attitudes and issues still facing us today. Fragmented texts take on new meaning in 2020, as we face the Coronavirus pandemic and issues of sexism and racism in our society. Coronet, meaning small crown, comes from the Latin word “corona”. The title becomes broken and shortened in various forms within these works, creating an undeniable reference to the most pressing subject on our minds today.  

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To Hear and Be Heard – Lisa Kokin

To Hear and Be Heard

Lisa Kokin

Lisa Kokin lives and works in El Sobrante with her spouse Lia, three canine studio assistants and Bindi the cat. The daughter of upholsterers, she stitches everything she can get her hands on, including discarded books which she rescues from the local recycling center. Kokin brings a fiber sensibility and a conceptual approach to a diverse array of materials. Her work is often a commentary on the world around her, often incorporating the age-old Jewish response to adversity, humor.

Kokin has been the recipient of multiple awards and commissions, including a Eureka Fellowship, a WESTAF/NEA Regional Fellowship, the Dorothy Saxe Invitational Award for Creativity in Contemporary Arts, the Alameda County Arts Commission (multiple venues), and the Richmond Civic Center Public Art Interior Acquisitions Project. Her work is in numerous public and private collections, including the Boise Art Museum, the Buchenwald Memorial, the di Rosa Preserve, Mills College, Kaiser Permanente San Francisco, Yale University Art Museum, and Tiffany & Co.

Kokin’s work is represented by Seager Gray Gallery in Mill Valley, CA and Gail Severn Gallery in Ketchum, ID.

Let Them Eat Cake

Lisa Kokin
(Left) Let Them Eat Cake #17, 2018; Shredded money and thread; 7.25” x 7.25”
(Center) Let Them Eat Cake #16, 2018; Shredded money and thread; 6.5” x 6”
(Right) Let Them Eat Cake #10, 2018; Shredded money and thread; 6.75” x 6.5”
Courtesy of the Artist and Seager Gray Gallery
Photo credit: Lia Roozendaal Photography

At first glance these delicate works might make one recall a time when royalty ate cakes off of doilies and civility was equated with good manners. Legend has it that Marie Antoinette callously replied “let them eat cake” when she learned her subjects had no bread to eat. That problematic sense of entitlement and insensitivity is what inspired Lisa Kokin to make the works in Let Them Eat Cake, which are part of her Lucreseries. Kokin tells us, “I like money in its shredded state because it is stripped of value and power. Worthless, it becomes just so much green and white confetti. It is literally not worth the paper it’s printed on. As I separate each strip, the patterns, letters, numbers, and gradations of color are more striking than when the bills are intact. Washington’s heavy-lidded eyes, references to higher powers, cryptic serial numbers, seals and signatures, scrolls and flourishes. When sliced-up and decontextualized, money is really quite mysterious and beautiful. No one values money in this impotent state. It no longer has the ability to poison relationships, threaten democracy, topple governments, create privilege and misery. Stitched together with metallic thread into textile fragments… the material is re-contextualized with a new value and purpose.” 

Countenance

Lisa Kokin
(Left) Countenance #2, 2019-20; Shredded money collaged on Canson watercolor paper; 9” x 12”
(Center) Countenance #3, 2019-20; Shredded money collaged on Canson watercolor paper; 9” x 12”
(Right) Countenance #1, 2019-20; Shredded money collaged on Canson watercolor paper; 9” x 12”
Courtesy of the Artist and Seager Gray Gallery
Photo credit: Lia Roozendaal Photography

Countenance is part of Lisa Kokin’s Denominate, her current series of collages made with shredded U.S. currency. She decided to use the mask form because it has become so ubiquitous and is symbolic of much. During the pandemic we wear masks to protect our health and our fellow citizens, showing respect for each other’s lives. Kokin uses only black, white and grey pieces of currency, also potentially symbolic as racism has been compared to a pandemic. Kokin says, “As political events become more convoluted and disturbing, my work has evolved into a more minimalist response. Gluing tiny pieces of money together using a tweezers and miniscule gluing brush, I find comfort and serenity in lining up edges and staying within the self-imposed lines. Despite the limited parameters, I am able to improvise and let each piece evolve without a preconceived notion of the outcome. Cellphones, mazes, and masks are the forms with which I began the series. Thirty or so collages later, I switched to zeros…I am intrigued by the paradox of making zeros from something ostensibly valuable, although money in its shredded state is devoid of value, of course. Holes and emptiness preoccupy me these days as we live through the challenges of the pandemic and an administration seemingly immune to its devastating effects.”

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To Hear and Be Heard – Julie Heffernan

To Hear and Be Heard

Julie Heffernan

Julie Heffernan is an American painter whose artwork has been described by the writer Rebecca Solnit as “a new kind of history painting” and by The New Yorker as “ironic rococo surrealism with a social-satirical twist.” Portraiture is a dominant subject in Heffernan’s painting, even while she also reflects on environmental, (art) historical, feminist, literary, social, and political subjects.

Heffernan was raised in Northern California, received her Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and painting from University of California at Santa Cruz, and earned a Master of Fine Arts at Yale School of Art. She is a Professor of Fine Arts at Montclair State University and Co-founder of the journal Painters on Paintings. She lives and works in Brooklyn, New York.

In 2011, Heffernan was elected a National Academician to the National Academy of Design in New York and in 2014, to the Board of Governors. She is a 2017 Fellow of the BAU Institute at the Camargo Foundation in Cassis, France; was awarded the Meridian Scholar Artist-In-Residence Fellowship from the University of Tampa in Florida and was the featured artist for the 2017 MacDowell Colony. In 2013, Heffernan was awarded a Milton And Sally Avery Fellowship at MacDowell and in 2012, she was invited to be the Lee Ellen Fleming Artist-In-Residence at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. In 2010, she was the Commencement Speaker for the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and in 2009, she was the featured artist at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. A recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts grant, a New York Foundation for the Arts grant, a Fulbright-Hayes grant to Berlin, Heffernan was also a nominee for the “Anonymous Was A Woman” award. Since 1999, Heffernan has had more than 50 solo exhibitions at museums and other venues across the United States and abroad. Her work is represented in 25 museum and institutional collections. She has been represented by Catharine Clark Gallery since 2005.

Julie Heffernan
Self-Portrait with Eruption, 2019
Oil on canvas
68” X 55”
Courtesy of the Artist and Catharine Clark Gallery

Self-Portrait with Eruption

What is the artist’s role in society? Creator? Cultural Influencer? Visual Historian? Activist?

In Julie Heffernan’s Self-Portrait with Eruption the artist is all of the above, paintbrushes and cans of paint at the ready. Draped across her hands she presents a painted scroll illustrating  “double-sided” narratives of the past, which include, Currier and Ives’ The Last War Whoop; The Bath by Jean-Leon Gerome; and In the Harem by Vincent G. Stiepevich. Behind the artist is a gallery wall filled with painted portraits of exemplary citizen activists that courageously worked for social and environmental justice.   

Who are these citizen activists? Women from history and present day that have spoken out and taken action to expose and correct societal problems, creating a new narrative and a more civil, inclusive and sustainable future. (From top left to bottom right) Civil rights activist Rosa Parks, well known for her pivotal role in the Montgomery bus boycott, which set in motion nationwide efforts to end racial segregation. Yuri Kochiyama, a Japanese American human rights activist, worked with Malcolm X for civil rights, and dedicated her life to social justice as an advocate for prisoners, nuclear disarmament and Japanese American reparations. Ella Baker, an African American civil and human rights activist, worked alongside W.E.B. Dubois, Thurgood Marshall, A. Philip Randolph, and Martin Luther King Jr., playing a key role in organizations such as the NAACP, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, among others. Ida B. Wells, an African American investigative journalist, educator and activist who brought attention to the horrors of lynching, was an early leader in civil rights and women’s suffrage, and participated in the founding of the NAACP. Sylvia Earle, an American oceanographer, explorer, author and lecturer, the founder of Mission Blue, a National Geographic explorer-in-residence, and the first female chief scientist of the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Frances Beinecke, NRDC’s president from 2006 to 2015, worked on finding solutions to some of the biggest environmental challenges of our time, including establishing a clean energy future that curbs climate change, reviving the world’s oceans, defending endangered wildlife and wild places, protecting our health by preventing pollution, fostering sustainable communities, and ensuring safe and sufficient water. 

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To Hear and Be Heard – Chelsea Wong

To Hear and Be Heard

Chelsea Wong

Chelsea Wong
Sea of Change, 2020
Gouache and watercolor on paper
22.5” x 21” 
Courtesy of the Artist 

Sea of Change and Freedom

Imagine a world where civility is commonplace. What would that world look like? Chelsea Ryoko Wong envisions such a citizenry with colorful paintings that depict people of all ages and colors happily gathered together or walking lockstep. The poetic text accompanying her imagery often conveys the collective intention of building community, supporting one another and being “our best selves”. 

In Freedom and Sea of Change we see empowered groups confidently celebrating the future and one another. Wong says that “these paintings reflect a sense of hope and joy. 2020 has been a series of unfolding, seismic events, producing anxiety and demanding change. To conquer fear, I jump optimistically into the unknown. With figures, I evoke a sense of familiarity and celebrate the magnificent diverse beings that we are. I use bright colors because they make me happy and tickle the spirit. I paint small poems that are hopeful wishes. These paintings conjure the senses, ushering in this new era, I am sending hope into the world, filling the void with unrestrained optimism and exultation.”

Chelsea Wong
Freedom, 2020
Gouache and watercolor on paper
12” x 9”
Courtesy of the Artist

About the Artist

Chelsea Ryoko Wong (b. 1986, Seattle) is a painter and muralist whose vibrant figure compositions reflect the diversity and style of her home in San Francisco. Through the use of watercolor, gouache and acrylic techniques, Wong creates busy scenes of co-mingling people drawing from real-life events and her imagination. Her work is known for celebrating racial and cultural diversity, promoting working class communities and evoking a sense of curiosity and wonder. Through heavily stylized and idyllic imagery, Wong creates an encouraging visual statement promoting joy, acceptance and openness to one another.

Wong began her studies at Parsons School of Design and finished at California College of the Arts with a B.A. in Printmaking. She is the first recipient of the Hamaguchi Emerging Artists Fellowship award at Kala in Berkeley, CA and has recently completed a mural for the FB AIR Program in San Francisco, CA.

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31 Women: March 1-31, 2020

31 Women: March 1 – 31, 2020

31 Women catalog cover and logo designed by Rozanne Hermelyn Di Silvestro, Arc and Line Communication and Design; catalogue production by Karen Gutfreund, catalogue authored and curated by Marianne McGrath, and for sale on the Whitney Modern Gallery website.

It has been quite a month and then some! I hope that everyone is healthy and safe during this time of uncertainty with the pandemic.

31 Women opened on March 1st and was well received by the community. The reception at Whitney Modern, Los Gatos on March 8th was a huge success and we had festive attendance all day long. It was a wonderful “last hurrah” before we had to retreat into social distancing. The planned virtual exhibit was a fortunate coincidence for 31 Women – it has kept the exhibit alive and brought art to people everywhere isolated at home. 

31 Women has been extended until April 30th at Whitney Modern, Los Gatos and a few works are still available. This will give people more time to see the exhibit online and keep our momentum going in showcasing the artists. Women’s History Month may have come to a close, but it is still a powerful year for women as it is also the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment, which granted women the right to vote in the United States – and this is an election year! PLUS now more than ever we NEED the power of art to inspire and uplift us during this difficult time.

Highlighted individually throughout the exhibition are each artist’s process and inspiration, as well as her sense of connection to women in history and art history, distilled from dozens of interviews, correspondence and conversations that began last year. Along with the physical exhibition at Whitney Modern, the artists from 31 Women were featured daily on social media, blogs, websites and in the gallery — one woman a day throughout the month of March. With extending the show, posts continued periodically in April with new features and sources of inspiration. This aspect of the show is intended to be a virtual exhibition available to those outside the area, and beyond the timeframe of the exhibit, to provide an individual focus on a particular artist, emphasizing her unique practice and contributions to the art community.

31 Women affirms that knowing one another empowers us. Connections past and present celebrate, support and strengthen the collective creativity of all women. Sharing our stories of women that influence us honors our past, while showcasing the work of women today crystallizes our appreciation of the present. Through such shared perspectives, we can inspire future generations of women. 

I want to again express my deep appreciation to the artists for their participation and enthusiastic support. My gratitude goes to Karen Gutfreund for publishing the catalog, for her support on this project and her encouragement as a fellow independent curator. Thank you to Rozanne Hermelyn Di Silvestro for the catalogue and logo design. And finally, a special thank you to Suzanne Smedt, owner of Whitney Modern, Los Gatos for welcoming 31 Women to her gallery and for being a champion of artists, curators and our art community.

I will be looking forward to celebrating Women’s History Month 2021 by curating a new exhibit dedicated to women artists. Until then I have several projects in the works. Check back soon for new artist interviews and projects, plus details about my next exhibit: To Hear and Be Heard, which opens October 16th, 2020!

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31 Women – March 31st: Kelsey Irvin

31 Women – March 31st: Kelsey Irvin

Kelsey Irvin
Storyline Silk I-V”, 2020                    
Vintage ephemera, gold leaf, oil, acrylic and resin on panel 

Appearing like paintings at first view, Kelsey Irvin’s contemporary collages are a treasure trove of materials upon further investigation. In her process she uses everything and anything: vintage ephemera, fabric from the 1800s, McCall’s dress patterns, Hollywood movie magazines from the 50s, New York Times fashion ads from the 20s, matchbox covers, oil, acrylic, graphite, and sometimes resin. The ensuing works conjure memory and nostalgia. There is crossover between past, present, and future, with unifying themes of independence, adventure, the strength of women, and the innocent imagination of childhood.
Irvin is inspired and challenged by the idea of creating something unique that draws people in, brings people back in time, or propels them forward. She finds these qualities in many artists past and present. A woman artist that exemplifies this for Irvin is Helen Frankenthaler, admired for her uninhibited boldness. She thinks of Frankenthaler’s masterpiece “Mountains and Sea” because of what it represents, both to Irvin and for female artists, she says: “Frankenthaler was inspired, set a new path, stood out among men, and the work is breathtaking.”
Likewise, Kelsey Irvin finds role models in everyday life. “People that are unwavering in their particular passion, highly capable by choice, ‘doers’ because they can’t imagine letting life go by without trying. People who are kind, thoughtful and selfless, but also driven with self-discipline. Women who aren’t afraid to pursue their dream career and motherhood at the same time.” Irvin explains that these aren’t always famous individuals, these are people like her mother and grandmother, and people she meets along the way through life.      

An Interview with Kelsey Irvin

Kelsey Irvin

MKM: Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up? Were you always creative?

KI: I grew up in Western New York outside of Buffalo.  I was constantly drawing as a child. I submitted cartoons magazines as a child thinking I could be a freelance illustrator in elementary school and middle school – I received very nice rejection letters. Beyond that, I never really thought about art as a career, I just knew I would always love and create art. 

MKM: Why did you pursue art?

KI: In college I fell in love with painting to a level I had not expected. I was a bit over-extended those years and had committed to the equivalent of 3 majors, held 2 jobs (one as a TA for 2 professors, and one as a rock climbing guide for the University’s Outdoor program), all while playing college Lacrosse.  Long story short, by my senior year I was so over-extended that I had to cut something out in order to make sure I didn’t lose time in the studio – the place I wanted to be the most. I thought long and hard. Growing up, I’d always loved the saying, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” I believe it was because I actually only heard the first part… “Jack of all trades…” which was something that appealed to me. I loved learning about and trying many different things. My senior year in college, after I had so thoroughly explored the idea of “Jack of All Trades”, something hit me like a load of bricks – it literally felt like it knocked me over…… “Master of None.” I finally heard that part. “Master of None.” I really heard it. It haunted me. You can do everything and become pretty good at a lot of exciting things, but you’ll never really explore one thing to the full capacity, that one thing you truly love, if you’re too busy pursuing other interests. Everything changed for me in that moment. I knew that I wanted to pursue and explore painting more than anything else. I didn’t think it could soon become my full-time job, all I knew was that I wanted to paint and be in the studio as much as I possibly could. I loved it that much. So, I started sacrificing other things for the first time in my life; and it was worth it.

MKM: Where did you study?

KI: St. Lawrence University in Upstate New York. A wonderful school that offered me great experiences and opportunities. 

MKM: Did you have any memorable teachers at St. Lawrence University?

KI: Any teacher that encourages your natural abilities is a memorable teacher. In college I had several wonderful professors. Two that stood out most were Tom Greene and Melissa Schulenberg. Tom is an Environmental Psychologist that I worked for and Melissa was my printmaking instructor and an artist herself. They were both so encouraging to me in finding my way, pushing me to pursue my unique interests and helping make a path out of those interests during my college career. 

MKM: When you’re creating what’s your daily routine? rituals, patterns?

KI: My routines and work patterns have changed a lot over the years. Before kids I could easily work thirteen-hour days and paint until my eyes went blurry. I didn’t have a lot of structure, it was just – go to work. I loved it. Over time more and more structure has slipped into my work routine. A year ago we had our 3rd child. Shortly after she was born I accepted representation into my 7th gallery and wasn’t really sure how I was going to pull it all off. I started setting a specific goal for each week of what I needed to get done in the studio. I try to set realistic goals – but also goals that push me a bit. If I’m working on an exhibition this is how I ensure I have enough time to complete what I need to. 

MKM: Do you focus on a specific medium or combination of mediums? Which creative medium would you love to pursue but haven’t yet?

KI: I use everything and anything. I consider myself a contemporary collage artist because collage, specifically vintage ephemera collage, has become such a huge component in what I do over that last 10 years. My work often includes vintage ephemera dating back to the early 1900s, even 1800s, fabric, leather, oil, acrylic, graphite, and sometimes resin. I use collage and assemblage that triggers memories in viewers: Vintage erector set parts, McCall’s dress patterns, Hollywood movie magazines from the 50s, New York Times fashion ads from the 20s, matchbox covers, hand-painted vintage signage; the list goes on and on. The work is meant to be a painting from afar, and a treasure hunt of materials upon further investigation. 

MKM: What themes do you pursue?

KI: Memories, nostalgia; the crossover between past, present, and future. My figures have themes of independence, freedom, adventure, strength of women, as well as the unique and innocent imagination and adventurous spirit from childhood.

MKM: What is your most important tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio?

KI: My fabric shears. Collage artists “geek out” over really sharp scissors. I could paint with my fingers if I had to, but I can’t cut with them, or draw with them for that matter. After scissors, I would say a 4H graphite pencil.

MKM: Is there an artwork you are most proud of?

KI: Cornerstone pieces. The pieces that changed my direction because they opened up a new door in my creative world. Magnetique I & II were the first figurative pieces that I did that were entirely collage. A New Daysymbolizes a lot for me and my career. And also, a newer set of panels, Jewels of Narration represents a newer direction in the evolution of my Storyline Panels, a series which I’ve been doing for over ten years.

MKM: What has been a seminal experience?

KI: When I mentioned that in my senior year of college I was overextended, and my studio time was at risk — I ended up making the very difficult decision to leave the college Lacrosse team in my senior year in order to spend more time in the studio. You get very close to team members of a college sports team and I left something very social and exciting to do something rather solitary, but the decision itself was pivotal for me. Without knowing it, I had started down a path of making sacrifices for studio time; Choosing art over many other things. It helped lay the foundation in a career well before I actually knew I would have a career as an artist. 

MKM: What art do you identify with the most?

KI: It’s a wide range. I’m tempted to say collage or mixed media, but that really doesn’t cover it. I think that I identify most with art that is layered in meaning. Art that makes my heart race could be anything. Art that you can’t help but walk up to, get really close to it, and immerse yourself in how the artist created it. I’d like my paintings to be one thing from afar, and another up close. 

MKM: What inspires you? Other artists, women from history, your process, a theme?

KI: The idea of creating something from life, in a way that is different from what anyone has seen before, that draws people in and then brings people back, or propels them forward is inspiring.  Wayne Thiebaud’s landscapes, Andrew Wyeth’s fine detail, Andy Goldsworthy’s leaf and stone formations, Helen Frankenthaler’s uninhibited boldness… There are so many artists from the past and present that are awe inspiring. Making something new and different is more challenging for artists every year, every decade — but that’s what makes it in and of itself an inspiring task, it’s the challenge — and the reality that it’s possible. 

MKM: Do you have a sense of connection to a particular woman artist from art history? Is there a specific work from this artist that you find interesting?

KI: I would have to say Helen Frankenthaler’s Mountains and Sea because of what it represents, both for her, for female artists. She was inspired, set a new path, stood out among men, and the work is breathtaking. 

MKM: Who are your female role models from history or present day? 

KI: A role model to me is someone who is unwavering in their particular passion; highly capable by choice — a doer because they can’t imagine letting life go by without trying. Someone who is genuinely kind and thoughtful and selfless, but also driven with self-discipline. Someone who isn’t afraid to pursue their dream career and motherhood at the same time. These aren’t always famous individuals, these are people I meet along the way through life that I just want to keep talking to. These are people like my grandmother and my mother. 

MKM: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

KI: Trust your first instinct. A painting instructor told me that while pointing out my initial painterly gesture in a large abstract piece. He said, “Build the entire piece around that.” He was right. In painting and in life. My first instinct is usually the best choice, and when I choose to ignore it, I usually regret it. 

MKM: What is your dream project? What can we expect from you in the next year?

KI: My dream project in the future is to complete a very large-scale collage/assemblage figurative work that includes dozens of individuals interacting through time; 30 feet or more. Either a mural or a work that can be exhibited and moved — several large works that come together. My plan for next year is to keep evolving my work by way of materials and technique and eventually take the panels into sculptural form. 

Inspiration and tools in Kelsey’s studio

Kelsey Irvin is represented by: Craighead Green Gallery, Dallas, TX; Exhibit by Aberson, Tulsa, OK; GF Contemporary, Santa Fe, NM; Gardner Colby Gallery, Naples, FL; Jules Place Gallery, Boston, MA; Kelsey Michaels Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA; Studio E Gallery, Palm Beach, FL; and Whitney Modern, Los Gatos, CA

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31 Women – March 29th: Kim Frohsin

31 Women – March 29th: Kim Frohsin

Kim Frohsin
A Voile de Decembre, 2018             
Gouache, dry pigment, tempera, ink, pencils on paper
Courtesy of Andra Norris Gallery
 

Kim Frohsin

Kim Frohsin

An esteemed and prolific artist, Kim Frohsin works in painting, drawing, printmaking, and mixed media. Her subjects include the female figure, landscapes and cityscapes, as well as objects, themes and series that attract her attention, and which are most often autobiographical in nature.

Frohsin began exhibiting in the San Francisco Bay Area in the early 1990s, and in 1993 was included with Nathan Olivera, Manuel Neri and Stephen De Staebler in the exhibit Four Figures from the Bay, establishing her among notable Bay Area Figurative artists. With Wayne Thiebaud as the juror, Frohsin won the California Society of Printmakers’ Award in 1996, and the following year exhibited at the de Young Museum in San Francisco in Bay Area Art: The Morgan Flagg Collection.

After earning BA degrees in Humanities and French, Frohsin received her BFA from The Academy of Art College in San Francisco. For more than thirty years she has exhibited in numerous solo and group exhibitions throughout the United States. Her work can be found in both private and public collections including: The Coca-Cola Corporation, Heritage Communications, Atlanta, GA; The Gap Inc., San Francisco, CA; The Crocker Art Museum, Sacramento, CA; and The San Jose Museum of Art, San Jose, CA.

Kim Frohsin is represented by Andra Norris Gallery, Burlingame; b. sakata garo, Sacramento; Paul Thiebaud Gallery, San Francisco and Thomas Reynolds Gallery, San Francisco.

https://www.kimfrohsin.com

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31 Women – March 27th: Carole Rafferty

31 Women – March 27th: Carole Rafferty

Carole Rafferty
In the Mission, 2019                      
Oil on gallery wrap canvas

Carole Rafferty has sat behind the easel, and in front of it. Her grandmother was an accomplished portrait painter and as child she spent many excruciating hours posing for her. Rafferty recalls that “I had no appreciation whatsoever for what she was doing, and I dreaded her visits because it meant I’d have to sit still for hours on end without even being able to even talk.” Despite this, Rafferty developed a passion for art, painting in high school and taking life drawing classes at night. During these formative years the women in her life planted the seeds for her growth as an artist. Rafferty says, “all my art teachers at that point, from my grandmother to the teachers in high school, to my aunties in India who ran fabric dying and printing companies, were all women. Looking back now – even though I didn’t appreciate ANY of them at the time – but they all had an enormous influence on how I was to turn out.”
Rafferty moved to London for college and when she graduated, she moved to California to begin a professional master’s program at UC Berkeley in Asian Studies and journalism. From there she became a reporter, working for the New York Times in San Francisco, and eventually the Mercury News in San Jose.
Deciding to take art classes again became a completely life changing experience. Rafferty threw herself into art and pursued it all. She says, “you name it, I took it!” After several years of study with number of local teachers, she eventually came to the realization that “you can’t spend all your time in classes, you’ve got to just do it!”
Today her art practice follows a regular routine. Starting most days with a brisk walk around the Stanford Dish, she returns home to go straight into her studio for a day of art making. Other days she explores the city with her iPhone, sketch book and watercolors, looking for new ideas and new scenes.

An Interview with Carole Rafferty

MKM: Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up? Were you always creative?

CR: I grew up in a very rural community in Wales and later in a small village on the south coast of England where the road was covered twice a day by the sea when the tide came in. My grandmother was an accomplished portrait painter (I was told that she had paintings in the National Gallery of Scotland and also the Tate Gallery, but I never saw them). As I child I spent many excruciating hours posing for her. I had no appreciation whatsoever for what she was doing, and I dreaded her visits because it meant I’d have to sit still for hours on end without even being able to even talk. I’m not sure if I was creative as a child or not. I know I had a fierce imagination, I traveled quite widely, and I lived for a while in India where my mother’s family were from. I loved reading and I was interested in languages and history, and yes, art too. 

MKM: When and how did you pursue art? Did you have creative role models?

CR: I studied art in high school and loved painting, especially from life. I went to life drawing classes at night in the nearest town and had to catch the last bus home and walk more than a mile with all my art materials along country roads with no streetlights, so yes, I was interested in art. Very much so. All my art teachers at that point, from my grandmother to the teachers in high school to my aunties in India who ran fabric dying and printing companies, were all women. Looking back now – even though I didn’t appreciate ANY of them at the time – they all had an enormous influence on how I was to turn out.

MKM: Where did you study after high school?

CR: At 18, I moved to London and began a four-year degree at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London, England in Asian languages and history. Ancient Indian history is really a history of art because a great deal of it is known through sculpture and architecture. I learned Sanskrit to be able to translate the inscriptions. I learned the differences in symbolism and style between the early Indian dynasties and the later ones. When I graduated, I moved to California to do a joint professional master’s program at UC Berkeley in Asian Studies and journalism. And from there I became a reporter. I worked for the New York Times as a stringer in their San Francisco bureau for five years, I covered the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, and eventually, after having twins, I settled down into a staid, full time job at the Mercury News in San Jose (in the days when it was a good newspaper and even won a Pulitzer Prize!). But after several decades of cradling the phone between my head and shoulder and typing notes into my computer, the discs in my cervical spine gave out and I was pensioned off because I couldn’t use a computer anymore. 

MKM: How did you transition to become a fine artist?

CR: I sat around for a while, profoundly depressed. I had identified myself as a writer, a reporter, and now that [this job] was gone, who was I? There was no creativity in my life and so, desperate, I decided to take a beginning drawing class at Foothill Community College in Los Altos. It was as if a small bomb had exploded inside me. I realized that this was what I wanted to do and that most probably it was what I should have been doing all along. I threw myself into art, every single thing you could think of – oils, watercolors, sculpture, plein air, portraiture, landscape painting, encaustics, you name it, I took it!  I took classes, too, from a number of local teachers.  

MKM: Who were your memorable teachers at this time?

CR: The most memorable was Rebecca Alzafon, a renowned Redwood City-based artist, who taught a series of year-long workshops in the French academic style of life drawing and portraiture. The workshops were incredibly structured, and they were conducted in a small grey cloistered studio, where every single sliver of light was blocked out so the scene could be completely and utterly replicated day after day. Artistically there was no such thing as going ‘off-piste’ in Rebecca’s workshops. Sometimes students became so frustrated they would burst into tears. She was relentless in her teaching of the methods and practices of the Old Masters. At times I felt like I’d rather open a vein  than sit through another session on light, half tone, shadow, and cast shadows. But my God did I learn a lot!  I credit Rebecca with much of what I know about oil painting.  And even though we disagreed at times and there were times when I swore I couldn’t take another session, I’d always go back and I’m so very glad I did. With those credentials and understandings under my belt, I felt I could experiment. I took classes from Randy Sexton and Bob Gerbracht in San Francisco, as well as a number of different workshops from various American and UK artists. And then I realized that what I needed to do was just DO MY OWN THING. You can’t spend all your time in classes, you’ve got to just do it!  

MKM: Now that you are well established in your practice, what themes do you pursue?

CR: I decided to concentrate on the landscape. Growing up in the countryside I was always profoundly moved by landscape and light. I don’t know why I decided to concentrate on urban landscape, that’s a mystery to me. The only explanation I can muster is that the natural landscape is so beautiful on its own I can’t do it justice, but urban landscape is something else. Especially San Francisco! Here the light changes rapidly, the fog rolls in, the clouds come and go, it’s an ever-changing palette and sensibility.

MKM: When you’re creating what’s your daily routine? rituals, patterns?

CR: My art routines are fairly set in stone. On the days I spend in my studio I get up  and take a brisk walk around the Stanford Dish, I come back home and go straight into my studio. I usually start painting around 9am and on a good day I’ll continue until about 4:30. Other days I spend wandering around the city with my iPhone, sketch book and watercolors, looking for new ideas and new scenes. Sometimes I go to the beach and paint a seascape.

MKM: What is your most important tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio?

CR: The one thing I can’t do without in my studio is my bluetooth speaker because as I’m painting, I listen to  podcasts, some educational, some French podcasts, but the ones I enjoy the most are true crime podcasts. Don’t ask me why because quite frankly none of these have anything to do with art but maybe it’s because of all the years I covered crime and the courts as a reporter.  

MKM: What art do you most identify with?

CR: I suppose that representational art is the kind I identify with most, which doesn’t mean I’m not profoundly moved by abstract art, and even installation art sometimes too. One of the most memorable and moving pieces of art I ever saw was an installation piece in the Saatchi Gallery in London looked at from above of a series of wheelchairs careening crazily around a circuit like bumper cars each wheelchair containing an ancient person of a different ethnicity or nationality, showing the futility of tribalism and nationalism. 

MKM: Is there an artwork you are most proud of?

CR: I’m not sure which canvas I’m most proud of, it really depends on which day you ask me. I go through an entire emotional process with each of my paintings, rather like giving birth to, raising, and then waving goodbye to a child as they set off for college.  When a canvas is in its infancy I encourage and am devoted, in adolescence I’m proud of them and adore them, but once they’ve gone, I don’t think that much about them at all. It’s a cycle really, one that keeps me going as a painter. Always the next thing….

MKM: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

CR: The best piece of advice I’ve ever been given regarding my craft came from my husband, who is a writer. He said, “You should stop each day when you know what’s coming next so when you start next morning you know where you’re going.”  He was talking about writing but it’s equally true of painting. My best paintings all start from a vision. I need to know what I’m going to create before I start… I need to have a vision and clear image of the finished painting in my head before I even touch a canvas especially when it’s a large canvas because it’s so easy to waste valuable time trying to find your way when you should know where you’re going before you even start out. 

https://www.carolerafferty.com

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31 Women – March 26th: Ivy Jacobsen

31 Women – March 26th: Ivy Jacobsen

Ivy Jacobsen        
“Sweet as Spring”, 2019                 
Oil, resin, & collage on wood panel 

An Interview with Ivy Jacobsen

MKM: Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up? Were you always creative?

IJ: I spent my early childhood living on a farm, amongst fruit orchards, in the countryside of Kingsburg, CA, in the Central Valley of California. I spent a lot of time outside in nature with my siblings. I moved to Pacific Grove, CA in my high school years, and I became aquatinted with the beauty of the natural flora, ocean and landscapes of the Central Coast. 

MKM: Why did you pursue art?

IJ: I’ve always been into art and using it to express myself. It was in 1997 that I took my first painting class and I instantly became hooked; it solidified by major in college. Two years later I earned my BA in painting and printmaking from SFSU and I have not stopped painting since. It’s my passion.

MKM: Where did you study?

IJ: I studied at SFSU and continued taking painting classes at The Art Institute in SF. I also continued taking printmaking classes through City College of SF at Fort Mason Center.

MKM: Did you have and memorable teachers  at SFSU and SFAI?

IJ: My memorable teachers include the artist Paul Pratchenko, painting instructor at SFSU, and the late painter Glen Hirsch, painting instructor at SFAI.

MKM: When you’re creating what’s your daily routine? rituals, patterns?

IJ: My studio practice is Monday-Friday from 9am – 3 or 5pm. I treat my studio practice (my art making) as my “job” and love it. Monday is my favorite day of the week, as I get to go back to the studio!

Ivy Jacobsen’s studio

MKM: How has your practice changed over time?

IJ: My practice as changed in that I am more focused now. I have a family and children and I have less time to devote to the studio. However, when I’m in the studio now I’m way more productive and diligent and seem to get more work done now than I did when I had no children. I realize that every studio hour counts, and I try to use the time wisely. 

MKM: Do you focus on a specific medium or combination of mediums?

IJ: I use oil and acrylic paint and 2-part epoxy resin in my current work. I layer my oil and acrylic paint in between a layer of 2-part epoxy resin, to give the illusion of atmosphere and depth. Recently I’ve also been incorporating collage into my paintings.

Studio supplies

MKM: What art do you most identify with?

IJ: I identify with Japanese art, some Chinese art, and botanical illustrations.

MKM: What inspires you? Other artists, other women from history, your process, a theme?

IJ: I am inspired by nature in all of my art making. Since I am painting from my imagination, I am focusing on my memories of nature and plants. I paint them in my own stylized way, not so much relying on accuracies but more on the essence of different species of plants in the natural world. Painting is a meditative process for me, and I hope that the peace I feel while making my work radiates into the viewer. 

MKM: Do you have a sense of connection to a particular woman artist from art history? 

IJ: I’m particularly interested in woman artists who balance motherhood with being a full-time artist. It’s been a huge issue in my own life, and I find artists who balance other demands inspiring. Many people expected my art practice to diminish after having children. I can say that it has only become stronger as I find that this career is extremely flexible (my studio hours) and I feel blessed every day that I make a living from my art. 

As far as a particular woman artist, I’ve always loved Georgia O’Keeffe and early works by contemporary painter Yvette Molina. Georgia O’Keeffe’s expressions of flowers are so unique and original for their time; they still are! She forged a path of her own that was quite revolutionary at the time. 

MKM: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

IJ: Good advice I was given randomly in college by painting instructor Paul Pratchenko. He said that you need to be okay with being alone for long hours a lot in order to be a studio artist. He’s totally right with that one!

MKM: What is your dream project? What can we expect from you in the next year?

IJ: My dream project for 2020 (in addition to my solo show in March at Patricia Rovzar Gallery in Seattle, WA) is to find more representation from a highly respected gallery.

Ivy Jacobsen’s studio

Ivy Jacobsen is represented by Patricia Rovzar Gallery, Seattle, WA and Momentum Gallery, Asheville, NC

https://www.ivyjacobsen.com

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31 Women – March 25th: Michelle Gregor

31 Women – March 25th: Michelle Gregor

Michelle Gregor   
“Odalisque”, 2017
Multi-fired to stoneware temperatures with glazes and underglazes

An Interview with Michelle Gregor

Michelle at work in the studio

MKM: Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up? Were you always creative?

MG: I was born in San Francisco (third generation San Franciscan) and moved to Tahoe City, CA at a young age. Raised by a single Mom, I’m the second of four children. I have a younger sister that I entertained by making drawings, puppets and toys. I’ve always been creative and originally thought I’d become a writer. I ultimately found my creative voice in the clay studio during my first year of college.

MKM: Why did you pursue art?

MG: Why did I pursue Art? I’ve always had a vivid imagination and loved to draw and make things with my hands. My Mom encouraged me to study what I loved and so I took many art classes in college. The communal aspect of the art studio felt like my spiritual home. I’ve always been drawn to creative people, they are the source of my greatest wealth, my artist family.

MKM: Where did you study?

MG: I studied first at UC Santa Barbara and transferred to UC Santa Cruz for my BFA. After completing the degree, I moved to SF and worked at a ceramic cooperative studio (Ruby O’Burke’s ) for about 7 years. I decided to go back to graduate school so I could have access to better studio facilities and attended SFSU where I earned my MFA. I had the opportunity to study with Stephen De Staebler there. 

MKM: Did you have any memorable teachers at SFSU, UCSB and UCSC?

MG: Stephen De Staebler at SFSU, David Kuraoka at SFSU, Sheldon Kaganoff at UCSB and Sandra Johnstone at UCSC. These teachers were all important to me. I feel very fortunate to have been a college student in California during the golden age of education. I have been deeply influenced by each.

MKM: When you’re creating what’s your daily routine? rituals, patterns?

MG: Ceramics is a process-oriented art form. There are many steps and phases an artwork goes through from beginning to end. Much of the work isn’t glamorous. There is the wedging and preparing the clay, recycling the clay, hollowing the form etc. etc. Always many tasks to accomplish! I work on several pieces at once and move back and forth between them. Clay takes time to set up, to hold its shape. It’s easy to overwork a sculpture which may cause it to slump or fall. By moving back and forth between pieces, I can allow works to stiffen up and hopefully retain some of the fresh mark making as the sculptures progress. Deep looking is also an essential part of my process. I sometimes just take a cup of tea into the studio and look. I’ll rotate the artworks and return to my chair and look some more. 

Michelle at work in her studio

MKM: How has your practice changed over time?

MG: I include a lot more drawing in my daily practice. I sketch from works in progress. I allow myself more freedom and am more generous with experimentation and mark making. Now I paint and draw as well as sculpt.

MKM: Do you focus on a specific medium or combination of mediums? Which creative medium would you love to pursue but haven’t yet?

MG: Clay is the most familiar medium and I hold a great love and respect for it. With clay, I can explore form and surface. It’s a generous medium. Over the past 7 years I’ve painted, sketched and drawn more on paper, canvas and board. I’d love to learn encaustic and oil painting.

MKM: What themes do you pursue?

MG: Themes of pursuit are both figurative and abstract. The figure provides a vehicle to explore form, shape, texture, color and space. I will never tire of it! Abstraction has limitless potential to describe emotional and spiritual states. Together the two themes encompass our human existence. My work explores what it is to be inside our human containers.

MKM: What is your most important tool?

MG: My most important tools are my hands.

MKM: Is there an artwork you are most proud of?

MG: There are artworks that I’m prouder of than others but in general, I’m never fully satisfied with anything. I am in pursuit of something that is just out of reach.

MKM: What has been a seminal experience?

MG: A seminal experience might be having first seen the work of artists like Cy Twombly, Joan Mitchell and Auguste Rodin. Being brought to tears by a canvas covered with scratchy marks and not knowing why. My relationship to looking at art has brought me profound emotional experiences.

MKM: What art do you most identify with?

MG: The art I most identify with is abstract expressionism.

MKM: What inspires you? Other artists, other women from history, your process, a theme?

MG: Inspiration comes in so many forms; a poem by Mary Oliver, a canvas by Joan Mitchell, a story by Haruki Murakami… I am deeply inspired by artists of all kinds. I never lack inspiration. It surrounds me both in culture and in nature.

Michelle at work in her studio

MKM: Do you have a sense of connection to a particular woman artist from art history? 

MG: When I was a young girl, I spent a lot of time in our small town library. I recall being particularly interested in the art section and was perplexed why there were so few books on women artists. I remember counting only three books with women’s names on the spine (O’Keeffe, Imogen Cunningham and one other). From that day on, I have relentlessly pursued finding everything I can about women artists and their creative processes. I still recall the thrill of discovering Artemisia Gentileschi. As far as specific artists and their work, I’m deeply enamored of Joan Mitchell’s paintings. 

MKM: Who are your female role models from history or present day? 

MG: My female role models are many and they have shifted places as the years progress. My earliest heroine was Georgia O’Keeffe followed by Anaïs Nin and Colette. Now I look to the Abstract Expressionist painters like Mitchell and Lee Krasner for inspiration. Artists like Kiki Smith, Phyllida Barlow and Kara Walker also are part of my pantheon. 

MKM: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

MG: The best piece of advice I’ve been given is from my Mother who told me to “follow your heart”.

MKM: What is your dream project?

MG: My dream project is to have a one person show in Paris.

MKM: What can we expect to see from you in the year ahead?

MG: What you can expect to see from me this year is the creation of new works both three dimensional and two dimensional. I have a couple of exhibitions lined up and a lot of work to accomplish. 

https://www.michellegregor.com

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31 Women – March 24th: Sara V Cole

31 Women – March 24th: Sara V Cole

Sara V Cole           
Cyclone Series No. 2. C, 2016        
Acrylic, gesso and graphite on Arches Cover Paper mounted on canvas, on wooden bars 

Sara V Cole

Sara V Cole is a nationally represented, internationally exhibited author, teacher and fine art painter with a full-time art making studio practice. Cole earned her BFA in  ceramic sculpture and installation/performance art with a minor in art history. She then completed her MFA in painting and drawing and went on to study graduate level Non-Western Contemporary Art History, all at San José State University. 

When considering women in art and history that have made an impact on her life, Cole listed dozens of women, from artists to politicians. In the category of women artists, she says, “I could name fifty I love, but here are ten that I am obsessed with: Adrienne Piper, Alice Neel, Julie Mehretu, Shahzia Sikander, Käthe Kollwitz, Hung Liu, Artemesia, Ann Hamilton, Marlene Dumas and of course who doesn’t love a little Frida!” In addition to this top ten, Cole recalled seeing the SFMOMA Eva Hesse exhibition in 2002. She says she still responds to the memories of this exhibition and that fragments of those works continue to resonate in her own work today. 

Sara V Cole’s studio in San Jose

Thinking back to her childhood, she described growing up with a radical hippie 1960s mom and cannot remember a day that “I didn’t know about Gloria Steinem, Dorothy Pitman-Hughes and Ms. Magazine.” Her favorite female authors include Maya Angelou, Joy Harjo, Mary Oliver, bell hooks, Audre Lorde and Sylvia Plath. She says other “badass women” also inform and inspire her life, such as: Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Simone de Beauvoir, Betty Friedan, Angela Davis, Shirley Chisholm, Elizabeth Warren, Kamala Harris and Michelle Obama. 

Cole has placed work in the permanent collections of The Triton Museum of Art, Hilton Hotels, the Microsoft Collection, Stanford University, the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, the Ritz Carlton in Laguna Niguel, the Grand Hyatt in Atlanta, Iberia Bank in Louisiana, and De Anza College in Cupertino. Her work can be found in the private collections of many patrons including that of Actress Sela Ward and the New York based National Art Buyer for One King’s Lane. She has an extensive exhibition history including New York City’s Asian Cultural Center Gallery and group exhibitions from Seattle, Washington to Metz, France.  

https://www.saravcoleart.com

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31 Women – March 23rd: Brigitte McReynolds

31 Women – March 23rd: Brigitte McReynolds

Brigitte McReynolds                       
The Intelligence of Water, 2019
Oil on canvas

Brigitte McReynolds

Brigitte McReynolds

Brigitte McReynolds’ practice is a continuous investigation of abstraction and exploration of the human form. It is her visual diary, a “paper trail” of a process that is both spontaneous and deliberate. Working in layers of paint, she merges luminous color and palpable texture. For McReynolds, painting is a dynamic, intuitive process. A drip or smear reveals part of that process. 

McReynolds works in series that start as a concept in her mind, or as a vision of a finished work. It can also begin as an emotion or process of the heart. When she develops a theme, she explores it in multiple materials: oil, acrylic, and encaustic, working figuratively and abstractly until the idea exhausts itself, or leads to another theme. McReynolds applies what she learns from shape, form and line in her abstract paintings to find the simplicity that is needed for abstracting a figure. Similarly, her abstract work profits from her figurative experience.

Brigitte in the studio

Her works often have a recurrent pattern or an illusion of repetition. However, not one shape is the same as the other. Similar to life, where we have days, hours and minutes that create a pattern, yet not a single moment resembles the next. McReynolds explains “Although I enjoy working with the ‘shapelessness’ of stripes I also love to work on abstract paintings that maintain shapes and forms. A shape in a painting is like a figure in a landscape. For me the abstract shapes are alive. They have a heart, an area with vibrant color; intense brush strokes, the limbs.”

When contemplating inspiration, McReynolds finds the mystic works of Hilma af Klint breathtaking and has never forgotten her visit to the Italian Tarot Garden designed by Niki de Saint Phalle. Inspiration also comes to her from women speaking out for justice through the #MeToo movement, and from the work of public figures like Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Senator Nancy Pelosi. McReynolds is most inspired by her mother, whom she describes as a creative, kind, humble and generous woman. She admires her mother’s strength, hard work and devotion in raising McReynolds and her siblings – nine children in total, while she managed her busy restaurant and hotel business.

Brigitte McReynolds is represented by Whitney Modern Gallery, Los Gatos; Pryor Fine Art, Atlanta, GA; Seager Gray Gallery, Mill Valley, CA; Jules Place, Boston, MA; and Eminent Design, Sonoma, CA.

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31 Women – March 22nd: Karen Gallagher Iverson

31 Women – March 22nd: Karen Gallagher Iverson

Karen Gallagher Iverson                
Gilded Dunes, Bodega Bay in Crimson, 2019
Pochoir and drawn colored pastel on wax on 3 panels

An Interview with Karen Gallagher Iverson

Karen Gallagher Iverson

MKM: Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up? Were you always creative?

KGI: I was born in Queens NY, within a very large extended family, mostly based throughout the five boroughs of NYC. We moved upstate to a commuter area when I was a kid. My mom always drew and painted and easily took on most any other creative craft she found interesting. Including her intense knitting habit today. Art supplies, and “the good watercolor paper” were always around and waiting for us kids to make something. I was extremely lucky to attend also a public school district that had a robust arts program. Something I didn’t fully appreciate then, and recognize as being even more significant now that I’m a parent in the Oakland Unified School District. It was easy to be creative when you didn’t have to try too hard to gain access. Both at home and in school. We had a kiln in our elementary school, welding and wood shop in middle school, dark room photography in high school. It’s amazing to look back on it.

MKM: Why did you pursue art?

KGI: At first I didn’t. I wanted to work in scientific illustration as early as the 6th grade, but was advised by my academic counselors that that field was dwindling, and suggested to become a nurse – which is a good field for women after all. That suggestion seemed absolutely ridiculous to me. Looking back I should have been directed toward graphic design. I originally went to college for Archeology and Anthropology, with a minor in Studio Arts (quickly a double major, then a complete switch in major to Studio Arts). My first apartment in my early 20s caught fire and burned down. I realized after fleeing a burning building, after the frenzy of trying to escape, that what I was studying in the ground wasn’t necessarily the truth of life, but was the record of what wasn’t important enough to take when braving the flames of change. You grab whats alive when you flee. In truth (or at least in my truth) the vibrancy of a culture is what lives on with you, and I realized that semester that I wanted to sink into that vision of the world. Visual art served that best.

MKM: Where did you study?

KGI: For my undergraduate degree I went to SUNY Albany, and my MFA was at the San Francisco Art Institute.

MKM: Did you have any memorable teachers at SFAI?

KGI: I consider my undergraduate printmaking instructor, Thom O’Conner to be my first major mentor. At the San Francisco Art Institute my most memorable Instructors were Jeremy Morgan, Tim Berry and Gordon Kluge. Even this year, 17 years after graduating, random remarks by Kluge ring true to some process I’m working on. Usually things that made no sense at the time, even things I whole heartedly rejected, I now think “oh… thats what you were trying to tell me!” From grade school through High School Wendy Feman-Pernice and Peggy Ellis always provided safe places to land. Those early years are so socially awkward for young creatives who haven’t found their voice yet.

Karen’s studio

MKM: When you’re creating what’s your daily routine? Rituals, patterns?

KGI: A typical Studio Day: My studio is right below my home, so before I go downstairs I make coffee, and I try to take care of some household chore, like start a load of laundry or defrost dinner. Once I enter my studio – I’m on the clock and don’t take care of family things until I return with my kids after school. I guard this time jealously. So much so that I set an alarm to go off at 1pm to remind myself to eat lunch. I turn on my Computer. Assemble my studio planner, studio notebook, process notebook, source material (sketches, print outs, photos, etc.) and I put on some continuous sound in the background – either a series on Netflix that just plays in the back ground, streaming music radio, or even a song on repeat when I’m close to grabbing hold of something and can use the repetition). I look at my notebooks and planner and see either what tasks need to be done today (like melt wax or gesso panels) or where I left off the day before on some imaging task. I keep notes on everything. Colors I mix and use, material ratios, when I begin using a blade in my cutter, exposure times if Im working on a photo print project, even the edit chain in photoshop of my photo source images. I also log random thoughts and ideas that come up while I’m working and keep it with the project at hand. Even when I was a teenager in beginning print classes I had a similar way of working. The way I approach printmaking is very methodical. Not a lot of emotive in the moment romance. I basically design a concept and idea, lay out a plan and get it done. Much of what people consider the ‘in the moment creative expression’ happens for me in my mind, in the way I plan things to layer, through the choices I make along the way, and when I’m drawing into my final layers. 

Karen’s studio

None of this would probably work except I compulsively take photos throughout my day, especially when in family mode adventuring around. I also journal in a notes app on my phone. A few words that catch me, things I’m thinking of, random impressions during the day like “huh this is the 3rd day in a row when the hills look pasty and gray, but its sunny and hot … gray during full daylight” then it later turns into a lithograph series. I also sketch with watercolors regularly. Sometimes just pushing material around because it feels nice. I often print out photos and colors that are catching my eye and just cary them around to look at. Think on whats grabbing my attention and why. 

If I’m playing around with a new series, its a little different. I’m not sure why, but I work better on beginning something new at night or the end of the studio day. Even if its on my phone while getting my kids to sleep, I’ll look though photos and notes and begin to reduce whispers of ideas into concepts, and indulge in what’s visually appealing to me. Its important to me to tie materials and processes to the overall content of the work and how I can filter concepts through media; whats gained or lost by it. I also will keep the remnants of my art making if they catch my eye. Sometimes i’ll like the visual quality and years later it will show up in a completely unrelated project. That’s how I arrived at my current encaustic landscapes. It was a random out take from work I did back in 2005 with carbon paper. I harvest all those bits and later use them as seeds. Once I settle on those basic components – I make a plan then get to work in the coming weeks. 

More views of Karen’s studio

MKM: How has your practice changed over time?

KGI: My process is very much linked to my innate personality. Many things have always been here. I was 12 or 13 when I started collecting compelling (to me) images in sketch books. Something I basically still do, only now digitally. I always enjoyed collaging and working with photo source material. Integrating some poetic thought process into my concepts has remained the same. Albeit it was more illustrative when I was young, and more about finding universal themes now. I now have a more interconnected way of working. Perhaps a more holistic way of living within my studio practice. One significant area where I differ is with time management, that changed completely once I had children. I’m more targeted and less wasteful with my days.

MKM: Do you focus on a specific medium or combination of mediums? Which creative medium would you love to pursue but haven’t yet?

KGI: Integrating some aspect of printmaking as a process is integral to my practice. Once I realized it could take me where I wanted to go, I didn’t really falter from print. Although, as a medium it really can incorporate a whole host of other mediums. Painterly approaches, line drawing, photography, sculptural cuts, even all the new maker technology dovetails perfectly with printmaking. Hmm, maybe I picked printmaking for its position as a middle ground? I’ve not worked much with wood, either wood cuts, wood type, mokulito (wood lithography).  I’m not sure why. I’ve been looking in that direction lately. I’ve also never made an artists book. I can’t easily wrap my head around it, but keep thinking it could really be a great format to experiment in. 

MKM: What themes do you pursue?

KGI: The common theme in most of my current work can be reduced to catching, or translating, light and dimension though pattern. It’s been really wild to see just how endlessly I can play and recombine these basic elements across all the different materials and processes at my disposal. 

(Detail) Gilded Dunes, Bodega Bay in Crimson, 2019

MKM: What is your most important tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio?

KGI: Probably my computer. So much of what I do is touched by it. If we entered into a period of global black out, I’m sure I’d figure something else out, but at the moment, I think its a common tool within everything I do. 

MKM: Is there an artwork you are most proud of? Why?

KGI: Probably my Variable Horizons work. Its my largest work to date, at 2 ft by 12 ft long, which is a considerable large work for encaustic. It took roughly 4 to 5 weeks of continuous daily work, and I was 7 months pregnant with a 3 year old up in the house. The sheer size and time was an endeavor. But, it’s also the only work I’ve ever made in response to the death of my infant son, about 9 years ago. I was invited to create a work in response to a theme, Corporeal Chronologies. The organizer of the show was familiar with earlier work of mine that was very body focused, he didn’t know that I was working pretty exclusively with landscape imagery. It was a wonderful way to incorporate my current work with such a delicate concept. One that could easily turn dark and abrasive. I was pleased with the way place, and life and grief through time came together in that work. 

MKM: What has been a seminal experience?

KGI: For sure becoming a parent, is a major event to most. Since my first baby died as a newborn, I’d say that was a seminal an experience for me, on many levels. It was a reset professionally. I was printing and making art, teaching, and I had been working as a studio manager for an artist of international acclaim.  When my son passed away, it all stopped. I stopped making art, I stopped teaching, and I never returned to a full time day job after that. It also opened the world back up to me in a bizarrely fresh way. My role in the world was completely severed and rebuilt from scratch. I was able to grow my studio practice back into my daily life in a way I never was able to do before. 

MKM: What art do you most identify with?

KGI: Abstraction and conceptual. People often think I’ll be drawn to representational imagery since I currently work with recognizable landscapes. I find more affinity with the poetic exploration in conceptual work and abstraction. 

MKM: What inspires you? Other artists, other women from history, your process, a theme?

KGI: Sudden shifts in light. Driving down a road and having the light flip suddenly. 

MKM: Do you have a sense of connection to a particular woman artist from art history?

KGI: Louise Bourgeois. Everything I’ve read on her points to a person of skill, whose tenacity and prolific activity slowly erodes at the life she’s built into. Ultimately really great work is able to  emerge.  

MKM: Is there a specific work from Louise Bourgeois that you find interesting? 

KGI: Her drawings and drypoint etchings. They could easily be overlooked. With the volume of them that exist, they demand to be looked at, given attention. And when you do, all the exquisite subtlety and conceptual interconnectedness comes to light and you cant unsee it.

MKM: Who are your female role models from history or present day?

KGI: Agnes Martin. The rejection of it all. I never see her work as an exploration or justification of gender. I never saw her career as an avenue to fame or celebrity. It was just honest, beautiful art work; and work that was able to rise with success in a very male art world. 

MKM: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

KGI: There have been two that continually inspire, and seem to work for any occasion. When I was working on a print edition with Kay Bradner, she let out “Reckless Abandon!” At the time she said it when using an enormous c-clamp to crack walnuts, because that’s what was handy on her kitchen table. But I find, when used responsibly, it’s often the right rallying cry to make. Plus, it’s good to make do some times without over thinking. The other is “You can boss me around as long as you boss me to victory” a friend exclaimed when given unsolicited advice during a card game. Nothing wrong with taking direction if it helps get you where you want to go. Also, a reminder about remaining humble. Is what I want to suggest really going to bring someone further to their victory? Or, maybe an off-putting remark I received needs to be let go of, because it was never going to serve my initiatives generously.

MKM: What is your dream project? What can we expect from you in the next year?

KGI: My dream? I want to make gigantic  wall sized landscape watercolors with hand painted photo halftones. Like, really big. “Only wall big enough is in the de Young” big. Thats a bit far out there. I’m already starting on large watercolors, but not that big yet. They take forever and have zero room for forgiveness. I’m planning to work more on paper this year. Both press work and hand painted work. More seascapes, too.

Karen’s studio

https://www.gallagheriverson.com

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31 Women – March 21st: Sawyer Rose

31 Women – March 21st: Sawyer Rose

Sawyer Rose
Lyra, 2017
Silver solder, copper, fiberglass
18 x 18 x 18 inches     

An Interview with Sawyer Rose

Sawyer Rose

MKM: Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up? Were you always creative?

SR: I grew up in Charlotte, NC, middle kid of three. My mom had all of us in art lessons from a young age. It was just at the nice lady’s house a few streets over, but as the creative kid of the family, I ate it up. At home I had three or four unfinished craft projects lying around the house at all times. 

MKM: Why did you pursue art and where did you study?

SR: I went to Williams College which has a wonderful Art department. It took maybe 6 weeks of my first year to decide that I wanted Art to be my major. Fortunately, the department required both Art History and studio classes, so I ended up with a well-rounded experience.

MKM: Did you have any memorable teachers at Williams College?

SR: My senior year painting professor was completely comfortable with my odd studio hours and wild experimentation on canvas. So was my photography tutor at Glasgow School of Art. I learned loads in both of their classes, but the most valuable takeaway was that it was ok, even encouraged, to let my practice develop outside of the academic box.

MKM: When you’re creating what’s your daily routine? Rituals, patterns?

SR: Daily routine? No. All work patterns conform to the elementary and middle school calendars. 

Sawyer in the studio

MKM: How has your practice changed over time?

SR: I began my practice as an oil painter, but I kept wanting to add a third dimension to my 2-D works. After many years I decided to try my hand at true 3-D sculpture and found it suited me much better. It’s only in the past year that I have started making 2-D works again, but now I make them by choice rather than by default.

MKM: Do you focus on a specific medium or combination of mediums? Which creative medium would you love to pursue but haven’t yet?

SR: I work in metal, wood, and fiber mostly. I find natural, earthy materials to be the easiest for me to wrap my mind around. Metal is a finicky, willful material to work with, which I have learned to enjoy. Metal does as it pleases.

MKM: What themes do you pursue?

SR: I like to make work that shines a light on social and environmental topics that are important to me. My metalworks are based on the native flora of California and ask viewers to consider what plants would look like if they could grow armor to protect themselves. In another vein, my work on The Carrying Stones Project takes a deep dive into women’s work inequity. I look at women’s paid and unpaid labor, but also at the wage gap, representation of women the workplace, and other ways in which people who identify as female are fighting an uphill battle at work and in their communities. 

MKM: What is your most important tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio?

SR: Does whiskey count? (Kidding!!) I love my belt sander. It’s powerful and versatile and can solve a lot of sculpture problems quickly. 

MKM: Is there an artwork you are most proud of? Why?

SR: I’m most proud, seemingly counterintuitively, of the pieces I make that don’t feel like they came out of me. It’s a thrilling way to get a glimpse of what my subconscious might look like.

MKM: What art do you most identify with?

SR: I’m attracted to art that highlights repetition and pattern while still maintaining an organic sensibility. Near-symmetry and flawed reproduction are mainstays of my production process. 

Lyra installed in 31 Women at Whitney Modern

MKM: Do you have a sense of connection to a particular woman artist from art history?

SR: Lee Bontecou’s sculpture work is stunning. It takes my breath away every time.

MKM: Is there a specific work from Lee Bontecou that you find interesting?

SR: Bontecou’s steel and canvas wall pieces are particularly inspiring for me, as I also work in metal. Her armatures are the stuff of dreams.

MKM: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given?

SR: “Never assume anyone else’s motivations are the same as your own.” My high school Spanish teacher told me this, apropos of what I can’t remember. When I’m trying to decide how to best educate my audience about a particular topic, I try to remember that every viewer comes with their own history, their own learning, and their own prejudices. I want people to feel comfortable starting their learning from where they are right now.

MKM: What can we expect from you in the next year?

SR: In the next year I will be building a new group of installation sculptures for The Carrying Stones Project that tell the stories of some truly fascinating working women. Eventually, I’m going to publish a book of all the work from the project.

http://www.sawyerrose.com

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31 Women – March 20th: Elena Zolotnitsky

31 Women – March 20th: Elena Zolotnitsky

Elena Zolotnitsky  
HER (Extinct Series), 2018               
Oil on mylar mounted to panel
Courtesy of Andra Norris Gallery

An Interview with Elena Zolotnitsky

A visit to Elena Zolotnitsky’s studio

MKM: Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up? Were you always creative? 

EZ: I grew up in Moscow. My father worked as a free-lance illustrator and a set designer at the major Moscow Movie Studio. While growing up I was always encouraged to do art: draw, paint watercolor, attend special art classes, et cetera. I became serious about art at the age of 14 and was passionate enough to focus on pursuing it.

MKM: Where did you study? Did you have any memorable teachers?

EZ: I started to study with tutors and get to ready to pass the exams at VGIK (All State Institute of Cinematography) majoring in the Art of Animation. I graduated in 1987 with a 10-minute hand animation movie as a creative director. The movie is titled From 9am to 6 pm. The director, the screen writer and the creative director (myself) were women. I was hired a year before I graduated, and it took our team exactly a year to finish the project. Oddly enough I have to mention two things that might be important, that surfaced years after that movie was done. The movie itself is about one day in the life of a woman architect and about her juggling her creativity, career, her family and everyday life. This movie can be found on YouTube and it is still shown on Russian television around 8th of March every year – International Women’s Day. In a way we were breaking the ground rules, [because we were] the first women’s creative team, and one of the first animations with “adults” in mind. Until then, animation was mostly a “children’s” affair. And the second important thing was the celluloid. The transparent plastic sheets that were used as a surface for painting and drawing. And you will understand why later. My most memorable teacher was Vadim Kyrchevskiy. He taught animation courses and he taught us life mostly. 

MKM: When you are creating what’s your daily routine? Rituals, patterns? 

EZ: My day starts with a 10-mile walk around Lake Merritt in Oakland. It’s a must. When I do not have that my whole day is thrown off. It clears my head, I can daydream about the day ahead, think about my new projects, et cetera. 

Work in progress in the studio

MKM: How has your practice changed over time?

EZ: My practice changed with the deepening of understanding of what painting is, and about what it means to me. For years after finishing college and already living here in America, maybe because of the editorial illustration I was working on, maybe because I was still trying to “find” myself – my paintings were super “controlled”; with the elements of design and very stylized. Now, I call them “coloring between the lines”. Something was missing and I couldn’t figure, or wasn’t mature enough to figure out what it is. Gradually, after a period of ups and downs, the creative blocks and changing coasts in the 30th year of my career, I started to understand what the painting was about (for me) and how to make it alive. And it continues to change, I am always growing and evolving….

MKM: Do you focus on a specific medium or combination of mediums? Which creative medium would you love to pursue but haven’t yet?

EZ: I work with oils on different supports. Have been favoring MYLARS (remember the celluloid!) lately. It is the hardest to “control” super slick surface. Very challenging and engaging. Keeps me totally focused….

MKM: What themes do you pursue?

EZ: I can paint everything – flowers, cityscapes, landscape, nudes, still-life, portraits. I have been focusing on the latter. Maybe because a face can be all of those things, plus. I favor “oneness” as a theme; for now….

MKM: What is your most important tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio?

EZ: Day light, my art books and a palette knife…

Inside Elena’s studio

MKM: Is there an artwork you are most proud of?

EZ: Yes, many. Because I can’t copy them or repeat them. They are truly one of a kind with the life of their own. Also, if they were created (“channeled”) at a pivotal point of my career. One of those points was a heart break, and another – my mother’s death.

MKM: What art do you most identify with?

EZ: The one that I don’t know how it was done. It intrigues and mystifies me….

MKM: What inspires you? Other artists, other women from history, your process, a theme?

EZ: Oddly enough, the older I become – the less enchanted I become by others. I still look for the holy grail of mystery in the museums. They are harder to find. My focus shifts at different times. Apart from Dutch, Early Netherland and Flemish – like Hans Memling, Pieter Bruegel and Rembrandt, my favorite are Paul Cézanne, Richard Diebenkorn and Gerhard Richter. The female artist being Berthe Morisot and Agnes Martin. 

I do get inspired by a face. Either live or a photo of it. I like to paint androgynous – they are the most mysterious to me. Beautiful, ubiquitous. I consider my painting a success if I got lost in it. And it’s a bonus if I have something reasonable to show for it, or at least learn from it…

MKM: Do you have a sense of connection to a particular woman artist from art history? 

EZ: I feel connected not to anything specific. I admire strong point of view, a craft, a deep understanding of the media, a voice, a vulnerability, a mystery. And there are so many. I come across them practically every day – those revelations that make my day. They tweak my creativity in this or that way, very slightly. They stay with me on my early morning walks. And it has nothing to do with the gender. It everything to do with the “goodness” of their art.

MKM: Who are your female role models from history or present day?

EZ: My female role model from history is Hellen Keller for obvious reasons. And my role models from present days are some of my girlfriends. They live in different parts of the world. Some of them have been having a very hard life – poor health, insufficient funds – but they keep it together. They persevere. They grow old as I do. They have their problems. But they never give up. They inspire me.

MKM: What is the best piece of advice you have been given?

EZ: The best piece of advice? I don’t think I have the answer. The best advice is usually the one that you get when needed the most. Sometimes, when I am stuck, I spend hours going through Goodreads Quotes looking for answers. It’s all there – the wisdom of enchanted humanity.

MKM: What is your dream project? 

EZ: My dream project is Artists Residency in Bellagio, Italy. Or American Academy in Rome.

MKM: What can we expect from you in the next year?

EZ: I do not know what to expect today. And you are asking about next year!

INSPIRED FOR LIFE
When I was 6 or 7 years old growing up in Moscow, some 30 years before  the experience made its way into the consciousness of my journey, I liked to “play secrets”. As an only child I had to occupy myself somehow and that game was as good as any because I could easily do it on my own. It involved wrappers for chocolates. The ones that you’ve managed to consume of course! The better chocolates – the more intricate the wrappers were. The best were the ones with the picture in the middle (it could even be a tiny replica of some famous Russian masterpiece hanging at Tretyakov Gallery) and the silver lining. After spending hours on folding them, still smelling of chocolate,  just right, completed with the silver design of the lining leaf, you had to hunt for another necessary element of a “secret”. That would be a piece of glass. The beer bottled ones, amber in color were the most magical. Then you had to bury the folded rapper with the glass on top in the shallow grave of the playground’s dirt. That was a “secret”. The magic happened when the young “artist”, on all fours and with her nose close to the ground, started to push the dirt away with her single finger in a slow little circular motion, clearing the tiny window of colored glass…. What a transformation! In the first shock of discovery it takes you a while to comprehend what you were actually seeing….Then it sinks in:a mystery of familiar….And the feeling! Of wonder, of revelation. I think that all my life I am chasing that feeling – the mystery to be discovered. That instantaneous shift of reality, the recognition of magic.  – Elena Zolotnitsky

Elena Zolotnitsky is represented by Andra Norris Gallery in Burlingame, CA

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31 Women – March 18th: Sandy Ostrau

31 Women – March 18th: Sandy Ostrau

Sandy Ostrau
Encountering Light Through the Fog, 2020                                   
Oil on wood panel

An Interview with Sandy Ostrau

Sandy Ostrau

MKM: Tell me about your childhood, where did you grow up? Were you always creative? 

SO: I grew up in Palo Alto. I enjoyed art making from a very young age. You could often find me surrounded by my treasured art supplies, drawing and coloring for hours at a time. One of my bedroom walls was covered entirely with bulletin board so I could hang my art. 

MKM: Why did you pursue art? 

SO: I started a business selling my designs on textiles and clothing and that launched my career of selling my art. I moved into painting because I was interested in learning to use oils. I found them to be a perfect medium for my style of art. 

MKM: Where did you study art? 

SO: I studied Art History and took drawing classes at UCSB. After college I have taken numerous drawing and painting classes at the Pacific Art League and Palo Alto Art Center. 


MKM: Did you have any memorable art teachers?

Jim Smyth and Brigitte Curt have both been incredible teachers and mentors throughout the years. Brigitte Curt teaches impressionist plein-air painting and Jim Smyth is a drawing and figure painting instructor. They are excellent teachers and both accomplished artists.

Sandy Ostrau’s studio

MKM: When you’re creating what’s your daily routine? Rituals, patterns? 

SO: I arrive at my studio by 10 am and I begin my day by mixing colors. I find the rhythmic movement of using the palette knife to mix is a great warm up and I then have a palette to work with for the day. It’s a wonderful ritual to focus my attention and loosen me up. Most importantly it switches my thinking to a work mode. 

MKM: How has your practice changed over time? 

SO: It hasn’t changed much over the years other than I used to spend more time painting outdoors and now I do most of my painting in the studio. 

MKM: Do you focus on a specific medium or combination of mediums? 

SO: I paint with oil paint, but I often sketch with graphite or ink and sometimes paint with acrylic on paper. I use paper and acrylic for studies. 

MKM: Which creative medium would you love to pursue but haven’t yet? 

SO: Print making. I’ve been thinking about it for a while and in the near future I’d like to try it out. 

MKM: What themes do you pursue? 

SO: Mostly I work at integrating the figure into my paintings, whether interiors or landscapes. I’m mainly a landscape painter but I use figurative elements to connect the viewer to my work and to instill a feeling into the painting. 

MKM: What is your most important tool? Is there something you can’t live without in your studio? 

SO: My favorite tool is my large rolling palette cart that my husband built for me. I can wheel it around and it’s a big area for mixing a lot of paint. I use brushes and palette knives. I don’t really prefer one to the other and can transfer from one to the other easily. Also, Viva paper towels are essential. 

Sandy Ostrau’s studio

MKM: Is there an artwork you are most proud of?

SO: I did a painting that was exhibited in an exhibition called Inspired by David Park a few years ago. I sold the painting after the show to a couple that moved to Santa Rosa with that treasured painting a few months before their home (and the painting) burnt down. It was so tragic for the family to lose everything. They kept telling me how much they missed the painting too. In addition, I think my early small outdoor landscape paintings are very special because they allowed me to paint the same scene over and over and experiment with value, color and shape in a way that you just can’t working large in a studio. Working from nature not from photos I think produces the best work and really trains your eye. 

MKM: What has been a seminal experience? 

SO: Painting outdoors. It allows you to work directly from nature, make a lot of small works so you can learn the painting process without worrying about making a great painting, and work quickly. I came to love outdoor painting and working from nature. I actually prefer it to painting in the studio. 

MKM: What art do you most identify with? 

SO: The art of Nicholas De Stael, Edward Munch, Joan Brown, Kim Frohsin, David Park and Richard Diebenkorn are painters I greatly admire. Also, Masaccio from the early Renaissance. 

MKM: What inspires you? 

SO: Nature is what inspires me primarily. More specifically, I am always astounded by the beauty of California. 

MKM: Do you have a sense of connection to a particular woman artist from art history? 

SO: I am particularly interested in the work of Joan Brown. I love how she depicts her scenes with such simplicity yet she captures the gesture and persona of her subjects. The impasto paint and expressive brush and knife work is thrilling. 

MKM: Is there a specific work from Joan Brown that you find interesting? 

SO: Girl Standing, Girl Sitting 1962 

MKM: Who are your female role models from history or present day? 

SO: I have always admired Kim Frohsin for how dedicated and her accomplishments as an artist. She follows her own voice, which I admire. Her work is entirely original and expresses her own interpretation of the figure or any subject. She is also highly skilled as both a draftsperson and a painter. 

MKM: What’s the best piece of advice you’ve been given? 

SO: There are two things my teacher Jim Smyth taught me that have been instrumental in my work. First, paint what the subject is “doing” rather than “what it looks like.” This is a way to shift your thinking so the work will express what is happening rather than just depicting a scene like a photograph; the work will have more feeling. The second is that value (light and dark) is more important than color, and the relationship and patterns created by dark and light is the basis for composition.

MKM: What is your dream project? 

SO: I love creating a body of work for an exhibit, especially a solo exhibit. 

MKM: What can we expect from you in the next year? 

SO: More exploration of figure work and possibly some portraits; also larger works.

Sandy Ostrau is represented by Bryant Street Gallery, Palo Alto, CA; Gallery North, Carmel, CA; Sue Greenwood Fine Art, Laguna Beach, CA; Thomas Reynolds Gallery, San Francisco, CA; Anne Loucks Gallery, Glencoe, IL; LeeAnn Brook Fine Art, Nevada City, CA; Anne Neilson Fine Art, Charlotte, NC; Peterson Roth Gallery, Bend OR; and Meyer Vogl Gallery, Charleston, SC.

http://www.sandyostrau.com