05.25.07
Previously, the gouaches and sculpture were distinctly separated from each other; how and why did you begin to integrate them?
I decided I needed to change things. I felt the last few sculptures, those that preceded these, were very resolved, as were the pairings of the botanical and window paintings. And I’d been juxtaposing the painting and sculpture, and insisting on their separation for years. It felt too precious, like a stand. There was always a place between the two practices, between the poles, where meaning developed. I thought that including both poles in a single piece would be interesting.
Though the sculpture, which now contains gouaches, has a “representational” aspect, they also feel to me to be more abstract and conceptual than the previous sculptural work. Do you consider them so?
Perhaps colliding and confusing my painterly and sculptural pursuits in single pieces does result in something more abstract. There’s also an element of literal abstract painting in them. I don’t think of the sculptures as “conceptual,” but I imagine you’re responding to the fact that the packing crate is part of the sculpture, and that the pieces pack into themselves. That came about more as an answer to a design problem than as a concept. Because of some of the materials and finishes of the earlier sculptures were somewhat fragile, I found myself always fretting and fussing over them, and they were a little cumbersome to store. So, I was trying to solve those problems. I did find I really enjoyed relaxing the craft, and the solution to the design problem also includes a lot of things that relate to an inside and an outside, thematic stuff that’s been in much of my work.
Since the mid-’80s, other than some recent gouaches with footprints in the snow and a passenger reflected in a train window, I only remember the figure—silhouetted women, I think—appearing in that strip club installation at Daniel Newburg Gallery in 1994. Now we've not only got the eyes, but these vertical sculptural works read figuratively. Is that your intention, a new interest?
Yes, some of these new sculptures, especially the ones with the paintings of eyes, reference the figure. And you’re right to link the figurative up with that work from the ’90s. I’d worked with mediated landscape and still life for much of the ’80s and arrived at a more or less “resolved” place with them. So I decided to mix things up and work with another genre, the figurative. That resulted in paintings of a stripper, and those evolved into a more elaborate installation piece. About a year and a half ago I found that I’d arrived at a similar state of resolution with the painting and sculpture as I had 15 years earlier, so I went to the figurative again and started painting women’s eyes. A little later the eyes found their way into the first crate sculptures. FYI: the eyes belong to my wife, friends, and former students, and are painted from my snapshots.
Is the wabi sabi aspect of your crate/boxes decidedly so? Why not more perfect cabinetry?
More perfect cabinetry is an option, especially if I farm out the work, which I did with the outer crates for these pieces. Building crates is not entirely beyond my skill level, but I wanted to approach the crate and paint upon it as if it were a readymade. When I built a crate myself, it wasn’t neutral enough. I do build the frames myself, without the proper tools, and for some reason with those I rather like how flawed they are. All the finishes of these sculptures are rough for both aesthetic and the aforementioned practical reasons. I do aspire to wabi sabi, but make no claims to have apprehended it.
In a recent phone conversation, you used the words “restrained expression” in reference to the new work.
I think I said “repressed expression,”with some measure of self-loathing. I envy the kind of hard-earned abandon that some painters employ. I was never too good at it when I was younger but now I’m enjoying dipping my toes back in that pool…but only my toes. I don’t really think of this work as reductive or minimal. I would say that, for better and worse, restraint and sublimation are aspects of everything I do.
Looking and recognizing have long seemed one of the messages in your work. Now, with the inclusion of the eyes as a subject matter, you and we viewers as well, are reminded of ourselves and our/the viewing process—literally, but also reflectively and reflexively.
Of course one of the endlessly mysterious and fascinating things about the eye is how it’s the membrane between inside and outside. Looking at and into eyes is one of the most complicated, and often pleasurable, things we do.
10.10.01
Given your continued production of both paintings and sculpture, why polarize
that dialogue?
This comes naturally and I like the dialogue. I don't interfere with
my instincts about what would be a good subject to paint, or how a sculpture
should feel. Sometimes the paintings provoke growth in the sculpture,
sometimes the inverse. I think the relationship may be more that of "flip-sides"
than polarities--maybe that's just squished "polarity". In this
body of work, it does seem the case that each medium is becoming more
itself. But that more also feels like a stronger tether between the two.
Do you consider the photographic element in the sculpture the main link in the relationship?
Yes, it would probably be the primary portal. The gouaches are painted
from my photos, and a sculpture’s photo is a key to its emotional
atmosphere.
Having said "emotional atmosphere," will you comment on your
interest in that Japanese snowstorm print in your home? It's been there for years, seemingly out of place but somehow significant.
That's a reproduction of Hiroshige's print, Night Snow at Kambara (1833),
from his Fifty-three Stations of the Tokaido. The emotional atmospheres
are silent, lonely, and lovely--that's a romantic tradition which attracts
me. While I find Hiroshige's pictorial and formal devices feel completely
modern, they also employ the Shinto’s formal structure that places
Heaven, Earth, and Man in descending hierarchical significance. His approach
to rendering snow was simply perfect. And I also like that the series
of prints are road pictures - which is a genre I’ve worked within.
There is a certain distance between your painted image and its antecedents,
which parallels the model-like qualities in the sculpture to architecture.
Are you using this as a way of navigating through a nature and culture
discussion?
Yes, these are parallel approaches. Painting a flower in a garden or a
sky through a window is as explicit as I feel I need to be at this point.
And the sculptures are less self-consciously referencing design and architecture,
and trying to more closely compliment natural atmospheres.
What are your thoughts on art's recent further blurring of the distinctions
between art and design?
The problem with some of the art that overtly references design is that
it does little more than that. Contemporary design has been so thoroughly
digested by the culture that I feel there's little I can add. While
I still make design-sensitive stuff, I'd like to imagine that it
touches places that design can't, or doesn't try to reach.
10.10.98
About a year and a half
ago when we first discussed the earlier pieces from this body of work
I thought of it as having more of a corporate mentality, about corporate
decoration, and now we have transcendental decoration. How do you see
the relationship of the corporate to the transcendental?
Of course those aren't mutually exclusive mentalities. People work
and play in corporate spaces and there's almost always some transcendental
element - religious, utopic, or escapist - within the design. And people
in any environment are capable of aesthetic and spiritual behavior.
Do you think that corporate design purposely evokes awe and notions of
the sublime?
Sometimes very much so - as well as promoting power and control and convenience,
things that can also yield a utilitarian beauty. Maybe the guys painting
parking slot lines or installing acoustic ceiling tiles aren't aware
of the extraordinary beauty of the pattern - that's where the artist
comes in. I did a show of work relating to the Epcot Center and another
of a strip club where I created rooms that tried to get to the flavors
and emotions, the spiritualism and the eroticism, of corporate entertainment
culture. In this work I've tried to collapse an individual subject
and corresponding room into a single object.
So you set out to address issues of corporate space and the materiality
of that space and its relationship to the notions of the transcendental?
When I set out I am simply looking for what in the world attracts me.
That involves a camera and looking for places that I find pleasing or
troubling or poignant or whatever. Those sensations provoke the need to
make something. During and after that process of making I step back and
try to see what it is I'm responding to and what I';m adding.
It’s odd that you’re making sculpture out of carpeting. Architecture
is referenced but the work is not necessarily architectural. Does the
carpet relate to your interest in landscape?
When I visit a casino or theme restaurant I’m surrounded by areas
of carpet I can only think of as fields. As landscape is a preoccupation,
it’s probably not surprising that as more and more of nature is given
over to culture, the geometries of the carpet start to resemble cultivated
landscapes.
Your sculptures have a formal quietude that creates a physical distance
that allows the mind to slow down and approach the work in an abstract
and personal way.
I hope so. Sometimes I employ ikebana forms which embody the harmonious
relationships of heaven, earth and man. Ikebana has a rigid formal structure
but the manifestations are intensely individual.
And you use haiku titles?
They're translations of Japanese death haikus. The poems typically
include a metaphorical landscape image that can conjure a crystalline
moment that reminds me of the photo I've placed in the sculpture.
Stillness does seem engendered in them. The work reminds me of the
way that architecture is to landscape as man is to nature. The scale of
these works invites human interaction that makes an equation: I am part
of architecture and part of landscape. That's an interesting conflation.
You've poured a lot of interest into these things.
I love that kind of response. This work is more abstract and open than
anything I've done in 15 years - so I'm really happy with associative
readings that might have bugged me with other bodies of work.
What about the related watercolors based on photographs; why did you
choose that medium?
I started panting landscapes years ago from life or memory. Gouache on
paper is simply a convenient medium that feels very intimate to me. Even
though the subject matter has stayed pretty consistent, over time they've
gotten more technically ambitious and I started painting from photographs.
Sometimes the paintings lead to more sophisticated projects.
Was it making the paintings that provoked the thoughts that the space
of the car and train are corporate - the same kind of structure?
My thinking wasn't that concise. I'd painted more than a few
planes, trains and automobiles before I started to see the pattern.
They are corporate. It made me very aware of, and tickled by, the similarity
of the goals of your work and those of the corporations. What is the relationship
of the painting to the sculptures?
I don't want to sound obscure or evasive, but I think some of the
meaning of the work exists in the space created between those two approaches
and I'd rather not analyze it. I would say that things like the feeling
of a rubber mat under your feet and the touch of a LeBaron's burgundy
velour interior are as much part of viewing a sunset as windshield, bugs
and smog.
I enjoy the clunkiness of the hand in the making of both the sculptures and the paintings - it keeps the human effort as part of the experience. Everything in corporate mentality tends to remove the human and that has always fed my antagonism to and disinterest in that kind of design. You use carpeting in a way that makes me reconsider all this. It was a relief to realize my prejudice through your art and to see the same thing in your watercolors. It gets the whole idea of art that pushes on your parameters.