Interviews by Gregory Ito

 

 

This is a two part editorial piece of small interviews with Kala Art Institute’s Fellows from 2011, currently on view at Kala (Oakland, CA) till September 15th, 2012.  Be sure to see the show before it comes down next month.  The interviews are with the following artists: Michele Carlson, Alison OK Frost, Seth Koen, Vanessa Marsh, Sandra Ono, Francesca Pastine, Lauren Rice, and Gail Wight.  Below is a desciption of the fellowship awards courtesy of Kala Art Institute.  

 

 

The Kala Fellowship, an international competition, annually grants nine artists a cash award, unlimited access to Kala’s facilities for up to six months, and a culminating show in the Kala Gallery, through a highly competitive jurying process. The Fellowship Award is geared towards supporting artists in completing specific projects or bodies of work that would benefit from Kala’s specialized equipment. This year Kala reserved one of the nine awards for an artist working in the discipline of Social Practice. Another of the nine awards is designated for a California artist living outside of a main metropolitan area with funding provided by The James Irvine Foundation. Hosting nine new artists at Kala each year helps to ensure that the artistic energy and vision of Kala’s entire community of artists in residence is continually re-energized and rejuvenated.

 

 

Lauren Rice:

 

GI: Tell us some history about yourself before being awarded with Kala’s Fellowship.

 

LR: I received my MFA from American University (Washington, DC) and my BA from Knox College (Galesburg, IL).  My solo exhibitions include Totems (2012) at Vox Populi in Philadelphia, Heirlooms (2011) at Transformer (Washington, DC), Heirlooms (2010) at The South Bend Museum of Art (South Bend, IN) and Vestiges (2009) at Org Contemporary (Detroit, MI).  I was born in Atlanta, GA and after living in New York and DC, I moved to Detroit with my husband, Brian Barr, a native Detroiter.  I currently am a Visiting Professor of Painting at Ohio University and split my time between Detroit and Athens, OH.

 

My work for the past five years has taken the form of collage and sculptural installation, however, I am very interested in creating work that contributes to the discussion/language of painting in the expanded field.

 

GI:  What are you current activities in the art community?

 

LR: In addition to being a Visiting Professor at Ohio University, I am a founding board member of Passenger, an in-progress exhibition space, studio space and residency program for artists in Detroit set to open in 2013.  I maintain a studio in Detroit as well as in Athens, OH. Recent exhibitions include:  ”Totems”, a collaborative exhibition with Brian Barr, Vox Populi, Philadelphia, PA,”. “2012 Young Painters Competition for the William and Dorothy Yeck Award”, Miami University, Oxford, OH, “Flamboyant Wilderness” (with Brian Barr), Starkweather Gallery, Romeo, MI, and “Lost and Found: Belief and Doubt in Contemporary Pictures”, Museum of New Art and Passenger Project Space, Detroit, MI.

 

 

 

 

 

GI:  Can you discuss the concepts that drive your artistic practice?

 

LR: I use collage and sculptural installation to explore gaps in history, missing information and systems in flux. In both my collage and sculptural work, connections are explored between presumably unrelated imagery.  Cut magazine images, photocopies and digital prints of jewelry, flowers, vases and gardens collide with found images of skulls, superhighways, reptiles as well as blobs of paper pulp,  rips and tears, spray paint and sawdust in an effort to questions my own contradictory impulses and desires as well as explore, critique and to question our unique contemporary economic, ecological, political and social climate.

 

I do not intend for my work to be overly didactic. The imagery and sense of movement in my work signifies events indicating dramatic upheaval, change and growth.  My arrangement of formal imagery is a metaphor for both the personal and universal struggle/fixation with binaries such as good and evil, love and hate, indulgence and guilt, consumption and conservation, and the fear of and fixation with death. The floral and decorative imagery at once expand and explode, as if they are no longer capable of sustaining their growth.  In accordance with the other binaries explored in my work, collapse can be perceived as both a positive and negative event—a destructive end, yet romanticized as the seed of infinite possibility.

 

GI:  What is your process like when creating your work?

 

I usually begin with formal impulses, movements and marks that I can’t predict, like a blob of colored spray paint or poured paint splotch. I then respond to that initial mark with materials such as cut paper collage, gouache, found objects.  Accident, chance and intuition are critical factors in my work.  I am also interested in making work that cannot be clearly defined as abstract or representational, often turning figurative elements into strange, abstract marks.

 

 

 

GI: What kind of materials/artists do you look at for inspiration?

 

LR: I love materials and the process of collecting them.  I collect magazines and printed imagery for inspiration and use on a regular basis, but most recently, I’ve been incorporating more  fabric and handmade textiles into my work, so I’ve been collecting and using various fabrics like black velvet and canvas drop cloths.  I will take trips to hardware stores, craft suppliers and secondhand shops for materials.  Two of my favorite contemporary artists are Wangechi Mutu and David Altmejd. I am interested in referencing/researching many historical artists such as Bosch, Matisse, Rauschenberg, Richter in addition to Dutch still life painting, mythology, the history of the ancient world, gaps in history and scientific discovery, economic, social, political, environmental (etc.) systems in a state of flux, as well as subverting hierarchies of materials, objects and images.

 

GI:  What do you have coming up in the near future?

I will be having a solo exhibition of my work at Coop Gallery in Nashville, TN in October 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

Sandra Ono:

 

GI: Tell us some history about yourself before being awarded with Kala’s Fellowship.

 

SO: I was born in Los Angeles and received my BA from University of California, Davis and my MFA from Mills College.  I moved back to Southern California after I graduated from Davis then found myself back in the Bay Area for grad school a few years later.

 

GI:  Can you discuss the concepts that drive your artistic practice?

 

SO: I’m interested in the micro and macro consequences of what we consume and use the human body as an interface between material and concept.

 

 

 

GI: What is your process like when creating your work?

 

SO: All of my sculptures begin as small experiments.  I keep a wall of experiments in my studio to help me remember my findings.  I usually work on a group of sculptures simultaneously and float around the studio from one piece to the next.

 

GI:  What kind of materials do you look at for inspiration?

 

SO:  find inspiration in mass-produced, utilitarian consumer goods I find in super markets, super stores and dollar stores.  I’m happy because a dollar store just opened down the street from my studio.

 

 

 

GI:  What do you have coming up in the near future?

 

SO: I am excited to start a residency in the Project Space at the Headlands Center for the Arts next week.

 

 

 

 

 

Randy Colosky: 

 

GI:  Tell us some history about yourself before being awarded with Kala’s Fellowship.

 

RC: I was born in New Jersey then went to school at the Kansas City Art Institute and graduated in 1987.  I took an Amtrak train to SF in 1993 to hang out with a woman I met in a subway station in NYC. It didn’t work out but I haven’t left since. Ive been a working artist and musician pretty much the whole time after school and would do almost anything for work but now I work as a self employed contractor and fabricator which allows me a lot of flexibility with time and  teaches me how not to manage finances. The last 4 years have been a great time for me in regards to my art practice. I had taken some time away from visual art from 2005 to 2008 I had sort of hit a wall, but then in 2007 Joe Byres from Atlas Cafe in SF asked me to do a show there so I casually made some piece for it and really got into it again. That lead to a show at Adobe Books in 2008, after that I was asked to be in some group shows at The Lab, then SOEX and Kavi Gupta in Chicago, then out of nowhere Tracy Wheeler and Bruno Mauro asked me to do a solo show at Ampersand International Arts in 2010 and they gave me the whole space which was amazing. After that I did a show at the Museum of Craft and Folk Art curated by Natasha Boaz and Jennifer McCabe, then Hijinks Gallery and Incline Gallery.

 

 

 

 

Michele Carlson:

 

GI: Tell us some history about yourself before being awarded with Kala’s Fellowship.

 

MC: I was born in Seoul, Korea, but grew up in Seattle where I also went to college. I moved to the Bay about 8 years ago for grad school at CCA where I completed a dual masters degree in Printmaking and Visual and Critical Studies. Since graduation I’ve been keeping busy teaching, writing, making art, and being an editor.  I live in Oakland, where my studio is now. I recently moved it back to my home so that I could capitalize more on the random studio moments that can come up in the day. I probably spend most of my time trying to find time for everything that I need and want to do!

 

GI:  What are you current activities in the art community?

 

MC: I am a teacher, writer, editor and artist here in the Bay. I teach all sorts of classes in art history, visual studies, studio art, and cultural studies at around five-ish colleges from San Francisco, Davis, and Santa Cruz. The commuting, my classes, and students keep most of my attention but I also regularly write about art and culture for a number of local and national publications (Art Practical, Art in America, among others).  Lately I’ve been writing mostly reviews and profiles; I’m really interested in emerging artists who have interdisciplinary practices.  My writing practice keeps me most active in the art community since I have to go out and find things to write about. I am also the arts section editor at Hyphen Magazine, a national print and online publication focusing on Asian American culture. At Hyphen I write, edit, and participate in broader editorial duties.  I also have a couple curatorial projects rumbling around in the future.

 

 

 

GI: Can you discuss the concepts that drive your artistic practice?

 

MC: I’ve always been interested in the places where history and/or memory fail. I started creating narratives of those moments, which at one point were more on the historical end but in the past 5 years or so I have tilted more towards creating my own fictional scenarios.  I see a lot of potential in imagining and creating new histories in the spaces where we don’t match up to the grand narratives. I am formally trained as a printmaker, which means I find that I’m drawn to creating repetitive and laborious processes as often as possible, even if I don’t have to.  So I cut and draw a lot of repetitive images and patterns–it’s soothing but also means I also swim around in the details.

 

GI:  What is your process like when creating your work?

 

MC: I sit in what is now my living room turned studio and watch tv, draw and cut.  My work can be a bit tedious at times so if I have some sort of tv show or movie playing in the background it keeps my eyes from burning out too fast. It also means I watch a lot of tv.  Anyone who knows me can testify that I have an absurd amount of tv viewing under my belt.

 

 

 

GI: What kind of materials/artists do you look at for inspiration?

 

MC: At this point, most of my inspiration comes from pop culture. I look to other artists for inspiration in terms of my overall practice and methodologies for research and making, but in terms of what I look at that inspires what i make I’d say it’s more about wanting to consume and then refigure the world around me. And that world is pretty pop culture-ful.  Things like television, comedy, music videos, the landscapes of professional sports, musicals…can get a bad wrap in the art world for not being intellectual enough, but the visual compositions that say, an NBA Playoff game creates on a screen is remarkable and there’s nothing that tells us more about ourselves as a mainstream audience then looking at what we watch.

 

GI: What do you have coming up in the near future?

 

MC: I write an artist profile series for Art Practical called “In the Artists Studio” and the last installment will be out this summer. I also have a couple other writing projects that will publish between now and the end of the year.  The academic year begins soon which means I’ll be fully engrossed in making hundreds and hundreds of students.

 

 

http://www.kala.org/exhibitions/current.html