Interviews with Artists University of Oregon 2015–2016 By MFA Candidates Department of Art FIVE MINUTES INTERVIEWS WITH ARTISTS BY MFA CANDIDATES 2015–16 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 4 Editor’s Introduction Editor in Chief 6 Scott Reeder Chelsea Couch �2 Enrique Chagoya 18 Paula Wilson Assistant Editor Laura Hughes 22 Chris Coleman 26 Lisa Radon MFA Interviewers 30 Samantha Bittman Lee Asahina, Andrew Douglas Campbell, Chelsea Couch, Anya Dikareva, Mandy Hampton, Krista Heinitz, Laura Hughes, 34 Steven Matijcio Stephen Milner, Joe Moore, Mary Margaret Morgan, �0 Anders Ruhwald Sarah Mikenis, Stephen Nachtigall, Esther Weng, Rachel Widomski, 46 Brian Bress Natalie Wood, Alexander Wurts �0 Martha Rosler Design & Typography 56 Lauren Fensterstock Bijan Berahimi and James Casey for FISK 60 Karyn Olivier Administrative Support 66 Squeak Carnwath Wendy Heldmann, Public Programming Director 70 Liz Larner Christopher Michlig, Director of Graduate Studies, Assistant Professor �4 Christian Patterson Special thanks 78 Aram Han Sifuentes Carla Bengtson, Department of Art Head and Ann Swindells Chair �2 Rick Lowe 88 Zackary Drucker This publication is made possible in part by the Ballinger Family Memorial Fund. �4 Artist Biographies Published by CORE Press Printed by Oregon Web Press art.uoregon.edu CONTENTS 5 Minutes was conceived in the 2014–2015 academic year as an setting and can present themselves in a studio visit with someone you’ve initiative to research, engage, and share threads of discourse between only just met. Each of the interviews that follows was conducted University of Oregon Department of Art masters of fine art candidates, in a variety of locations and recorded on a small handheld digital audio the department’s visiting artist lecture series participants, and the Uni- recorder by an active listener, transcribed and introduced by the versity community-at-large. The process gained a momentum that interviewer, edited, and collected into this volume. The interview series launched the initiative into an entirely graduate student-run fixture would not exist without the generous advice and support of Christopher of the 2015–2016 academic year. As a participant in the first iteration Michlig as the project transitioned to its new form, the scheduling, of 5 Minutes, I aided this transition in the hopes of both continuing the coordination, and expansion of the following list of interviewees provided interview series and of helping the series find its voice as a recurring by Wendy Heldmann, the contributions made designing this volume by process among students. This year, artists invited to hold studio visits Bijan Berahimi, the contributions as co-editor of Laura Hughes, and with the masters of fine art candidates were added to the interview the immense time and effort placed into researching, interviewing, series, providing a lineup of visiting artists who presented lectures, held transcribing, and writing by the graduate students of the University of studio visits, or both. In expanding the conversations had with, about, Oregon’s Department of Art. and around these artists, the conversations have persisted and entered into all aspects of dialogue surrounding the Department of Art. Actively Thank you and enjoy! encountering the artists visiting our campus and choosing to push those encounters further has allowed the graduate students a proactive – Chelsea Couch, Editor in Chief stance as well as an opportunity to more wholly engage the artists by breaking down the perceived barriers that often feel present in a lecture EDITOR’S INTRODUCTION 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Interviews with Artists by 5 MFA Candidates FOREWORD ESTHER WENG IN As someone who started out in painting but has now branched out CONVERSATION WITH into sculpture, installation, and video, I am interested in Reeder’s ability to bring together these different media in such a fluid and cohesive way, as concretely exemplified in Moon Dust. There is plentiful reference to art history in Reeder’s work, yet their absurdity and playful parodies make them more accessible through subversive humor. As the first film directed by an artist known SCOTT primarily for his paintings and objects, Moon Dust is a dystopian comedy that’s also an exercise in color theory with nods to modernist painting and sculpture. Just days after NASA confirmed REEDER evidence that liquid water flowed on Mars, I had the pleasure of interviewing Reeder at the café of the University of Oregon’s Jaqua Center. We sat down on Pantone 107 yellow (one of UO’s institutional colors) leather mod lounge seats, surrounding in a suggested shape ESTHER WENG: Humor and playfulness that community, that social aspect or that of an “O” an unlit four-sided gas fireplace. The carpet beneath seem to be important in your work. Could kind of innovation or experimentation our feet is of the same bright yellow. The retrofuturist aesthetic you talk about the roles they play in your through play. I know the parties were really transported us to one of Reeder’s sets for Moon Dust. Reeder process and also in the experience you important at the Bauhaus. There was one remarked that he used the same hue of yellow carpet in his recent want to give your viewers? party where you had to enter with a slide. installation at Kavi Gupta, adding that it was surprisingly hard to find So even that was like a formal ball. Everyone yellow carpet. Maybe they are all in Oregon. SCOTT REEDER: I think I’m more interested had to come in through the slide—even the in the absurd than humor. I mean, I’m defi- mayor of the town or theses diplomats, so it nitely interested in humor as a way to get leveled the playing field or there was a way people in the door, or engage viewers who everyone set the tone to see things through wouldn’t otherwise even look at art. I mean, a different lens. But maybe it also depends I’ve always been interested in reaching mul- on what aspects in my work we’re talking tiple audiences. But I don’t know if I want about, because I just made this film and it’s everything to be funny or a joke, so I always definitely kind of funny. It has some funny think of absurd as a better word than funny, parts and I like it. [laughing] If I see it with even though it is sometimes funny. So that’s an audience it’s a good thing, but maybe like a philosophical thing, like absurdity is— not with my paintings. They’re not all laugh yeah, like Camus or something. I’m sort of out loud type of humor, and I want them to questioning all systems of value and humor be a little more uncomfortable or disorienting. is a way of doing it. And play is important, but that’s also kind of a bad word in art. But EW: And with the film, it’s an activity that I think there’s a whole history of serious play, you would do as a group, right? or whimsy, or even like the Bauhaus. The social aspect is very important. With the SR: Yeah, I just screened the film in Chicago Bauhaus school you don’t think of Mies van at the Museum of Contemporary Art last der Rohe as funny, or Albers, or Kandisky. Saturday, and I’ve screened it in New York But I think that was an important part of and in Marfa, Texas. I’ve screened it in a few 7 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Esther Weng in Conversation Thursday, October 8, 2015 with Scott Reeder places, and also in this festival in London. exhibition in LA at 356 Mission Road and But I read it. I’ve gotta research that more. sometimes it was written out and then But there hasn’t been a lot of screenings they had this huge space and part of their But it’s that kind of system. It’s like some sometimes we’d just keep trying stuff and so far, but yeah, I definitely like seeing mission about space is that they like to arbitrary color hierarchy. Like in the military write it on the fly. So refine it, and you’d it with an audience. It’s a conventional, realize projects that couldn’t be at other too, how they have different ranks. end up figuring out exactly what to say but feature length movie with a beginning and places, so longer-term, crazy things that it wasn’t written ahead of time so you just an end, so I wouldn’t wanna just show it in a wouldn’t really fit for a commercial gallery EW: Will we see a sequel to Moon Dust any would keep trying things out. So sometimes room just playing on a loop or something. or museum schedule. So they invited me to time in the future, perhaps set on Mars? it was straight improvisation where people come and shoot these scenes that I always were just totally making it up. There was EW: …like in a gallery? wanted to shoot but never had the space SR: Well, I’ve joked around that, instead a range of that. And the final product was and time. So I built these final sets, and in of having a DVD extra of deleted scenes kind of a mix of scripted and unscripted. SR: Yeah, like a video. So it’s definitely doing that, building sets and taking them you have just a whole other movie. Because better to see with a group. apart, painting and repainting them, this there’s so much extra footage that didn’t EW: And while we’re on the topic of whole other body of work, these large- make it in. There’s eighty hours of footage. improvisation and chance—in a recent EW: In a theater setting? scale paintings that came out of that, they I mean, a lot of it is just of people that interview, your brother (painter Tyson were made with paint rollers. I call them can’t act and repeating the lines until Reeder) mentioned that you used to make a SR: Yeah! Landlord Paintings, ‘cause it’s like painting it’s acceptable. But there is some amazing dart board where you would have different a wall, so there were these moments when stuff that was shot but didn’t make it in ideas for a painting and then throw the EW: Well, I actually had a couple of ques- a couple of interns were painting this wall the final cut. But yeah, I have an idea of dart. In another interview, you talked about tions about your film Moon Dust. When and have four different pastel colors on doing something with that extra footage, being interested in things that are made by I was reading about it, I read that it was it, and they didn’t really know how to and then a sequel. In the movie they talk people who don’t know what they’re made over the course of eleven years, and paint a wall. And they’d look kind of like about this other resort. If Mars is the new doing and creating artificial constraints you seemed to have paid a lot of attention a Clyfford Still, so one thing fed into hot spot, the moon is sorta like Daytona that always put you back at square one. to color and form, so how did working on the other. But the movie was probably Beach, like no one goes anymore. [laughing] How do you use and balance chance, the film during this period of time influ- influenced by my paintings too—just So maybe a movie about Mars or some- risk, and control in your practice? ence your painting practice? And did the the color, ongoing, interesting color… thing…I don’t know. I’ve thought about boundaries between the film production doing some kind of sequel for sure. SR: I like limitations, and if there are infinite and paintings start to blur? EW: Because it was based on the colors, choices, you can’t make a choice. Also, I’m right? The hierarchy of the workers? EW: Well, I would certainly be interested a Libra, [laughing] so I always have extra SR: Yeah, I’ll talk about it a little bit in the to see that and hopefully we won’t have trouble with sort of balancing the options. lecture, but it was a whole new body SR: Yeah, it was like—I heard that Google… to wait another eleven years for it. So I like to have rules or mess myself up of work that came directly out of the it’s just like this thing that I’ve actually somehow. Either you have to do some- production of the film. So it took me ten mentioned in other interviews and I don’t SR: [laughing] Right, right. thing really fast, or you do something with or eleven years to finish it, but there’d be research. [laughing] I still know just as limited supplies, or you let chance make long periods—two or three years where much about it last time I brought it up and EW: You mentioned the actors improvising. some of the decision. I guess I’d always I didn’t do anything. So it’s just sort of like I totally forgot to look it up again. [laugh- Did you leave a lot of room for that? Or been interested in that and think that it’s if you were building a boat from scratch ing] So yeah, I’d heard maybe that Google allowing chance during the production of mysterious what ends up being interesting in your back yard [laughing] and work has—that the colors in Google mean the film? and it’s not always the thing that’s calcu- on it when you—but that’s not an ideal way something, so that there’s actually a pretty lated or pre-conceived. And especially to make a movie, because the actors are rigid system of hierarchy of employees in SR: Yeah, sometimes I would just direct with painting, it seems like it’s hard unless aging and everything [laughing] But that’s Google. It looks fun to us, but if you’re a them. Like, this is where you’re supposed to you’re like Albers, or you have some really how I did it, so I kind of thought I would green G or whatever, it might suck. [laugh- start and this is where you’ll end up. They good system. I mean, I am jealous of that. never finish it. But I was invited to do this ing] I don’t know if that’s even true, though. might make up how they get there. I mean, Like, how much anxiety did he ever have? I want them to be a little more 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Esther Weng in Conversation Thursday, October 8, 2015 9 with Scott Reeder He could be like, Oh, what about orange, EW: That sounds pretty interesting. I’d like everything else I’ve done. It’s like this other orange, or orange? I mean, you know it’s to see that when it’s done. So finally, as thing. That was surprising. That would be going to be a square. Or Agnes Martin or an exhibiting artist who has worked on a an example of the most—it was embarrass- something. I mean, I am sort of envious of number of curatorial projects and as a pro- ing, it was hard to show the movie. Because that kind of artist. But that’s a limitation, fessor of painting and drawing, what is one it’s, you know, Sci-Fi. I don’t know. It’s too. That’s a way of reeling it in, so the thing that you would want your students pretty nerdy, but it’s fun. But people liked inventions happen in a smaller arena and to take away from your teaching? Or, what it at the MCA, so that was good. And that there’s control over it. In some of the things advice do you have for a young artist in art was extra hard because I had been talking I’ve worked on with my brother collabora- school right now? about it for so long in Chicago. tively, we’ve done a lot of curatorial proj- ects. So one thing was this four-color pen SR: I mean, you mentioned risk, so I always EW: People had expectations. show, where we had sixty different artists think it’s good if you think you might use the little ballpoint pen that we just sent embarrass yourself—you’re probably doing SR: Yeah, people had expectations, and I to them. That was a good example of limita- something right. So you have to take some think most people thought I was just lying tions so it forced everybody to use that one kind of chance or chances. I think it’s hard that I was never gonna finish it. tool. And some people got really good at it to do, I mean, the stakes are high and our and ended up making more work using that world isn’t nurturing, warm; do anything EW: Well, thank you so much for taking the pen, but it’s kind of like ugly colors—but and there’s a lot of judgment. That’s all it is, time to do this interview with us, and we people did some really crazy stuff. is people exercising their taste and judg- look forward to your lecture tonight! ment, and connoisseurship. I think you just EW: I’m sure you received a lot of unexpect- can’t let that stuff mess with you. You have ed outcomes from that. to do something—just the crazier the better. I know in my own career that the things that SR: Yeah! are the most embarrassing make the big- gest impact. So I have this feeling like, oh EW: So if you had a dartboard now, what this, I might have gone too far. This really is would be one of the ideas on it for a painting? dumb. But not always. I have gone too far, but usually that’s a good sign. And even if SR: The dartboard thing was—I used to just you do, that’s good too. You learn from that. throw darts at words and then it’d be word And the movie is a perfect example. I start- combinations for titles, to generate content ed it so long ago. It wasn’t designed for an for what imagery I would paint. When I got art context. Video cameras got better and here and I walked out of the airport I walked people were making features on a consum- through a spider web, and then we were er camera. So I was like, Oh I’ll just make a joking that the airport was haunted. [laugh- feature in a couple of weeks. Just to do it to ing] I mean, I’ve never seen a spider web at say I did it. an airport. Like, usually they’re pretty busy? EW: But it turned into this huge project. EW: This is Eugene. SR: But ten years later… So it’s been nice SR: [laughing] Yeah, yeah! So that’s an idea. that it’s been well received in this art con- Something about a haunted airport could be cool. text and now it even fits. It does fit in with uncomfortable or disorienting. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Esther Weng in Conversation Thursday, October 8, 2015 11 with Scott Reeder FOREWORD ANYA DIKAREVA IN Enrique Chagoya is an artist utilizing printmaking as a tool for CONVERSATION WITH remix and reexamination of cultural assumptions. His lithographs, etchings, woodcuts, and other print media work address issues of colonialism, art history, and politics. He draws on his experiences living on both sides of the Mexican border as well as spending time abroad in Europe. Enrique engages his audience on multiple levels and was very articulate about his influences when we sat down to ENRIQUE interview him before his campus visiting artist lecture on October 15, 2015. Joe Moore and I were both familiar with his work as undergraduates and his mix of satire and critical commentary of CHAGOYA visual culture has been influential in our own printmaking endeavors. Anya Dikareva: How do you start off your and I wanted to do my own versions of day? What is your ideal breakfast? them. I was also influenced by an experi- ence I had as a child at my dad’s office. My Enrique Chagoya: I usually wake up between father used to work for the central bank 7:30 and 8:00. I have a couple of muffins in the internal security department where for breakfast; they are mostly coconut flour, they keep an eye on forgeries and crooks. almond flour, and chocolate... no sugar. That’s maybe one of the few institutions Coffee—I make myself a very strong latte. in Mexico that cannot afford corruption My wife makes a fruit salad and a smoothie because they print the money. My dad used with hemp protein. And that’s my breakfast! to work with other people to catch forgers and all kinds of crooks. AD: What drives your imagery? How do you source your visual material? It seems like AD: That’s the mark of the ultimate you have a lot of different channels. printmaker—to be able to print money! EC: A lot of social context influences my EC: Oh yes, not only that but his office was work. Sometimes it is the place I live or full of plates of forged money. His office events of the day, and I react to them. was a museum of crime. He had a skull of Sometimes it is a beautiful object that I a famous criminal on his desk, the Tiger of want to make my own version of, such as Santa Julia. This criminal was a bandit who some of my etchings after Goya. Those killed a lot of cops. Everyone was really started after I fell in love with Goya’s prints afraid of him but they got him when he was when I was a student at the San Francisco on the toilet, which made him even more Art Institute. A history of printmaking class I famous. This became a joke; whenever took gave us access to original Goya prints somebody called you and you missed their 13 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Anya Dikareva in Conversation Thursday, October 15, 2015 with Enrique Chagoya call, you tell them they got you like the Mixtec-Zapotec architecture. So I thought, to conflict. But resolution of conflict is what me could see them. And of course they Tiger of Santa Julia and they would know what would happen if the opposite took brings progress. History is an ongoing reso- didn’t like that and they only let me see the where you were. So that famous skull was place? What if an artist from a former colony lution of conflicts, or violence which delays microfilm which was useless. So I made my on his desk. I was about ten years old and it appropriated European art? So I began to resolution. So from that perspective, I don’t own codex, Les Aventures des Moderniste influenced me to do look-alike things. I kind take over European paintings and other things feel like I belong to a particular country or Cannibales (The Adventures of the Mod- of wanted to be a forger without being a and developed something I call Reverse culture even though I have two passports, ernist Cannibals). It’s full of French imagery forger. When I made my first Goya print, Modernism, or Reverse Anthropology. two nationalities. When I was living in Paris, with a lot of conflict happening there. That I was amazed I could do it. I measured I was not missing Mexico, and I was not was my context and my reaction to that the original print, took notes about how This combines everything—my idea of look- missing the whole U.S., I was missing San context. long to leave it in the acid to make the lines, alike things, putting a mirror on the history Francisco. Paris was a beautiful place with and studied Goya’s lines. But my lines were of colonialism, and on ourselves basically. amazing art, amazing food, but somehow To reiterate, I will say that I feel like I belong coming very crisp and straight and his lines Instead of pointing fingers, it’s a critique of the people reminded me a little too much nowhere and everywhere. You become were shaky and beautiful. So what I did human behavior in general to which we all, of the conservative Catholicism of Mexico. yourself and your circumstances, as a was shake my hand a little bit and then I one way or another, are related. It’s not Us There was something very alienating in my Spanish philosopher, Ortega Gasset, said. realized his hands were shaky—he was in his Vs Them, it’s Us Vs Us. We could be our own interactions with the local bureaucracies, When you live across borders you realize, in sixties when he did those prints. I learned best friends and do incredibly amazing and the Biblioteque Nationale, dealing with my spite of all the differences I listed, there is a something about Goya, a little encrypted helpful things for others and equally in the residency permit... human essence that is very much the same. message about his etching, and felt like I opposite direction, we can do terrible, hor- I feel like I can identify with the good and was communicating with a dead artist! So rendous, criminal actions against humanity. AD: That’s right, and the Biblioteque Natio- bad everywhere. Even though we would like far I have done about forty of those, from It’s a duality that humanity deals with all the nale wouldn’t let you look at a collection… to think we are something like a breed apart, Los Caprichos series, the Disasters of War, time. That duality is something that informs the world is getting so small today that and from the Proverbs. a lot of my work. EC: Oh yes, I was writing an essay about maybe that’s why people are reacting so the destruction of pre-Columbian books strongly to the differences—they are afraid The Codices are a similar idea. I wanted Joe Moore: Are you more of a patriot or a for the LA County Museum catalog for the of getting to know people too much, seeing to make something that looked like a pre-Co- concerned parent out for revenge? 2000 exhibition titled The Road to Aztlan, the differences as a threat rather than a lumbian object so I made ancient-looking which was part of the ancient indigenous commonwealth. Eventually, when people re- books with pre-Columbian imagery. Because EC: Neither! I’m the opposite of a national- migration route between southern U.S. and alize that they are a commonwealth, I think I have a lot of interest in social issues and ist, if anything. After living in both Mexico Mexico. I was writing about what happened we will celebrate our differences more than my background before I became an artist and the U.S., and also in France, I realized to these books during the conquest. The being afraid or worried about them. was an economist, I mixed that idea with that people are different but also the same Biblioteque Nationale has one of the three making look-alike things. It gets complicated everywhere. The differences are great Mayan books in Europe, the Codex Paris. AD: What advice would you give to young eventually; I began to rethink the theories and something that could enrich our lives. The other two are in Spain, the Codex artists today? What is the most important of Modernism and realized that a lot of Unfortunately, people see differences as a Madrid, and in Germany, the Codex Dres- thing to consider? Modernism was appropriating art from threat for the most part. Sometimes they den. So I wanted to see the Codex Paris and former colonies. Picasso is an example of use differences against you and it creates they told me they couldn’t show it to me EC: To ignore the art market and making this, he loved African masks and used them conflict. Very often the conflict becomes because the last Mexican who looked at the a living from selling your work and focus to develop his cubist style. Henry Moore violent, which is unfortunate. Conflict is a collection stole some pre-Columbian man- on the rewarding aspects of making art, was also inspired by pre-Columbian figures natural thing that happens, especially in uscripts from them. So I told them, search whatever is rewarding for you. If you can to develop his seated figures. The architect our species, which is very diverse. Different me, and they didn’t get the joke. I got kind of get away with doing what you like, then Frank Lloyd Wright developed his houses nationalities, different religions, different annoyed and I told them, those books were you are a successful artist. The market may in Los Angeles to look like Mayan architec- social classes, gender identities, languages, basically smuggled out of Mexico illegally come for help or it may be an obstacle but ture. Joseph Albers did an altar based on you name it. This diversity will naturally lead and they should be returned so people like that does not matter. If it comes for good I realized that people are 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Anya Dikareva in Conversation Thursday, October 15, 2015 15 with Enrique Chagoya reasons and you start selling your work, then that is the cherry on top of the cake but you should never make art for some other reason than art itself; everything else follows. If you become a really good artist, then people will look for you, you will have opportunities. If you focus on having big shows, being famous, having your work in every art fair and then you don’t get that, you will get so frustrated you will just quit. And that’s not good at all. In the other direction, if you are really happy with your work, you can withstand difficult circum- stances and times and most likely you will find a way to make a living. Most artists find a way to make a living, maybe not necessar- ily through their artwork but maybe through other means. Maybe they become curators or teachers or entrepreneurs of artistic venues, open a gallery or if they have access to investments they might open up an art factory! Who knows! But that’s not the objective. If you want to make money, you better go to a business school, get to Wall Street and maybe become a big collector of art instead. different but also the same everywhere. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Anya Dikareva in Conversation Thursday, October 15, 2015 17 with Enrique Chagoya FOREWORD ALEXANDER WURTS IN Paula Wilson is an art-making powerhouse. Her artworks span a CONVERSATION WITH range of media (nearly all of them) while still managing to come together into a cohesive whole. She’s found ways to make work that is consistently surprising and increasingly dynamic. It’s these aspects of her works that really intrigued me, and I was excited for the opportunity to interview her. When I met Paula, I was surprised by how friendly she was which made the interview even PAULA more enjoyable. Her outfit was particularly impressive, consisting of colorful clothes she made herself. She also wore a handcrafted wooden utility belt that carried her art-making supplies which WILSON made her seem like a superhero artist ready for battle. When preparing for this interview I was interested in writing questions that would give people an idea of Paula’s unique perspective and art-making practices. Specifically, how they make decisions about Alexander Wurts: So we’ll start off with an how you think about material processes and materials and content, what inspires her, and so on. These are the easy one. What is your ideal breakfast? how you make those decisions about what same things that all artists struggle with at every point in their materials to use? career, so I was hopeful that Paula’s answers could provide some Paula Wilson: [laughing] My ideal breakfast valuable insight. is chia seed pudding made with coconut PW: Yeah, I think fundamentally I respond to milk with almonds that have been blanched, a collage aesthetic, akin to Romare Bearden. and the skins removed, and peaches that Until I have these disparate pieces that can are fresh. And mint. And maple syrup! come together to form a whole, that’s when [laughing] it feels real to me. I think that when it’s only one medium it feels untrue to the kind of AW: In your work you mix contemporary diversity of materiality that I see around me. media with traditional media, such as stained glass and iPhones—can you talk AW: The way you use figures and portraits in about what those references mean for you? your work suggests an exploration of ideas of identity in our everyday life. Can you tell PW: What they mean for me is what it’s like us about those ideas and how you think to be alive today. We, you know, go to The about them in your work? Met and look at sculptures from antiquity and then we take a picture on our phone PW: Well, I’m biracial—my mom’s white and and then we sit at a picnic and show our my dad’s black. I grew up in a very diverse friends the vase from antiquity in today’s part of Chicago, this neighborhood called world. So it’s just a reflection of what it feels Hyde Park on the South Side. So to me, this like to be human in this moment. kind of mixing and melding of perceived opposites in figuration is something that has AW: You utilize a wide range of materials become the norm and something that excites and processes, and it seems specifically me to reflect back on my work. non-medium specific, so can you speak to 19 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Alexander Wurts In Conversation Thursday, October 22, 2015 with Paula Wilson AW: What advice would you give yourself when you were first starting out? It’s just a reflection of PW: To know that I’m never going to figure it out. what it feels like to be AW: What are you presently inspired by? Is there anything you’re reading or listening to that’s currently fueling your work? human in this moment. PW: Well, I love listening to music on SoundCloud and accessing playlists where you meander and find yourself somewhere completely new. This is my first trip to the Northwest, so I’m greatly inspired by this tree that I walked by on campus that had moss growing on it, had ferns growing on it, it had this golden explosive rainbow effect that blew me away. So I’m taking that back to New Mexico with me. AW: What are your plans for the future? Are there any projects you’re working on that you’re excited about? PW: I have an art organization in New Mexico called MoMAZoZo, Museum of Modern Art Carrizozo, which is the town I live in. We are launching an Artist-in-Res- idency program, so that’s something I’m excited about—particularly to see that this might be in print, and that students might see that and think about coming and visiting, so Momazozo.com. I’m gonna go to Detroit to check out this kind of ruin porn renaissance that’s happening soon, so that should be exciting as well. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Alexander Wurts In Conversation Thursday, October 22, 2015 21 with Paula Wilson FOREWORD NATALIE WOODS IN Before our interview, I did some sleuthing online about Chris CONVERSATION WITH Coleman. His website (digitalcoleman.com, what a good domain name!) includes a long list of projects to explore. I was impressed by the variety of work as well the interactive quality of many of the pieces. His art is beautiful, with playful moments, and is at times political. There is a definite theme of technology but also a focus on making connections with people via digital tools. I was CHRIS surprised by his openness towards his ideas, process, and ways of executing each piece. He even includes links where you could download the same programs he is using. Scrolling through his COLEMAN site helped me generate questions about what it is like to be an artist so heavily immersed in technology. As my own work has grown more and more digital, I have wondered about how to find balance between virtual and reality. I wanted hear Chris’ thoughts on that issue as well how his pieces come into being. It was a great Natalie Woods: What does a typical day working in the yard or while I’m walking to conversation that I learned from and have often reflected back on in your studio look like? school or while I’m sitting on an airplane. while working in the studio. That is when innovative, deep thinking Chris Coleman: My studio is a room in my happens and then the computer is when it’s house where there are lots of computers time to execute. and 3D printers and soldering irons and things like that. Just to set the stage. NW: So you get ideas elsewhere, then you Typically, unfortunately, ninety percent come to your studio ready to work on it? of the days are spent in front of the comput- er. I have one of those adjustable standing CC: Yeah, for me that has always been desks where half the day I’ll stand up, half an important part of being an artist. There the day I’ll sit down. Half the day I will use is never a moment where I am not think- my right hand with the mouse, half the day ing about the next couple of projects. No I will use my left hand to prevent damage to matter what I’m doing, if I’m listening to a my wrist. So it is a sort of ergonomic dance, podcast or while I’m raking the leaves in the I suppose. [laughing] But when I am really yard, I’m constantly trying to solve and focused on my artwork it depends, because think through subtleties of the problems I work in so many modes. It might be a day for the next project. By the time I’m at the where I’m just programming and trying to computer it is too late. Either I have figured beat a problem. Or it might be a day spent it out or I haven’t. [laughing] I might test 3D modeling and trying those models some things out and find failure and then go out on a print. Or I might be doing more back out. Because when I am in front of a animated stuff. But typically by the time I am computer I am either working or there is the sitting in my studio, I already know where I Internet, right? [laughing] And it is endless and need to go. The actual ideas and processes vast and too much. So I cannot be in front of are things that have come to me while I’m the Internet and be able to think about my work. 23 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Natalie Woods in Conversation Thursday, October 29, 2015 with Chris Coleman NW: I noticed that you often work with other and then I also do collaboration with my make five. That is how you sell art. If I had time. But it is also why I went into this, the artists. Can you talk about your experiences wife. And while some people may go, If you to participate in that market, I would have beauty of being a professor and an artist, collaborating and how that influences your are doing half the work in both situations, to take a different stance. But because I’m a as opposed to working in an ad agency or personal practice? what is the difference? But for me, it’s that teacher, because part of what I do is share whatever, is that part of my job is to make key piece of—are we trying to talk about knowledge on a daily basis, having myaart art. Making art is what I love and in my CC: For me, it has always been a pretty the same thing? Or did one of us generate practice also be embedded in sharing free time I want to do what I love. And my comfortable space. It requires first and an idea and the other one is helping that knowledge goes hand in hand. I can’t do one wife is an artist and professor too. So there foremost that I have a conceptual topic that person accomplish their idea? So when without the other. is no need for, Oh it’s the weekend, let’s is shared between the two or three or four I am a technical producer, Laleh has an take off and do something different. No. We of us. I’m not interested in, Oh you do work interesting idea, and we’ve discussed it. We NW: With your project W3FI you talk about are both like, Yay, it’s the weekend! We both in this stuff, I do work in this stuff, let’s do help each other’s ideas grow. But at the end how it is getting more and more difficult to get to make art! And I sit in front in of my stuff together! That is terribly uninteresting. of the day, it is an interest of hers that she lead lives separate from our virtual lives. As computer and plan for the next thing. It’s For instance, I have done stuff in the past wants to talk about. It is not an interest of a digital artist and spending so much time in not always healthy, but it’s where we’re at. with Michael Salter. Some of that work has mine and I don’t really have any deep input front of a computer, how do you find balance? been about the way we choose to live our as to why she is trying to execute some- lives and suburban settings and separation thing. It is just my job to help her execute it. CC: I don’t think there is a balance anymore. from person to person and isolation and I think, [pausing] well let me ask you, what how that allows us to think differently about NW: On your website you seem really open do you mean in terms of balance? everybody else because we don’t feel the about your process and will even have community ties to one another. So that links to download software that you are NW: Well, I am interested in what you were was a conceptual connection that allowed using. Can you share your thoughts on open saying about being in your studio and us to work together and tell stories that source materials and being transparent switching hands and standing and sitting. both of us instantly understood. I think the about your process? So that is physical balance and taking care same thing comes out in the work I do with of yourself physically. I spend so much time my wife, Laleh Mehran, and several other CC: If you believe in what you’ve made and in front of a computer and it is so exhaust- people in the past. And then other pieces, its power, then you shouldn’t be afraid that ing that sometimes I have to go make phys- like I have a sound designer that I like to by making files available to other people ical projects that have nothing to do with work with, and we have done work together that somehow they’re going to copy or rip the computer. So I wonder how you balance that is collaborative but most the time I am you off. I’m not interested in the notion that in your art practice or how do you step commissioning him to do sound design that you have to protect things. To be frank, away from being in your studio and balance after I have completed a conceptual work. people say it all the time, there is no such the rest of your life? thing as an original idea. We’re all ripping off And that collaboration, in so much that it is of each other and culture. So to suddenly CC: Ok, yeah. For me, the balance is teach- a collaboration, it is a delicate term there, say, Now that I’ve done it, you can’t touch ing versus working on art; because other but it’s because I know that his audible it, is a pretty stupid notion to me. Now, that than taking an hour out of every day to do results match my visual aesthetics. So I trust being said, I make my money as a professor. some yard work or something outside, there that I can put something in his hands and I don’t make my money with art. And so, is nothing else. I don’t play games, I don’t we are quickly going to be able to narrow down because I don’t participate in the art market, hang out or go to bars. We maybe watch where he can go and where I am already going. which requires artificial limitation—I work in a movie once a month. But every moment the digital field, anybody can copy anything, that is not in school we are spending But I say this pretty intensely because I also right? So the art market requires that even making art. And I kind of see that as why I’m do technical production work for my wife though I can print an infinite number, I only successful. Because I am working all the That is when innovative, deep thinking happens... 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Natalie Woods in Conversation Thursday, October 29, 2015 25 with Chris Coleman FOREWORD LEE ASAHINA IN I met Lisa Radon after having the pleasure of being alone with her CONVERSATION WITH work for a couple of hours. I knew beforehand that she was a writer but was not prepared for how strongly language permeates her work in a way that, before this interview, I would have described as poetic. After a coffee shop disappointment (they were closed), we had the conversation that follows in a booth in the dining area of a dorm whose vinyl cushions kept falling off. The setting couldn’t LISA have been further away from the space of Radon’s work, but to talk to her is truly to be transported to a magical, monochromatic place where objects have a life of their own. RADON Lee Asahina: When you are making a body of LR: Okay. Well, it might be useful to know work, how do you decide what form it will take? that I think about objects as having power, and that I think of them as little machines Lisa Radon: Oh, you have to explain that that do work. And so, they’re kind of like question more… Are you asking about these purpose-built machines that are process? meant to do a job—and that I don’t think of them individually, I think of them as a matrix LA: I guess I’m asking about process or if in a space. So there’s a set of objects that you have an idea in mind—if you want to together perform work. At the same time, make it into a book or if you want to make a that set of objects is also a poem that may visual work, are those separate things? have aspects of it that may be—this publi- cation that I made, for example, it may be LR: Okay. That’s multiple questions… a text that lives on the website, and I have made a website that would be something LA: It is multiple questions. that would work with the objects before, so I think that answers your question… LR: Well, I mean because one aspect of it is the relationship of the book to the object LA: Yeah, that’s great. That’s exactly what I matrix— wanted to hear about, thank you for clarify- ing my question for me. LA: Sure. Can you talk about choosing materials and LR: —and a different question is—here is a the importance of cataloguing them? concept, how should it look? LR: The materials are super important, and LA: Yeah, I think that’s the question. I feel like—two things, one is if we think 27 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Lee Asahina in Conversation Friday, October 30, 2015 with Lisa Randon that an object has power then it draws a is a word people seem to use a lot when LA: Yeah LR: I feel also a really strong connection lot of its power from its material before I describing art. What do you think makes a with waves because I think my kind of core ever—I mean, my touch also has an aspect work of art poetic or, I guess alternatively, LR: It’s actually sort of a feeling that we directive or understanding about things is of charging that material, but the material do you even think that’s a good word to use have when something speaks to us in a this idea of the plumb line and the wave, in and of itself has its own power. And so to describe visual work? particular way. I think that’s the way people alignment and flow—so, that’s like that half when I was asking myself what materials are most typically use poetic—if something is of it, that’s fifty percent of it, that maybe best for this use, going back to materials LR: It’s a weird thing to ask a poet that like, evocative, right? you’re actually lying on top of the ocean and from my home place was a way that felt the question— letting the swell move you or that idea of most powerful to me or the most… like the LA: Yeah, yeah. Definitely. I always feel like process and recovery and redoing. Waves— most core. LA: Yeah. it’s so vague, so that’s why I was curious to I should have just said waves. Period. ask you the poet what you thought. LA: Yeah. LR: —because I understand the use of LA: That’s such a lovely way to talk about that word in that context and I do use it in LR: Yeah, let’s analyze that… [laughing] it—yeah, that’s great. Thank you. LR: So, oak—I come from a place where that context, and I think… Well, the other there are oaks, some pines but those are complication is that there are different ways LA: Yeah, let’s dig in. [laughing] dying, and then there’s granite, as well, and to understand that word, and what we might Okay, my last question is what’s your favor- clay, so there’s clay, but this Carmel stone mean is lyrical. ite naturally occurring phenomenon? is like—something that besides adobe, a lot of things are built with, a lot of rock LA: Sure, yeah. LR: That is so hard. What is a naturally structures like your fireplaces so forth occurring phenomenon that I don’t feel a would be built with this stone. And then the LR: Or, we might mean suffused with mean- strong relationship with? adobe of course is literally—most of it was ing and metaphor in like, really rich ways. made in people’s yards and then made into LA: I mean that’s a great answer. the buildings—so anyway, it also helps me LA: Yeah. because I’m very seduced by materials, and LR: This is the farthest I’ve ever lived away it helps me not be profligate in my use of LR: And so, it’s hard to say. I’m not above from the ocean in my life, and I think—so various materials because otherwise I think using that word for something but I also, I would say waves, ocean waves, because I can be quite slutty about the materials that for my own work, think about an exhibition speaking of something that is ripe with I would use because I fall in love with them, or this matrix of objects as a poem—it all metaphor, or ripe for metaphor… That is the you know? comes out of the same impulse. I mean I thing, that it is—I mean we call these cliffs feel like it’s a word that’s not—it’s kind of at our beach—we call them sand factories, LA: Yeah! like the word great… right? It’s taking this stone that forms over millions of years and breaking it into smaller LR: So much! So, it’s a check on Lisa’s en- LA: Yeah. and smaller and smaller and smaller pieces, thusiasm for materials, if that makes sense. and it falls, and then when the winter ocean LR: —In that it’s really multi-purpose and comes, it recovers these larger pieces and LA: That’s a great way to talk about it. I need not very specific, and if we were allowed then tumbles them smaller and smaller until that! to have a hundred words to talk about your they’re granular, and then it settles down exhibition we might think twice about using and starts the process again—come on, LR: That’s the dorky answer. [laughing] that one because it maybe isn’t pulling its that’s like, incredible! [laughing] weight, you know? LA: [laughing] No, that’s great. Okay, poetic LA: Yeah, that’s amazing. I think about objects as having power. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Lee Asahina in Conversation Friday, October 30, 2015 29 with Lisa Randon FOREWORD SARAH MIKENIS IN As an artist who is personally invested in using the optical CONVERSATION WITH potentials of pattern to conceal, confuse, and alter perception in paintings, I was particularly excited to interview Samantha Bittman before her lecture about her intricate, mesmerizing paintings on hand-woven textiles. We spoke about pattern, imitation, distortion, and camouflage. SAMANTHA BITTMAN Sarah Mikenis: So I’m really fascinated by of the space and how maybe the differ- the logic behind dazzle ships, and how ent angles of the patterning would sort the ships aren’t camouflaged by blending of break away and interact with the, you into their surroundings, but rather by the know, the seam of the walls or the floor of painted patterns making them impossible to the architecture and distort the viewer’s perceive the ship as a whole or the direction understanding of themselves in relationship that the ship is moving. Can you talk about to the architecture of the room. I don’t know the influence of camouflage, or maybe that that necessarily happened, but that’s dazzle ships specifically, on your work? what I was thinking about. I think it also was because of being surrounded on all four Samantha Bittman: Yeah, I mean I think sides with the black and white opticality, it about camouflage both in terms of what you just made it difficult to perceive distance in just described with the dazzle ships and a way, you know— that was kind of interest- the way they distort the enemy’s percep- ing so that’s what I was thinking about for tion because of the large black and white that particular show. And then I think about patterns—like if you look at the pictures camouflage in a more traditional… or, in the of the dazzle ships the patterns are sort of way maybe we think of it more traditionally, like in lots of angular shapes that suggest where an object blends into its background a certain perspective or directionality that just through similar patterning. I think that’s the ships might be moving in, and then very straightforward. in another part of the ship it might sug- gest another directionality. So, in terms of SM: Yeah. So this might be sort of a repeat that particular show, Razzle Dazzle, I was question, but I will ask to see if you have thinking of that in terms of the way that the anything to add to it. I was thinking about black and white patterned wallpaper was your recent exhibition Razzle Dazzle and organized in relation to the architecture was just wondering how you decided to 31 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Sarah Mikenis in Conversation Thursday, November 12, 2015 with Samantha Bittman start creating wallpaper, and then also if SB: Well the use of black and white I think at stretching the weave onto the canvas the wallpaper was a catalyst for making first was, you know, I think I was just focus- there’s that kind of distortion in a lot of the decisions to hang work that engaged the ing on materials when I first started using pieces, so it’s really interesting to hear you space in a different way and deviated from black and white. So maybe it was a way to talk about it being that kind of… the standard sixty-inch center line? break down making work without the added layer of thinking about color. But also going SB: Yeah! And I think too, like, in making SB: Yeah, I think in a way… yeah. The back to the idea of camouflage, I think in textiles a lot of times textile patterns are wallpaper—I think of the wallpaper as an order to camouflage—in some of the earlier repetitive or hard-edge in terms of like, if extension of the paintings in the sense that works where there were large areas of black you read a set of instructions for making the wallpaper patterning really is the same and white textile and then areas of black any type of textile there’s a certain objec- as some of the paintings so there’s a partic- and white paint where I wanted the image of tiveness to that information but then I think ular relationship. I think of, in some of the the patterning of the painted parts and the through the process of hand making some- paintings, where the painted portions blend patterning of the textile to visually fuse to- thing it softens it or it gives it a distortion into the textile of the paintings—and then I gether and make another type of patterning. or an organic feel to it so I like that combi- guess I was thinking of that as a relationship The strong value contrast of black and white nation of the hand with the hardness of the to the paintings blending into the wallpa- I think fuses the material contrast between patterning. per as well. It was also just—the first time the plastic-ness and the cotton of the textile I did the wallpaper, a problem that I was and so it was a strategy for making those SM: Okay, last question. Your paintings blur interested in of having a discreet show of two surfaces visually more fuse together. an understanding between structure, support, the paintings and tying them all together in weave, and painted image. I was just wonder- a specific space. So it was also to unify the SM: What role does distortion and warping ing, is the idea of imitation or paint imitating walls and yeah, the paintings, and yeah, the of patterns play in your work? the woven structure important to you? wallpaper patterning—and maybe I said this, but the wallpaper patterning is taken from SB: Well for warping of patterns, I mean— SB: Sometimes. Yeah, I mean sometimes, the textiles themselves. So when I produced I think the way that occurs most is taking and maybe this isn’t exactly what you mean, the wallpaper in Photoshop, I was thinking a piece of cloth that has a pattern that in but I’ll think of the paint—I’ll like copy it in about the pixel of the Photoshop screen theory is rigid but it’s fluid because it’s paint or inverse what it is in paint and in that in relationship to the pixel of the woven cloth, and then how that interacts with way it’s like maybe the paint application textile, or the interlacements of the woven essentially a two-dimensional frame or front and the plastic-ness sort of flattens out and textile, and how those two things are both part of a stretcher bar by wrapping the removes the patterning and the surface of related in the sense that they’re a storage textile that sort of hardens the warp-ness the textile away from the object of the tex- or carrier of binary information and so in a and flattens it out. So I am interested in the tile and that experience we have with cloth. sense they’re like different manifestations in paintings as objects and how the stretching I suppose that’s a type of imitation and it terms of medium—but in terms of informa- of the textile with the pattern interacting kind of negates that experience and it just tion they are exactly the same. That in a way with the hardness of the stretcher bars—so becomes a picture of itself. So yeah, that is a different kind of camouflage too; It’s that physicality, the warped patterning, is would be imitation. like a camouflage of medium through the like an indirect relation to that physicality sameness of information. of the object of the textile and the frame SM: Okay, that’s it! Thank you so much! interacting with each other. What do you SM: How do you think about color in your mean by distortion? SB: Cool, thank you guys. That was fun— work, specifically your use of black and that helped me warm up! white and primary colors? SM: I meant through the process of It’s like a camouflage of medium. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Sarah Mikenis in Conversation Thursday, November 12, 2015 33 with Samantha Bittman FOREWORD STEPHEN NACHTIGALL IN Talking to artists about what they do is always a treat because CONVERSATION WITH you’re afforded a chance to hear a unique perspective on what art is or what it can do. Speaking to Steven Matijcio, the curator at the Contemporary Arts Center of Cincinnati, was a particularly enlightening chance to learn about the role a curator has in looking at art from a broader perspective. Steven intuitively and fluidly makes connections between artists and ideas and is able STEVEN to package what he does in a way that is accessible to diverse audiences. It’s not every day that you speak to someone who knows contemporary art so well. I spoke with Steven about his role as a MATIJCIO curator, how he sees that position, and some of the ideas behind his work. Stephen Nachtigall: I’ve read a bit about ground up and I like to channel and to chal- your curatorial process and I’m curious lenge what’s happening in a local setting. about how your role as a curator tries to Often times to try to convene global conver- address the rift between local and global sations I think the group show is often times perspectives? a very effective way of doing that, where you’re bringing together an idea of a dinner Steven Matijcio: It’s crucial that one of my party setting of international, national, local, first orders of business when I arrive in a and regional artists and allowing them to new city is to do a whole series of studio wrestle with similar topics but contributing visits to try to survey the landscape not only all of their different perspectives. I think of what artists are doing and how they’re that that’s how I try to address the local working, but the general kind of zeitgeist or and global, to make it a much more fluid landscape of ideas that are being wrestled relationship, trying to break down the fortifi- with and engaged. I draw a lot upon this cation of them. idea of curatorial practice as geopolitics, but really that boils down to looking at the SN: You were talking about bringing nuances, the idiosyncrasies, the eccentric- knowledge into communities. The second ities of place and using that as a lens for question deals with a responsibility of con- what I’m going to do with exhibition making. temporary art to its audience and vice-versa Really seeing that as curatorial fodder, as the responsibility that the audience might the bedrock with which I build exhibitions have in coming to view some of the exhibi- upon. Because I think it’s a fallacy and a tions that you put on. grave mistake to go in and say, I’m going to bring perspective, understanding and SM: What I often talk about when I gen- knowledge to this community who needs to erate exhibitions or present exhibitions know better. I think that you build from the is that indifference is the ultimate enemy 35 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Stephen Nachtigall in Conversation Wednesday, November 18, 2015 with Steven Matijcio of contemporary art. I want people to your projects deal with the architecture of SN: Being from Canada and taking part of improve society. But I think ultimately we either love or to hate the shows, but I don't the institution very directly. I’m wondering numerous international residencies, I was are sort of thinking about philosophies and want them to go through and shrug their if you have anything to say about contem- wondering if you consider yourself as an paradigms and understanding sight lines. shoulders because that is not a resonant porary artists responding to architecture, or outsider. In that way contemporary art can have experience. A few days or a week later if maybe that connection can be addressed an effect in the way you can capture what you’ll kind of go, What did I see again?, and through art education. SM: Oh wow, that’s a good question. I think artists are doing and the way that they’re it won’t register or resonate or reverberate. it’s sort of the plight and the opportunity looking at particular urban and natural I don’t want people to hate shows but if SM: I’ve worked with some eccentric and of the contemporary art curator to be this contexts. Again, we just want to convene they have something like a really passionate unique spaces in the past. I think the Zaha perpetual outsider. I think it’s more and that conversation so yeah, being an outsider response, that’s what I want to engender Hadid building is an especially pronounced more difficult for a curator to be at an insti- isn’t always tough. Socially it's difficult, and cultivate. I don't think that I would say case. Often when you're working within tution or a place for decades. I think that sometimes you feel like you’ve arrived at audiences have a particular responsibil- those so called starchitect buildings, the you’re almost forced to be this transnational a party and you’ve gotten there a little too ity but I think there is work that is richer voice of that architect is always present. citizen who continues to take their wares late and all the circles are established and when you know the larger context. I’m very It’s the kind of degree or volume that I want and pack up shop and go elsewhere. I don't you’re kind of peeking over shoulders. So careful to program work that has some level to turn on the switch. I find that there’s want to be doing that for the rest of my life on a personal level often times it's more of immediacy. I compare it a lot to having a tremendous opportunity when you bring but I think that it does offer a perspective. difficult than in a professional context. relationship with another person, you have contemporary artists into the space be- I think that when you go away you're trying to have some level of appeal or attraction cause everyone sees it in a different way. to negotiate and understand what that SN: Last question—could you perhaps to want to know more. It has to inspire I think that’s where commissioning specific landscape is. There’s certainly a danger of explain what your dream exhibition might your curiosity. I think that’s the danger with work is crucial to a more effective relation- coming in and making rushes to judgment be like? some programming and work is that it’s too ship between artist and building because I and saying, I understand this, I’ve been here aloof, it’s too distant. The people just don't think that that’s when the dialogue becomes three months, I totally get what’s happen- SM: Oh man, see there’s so many, I have want to work that hard to make the bridge that much more pronounced and rich. So ing and now I will solve all your problems. this little black book and I sort of generate because you’re not sure if it’s worth the we try to do that, to give you an example we There’s a hubris to that kind of gesture, but these exhibitions. Sometimes they may be investment. Whereas I think if somewhere have Do-Ho Suh coming in, this celebrated I think that there can be something. I don’t completely unrealized and may sometimes there is a flicker, a flame, a spark, a seedling, Korean-American artist. I would love to com- know exactly what that proverb is but it’s never take physical form. But I will just I think that’s where you can start to let the mission new work, we didn't have quite that like you see the forest for the trees. It’s that continue to add names and experiences to layers accumulate. I try to do that with a budget but he's kind of customizing a few sort of idea of standing at the side of it, and these growing lists. And so I have about four lot of interpretive strategies. We try to do of his prior installations to really establish when you're in a place for too long you’re or five of these shows that continue to swell extended labels. We often try to incorporate a conversation with the geometry, with the too enmeshed in it. You’re immersed and and accumulate. I can think of one that has audio and visual material. I love to have the physical manifesto of what Zaha Hadid is surrounded. Whereas I think if you're the inspired me through the longest period; I’m voice of the artist incorporated on some doing. He's kind of creating this conversing outsider it does provide that opportunity. fascinated by the idea of the manifesto, this level of conversation. I just want to provide point, this call and response, and so we try I look at theorists like Edward Said and that idea of a very pronounced political state- portholes for people to find their own foot- to do that continuously. It’s incredibly en- idea of the exile, sort of taking something ment that is meant to inspire action and that ing, to offer interpretation. We don't want to lightening and inspiring to see the way that that you are able to assess and evaluate has taken a very definitive stance. This was be the center of the museum that says this artists are enterprising that architecture and to hopefully find different opportunities especially prevalent in early twentieth cen- is the definitive or authoritative knowledge because it offers something to respond to, for interpreting; I think that really that’s the tury avant-garde movements. I studied quite or meaning of this piece and that’s all you it’s not the white cube. You can love or hate ultimate goal. I think that in contemporary a bit of Futurism and it was this movement need to know. Really it’s just the foothold to it but it will inspire a response. I think as art we can be catalysts for social-cultural of movements, there were about five or six allow that conversation to grow. an institution we are there to cultivate and awareness. Hopefully through the raising manifestos that all got congealed in that nurture that kind of relationship. of consciousness and awareness we are movement as a whole. I’m interested in the SN: So working at the CAC, it seems a lot of able to catalyze some real change and to evolution or the trajectory of the manifesto Indifference is the ultimate 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Stephen Nachtigall in Conversation Wednesday, November 18, 2015 37 with Steven Matijcio and today in the twenty-first century it's almost become a caricature. It seems like there’s this level of political impotence, I don’t know if the manifesto still has that same currency or ability in today’s society. And yet there was something with the Arab Spring where you saw this sort of ability for people to gather agency and critical mass, but then there were all of the Occupy movements which seemed like much more of a pacifist approach to political action. So that’s kind of my dream show is to track the evolution of the manifesto and to look at it across a century or perhaps even longer, and to look at all the ways that artists are wrestling with political action as an artistic subject. That’s the one that if I ever have my Venice Biennale, that’s what I’ll do, but there’s a lot of other contenders that I have that continue. I like that my inspiration and research can go on and be mobile and can last within that sense, I can develop multi- ple exhibitions within a single timeline. SN: Awesome, thank you. enemy of contemporary art. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Stephen Nachtigall in Conversation Wednesday, November 18, 2015 2015–2016 with Steven Matijcio FOREWORD JOE MOORE IN Mary Margaret Morgan and I met to speak with Anders Ruhwald CONVERSATION WITH on Thursday, November 19th, at approximately 5:15 pm. We went to the wrong place to meet Anders so it might have been more like 5:30 pm. He didn’t seem to mind. All of us were confused as to what was going on. The following conversation took place at the front of a dimly lit, mostly empty auditorium ANDERS RUHWALD Joe Moore: I just have like five questions and AR: Or somebody else, maybe. Which, I wanted to start off with something kind of I guess is not good for the question—so, lighter—I was wondering how much weight whatever. you think you could lift above your head? JM: Okay, so, I was reading a review of your Anders Ruhwald: [laughing] Ah, that’s a good work by Ezra Shales— question. I think if I really pushed it, proba- bly like sixty pounds? AR: Uh huh. JM: Sixty? Yeah, that’s pretty good. JM: He was talking about—or he described your sculptures as insignificant forms. I was AR: I don’t know—is it? I’ve never tried. wondering if you could talk a little bit about your interest in the banal or the austere or JM: I don’t do that either. the domestic? AR: I’m not like a bench pusher or whatever. AR: Yeah. A lot of what I’m interested in is about kind of making the unnoticed JM: Yeah, me either. Sixty sounds good, noticed, so I think—it’s been a couple of though. years since I read what essay, what Ezra wrote in that essay, so at least for me it’s AR: That’s like a bag of plaster. I think if I like about sort of drawing out the things that are really get my shit together then I could do it. perhaps—the things that we don’t notice [laughing] so much and kind of begin to kind of make work around that and kind of bring those JM: [laughing] sort of things that we just kind of go by in the everyday and not think about. So, that’s 41 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Joe Moore in Conversation Thursday, November 19, 2015 with Anders Ruhwald one of the things that I think about a lot, of top ten is difficult. I mean I got into making AR: It’s this and only that, right? first three years but then after that, then kind of bringing—there’s a writer, a French art by just making pottery and that was you figure out a way to deal with your loans, writer called Georges Perec who kind of kind of just a kind of simple act of being JM: Yeah. you’ll figure out a way to kind of deal with talks about the infra-ordinary which is all able to kind of make something on a wheel getting a studio or whatever you need to do the things that we don’t think about in the was pretty revolutionary to me. I started AR: Yeah, yeah, yeah. to make it work, right? And finding money everyday and so those are the things that when—I’m going to be talking about that in to make sure that you can pay for your I’m kind of interested in, particularly when it the lecture as well, but whatever—I started JM: So do you have any advice for us as stu- situation, you need to make your art and all comes to objects, you know, just all the kind when I was fourteen and, you know, being dent artists moving forward? I mean you’re those sort of things—you know, shit then of supplementary stuff of like, you know kind of pretty early in your teenage life and at Cranbrook… starts falling into place but those first three materiality and all that kind of stuff. I’m very then suddenly having this ability to create years are the most difficult ones and so if interested in the kind of visual coding that a thing was pretty amazing, I thought. And AR: Mhm. you can just find a way to keep on making we have when you know—so you look at this so, I think at the root of when I make objects work, whether it’s from like 2:00-4:00 in green plastic table, right? And you kind of, that simple kind of thing is still there very JM: …even exiting school or something like the morning or whenever but something even before you look at it you kind of know much so. And then, [sighing] but then in that, what do you have as advice to focus that keeps you focused on your practice what it feels like, but then there are certain terms of what influences me, that shifts a on while we’re still here? because if you lose that focus or you get kind of sensory qualities that then pop out whole lot all the time and depends really enticed by a job or paycheck or something from it just by touching it, they kind of—it’s what I’m interested in at various times but AR: Yeah, I mean while you’re still here it’s else then that’s when it slides if you don’t do it. a pretty hard edge here, which is probably what am I really kind of thinking about a lot just—do as much as you can in your studios So, yeah, just make work. [laughing] why it’s chipped there. And so on and so these days? I’m thinking a lot about ideas as I think is like the most important thing that forth, but there’s like a material kind of a vo- around legibility—and so there’s a French you can do because it’s such a luxurious JM: Right? Yeah. That’s good advice. [laugh- cabulary that comes with things that I think artist who lived in Los Angeles in the seven- time that you have right now. When you ing] And then finally I wanted to end kind of we just notice and we rarely kind of think ties and the eighties called Guy De Cointet graduate I would—what I always tell my light again. What’s your favorite food? You about and so I’m interested in those kind of who kind of did a lot of work around object students is just keep making work. It’s so can be as specific as you like. things and those kind of moves and what and language and performance of language simple, but it’s kind of the most difficult that kind of prompts in our minds and try to and legibility and all that kind of stuff and so thing. Particularly for the first three years AR: Oh, my favorite food is probably kimchi. kind of bring that to the point of noticeabili- he would do a lot of kind of performances is what I’ve found with the people I went to I really love kimchi. I can eat as much ty if not language. which were basically on language with school with but also people that I’ve seen kimchi as anybody can serve to me. Yeah, objects, where the objects were just kind of come through a lot of schools—that those I can really eat a lot of kimchi. Kimchi and JM: Cool, yeah. And that sort of leads into props to prompt language that didn’t make three years if you can just keep on retaining like ramen and udon, but particularly kimchi. my next question. I guess sort of in relation, any sense. Sometimes it was a language your practice just for those three years, you I was wondering who or what was or is your that didn’t exist even to that sort of point but most likely are gonna kind of succeed as JM: Yeah. greatest influence as an artist? in those performance you’ll kind of see the an artist, you know? [laughing] In whatever actors kind of acting through, like pointing at shape or form that takes it might be that AR: Yeah. [laughing] AR: [laughing] specific language or pointing at specific ob- you get a Blue-Chip Gallery somewhere or jects and then they become prompts for the it might just be that you know, you have JM: [laughing] Alright. Yeah, JM: …to get into that materiality, but maybe narrative that goes through. So I’m looking a your own practice that at some points gets that’s good. there was an impetus for the interest in that? lot at that right now; It’s not my greatest influ- recognized and might not get recognized ence, I guess, but it’s one of the many. but at least you’ll have a life that revolves Mary Margaret Morgan: Do you make your AR: Yeah. It’s so many things, right? You around that practice which is I guess what own kimchi? know, if you kind of think about what makes JM: Yeah, I mean that makes total sense, we really kind of aim for as artists, right? But you make work it’s—I don’t know, it’s like I don’t think that anyone really has like, this is what I’ve just seen is that it just seems as if AR: No, I haven’t gotten that far yet. I’m a ton of things. So kind of putting it on a [gestures] it’s—the challenges are the hardest for the blessed with a lot of good Korean students 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Joe Moore in Conversation Thursday, November 19, 2015 2015–2016 with Anders Ruhwald that provide me with a lot. JM: That’s, yeah, that’s a huge bonus. A lot of what I’m AR: Yeah. [laughing] Exactly, yeah. Good cooks, it’s important in your students. interested in is about JM: Yeah. kind of making the unnoticed noticed. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Joe Moore in Conversation Thursday, November 19, 2015 45 with Anders Ruhwald FOREWORD STEPHEN NACHTIGALL IN I was looking forward to speaking with Brian Bress because he CONVERSATION WITH makes art that is fun to look at. His work seems to push back against medium specificity in a positive and engaging way. Brian is a very nice and successful artist. I sat down to talk to him and ask him some questions that might give some background about his personal journey into the world of art. BRIAN BRESS Stephen Nachtigall: Did you ever play any SN: Okay, good lesson—good way to make sports as a kid? it through. So did you ever want to be a cowboy or an astronaut as a kid? Brian Bress: Did I play sports as a kid? Yeah I played soccer. I played goalie. I was not BB: No, I was way too practical. The earliest very good at it. Oh, and I wrestled. profession I remember was wanting to be an an- esthesiologist. At a very young age, like seven. SN: You wrestled as well? SN: How did you find out what they did? BB: Yeah, I wrestled in high school. Because you had to do a winter sport in my school BB: Well, I was like, I like to draw, but you and basketball was out of the question. At least need a lot of time for that. I wanted a job in wrestling, nobody came to the wrestling that I could do and then quickly go and matches. And I was really good at not draw. I was very practical, so I thought, getting pinned, so they would just put me what doctor takes the least amount of time? across broad weight classes because they I think I saw it in a movie, the guy was like, didn’t have enough guys sometimes. So Count back from ten, and then he left. So they would bump me up to heavyweight, I was like, that guy—that’s the guy. He’s I weighed like one hundred and sixty pounds getting paid. And then I realized I was no and I would just go out there and wrestle like good at math or science so it went downhill five guys in a row because they didn’t have from there. I thought about other doctors the right classes. Not showing up you lose a like maybe I could be a psychiatrist but you lot of points, but if you go up there and don’t have to be good at science for that too. get pinned you lose less points, so it gave me a chance to not do as poorly. So that’s the SN: But you figured it out—you’re doing well. lesson: don’t do as poorly. 47 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Stephen Nachtigall in Conversation Thursday, January 14, 2015 with Brian Bress BB: Yeah, I eventually figured out not to be SN: If your artwork were to be a food item, a doctor. would it be more like a pizza or a salad, or maybe like an Indian buffet? I see so many paintings SN: Okay, so about your work. Do you ever wish that other paintings would move and BB: I think I understand this question. So do things the way that yours do? there’s this thing in the art world—there’s and they seem like a some work that is maybe more pleasurable BB: I think that that’s why mine do that. or more in the realm of entertainment. I see so many paintings and they seem like More accessible like pizza maybe. And frozen moment in time a frozen moment in time and I can imagine then there’s other work that’s conceptual the before and the after to them. So it’s not and maybe drier and more—I don’t know, sort of a wish, but I do see them moving. cooler is not the right word, but the guy is and I can imagine the like smoking a cigarette in the corner and SN: Would you ever make like a feature doesn’t give a shit how many people get length painting? or understand him. And that might be, not before and the after really the salad, but something else, maybe BB: I see what you mean—yeah, I would for dry toast or something. I think I’ll cop to sure. I don’t see that as something that’s the work having a more populist undertone, to them. too far off on the horizon. At a certain so it’s probably more pizza than salad. I’m point there’s a fine line between a groove sure there’s gotta be another food that’s and a rut. The thing that’s working for you more… maybe it’s like a… Okay never mind, now might not be working for you later on. I’ll answer it like that, it’s pizza probably. Maybe that’s something to do, a challenge, That’s a deep question. You can’t trick me something that could go off the rails. Some- with those seemingly simple questions, that thing ripe for failure. one’s loaded. SN: You’re kind of close to the cinema industry in LA right? BB: I am, yeah. Absolutely. My wife works in the film industry. She's a set decorator. And I know other people that are deeply involved in that. Everything from line pro- ducers, directors and cinematographers. So it would be feasible to cobble together favors and people that could do it. The way that I would want to do it—it would happen organ- ically, not necessarily from a script or a plan. I’d want to build it to be ad hoc. Work on it for six months and set it aside and then go back to it and make it a longer term thing. It wouldn't be made like a normal feature length thing. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Stephen Nachtigall in Conversation Thursday, January 14, 2015 49 with Brian Bress FOREWORD RACHEL WIDOMSKI IN Martha Rosler is a “famous person”. This identity was unearthed by CONVERSATION WITH a Facebook follower unaware of her life beyond the conversations they often engaged in online. This digital platform was the bridge that collapsed the distance between an artist, activist, and academic and an anonymous blue collar worker. Without pretense they often engaged in conversations surrounding her posts on her Facebook account; an account that I also follow. Aware of her MARTHA many forms of activism (collage, pamphlets, billboards, art events) I could not help but think this was an artwork in itself—another form of protest and dissemination of information. I couldn’t wait ROSLER to ask! Martha is such a relatable person I felt as if we could have discussed this over coffee for hours, but there was a train to catch (that she almost missed). Rachel Widomski: Thanks for coming, we division—but, that there are different ways really appreciate it. to speak to people who are coming from different perspectives and I’m wondering Martha Rosler: My pleasure. if you think that social media can act as a bridge that kind of collapses the division of RW: It was great listening to you yesterday those classes? also. MR: Very interesting. That’s a really interest- MR: Thanks. ing question. Well social class is complex because it isn’t really just based on money RW: Some of the questions I had are an- it also has to do with your position in terms swered already. So, In lieu of being safe, of world of work. I mean, this is really a I want to ask you a question— major issue, whether you’re a professional or a laborer or a teacher a doctor an artist, MR: Can I take a picture, I always photo- these are all really basic elements of class graph people who interview me if possible. and there is a worldview that goes along with it because of your subject position in RW: Sure. relationship to the other classes in society but at the same time if people are willing MR: [photographing] I’ll do one more. [pho- to engage with each other where none of tographing] Thanks. those things are actually visible, which is social media, I think there can be. I have RW: Sure. One thing I’ve been thinking an interesting experience, I have a lot of about a lot since your lecture last night, Facebook friends and there was one guy is culture and class as not something who after about a year and a half, he wrote that is exclusively monetary, that it’s the to me recently and he said, Are you an artist 51 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Rachel Widomsk in Conversation Friday, January 22, 2015 with Martha Rosler named Martha Rosler? and I said, Yes, that’s both follow you on Facebook, and, I mean, CC: [laughing] lives to say there’s also—don’t get so stuck who I am, and he said, I just discovered that as an artist I’m wondering is this a project in one mode reading political articles or the you’re a famous person. And I said, Mmm, that— MR: —and imitative cats, but not a lot, it’s latest atrocity against women or people of to some people. He’s actually a worker, just because I get a deep pleasure from color, things like that. this guy, he’s a hardhat guy. I said— but it MR: Oh, that’s right, Facebook! I was told some of these things, I get a deep plea- doesn’t matter, and he said, Well, do you by Wendy that you were interested—I forgot sure from reading but also from some of RW: Right. actually write your own posts? And I said, about that. So here we are, we’ve come the really strange things that people have Well, of course. Though, a lot of people ask around. posted. I actually wanted to ask people CC: Right. me that—I mean, art world people ask me yesterday, I had this crazy impulse to say, at that, which I thought, I mean, why bother? RW: Yeah, like a billboard would or a flier dinner, Did you see the thing I posted that MR: But also scientific discoveries and It’s not—Twitter is I think where people have that you would hand to another person on was a GIF of Obama after The State of the things about the universe that you know, other people write stuff for them, but on the street that’s a quick interaction or an in- Union where he threw his papers? really motivate me. So, I think social media Facebook? Well, anyways, we didn’t know direct interaction and was this a purposeful is the great bulletin board of our time and each other as people of different classes. thing to disseminate these articles and this RW: [laughing] Yeah! it can’t be ignored. I try to ignore it, and I And after he sort of regained his footing, he information to— have many friends, even younger than me just went back to being, you know, some- MR: It was so great, it was so well done, you academics, and I’m shocked by how out one who I talked with and actually had the MR: No, I’m hopeless. I’m hopeless. know? Fuck you all!—and Michelle is just of step they seem because they’re not on same reaction from a woman of color who standing there… Yeah, right. It was just so Facebook—that’s crazy! But it’s the truth. was an artist somewhere when after we’d RW: [laughing] beautifully done and we could all identify been corresponding for a while she said, with that feeling of you know, pissed off but RW: Yeah. It’s almost as if if you do not have Are you that Martha Rosler? And you know I Chelsea Couch: [laughing] triumphant, in a way, you know? [imitating an online presence you almost don’t exist. never anticipated any of this, and I think the mic drop] I’m done, I’m out of here, but I reasons some people friend me is that they MR: I used to do it in my family until my son won. [laughing] So, yeah, I think the thing MR: Right. Well I never thought of it that way. want to hear pronouncements but that’s not and daughter-in-law said, We can’t read all about social media is it allows you to com- But I think you’re right, yes. And it’s more who I am on Facebook. I’m just, you know, of that. But then I had an online group, a municate on several channels. I have a guy and more getting that way, of course it may passionately me. And I’m also somebody group or people from a former workshop I don’t know who’s a close Facebook friend, also be a way that passes but when I was who forwards articles that I know people that I’m still friendly with—it’s like, I can’t I’ve never met him, he lives in the Mid- teaching in the seventies at UC San Diego, wouldn’t see otherwise. So I do think it’s a help thinking, Oh, people should see this! west, he teaches Film, and he is a diehard I was teaching a photo class, it was a small place where—and then people comment Or, I bet people don’t know about this! Or, anarchist who always posts amazingly nasty class, maybe fifteen people and they were because I post publicly. So I do think that What do they think about this? So that’s things and we have really nasty arguments talking about TV. I happened not to have a one of the things that you can say about what I’m thinking. And I’m almost compul- but I will never unfriend him and as relief he TV but there was a woman in the class who social media is that they can act to some sive that way, but I’m not the only person, posts pictures of his poodles—his standard was significantly older than all of us and she degree as a social leveler or that is they I have a number of other Facebook poodles and I used to, in the beginning, say, said, I don’t have a TV, I don’t have a radio, remove the barriers to having actual con- friends—a woman in England and a few why are you posting your dogs? And he and everyone was completely horrified, how versations. The question is what happens other people, I have a friend who still does it says, When the conversation gets too heavy do you know what the world’s about? (I had with the rest of life. Will it actually affect in an Email group who is living in now North- I show you my dogs. Because he’s trying to a radio.) And she said, I choose not to, and I people and their world view and you have to ern California, people who feel we have a say, you know, I have a life and I have things told them they needed to respect this, that assume it, to some degree it can. So, thank pedagogical instinct, we feel compelled where I’m not in opposition all the time, and this was a choice, that she was actually into you for the question. to say, Read this! You know, and also I post I think that’s maybe why we use these—as meditation and learning about herself and screaming goats— [laughing] I was saying about, you know, animals and not being caught up in the movement of the RW: Thank you for the answer. I was really performative things we use to represent the world and of course that is what Buddhism thinking about that because I know that we RW: [laughing] different voice, the different stream in our often teaches, that you leave the turmoil When the conversation gets too heavy 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Rachel Widomsk in Conversation Friday, January 22, 2015 53 with Martha Rosler behind, and that they ought to think about CC: [laughing] doing it more themselves. So, one of the things about social media is that you ought RW: [laughing] We do! It’s a thing. You have to take a vacation every once and awhile a following amongst grad students, at least. and just… MR: But you see how little I post about RW: Yeah— either my work or about art. I just feel like other people can do that better and that I MR: … step back because I think you do don’t want to be a guru. I’d much rather just get—one of the things about it that I think talk. I’m sorry to have to leave! It’s nice to is very bad and worse about Twitter is that talk to you. it magnifies nastiness and outrage and that this is not a good thing socially either for CC: Thank you for the opportunity! the person or for society that everybody’s just boiling mad at every minute and then we see that reflected in someone like Donald Trump— RW: Yeah. MR: Where outrage becomes the primary form of address so I think it’s good when we can use Facebook to build up communities without being vicious and exclusionary and I get very upset—it’s mostly men—who say the most insane things. And every once and awhile I challenge them and say, what did you mean by this, and then they—whatever, but still, I do think that we ought to tone down the rhetoric a little. In a way, posting articles is a good way to avoid that because very few articles are really just incendiary. So, I guess I gotta go. RW: I know, you do. Thank you, though, for squeezing us in, I appreciate it. CC: Thank you so much! MR: Well, thank you for reading my Face- book! [laughing] I show you my dogs. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Rachel Widomsk in Conversation Friday, January 22, 2015 55 with Martha Rosler FOREWORD LAURA HUGHES IN Earlier in the day before speaking with Lauren Fensterstock, CONVERSATION WITH I heard her lead a discussion with ceramic casting and metals casting classes. She chose an excerpt from The Hare with Amber Eyes by Edmund de Wall as a companion to a conversation about our relationship to objects and the human impulse to collect. It became clear hearing Lauren speak that she is as energized by history, language, and the possibility of multiple points of view as LAUREN much as working through process and materials. As she began her lecture later that evening she mentioned that she had visited the University of Oregon ten years ago, and the work she’d discuss FENSTER- would pick up where that last lecture left off. This past decade of work saw an incredible shift to very large installations of black paper vegetation inspired by Romantic English gardens. Rachel Widomski and I had an opportunity to talk to Lauren about where STOCK this shift came from and how the work is made. Laura Hughes: What role does drawing play LF: Yeah everything, I always draw first. in your practice? I don’t always feel I have to execute the object the way it’s been drawn, so I’m Lauren Fensterstock: Oh, drawing is a huge willing to sort of take some license to let the part of my practice. And I think drawing was drawing be its own entity and installation really the first art that I participated in—I can sort of veer, but I always use drawing as think probably like most people. For me a sort of roadmap of what I’m going to be it’s the way I always go back to the basics. doing. Also because a lot of the work that I I find a lot of my ideas come from reading do is installation, and if I’m working with a and my next step is always drawing. For me curator they can’t come to my studio which it’s a way to keep my hands busy and and is like ten by ten square feet and see this have that kinesthetic learning that can only giant two thousand square foot installation happen when you’re making. It’s a physical I’m about to do and so the drawing is also a thinking process for me, and so I do a lot way that I can communicate what’s going to of drawing because a lot of the work that I happen to someone. do is ephemeral—I make a lot of large scale installations. Drawing is also a way I can have LH: It seems you must spend a lot of time a permanent record of the work that I’ve done in your studio making components and and its process, and it’s also something I amassing multiples. So how do you think can sell that can move to an audience. about that kind of labor leading to some- thing else? LH: And so some of your larger installations come from drawing first? LF: It’s interesting because I have this background in jewelry, so I think I still think 57 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Laura Hughes in Conversation Tuesday, January 26, 2016 with Lauren Fensterstock of production on a kind of jewelry scale and you first see it it looks just like a black hole culture and how we use nature to make then I just amass it. So I’m often working or a void or a minimalist artwork and then allegories of human life. But I also feel like really in the space of a bench pin, making when you get close you realize there are all we are so—in our post-Renaissance reality, small units, and I’m thinking about things of these details and I feel like that’s some- we always want to separate ourselves from on that microscopic level of a jeweler in thing that can really only happen with black. nature and you know I would argue that fractions of millimeters. I box things almost I was a teenager in the eighties, I was super this concrete building is as much a part of like a botanist, I’ll make a thousand paper goth, I was into new wave, I wore black lip- nature as any bird’s nest and so I think our daisies and a thousand paper leaves and stick so there’s still a little bit of that in there. ideas of what nature is is really a human they get boxed and labeled, and then in the It’s a little bit of all of those things. I like to construction and in many ways sort of false. space of the installation when it all comes watch vampire movies, you know? together—and it’s funny when I’m making the modules I’m completely anal. Like I will Rachel Widomski: I think the black might also agonize over the tiniest detail, but when I’m communicate ephemerality in a different in the installation zone I’m a completely dif- way, it’s a shadow of something that existed ferent person and I will like radically change at one point like when you are talking about things and rip things up and throw dirt on the mirrors. them and it’s like a completely different artist I think in these different moments. LF: Absolutely, yeah. Like with a lot of the natural objects you understand where they LH: When did the shift happen toward the are in their phase of life through the color, more monochromatic work? And does color and so black is generally not found in nature theory or some relationship to the body or at least not in the objects I am looking at. inform your materials? I think it does allow them to be separated from a lifespan. LF: It’s almost like a perfect storm of rea- sons that it all ended up being black. A lot of LH: I heard you say in an interview once, the current work started with my research which I thought was really lovely, The way into garden design, and I came across this we view the natural world says more about object called the Claude glass which was a us than the natural world itself. I think we’ve black convex mirror that people would use already touched on some of those ideas but to go into the landscape and reflect scenery. could you expand on that a little bit? So some of this body of work started with the question: What would it look like if I LF: Yeah. it’s interesting, my interest in made a landscape viewed through this nature comes not so much from being in black lens? Which is a kind of historic ref- nature or growing plants, even though I do, erence of the black, but I’m also interested and I’m not so much interested in ecology, in the garden as a model for metaphysical even though I am. I think my real interest is reality, and so I like the sort of otherness the way that nature is used as a metaphor of the black, it appears so mystical and for other human interests like understand- unnatural, unfamiliar, and I love the ability of ing a metaphysical world or understanding things to be reduced to from but also to slip man’s role in the world and so most of my into darkness. With a lot of my work when ideas about nature are much more about I like to watch vampire movies. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Laura Hughes in Conversation Tuesday, January 26, 2016 59 with Lauren Fensterstock FOREWORD ANDREW DOUGLAS CAMPBELL I was honored with the opportunity to speak with Karyn Olivier IN CONVERSATION WITH just before she gave an artist’s talk. When it was time to meet up with Karyn I found her checking out a shrub that was in bloom with a huge smile on her face. It only got better from there. In the interview, and also in the chats we were able have around it and her lecture, I felt very connected to her strategies and concerns. My own practice, like Karyn’s, brings me to use multiple mediums KARYN and aesthetics, but I felt a more generous connection from our conversation around a notion of placement. Much of my art comes from investigating my place and agency in culture and reconciling OLIVIER how that place resists a singularness. I won’t speak for Karyn or editorialize on her statements—I will let the interview speak for itself—but I must say the notion of an expanded identity that carries through many of her statements is a notion I stand firmly in support of. Immediately after introductions, Karyn and I started Andrew Douglas Campbell: So I guess out you can use it to eat, you know? But then I laughing and joking together, before the mic went on we found a of the questions I’ve come up with—Sorry. realized that the disparate fields just come comfy couch to hold the interview, and had a genuinely friendly [laughing] I should not be covering my mouth. from the only things that I know, are the and good time. things that are concrete in the world, you Karyn Olivier: Because you have a recorder— know? I know a chair or I know a couch, I [covering mouth] So what I was thinking, know a pair of jeans—and in that comfort— I have this really intense thing I wanted to because I always feel as though I’m a fraud say to you [laughing] —Don’t tell her. and I don’t know this Art thing—these things [pointing to recorder] that I know in the world and how they exist. I have to believe that as human beings they ADC: So you work with disparate fields and are going to keep on shifting, and there forms, right? Just in terms of imagery and is still more there to uncover, or this thing sculpture and investigations and stuff. that I assume could then take on a different meaning. So that can happen through a KO: Right— social practice piece, it can happen through an object, a discrete object, it can happen ADC: Could you speak to your relationship through an installation, it could happen with that range of strategies? through seeing an image and saying, Okay, I know that is a picture of a cemetery wall, KO: It is a funny thing, my background is not but if I put it with this other thing… All of a art. I went to Dartmouth, I studied psychol- sudden now it’s totally confounded what I ogy. And when I was young I guess I was presumed those two things were and hope good at art, but I was also good at math and that something new, or something—some- science. And when I started doing art it was thing—it doesn’t have to be new but, I think through clay and it was things you under- Audre Lorde said something about, there’s stand, like clay is bowl, it has sustenance, not new ideas it is just new ways to feel 61 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Andrew Douglas Campbell in Conversation Thursday, February 4, 2016 with Karyn Oliver them, you know, the new ways for them but if anything it’s about our expanded be it the mouse that keeps running around. KO: Totally, right? to be felt in the world. So now if I start identities. So sometimes it makes sense You know what I mean? I think it is that with the known—because I’m not one of when I’m thinking about myself being from mentality—I feel as though I never will know ADC: So, the Inbound Houston project, those artists who was a kid drawing these Trinidad and I grew up in Brooklyn, I have enough, I don’t have that BFA in my back I was drawn to those on your website. fantastical worlds, that just wasn’t my that moment when I feel as though I’m not pocket, so now there is something here that I looked through them multiple times. I’m cu- reality—I have a forty-seven year under- tied to my culture. Or I go into a Caribbean I can use. Yeah. rious what you think is being provided there. standing of the world, but then I have to store and I realize this is just about nostal- know that this can’t be it. This plane is only gia for home, and I’m thinking, Well, what ADC: Yeah. So that was a lot of talking KO: That project came out of being a New one plane, you know? Ten years from now can I do to deal with that? That lead me to about all of your art in really broad umbrella Yorker moving down to Houston after grad who knows, we won’t need to use chairs. make this library project. I’m not tied to my terms, right? school a week before September 11th, and You know what I mean? culture in a way that I think I am, and if I’m being inundated with billboards. It was feeling that way as an immigrant then I’m KO: Shouldn’t we all be thinking about like sky and advertisements, and they felt ADC: Yeah. sure someone else is. So in a way it was to ourselves in terms of expansive identities, very innocuous. I was like, Wait a second, satisfy my own need. But I know I’m part of or having multiple publics for your work? why am I acting like this capitalist structure KO: That’s kinda roundabout, I think. a community and that maybe I can find a You can have a public of one and that can is okay? It was that way in which I had to way to bridge something so it made sense be the most beautiful thing, and another be a commuter, and I had to be driving ADC: No, it’s there. And I have a couple in that way, to do the work that way. So work you can have a public of thousands of a car, and I didn’t know how to drive till I of follow up questions, or maybe it’s one when I was making installation work that people seeing it and that’s kinda beautiful, was thirty. What could I do as a gift to the question split into two lines, I don’t know. was coming from more literal ceramics too. I’m not saying one is better than the commuters and a gift to myself. Can I give Do you find that certain interests gravitate work, saying, Okay, so this is a container, other, but I think those varying publics myself a reprieve or a respite from all these towards a corresponding mode of produc- but it is not just containing food—you’re relate to our multiple identities, our expand- ads? I forgot your question, dammit what tion? And I guess what I mean is—formal eating because it reminds you of your ing identities. So hopefully it’s going to be was your question? Damnit. [laughing] investigations lean more toward the pho- grandmother. And the same thing is true of felt in the work. Some work you make very tographs but then social inquiries take you a room—a room is a shelter, it’s safe, but it quickly or I can make it by myself because ADC: [laughing] What’s funny you have closer to interaction spaces in your work? is also filled with this other psychological it’s a scale I can handle, other things it’s almost, in different words, said exactly what stuff. I don’t think I’m answering your ques- like—oh my god, it took three years make I have written down for the next question. KO: I’m wondering—I think not having that tion, though. [laughing] that project because it involved a corpora- I just asked you what was being provided. art background, when I’m stuck I used tion to help me make this happen. Because to take photographs—because everyone ADC: You are though, or at least like—I’m those things happen in different durations KO: It started off for me asking—lots of knows how to take a photograph—or read feeling it, right? [laughing] and different materiality or different ways artist have done things with billboards, but or try to write. But it’s weird, I’m in a place of butting up against the world it has a I’m thinking of a place where billboards now where photography is becoming a KO: [laughing] It’s a thing—I remember one potential to have different reaches—which exist as the status quo, just being part of thing in the work, where before it was just summer I was a participant at Skowhegan will really express who you are in the end. the landscape. People don’t see sky with- a way of organizing. Okay, if I’m seeing and I went back as a dean for a couple Right? out billboards. So I’m thinking if I can kind and I’m looking at this frame, what am of summers and I remember being really of take away some of these ads, take away I framing? What am I seeing? What can I stuck, and my studio mate was Daniel ADC: Yeah! from the capitalist structure for one month now conflate this with, to press it to do Bozhkov, who is this amazing artist you with these thirteen ads. Or, the fact that something? [pausing] I go back to the idea guys should look up if you don’t know him, KO: Yeah. when you are a commuter and driving and that we are not—I was talking to some- and he was like, Karyn, just use what’s you are in a car, it is a very insular expe- body in their studio, and they were saying there. Just use what’s right in front of you. ADC: Yeah. I’m definitely into the space of rience—you are thinking about point A to something about the fragmented self, and Why are you fussing, just use what you multiple identities and simultaneous truths point B and you are in your own world, but I was all, Yeah, Lacan, and I get all that, have, be it material, be it sound, be it air, that are possibly contradictory, right? what happens when you see something that I’m not tied to my culture 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Andrew Douglas Campbell in Conversation Thursday, February 4, 2016 63 with Karyn Oliver shouldn’t be there? And what you’re seeing I asked why and the said, The heads are is a kind of nothing, in a way, and then you saying they’re worried this is a political start to think, Oh, that’s the landscape. All statement. And I’m saying, [joking voice] of a sudden you are seeing this thing, and No, no, look at the history of the artists who maybe after two days you realize maybe work with billboards, and I’m thinking, Oh that was not the landscape, it was not real, this project that I’ve been working on for it was a photograph of the landscape and four years is about to shut down. So I say, maybe you’ll wonder, What is this thing here, No, it’s just expanding the space of a bill- and then what are my assumptions about board. Yes, in one way it can be used for an advertising, and all that. But it was really a advertisement, but it can also be used for way to just give people something else to this. And we got it, but yeah of course there see, and I like that it did do that uncanny was politics in it, but then someone can say surreal thing there, it did line up, but in the to that, Well Karyn, you are participating end the project became more exciting on in the system, because you kinda put up the side where you are seeing these paint- billboards, you did have to raise funds to ings in the sky, or fragments of something pay for part of it. But I think artists should else existing. I was hoping, on one level, be both inside and outside the system. people wouldn’t notice until a couple of I mean, if we are totally outside it, what are days before it was gone, and say, Wait, now we doing? It has to be a rubbing up, and what was that thing?, and that question part of that means you have to be in it a bit about it is not being about art. I was very to figure out what needs to shift. interesting in this project not being read as art, and then when it’s gone maybe ADC: Absolutely. that’s when it becomes more profound and poignant. When, aww now it goes back to being what it usually is. So in that thirty-day opening, that space, there’s a kind of pause, a kind of public whisper, or something. ADC: Yeah yeah. I didn’t want to guide when I asked about that, but I did interpret it very specifically in two ways simultaneously— that it was this beautiful noise reduction, and that at the same time it was this very marked political statement. And now I wonder is that chill? KO: That’s it! That’s it, that’s it. Literally two weeks before it was to go up I had a meet- ing with the CBS Outdoor, the billboard company who gave me a crazy discount, and they said, We have to meet with you. in a way that I think I am. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Andrew Douglas Campbell in Conversation Thursday, February 4, 2016 65 with Karyn Oliver FOREWORD KRISTA HEINITZ IN Squeak Carnwath is painter. I am not a painter, but wanted to CONVERSATION WITH know how she thought of things I think of. SQUEAK CARNWATH Krista Heinitz: So I have a few questions, the make archives, like, it’s not my work. It’s first one is something that I’m interested in a kind of—my paintings are the work, the with my own practice and that I’ve seen in crazy papers and the other stuff that I save, your work so I’m curious. How do you work those are the archives to me. And I don’t with the idea of an archive? keep a diary, I keep boxes of clippings and things that I’ve used in my paintings. I keep Squeak Carnwath: Oh, I archive everything, a couple of notebooks that are filled up I save everything. with clippings, a travel notebook with little paintings in it. KH: How do you think about an archive? KH: I always like a take on a fictional archive. SC: I want to sell my archive, that much I know. [laughing] The crazy papers are SC: No, mine is a real one. I’m not going to part of the archives, then I have prints, that make a fictional one. I would love to sell could be an archive. I have two of each. my crazy paper archives because they are Then I have all my records, businessy stuff, artworks kind of, or the print archives. tenure stuff from University, merits, letters of rec I’ve written. All my images are in a KH: How does time relate to the way you digital archive, a database and in books make your work? Thinking of your talk last when the images are film. I think it’s really night, connected to a revealing in time. good to document, I think everyone should keep track of their work, even if it means SC: Really? I don’t think I said that. You drawing a sketch of what went out if they mean the labor? didn’t have a camera or didn’t take a picture, and write a date on it. So if it gets separat- KH: The time that the painting is completed, ed, at least it can get researched. I don’t it lives in the world, and there is a change? 67 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Krista Heinitz in Conversation Friday, February 12, 2016 with Squeak Carnwath SC: Oh, you mean the paintings change over SC: I don’t think about textiles. I grew up time? It’s a given, it ages like a skin. I think on the East coast where there are Amish about that. I know that the things that are quilts and East Dutch quilts, barn painted buried underneath the outermost surface quilts. Shaker stuff, the architecture is like a will eventually reveal themselves as shad- quilt. It’s more like an agglomerate of Amish, ows. I have no sense of time when I’m in the Shaker stuff. studio. I have no sense of time anyhow; I have to check the phone or wear a watch. KH: It’s interesting how you bring up architecture… KH: How you talk about the skin is interesting. What is your studio routine? SC: If you think of shaker building with punctuation of the windows, or line pegs SC: I don’t have a routine-routine. up. Shakers are really great. There are these women that made these song drawings or KH: That’s an answer, talk to me about it. poetry. These drawings Shaker women did that were kind of meditations. They were SC: I mean—I don’t get up early. I go to the gorgeous. studio and sometimes I read the New York Times before working, sometimes not. It KH: Were they map-like? depends on what I feel I have to do or how behind I feel. Even if I don’t have a deadline, SC: Map-like, quilt-like, diagrammatic… if I feel things have not been moving along enough for me then I want to push them KH: Do you think about maps? along. There’s a lot of things that have to be layered, so I have to build up the paint. SC: A little bit, but not in a map-map way. Do So I make sure I get those done. But I can you know the Mbuti women? They are nomad- be in the studio for ten to fifteen hours, it ic, they make these beautiful drawings that depends on what else I need to to. I have are maps where the water is, where they have the TV on at all times with sound off. NPR on been. Like little hashtag things. That kind of or else playing music. The TV is on in case mapping, yeah. anything happens. Painting is the routine. In case there is something pictorially I need to KH: I always think of maps and the archive as know, that’s on the news, the TV is on and I these accumulations of mark, form, shape can see that it is happening. that sometimes tell specific information but sometimes it’s about the disconnect of not KH: I have one more question, I am unsure being able to understand. Like your frag- how you will answer it but I’m curious. Right mentation of text in your paintings, bringing now I’m really working with quilts, talking fragments together into new constellations. about them, thinking about them, making them. When I look at your paintings I think SC: I’m picturing it in my mind. about the composition of quilts, in the blocks. I’m curious if you think about textiles? KH: Thank you for your time! Painting is the routine. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Krista Heinitz in Conversation Thursday, October 8, 2015 69 with Squeak Carnwath FOREWORD MANDY HAMPTON IN I was pleased to interview Liz Larner because I like her use of CONVERSATION WITH material and color. It seems clear that she implements significant experimentation in the studio, preferring to collaborate with material rather than dictate form. I particularly like her large bent-cube sculptures like 2 As 3 And Some Too. Her resin-coated ceramic series is beautiful and I was able to ask some in depth questions about process the following day when we had lunch LIZ together. LARNER Mandy Hampton: How do you structure your materials and forms. What is your process studio days? Do you have a rhythm that for selecting these, and does one usually works well for you? come before the other? Liz Larner: Yeah, well it’s changed. It’s differ- LL: I have to say it really varies. Sometimes ent now than it used to be because I have I’ll get an idea for a kind of work that I want a young son now so it’s totally different. to do. I wanted to do the smile series and I I try to just work three days a week. It’s very knew that I wanted it to be cast in porcelain difficult after working all the time. I keep it but I didn’t know how to do that. That whole pretty structured these days. It all depends idea of a work led me to ceramics. A lot of on when I can get childcare. I go in on times I’ll have an idea, get the ball rolling, Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Fridays and try learn how to do something, and that takes to spend at least eight hours. me on. What seems to be happening now is that the work just tells me what to do next. MH: Do you spend a lot of that studio time experimenting with processes or planning MH: Do you have a favorite process or mate- and researching ideas? rial to work with? LL: A large part of my practice has always LL: Yeah! I really love to work with ceramics been experimentation. A lot of the pro- and I love working with color. It’s just so cesses I use I don’t have control over. The amazing. You know, in glaze or in epoxy. planning kind of gets in the way. [laughing] I mean you have to do it but I’d be in the MH: That leads me to my next question— studio experimenting. How do you address color in your work? MH: Your works traverse an array of LL: When I started making sculpture, there 71 2015–16 University of Oregon FFiivvee MMiinnuutteess Department of Art Mandy Hampton in Conversation Thursday, February 18, 2016 with Liz Larner wasn’t that much color in sculpture, and when there was it was to reinforce the form. I really wanted to work with that idea. What seems to be I do believe that color can make form and change form. I like to have color be an active, equal partner with form in the work. happening now is that MH: You've spoken to the way your art ex- poses the difference between the linguistic the work just tells me implications of what a thing is called and the inherent meaning in material—could you speak to this further? what to do next. LL: Yes, I think with materials there’s what something’s called, what something is, and then how it affects each person when we encounter it—what our histories are and what biases we might have that go along with that. All of those things can be really different and they all come into how we receive a material. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Mandy Hampton in Conversation Thursday, February 18, 2016 73 with Liz Larner FOREWORD STEPHEN MILNER IN At the end of the year all of the biggest photography magazines CONVERSATION WITH start publishing their Best Photobooks of the Year articles, and in 2011 Christian Patterson was in every one of them. His book Redheaded Peckerwood, published by Mack in October 2011, was by far one of the most influential photography books of 2011–2012. Redheaded Peckerwood has sold out of three print editions and if you happen to come across one of them, please donate it to me CHRISTIAN and I will love you forever. Other than the book being incredibly successful, I was drawn to it because of Christian’s unique approach to the project and the photographic book. Redheaded PATTERSON Peckerwood incorporates and references the techniques of photojournalism, forensic photography, image appropriation, reenactment and documentary landscape photography. The disturbingly beautiful narrative walks the fine line between fiction and nonfiction. It was my first introduction to a photography Stephen Milner: Hi Christian—Let’s start off the practical side of being an artist, which book that used personal documents, objects, and real crime scene with probably one of the most challenging he wasn’t necessarily, but he has a lot of evidence that allow the viewer to discover and make connections questions of the interview—If you were people around him who are, and there within the narrative. The way all of the visual material is edited stranded on a deserted island and could is a whole other side of being an active provides cues and clues, but at the end, the myth of this tragic only listen to one album for the rest of your professional artist, there is a lot of work story is still kept. lonely life, what would it be? that comes along with that. For the lack of a better word, the business side of being an Christian Patterson: Boy that is a tough ques- artist, that was very useful and is not easily tion [laughing]—Pet Sounds—probably the learned unless experienced. Beach Boys. SM: Can you talk a little bit about how you SM: At the beginning of your career you became interested in the photographic worked with William Eggleston as his archi- book and when you started to think about vist. What were some important things you your own work in the book format? took away from working closely with him? CP: I definitely was looking at books before CP: Well I definitely respect him not just as I moved to Memphis. I was looking at an artist, but an artist with his own vision, books a long time before I decided to more an artist with his own style. Someone who seriously pursue the idea of being a better uncompromisingly did his own thing, he is photographer and becoming an artist. The a true artist, true embodiment of a stereo- kinds of books I was looking at the time typical free-spirited eccentric artist. I think were for the most part more—perhaps a those are the most important things to little bit more traditional, perhaps a little mention, I just learned a lot about following bit less adventurous. Books that probably your own heart, or doing what you want functioned more like catalogues rather to do. I also learned a lot about more of than conceptual books or narratives. Then I 75 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Stephen Milner in Conversation Thursday, February 25, 2016 with Christian Patterson moved to Memphis and books became the dealing with such a heavy and sensitive working on I am not looking outside of that primary way I saw or experienced other art- subject/theme? nearly as much as I use to. Part of that is ist’s work, I mean yes, there were galleries the lack of time or lack of interest or need and museums but it wasn’t New York City. CP: Yeah, um—I don’t know. [pausing] I to get that inspiration. I feel like I have de- You couldn’t just go out to all of these amaz- guess there were certain lines I chose not veloped my own approach or my own path, ing galleries or museum shows and you to cross, either in the process of making the yeah—not too sure what else to say. What don’t have those kinds of bookstores either. work… [pausing] meeting certain people, am I working on now? [pausing] There’s So photography books became probably going to certain places, trespassing or a fairly large project of both a book and more of the primary ways of seeing other breaking laws. Because a little bit of that did exhibition that have been on the backburner work at that time. I guess I always wanted to happen, I won’t go into detail but I do try for a long time and I’m finally making effort see my work in a book, I think it’s something and maintain some sensitivity and respect to begin to now work on, I don’t know how young artists, especially photographers, for the tragic side of the story, the people long it will take but I suspect it could be a imagine or want or feel they need to do, or who were involved and people who were year or two and it's definitely starting to get should do. But making a book is a real chal- affected by the events. [pausing] Yeah, I into the thick of it right now where it feels lenge and it takes a certain kind of work. will get into that bit when I do my talk good to be working on something. But it tonight, I will touch upon the things I saw in doesn’t come without the anxiety of where SM: In 2013 you published Bottom of the the archive, the things I saw or discovered it’s headed or how long it’s going to take. Lake with TBW books—can you talk about myself later outside any official collection or how you arrived to the 2015 version of the archive that I could’ve used but chose not SM: So do we get to look forward to a new book? to because they were too bloody, too gory book in the near future?! or too direct, too sensational or exploitative. CP: The books are different—I would say Obviously this book starts with a story that CP: That’s all relative. [laughing] I think give they both exist within the realm of more is sensational and tragic but I didn’t want to me a few years. conceptual photography book but the exploit that story, I wanted to carefully walk manifestation or the realization of the TWP a line that basically investigated or treated book is different because it has, as you the story much like a researcher or detec- were saying, as you are alluding, the second tive would but I didn’t really try to establish book sort of took a lot of the first book and or imply any guilt or innocence, despite the inserted it inside the other book. The tele- fact that it’s a pre-existing, very well-known phone book, which was the container for true crime story. There are things that the second book, was always there from the allude to the tragic side of the story and I very earliest point of thinking about the work. hope that comes through. It was not work The first book was predetermined by the first that was made without empathy. publisher and with the second book I had the control and freedom of the book design. SM: What are you currently working on now? What is currently inspiring you? SM: With Redheaded Peckerwood, based on the real-life murder spree of the American CP: Inspiring me? I don’t know, as time has teenage couple—I’m curious if you set any gone on—[pausing] as I have less time for rules for yourself when on the road photo- myself with work and at home, I haven’t graphing and also in the end when making been really looking outside myself or the book, did you ever feel conflicted outside my own practice, whatever it is I’m I always wanted to see my work in a book 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Stephen Milner in Conversation Thursday, February 25, 2016 77 with Christian Patterson FOREWORD LAURA HUGHES IN Aram Han Sifuentes visited during the first real warm, sunny CONVERSATION WITH stretch of Spring days in Eugene. She led workshops, held studio visits, and gave a talk about her work. Aram was most recently invited to respond to Chinese and Korean textiles at the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum in Seoul, South Korea. She chose to do so by extending this invitation to groups of indigenous women who have their own distinct styles of embroidery at the ARAM HAN Centro de Textiles del Mundo Maya in Chiapas, Mexico by way of workshops and exchanges. Her work often involves giving prompts to workshop-goers who are specific to a certain community, and in SIFUENTES the presentation of the collected works individual voices emerge. I was happy to have a chance to talk with Aram about these collaborative works. Laura Hughes: So I’m gonna start with an AHS: I am a really social person. You know, easy one. What is your favorite book or it’s funny because embroidery is so solitary books? and can be so isolating at times and I defi- nitely still need that aspect of embroidery Aram Han Sifuentes: Oh, easy! I don’t know but in that way of working but definitely about that! Actually I’ve been rereading I get bored sometimes. You know it’s not Pedagogy of the Oppressed. I love that just about the boredom—if I ask someone book, and actually now reading it—you to do this or engage with this prompt it's know, I read it when I was in undergrad partly because of that curiosity as well and years ago but reading it now, being an edu- liking working with people and feeling like cator and thinking about how it can apply to I learn so much, that I make my best work teaching—even the vocabulary I use while in those instances. That first jean project, teaching and things like that. So that’s a Amend is the first project where I worked really really good book. In terms of fiction, with other people—that really happened for Kite Runner, that one was really really great, practical reasons because I needed more I was so moved by that and I can’t think of jean cuffs you know? Going around talking another book that has moved me so much. to people, it was really intimidating, you know? But then really enjoying it and also LH: You often invite other artists to collabo- seeing that these seamstresses and tailors rate and contribute to projects, how did you were so open and enjoyed having someone come to start making collaborative works? ask them these questions about their lives. What would you say are some important So that was really the beginning of how I considerations to keep in mind when you started working with other collaborators. are reaching out to different communities to collaborate? Approaching certain groups of people, a lot of it’s trial and error. I think what is 79 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Laura Hughes in Conversation Friday, April 1, 2016 with Aram Han Sifuentes really necessary is trying to be as sensitive labor versus artistic labor? there. However, I think that even if the of them are really big, so I have to like rip a as possible and being in communication viewers don’t walk up to the wall text or hole or really stretch out the fabric to get and having a lot of conversations with my AHS: It’s really complicated and I think read it on my website that’s okay. I think it the needle to go through. They’re more cool collaborators even if it is artist collaborators. about it a lot and talk to my students about adds layers to the piece, however if they for thinking about it conceptually than seeing it. We have such different personalities, all of it. I don’t call my practice labor. Being an example look at my Amend jean piece and For a while I was thinking I needed to have us, right? So just to be able to check in, How immigrant I would never call it immigrant are like, Oh, that’s a cool sculpture! Hopeful- that fabric, and I needed to have the prod- do you feel about this? Is this okay with you? labor. That’s not it! What I’m doing speaks to ly that draws them in a step further to look ucts of their—of me using them. But then Just constantly checking in. Working with those practices and are in conversation with at the wall text and think, That’s where that I think it’s okay not to include everything, non-citizens, a lot of them being undocu- those practices and adds to the discourse, came from! or There’s this chart with stories. and in them being laid out as tools without mented, that takes a lot of sensitivity to be however there is a distinction between Hopefully that happens but isn’t an expec- me giving that information people still see like, Can I take some photographs, are you labor and leisure and being able to make art tation I have, or is something I think people them and know they are tools and still say, guys okay with that? Can I put these pho- is leisure. And so it definitely does highlight need to know in order for them to appreci- Wait, how does that get used? I think that tographs on the website, is that okay with my place of privilege and my ability to like ate the work. I think with the Chiapas stuff maybe more powerful and more beautiful as you? Can I write down your name? If they spend ridiculous amounts of time sewing too, even from afar it’s like they are really a gesture than showing these wonky holey are like, No, then being able to respect that something, and that’s my choice—it’s not weird textiles right? I think you can kind of fabrics. It’s not to say that I may not still as well. It wasn’t that I always get it right because I need to do that in order to feed recognize them as being Korean or Chinese make a video, I’m still playing around with every time, for example I remember when my family and so I think it’s really important but then they are totally weird, they’re not! them but for now I’m satisfied with them as I first started these projects and I was going to acknowledge that I’m privileged and ac- So then I think even that kind of response these objects. to the cleaners, seamstresses, and tailors knowledge that I am able to make this work. is fine. the first couple people I talked to I was like, I’m an artist and can you donate your LH: Hearing your talk and seeing your LH: I really love The Functional Needle proj- jean cuffs? and they were like, I’m working work online it seems there is usually some ect. Have you used the needles? Or do you please leave. And then what I realized was text that gives some historical or cultural plan to use the needles? to say, Hi, my parents own a dry cleaners context for your projects, so that maybe and do this work in California. How long the viewer has the experience of knowing AHS: So, I experiment and play around with have you been doing this for?—That was a the guidelines or prompt and then seeing the needles. Some of them are really hard different entry, and I felt they were being so the material results. Can you talk about how to use because for example one is a hole generous and I wasn’t returning anything, that information is presented when you are drilled into a sunflower seed—you know? so then I started taking my clothes to get showing the work and how you come to [laughing] Oh no! it’s a pine nut. dry cleaned. To drop something off and pay those prompts? for their services, then ask, Can you save LH: [laughing] Oh my gosh. your jean cuffs? Then they were the most AHS: Yeah, it’s something I think about and open and they’d say, Yes I’ll save you a bag experiment with a lot. I don’t I have any AHS: Like it’s tiny right! How am I gonna for when you pick up your dry cleaning! So answers or solutions to anything. It’s a little use this? But I have been playing around I play around with how I can approach cer- difficult to make this type of work just be- with some of them. It’s interesting the way tain people and how it affects the openness cause it is based on so much research and it alters my body, and how I have to relearn to engagement. because of the interaction or the process the tool. However, I haven’t included that of how the objects came to be made—the anywhere to be exhibited because it’s not LH: You engage the practice of labor in process is so important to the piece. That’s resolved yet. The cloth doesn’t look that industry by mirroring it or speaking to it in hard to show in the final product. So then pretty. It’s interesting because each one of your own work. How do you think about the it usually is in the wall text, or hints of it at them require a different cloth, and they also intersections or distinctions of industrial least. And as you said on my website, it’s require a different thread. You know some I don’t I have any answers or solutions... 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Laura Hughes in Conversation Friday, April 1, 2016 81 with Aram Han Sifuentes FOREWORD MARY MARGARET MORGAN IN I met with Rick Lowe on a balmy afternoon. Upon realization that CONVERSATION WITH we’re both originally from Alabama, he and I discussed various differences between the South and elsewhere, perhaps summarized best by the homophones marionberry and Marion Barry. RICK LOWE Mary Margaret Morgan: What is your ideal MMM: Yeah. An array of ideal breakfasts. breakfast? An ideal breakfast for every morning. Rick Lowe: Ooo, Ideal breakfast… RL: Yeah, yeah. MMM: Yes. MMM: Yeah. Okay, I was wondering what came first—was it finding the Row Houses RL: Oh, icebreaker question… [laughing] in Houston or was it this interest in social sculptures or social practice, or was it just MMM: [laughing] like this thing that happened? RL: Oh man, ideal or what would I eat… RL: Yeah, that’s always something to ponder I mean that’s a tough question because because I’m always thinking about things there are like things that I would dream historically—we always have a tendency to about eating but then there are things that frame things historically from the stand- I would eat. Okay, if I was dreaming about point of the idea. But, actually, so often eating it would be like blueberry pancakes it’s like the physical stuff that shapes the and, you know, some turkey bacon or idea, you know it’s kind of like does the sausage or something like that. And some physical thing shape the idea or the thinking scrambled eggs. Yeah—but then, maybe a around it or does the thinking shape the waffle? I don’t know. But that’s not what I physical thing? When we reflect back we would eat. I mean I generally just eat fruit always think, Oh, that idea that did this, but and oatmeal and stuff like that. [laughing] oftentimes it’s like these physical things That becomes more ideal from a health that we’re making and things happen. So standpoint. with Project Row Houses I think it was kind of a—it was a murky kind of thing. There was 83 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Mary Margaret Morgan in Conversation Monday, May 2, 2016 with Rick Lowe a desire to do something but it wasn’t clear say, These are the conditions. So I had a those lows of like, you know, where people think about what that means and how do what to do, and then there was this physical recent project in Philadelphia that—I think it just have… that the solution, they don’t you get there cause I—you know, I’m work- thing of these houses that popped up and has the potential for some longer term kind feel like it’s going to happen, until you can ing at a number of different places. There’s so, I think that was a nice kind of balance of of stuff, but the physical opportunities just get back to some other point of aspiration. no way I can give that kind of devotion to the two just naively kind of influencing each wore out. The resources and all were just You know, and it was just time that was the any particular project that I did when I start- other in a very organic way. not there to be able to carry forth, so… most important thing I had. So now if you ed Project Row Houses. But there’s always fast-forward twenty years later, I don’t have somebody in a place that is, they’re as pas- MMM: Yeah. Excellent. I mean it is this thing MMM: Yeah, kind of going into it, are there that much time to devote, I don’t have the sionate and have as much time as ever. that just kind of happens organically I guess, any criteria or things that you look for in a same kind of time that I had twenty years but I was wondering, now that it’s been project or do these find you—the project in ago to devote to a project. But I have a lot MMM: Do you find that you’ve become, going on for a while and there’s these other Philadelphia or wherever? of experience and I have a lot of knowledge through that, a mentor to those– projects, how you are able to ensure that and I’m kind of networked with connection these are sustainable efforts or projects? RL: Yeah. Well—I’m learning what to find. for resources. So nowadays what I try to do, RL: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And I’m gettin more You know this kind of—the work that I’m what I’m trying to test out and train with is— into that, too, because like I said, you know, RL: Yeah, so there was an organic nature doing is not... there’s no history, there’s if I’m going to work on a project in a place, to find partners to collaborate with it’s… to the idea in the physical form, right? In no established thing, it is truly an explora- to look for someone or something that has Really the valuable thing that I bring to a the development of Project Row Houses, tion. You know, I’m learning as much as the the same kind of time availability that I had partnership is my experience now, I can but since then—so now I have a framework next person. I have a lot of experience but twenty years ago. If there’s someone, if bring my experience and whatever kind of that Project Row Houses has provided me I’m still learning. I could try to repeat the they’re gonna cut limbs off trees, and they network—well, networks and all that kind with to approach things so the idea, there’s same stuff but that’s not that interesting have the time to do it and commitment to of stuff is tied into my experience. I bring always an idea that’s kind of in the forefront, either. So I’m out trying to learn and figure do it, then maybe I can partner with them that to bear on the potential collaborator. but generally the physical ramifications or things out. One of the things I have learned and I can bring in my years of experience, So, for instance, I mean there’s a project in the possibilities or potential for physical that I realize I have to look for is the thing knowledge, and we become partners and Dallas (it’s still going) that, there’s a great manifestations start having a huge impact that was most valuable at the beginning of we work as partners. And so they can fulfill young woman who’s working on that and and so I have these ideas of things I want to Project Row Houses—someone asked me that most valuable important thing I think I’m able to kind of serve as a mentor, col- do but then there’s the question about well, that as a question once and it had me think is necessary for doing the kind of work that laborator with her on the project that I kind Is it possible to do it physically? And then about this, they said, If you had to say the I do—time. And then I can bring in expe- of initiated and I brought her in, though, what does that mean in terms of sustain- most important asset in the beginning of rience—you know, so really the work has because she was showing the kind of—that ability? And then there’s the question of like, Project Row Houses, what was it? My first to be—I look for a good collaborator now, she wanted to put the kind of time in that How important is sustainability anyway? thought was like, well… you know you think that’s the main thing that I’m focused on was necessary, so we got her in. And then You know and so there’s like all these other of like money, resources, you know like now. I have to find good collaborators and also the project in Philly, although the two things that come from—even when some- there was, somebody gave this money to people that have a commitment and time to people that were working on it there, I mean thing physically manifests itself there are all do that and it helped—but then I realized the issue that they’re talking about. they had the time and the commitment but these questions about it that question the something after thinking about it. I realized I just couldn’t—I couldn’t pull together the idea because every idea, say, Oh, you want that the most important asset that I had at MMM: Yeah. other resources to do it. But it’s been great to do something that’s sustainable and blah the beginning of Project Row Houses was working them as kind of mentors. de blah, but then when it physically man- time. Time. I mean, I had time to be there, RL: Does that make any sense? ifests itself then you start to get to know to just be like bullheaded, to show up when MMM: How—as these projects develop have more about whether physical sustainability everybody, nobody else thought it could MMM: Absolutely. Yeah. you dealt with gentrification and people is even desired. I think in most cases you happen. You know, but I was still able to trying to move in towards the neighborhood do want it but if the conditions are not right give time to it there, to be able to sustain RL: Yeah, cause it’s one of those things that of the Row Houses? then you just have to give in to that and just between those gaps of aspiration, to then I’m just playing out all the time, trying to There’s no history, there’s no established 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Mary Margaret Morgan in Conversation Monday, May 2, 2016 85 with Rick Lowe RL: All roads lead to gentrification. that much importance is because usually people like themselves in, which, will, you it’s poor people and poor people don’t have know, snowball the kind of… the displace- MMM: Yes. value. ment. So it’s about attitude. It’s just about attitude. That’s all I’ve got to say about that. RL: [laughing] MMM: Yeah. Yikes. [laughing] [laughing] MMM:[laughing] RL: [laughing] Reality. There you have it. MMM: Excellent, thank you! RL: That’s just the harsh reality. Land, real MMM: What advice would you have for estate, is a rare commodity. I mean, you’re young people, young artists, looking to not producing any more of it and so when, move to these urban centers and—with as capital moves around and tries to decide the knowledge that they are adding to that where it wants to be, it will find its way—and problem? particularly in urban areas, it is just, yeah. It’s hard to push it back. Now, but the RL: Well, you know, I think the thing is for challenge, though, for the work that I do people—we can be assets to something and others that are working in urban envi- or we can be a liability; anybody can in ronments is to create work that highlights any way. There are people that live in the and shows the value of the people and the neighborhoods that are potentially going culture of places as having a value that is to be gentrified who’ve been living there strong enough that we can almost kind of, for generations and they’re not assets of that we can generate as many resources their community because they’re not active, to support and sustain that as the market they don’t—they’re not really doing things forces that want to gentrify coming in, so that will help preserve the neighborhood you create a nice balance or even—or and show its value. And then there are new creating enough awareness of value that people that come in that are great assets, encourages policy structures that protect they come in from everywhere and they’re it. In the same way as we do—well of course assets. So it just kind of depends on your it’s never set, it’s always a struggle—but intention and how you go in. I mean gentri- National Forests and that kind of stuff, you fication is not, it manifests itself mostly in know the market would love to come in a racial kind of context, but that’s not the and just kind of build throughout all of it root of it, the root of it is generally wealth cause there’s beautiful sights and that kind that comes in and there are wealthy people of stuff—but we’ve somehow been able to of color like there are wealthy white people articulate the value of those places that and they come in and—but the question outweigh the economic benefit of develop- is how do people come in, do they come ment and so that’s where I think we have to in with the idea that they’re coming in and head in terms of the urban context. There’s committing themselves to embracing the somethings that are people-centered that place where they are and want to be a part are as valuable as things that are a natural of, or do they come in from the standpoint environment. Usually the reason that the of isolating themselves from the existing people-centered part didn’t seem to have place and actively trying to bring more thing, it is truly an exploration. 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Mary Margaret Morgan in Conversation Monday, May 2, 2016 87 with Rick Lowe FOREWORD CHELSEA COUCH IN I was presented with the opportunity to schedule an interview CONVERSATION WITH with Zackary Drucker on the day of her studio visits while Laura Hughes and I were wrapping up editing this document. It was midday on a Wednesday and most grads were in class; it was also the week our third years were installing their thesis show in Portland. I could not stand the idea of missing the opportunity to include a conversation with Zackary simply because I’d gone ZACKARY into this year’s Five Minutes decided that I would not conduct any of the interviews but only observe, coordinate, and compile. So, immediately following a delightful, insightful, and much needed DRUCKER conversation in my studio, we settled in for an interview. While she was in town, Zackary introduced a screening of Warhol/Morrissey’s Women in Revolt at the Wayward Lamb in conjunction with The Queer Productions Series. It was quite the treat to have this expe- rience introduce a thread of interactions which transpired over the Chelsea Couch: What is your all-time favorite I’ve been influenced by all their works. But next twenty-four hours, from a studio visit and interview to lunch film? [laughing] there’s so many more on that list—Godard, and then a screening of her works interwoven with an artist’s talk. Bergman, Hitchcock, Kurosawa, Tarkovsky… I am so thankful to have had the opportunity to spend time with Zackary Drucker: Oh my god… [laughing] I’m trying to think of people who are making Zackary and to include this interview as the capstone of this year’s All-time favorite… work now that I really love. And I’m trying Five Minutes; I am also glad the project found ways to be receptive to also think of my all-time favorite film… and transmutable. CC: Or if you had to pick a top five? Is that There’s kind of wacky films that I love, Muriel’s any easier? Wedding being one of them. I love an outsider story. [laughing] And yeah, I don’t know. ZD: That’s so tough because cinema is one Antonioni, Bertolucci films are just spectacu- of my main influences. As an adolescent lar. I wish I had more time to watch films. I wasn’t exposed to visual art but I had access to an independent video store (video CC: Definitely. rental) and independent cinemas—so I was exposed to so much film and it was really ZD: Yeah, but… my all-time favorite, god I’m my conduit to the world outside of Syracuse, just like, I’m trying to think of even my ten New York, where I grew up. I could name top favorites. I love Maya Deren for sure. more easily my five favorite directors? You know, the reason why I’m hesitating so much is because I know that I’m leaving so CC: Sure—that works! many important people out, so many people who have really influenced my work—David ZD: I love Wong Kar-Wai, and Claire Denis, Lynch, absolutely, Robert Altman, so many and… I’m trying to be very precise here! of Robert Altman’s films. I’m trying to think I love John Waters, I love Lucrecia Martel… of more contemporary… I love Lee Daniels— [clearing throat] That’s four, and [laughing] Precious, did you ever see that? Béla Tarr. From all corners, I would say; 89 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Chelsea Couch in Conversation Wednesday, May 4, 2016 with Zackary Drucker CC: I haven’t… I think, being a participant in the trans civil ZD: Yeah! [laughing] I think that we’re— relationships and it’s usually ephemeral— rights movement. I think that we are old, I think that our sometimes you’re lucky to have a letter or a ZD: That’s such a good movie. [laughing] spirits are amalgamations of past spirits. photograph, but to actually create work in I think about that movie a lot. CC: Excellent, thank you. And I think that there’s a lot of wisdom that the context of a human connection can be a Kind of going off of that, too—how does happens in sharing with somebody from a microcosm for understanding in the world. CC: You’re definitely making a nice list for the initial creative process differ in your different generation and it can go in either me to look into! varying approaches to making work, from direction. CC: Yes! Alright, last question. So, the JSMA performance to video work to even more erected curtains for the Relationship show ZD: Yeah, I’m trying to think of women documentary work to public work? CC: Right. and it is so troubling in that the work is very filmmakers… Andrea Arnold’s Fish Tank is an private, right? I believe the initial intention amazing film. Yeah, that’s a start. ZD: I think as an artist I’ve moved towards ZD: I think that we have a lot to learn from was not to share the work? But you have what’s interesting to me in that moment and the younger generations and ultimately shared and the work has entered the public CC: Yes, thank you so much! one of the things I learned at CalArts is that they will keep us relevant as we age and we space and it feels as though that gesture is So, you’ve stated previously, I believe in an the idea will find a medium—the idea will have that same responsibility for our elders pushing it back towards private, as an act of interview from last month, that photograph- dictate the medium and to have flexibility in and so many survival strategies to learn censorship. ic imaging has always played a large role in working in various forms of media, you can from those relationships. Every generation your explorations of self throughout time maximize the potential for an idea by work- comes along and thinks that they’re doing ZD: [laughing] That’s very astute. and that you’ve always known you wanted ing across platforms. I think of transness as something for the first time. to be an artist. I’d like to hear you speak more than a gender identity but also a way CC: So I’m curious to hear you speak to to how your relationship to making has of moving through the world, a way of being CC: Right. [laughing] how that can be used as an opportunity for changed throughout time? a creative person, able to navigate a con- something positive, through conversation stantly shifting world. As a young person ZD: [laughing] But I don’t think that’s ever around that gesture. ZD: I always kind of reference my first art I remember being bored and not having the case. [laughing] There’s always a paral- project as being a young person using pho- enough stimulus and I think as an adult I’ve lel to a past movement or a past experience ZD: Mhm. I totally support the conversa- tography to imagine myself outside of the really kept this pact with my younger self and we’re so interconnected. I think that tion and I’m happy to inspire conversation physical constraints of being assigned male to constantly engage with things that are beyond what we inhabit, we are a part of a around gender and the reality of trans at birth, so exploring a feminine identity challenging me and pulling me in new direc- genetic chain and all of the sort of charac- bodies in our culture and entering culture. was always sealed by a photograph, right? tions. There’s nothing static about being a ter traits of our ancestors have also been Anything that’s new I think takes time for So, I had this collection of photographs human—we’re infinitely transformable. passed down through us and the only way people to adjust to, and the challenge in a photo album that acted as an escape I think that I always return to certain themes that we could be conscious of that is by that trans bodies present is ultimately a and a way out, a fantasy realm to be sort of and certain modes of working but I’m also having authentic relationships with people request for our whole culture to transition free of my role in life and I think of that as always looking to expand. in our own family and then people in our with us and it dismantles our own notions the seed for the many works that I’ve made chosen family. Yeah, it’s really valuable. of gender as these sort of reinforced—and subsequently. Photography is my original CC: Thank you. I would love to hear you really most of our social order is based on medium, but at some point I felt as though speak about inter-generational sharing and CC: I agree. Yeah, it’s great to hear you that as a century of feminism has taught us the limits of an image were too defined the kind of role that plays in a lot of your speak to that—you definitely do with your and illuminated for us. All of the struggles and I realized that speaking—that being a works, specifically in recent works where work. Thank you, that was great. that trans people face or the struggles that human body in a room with other people you’re working with your mother. And also women have faced through time—I think disallowed an audience from objectifying how you might advise we work towards this ZD: Yeah, I think that, you know, you can the regulating and censoring of women’s me. Yeah, and so at some point I started evolved relationship, I believe in your own use a relationship as a springboard to bodies is something that also affects trans making video, performance art, installation, words you say, Where honesty is the only making work. It creates a really rich bonding bodies. This is a conversation that is hap- and now I’ve entered a more public realm of, possibility? experience. We produce so much out of our pening all across our country right now, so 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Chelsea Couch in Conversation Wednesday, May 4, 2016 91 with Zackary Drucker this is not unique to JSMA, to University of Oregon, to Eugene—It’s not new to me or to Rhys, we just happen to be in this particular The idea will dictate the quandary together and I totally support the dialogue, the controversy. In no way would I ever attempt to shut that down or to silence medium and to have anybody’s voices. I think it’s totally valid, but on a personal—first of all, I think as an artist, you can’t take things personally. But flexibility in working in it’s hard when you are representing yourself in this one-to-one relationship, [gesturing] and it’s a photograph of your body, and you various forms of media, are your own worst enemy, so of course in presenting work you’re—it takes a lot of courage to not self-censor. The work was you can maximize the never intended for a public audience and now the relationship that it’s documenting is very different—Rhys and I are no longer in potential for an idea by an intimate relationship, though we contin- ue to collaborate and to work together on a range of other projects. That too, can feel working across platforms. really sensitive and vulnerable, right? You’re like, exposing this really significant stage in your own life and a life that you created with somebody. Yeah, and then too, we always try to correct things that are triggering for people, so from an administrative angle I also totally get it, it’s just that sometimes the solution is—opens up a new host of problems that are worse than, or more trou- bling than, the initial complaint. Yeah, I’ve been so welcomed here and especially by Jill, the director of the museum, and I can’t help but feel responsible for activating this conversation. But, it’s all good. CC: Alright. Thank you so much! 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Chelsea Couch in Conversation Wednesday, May 4, 2016 93 with Zackary Drucker SCOTT REEDER 2) at Gavin Brown’s enterprise NY. Reeder Moderno in the Canary Islands in 2015. In cultures that inform the work. With a is represented by Lisa Cooley in New York, 2014, he opened a print retrospective at style characterized by narrative, bold color, Scott Reeder’s paintings, sculptures and NY, Kavi Gupta Gallery in Chicago, IL, and the Elaine L. Jacob Gallery at Wayne State and silhouette, the work often depicts videos are studies in contradiction—ab- Luce Gallery in Turin, Italy. University in Detroit and in 2015, a print interactions between female figures and stract and representative, ambitious and survey opened at the Instituto de Artes lush, highly detailed scenes of nature. restrained, ironic and sincere. His “pasta ENRIQUE CHAGOYA Graficas de Oaxaca in Oaxaca City, Mexico. Interweaving corporeal forms and patterns paintings” with their loopy variant marks of bright color with literal and figurative reference Abstract Expressionism but Enrique Chagoya is a painter, printmaker, His work is in many public collections reference to stained-glass windows and are made with the elaborate alphabet of and art practice professor at Stanford’s De- including the Museum of Modern Art, the fabrics, Wilson’s work uses decorative noodle types, and his text paintings, pairs partment of Art and Art History. Enrique Metropolitan Museum, and the Whitney motifs to great effect exploring both the of four-letter words like “Post Cats,” and Chagoya uses art to turn assumptions, Museum of American Art in New York, the nature of femininity as construct and the “Dark Math,” channel Ed Ruscha via a lo-fi both artistic and political, on their heads. San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and visual markers of identity. punk aesthetic. His list paintings, such as Drawing from his experiences living on the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco “Alternate Titles For Recent Exhibitions both sides of the U.S.–Mexico border in among others. He has been recipient of Paula Wilson received a MFA from Colum- I’ve Seen,” are comical blends of topical the late 70’s, and also in Europe in the late numerous awards including two NEA bia University in 2005 and has since been mundanity and absurdist existentialism. 90’s, Enrique Chagoya juxtaposes secular, artists’ fellowships, the National Academy featured in group and solo exhibitions in popular, and religious symbols in order of Arts and Letters in New York, residen- the United States and Europe, including Scott Reeder is a painter, filmmaker and to address the ongoing cultural clash cies at Giverny and Cite Internationale des the Studio Museum in Harlem, Sikkema professor of painting and drawing at the between the United States, Latin America Arts in France, and a Tiffany fellowship. Jenkins & Co., Bellwether Gallery, Fred School of the Art Institute of Chicago. and the world as well. He uses familiar pop He is represented by Gallery Paule Anglim Snitzer Gallery, The Fabric Workshop He currently lives and works in Detroit, icons to create deceptively friendly points in San Francisco, George Adams Gal- and Museum, Center for Contemporary Michigan. Reeder was the subject of a solo of entry for the discussion of complex lery in New York, and Lisa Sette Gallery Art Santa Fe, Johan Berggren Gallery in exhibition at the Museum of Contempo- issues. Through these seemingly harmless in Scottsdale, Arizona. His prints are Sweden, and Zacheta National Gallery rary Art, Chicago in 2011 and has been characters, Chagoya examines the recur- published in California by Electric Works of Art, Warsaw. Wilson is a recipient of included in group exhibitions at the Tate ring subject of colonialism and oppression in San Francisco, Magnolia Editions in numerous grants and awards including a Modern, London; the Museum of Contem- that continues to riddle contemporary Oakland, and Trillium press in Brisbaine, Joan Mitchell Artist Grant, Art Production porary Art, San Diego; and the Portland American foreign policy. Made in California in Oakland, and Smith Fund’s P3Studio Artist-in-Residency at the Institute of Contemporary Art. Reeder’s Andersen Editions in Palo Alto, and also in Cosmopolitan in Las Vegas, and the Bob work is included in the collections of the Chagoya was born and raised in Mexico ULAE in Bay Shore, New York, Shark’s Ink and Happy Doran Fellowship at Yale Uni- Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; City. He earned a BFA in printmaking at in Lyons, Colorado, and Segura Publishing versity. She lives and works in Carrizozo, The Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture the San Francisco Art Institute and a MA in Pueblo, Arizona. New Mexico. Garden, Washington D.C.; The Atlanta and a MFA at the University of California, Contemporary Art Center, Atlanta; and the Berkeley. Chagoya has exhibited his work PAULA WILSON CHRIS COLEMAN Kadist Foundation, Paris. nationally and internationally for over two decades with a major retrospective Paula Wilson’s work blends multimedia “I believe in using art to create disrup- In 2014, Reeder debuted his first fea- organized by the Des Moines Art Center in and multicultural references in creating tions from daily life. Sometimes these ture-length film project, Moon Dust at Iowa in 2007 that traveled to UC Berkeley extravagant paintings, prints, videos, and disruptions are subtle, and sometimes Anthology Film Archive in New York. Art Museum and to the Palms Spring Art sculptures that are simultaneously real- enveloping. My art is always looking Reeder has also curated several exhibi- Museum in 2008. In 2013, a major survey istic and unworldly. The dense layering outward, unearthing the problematic and tions, including Dark Fair at the Swiss of his work opened in Centro Museum of color, image, pattern, and material in seeking possible pathways for positive Institute NY, The Early Show at White Col- ARTIUM in Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain that her pieces act as a visual metaphor for forward movement. The question becomes umns, NY and Drunk vs. Stoned (parts 1 & travelled to the Centro Atlantico de Arte the complex stratum of histories and how do I apply my digital media creation, ARTIST BIOGRAPHIES 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Artist Biographies 95 creative coding, mechanical engineering, 2015), Infinity Increaser (PICA, 2015), The Samantha Bittman lives and works in Chi- to participate in curatorial residencies and sculptural skills towards answering Plumb and The Wave (Pied-à-terre, 2014), cago, Illinois. She received a BFA from the in Gwangju, South Korea as part of the challenges we face? How do the outcomes Prototyping Eutopias (2013), and The Rhode Island School of Design in 2004 and Gwangju Design Biennale and Berlin, interrogate big picture perspectives and Book of Knots (c_L, 2013). She has made a MFA from the School of the Art Insti- Germany as part of the Haus der Kulturen offer ways forward that are on some level solo exhibitions at the Portland Institute tute of Chicago in 2010 and also attended der Welt’s SYNAPSE project exploring the practical? These are the challenges of the for Contemporary Art, Pied-à-terre (San the Skowhegan School of Painting and relationship between art & science. In the Critical Arts Engineer. The Critical Arts Francisco), Ditch Projects (Springfield, Sculpture in 2011. Recent solo exhibitions fall of 2012, he curated the 4th edition of Engineer must have a deep understanding OR), Artspeak (Vancouver, B.C.), and was include Razzle Dazzle at Andrew Rafacz the Narracje Festival in Gdansk, Poland, of many technological tools and methods included in Six Weeks at the Henry Art Gallery, Chicago, IL; Number Cruncher at which involved a citywide program of of making, combined with a very critical Gallery (Seattle). In 2016, she will make a Longhouse Projects, New York, NY; and installations, interventions, and video pro- look at what those tools offer, how they two-woman exhibition at RONGWRONG Soft Counting, at Greenpoint Terminal, jections upon historic buildings. Matijcio’s shape what is produced, and how they (Amsterdam), a collaborative piece for a Brooklyn, NY. Bittman has been included 2013 essay “Nothing to See Here: The convey particular concepts; the concepts group show at Alvar Aalto’s Paimio Sana- in recent group exhibitions at Morgan Denial of Vision in Media Art” was accept- themselves being critical looks at our world torium (Finland), and a solo exhibition at Lehman Gallery, New York, NY; David ed into the RENEW: Media Art Histories in structural, political, and systemic terms.” Jupiter Woods (London). She publishes the Castillo Gallery, Miami, FL; Guerrero Gallery, Conference in Riga, Latvia. - Chris Coleman journal EIGHTS. San Francisco, CA; and Paris London Hong Kong, Chicago, IL. She is currently on facul- Matijcio has also lectured on theory and Chris Coleman was born in West Virginia, SAMANTHA BITTMAN ty at the Rhode Island School of Design. criticism at the University of Manito- and he received a MFA from SUNY Buffalo, ba, written for numerous catalogs and New York. His work includes sculptures, In her paintings on hand-woven textile, STEVEN MATIJCIO journals including the Guide to the 27th videos, creative coding, and interactive Bittman exploits the limitations of the Sao Paulo Bienal, and was commissioned installations. Coleman has had his work basic floor loom. By designing and exe- Steven Matijcio is the curator of the in 2003 by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foun- in exhibitions and festivals in more than cuting weave drafts that consist of simple Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, dation to curate one of their first online 20 countries including Brazil, Argenti- sets of numerically based instructions, Ohio. Prior to this position he served as exhibitions. He has recently sat on juries na, Singapore, Finland, the U.A.E., Italy, she generates woven cloth whereby the Curator of Contemporary Art at the South- for the Tremaine Foundation, School of Germany, France, China, the UK, Latvia, architecture of the weave interlacements eastern Center for Contemporary Art in the Art Institute of Chicago and the McK- and across North America. His open and the graphics of the cloth are one in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Matijcio night Fellowships in Minneapolis. source software project developed with the same. Once stretched over tradition- received a MA from the Center for Curato- Ali Momeni, called Maxuino, has been al painting stretcher bars, the textile rial Studies at Bard College, New York, and ANDERS RUHWALD downloaded more than 50,000 times by patterns, which often become distorted a HBA from the University of Toronto. He users in over 120 countries and is used by the act of stretching, direct and dictate has held positions in a number of import- Anders Ruhwald is one of the foremost globally in physical computing classrooms. the painted surface. These moves are both ant galleries and museums including the ceramic artists working in the world today. He currently resides in Denver, Colorado intuitive and logical. In several works, the Plug In Institute of Contemporary Art, the Noted for large-scale installations that and is an Associate Professor and the weave graphics are replicated precisely Power Plant Contemporary Art Gallery, explore ceramic as both idea and material, Director of Emergent Digital Practices at in paint, negating the materiality of the the Art Gallery of Ontario, and the Nation- he brushes aside the distinction between the University of Denver. textile in favor of the pictorial aspects of al Gallery of Canada. ‘art’ and ‘craft’, emphasizing instead the the cloth. In other instances, selectively disruptive and transformative capacity LISA RADON painted areas merge with their underlying Matijcio was honored in 2010 with a of objects in space. As the Director of textile support, further flattening the pic- prestigious Emily Hall Tremaine Exhi- New York’s Museum of Arts and Design Lisa Radon has made some books in- ture plane and perceptually disorienting bition Award for his project paperless. Glenn Adamson has stated: “For all their cluding The Blind Remembrance of the the viewer. In the summer of 2011 he was chosen compressed particularity, [his] sculptures Swirling Bone, (Ditch Projects/Artspeak, from an international pool of candidates are also enlivened by inexhaustible nuance. UNIVERSITY OF OREGON 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Artist Biographies 97 Ruhwald takes seriously the idea that sur- BRIAN BRESS MARTHA ROSLER longstanding interest in the position of face is where form interfaces with spatial the female subject within patriarchy, uses context, so his surfaces have an intensity Brian Bress, a Los Angeles-based artist Martha Rosler is an artist, theorist, and humor in this parody of cooking shows in all registers.” and filmmaker, creates absurd, circularly educator as well as a leading contempo- to address the implications of tradition- narrative films driven by the circum- rary critical voice within feminist and art al female roles. Other videos cover the Anders Ruhwald is Artist-in-Residence and stances of a bizarre cast of ridiculously discourses. Rosler’s work encompasses geopolitics of food, mass-media imagery and Head of Department at Cranbrook Academy costumed characters, more often than photography, video, installation, pho- language, war and torture, and domestic life. of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. He not played by Bress himself. Though they tomontage, and performance as well as graduated from the Royal College of Art in rely predominantly on homemade props commentaries on art—especially on Her groundbreaking work The Bowery London in 2005. Solo exhibitions include and costumes, Bress’ videos are visually documentary photography—and culture. in two inadequate descriptive systems “The Anatomy of a Home” at The Saarinen innovative and their inherent silliness She was born in Brooklyn, New York, USA, (1974/75), in which photographs of House in Michigan, “You in Between” at and rambling pace only serve to intensify where she lives and works. storefronts are paired with metaphors for Middlesbrough Institute of Modern Art in the examination of assumptions about drunks and drunkenness, questions the the United Kingdom, and more than 25 the nature of reality. He is also known Rosler’s work has been shown internation- social meaning of documentary essays gallery and museum solo shows in New York, for his collage-like portraits that feature ally for many years and in 1999-2001 was centered on poor and destitute people. London, Paris, Hong Kong, San Francisco, costumed actors wearing strange masks the subject of a retrospective, “Positions Chicago, Stockholm, Copenhagen and that obscure their faces. By disguising the in the Life World,” at five European and Rosler is well known for her photomon- Brussels as well as more than 100 group-ex- identities of the sitters, Bress heightens two American museums. A more recent tages combining news photography with hibitions around the world. His work is the level of uncertainty in the work to survey show was held at the Galleria d’Arte depictions of ideal homes and perfect represented in over 20 public collections humorous levels. Moderna in Torino. Her collection of over bodies, producing a single frame as a way internationally including The Victoria and seven thousand books toured internation- of highlighting the false disconnection be- Albert Museum, United Kingdom, Musée Brian received a BFA from Rhode Island ally as the Martha Rosler Library. Rosler tween two public discourses. In the series des Arts décoratifs, France; The Denver Art School of Design and a MFA from Universi- has been the recipient of a number of “Body Beautiful, or Beauty Knows No Pain,” Museum, The Detroit Institute of Art, The ty of California, Los Angeles. His collages, national and international awards, most made between 1965 and 1972, Rosler Philadelphia Museum of Art, Icheon World photographs, videos, and paintings have recently The New Foundation Seattle’s deconstructs commercial representations Ceramic Center, Republic of South Korea; been exhibited in various group shows inaugural lifetime achievement award. of women and families in mass circulation The British Crafts Council and The National and film festivals in Los Angeles, Chicago, magazines—for example, by augmenting Museum, Sweden. In 2011, he was awarded and New York, including Spike and Mike’s Rosler has also published over fifteen images of lingerie models with snippets the Gold Prize at the Icheon International Festival of Animation, Black Maria Film books of her works and essays exploring of pornographic imagery, whether from Ceramics Biennale in South Korea, in 2010 Festival, New York Director’s Club Bienni- the role of photography and art, public soft-core or hard-core sources. In “House he received a Danish Art Foundation three- al, and The LA Weekly Biennial. Current space, and transportation, as well as Beautiful: Bringing the War Home (1967– year work-stipend, and in 2007 he received and upcoming solo exhibitions include a public housing and homelessness. Her 72)”, a series of works produced at the the Sotheby’s Prize, United Kingdom. His ten-year retrospective at the Utah Museum essays have been collected as Decoys and peak of the Vietnam War, Rosler combined work has been reviewed in major publica- of Fine Arts, Salt Lake City, and the Disruptions: Selected Writings, 1975-2001. images of Vietnamese civilians and U.S. tions including the Guardian, Wallpaper, Museum of Contemporary Art Denver in Her most recent book is Culture Class, soldiers with those of pristine dwellings. Artforum.com, Sculpture Magazine, and 2016. Bress has recently had solo exhi- published in 2013 by e-flux and Sternberg These works remained outside the art con- Avenuel. Ruhwald has lectured and taught at bitions and projects at the Los Angeles Press (Berlin), which includes an extended text for many years, as Rosler distributed universities and colleges around Europe and County Museum of Art, CA, Museo d’arte essay on the role of artists in processes of them as photocopies among the anti-war North America and has held an associate contemporanea, Rome, Italy, Santa Barba- gentrification. community as well as publishing them in professorship at the School of the Art Insti- ra Museum of Art, CA, and New Museum, “underground” periodicals. She reopened tute of Chicago. New York, NY. Brian is represented by Her widely seen video work Semiotics this series in 2004 and 2008, pointedly Cherry and Martin. of the Kitchen (1975), reflecting her using the same form to draw a parallel DEPT. OF ART 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Artist Biographies 99 between the Iraq and Afghanistan military Fensterstock received a BFA from the but one that is accessible to a wide range LIZ LARNER adventures, begun by President Bush and Parsons School of Design and a MFA of people. I am interested in our collective his allies, and the dismal catastrophe of from SUNY New Paltz. and individual responses to representation “I began showing my work in 1985 and Vietnam begun four decades earlier. and memory. They also act as a record of have always been interested in the mean- KARYN OLIVIER my daily struggles, fears, and moments of ing inherent in materials, as well as the Some of her best-known works deal with clarity.” linguistic implications of what something the geopolitical dilemmas of dispossession Karyn Olivier, who was born in Trinidad - Squeak Carnwath is called, which my art has often exposed and entitlement. Interested in places of and Tobago, received a MFA at Cranbrook the difference between. I am currently passage, she has produced photographic Academy of Art and a BA at Dartmouth Leah Levy wrote in Squeak Carnwath: using more traditional art materials like series on roads and shop windows, and College. Her work has been exhibited Transformations, in Lists, Observations, & paper, ceramics, paint, and wood but large-scale installations about airports. nationally and internationally, including Counting—“The subjects of Carnwath’s have also, and continue to use landscape “If You Lived Here” is her highly influen- exhibitions at the Gwangju and Busan works are the simple intimacies and subtle materials bacteria and more contemporary tial cycle of three shows and four public Biennials, Korea, World Festival of Black intricacies of life: modest objects that por- means of fracture like digital modeling forums on housing, homelessness, and the Arts and Culture, Dakar, Senegal, the tend significance; the interrelationships of and production. I feel the material is often built environment, held in New York in Wanas Foundation, Sweden, The Studio humans and other living beings; emotions the message, but the message is config- 1989 and reprised many times in various Museum, Harlem, The Whitney Museum and perceptions; and the element of time ured by form. Color has been an important forms over the years. The accompanying of Art, New York, MoMA P.S.1, Long Island itself. In its exploration, Carnwath’s art aspect of what I do, and have done, and I book, in print since 1990, is in wide use as City, The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, emphasizes the way our lives are orga- use it to basically destabilize, dematerial- a textbook for architecture students. The Contemporary Arts Museum, Hous- nized in and about the daily minutia that ize, and question the validity of the symbolic ton, The Mattress Factory and Sculpture tend to echo a broader envisioning of space and semiotic aspects of my art. I am a female LAUREN FENSTERSTOCK Center, Pittsburgh. In 2015 Olivier was and time.” artist and my work reflects this.” commissioned to create public works for - Liz Larner Lauren Fensterstock is an artist, writer, Creative Time in Central Park, New York Squeak has received numerous awards and curator based in Portland, Maine. and NYC’s Percent for Art Program. She is including the Society for the Encourage- Liz Larner received a BFA from the Her work is held in private and public the recipient of the John Simon Guggen- ment of Contemporary Art Award from CalArts in 1985. She lives and works in collections in the US, Europe, and Asia heim Memorial Foundation Fellowship, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Los Angeles. Larner has been the subject and has been the subject of numerous the Joan Mitchell Foundation Award, the two Individual Artist Fellowships from of numerous solo museum exhibitions, exhibitions including recent shows at New York Foundation for the Arts Award, the National Endowment for the Arts, a including a forthcoming exhibition at the The John Michael Kohler Art Center, The a Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant, the Guggenheim Fellowship and the Award Aspen Art Museum, 2015, the Art Institute Contemporary Austin, The Pearlstein William H. Johnson Prize, the Louis Com- for Individual Artists from the Flintridge of Chicago, 2015, the Museum of Con- Gallery at Drexel University, and The fort Tiffany Foundation Biennial Award, Foundation. Carnwath is Professor Emeri- temporary Art, Los Angeles, 2001–02, the Bowdoin College Museum of Art. Out- and a Creative Capital Foundation grant. ta at the University of California, Berkeley. Museum of Applied Arts Vienna, Austria, side the studio, Fensterstock currently Olivier is currently an associate professor Publications featuring Carnwath’s work 1998, and Kunsthalle Basel, Switzerland, serves as a Critic at the Rhode Island of sculpture at Tyler School of Art. include: Squeak Carnwath: Lists, Ob- 1997. She has been commissioned for School of Design. She previously served servations, & Counting (1996), Squeak multiple public artworks including the as Academic Program Director of the SQUEAK CARNWATH Carnwath: Painting is no Ordinary Object Byron G. Rogers Federal Building and Interdisciplinary MFA in Studio Arts (2009), and Horizons on Fire: Works on Courthouse Plaza, Denver, 2015, Univer- at Maine College of Art and as Director “My paintings and prints draw upon the Paper 1979–2013 (2014). Carnwath is a sity of California, San Francisco, Mission of the Institute of Contemporary Art philosophical and mundane experiences of founding member and current president of Bay Project, 2003, and the Riverside at Maine College of Art. Her curato- daily life to form lush fields of color com- the Artists’ Legacy Foundation. She lives Pedestrian Bridge at Walt Disney Studios, rial projects and published writings bined with text, patterns, and identifiable and works in Oakland, CA. Burbank, 2000. She has been the recipient have been featured internationally. images. My vocabulary is a personal one, of multiple awards including the Nancy 2015–16 LECTURERS 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Artist Biographies 101 Graves Foundation Grant, 2014, Smithso- from her family’s immigration experience Excellence, the AIA Keystone Award, the nian American Art Museum Lucelia Artist to address issues of labor and explores Heinz Award in the arts and humanities, Award, 2002, and the Guggenheim Fellow- identity as a first generation immigrant. the Skowhegan Governor’s Award, the ship, 1999. Larner is represented by Regen Skandalaris Award for Art/Architecture, Projects in Los Angeles, Tanya Bonakdar Han Sifuentes’s work has been shown in and a U.S. Artists Booth Fellowship. He Gallery in New York, the Modern Institute national and international exhibitions. has served as a Loeb Fellow at Harvard in Glasgow, Scotland and Max Hetzler Her work has been included in exhibitions University, a Mel King Fellow at MIT, an Gallery in Berlin. at the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Auburn University Breedan Scholar, and Museum in Seoul, South Korea, Wing a Stanford University Haas Center Distin- CHRISTIAN PATTERSON Luke Museum of Asian Pacific American guished Visitor. President Barack Obama Experience in Seattle, WA, Center for Craft, appointed Rick to the National Council on Christian Patterson was born in Fond du Creativity and Design in Asheville, NC, the Arts in 2013 and in 2014 he was named Lac, Wisconsin and lives in New York, New and Elmhurst Art Museum in Elmhurst, a MacArthur Fellow. York. Photographs are the heart of his IL. She earned a BA in Art and Latin work and are sometimes accompanied by American Studies from the University of ZACKARY DRUCKER drawings, paintings, or objects. His work California, Berkeley in 2008 and a MFA in “Redheaded Peckerwood” was published Fiber and Material Studies from the School “Okay—So now you found me. What now? by MACK in 2011 to critical acclaim, won of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2013. Should we have a conversation? You and the 2012 Recontres d’Arles Author Book me? Should we talk about planet earth and Award and is now in its third printing. In RICK LOWE pontificate on the meaning of life? 2016? 2013, he was awarded a John Simon Gug- Things are changing, I know, the un- genheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship. Rick Lowe is a Houston-based artist who known is scary, but we will navigate this In 2015 Walther König will publish his has exhibited and worked with commu- new landscape together. You know who I work Bottom of the Lake. Patterson is self- nities nationally and internationally. His am. I am Zackary Drucker. I am a human, taught but lectures widely about his work. work has appeared in the Contemporary an artist, and a person.” He is represented by Rose Gallery in Santa Arts Museum, Houston, Museum of Con- -Zackary Drucker Monica and Robert Morat in Hamburg and temporary Arts, Los Angeles, Neuberger Berlin. Museum, Purchase, New York, Phoenix Zackary Drucker is an independent artist, Art Museum, Kwangju Biennale, Kwangju, cultural producer, and trans woman ARAM HAN SIFUENTES Korea, the Kumamoto State Museum, who breaks down the way we think Kumamoto, Japan, and the Venice Archi- about gender, sexuality, and seeing. She Aram Han Sifuentes considers the complex tecture Biennale. He is best known for his has performed and exhibited her work impact of globalization and how it speaks Project Row Houses community-based art internationally in museums, galleries, through the end of the needle in the hands project that he started in Houston in 1993. and film festivals including the Whitney of immigrant laborers in and outside the Further community projects include the Biennial 2014, MoMA PS1, Hammer garment industry, and artisans active in Watts House Project in Los Angeles, the Museum, Art Gallery of Ontario, MCA living textile traditions around the world. Borough Project in Charleston, SC (with San Diego, and SF MoMA, among others. Aram Han Sifuentes learned how to sew Suzanne Lacy and Mary Jane Jacobs), the Drucker is an Emmy-nominated Producer when she was six years old from her seam- Delray Beach Cultural Loop in Florida, for the docu-series This Is Me, as well stress mother. Han Sifuentes was born in and the Anyang Public Art Program 2010 as a Co-Producer on Golden Globe and Seoul, South Korea and immigrated to in Anyang, Korea. Among Rick’s honors Emmy-winning Transparent. She is a cast Modesto, California as a child. She mines are the Rudy Bruner Awards in Urban member on the E! docu-series I Am Cait. FIVE MINUTES 2015–16 University of Oregon Five Minutes Department of Art Artist Biographies 110033 Artist Biographies 105 Scott Reeder Enrique Chagoya Paula Wilson Chris Coleman Lisa Radon Samantha Bittman Steven Matijcio Anders Ruhwald Brian Bress Martha Rosler Lauren Fensterstock Karyn Olivier Squeak Carnwath Liz Larner Christian Patterson Aram Han Sifuentes Rick Lowe Zackary Drucker 2015–16