Peripheral ARTeries Art Review May 2014

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Olga Karyakina14141414

Andrew Smith58585858I wanted to invent something different, unique, in my work – merging my two passions all over the canvas, giving a different story in every frame in which the perception of unreality merges with the imagination, creating a balance between everything that surrounds me.

Laelanie Lerach 46464646

Astrid Jahns 24242424 Yotam Zohar34343434

PeripPeripPeripPeripheral heral heral heral ARTARTARTARTeeeeriesriesriesriesA R T R E V I E W

May 2014

"I create objects, installations and performances that investigate the echoes of time in contemporary identity and environment. I focus on narratives and legacies left behind by families, media and technology."

Yotam was born in Jerusalem, Israel. He studied drawing and

painting at the Ohio State University (BFA) and

Eastern Illinois University (MA). Yotam lives in New

York City with his wife, son, and three cats. He

paints, illustrates, writes, and teaches on the subject

of art.

"When you are a foreigner, you are always

feeling like a highlight-ed person.

I felt a high level of «what does it mean to be

highlighted»,being a tall

blonde woman in Mexico.I was thinking about how

to show this feeling."

"I think that the human being, with all its thoughts, emotions, moods and wishes, in combination of its surrounding, represents the most exciting elements to create art. I like to imagine scenarios that could almost happen everywhere. An important aspect often are human characteristics or properties that my protagonists do not want to show to the outside, but rather know in hidden deep inside. "

4444

In my three dimensional work, it is my intention to deal with the connotation of the word home. These

ideas are expressed through images and

concepts ranging from my sights and experiences as a

child, while on the American Highway moving from home to home, to my more recent body of work

Margaret Noble

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82828282I've always been fascinated by the

moment when the painting is leaving its

role of pure reproduction of reality.

Initially, as inspiration, there is often a color, a

shape, a detail that intrigues me.

Cesar Valerio 70707070

Erin O’Malley

“With digital macro photography I have been exploring the interaction of light with transparent and reflective surfaces.

I consider my photography a series of experiments, a process of trial and error

that builds upon past succes-ses through the

manipulation of variables”

92929292Thomas Mc Conville 99999999 Jodie Woodcock

David Wilde 104104104104

Feel free to submit your artworks to our art review: just write to [email protected]

Most of my artworks are feelings .... Are moments in my life that marked me or marking as time goes on, and I try to let them carved in marble stone.There are others pieces I was asked to do ... my passion for oriental art takes me to mix the abstract with florals.

would say my art is mostly abstract. I like different,

always have. The way I create my work

haschanged since I started painting, I have changed.

I started painting in 2010 and for awhile I could

hardly stop. My ideas and Visions just flowed out of me. I been into drawing

since I was young.

My work joins several artistic processes and techniques into one sound installation. The music draws largely from painting and literature, with a particular focus on the works of James Joyce and the paintings of Picasso.

107107107107The process of creating and the presentation of art is a fundamental blessing and encouragement for human society that arises from the artists' ability to open to the primal elements of life's appearances. Feeling the heart of events and finding the freedom to express that in media and terms beyond the distortions of ego is a liberating thing that wakes people up to the natural benevolent vividness of circumstances.

Pavla Rozkovcova

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#196 Winter

I create objects, installations and performances that investigate the echoes of time in contemporary identity and environment. I focus on narratives and legacies left behind by families, media and technology.

I use found objects, construct new objects and design sound to activate spaces, reference history and pose questions about perception. I draw on a wide variety of materials and symbols to juxtapose ideas. I play with time travel as I move between generational influences, historical myths and the future.

Born in Texas and raised in San Diego, Margaret Noble’s artwork has been exhibited across the United States, Canada and abroad in Europe. Noble’s art has been featured on PBS and positively reviewed in Art Ltd Magazine, the San Diego Union Tribune, and San Francisco Weekly. She holds a BA in Philosophy from the University of California, San Diego and an MFA in Sound Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.

Noble has been awarded the International Governor’s Grant, the Hayward Prize, the Microsoft Global Educator Award for Arts and Mathematics and the Creative Catalyst Fellowship. Noble’s artistic residencies include the MAK Museum in Vienna and at the Salzburg Academy of Fine Art. Her solo exhibition, 44th and Landis was featured at the Museum of Contemporary Art, San Diego from 2012-2013. In 2014, she won first place in the Musicworks Magazine electronic music composition competition. Margaret Noble’s work is influenced by the beat-driven dance culture of southern California during the 1980s. This inspiration led her to perform as an electronic music DJ in the underground club community of Chicago for several years during the late nineties.

In 2004, Noble branched out from the dance floor into more experimental interests and created a monthly arts showcase called Spectacle in Chicago; during this period, she performed and produced experimental works with a variety of cutting edge new-media artists. Her interdisciplinary work resides at the intersection of sound, installation and performance.

An artist’s statement

(USA)

Margaret Noble

Peripheral ARTeries

Margaret Noble

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Righteous Exploits

performance, photo by Matt Lewis

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Margaret Noble

an interview with

An interview with

Margaret Noble

Hello Margaret, first I would give you welcome to Peripheral ARTeries: to start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You hold a BA in Philosophy, from the University of California, San Diego and an MFA in Sound Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago: how have these expe-riences influenced you in the way you currently produce your artworks?

Both of these educational experiences have deeply influenced my research and artistic motivations. In the instance of philosophy, I was trained to ques-tion and analyze all manners of ideas with a critical eye. I find this practice resonate with what many contemporary artists do today.

They investigate ideas, put forth arguments and problem solve through form. Later, when I began my studies in sound art, I was at first pushing to learn the technical and formal aspects of creating exclusively. But, I learned immediately that a work’s ability to communicate may lack in depth if it relies on technical and formal skills alone.

Before starting to elaborate about your pro-duction, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

My work starts exclusively with an idea of interest; some seed of context that is neglected, in tension or resonates as a problem. I then spend a good deal of time researching my selected topic of interest until I feel that I have something that is more refined and meaningful to express. With this spe-cific concept in mind, I draft out ideas for forms that

will express the concept in its most effective way. My forms are fluid and I often outsource pieces of the project to secure the best possible outcome. I fear having my art limited by my technical ability.

Now let's focus on your art production: I would like to start with your interesting project Righteous Exploits that you have created in collaboration with Justin Hudnall and that our readers are starting to get to know in the intro-

Margaret Noble

Peripheral ARTeries

Margaret Noble

ductory pages of this article and I would suggest to visit your website directly at http://www.margaretnoble.net/righteous-exploits/ in order to get a wider idea of this interesting work: in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of the project behind these pieces? What was your initial inspiration?

My work is obsessively time-based in both form

and concept. I am often looking to the past to inform the present and in particular I hunt for primary documents such as letters or photos that may shed light on our experiences of today. For Righteous Exploits, I was inspired by the Ann Fabian’s book, The Unvarnished Truth which is a powerful cultural history of how ordinary Americans crafted and sold their stories of hardship in the nineteenth century. Justin and I decided to exploit our own stories (as often artists do) to see what themes of the past would resonate today based on letters and documents we could dig up from our family. The work then took shape on its own and morphed into ideas around eternal recurrence.

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Righteous Exploits


As you have remarked, Righteous Exploits is a chronicle of the life of your grandmother, Helen Hosmer, a 1940′s-era labor activist... so I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

Yes, I do feel that the most honest and interesting

Righteous Exploits


Peripheral ARTeries

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#196 Winter

Peripheral ARTeries Margaret Noble

an interview with

work is that which is personal. However, my concern as of late is that my work is sometimes too personal and this directness has made me uncom-fortable in familiar audiences. But, the conceptual problems that interest me are those that relate to my direct experiences. Working with experience gives me authority to explore freely and take risks because of insider knowledge.

But, the aim is to explore the personal in such a way that it relates to the audiences that experience the work. The antithesis of this is making personal works without thinking of your audience. For me, if the work is only serving the self then it may not belong in the public sphere. I am not saying to pander or cater to audiences in a way that is compromising. What I am saying is that work is more interesting and carries more weight when it is relevant to others outside of the self.

Multidisciplinarity is a recurrent feature of your art practice: your production ranges from sound to installation to performance as the interesting 44th and Landis and I think it's important to remark that you were a dancer later, during the late nineties, you were a DJ in the underground club community of Chicago for several years during the late nineties... while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

Absolutely, and herein lies the tension. I cannot be an expert at all mediums but I do not want to limit my ideas to the mediums I am skilled at.

44 th and Landis

installation, photo by Nathaniel Elegino 44 th and Landis installation, photo by Nathaniel Elegino

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Margaret Noble Peripheral ARTeries

#196 Winter

an interview with

daresay- on a physical one, as in as Tides ... Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? Do you ever happen to draw inspiration from who will enjoy your artworks?

I deeply care about my audience's experience and this informs my work. I resent projects that alienate audiences and although I am interested in the contemporary art dialectic, I am more interested in work that reaches beyond this specific camp. That is not to say that I think work should be dumb downed, on the contrary, the ideas should remain gripping, challenging and provoking. But, what I would advocate for is that artists use form to communicate ideas beyond the contemporary art community. I was once told that I am a “plain speak conceptualist,” I liked that comment.

So, I can execute poorly at mediums I am new to. But, that doesn’t succeed because the work is unsuccessful. I could try to master multiple forms.

But, by the time I get to any type of proficiency I may loose interest in my original concepts. So for me, the answer is often collaboration or (as I mentioned earlier) outsourcing parts of a project. Artistic vision is so exciting and clear in one’s mind but so challenging to manifest as a real thing.

It does often require a synergy between different disciplines.

Your works are strictly connected to the chance of establishing a deep involvement with your audience, both on an intellectual side and - I

A still from 44 th and Landis


Live performance, photo by Mark Hamburg

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#196 Winter

Peripheral ARTeries Margaret Noble

Another interesting pieces of your on which I would spend some words are Shelter and Spills, which part of an installation series that explores the fragility and futility of human interference with natural processes: one of the features of these interesting pieces that has mostly impacted on me is the way you have been capable of re-contextualizing the idea of environment, especially challenging the "func-tion" of it... I'm sort of convinced that some information & ideas are hidden, or even "encryp-

ted" in the environment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of ourinner Nature... what's your point about this?

I think the subconscious runs wildly in creators and that the artistic works they make are often cryptic even to the artists themselves. I often think that I am so clear about my intentions behind a work and then once the work is finished I figure out that

Shelter

installation Photo by Stacey Keck

Spill

installation Photo by Stacey Keck

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Margaret Noble Peripheral ARTeries

an interview with

there is much more to uncover. It is kind of exciting and unnerving because I want to be very articulate about what I am planning to make. But then I find out that the work is saying more or something different. Of course, I wonder was this intention always there and I ignored it? Or, did something really new emerge?

During these years you received many positive feedbacks, and you have recently won first place in the Musicworks Magazine electronic music composition competition... Moreover your artworks have been exhibited in several oc-casions, both in the USA and abroad, as in Europe, and you won a residency at the pres-tigious MAK Museum in Vienna and at the Salzburg Academy of Fine Art: what impressions have you received from the expe-riences in Europe? Did you find any great difference with the American scenario?

It is a funny thing being an American artist in Euro-pe. There are just some things about the wealth of

culture and history when trekking about Europe that makes an American feel like a child. Sometimes, I have this impulse to feverishly study European art and history textbooks before connecting with artists in Europe. But, that solution is ridiculous and makes one an imposter. So I embrace my American-ness and soak in what the old world offers, recognizing that these two worlds are different and that is interesting!

Thank you for this interview, Margaret. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you that you would like readers to be aware of?

I will be creating an installation for the Mediations Biennale this fall at the American satellite venue in San Diego, California.http://www.biennialfoundation.org/biennials/mediations-biennale/

44 th and Landis performance, photo by Nathaniel Elegino

an interview by [email protected]

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#196 Winter

Olga Karyakina

InstallationLight, founded local natural materialsSpace size: 4,000 sfMaravatio, Mexico

When you are a foreigner, you are always feeling like a highlight-ed person. I felt a high level of «what does it mean to be highlighted»,being a tall blonde woman in Mexico.I was thinking about how to show this feeling.

One of the possiblespaces for my installation was abandoned meal factory, named «LaBlanca» (“White”)I found this place 4000 sq feet dark and dirty. I found out that itis possible to make the holes in the roof.

Then I decided to make alight-based installation.I’ve worked with natural and founded materials and live objects.

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La Blanca, 2012

Installation

Light, founded local natural materials

Space size: 4,000 sf

Maravatio, Mexico

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Olga Karyakina

an interview with

An interview with

Olga Karyakina

Hello Olga, and a warm welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be in your opinion the features that mark an artworks as a piece of Contemporary Art? Do you think that there's still a dichotomy between tradition and contemporariness?

Hello, I'm not sure if it works when art is divided into «contemporary» and «traditional» arts. As an artist, I'm not interested in any separations. I would say, it is really great to be a part of a big tradition, as well as Renaissance Masters, Picasso and Van Gogh. Also, I agree with Josef Koshut's opinion that the value of an art object can be measured as a value of the new meanings it brings. From this position, you can probably judge what is art and what is not art.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? You have received a formal training, and besides your studies at the Moscow State University of Printing Arts, you have spent a year in New York, attending the School of Visual Arts. How have these expe-riences impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks? By the way, I someti-mes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... what's your point?

I studied in Moscow State University of Printing Arts where mostly learned about aesthetics issues. I studied graphic arts, book illustration and design. It allowed me to develop my personal style in graphic design and set up the design studio. in 2010 I started to attend SVA Fine Art department in New York.

The most exciting thing, I've discovered at SVA,

was the possibility of collaboration with the teacher and having fun during the lessons. It was the kind of freedom, I've missed before. Mostly I loved Gunars Prande's silkscreen class. During the les-sons we discussed exhibition catalogs and other books, artists, sweets, and politics.

The turning point for me was the time I spent in Cittadellarte Residency in Italy: it was a turn from aesthetics to the deep meaning of the art. In my experience, it was more important to be in a con.

Olga Karyakina

Peripheral ARTeries

Olga Karyakina

nection with the community of artists, than to learn in the university as a graduate student. This doesn't mean, that the art community living is nice, but it is very stimulating.

Before starting to elaborate about your pro-duction, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do

you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

I don't really have a specific method :). The projects, which I really love, have nothing in common with their original purpose. A starting point for me is an impression from social or physical space. Second step is a thinking about how this perception of the space can be high-lighted, forced and represented to other people. I just work on the idea for a long time. Somewhere in the middle there is a special moment, when a completely different solution comes.

Now let's focus on your art production: I would like to start with La Blanca that our readers have already started to get to know in the introductory pages of this article. Would you tell us something about the genesis of this project? What was your initial inspiration?

I was inspired by my Mexican journey. Sunlight. Completely different life, nature and people. La Blanca visually expresses the feelings of an alien, who is markedly different in appearance from the locals. This was a reflection of my foreignness, visibility, sense of self, as a person exposed for observation by other people.

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La Blanca, 2012 Installation


Space size: 4,000 sf Maravatio, Mexico




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#196 Winter

Peripheral ARTeries Olga Karyakina

an interview with

The moment of inspiration was when I found this abandoned meal factory, called «La Blanca». The building has a sophisticated suite of rooms, connected to each other and to the main corridor. I found this place (approx 4000 sq feet) dark and dirty - a perfect space for a light-based installation!

In my work the light beams moved on the floor following the movement of the sun. Viewers could watch their slow movement. On the floor, beneath the light spots, were colored areas made from a handful of petals of different flowers and plants arranged in exactly the same shape as the rectangular patches of light. A small part of the figure was illuminated at first; then more and more. At this point, color became the main figure. For a short time, the whole room was covered in red, pink or yellow. The extended suite of rooms was used to create the effect of rhythmic repetition of




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Olga Karyakina Peripheral ARTeries

an interview with

sunspots on the floor. This rhythm moved the audience from one spot to another. In this installation the performance is not due to some sort of action, but due to the natural movement of the sun's rays.

Another pieces of yours on which I would like to spend some words is Green River, an interesting piece that has particularly impres-sed me: in a certain sense, it breaths, moves, changes a direction, cooperates with the nature... A feature of this piece that has mostly impacted on me is the effective syner-gy that you have been capable of establishing an effective dialog between the concept of Nature and our inner nature... Could you lead us through the development of this project?

Thank you, I wouldn't say better! It is really a dialog between the concept of Nature and our inner, human nature! It begun as a small paper model. Then I scaled the model and made a construction from wooden bricks. In collaboration with Oropa Botanical Garden we covered this construction with alive plants.

We built the installation just in the center in City of Biella, Italy. It was the best place for such object supposed to create a context for communication with the residents of Biella.

Cervo River previously used to be a source of energy for many textile mills in Biella. Nowadays these mills are abandoned. So the installation was

Green River, 2011 Installation

Wood, live plants, appr. size 315 in x 69 in x 39 in, Biella (IT)

the point to start the conversation about people life, economical crisis and the nature.

During the show, I asked visitors to formulate a sentence about the river, which characterizes their attitude towards it. Some of visitors shared their personal metaphors and thoughts.

Being strictly connected to the chance to create a deep interaction, your artworks as The Farm are capable of communicating a wide variety of states of mind: and, as you have once stated, your pieces aim at the creation of «third» space, which affects people's behavior, switching from "looking" to "feeling", or "being in the space": would you like to elaborate a bit this interesting concept for our readers?

Farm is a sign, or a mark, which can be installed in any space. It is a wooden screen, made in shape of farm barrow. Some parts of the screen are lost and some details of the video missed.

This piece is more meditative and it affect people's feelings more than doing.

By the way, I can recognize such a socio political criticism in your works, as in Marked as an important... I'm sort of convinced that Art in these days could play an effective role not only making aware public opinion about socio political issues: I would go as far as to say that nowadays Art can even steer people's behavior... Do you think that it's an exaggeration? And what could be in your opinion the role that an artist could play in our society?

I'm totally agree, that art impact on the political and social situa-


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Inside-out House, 2011

Installation

Wooden blocks, grass, found furniture

Approximate size: 236 in x 236 in x 15

Biella, ItalyInside-out House, 2011

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tion. Art directly steers people's behavior in such situation as «Occupy Wall Street», for instance. My art works by implication, it doesn't provoke, it is more a point of discussion.

«Marked as an important» represents the alternative “measuring” system, based on the imaginary relationships with different art institutions around the World. These imaginary relationships connec-ted with the reality by a plenty of rejection letters, received by artist.

7.5 in

and household items



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#196 Winter


an interview with

Your art practice ranges from Installations as Inside-out House to graphic design: while crossing the borders of different artistic fields have you ever happened to realize that a synergy between different disciplines is the only way to achieve some results, to express some concepts?

That's true, I work with a wild range of disciplines, and switching between them or mixing them to express the idea better. To be honest, I never think about how it works.

During these years you have exhibited your art-works in several occasions in your homeland and abroad: both in Europe and in America. Just a couple of years ago you had the solo «La Blanca» in Mexico. It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces?

I love awards. I would like to have more, but I think it is not productive to dream about it in a process of making art. The most important for me is the moment when a viewer gets into the space of my object. This is the moment of co-creation and most important feedback for me.

Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts, Olga. My last question deals with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

All my thoughts now are about my upcoming solo exhibition in the Museum of Modern Art in Moscow. So if you guys suppose to be in Moscow in November 2014, you are very welcome!

An interview by [email protected]

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Olga Karyakina Peripheral ARTeries

an interview with

Peripheral ARTeries

I like to feel free in choosing materials and techniques or even to combine them thus I get a manifold spectrum in which I can realize my ideas. But in main I focus on the collage techni-que because I can combine several realistic fragments with each other. The results are different surreal surroundings which often get into a connection with the language, based on poems or other short texts. So there is an interplay between the text and the collages thus resulting any kind of narrative storylines like dialogs or monologs.

I think that the human being, with all its thoughts, emotions, moods and wishes, in combination of its surrounding, represents the most exciting elements to create art. I like to imagine scenarios that could almost happen everywhere. An important aspect often are human characteristics or properties that my protagonists do not want to show to the outside, but rather know in hidden deep inside.

A good possibility which I’ve opened up for me, is the humanization or personification of protagonists with their characteristics and properties. They merges into each other so that they become one, like I created in the series Kassandra or The Seven Deadly Sins. In the series The Seven Deadly Sins, for example, I imagined that we bear parts of these sins within us. One more the other less, it depends on the sin and our character.

Astrid Jahns(Germany)

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We try to hide them deep inside, but some-times we cannot control these negative emo-tions and they burst out of us. Suddenly we find ourselves inside a nightmare thus the sin(s) become pure emotion and triggers panic in their intensity. We have ourselves no longer under control because our subconscious mind is controlling us know. The black background has revealed to me, because this dark space seems to me as kind of universe or any other wide eternity, in which the individual scenarios are acting.

The result is a space that is not attributable to any time or a certain place. Thus, the respective protagonists can devote all their actions.

Astrid Jahns

Tragik Tragedy

from the Kassandra series

Collage, 2014, 29 x 19,5 cm

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Astrid JahnsAstrid JahnsAstrid JahnsAstrid Jahns

Peripheral ARTeries

Cassandra Hanks

an interview with

Then I had initially turned away from the art for a short period of time in order to re-sort myself. During this time I have been interested in graphic design which I opted to study. There I, however, soon found that these art teachers, from my last experience, were an exception or just a bad coincidence.

The graphic design section was fortunately connected to the fine arts, so that I could choose my professors and I was able to connect both with each other which made my studies very interesting and a precious experience. By the way, I believe that the artistic development ta-

Hello Astrid and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: as a contem-porary artist, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

I think that contemporary art is also a con-frontation with past (art) eras. A combination of todays thoughts, which mature over time and thoughts from yesterdays and tomorrows. Thus contemporary art combines important features from the past, present and future.

That’s what makes it interesting is the view to something of the past combined with thoughts from today’s point of view or the view into the future, with topics of today, maybe even a naive point of view if one remembers back later, as seen in earlier science fiction series like „Star Trek“ or „The Avengers “. Where the creators had other knowledge and funds available as they’d have today. That, what each era brings with it, is what makes it exciting. But the most important is to developing your own artistic way.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any experiences that particularly impact on the way you currently produce your works? By the way, sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... what's your point?

I agree with you. I grew up very anti-autho-ritarian and have visited an alternative school. So I always had the ability to act artistically very freely and could experimenting with different materials.

There were no one who wanted to lead me in any direction. Afterwards I visited two other schools, in a total of three years, I am encounte-red exactly those art teachers from who I was spared of fortunately before.

Astrid Jahns

Astrid Jahns

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Peripheral ARTeries

Jolanta Gmur

kes place very early and that children will have formed too much and run the risk to be a subject of the ego of the particular art teacher.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In parti-cular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much pre-paration and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

In main I’m trying to feel free with any technical aspects. They arise during the creating process

Schicksal Fate


Collage, 2014, 29 x 19,5 cm

Missgunst Grudge


Collage, 2014, 29 x 19,5 cm

by themselves. The preparation or time is always depending on the material which I select or find, what kind of ideas I have, or which intention I follow and of course, how complex the idea or intention is. Since I have collected a contingent of materials that I’m re-sorting from time to time.

That has got something very relaxing which simultaneously fills my subconscious mind with new associations and thoughts. What will let grow new ideas and intentions that might flow into the next work. And that is in main how I work, as I have already mentioned or will men-

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tion further on, something is arising somewhere deep inside my subconscious mind. If it has reached my consciousness mind I’m only going to capture it, maybe like a hunter does. Once caught, I start to work.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with you recent series Kassandra, that our readers have already admired in the intro-ductory pages of this article and that I would suggest to view directly to your website at http://www.astridjahns.de/collagen/kassandra.html, in order to get a wider idea of it: in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

I found an invitation to work out something about Cassandra. My first idea was writing some poetries, but that didn’t work well, somehow. The following idea was then, similarly as like I did already in the series The Seven Deadly Sins, to humanized certain circumstances out of Cassandras life.

Her life offers a variety of interesting possibilities for interpretation, such as her fate, the curse that came upon her, the tragedy which crosses her life and the grudge of some people she has encoun-tered. Those were exciting aspects that I wanted to visualize. If you have specific properties humanized, then they suddenly become real and perhaps you might recognize yourself.

A recurrent feature of your pieces - and es-pecially the ones from the aforesaid series - that has mostly impacted on me is the effective mix of few dark tones which are capable of creating such a prelude to light... I also noticed that several nuances of red are very recurrent tone in your works. By the way, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

Recently I was interviewed on the topic of colors. I was asked if I have a favorite color. My answer was no, but I was talking about the color blue. Which gives a good impression of the various different meanings of color names within our language. Blue

Fluch (Curse)


Collage, 2014, 29 x 19,5 cm

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Peripheral ARTeries

for example, means sad or melancholy within the english language, but within the german language blue (Blau) means being drunk or taking a day off or absenteeism. But I always have had an affinity to red, as well. So now I may give a brief impression of the color red. When I was still studying, I mainly worked with red, black and white. I think red is a very concise and strong color that should be used with a lot of carefulness and sensibility. It’s a signal color, but also has a strong symbolic language. Interesting is the contrast effect in combination with the colors blue and green, as well. In both cases the result can be an exciting and spectacular interplay of colors. I think that the conscious use of colors is very important.

The Kassandra series and The Seven Deadly Sins, for example, are apart for almost four years, while the series The Little Prince were created in between, about two years ago. In some series I like to work with materials like old paper cuttings. The result is black and white and very poetic, which I often complement with a poem or a thought. The color palette I use depends on my instantaneous mood, the subject with whom I am dealing and of course, the materials which are available to me. Nevertheless, the color palette of the works I just mentioned are very typical for me and have also manifested over the time.

Your The Seven Deadly Sins series show the immediate nature of collage and it effectively establishes such a direct narrative of the stories that your works tell: so I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

Well, that question is not that easy to answer, but I think no. I’m dealing with the thoughts of the Surrealism for a long time. My opinion is, that the development of a creative process takes place in the subconscious mind. Since the subconscious mind is a combination of the experienced and the different sensory perceptions, coupled to the con-

Astrid Jahns

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Peripheral ARTeries

Cassandra Hanks

days this is a very common practice, not only in Collage. Folks often wonder about the personal contribution of the artist, in such case... it goes without saying that also white canvas, acryls tube and pencils, they are all material that already exists... roaming and scavenging through "found" material to might happens to discover unexpected sides of the world, maybe of our inner world... what's you point about this?

Yes, to discover the world, is an important aspect, because if I don’t want to discover the world for me the curiosity is missing and I cannot be creative thus I cannot create art.

Rummaging, seeking and finding or finding, seeking and rummaging are important proces-ses, that invites you to wander about, which is indispen-sable if you’re an artist. It’s also exciting to discover varying materials to create something new out of it or to combine different materials from different eras. I also have ano-ther reference to the material when I find it exci-

sciousness mind which means, that we cannot give up our personal or direct experience in a creative process. Without personal and direct experience, in my opinion, no creative process could arise. But I would also include dreams or imaginations to the direct and of course, personal experiences. Thus a combination of all makes art or a process is made of. An important component is the the wandering about or derive. Many ideas are born not necessarily during a direct process, but they do while jogging or taking a shower, for example, because the mind is not focused directly on the process.

Thus it has the possibility to seek in the sub-conscious mind where it will find an idea, intentions or solution. I guess, our thoughts taking a trip into our subconscious mind, without letting us now, somehow. A good division of work, by the way.

As a talented collagist, your art practice is strictly connected to the usage of so called found” materials: not to mention that nowa-

The Seven Deadly Sins I-VII, Collage, each 20 x 25 cm, 2010

Astrid Jahns

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Peripheral ARTeries

Jolanta Gmur

tedly at flea markets or in an antiquarian, because I never have a clue what I’m going to find beforehand and not what I’m doing out of it. Sometimes I find material, but cannot imagine what I’ll do out of it, but I’m going to buy it, nevertheless. I’ve got the feeling that I’ll need it some day, somehow. So I store it until I come across it once again, just at the right moment.

Another project of yours that have particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Where did the Little Prince go? I have been struck with your capability of creating a deep intellectual involvement, commu-nicating a wide variety of states of mind: even though I'm aware that this might sound a bit naif, I have to admit that in a certain sense it unsettles me a bit... it's an effective mix between anguish and thoughtless, maybe hidden happiness... I would go as far as to state that this piece, rather than simply describing, pose us a question: forces us to meditation...

The Little Prince is not from earth, he lives on a small asteroid, no bigger than a house. On his planet the

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Astrid Jahns

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Peripheral ARTeries

Cassandra Hanks

Little Prince is mainly busy with cleaning volcanoes and tearing out the baobabs so they do not overgrow the whole planet and finally blew. I imagined that the Little Prince just not torn out and throw away the baobabs, but he developed the appearance of new forms of the trees that grow on its own asteroids and floating around in space.

The Little Prince wanders about and experi-ments by developing new forms of trees to create little waiting-zones for possible space

Where did the Little Prince go? I

Still waiting for Adam and Eve

Collage, 15 x 18 cm, 2012

visitors. He is a curious and playful guy, but he doesn’t share his knowledge.

Thus, he remains mysterious which you can see on the „not-being-visible“ of the Little Prince. He does not appear in the collages, but he leaves us something which refers to him and shows his knowledge: The three baobabs which keep on waiting. Where the Little Prince is and what he is doing or what he is creating, remains hidden. You’re right by thinking of meditation or even derivé, having a little break.

Where did the Little Prince go? II

Wish anyone would water me

Collage, 15 x 18 cm, 2012

Astrid Jahns

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Peripheral ARTeries

Jolanta Gmur

So it can be thoughtless, but also anguish in a way, being on your own means also being alone.

Maybe floating somewhere in a strange space like the baobabs do. It depends on you how you spend those moments.

Your works have been exhibited in several occasions and moreover in 2011 you have been awarded from the mayor of Lever-kusen: it goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, I was just wondering if an award -or better, the

expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist...

To receive an award is a very important event for an artist, because it honors your work as well as yourself.

You shouldn’t forget, that artist not always find recognition or get paid for what they are doing. A me-known author and philosopher, once said that a good review is worth more than money. I guess, that includes an award too!

Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Astrid. My last question deals with your future plans: anything co-ming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Currently I am writing poems in main. There will be some publishing projects in the near future. I also work on sound-collages which are alike to the collage technique, composed out of indivi-dual sounds. I’m still experimenting as I connect the sounds with the collages and texts, for example.

Furthermore, I continue to work on the things that come into my mind or if any other interes-ting project will emerge, I’d be very happy.

Where did the Little Prince go? III

Keep on waiting for you

Collage, 15 x 18 cm, 2012 An interview by [email protected]

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#196 Winter

Peripheral ARTeries

Leleen and Gnim Talle

21 x 27 inches oil on board 2007

2

Yotam Zohar

Yotam was born in Jerusalem, Israel. He studied drawing and painting at the Ohio State

University (BFA) and Eastern Illinois University (MA).

Yotam lives in New York City with his wife, son, and three cats. He paints, illustrates, writes, and

teaches on the subject of art.

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Yotam Zohar

an interview with

An interview with

Yotam Zohar

Hello Yotam and a warm welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. To start this interview, would you like to tell us something about your background? You hold a BFA as well as a MA that you have received from Ohio State University and from and the Eastern Illinois University, where you studied drawing and painting: how have these experiences of formal training impacted on the way you currently produce your works?

Thanks very much! I’m grateful for the opportunity.

I come from an artistic family. My father is a figurative painter, my mother is a violinist, and all my siblings are involved in some way in a creative field—two of them are well-known musicians. In retrospect it seems inevitable that I became an artist as well, but when I started painting I was much more inspired by literature and film than I was by other painters. The more I paint, the more I realize I have to learn from my contemporaries.

In recent years the Ohio State University’s art department has gained national recognition for its MFA program. Eastern Illinois University is more of a diamond-in-the-rough. I would describe both institutions as having brilliant faculty and program-ming, and although I was a terrible student I like to think that I benefitted immensely from my expo-sure to them. I try my best to remain in contact with any of my teachers who didn’t grow too fed up with me.

Both institutions—OSU and EIU—are at their best in preparing students to think about their work and to craft a viable practice. To learn the Old Master techniques I traveled to Europe to study privately with my father, who is on closer personal terms with Vermeer and Rembrandt than anyone else I have ever known. So, when I came back to the American Midwest as an undergraduate with this

newfound understanding of grisaille I felt a little bit like Moses on his first descent from Mount Sinai.

I’m very lucky, actually, because I was able to get both the classical training and the cutting-edge conceptual stuff. If I’d stayed in Ohio the whole time, or gone to some stuffy Parisian atelier, this wouldn’t be the case. Inevitably, I think, I shall always strive for Rembrandt using the tools of Richter, or maybe the other way around.

I’ve also worked for nearly a decade in art gal-leries. Many young artists do this as a way to earn a living before their work starts to sell, and I think that although most gallery workers are severely underpaid it’s an extremely valuable experience because they learn from very close range what their work needs to be able to do once it leaves their hands. They also learn how to be more professional in dealing with the art world, which, to the chagrin of many gallerists, is not something they usually teach in art school.

Artist in the Studio,

14x13 inches oil on panel 2007

(triple-self-portrait)

Peripheral ARTeries

Yotam Zohar

By the way, being a classically-trained figura-tive painter who explore Contemporary Art, I would ask you if you recognize still a di-chotomy between Contemporary and Tradi-tion... Moreover, what could be in your opinion the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

I think the only meaningful difference between contemporary art and “traditional” art is the completion date. There is nothing about Vermeer’s paintings, for example, that isn’t conceptually focused or still relevant, just like there’s nothing about Lisa Yuskavage’s workthat doesn’t have to do with her ability to handle paint or carry on a dia-

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logue with history. I also wonder whether romantic ideas about art being different in the past con-tribute to the inflation of secondary market prices and the difficulty many young artists face in finding open-minded collectors.

Artists today are asking questions and saying things for the same reasons as they did in centu-ries past, except now we have more materials and technology to help us realize our visions. The earliest visual art was made as a means of ultra-important communication and storytelling, and now a lot of that communication is probably as frivolous as most of Facebook. In terms of art’s actual content I don’t think much has changed, so

The Double

18x24 inches oil on panel, 2007

Peripheral ARTeries

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#196 Winter

Peripheral ARTeries Yotam Zohar

an interview with

I’m not sure there’s any need to make a wide distinction.


I use a hybrid of Baroque and contemporary techniques, starting with grisaille: first the basic high-lights and shadows are put down over a neutral background, and then color is added in translucent layers after each previous layer has been allowed to dry. This means that when the painting is viewed, the eye is seeing light that has been filtered through these layers of color and reflected off the highlights underneath. It gives the work a luminous, jewel-like quality that opaque paint cannot achieve.

The amount of time each phase takes can vary widely. I’m not sure I’ve ever spent fewer than three hours on a painting, and I don’t think I’ve ever spent more than three months. But that’s not a rule either.

I am trained to approach painting from the point of view of someone who works with the figure. This means that I permit myself the indulgence of rendering imperative the significance of the human being. This fundamental tuning-out—of everything except a human subject and myself—is the starting point for any figurative work.

My work is mostly representational, which means that it contains depictions of real-world objects and organisms as they appear on a human scale. I employ a philosophy of “by any means necessary” in order to arrive at a finished composition. Most notably, perhaps, I use optical tools and imaging technology—namely a digital camera and Photo-shop—in order to create source compositions. The source image becomes the basis of the painting. Since optical tools technically predate the planet Earth—remember that a camera is only light passing through an aperture—I don’t think there is

anything controversial about artists using them. And they have, for as long as we have a record of artwork being made.

Now let's focus on your artworks: I would like to start with your Underground series, that our readers can admire in these pages and I would suggest to visit directly to your website at www.yotamzohar.com in order to get a wider idea: in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this interesting project? What was your initial inspiration?

I imagine that most people who come to major cities with widely used public transit systems experience the same thing that I did: such variety of life, and a much greater likelihood that a face will seem interesting, or that a gesture of body

Scrutiny, from the Underground series,


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Yotam Zohar Peripheral ARTeries

an interview with

twin component of the project, but she’s an architect and already gives all her time to her career and our family. Maybe one day she’ll come out with an even better set of paintings!

As you have remarked in your artist's state-ment, you are a person without a "tribe", constantly between cultures; because of this the Underground paintings carry an additional powerful metaphor for permanent transition... I can recognize such a socio-political feature in this aspect of your Art... I think that Art could play an effective role not only making aware public opinion, but I would go as far as to say that nowadays Art can steer people's behavior... what's your point about this?

First, I must say that I have no expectation what-

language will communicate something compelling. And people fascinate me anyway, even when they’re not especially striking.

A year after I moved to New York, on my first date with the person who would later become my wife, this phenomenon came up in conversation and we agreed about the way this fascination would lend itself so readily to a body of paintings. Around that time I’d gotten my first mobile phone with an onboard camera, so it was simply a matter of pretending to use the device for something else while covertly snapping pictures.

I think the idea is obvious, but to my surprise there are very few people doing what I’m doing, if there are any others at all. My wife was supposed to start painting from her train snapshots too, as a sort of

The Boys, from the Underground series,


Aura, from the Underground series,


soever that art should or can play a role in shaping public behavior or opinion. To the contrary, I believe that artists are very much products of the societies from which they emerge, and at their best they manage to hold mirrors and prisms up to humanity. It’s up to other people to identify this and respond. Of course there are exceptions, but as a rule I don’t think artists deserve credit for “steering people’s behavior.” Parents, teachers, advertisers, and lawyers do that.

As for me, my personal story is a convoluted one but the point is that after a great deal of searching and moving around I realized I don’t really, fully, identify with any abstract groups: religious, ethnic, national, cultural, whatever. There’s no single geographical place I think of as home or feel an exclusive connection with. And it’s not that

I avoid connections on purpose: whenever I feel myself gravitating toward a group there always seems to be something that makes complete im- mersion impossible. If I need to label myself I’ll use biology as a metric and beyond that I start to feel very uncomfortable indeed.

Maybe I’m projecting: what I see on the subway are just humans in perpetual transition. Down there, when the train is moving, we can only be divided according to who is sitting or standing, who is reading and who is listening to headphones, who has luggage and who has none, who is alone and who is traveling with a companion. These are characterizations that have nothing to do with inventions like nationality and race; they are much more universal and at the same time individuali-zed, but they are at least concrete! And I like that.


St.Petersburg, from the Underground series,


Steve 2, from the Underground series,


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The inside of a train car is, in this sense, a very egalitarian place, especially in the middle of a long tunnel when everyone becomes quiet for a mo-ment, when the rhythm of local stops gets broken apart by an extended pause and everyone seems to simultaneously draw a breath and reflect there, beneath the riverbed. That’s the narrative moment I envision for these paintings’ settings. There is no season or day or night, just a relative closeness to the center of the planet and a ‘journeying collec-tive of permeable solitudes.’

At the same time, however, I’m not trying to make a personal statement with these works. I don’t have a message about diversity or anything like that. It’s really more of a question I’m asking: how are we all connected now?

Your work often shows the immediate nature of Photography mixed with the "contemplative attitude" - if you forgive me this word- of Pictorialism and it effectively establishes such a direct narrative of the stories that your works tell: so I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indispen-sable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

A creative process is by definition a direct expe-rience.

Direct experience is a tool, not unlike research. I could have done the Underground paintings based on anecdotes my friends tell me, or from photos that get sent to me from anonymous email addres-ses or something. I could have just done it all from

Innovation, from the Underground series,


To Church Ave, from the Underground series,


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#196 Winter


an interview with

might end up looking similar. I decided to go out and mine the source images myself, with a smartphone—the same tool that has started revolutions in recent years.

There’s a reason for that: it is ultimately vital that I take the pictures myself, in order to link the subject (the person or people being depicted) to the viewer. I want the viewer to be aware of the single degree of separation between them and the person they are looking at, the way it is with Mona Lisa, of the artist-as-conduit. If I were to come up with the source images some other way, the work would lose this meaning; the connection would break down. I might as well sit at home and collect images from Google, which would make me a very sophisticated kind of inkjet printer, not an artist.

When computer programs generate advertise-ments we don’t call them Mad Men, we call them spam bots. If I generated these images without being present the viewer would lose that personal interaction. It would be like looking at an algo-rithmic vector printout. Visually compelling, per-haps, but meaningless. “You can throw it in the garbage,” as one of my teachers used to say.

A recurrent feature of your pieces that has mostly impacted on me is the effective mix of few dark tones which are capable of creating such a prelude to light... I also noticed that several nuances of red are very recurrent tone in your works. By the way, any comments on your choice of your pallette and how it has changed over time?

When I first picked up Classical technique I was shown how to work with six or seven colors, maybe more. Within a year or two I was using only five. What I’ve come to learn is that this is an important deviation from the way many other traditional painters work. In fact I’m not using a traditional palette, but some kind of minimalist iteration. Some painters will mix what is called a dead palette, which includes as a starting point many different tones and shades of each of more than seven or eight colors. I don’t. I’m not a revivalist. I want to do things differently.

The color red has historically served the purpose of pulling the viewer into a painting. Who am I to deny its power? I hope it works.

Besides producing your stimulating artworks, you also teach: have you ever happened to drw inspiration from your students... By the way, I sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... what's your point? I can remember that you once stated that our culture trains people to be visually illiterate...

I can consistently count on my students’ enthu-siasm and ambition to inspire me to bring energy into the studio. Most teachers will tell you that they learn far more from their students than their students do from them, and I think it’s true. Having students creates that many more sets of eyes to

The Artist Zohar, 2014

18x15 inches oil on board

6

Yotam Zohar Peripheral ARTeries

an interview with

twin component of the project, but she’s an architect and already gives all her time to her career and our family. Maybe one day she’ll come out with an even better set of paintings!

As you have remarked in your artist's state-ment, you are a person without a "tribe", constantly between cultures; because of this the Underground paintings carry an additional powerful metaphor for permanent transition... I can recognize such a socio-political feature in this aspect of your Art... I think that Art could play an effective role not only making aware public opinion, but I would go as far as to say that nowadays Art can steer people's behavior... what's your point about this?

First, I must say that I have no expectation what-

language will communicate something compelling. And people fascinate me anyway, even when they’re not especially striking.

A year after I moved to New York, on my first date with the person who would later become my wife, this phenomenon came up in conversation and we agreed about the way this fascination would lend itself so readily to a body of paintings. Around that time I’d gotten my first mobile phone with an onboard camera, so it was simply a matter of pretending to use the device for something else while covertly snapping pictures.

I think the idea is obvious, but to my surprise there are very few people doing what I’m doing, if there are any others at all. My wife was supposed to start painting from her train snapshots too, as a sort of

Rembrandt van Rijn

16x14 inches oil on board

2006

see through, to study the problem-solving proces-ses they use. It’s better than reading chess ma- nuals.

Formal training, especially if it’s gained in a heavily dogmatic setting like an atelier, can be absolutely stifling. But creativity is not what’s being stifled. If anything, creativity flourishes most under constraint. If formal training stifles anything it is perhaps the off chance that the alternative might have been better, or that the breadth of understanding might have been wider. Some of the artists who became mediocre realist painters might have been more gifted at abstract expressionism, for example. Or they might have been amazing machinists (with a union behind them to ensure they never starve)!

So, why do so many people claim they’re not artistic, why do so many artists seem to be so bad at their jobs, and why do we keep hearing about people who have no interest in art at all? I have a theory:

Our culture teaches us to be visually illiterate. We just haven’t taught our children to learn how to see in an active way. By “seeing actively” I mean that when you look at something you consciously notice relationships in forms and light, and you gain an understanding of why it looks the way it does. Representational drawing or realism is really as simple as recording this observation, but it’s an immense first step.

A friend of mine was studying to work with autistic children. She told me a story about a teacher who asked a class of autistic kids to draw their houses. The idea was to teach them how to behave like “normal” children in order to blend more easily into society. They were supposed to replicate the archetype of a child’s drawing of a house: a square with a triangle on top, the rectangular chimney with the helical squiggle coming out to represent smoke, a smiling sun with rays, and so on. Sure enough, one of the autistic children started rendering his home with the precision of an architect, in all its real detail. The teacher came and corrected him, told him to do the square with the triangle on top. Because that’s what normal kids do.

When I first heard this story I was incredulous. How dare she stop this child from drawing what his eyes have seen? This is an extreme example, though, because the children were autistic; maybe it is important for them to be taught to engender the flaws that the rest of us take for granted so that they don’t get negative attention. I don’t know very much about what’s best for autistic children so I reserve judgment. What is more interesting—or disturbing—is that in the meantime, the rest of us draw the house as a square and a triangle without a teacher telling us to.

In Solomon Asch’s conformity experiments of the 1950s, he and his colleagues used a fake visual test to determine the effects of peer pressure on the way participants answered questions about the relative proportions of lines. If the rest of the group answered incorrectly—saying that two lines were of equal length when in fact they clearly were not—the test subject was more likely to conform and also answer incorrectly. The conclusion was that it is more important for us to comply with the behavior of a group than to react honestly to our own observations.

This makes sense when we’re talking about life and death: if you’re in a crowd and everyone starts screaming and running frantically in one direction you’d most likely be stupid or suicidal not to run the same way. The square with a triangle on top works as an efficient symbol for a house, as a way of quickly and easily communicating an idea that a house exists as a concept, but it is not a drawing of a house. The problem is that in our society it is rare for someone to say, wait a minute, show me what a house actually looks like. People only see the activity on the surface—drawing a picture—and for most of them this is all art needs to be. That is, until it’s time to criticize the art world.

In the meantime, we’re routinely failing to equip our children and ourselves with the tools to describe, and without that ability there can be no meaningful inference, no analysis, no reflection, no metaphor

It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, I was just wondering if an award -or bet-


ter, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a good relationship between business and Art...

In a way, when an artist sells a work, it is like winning an award: some person chose that work over all the others because they liked it the best, just like a juror or curator, and there is a cash prize. I think most artists just hope their work is being enjoyed with as much energy as it was made with, but we rarely get a glimpse into what happens to our work once it leaves our hands forever. For me, it’s a little bit like ex-lovers who go to live out their lives on another continent, but as though it’s in the old days before Skype. And although the breakup was amicable—to extend the metaphor—they are bitter about all those incorrect brush strokes that only you know about, so they never write or call. Every once in a while, you miss them, but for the most part you’re just happy to know they’re out there being themselves.

During the conception phase of a piece or a body of work its origin has absolutely nothing to do with the intended audience. That would be like getting pregnant, seeing the fetus in the ultrasound, and deciding whom it should marry when it’s 30. It’s beyond irrelevant, although I can understand why we entertain such thoughts. A better question is: “Is this artwork relevant, and to whom?” But it doesn’t necessarily accompany the question of why or how to make a body of work. It’s better

suited to the issue of when to make it.. Art and business do have a genuine relationship, and they have had one for a very long time. Art has probably been bought and sold almost as far back in history as sex. And art comprises the largest unregulated luxury goods market in the history of the world. This is the very definition of a business relation-ship: supply and demand. Depending on whom you talk to, the lack of regulation is either a very good thing or a very bad thing.

We [artists] do what we do because we’re sup-posedly good at it and it gives us pleasure, yes, but more importantly we do it to earn a living. Anyone who says otherwise is hurting our chances of being compensated fairly for our time and skills. To the amateur it seems cathartic or fun to work with paint and abstract ideas, but we do it for countless hours a day, every day, under pressure to convince someone to pay us for it or we’ll die. We have to keep coming up with reasons why people need our art. That’s the only standard, actually: if you’re an artist, your work has to be so good, or so something, that people who see it will feel the need to possess it, or to ensure its continued existence.

Thank you for your time and for sharing with us your thoughts, Yotam. Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

As far as exhibitions go, at the moment I know the following: I’ll have a trio of Underground paintings in NordArt 2014 at Kunstwerk Carlshütte in Büdelsdorf, Germany, from 14 June to 12 October. Israel House in San Diego, California, USA, will be displaying some of my work starting 8 June. In May 2015 I’m planning to show six paintings in an exhibition called “Attribute” at Buckham Gallery in Flint, Michigan, USA. In the meantime I’m hoping to exhibit at the Governor’s Island Art Fair in New York City this coming September, but we’ll see what happens.

The next body of work is already in the planning phase and I don’t want to divulge too much about it in case things change, but I’m really excited about the future.

Rochelle, 2007, 24x41 inches, oil on panel

An interview by [email protected]

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#196 Winter

I wanted to invent something different, unique, in my work – merging my two passions all over the canvas, giving a different story in every frame in which the perception of unreality merges with the imagination, creating a balance between everything that surrounds me. The center of each piece begins with a story that continues into another segment of the canvas with a touch of fantasy and surrealism.

There are no boundaries to art, so I decided to expand my imagination beyond my limits, break the conventional, be more radical and fuse each of my work half painting / photography. Behind every picture there is a concept and a story that always helps me to name a piece. Another passion that I have is poetry – based on it, I tend to give a unique name to every painting.

Art is so important in my life,it has a huge impact on my life cause it’s a powerful form of expression and it allows me to convey or demonstrate deeply-held feelings; it opens my creativity and takes me to a different level of consciousness where I can show all my thoughts in one piece.


(Honduras / USA)

Peripheral ARTeries

Laelanie Larach

Laelanie Larach

www.laelanielarach.com

2

Balance of the Worlds

41 x 48 inches

Mixed Media /Tridimensional Piece/41 x 48in

2013

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Laelanie Larach

an interview with

An interview with

Laelanie Larach

Hello Laelanie, and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

A work of art is a skillfully processed imaginative creation accepted by one or more of the human senses, conveying meaning; expressing and stimu-lating various emotions, and is something com-patible with the given culture/s for which it was intended. A unique example would be classified as a masterpiece.

Contemporary means "art that has been and continues to be created during our lifetimes." In other words, contemporary to us marks an oppor-tunity to reflect on modern day society and the issues relevant to ourselves.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any experiences that have particularly impacted the way you currently produce your artworks? By the way, I sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... as a self-taught artist, what's your point about this?

I was born in Honduras- a beautiful country that gave me a lot of inspiration. At an early age, i started painting using all types of media, for example pastels, watercolors and charcoal.

I remember winning small art contests in school- that meant a lot to me. As the years passed by, i focused on changing mytechnique. One day, sitting in my room, something flashed into my mind – I thought, “why not combine two of my passions-photography with abstract painting and the surreal

Peripheral ARTeries

Laelanie Larach

Laelanie Larach

style?” The first piece using this technique was called “Vertigo over the Shadow”. From that point on, I continued my journey creating innovative art with the use of this technique every day. In my opinion, when you are born with a gift, in this case art, there is no need for formal training to get creative. The best part isletting your imagination take control of the canvas and expressing your feelings without boundaries.

Before starting to elaborate about your pro-duction, would you like to tell our readers something about your process and set up for making your art? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on in your work? And how much preparation and time do you

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Fly Away

Tridimensional Piece/Oil on Canvas/30 x 40 in

2012

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#196 Winter

Peripheral ARTeries Laelanie Larach

an interview with

put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

First, i need to be inspired to start a painting, without that feeling it’s impossible for me to continue with my artwork. I want to invent some-thing different and unique in my work – merging my two passions all over the canvas, telling a different story in every frame in which the per-ception of surrealism merges with the ima-gination and creates a balance between everything that surrounds me. The center of each piece begins with a story that continues into another segment of the canvas with a touch of fantasy and surrealism.

Now let's focus on your art production: I would like to start with Fly Away and Balance of the World that our readers can admire in these pages and I would suggest our readers visit http://www.laelanielarach.com/ in order to get a wider idea of your work: in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of the project behind these pieces? What was your initial inspiration?

“Fly Away” was inspired by my connection with nature. I imagine myself to be a butterfly, flying through a colorful sky,spreading my wings during a sunny day near the ocean. If you look closely, the piece has a lot of different colors and shapes… it’s one of my favorite paintings too. Also another of my favoritepieces is “Balance of the Worlds”. It’s based on the “Yin Yang”-when opposite or contrary forces are interconnected and interdependent in the natural world, and the rise they give to each other as they interrelate. Everything has both yin and yang aspects (for instance shadow cannot exist without light). Either of the two major aspects may manifest more strongly in a particular object, depending on the standard of observation.

As you have remarked in your artist's sta-tement, the center of each piece begins with a story that continues into another segment of the canvas with a touch of fantasy and sur-realism, as I can clearly notice in Imagine, which I have to admit is one of my favorite pieces of you... so I would like to ask you if in your opinion, personal experience is an abso-lutely indispensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be

even disconnected from direct experience?

Yes, it happened several times. As an artist, i had a lot of good and bad experiences that were the basis of inspiration for some of my pieces. I can’t live a stagnant life... i need to feel my surroun-dings. That’s how i get to the creative process.

Imagine

Tridimensional Piece/ Oil on Canvas/30 x 40in

2012

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Laelanie Larach Peripheral ARTeries

an interview with

Now let's deal with the tones of your pieces: I would focus onVolare and in particular Enchanted Blue Love: far from being the usual deep blue that we should expect to see in a painting with such title, it's a thoughtful nuance of blue... and what has mostly imp-ressed me is that it is capable of establishing

Silent Whisper

Mixed media / Tridimensional 30x40 in, 2012

Vanishing Point, Mixed media trid.piece, 2012

such a dialogue, a synergy with all the other tones instead of a contrast... By the way, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

Those two particular pieces “Volare” and “Enchan-ted Blue Love” are from a previous collection based on moons and surrealistic emotions. Back then, when i started painting, i remember using dark tones. It was weird for me to paint with bright colors. As time passed, I started using bright colors, for example, red, yellow, etc. I was starting to be more rebellious in my artwork.

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Being strictly connected to the chance to create a deep interaction, your artworks - as the ones from your extremely stimulating and recent series entitled Lucky eyes - are ca-pable of communicating a wide variety of states of mind: have you ever happened to discover something that you didn't previously plan and that you didn't even think about before? I'm convinced that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal hidden sides of life and nature... what's your poin?

A clear example is the piece “Lucky Eyes”. I re-

Enchanted Blue Love, Tridimensional piece / Oil on canvas, 41x48 in, 2013



remember looking at the blank canvas, listening to music. I grabbed my brush and just started to paint. I had other colors in mind, but something inside drew me towards red and black tones. The shape of the piece slowly changed and at the end it was nothing like what i had in mind originally. That happens to me very often. As i said before, it all depends on how inspired I am.

Another interesting pieces of yours that have particularly impacted on me and on which I would like to spend some words are entitled Pieces in the Sky and Power of Faith: mytho-logicalelements are recurrently mixed tran-scendent concepts: the space that you create, besides a merely physical dimen-sions, has a more symbolic meaning, it can

Volare, Tridimensional piece / Oil on canvas, 41x48 in, 2013


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Full Bloom

Tridimensional Piece/ Mixed Media/ 15 x 60 in

2014

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be a metaphor for emotions and associations...

Both pieces, as you mentioned, have mythological elements that surround inner emotions, combined with certain trains of thought.

So far your works have been exhibited on several occasions and I think it's important to mention your recent exhibition MOSAIC at the LMNT Gallery, Miami... It goes without saying that feedback, and especially awards, are capable of supporting an artist. I was just wondering if an award -or just the expectation

of positive feedback- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how important is the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think of who will enjoy your art when you conceive your pieces?

Public acceptance is what motivates me to believe in my art and grow as a painter. It certainly is so-

Piece in the Sky


2014Power of Faith


2014

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coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

That will be a surprise in June! All shows and information regarding my work can be found on my official website, or you can visit my Facebook fan page at

mething fundamental thathelps me improve my echniques. I personally always accept criticism in a positive way. I also want to thank my fans for the unconditional support I receive from them.

Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts, Laelanie. My last question deals with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything

Broken Wings


2014

https://www.facebook.com/LaelanieArtGallery

an interview by [email protected]

Peripheral ARTeries

My two-dimensional work is created in conjunction with Tin Soldier Press. Ross Turner and myself formed Tin Soldier Press in 2013, and under this mantle, we pursue groundbreaking printing methods. Together we are actively in pursuit of blurring the lines between two of the most revolutionary industrial techniques known to man, foundry and printmaking. Our collaborative efforts have helped us move towards the creation of a new printmaking relief matrix, through cast aluminum relief (C.A.R.) blocks. This has created several interesting opportunities for not only the printmaking world, but the sculpture community as well. From a printmaking standpoint, these C.A.R. blocks allow us to handprint, print using an etching press, blind emboss, print using a vandercook letterpress, and even print with fire. Utilizing any printing method gives the C.A.R. blocks a unique sustained durability not found in woodblocks allowing the artist to print in a variety of fashions without fear of block deterioration.

It is our belief that this process and idea is important within the contemporary art world. Collaborations of this nature can help explore traditional materials and ideologies, while allowing for the revitalization of process. It is our hope that through this process we can gain a greater audience, introduce artists to new methods that they would not otherwise think to utilize, and bring more awareness to our prospective fields.

In my three dimensional work, it is my intention to deal with the connotation of the word home. These ideas are expressed through images and concepts ranging from my sights and experiences as a child, while on the American Highway moving from home to home, to my more recent body of work where I deal with the archetypes of home in terms of a disconnected astuteness.

(Germany)

Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith Flushed, sculpture

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Andrew Smith

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Peripheral ARTeries

Cassandra Hanks

an interview with

When we can experience art in this manner, it demystifies and opens up a better line of dialogue for reaching society as a whole. I can only speak in terms for myself, but my work is absolutely influence by traditions of the past. We as creators have a rich history, and to deny against that and its traditions is only doing the work a disservice. I believe there is nothing better then being “contemporary” because you have the knowledge of the past, along with everything that the present has to offer. I really think of contemporary art as nothing more then art that is being made presently, and because of that, any features that would mark or define it will always be changing and moving along the same timeline we are. Anything that is deemed as contemporary art now, will at some point be labeled under a different category.

Hello Andrew, and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. I would start this interview with my usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be in your opinion the features that mark an artworks as a piece of Contemporary Art? Do you think that there's a dichotomy between tradition and contem-porariness?

Ahhh, the age-old question. The smallest word with what seems the broadest definition. Sometimes as artists, I feel we get too hung up on the word “Art” and how we choose to contain, handle, and find our place in the self induced restrictions of such an extensive word. I believe by categorizing and defining this word it somehow makes us feel safer and possibly more justified when we ourselves classify each other as artists.

I mean, if you can pigeonhole a definition, then it becomes much easier to group the people who work within that criterion. For example, a mason works with brick or stone and a carpenter builds wooden structures or objects. These words in terms of a person to object relationship involve a very tangible definition. We as a society know what wood is or what brick looks like, but when you break it down what does art look or feel like? A mason and carpenter are both artists, and the structures and objects they create are art.

I by no means am saying that everything is “art” and everyone an artist in some form. I however encourage the reader to truly question whether the definition of a word such as art, is grounded on a sentence structure with a beginning and an end, punctuations, and a set of guidelines that says to the world A+B = Art; or if some-times an indefinable feeling within each person determines the validity of if what they are experiencing is indeed art.

Andrew Smith

Andrew Smith

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Jolanta Gmur

Flushed, sculpture

Would you like to tell us something about your background? You hold a MFA of Scul-pture that you have received a coupel of years ago from the Texas A&M University, Corpus �Christi,... How has this experience impacted on the way you currenly produce your artworks? By the way, I sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... what's your point?

I grew up in a military family, which I guess makes me what is commonly referred to as a “Navy Brat”. With my father being in the Navy my family and I moved around a lot.

I think that experience not only defines a big part of me, but has a large influence in my work as well. I received my BFA in sculpture from the University of North Florida in Jacksonville

studying under Jenny Hager and Lance Vickery (two amazing artists) and my MFA in sculpture from Texas A&M Corpus Christi studying under Jack Gron (the man’s a genius). It’s possible that I was lucky, but I can’t speak more highly of the two institutions I came from. I think formal training absolutely changes and impacts your artwork and the way you think about the world around you in general, but you don’t choose to study art or go to University in hopes of staying the same as when you started. There is a rich history when it comes to “fine art” and the more you know the better equipped you become to make decision regarding your own works. Before academia there was the master and the apprentice, which was and still is in some cases a style of formal training.

I believe just as a mathematician, a writer, a doctor, or any other field seeking understanding through their predecessors so should artists. I believe it’s important, especially in contempo-rary times where the idea of “everything is art” serves as a scapegoat and runs rampant through young artists’ vocabulary, to challenge them to think. Not that it is a wrong way to feel about art, but I think its easier to say everything is art, then be forced to confront that belief head on. A healthy relationship between educa-tor and student should never leave the latter feeling stifled but enlightened.

Flushed, sculpture

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Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

Well, I would say that with each piece the actual production or process slightly changes. I believe that the work starts to dictate what process I’m going to have to use to see it to its completion. Sometimes that might mean more time in the woodshop or foundry, while others, more time in front of the printing press. I believe that material and the processes that coincide with them are only a means to an end, so I try to be open to everything when creating. The most important thing becomes, “how can I best convey this idea or feeling.”

There is a nice common thread that weaves its way through the start of every work of mine. The Sketchbook. Whether it is quick notes and thumbnails jotted down, or more elaborate drawings with measurements and historical references; it all starts in the sketchbook. It becomes a vault of sorts, to store all my ideas and thoughts, so even if I don’t create them immediately I don’t lose them. When it comes to the technical aspects of my work, I focus on the “trinity”, which is craftsmanship, concept, and the object. I believe all three need to work in conjunct with each other for a successful sculpture. With that being said, I’m a big nutter when it comes to craftsmanship. I really become obsessed with everything being as tight and clean technically as possible.

Packed Bag, sculpture Flushed, sculpture

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Andrew Smith Peripheral ARTeries

#196 Winter

an interview with

Now let's focus on your art production: I would start from Flushed, that our readers have already started to admire in the introductory pages of this article. Would you tell us something about the genesis of this project? What was your initial inspiration?

The start of the Flushed series first came from a fascination with form. I found these wave-guides, which are used throughout the whole series, in the basement of an engineering building and was instantly drawn to them. They had a mixture of an industrially scientific aesthetic, with the hint of an adult version of an Erector Set (a building toy like Lincoln Logs or Tinker Toys that my brother and I played with as children). As with most of my work, I was dealing with the concept of what defines a home, the differences between a home and a house, and my overall search for understanding of the quintessential ideals of “home”.

However, with Flushed I decide to reference home in a way that I hadn’t dealt with previously. Through personal dilemmas that happened around the time this series was originated, I started dealing with home as a tangible that I almost had within my grasp but then lost just short of being able to experience. It was, if you will, “flushed away”. Each piece within this series becomes therapeutic to me, different forms that I’m able to assemble, disassemble, and then reassemble again until I find the perfect composition for each piece. This versatility of linear elements allows me to wield these materials as a painter would a stroke of paint with a brush. They become not only sculptures but also drawings in space, where the com-position of line and form in conjunction with movement and balance are as equally as important as the weightiness of the conceptual inferences.

It’s through these techniques that I hope the viewer’s eye can naturally travel across these “sewers” unable to find rest in any one location, in a visual journey unique to themselves. These houses and cities, with their soft natural aesthetic, serve in stark contrast to the dark industrial sewer ways. These are potential homes for the viewer to find visual reprieve along their delineated expedition throughout each work.

A feature of Shortline that has mostly impacted on me is your capability of creating a deep intellectual interaction, communicating a wide variety of states of mind: even though I'm aware that this might sound a bit naif, I have to admit that in a certain sense it unset-

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tles me a bit... it's an effective mix between anguish and thoughtless, maybe hidden happiness... I would go as far as to state that this piece, rather than simply describing, pose us a question: forces us to meditation...

My intention with Shortline was to make reference to a larger installation I had done, Untitled Mnemonic VIII and I believe that it is where one leaves off the other picks up.

On a larger scale Untitled Mnemonic VIII worked as an interactive piece where the viewer could actually feel the physicality, weight, and labor of moving these boxes across the gallery while the video of a first person view from the driver’s seat travels to what one is lead to expect is a new home. If the viewer participant were to turn their head, as to look out the rear window of this imaginative car reference, they would see a car driving off from a home witnessing the town/city become smaller in the distance.

The short line, sculpture


Shortline being on a much smaller scale takes a mine cart on tracks and references the potential for this cart to move or to have already been moved. The track with no real beginning or end serves to the same end as the cart. Having no distinguishing features, such as a clearly defined front and a back, there becomes no signifier for what’s forward or behind. Simply there is a cart with miniature moving boxes, and it is up to the viewer to decide the history and future of this wheeled vessel. The cityscape located beneath the cart, is meant to be a transitory destination, giving way to the feeling of these boxes and cart are “just passing thru”.

Just few times ago an artist that I happened to interview told me that "to build a sculpture we need physical involvement, great immediacy. Forms mature upon their long being created in imagination" I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I think a better question is… Would you want it to be? I believe that one of the most beautiful things about what we as humans do, is allow our emotions and experiences to help guide us. Maybe it is just my own naivety, but I would like to think people in general couldn’t be truly disconnected from their personal experiences. It in one way or another effects everything we do. We are constant-ly connected to our past and in some form always influen-ced by it. As far as the importance of having the artists’ hand directly in the creation process, I believe that it is a necessity.


Untitled Mnemonic III, sculpture

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I understand there are times when we as sculp-tors must outsource some elements in the con-struction of large (and sometimes small) scale works. As well as having assistance in the studio to meet demands of commissions. These levels of “artists being disconnected” have always happened in some form or another. Which is why I believe sculpture is such a community based form of creation… because of this physicality we sometimes need help to make or ideas an actua-lity.

Another interesting pieces of yours on which I would like to spend some words are from the Untitled Mnemonic Circle, that I have to admit is one of my favourite projects of yours...

By the way, Technology or I should better say, the manipulation of the concept of techno-logy, plays a crucial role in producing the creative synergy that marks your art practice. So I would ask you: do you think that nowa-days there still exists a dichotomy between art and technology? By the way, I would go as far as to say that in a way Science is assi-milating Art and viceversa... what's your point about this?

At one time in our history the hammer and chisel were a technological breakthrough, fire was a gift from the gods, and the wheel change the world. I can’t say with any confidence that I believe there ever existed a dichotomy between art and technology.

Untitled Mnemonic II, sculpture

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#196 Winter

Computers, videos, CNC cutters, CAD programs, and 3D printing are all just new tools for sculptors to learn. Will all sculptors learn these tools…No; but you wouldn’t expect a blacksmith to go chisel a marble masterpiece either. I think as time progresses, the current unfamiliarity with these tools will be an idea of the past and will give way to hopefully a newer way of creation. Can never have too many tools in your tool belt. I think science and art have a beautiful symbiotic relationship with each other. This is a conversa-tion I often have with my brother, who is currently a doctor doing research at the Laboratory of Functional MRI Technology at the UCLA Depart-ment of Neurology. Art can be wonderful tool to help explain science and become a wonderful

become a wonderful communicator for ideas and theories. While art will never be capable of fully explaining scientific theories and ideas, it allows for a conversation to open, helping to reach society as a whole. Science on the other hand can be a great conceptual generator and inspiration to artists. Pablo Picasso’s Les Demoiselles d’Avigon, Marcel Duchamp Nude Descending a Staircase, Dali, and Kandinsky were all inspired by science, technology, or mathematics.

It goes without saying that positive feedbacks are capable of providing an artist of the indespensable moral support to go ahead with his art production an artist... I was just wondering if it could even influence the pro-

Untitled Mnemonic VII, sculpture

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cess of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

I really believe this all depends on the artist. If the market for whom is buying your work is based around a certain style or process, I can very easily see how audience feedback would influence your process. For example, if you were an established painter known for beautiful beach landscapes, relying solely on the selling of your work for income, it would not be adventitious to start painting in abstractions. Client base and marketability are real things that artists are confronted with, and each artist handles these challenges differently.

A genuine relationship between business and art can absolutely exist in the perfect circumstances… but how often do we find ourselves in a picture perfect scenario? I would be lying if I said I don’t care what the viewer thinks of my pieces because I only create work for myself. It is important to know if you are conveying your conceptual or visual constructs successfully. I don’t allow for feedback to determine what I make my work about, but I do consider the viewer and how they will interpret what I create. What’s the point in yelling if no one understands what you are saying?

Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts, Andrew. My last question deals with your future plans: anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Thank you for allowing me to be a part of this art review, and share some of my thoughts with the reader. One of the big projects I’m working on is Tin Soldier Press, which is a collaborative effort with another artist Ross Turner (www.rossaissance.com).

Together we are actively in pursuit of blurring the lines between two of the most revolutionary industrial techniques known to man, foundry and printmaking. Our collaborative efforts have helped us move towards the creation of a new printmaking relief matrix, through Cast Aluminum Relief (C.A.R.) blocks. This has created several interesting opportunities for not only the printmaking world, but the sculpture community as well. I must mention Ross’ wife Allison "Sauce" Turner of Cage Free Press, who often comes into the studio to save the day, when us two knuckle draggers are stumped.

You can find more information about this project directly at www.tinsoldierpress.com. I have another collaboration in the works with my brother, who I mentioned earlier in this interview, involving his research as the conceptual catalyst and my art as a visual tool of explanation.

Untitled Mnemonic VII, sculpturean interview by [email protected]



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My father started as an apprentice of stonemason at age 13 and died at the age of 62 as a stonemason master, so I usually say that I hit my head on a marble stone at birth.

Growing up amid marble stone sculptures and artists led me to understand life as a passage for this wonderful planet on which we are an uncertain time.So let hear a mark for those who come may know I was already is this planet ,how do I felt life and lived , it is important , do it in marble stone will last for eternity .The marble stone carving is very hard , and you must know it and know how to work it to make a good artwork.

Most of my artworks are feelings .... Are moments in my life that marked me or marking as time goes on, and I try to let them carved in marble stone.There are others pieces I was asked to do ... my passion for oriental art takes me to mix the abstract with florals.

As a human, culture and Japanese values u8203 fascinate me...


(Portugal)

Peripheral ARTeries

Cesar Valerio

Cesar Valerio

Son of the Sun

Sculpture

2

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Cesar Valerio

an interview with

An interview with

Cesar Valerio

Hello Cesar, and a warm welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. I would start this interview with my usual introductory question: what in your opi-nion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be in your opinion the features that mark an artworks as a piece of Contemporary Art? Do you think that there's a dichotomy between tradition and contemporariness?

Hi, congratulations for the magnificent review and the wonderful Peripheral ARTeries Team, thanks for the opportunity to show my works to people… that's the million dollar question , homohabilis must have the answer to that, he is the one ho found the seed of work…

Anyway I think maybe my ideal can get close to definition , this portuguese poet "Fernando Pessoa" have this satiation "GOD WANTS THE MAN DREAM THE WORK BORN ".

So GOD WANTS…. That is the part wee don't have explanation, the why ??? destiny !!!, thats why wee have god, to explain the unexplainable, or not ….THE MAN DREAM…. living and analyzing live ,how can wee communicate to each other, how can I express my thoughts and my feelings, images flashes in your brain . Hall that lids you to creation, the image of an ideal work… that's creativity. Creativity is a child ….

THE WORK IS BORN… that's the gestation of the work, the ability to put your creativity in a fiscal image or object so others can see it… this is the ART, this word "ART" means the process to achieve the "matter" physical view of what was the image of an ideal work flashing in your brain …ART is all the ways an artist uses to achieve the master piece…

Now if you do the piece well and people can understand watt was going on your mind or watt you have felt, you have an artwork … like it or not.

Cesar Valerio

Peripheral ARTeries

So an ARTWORK is the piece without defect , the perfect image or object which can express images, feelings and thoughts. So others can visualize what are or have you pass through...

Cesar Valerio

The features of contemporariness in an artwork, maybe the unlimited "why" or "what" , todays art is more about the artist hand is life, its about people feelings! the great battle of… or the great

god of… with this pretty human forms posing is attributes, thats over ! now wee touch peoples feelings hand soul, we push the human brain to the limit of visual comprehension wen truing to make the viewer see or felt things came from the artist eyes hand mind…

About the traditional work, I am glad you touch the subject, here in Europe we have this religious marble stone sculptures which until ending 90tis the sculptor has a few molds in plaster or wood, and he hand carves a reproduction on marble stone one by one, for that he needs hands end concentration skills… but now wee live in the clone generation !.. and you put one mold in the machine push a button turn your back and a few hors you have like 10 clones of that mold. So the artisan was changed by the machine, and to my it looks like industry…

But do art when you have rules and standards related with the place you live , can limit your creativity, so I think there are some dichotomy between traditional end contemporariness , if you can mix traditional with contemporariness the work its gone look better, that I am sure …

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any experiences that have particularly impacted on the way you currently produce your artworks? By the way, I sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal

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Son of the Sun

Sculpture, detail

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Peripheral ARTeries Cesar Valerio

training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... what's your point?

My father started as a stone masonry apprentice at the age of 13 and wen I was born he has 30 years old end running is on stone masonry… so I use to tell I beat with my head in a marble stone at birth . At my 3 years old I was playing with my brother out in the patio, running, and some way some how i just end hit with my front head in the white marble stone door step … I don't know how detains the record , but this day they give mi 9 points "stitches" …

I grew up in this village "Vila vicosa" in the center of marble stone felon , end I spent my free time being the shade of my father between marble stone quarries hand stone masonry's , marble stone sculptures and artists… at my 14 hall school vacation was spent working helping my father, just to win money for my boy things …at 17 I quit school to start was a young stone mason, it take my 10 years to be better than my father, so to prove him at the age of 27 I start mi career as a marble stone sculptor. My experience as stone mason lead me to do a very risky, hard to work and not replying pieces. Must all my artworks are feelings and my better works really break my heart …

Training is hallways good, improve your skills, make you faster, show you your one hay and even with a bad teacher wee can learn a lot… we learn the how not to do part , which is very important… about creativity, that can be found in childhood hand stimulated wen adult, but what wee don't learn or wee cant teach is " talent " that you have to born weed it in your genes.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your artworks? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

Most of my artworks are about people's life and of my own one. If you ask someone to draw the line of live , the correct draw while be look like a spring in a vertical position… Because when we grow up "has life goes b" we can see the past and certainly the future is two twist to have shores ….to be a quick explanation !!.. Creating a piece, that could by very hard or very easy, when you have a great idea like SON OF THE SUN you start by make a mold in plaster so you can have shore there is no mistake on the position of the body parts, like hands, fetes, head, the points must by balance with the body portion. Then the next step is to

Son of the Sun

Sculpture

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an interview with

find a good marble stone, you have to be very caution about broken parts in the marble stone bloc and the size , if is to big you have more work.

So make a mold and find a good marble stone bloc for a piece of this size, this step can take one year… than you have to pass the mold for the 5000 kg pink marble stone, I use mi hands , small machines with diamond blades to cut and deburring, sizzles to broke and carve but diamond tools do the carving faster and kiln, to do the sanding or polishing I like water sandpaper for the handmaid parts. This last part "hand carving" took me 3 years .It is a very hard finish a big artwork… the marble stone dust goes every were , there are days of dust storm you can't breed you can't see, it is bad… When it comes the sending its really physical , you get tiered just to look , I have days wen I get home just wont eat end sleep …

However if you find a 30 kg bloc with a pretty idea trap inside like a bonsai , in 10 or 12 days you have one more nice piece… Hall and which one of mi artworks are hand carved in a single bloc of marble stone , I don't use glues or varnish , it is just marble stone.

Now let's focus on your art production: I would start from Son of the Sun, an extremely interesting piece that our readers have already admired in the starting pages of this article: and I would suggest our readers to visit your website directly at http://www.cesarvalerio.com/ in order to get a wider idea of your Art. In the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of this piece? What was your initial inspiration?

I try to be short …in this part of mi live I felt this impotence feeling in my flesh and soul, it breakes my heart… I'm still looking for some pieces, hand as a human bean I realize there are things in live wee cant explain, like destiny, we cant change accidents, death or love, it happens and that's it ….

Life goes on and wee have to work , so I create this by mix impotence with destiny and my fighting spirit, and it comes out this fight to get free from destiny , this internal violence have so much power that is burning every thing around him and melting the ground rock...Than later when I was carving the marble stone I realize that this feeling doesn't happen only to me, but to must of human beans , sooner or later it makes part of live…

Without the sun life don't exist on up land,the sun is always in the same place , is destiny is burn to irradiate light , so may be is fighting to get free of is destiny to … it burns !!!The human form represent humanity, the abstract which arrest

him represents destiny, the fire and the melted rock represents the fight. Wee cant put a name on humanity….

Thats why he don't have a name, because he represents all of us. So I presents you SON OF THE SUN!!.just like you and me , fighting to be free….

Another stimulating works of yours that have particularly impressed me and which I would like to spend some words are Homen do leme and Abdominais… I noticed that most of your pieces although often marked with a deep abstract feeling, are focused on "human" element, that - as in often reveals such an inner struggle and intense involvement... How much emotional involvement is important for your Art?

The best way to draw a feeling is feeling it or have felt it, more evolvement better design. HOMEM DO LEME is absolute freedom, is a steersman sailing with a rip sail going wherever the wind takes him, freedom no matter what!!.

ABDOMINAIS that's one of my first pieces and I was obsessed by mi physical resistance and I just look to the marble stone and have that vision, every things get easer when you have rock abdo- minals and a heath form .

A feature of Vinganca that has mostly impac-ted on me is your capability of creating a deep intellectual interaction, communicating a wide variety of states of mind : even though I'm aware that this might sound a bit naif, I have to admit that in a certain sense it unsettles me a bit... as another interesting piece of yours, entitled Entrega it's an effective mix between anguish and thoughtless, maybe hidden happiness... I would go as far as to state that this piece, rather than simply describing, pose us a question: forces us to meditation...

VINGANCA… there are this greek sculpture of "PERSEUS" the god of war, so the god of war is always in war ! and that means if you kill you enemy you are going to carried your sod for the rest of your days , you cant hide your evil wen he is bigger then you,so the sod represents the evil



and PERSEUS is truing to wide him , but I can't because it is bigger than him… this is the Sr Nelson Mandela matter.I have got the "ENTREGA" vision when i found mi first love… This clan leader, this selfish and proud man, the fearless warrior, this powerful man are bender to love !!..so love is the strongest weapon on live, and maybe I get very close to define love, but I hit on devotion …

Cesar Valerio

ABDOMINAIS

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An I couldn't do without mentioning Coisa and especially Bonsai, which have particularly im-pacted on me and I have to admit that it's one of my favourite pieces of yours... By the way, just few times ago an artist that I happened to interview told me that "to build a sculpture we need physical involvement, great immediacy. Forms mature upon their long being created in imagination" I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a creative process could be discon-nected from direct experience?

I am a lover of oriental culture , the values and humanity of the japanese people… this oriental art is very floral and nature.

The line of life is very present in my first abstract pieces has UNIAO, DESTINOS e ABRACO, lately I am mixing this line of life with the floral like in ORIENTAL LOVE and COISA. COISA is a line of life , mix with flourishing parts in bonsai, it is a new bourn live ….BONSAI a flourishing ancient …-

To do a marble stone artwork you have to choose the right stone for the right work and vice versa, it takes

me years to learn how to hit the marble stone so can brakes in that particular place… you have to know really watt form the piece have, create a 3d draw in your brain to chose the right position of the marble stone. Experience its indespensable in the ART process! If you going to draw one idea than ask for some artist

Entrega

Bonsai

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Cesar Valerio Peripheral ARTeries

an interview with

to hand carve it on marble stone he is going to tell you here are the fragile parts , wen it comes to hand carve a marble stone artwork the knowledge about stone resistance is indispensable ! creating without this know-ledge is possible , pass it to stone cannot be… experience makes you better in everything

you had done, I can't answer black or white my answer is there are different tons of gray, if you really wont to be god creating you have to had direct experience.

Now let's talk about exhibitions and audience's feedback... it goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of

Coisa

your audience? Do ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces? I sometimes wonder if it could ever exist a genuine relationship between business and Art...

If to win an award you have to participate in a contest , all most have rules about dimensions , weight , explicit , forms … adding the shipping, insurance , customs and the others I can't remember right now , COSTS!!!!!! wen you do it in a heavy and breakable material like marble stone, YES, it influences the process and well of keep being a marble stone sculptor …About the exhibitions if you have to pay for people see your artworks, you are not an artist !!! does Elvis pay for people listen is songs ??? why do I have to pay for people felt mi spirit ?..


Bonsai


Cesar Valerio

It is always good know watt the audience thinks about your artworks ,but wen I do an artwork I am not thinking about the audience I just trying to be me in my own world , I am trying not to be influenced by people thoughts , this is my way ! , and I am going to leave the mark very high ! If you like my artworks or not that is your problem not my …

Business and art , ask to different people to put a price on your sex or someone sex, and the answers will be totally different, you cant put a fix price to an artwork because the artist may or not may evolute to notoriety… so the relationship it's always a monetary interest wen it comes to dealers .wen it comes to a genuine collector, the money in a case don't go with the color of the halls…

Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts, Cesar. My last question deals with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

In 2005 I had the flash of SON OF THE SUN artwork and it takes me 8 years to finish it … so now I have a good idea for a big piece and I am going to need big tools, heavy machinery and a better studio to get the job done , so i hope god can help mi to do this one , in the meanwhile I keep doing small abstract pieces and watt mi well and inspiration allows me . Broke stone with stile that is what I do!…Thank you for your interest on artists art and for let me explain my thoughts and feelings to people , you are very welcome. And this was my first interview, thanks …If you find homohabilis tell him I would like to see him …

Bonsai

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#196 Winter

I've always been fascinated by the moment when the painting is leaving its role of pure reproduction of reality.

Initially, as inspiration, there is often a color, a shape, a detail that intrigues me.

Follows an adventure around several axes to highlight messages, sensations: the scale game, expansion or excessive approaching, contrasts and expressive colors, simplification and distortion of shapes, disproportion.The structure remains often noticeable.

Where is the balance, where the mystery goes?


(Czech Republic / France

Pavla Rozkovcova

Peripheral ARTeries

Pavla Rozkovcova

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Pavla Rozkovcova

an interview with

An interview with

Pavla Rozkovcova

Hello Pavla, and a warm welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. I would start this interview with my usual ice breaker question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? By the way, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

We live in a period where quite everything could be said to be an art object. So an art object should firstly express a message, question or at least emotion.

For me contemporary art is every art created in our period. We can argue that under contemporary art we understand only defined categories of art, expressions, trends. But I would say, all art created in our period is influenced somehow by the actual context, by the social unconsciousness. If there are expressions which would seem not to be contempo-rary enough, there is still reason which pushes author to create this way.

We are living now, we have all limited (at least consciously) information, we lack detached view on our period, we don't now what it will be said on that period fifty or hundred years later.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? Are there any experiences that have particularly impacted on the way you currenly produce your artworks? By the way, I sometimes I wonder if a certain kind of formal training could even stifle a young artist's creativity... as a self-taught artist, what's your point?

I am a niece of Czech painter Zbynek Novotny. But families weren't in contact and I was , in a very subtle way (which was far most successful than interdiction) discouraged from artistic activities. Nevertheless in my teens I tried twice (and spent some time in) art courses, in both cases, they were technical oriented and in my eyes it overtook on my expectations of free-

dom and imagination. In my case, being taught for a long period this way would stifle everything. Then I took other art courses in my adult life, so I am not sure I am a pure "self taught" artist, I would say maybe "self directed" or "self developed artist". I chose these courses and I could stay just the moment I need and was feeling it's benefiting me. I wasn't limited to stay longer just for unique view to get a diploma. In these courses I learnt useful tools, which helped me to go further. Previous practice (and self training in the end ) of sport on quite a high level (I was medium to long distance runner) taught me some self-discipline, which could be useful in art practice too, particularly if you are developing on your own. So in my case it was the best way in respect of my creation. I started really paint at 26 and, what and in what style to paint, I felt it as an evidence.

Pavla Rozkovcova

Peripheral ARTeries

Pavla Rozkovcova


In some way, I work a lot in a period when I don't seem to be working. I imagine a lot just in my head. It should be the heritage from my teens, where I was quite hyperactive and I just couldn't imagine, that after a school day I will sit down again and draw, so I spent a lot of time just imagining.

So there is some gestation in my head and, then I am doing some sort of sketches, mostly only with pen and paper. I'm testing if the idea worth some-

thing. After that, I'm working directly on canvas. It's a little bit an adventure, which means that there a also risks, surprises, tensions. There should be a risk that it wouldn't be perfect. If I just copy something I have already tried, I will be bored.

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Orchid I

Peacock

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#196 Winter

Peripheral ARTeries Pavla Rozkovcova

an interview with

It will be perceptible on the work. I have already tried to redo a work, I wasn't completely satisfied with. The result could be better composition, better colours, better execution in the second artwork, but some-thing is missing.

Very often, I discover something new, as quite every finished work is at least partly different from my prime inspiration and my preparatory study.

Now let's focus on your art production: I would like to start with your interesting project Natu-ral or Supernatural and Orchid I &II that our readers can admire in these pages and I would

suggest our readers to visit your website at http://www.rozkovcova.com/index.php?gallery=gallery in order to get a wider idea of your work: in the meanwhile, would you tell us something about the genesis of the project behind these pieces? What was your initial inspiration?

Nature is my great subject. In a period of Orchid I & II my attention was turned to flowers. Besides a large "library" of colours and forms, I wanted to represent them as a more "complex or even complicated being" than a "nice thing" in our garden or in a vase on our table. On the other hand, I didn't want to turn it to a

natural or supernatural

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Pavla Rozkovcova Peripheral ARTeries

an interview with

tive process could be disconnected from direct experience?

I think that a personal experience is inseparable from creation. Even when the "real" subject seems to be far away from experience, there would be something that will emanate from the work, which would be connected to the personal experience.

Now let's deal with the tones of your pieces: I would focus on Blue and Red Parrot and in particular Red Landscape : far from being the usual deep red that we should expect to see in a painting with such title, it's a thoughtful red… which is capable of establishing such a dialogue, a synergy with all the other tones instead of a contrast... By the way, any comments on your choice of "palette" and how it has changed over time?

First, I would like to say that I love colour and all the

thriller neither. I wanted to stay in between, talk about tensions, forces, surprises, but yes, also about beauty and colours. To pay more respect to nature. The mystery of orchids are perfect for that.

For natural or supernatural the initial inspiration is a weeping willow not far from my house. It's like asking for it, you can't miss it.

Its initial form, its colour in spring. I'm always intrigued by its light green supernatural colour in spring. Supernatural forces of nature in spring?

As you have remarked in your artist's state-ment, as soon as "the moment when the painting is leaving its role of pure reproduction of reality it ollows an adventure around several axes to highlight messages, sensations"... so I would like to ask you if in your opinion personal experience is an absolutely indespensable part of a creative process... Do you think that a crea-

big red parrot blue red parrot

work around. Colour is highly personal thing. At the beginning of my practice, I did some colouring exercises, so I can reproduce a big variety of colours just from the three primary colours and white. But, then, there are colours, especially very bright tones, that you can't really reproduce this way, maybe a little bit by "cheating", by creating bright contrast with another colour. I'm mostly using Czech mark Umton, where even some "expensive" pigments are on reasonable price and on good quality.

That would say I'm partly depending on their palette. Sometimes I see, mostly on acrylic paintings, colours and tones that wouldn't be easy or natural to me to be reproduced. Technically my reds are mostly reds of cadmium with a little bit of carmines (from Rembrant, Umton doesn't do them). The choice of colours is intuitive, in that special case, it seems to be easier to start work with orange-bright red colours, it seems easier to structure the painting by deeper colours after and to ally it with this type green to green blue on trees.

With deep red as a principal colour (it can be an interesting idea), the colour equilibrium would be somewhere else, I couldn't probably use the same green, it has to be a brighter green to create something interesting. I try to establish some sort of harmonies between colours, not so much the real contrast, in a way that one colour is repulsing the other. Even a little change in one colour needs an

adjustments in the other ones. I would say I'm not sure my palette evolves so much, I think actually I'm taking more risks, stepping out of my zones of comfort, discovering new possibilities, new alliances, I love the process of discovering. But at the begin-ning I didn't use any green colour in my paintings, I don't know really why...

By the way, again on Red Landscape: I'm sort of convinced that some informations & ideas are hidden, or even "encrypted" in the environ-ment we live in, so we need -in a way- to decipher them. Maybe that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal unexpected sides of Nature, especially of our inner Nature... what's your point about this?

Totally agree with you, but it's an ambitious and demanding role. Science is more limited by logics, methodology and other formal requirements, so in my opinion there are areas of knowledge or information, that can't be decrypted this way. And (visual) art can help to decrypt these information or bring another type of perception.


azure sea

fountain tree

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#196 Winter


Being strictly connected to the chance to create a deep interaction, your artworks - as the extremely stimulating Modèles Vivant, which I have to admit is one of my favourite series of yours- are capable of communicating a wide variety of states of mind: have you ever happened to discover something that you didn't previously plan and that you didn't even think about before? I'm sort of convinced that one of the roles of an artist could be to reveal hidden sides of life and nature... what's your opinion about this?

Model Vivant series are in fact a "schoolwork". It's an outcome of school classes, technically it's oil on paper painting, the scale is quite big (1m x 1m, 1mx1m30) and it's painted quickly (2-3 poses of 20-30 minutes). In these conditions there is really no time to "think", you have to cope with the situation and do your best. There is no time for preparatory study. On the other side, no time to fear to do it the wrong way neither. Maybe it's in these conditions where the subconscious and unconscious comes out, maybe I work in another state of mind. Technically I don't use prepared flesh colour, I mix it directly from the three primary colours (+white). Maybe even this aspects pushes me, or allows me ?, to search different expressions. I absolutely agree with your opinion, I choose painting because of this. If I can explain everything by, for example writing, I would rather be a writer.

It goes without saying that feedbacks and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist: I was just wondering if an award -or just the expectation of a positive feedback- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces?

I think that a positive feedback, for an emerging artist, is always an important impetus. It's the same for me, it helps me very much to go on in my practice. Then, on the other side, I don't like to primarily focus on the future possible award or on my future possible audience, I like my artwork be highly authentic, and thinking about my future audience before the work is finished, doesn't interfere positively with it.

Thanks a lot for your time and your thoughts, Pavla. My last question deals with your future plans: what's next for you? Anything coming up for you professionally that you would like readers to be aware of?

Last year I had more opportunities to show my work around, this year it's coming a little slowly, so we will see. In next weeks I will try something a little bit different, work on a design project and on the illustration for a digital game developed by my husband.Portrait

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Pavla Rozkovcova Peripheral ARTeries

#196 Winter

an interview with


Peripheral ARTeries

(Ireland)

an artist’s statement

My work joins several artistic processes and techniques into one sound installation. The music draws largely from painting and literature, with a particular focus on the works of James Joyce and the paintings of Picasso. As part of my work I create forms and processes within the music which emulates the cyclical structure of James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake. Through researching these topics I have become interested in how time and perspective is sensed in my compositions.

The installations I have been working on are cyclical pieces of music which begins halfway through a musical phrase and ends halfway through the same phrase, in order to create an ‘endless’ piece of music when looped. The music also contain elements of cubism in which sounds will be heard from several positions at once, giving the listener multiple perspectives of the same piece. I have listed below, several techniques I intend to use throughout this piece: Methodology My work generally utilises music composed for acoustic instrumentation that is then treated electronically by utilising thoughtful editing and manipulation techniques.

Specific methods and techniques I will explore through this research include: • Time lapse effect: Presenting an idea and gradually fragmenting it to give it the feeling of moving through time quicker, without actually speeding up the music. • ‘Endless’ music’: Beginning a work halfway through a scale or musical phrase and ending the piece halfway through the same phrase, to create a seamlessly looped piece of music with no beginning or end. • Cubism in Music: Musical phrases viewed from multiple view points at the same time, achieved through rhythmic and harmonic variations. • ‘Portmanteau’ notes: Several instruments of different timbres recorded and cut up from beginning to end and placed side by side to create one note that begins and ends with completely different timbres.

Thomas McConville

Thomas McConville

Heng-Chang Chen

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Peripheral ARTeries

Thomas McConville

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Thomas McConvilleThomas McConvilleThomas McConvilleThomas McConville

Peripheral ARTeries

Cassandra Hanks

an interview with

Thomas McConville is an Irish composer and sound artist, working in both acoustic and electro-acoustic composition. His works have been performed throughout his home country as well as across Europe and America as part of acclaimed concerts, festivals, installations and gallery exhibitions.

His work has also been published in the world’s largest selling computer music magazine, broad-cast by electro acoustic pioneer Christian Zanesi and he has since released an EP containing a selection of his compositions on English/American record label ‘Them Records’. He is currently finishing work on a new album that will contain a collection of his compositions and will be released on Schematic records.

Hello Thomas, and welcome to Peripheral ARTeries. I would start this is interview with my usual introductory question: what in your opinion defines a work of Art? Moreover, what could be the features that mark the contemporariness of an artwork?

I don’t know that’s really hard, I find it’s difficult to talk about the definition of Art without sounding a bit prentenious so I never really go too much into it, and as well as that it’s some-thing that there’s no concrete answer to. I think that most people have a better grasp of what they think art should or shouldn’t be as opposed to what it actually is.

But as for what makes something contemporary, I don’t know, although I think there’s a been a bit more of a boost in works which are influenced by the audiences presence and are more open with regards to crowd participation. I like that, I think that it opens up the work for the audience and puts them in a kind of childlike state, where they aren’t trying to over intellectualise things and buying into all the nonsense that sometimes goes hand in hand with a lot of contemporary art. I think that if they’re really head over heels about a work but don’t fully understand why they love it, but they just do, means it’s a great piece.

For a while I think that people had this percep-tion of contemporary art as something that should be shocking and difficult and that no one is supposed to get it, but I think that a lot of that thought process is gone now, at least I hope it is.

Would you like to tell us something about your background? You have received a for-mal training and you studied Music at the Dundalk Institute of Technology specialising in composition: how has this experience im-

Thomas McConville

Thomas McConville

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Jolanta Gmur

He has obtained a 1st class honours BA degree in Applied Music from the Dundalk Institute of Technology specialising in composition, where upon completion he was invited by the renowned composer Francisco López to take part in a compositional residency in South Africa, where he is to compose music inspired by the surrounding area. Reviews/Quotations Interview about a release under the pseudonym ‘Alice’ Irish electronica maestro who’s mind bendingly good tunes have been causing quite a stir with us the past while…. pleasantly off kilter tunes that will have your brain wondering what just happened. I really enjoy when producers this young are producing stuff of such high quality …I can’t imagine it’ll be too long until he’ll be causing more of a stir. Skirmish ‘Powerful’ – Christian Zanési

pacted on the way you make Art nowadays? By the way, you have have been recently invited by the well-known composer Fran-cisco López to take part in a compositional residency in South Africa: would you like to tell us something about this experience?

I did have formal musical training, which began in my early teens. I found that the most valuable experience was being around people who come from all different musical and artistic back-grounds, as it forced me into situations of discovering and learning new styles and genres that I probably wouldn’t have come into contact with otherwise.

The thing with Francisco Lopez came about after my composition lecturer Hilary Mullaney, who had previously worked with him, told me about a residency he was doing in South Africa. Then I emailed him and sent him a few pieces of mine and he got back saying he loved them and wanted me to join the residency. Unfortunately due to unforseen circumstances I had to postpone the trip until next year, so looking forward to that. It was just great to see that he liked the music, I couldn’t believe that someone of his standing in the sound art community enjoyed it, so I was delighted with that.

Before starting to elaborate about your production, would you like to tell to our readers something about your process and set up for making your works? In particular, what technical aspects do you mainly focus on your work? And how much preparation and time do you put in before and during the process of creating a piece?

I’m really not a techy person, and I’m sort of afraid to even attempting to become one. I’ve just seen it take over the musical and artistic side way too much and all of a sudden you have something that is really flat and boring.

Preparation usually starts with laying out instrument combinations and maybe conside-ring what processes I’d like to use. But generally I just work on several things and continue making new pieces immediately after finishing previous ones, I work everyday and throw a lot

Thomas McConvillePeripheral ARTeries

Cassandra Hanks

were the result of a massive surge of ideas coming all at once, nearly as if they had all built up in my head over the course of time I’d spent trying to make something new and were all released at the same time. As a result these are works I’m the most happy with, particularly Intro, which is probably my favourite work out of anything I’ve ever wrote.

I named the track Cecilia due to me being so frustrated at not being able to create something I was happy with that I said the next track I wrote I like I would name after St. Cecilia, the track was then finished soon after.

Your works have been often performed in gallery installations and exhibitions... By the way, I'm sort of convinced that music brings a temporaral aspect to a sculptural work while sculptures bring a physical aspect to music: could a symbiosis between two appa-

of stuff away but it’s necessary in order to find get something you want.

I do have rough templates of processes and techniques that I plan to use in new works but that’s about it for the most part.

Now let's focus on your works: I would like to start from your Electornic Works: in particular, I have found very stimulating your Intro and Cecilia, and I suggest to our reader to visit your personal website directly at http://thomasmcconville.co.uk/#!works/ckiy to have a more precise idea of this interesting pieces: in the meanwhile, could you take us through your creative process when starting this work? what was your initial inspiration?

Actually it’s interesting that you found these two the most stimulating, as they both came after long periods of a creative block, and after having my ideas blocked for 6 months to a year these

Culture Night, 2013

Thomas McConville Peripheral ARTeries

Jolanta Gmur

apparently different media give birth to a completely new kind of art, or just reveal hidden features of what we use to call "tradition"?

I think it’s probably a bit of both. I have seen a few sculptural works that use music, but it’s really weird because the piece is constantly changing from complete to incomplete, due to the temporary nature of music in a gallery setting. It definitely does reveal hidden features, but I still think there will be better ways of achieving a fully realised set piece.

Another piece of yours on which I would like to spend some words is entitled Lugs and our readers can listen to it a directly at https://soundcloud.com/thomasmcconville/6-lugs Would you like to tell us more about the creative process that has lad you to conceive it?

Lugs was just really me trying to make some-

thing that focused for the most part on the texture of sound. The work was written in a very short space of time but remained unsused for about a year, I think I didn’t feel confident enough with it at the time.

And I couldn't do without mentioning Daddy says it's like a teddy on LSD, which I have to admit that is one of my favourite pieces of yours... and I must confess that I'm always happy when I discover synergies between Art and Technology. Moreover, I would go a far as to say that the more time it passes the less there are concrete differences between Art and Science... what's your point about this? Do you think that nowadays still exists a dichotomy between art and technology?

It completely depends on the artist really. For me technology is just another tool for creating stuff, and I find the relationship between techno-logy and what I create to be no different between

Culture Night 2013 in CMC

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the paintbrush and a painting. Although I will say that the only thing that annoys me about the technological aspect to most artforms, but music in particular, is how people approach it. They spend all of their time and efforts ob-sessing over the minute details of the software and hardware that, for me, have no relevance to the final work, and I find that the people who are more interested in the tools of creating rather than the actual finished piece are in a different field altogether and they usually pro-duce the least interesting works.

I’ve met so many people who talk endlessely about what equipment they use and fill me in on the technological specifications of their latest purchase, but they just seem more like engi-neers than composers, artists or producers and when they do end up showing me their work it’s extremely bland. I look on this the same as a painter finding his brush more interesting than actually painting.

Your artworks have been awarded and exhibited many times. It goes without saying that feeback

and especially awards are capable of supporting an artist, I was just wondering if an award -or better, the expectation of an award- could even influence the process of an artist... By the way, how much important is for you the feedback of your audience? Do you ever think to whom will enjoy your Art when you conceive your pieces?

Well, the prospect of being exhibited or achieving an award is incredibly useful for giving a person the drive to create something that wouldn’t have existed otherwise. I was talking to a Music graduate one day about recent projects and they stated that they found it incredibly difficult to write new music, as they felt that since leaving college they had no deadlines to meet, and as a result creating no new work.

I never found this a problem as I am always working and looking for new opportunities, however if these did not exist I can’t be entirely sure that several of my favourite works would exist today. In this sense I think it’s extremely important for the creation of new music, art or anything, regardless of whether they get ex-hibited or win an award, something new exists

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Jolanta Gmur

that would not exist otherwise, and you’d never know, at a later date that work may find a new life of it’s own that works out in ways you never planned.

I think it's important to remark that besides your ElectroAcoustic Works, you have pro-duced acoustic compositions as well, as Cyclical Music No. 1. Do you think that studying an acoustic instrument is absolutely necessary to get ahead into a career in Contemporary Music? It seems that a "traditional" training is an advantage for developing experimental music...

I really hope it’s not neccesary to get ahead, and I really don’t believe it is. In the beginning I did have a horrible feeling that made me believe that it was neccessary to compose acoustic music as a main output to be taken seriously in the contemporary music world. However, as time went on I started to realise that this was total nonsense. A lot of the acoustic and acedmic electronic compositions I had heard many composers putting out then (and still today) were completely routed in a style that they had refused to develop, and as a result created music that was incredibly stale, despite advertising itself as ‘cutting edge experimen-tation’. It was cutting edge during the early to mid 1900s, and many of the ‘experimentalists’

now are just new traditionalists. This of course does not include the work of all acoustic and academic electronic composers, as some are doing stuff that’s totally amazing and unlike anything I’ve heard before, but it paled in comparison to the work I was hearing coming from the people who had been brought up on pop, rock and dance music. This work was really fearless and wasn’t trying to obey the rules that the people who considered themselves as ‘serious composers’ had laid out.

I do think that a routing in the traditions of the music you are working in, whether it’s experimental, classical or pop, is very important. At least that way you have a starting off point instead of wondering about aimlessly, although I would enjoy to hear the work of a composer who has never had any experience of music before.

Let me thank you for sharing your thoughts with us, Thomas. My last question deals with your future plans: what direction are you moving in creatively?

I have a good amount of stuff I’m working on at the minute and lots that I’ve finished that I’m just waiting to come out. Yeah the commission came about around a month or two ago as part of the City of Culture celebrations. It just made the most sense to incorporate Heaney’s work into the piece, due to his recent passing, so I thought it would be nice to have his poetry and his voice in the work. Although I felt kind of strange for not including a more audible reading of his poetry, but I suppose I wanted to try and create a sense of his presence influencing the

Thomas McConville Peripheral ARTeries

Thomas McConville - Shop (Cyclical Music)

Thomas McConvillePeripheral ARTeries

the music as opposed to basing the entire work around his words. I think it fit in nicely just because it probably represented his influence on other art forms better by having a shadow of his voice in there working it’s influence.

Other than that I have a release coming out on Schematic Records now really soon, I’m trying to get more installations on the go and especially want to begin work with visuals to go alongside the music. So I’ve just finished up on work with a few exhibitions that are on at the minute and have plans for some more in the near future (so far London, Glasgow and Guimarães in Portugal).

As for the direction I’m headed in creatively, I really want to start incorporating a visual element in my work.

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Peripheral ARTeries Art Review May 2014