Art in the Studio: The Questionnaire

Showing posts with label The Questionnaire. Show all posts

Monday, October 18, 2010

The Questionnaire: Jhina Alvarado

The Questionnaire is meant to be a lighter version of a bio, a little more revealing in some respects and personal without all the facts bogging it down. I supply the questions and the respondents supply the answers. Either one or both of us supply the images. (NOTE: CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE.)

J h i n a A l v a r a d o

What is your favorite color?

Red

Jhina Alvarado, "Resignation"

What is your favorite word?

Porkchop! Second favorite would be monkey.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Creatively: seeing beautiful art,
Spiritually: sometimes, when it's a really nice, sunny day and I'm driving around San Francisco, I can't help but feel great to be alive.
Emotionally: sleep and good food.

Jhina in the studio

What turns you off?

Chewing noises and someone cracking their knuckles

What profession other than artist would you most like to be?

I loved being a teacher for 13 years, but I've been there and done that already. Perhaps my next career, after I'm done being an artist, will be something where I can do math all day.

What is your favorite book or movie?

Any book by Amy Tan or Jodi Picoult. Any movie where someone overcomes hardship and lives their dream. I'm a sucker for those movies.

Who is your favorite musician, musical group or style of music?

Jeremy Enigk. If I wasn't marrying Ben, I'd marry Jeremy just based on his talent alone. (Note from NN: this was written some weeks ago before Jhina actually did marry Ben.)

Jeremy Enigk

Jeremy Enigk on MySpace - click to play

What do you most value in your friends?

Loyalty and being there when I really need them, even if it's not convenient. Also, having the courtesy of telling me when I have a booger or my makeup is messed up.

Name three artists whose work has influenced your own or whose work you most relate to.

Squeak Carnwath (influenced early work), Jane Hambleton (relate), and my grandfather, Juan Alvarado (influenced).

Squeak Carnwath, "Be Happy"

Jane Hambleton, "Float II," 2008, acrylic, oil, graphite on paper, 49"H x 50"W

Grandfather

Name an artist whose work you admire but which may be unlike yours.

Timothy McDowell

Timothy McDowell, "Symbiotic Hinge," encaustic on panel, 60" x 46"

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Good food, lots of naps, and constant inspiration and motivation to paint.

Works by Jhina Alvarado

"Downward Gaze," 12" x 12", oil and encaustic on panel

"Lounging at the Beach," 12" x 12", oil and encaustic on panel.

"The Family," 24" x 24", oil and encaustic on panel

"Welcome Home," 16" x 16", oil and encaustic on panel.

For more of Jhina's work:

www.jhinaalvarado.com
www.risingartist.blogspot.com
www.twitter.com/jhina_alvarado

Monday, October 11, 2010

The Questionnaire: Beverly Rippel

B e v e r l y R i p p e l

What is your favorite color?

I am more interested in the interaction of colors –often complementary colors – and find that one either quietly enhances the other….or may cause some ‘razzle-dazzle’. I also use monochromes (or black + white) for effect, and find that size matters, too.

Threefold #28, oil and encaustic on linen, 66"x42", Beverly at River Tree Arts show "In Flat Fields", 2008, Kennebunkport, ME

Snow White Eve, oil on canvas, 20" x 20" x 3", 2007.

What is your favorite word?

Respect

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Nature’s sounds and silences… sitting by the ocean…going for a morning walk and being alone in my “mind studio”. Also, believe it or not, I find that when I clean my house on my hands and knees, (my repetitive “floor exercises”), I re-discover past yard sale collections or street finds. Sometimes past journal ideas are later re-ignited.

What turns you off?

Unrest. Worry.

What profession other than artist would you most like to be?

Other profession(s): medical, music, or maybe a pastry chef! (My dad was in the medical field, so that was my direction entering college.) Something about the physiological, the psychological or our cultural rituals has always fascinated me. I ended up studying anthropology along with folklore and liberal/ fine arts. It all shows up in my work. My mom, Julia, was a fantastic baker of desserts. I enjoy creating pastries and pies especially with woven, buttery crusts. We always joked about opening a bakery (together with my two sisters) which we would call “Julia’s Child”. Food, table settings - the idea of “ingesting” ideas- plays a part in my visualization.

Rhubarb Custard Pie, edible materials, 12" round x 2" high, site specific/temporary construction, July 2010

What is your favorite book or movie?

Anne Morrow Lindberg’s A Gift From The Sea is one book that I go back to over and over. It is a simple book that I first read 40 years ago and have always included on my “suggested reading list” in my drawing and painting classes. Each time I revisit her words, Lindberg reminds me to simply ‘slow down’ and ‘notice’… actually a very Zen thing I need to do in between living and working.

Who is your favorite musician, musical group or style of music?

Musician /music: Though I was trained in classical music and theory at The Longy School of Music in Cambridge, MA, I enjoy all forms of musical expression . But—The Blues gets to my bones.

Robert Johnson- a great, primitive blues singer/songwriter - is a favorite. He was born in 1911 in Hazelhurst, Mississippi.

A bit about Robert Johnson that I find truly resonates with me as a visual artist:

Stephen C. LaVere, music historian, wrote of R.J. “He was…a most serious and precocious individual. His greatest blues are not only super-charged with truly fiery emotion, but they convey a despair and dissatisfaction along with a nearly omnipresent solemnity.”

Keith Richards wrote “…he came out with such compelling themes, they were actual songs as well as just being blues. And the guitar playing- it was almost like listening to Bach.”

Eric Clapton wrote, “What struck me about the Robert Johnson album was that it seemed like he wasn’t even playing for an audience at all; it didn’t obey the rules of time or harmony or anything – he was just playing for himself….. It was almost as if he felt things so acutely he found it almost unbearable. This was an image, really, that I held on to for a very long time.”

Red Body, found objects/guitar parts with encaustic, wall installation: 6' x 20". Included in 8/2010 Northeast Chapter of Women's Caucus For Art show, "Shine" at Bromfield Gallery, Boston, MA

Red Body (close-up detail)

What do you most value in your friends?

Being a generous listener.

Name three artists whose work has influenced your own or whose work you most relate to

So many….Richard Diebenkorn, Wayne Thiebaud, Andy Warhol, Georgia O’Keefe, Jasper Johns, Kiki Smith, Cezanne

Bodyscape II, oil on linen, 17.5" x 10", shown in 1994 at Gallery 84 in NYC. Juror: Ivan Karp of OK Harris, NYC.

Paint On Canvas III (Island), oil, 8" x 8", included in 8/2010 exhibition, "Collective" at Galatea Gallery, Boston, MA

Just Once, oil on linen, 24.5" x 44.5" (Malcolm Rogers Award at Cambridge Art's 1st National Prize Show 1998)

Pink Cap Gun I, oil and encaustic on linen, 50" x 52", 2010

(This just in: Pink Cap Gun I was chosen for inclusion in the 2011 Biennial @ the Portland Museum of Art (April-June 2011))

Blue Cap Gun III and II, 70" x 52", oil on linen. Beverly shown with wall installation at University of Maine Museum of Art's 2010 I-95 Triennial Exhibition: A Survey from Four New England States. (Adjacent artwork by Walter Kopec, Boston artist.)

Name an artist whose work you admire but which may be unlike yours.

Cy Twombly’s brave open spaces. Gerhard Richter’s multi-faceted explorations both conceptually and materially.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Other than being lost in my studio- it is embracing my family around the dinner table with a home cooked meal.

For more of Beverly's work, see newenglandwax.org

http://www.felosart.com/bev/BeverlyR.htm

www.umma.umaine.edu (I-95 Triennial Exhibition)

www.cambridgeart.org (“Grande” corporate works)

Monday, October 4, 2010

The Questionnaire: Joanne Mattera

For this interview, Joanne supplied the images and the captions for the images.

J o a n n e M a t t e r a

What is your favorite color?

Red, from orange red to blue red. I like that you can have those complements in one hue. Also, do you know I have a paint named after me? Joanne Loves This Red (from Evans Encaustics).

Uttar 286 in the window of Arden Gallery, Boston, in December 2008, for my show, Contemplating the Horizontal. JM photo

Hue Again, a 2008 installation view of my solo show at an academic gallery north of Boston, with a view of Ciel Rouge, a four-panel painting, 48 x 57 inches. JM photo

I like red that works its way into orange. This is Soie 5, part of a series I did this summer, in gouache. It's 22 x 30 inches, Arches 140 lb hot press paper. Much as I love encaustic, I love and work in other mediums, too. My middle name, as you may know, is I-Am-Not-An-Encaustic-Artist. JM photo.

This red-with-orange-undertones paint is named after me, Joanne Loves This Red, by Evans Encaustics. I had a cow named after me once, too. Photo: Evans Encaustics.

What is your favorite word?

Yes.

An impromptu picture taken in the studio a couple of years ago. Photo: Claudia Saimbert.

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Creatively: going into the studio and allowing my brain to click into that place where “it” happens; spiritually: centeredness; emotionally: humor, wit, beauty

You asked what turns me on creatively. It's going into the studio. Entering the space I have set up for artmaking allows my brain to switch to a different channel. For almost 20 years I had a 9-5 job, and when I got into the studio in the evening, there was no time to futz. I had four good hours before hunger and tiredness sent me home. When the key clicked in the lock, something clicked in my brain. I've been able to retain that "switch" even now that I'm painting full time. This shot was one of several taken for a postcard of a 2006 show in Atlanta, so the studio is cleaner than usual--but it's typically organized. That's how I like to work. JM photo.

An installation shot from Luxe, Calme et Volupte: A Meditation on Visual Pleasure, which I curated for the Marcia Wood Gallery in Atlanta in 2007. You can view the online catalog, which has an essay by me here. In this photo: Heather Hutchison in the far gallery, Frances Barth, Tim McFarlane. JM photo.

Peeking into the back gallery, there's Tim McDowell, left, and a closer view of Hutchison's painting. These were the only two works in encaustic in the show. Luminosity is the reason they were installed near one another, just as geometric composition is the reason the paintings below were installed together. JM photo.

In a third gallery--this was a big show with 14 artists that stayed up for two months--you see two paintings by Julie Gross, left, and two by Julie Karabenick. On the floor is a marble sculpture by Julia Venske and Gregor Spanle. JM photo.

What turns you off?

Incompetence, deviousness, lateness

What profession other than artist would you most like to be?

I usually say “Curator” because I plan to return as a curator in my next life, but my fantasy is to be a conga drummer

But what I really want to be is a conga drummer. This is me in 1996 in my Union Square studio in Manhattan. Dig that platinum hair!

What is your favorite book or movie?

This may be very un-lesbian of me but I loved Marcello Mastroianni, so any movie with him. And there were many wonderful ones in which he played gay men, or old men; he wasn’t just the stereotypical “latin lover.” Also, movies with him usually included Sophia Loren, Claudia Cardinale, Stefania Sandrelli, Catherine Deneuve and were directed by Fellini or Vittorio De Sica or Vittorio Gasman, and had music by Nino Rota. Notice the thread here?

Here's how much I love Marcello: When my publishing job ended in 1998, I spent two weeks at the Marcello Mastroianni Film Festival at the Walter Reade Theatre at Lincoln Center. I knew I'd never have that kind of time again, so I went every day to see one, sometimes two, Marcello movies. Image via the Internet.

Of course I also got to see Sophia Loren, Anita Ekberg, Catherine Deneuve and other actors. This is the young Sophia, when she was still acting only in Italian. Image via the Internet.

Who is your favorite musician, musical group or style of music?

Latin music, from traditional Cuban singers like Celina Gonzalez to contemporary traditional like Albita and Celia Cruz (her rendition of “I Will Survive” in Spanish surpasses even Gloria Gaynor’s classic); to latin jazz via Tito Puente, Eddie Palmieri, Chico O’Farrill, Bobby Sanabria and Canadian flutist Jane Bunnett. I just wish there more women in the percussion section. Conga drumming women are heartstopping.

Latin music is my passion, from traditional Cuban to jazz. For several years in New York I went to every concert of Celia Cruz and Tito Puente--sometimes they performed together--because they were getting older and I wanted to see as much of them as possible before they passed. They were great performers as well as musicians. Image via the Internet.

What do you most value in your friends?

Honesty, generosity, responsibility, reliability, which I am more than happy to reciprocate

Name three artists whose work has influenced your own or whose work you most relate to.

Artists I relate to: Agnes Martin for her visual purity; the Siennese painters of the Renaissance for the gloriousness of their color; Martin Puryear for the materiality and mystery of his sculptures.

There was a wonderful Agnes Martin retrospective at the Whitney about a decade ago. You could see the work get purer and more breathlike as she got older. I admire her monasticism, but I want to be more out in the world as an artist. Photo: Charles R. Rushton, via the Internet.

Giovanni di Paolo's Creation of the World and Expulsion from Paradise, about 1445, is an abstraction of a dimensional universe. This is before Columbus sailed across the ocean, when most people though the earth was on a plate. You can see this image in the Lehman Wing at the Met. Photo: Metropolitan Museum of Art, via the Internet.

My favorite painter is known only as the Master of the Osservanza--a monk named for a church in Sienna where one of his works is placed. His paintings have a kind of abstraction that's contemporary. Look at that sky; it's like a Clyfford Still painting! This is St. Anthony Tempted by a Heap of Gold, about 1435. The heap is missing--maybe someone else was tempted and scraped off the gold--but a pentimento is visible between the hare in the left corner and the figure of St. Anthony. Image via the Internet.

I saw the Martin Puryear retrospective at MoMA in 2007 and wrote about it here. Puryear taps into a collective idea of culture, of what it means to be a human who dreams, who works, who makes things. JM photo.

I have to give you one more name: Eve Hesse, who combined minimalism and materiality in a way that has been a beacon for me.

Eva Hesse has been my hero since art school. I respond to her use of materiality in the service of a minimalist vision, something I have been similarly involved with. I wrote about her 2006 show, Eva Hesse: Sculpture, at the Jewish Museum here and more recently on Eva Hesse: Test Pieces at Hauser & Wirth here. Image via the internet.

Name an artist whose work you admire but which may be unlike yours.

I’m giving you three: a painter, Joan Mitchell; a sculptor, Jackie Winsor; and that force of nature, Louise Bourgeois.

Joan Mitchell did something with gesture and color that moves me. Her pastels, in particular, have an immediacy that pulls me in. Her fingerprints are all over the work, a kind of living reminder of the artist making the work. Photo: Cheim and Read Gallery, via the Internet.

I am hugely enamored of Jackie Winsor's cubes from the Seventies. A recent show at the Paula Cooper gallery brought together a good deal of her early work, including this one. JM photo.

Louise Bourgeois is the original "material girl," having worked in all kinds of mediums from plaster to cloth to marble to wood, without allowing herself to be pigeonholed by medium. I wrote about her 2008 retrospective at the Guggenheim here. JM photo.

What is your idea of earthly happiness?

Sitting on a beach in summer in the late afernoon looking out at the horizon as the sun shines on the water and the sand retains its warmth. On another day I might tell you it’s snorkeling in the Caribbean after a couple of tokes, or being anywhere in Italy.

This is not me sitting at the water's edge--I pulled the image from the Internet--but it could have been. I like to put my chair in the water and look out at the meeting of heaven and earth. This image might even be of Herring Cove, the beach in Provincetown where I spend part of every summer. The light there is extraordinary.

Another bit of earthly happiness in Italy. This happens to be Napoli, home of yin and yang Italian style, where beauty coexists with traffic and trash.

What I did this summer: a series of gouache-on-paper paintings called Soie, silk. The series came from the print I did in June at Connecticut College, part of a printmaking project I wrote about here. JM photo.

The cover of The Art of Encaustic Painting, published in 2001 and now in its seventh printing. (A note from NN--still The best of all the books on encaustic.)

For more of Joanne Mattera's work and writing:

joannemattera.blogspot.com
www.joannemattera.com
encausticconference.blogspot.com/

Monday, September 27, 2010

The Questionnaire: Pam Farrell

P a m F a r r e l l

What is your favorite color?

Currently, earthy greens/golds/browns/greys that have no name

Hypnotist Collector (ochre 2), 2009, encaustic on panel, 18"x18"

Monoprint 1, 2010, oil on mulberry paper, 16"x20"

Monoprint 2, 2010, oil on mulberry paper, 16"x20"

Chamber 2, 2010, digital image

What is your favorite word?

Every day a different one... today's favorite word is excellent!

Pam behind the camera on her Mac

What turns you on creatively, spiritually or emotionally?

Creatively: challenging, new information; things I don't know

What turns you off?

Creatively: over-thinking, self-doubt

What profession other than artist would you most like to be?

Rock star or neuroscientist

What is your favorite book or movie?

Changes all the time... currently the book I cherish is The Cloud Atlas; I love dictionaries, reference books, specialty glossaries

(Not the novel The Cloud Atlas, but the actual cloud atlas)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Cloud_Atlas

Who is your favorite musician, musical group or style of music?

Blues, jazz, three-chord rock n roll, early r & b

Howlin' Wolf, Robert Johnson, Stevie Ray Vaughn, Mingus, Chuck Berry, early Stones...I could go on

Charles Mingus

What do you most value in your friends?

Connection, authenticity

Name three artists whose work has influenced your own or whose work you most relate to.

Cy Twombly, Gerhard Richter, Brice Marden