Elena Lavorato Gets to Know Garrett Perry

 Can you tell me a little about your process? How much change does the painting undergo from what you originally set out to create?
My work is very process driven and the paintings change quite a bit during the process. Usually I'll have an idea of what I want to paint. I work in my sketchbook to determine compositions and concepts. I initially paint fast and with vigor. After a ground of bold and bright colors is laid down I tend to slow down. I then intuitively respond to the shapes and alter and add layers. I typically will set paintings aside and come back to them weeks later. I like responding to them with a fresh set of instincts.

 The placement and size of some of your figures are reminiscent of traditional portraiture, in particular Romantic Imagination; however the subject is disfigured or partially concealed in a way. Are you in fact mimicking traditional portrait style and in what manner?

Yes. I use traditional portraiture as a departure point. The intent is not to disfigure the subject but for the physicality of the paint to create a barrier between the subject and viewer.

The majority of your paintings appear as close ups, a snap shot of a much larger scene, can you tell me anything about this?

They are. They are segments of a larger scene, memories of a story that has been mostly forgotten. They are meant to be elusive.

Your color pallet reminds me of an ice cream rainbow, what attracts you to pastel colors?

I like mixing a lot of white with my paint to make the painting appear flat. I don't think of them as pastels but as colors being within a similar value range. If the paintings were grey scale they'd all be a similar grey.

You say on your website that you watched a lot of television in your younger years, why was that the case?
I am a child of the late 80's/ early 90's. It was available.

How do television and visual culture inspire your paintings?

It's not so much TV as it is visual culture in general. I take images from the internet, magazines and art history books and use them as visual sources. From the visual sources I work in my sketch book to create compositions and ideas.

Do you surround yourself by anything inspiring while you paint? Photographs? Music?

Music is extremely important to my process. I need to be wearing headphones to keep myself distracted from the real world. I also surround myself with images. My studio is filled with open books, magazines, photographs, and computer print outs.

Who are your favorite artists?

In no particular order. Max Beckmann, George Condo, Picasso, Matisse, Rembrandt, Tal R, Eric Yahnker, Chantal Joffe, Allison Schulnik, Dana Schutz, Jeff Koons, Gerhard Richter, Brad Phillips, and Cindy Sherman. They have all been very influential over the last ten years, at one point or another.

Check out Garrett Perry's work, along with Sophia Heymans, in Lovesickness With Trees at SooVAC. For more information click here!

Elena Lavorato Gets to Know Exhibiting Artist Benjamin Rogers

the past has its place

    

1.  Can you tell me a little about your work in general?

            My work doesn’t really have a central theme really, but I do try to construct a visual frame that links all the paintings and all the drawings.  Each painting is an opportunity to explore different subject matter, often times I make paintings that are about the creative process and how that intersects with my personal and professional life.  Generally my paintings take on a multitude of meanings and I don’t feel comfortable pontificating to the viewer what each piece should mean.  I like people to interact with my paintings, investigate them, and whatever interpretation they create is okay by me.  It isn’t really up to me how it will or won’t affect people.  I also take special care to assign titles to the work that will engage a viewer’s imagination instead of spell out the meaning for them.  A pet peeve of mine is when artists explain away all of the aura and magic of there work of art.  As a viewer I like having a little bit of mystery.

  

2. Your paintings are so complicated and realistic, how do you plan out all of these components before paint actually meets canvas?

the morning never knows what the afternoon holds dear

         The truth is that I don’t plan out all of the components of the painting before I begin.  I do begin with a fairly exact drawing, and a good understanding of what the end product will be, however that almost always changes as I get into the painting.  I am constantly adding and subtracting things as I go along, trying to find the right combination of substance and style.  I work from photographs, but try to reference them as little as possible, so that I don’t feel like I am trying to recreate a photo on a canvas.  I want to create an entirely unique image that takes advantage of the physical properties of paint.  

      I am interested in creating contrasting dimensionality, by making large flat color fields next to highly formed objects or figures.  So I treat the picture plane like an abstract surface and pay special attention to foundational formal principles, such as color relationships, value distribution, balance, composition etc.  In the course of creating a painting I may have a plan for how it will look, but once I start adding paint to the surface the reality strays from my intentions, which is good, and I react by inserting whatever feels right for the concept of the painting and what fits in a formal framework.

3. Do you set up a scene and then photograph it or do you work from photographs you find?

 

one among the many

         I create a scene and then photograph it, (with one exception, my drawing One Among the Many was a photograph of one of my former students that I found).  I will begin a work one of several ways, sometimes I start with a title and build the rest from there, sometimes I want to try something challenging like make a Pink painting, or sometimes I have an idea of a subject or object that I want to use.  Sometimes I know exactly the image I want when I go to photograph, and sometimes I have a general idea and just keep trying new things until I find it.  I use the different components in the scene to inform the narrative of the painting, so I do put a lot of    thought into what goes into each image.

4. Why do many of your subjects look directly out from the painting at the viewer?

            I really like experimenting with the gaze of my subjects and how they interact with the viewer.  In film when a character looks into the camera or addresses the audience it’s called breaking the fourth wall, in painting you see this happen all the time through art history, famously in Olympia by Manet.  I think that I use it as a way of talking about the artifice of the surface, that I’m making something that is naturalistic but doesn’t pretend to be something other than a painting.  When the figure breaks the fourth wall in a film they are telling the audience that they understand that the film happening around them is not reality but they have a special insight into the land of make believe that the audience is peering into.  I think I’m trying to get the same affect with my figures.  I also think that it is easier for people to connect with a figure if they are making eye contact, so it’s way of getting the viewer’s attention.

 5. Why do you place yourself in your artwork?

           I am not in my artwork as often as people seem to think, I have a few paintings of my two best friends who look just like me and I will do a self portrait from time to time.  But I do admit, I paint myself enough that it’s noticeable.  And the only reason for that I suppose is that all of my work is largely about me and my understanding of the world.  A lot of my work is about the creative process which I can really only understand through the lens of my experience, so why not just go ahead and use my visage as the protagonist of the painting.

the hunger artist

6. Does the paint color deviate much from the true color of a scene? If so, how do you choose your color alterations?

Yes, quite a bit.  Since I don’t really look at the photograph very often the colors get changed and exaggerated.  I have made paintings that are more in the photorealistic genre, but I didn’t feel as free as I do when I simply use my intuition and understanding of painting to create entirely unique paintings.

7. I heard you taught at Normandale this past year, what classes did you teach? 

how far then, shall we say, that the east is from the west?

            

 I taught Painting 1, Painting 2, Drawing 1 and Watercolor Painting.  I loved teaching at Normandale, it was a great experience.  I had some really wonderful students and got to see some of them mature artistically.  I was a sabbatical replacement and wish I could have stayed on longer.

 8. Has teaching influenced your own artistic practice?

    

Yes, since teaching is an exercise in deconstruction of one’s practice, you really begin to understand your weaknesses.  This has encouraged me to really develop my weaknesses instead of avoiding them   as my natural tendency would dictate.

9. I saw that you received degrees in Arizona, Louisiana, and Kentucky; is the art scene different in Minneapolis?

that which we've built together throughout these many years

        I think that every large city has a different art culture, certain things are valued more, and certain types of work are more successful etc.  For instance, Phoenix, Long Beach and San Diego each have a certain style, or a prominent theme for the work that thrives in those areas.  There are some successful figurative artists in Phoenix, but the work that is the most successful deals with national identity/border issues or water issues. I think that the Minneapolis Art scene is similar in a lot of ways to that of Cincinnati (where I grew up) in that there isn’t really a predominant media, style or subject matter.   There also isn’t a lot of For-Profit galleries or “Blue Chip” galleries  but there is a great appreciation for creativity through things like the Art-A-Whirl.  However I get the sense that the country’s biggest Artwalk is more about having something interesting to do than having an opportunity to look at great art.  And for that matter it shouldn’t be, that’s a sort of terrible context to see art, I know because I went through a similar art walk 4-6 times a year at my studio in Cincinnati.  I do think that it’s amazing the way that Minnesota supports the arts,  there are a lot of funding opportunities for artists and a few really nice Non-Profit Galleries like Soo VAC.  I also see little hints of the New Orleans Art Scene in this city, because of peoples interest in beauty and oddity and their appreciation for diverse cultural expression. 

For more information on Critique of Pure Reason, Benjamin Roger's show opening August 2nd, CLICK HERE

Elena Lavorato Gets to Know Exhibiting Artist Sophia Heymans

March

Can you give me a brief description of your work?

Each landscape painting in my new series represents one month of the year and attempts to express a Minnesotan’s personal relationship to nature within that month.  I often think about the style as layering the figurative narrative of American Folk Art on top of the textural assemblages of Abstract Expressionism. There is a lot of wild and fast-paced surface build-up and then more controlled figures added later. To me, each painting is a different character and I am making a big family of 12.
 
Do you feel there is some advantage to depicting a scene from an angled aerial perspective?

March (detail)

The reason I choose an aerial perspective is because I want to show as much of the landscape as I can. I want the viewer to see everything that is happening all the way back to the horizon with nothing obscuring the view. Because of this perspective my paintings can become a giant stage for interactions between plants, landmarks and people. I give a much bigger role to the land than the sky in my paintings. I don’t have much interest in portraying the sky in paintings because compared to land/earth I think it lacks personality. For me, a very small amount of sky is enough to get the idea across.

How do you use paper mâché in your work? For texture?
 
I use it for texture but it also works as a composition tool. I place chunks of paper mâché (and other textural materials such as string and seeds) down first on the canvas before I use any paint and they become obstacles to work around which helps keep the composition from getting stale or predictable.
 

January

How did you come to use dryer lint with paint?

I first used dryer lint in college. I saw a pile of it in the trash in the laundry room of my dorm building and each piece was a different color from a different load of laundry. I thought “I could use that”. I don’t use it as much anymore because I don’t live in a place with a big laundry room, but I highly recommend it as a material. It almost always has a really interesting color or mix of colors that is hard to make with paint.

Thinking about what these scenes are, a prairie or a park, these are places that are normally depicted as serene or peaceful, but in you paintings there seems to be elements of chaos. Is this correct?

Yes, I think about chaos a lot. I like to play around with order/disorder. For instance the composition may be arranged tidily in a large circle but the plants making up those arrangements are strangely shaped, overgrown or laying dead in the snow.  I do believe nature is chaotic which makes it demand so much awe and reverence. That is the main reason I choose to paint landscapes.

What was your first art related experience?
   

January (detail)

My sister and I were homeschooled through childhood and every place on our family farm was transformed into a world that really only existed in our minds: branches at the top of a tree, a cleared out space in a cornfield, an empty bathtub, a colorful rug. They were all different settings in our highly intricate play world. I grew to understand that people could not see these places the same way we did. When I tried to tell my parents about them with my words they responded with very little interest.  I went looking for a different way to convey what I saw and experienced to others and I am still doing that to this day through painting. My sister must have felt the same way because she became an artist too. 


For more information on Sophia Heymans visit HERE. 
And more about the exhibition opening August 2nd HERE.

Elena Lavorato Gets to Know Exhibiting Artist Aaron Dysart

In regards to your sculptural practice, why are you interested in nature? 

       I really have problems with the word ‘nature’ as it always feels like a false category, as I do not believe in the supernatural, so nature is all there is, it is the grand system.  However it is often thought of as something other then us, and this manufactures distance and problems.  Knowing this, I still feel the disconnect.  I wish I didn’t, but I do. 

       The sculptures are trying to understand where this disconnect comes from and how I can get rid of it.  I want to be a positive part of the natural system, though I harbor a strong distrust of my thoughts of how this might come to be.  Nature is so much larger then us, I often wonder how much we can know for sure.  I am however not content to fester in skepticism, and try to push forward with the knowledge that I am probably wrong and always wear my earnestness on my sleeve.

What does the fake aspect of plastic or painted trees represent?

I enjoy when something is trying to be something else.  It ceases to be anything stable, as it is both the material it is made out of and the thing it is trying to be.  I love the fact that a discrete object can exist in this ambiguous, and at times, contradictory state.  

Do you have a memorable childhood experience involving art?

My origin myth starts with tee-ball.  My parents signed me up, and for our first game all the kids on my team ran onto the field calling the position they wanted to play.  Since I had no idea how the game was played I ended up in left field, which of course is pointless in a tee-ball game played by 6-year-olds.  I stayed out there making piles of grass for a couple innings as the other kids kept changing sides.  Seeing my complete non-interest my parents signed me up for ceramics classes at the Minnetonka Center for the Arts, so technically I was in art school before normal school.

       Where is your favorite place to be outside?     

The Minnehaha dog park is my favorite place in the world.  I could write a whole book on that place, but will just say that I think it's pure magic. 

 Do you have a preference when it comes to displaying art indoors or outdoors? Is one   more effective than the other?

I have been mostly outside for years now, and the work was there for conceptual reasons.  In attempting to understand how I relate and think about wilderness, I need to be physically in that space.  It isn’t always comfortable, and can be a pain in the ass, but it made sense for the work and I let that guide me.  The nice part is I didn’t have to look for shows, or wait for gallery space.  I just found a good spot and put it up.

This show was a conscious return to object making, which I have missed lately.  I love the discrete boundaries of an object and the physical act of making.  The difficulty in having objects seem vital pays off when you make something that holds ambiguity and contradiction yet provides an undeniable permanent physicality.  I don’t think I always achieve it, but it is what I am shooting for.

 

If you could only use three tools to make work for the rest of your artistic career, what would they be?

This sounds like a nightmare.  I am interested in having material being determined by the content of the work.  Because of this, the tools and techniques are always quite varied and can become tool intensive.  Sculpture can draw from anything, which allows me to continually learn new materials and constantly search out new skills.  If I was stuck with just three tools, the work would narrow and become material dependent, and that doesn’t really interest me. 

Come check out Aaron Dysart's show opening June 7th!!!

Elena Lavorato Gets to Know Exhibiting Artist Nate Burbeck

 Many of your paintings could be photographs, why does painting these scenes make them better? 

 Firstly, I'm not technically proficient enough to realize these works as photographs, but in truth I actually prefer them as  paintings. Painting allows for a certain amount of flexibility and I think it more easily opens up the possibilities for what can be done. I also enjoy the challenge that painting presents - to be able to depict what I'm trying to create in a convincing fashion. It's not automatic either and it takes time to accomplish that goal but I enjoy the process.

What do the smoke, balls, glowing light, and other surrealistic elements applied to everyday scenes represent?

They don't really have a ton of specific meaning to me in that one thing means this and another thing means something different, these elements are more there to give the paintings a surreal or psychological edge. Overall I'd say there's no one correct way to read each painting, the onus is on the viewer to fill in the gaps of meaning for themselves. And that's really what I'm most interested in for these paintings. Different people have different interpretations depending on how they see the work and what experiences they bring to it.

Do you personally know most of the people in your paintings, especially the ones with close up and detailed views of the faces?

For the most part yes. I prefer to have actual people pose for me (who I will photograph and use as reference for a given painting) and those people tend to be friends or people I know. There are some instances where I've had to use images from various online sources but ideally I try to find friends to pose for me.

 I’m curious to know if you were bored or dissatisfied as a child growing up in the Midwest and the things you saw made you fantasize about a more interesting world? Such as, what if there were reflective metallic balls over this field?

No, I wouldn't say I was bored with my surroundings growing up in the Midwest. Things were pretty normal, for whatever that's worth. My interest in these kinds of typical middle American settings has only really come up more recently, say in the last five years or so, and I think it mostly is just a result of working with what I see around me. There are interesting things to see here in flyover country, you just have to be willing to look.

 How old were you when you began to paint and what were your ideas or themes like then?

I've been doing art related things every since I was little, though that was mostly doodling and drawing. I got into painting somewhat late (I guess) when I was in my junior year at college. When I was first starting out with my own ideas I was more interested in symbolism, everything had a specific meaning. But now things are more generic, in the sense that I don't ascribe those attributes to what I paint, things are more open ended now. 

 I read your CV, can you elaborate on when you say …creating tension between what is familiar and what is distinctly surreal. I’m wondering because for me personally I get a dreamlike or calming feeling from your work and I was hoping you could tell me a bit more about the aspect of tension.

    I'd say there's some tension in the work but not all in equal measure. Mostly what I'm getting at with that is that there's a strange mix in my paintings, where most of the settings are familiar, maybe even uninspiring, everyday landscapes but within these seemingly mundane settings there's something strange going on, those elements that give the paintings a surreal or psychological edge. So there's a tension in having to reconcile with those two things that are existing in the same space. And like I said this isn't all in equal measure, there are some paintings that have more direct tension and even violent aspects - example, Highlands Ranch, Colorado - whereas others might be a little more quietly mysterious and not so jarring - as in Robbinsdale, Minnesota, etc. 

What art do you have hanging on your walls? 

 Umm, well mostly my paintings at the moment. I would have more art from other artist friends of mine but I just don't have a whole lot of space to do that right now. I have a sculptural wall piece from an artist friend that's currently living inside a box in my studio, eventually I'm planning on displaying it. I do however have a small, growing collection of art books that I'm pretty proud of, if that counts.

What are you working on now?

More painting! Currently I'm working on a larger piece that is based off of some photos I took on a weekend trip to Fort Dodge, Iowa. I'm excited to see how it will turn out.

For more information on Nate Burbeck visit HERE.

Elena Lavorato Gets to Know Exhibiting Artist Theresa Anderson

1. Can you tell me a little about the materials you use? Do you stumble upon them? Are they free? Do you search for certain pieces?

I spend a bit of time before each making spree scavenging freecycle, estate sales and thrift stores. Each sculpture is usually a mix of old and new. In the work, one shot big shot, a new slab of paint embedded with floral foam is tied with yellow electric tape around a structure of discarded wood. Heavy striped vinyl sits/ dangles off the base like a spent balloon.

One of my biggest coups was being contacted by the Artistic Director at PlatteForum Creative Residency a few years to come take a look at the discards from a previous artist. She knows I’m always searching for materials that have a certain kind of history to them, texture or color. The artist had left at least 40 old stretcher bars with the edges and sides of the paintings intact. I immediately loved them. I remember seeing the notes on the sides, the residue of the making and just knowing that they’d be fodder for something.  Old plastic garbage cans, bird cages, parts of lamps, sticks, wallpaper, vintage textiles such as fur, bra straps, pantyhose, picnic tablecloths, pillow stuffing, threads and ropes, feathers, tables, legs, kitsch holiday decorations, fake hair, fake flowers and all kinds of things make their way into the studio.  Quite often I’ll mess around with them over a long period of time before they’re either incorporated into a sculpture or given a new home with another artist to make room for other materials. 

2. Can you tell me about your sculptural practice in general and what your ideas and feelings are towards your work?

Overall my work is very circular moving between the daily drawing practice, painting and sculpture. I’m pulling apart ideas, thinking about the relationships of materials, and moving between abstraction and figuration. The sculptures represent a space of reasoning that often starts much more formally, centered around material requirements and ideas about body pivot points, fragmentation and movement. Each type of work allows me to reflect and push back into the research and notes about the ideas I’m thinking about. It’s pretty layered.

3. Why do you use pedestals to elevate certain sculptures rather than other materials?  Do you build these sculptures with the pedestal in mind?

All of these works have gone through relationships with the floor, furniture and the pedestal. I’ve played around documenting the works with pedestals as a way to bring the work back to some kind of formality- a leaving off of the emotional attachment, palette cleansers. I can put them back on kinds of living furniture or the floor to reinvigorate them with another kind of physicality.

4. Do you have a memory or memorable moment of your first childhood experience with art?
 

Some of my first memories are of sitting in the dirt painting rocks, coding doorjambs and driving nails into wood. I had a pretty vivid imaginary world, making costumes, writing plays, singing and dancing.

5. Do you play a specific kind of music when you work that you don’t normally listen to outside of the studio?

I have a set of 171 rap and dubstep songs that I’ve been listening to since late 2011-12. My then teenage son had uploaded his song list onto my itunes and repopulated my ipod. I pair the violent misogyny with focused readings in the morning.

6. The work you will have in Tenantless Pause (granted I have only seen two pictures on our website) seems more ambiguous compared to your other sculptures which automatically trigger a connection in mind to the female body or other real-world images. Am I totally off or has your work shifted in this direction?

My work has been going more towards abstraction for quite some time. The tension between figuration and abstraction is pretty sweet.

7. Do you keep a special object in your studio that you won’t use for a sculpture but offers inspiration for your work?

Nothing in my studio is off limits. Anything off-limits should stay out of the studio. I spend quite a bit of time collecting, touching and thinking about the things I’ve put in the studio so when I’m ready –it’s incorporation happens quickly. It’s very similar to drawing practice. It’s there when you need.

 
For More Information on Theresa Anderson's exhibit opening June 7th Click HERE.

Elena Lavorato Gets to Know Exhibiting Artist David Lefkowitz

You have successfully painted on many unexpected and intriguing surfaces like Styrofoam, ceiling tiles, and felt, have there been any materials you were excited to paint on but were unsuccessful?

Hmmm, I’d have to think about that a while. The choice of materials and the imagery depicted are almost always linked. For example, interior architectural cutaway views made of joint compound on drywall, which are the basic materials of interior walls, or the manipulated natural forms of topiaries depicted on the manipulated natural forms of plywood. So if there’s a connection between a material and particular imagery that I’m interested in, I will find a way to force them together! 

What was your “gateway” material so to speak that led to painting on non-traditional surfaces? 

Wood is not exactly a non-traditional material, but the way I used it for some earlier work drew attention to particular standardized forms that it comes in, I’m thinking specifically of panoramic landscape paintings about resource use on 2X4’s. That was the first series that emphasized a link between image and object. 

Why did you start painting on cardboard? Is there a moment that sticks out in your mind of the experience? What were you thinking and how did it feel to apply paint to that surface?

I first used cardboard to create artificial tree stumps. On one giant one I added painted tree rings. From there I thought about potential other ways to address cardboard’s physical properties and the ubiquity of the material as a standard container for global mercantile exchange, and the work in Austerity Plans presents several different avenues suggested by that line of inquiry. 

I noticed that your watercolors are almost centrally located on a large piece of cardboard while your acrylic paintings cover their entire surface. Is there a correlation between the paint and the scale or coverage?

  
First, just for clarification, most of my paintings are in oil. I have usually created compositions on cardboard that emphasize an isolated ‘figure’ on an empty ground. They lend themselves to that specimen-like format- there’s a no-nonsense assertion of fact that I like – it helps legitimize these otherwise impossible structures. However, some of the newer pieces in this show fill the whole space or are cropped in ways that activate the ground more.

What is your first art related childhood memory?

It was more like high school than childhood, but I remember loving work that expressed diametrically opposite attitudes about what art is. I responded both to Realist painting like Thomas Eakins, which demonstrated attentiveness to the external world and the craft of illusionism, and Marcel Duchamp’s Fountain, which overtly challenged those assumptions in an audacious and hilarious way. I’ve been embracing that tension ever since.

Do you listen to anything while working?

Sometimes I need quiet to concentrate on working out ideas, but a lot of my work involves relatively rote, somewhat repetitive activity, and then I’ll usually put my i-tunes library on shuffle- I love the surprise of an eclectic, sometimes jarring mix- like Thelonious Monk followed by the Monkees, followed by chanting Benedictine Monks….

Acrylic paint seems to conceal the material you are painting on while with watercolor the paint becomes apart of the surface instead of lying on top. Why do you choose certain paint for a particular surface?

I like watercolor for the cardboard work because its translucency does always bring a viewer back to the materiality of the corrugated boxes that make up the surface. 

After looking up the definitions I found austere can mean severe or a simple plain quality and austerity can refer to spending money only on things that are necessary. Does Austerity Plans reference the economic use of painting on something that most people throw away and in the clean and detailed architecture demonstrate a blue print or plan for doing this? 

I like the multiple references that ‘Austeriy Plans’ brings to mind- so the answer to your either/or question is yes. I like that austerity can refer to a simplification- a Modernist, even Minimalist assertion of attention to the elemental, the basic. Some great art has come into being from that premise, but it’s a narrative that can only go so far- an end game. In economics, it implies hardship- government policies that slash services, usually at the expense of those lowest on the economic ladder. I’m interested in suggesting alternative ways to consider the term that reframe it to emphasize doing more with less- to develop a spirit of radical resourcefulness. Modernism and Global capital both rely on an assumption that progress and growth are synonymous and inevitable without much consideration of the costs. I propose rethinking what we mean when we talk about progress. So do paintings of boxes on cardboard boxes accomplish this? I don’t know- think of the work as a catalyst for this kind of conversation.

Austerity Plans runs from April 5 to May 15 at SooVAC with an opening reception on April 5th.  Visit Here for more on David Lefkowitz.