Artist Interview – Page 4

February 14, 2022January 7, 2022, by Jennifer McGregor

Landscape Deconstructed at the Hammond: Linda Stillman

Part 1: Linda Stillman – Interview with Jennifer McGregor

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Description automatically generated — Linda Stillman, *Daily Skies: 2020, February 15, 2020 focus*, 2021, archival pigment print on paper, 19 x 13 inches

Landscape Deconstructed: Mimi Czajka Graminski and Linda Stillman is a virtual exhibition on view at the Hammond Museum and Japanese Stroll Garden website until June 2022. It is curated by Bibiana Huang Matheis. The opening on September 11, 2021, included a virtual conversation with Mimi Czajka Graminski and Linda Stillman moderated by Jennifer McGregor which has been distilled and reformatted for individual interviews with each artist.

January 31, 2022January 31, 2022, by Etty Yaniv

Judith Schaechter – Native to her Imaginary World

A person painting on a table

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — Judith Schachter at work

Art without craft is blind, craft without art is empty Judith Schaechter paraphrasing Kant

January 24, 2022December 20, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Gabriela Vainsencher: Unfolding Motherhood

Gabriela Vainsencher in the studio with “Mom”, 2021

Gabriela Vainsencher works in photography, video and drawing, while merging all of these forms in her porcelain sculptures. Her sculptures and wall reliefs are as far off the smooth perfection we traditionally associate with porcelain – twisted forms merge into each other or repel, forming a fiery existential dance that sometimes invokes symbiosis and sometimes pulling apart.

January 3, 2022December 5, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Linnéa Spransy: Stockpiles of Potential

A picture containing a studio wall with frosted mylar drawing and the artists seated in front of it. — Linnéa Gabriella Spransy in her studio with ‘Chronos’, an ink drawing on frosted mylar, laminated and partially suspended from the wall.

For LA based, multi-disciplinary artist Linnéa Gabriella Spransy, limits are the core subject. Her curiosity about science, philosophy, cultural theory, physics, history, theology and, as she puts it, “a healthy dose of science fiction”, has led her to notice patterns and contradictions in commonplace assumptions. For instance, the belief that unlimited freedom is the optimal state of being, an idea that is flatly contradicted by the fact that no one is absolutely free, as we are all bound by a certain era, language, and people in our lives. Furthermore, Spransy says, some would argue that knowledge itself is a limit, especially knowledge about the future. She is grappling with big questions such as—does knowledge that deals with predicting the behavior of systems prevent freedom? Do we live in a deterministic universe merely garnished with the illusion of autonomy, or do we live in a genuinely open one? Throughout her reading and experience in the studio, she began to suspect that limitations are not barriers to freedom, but rather gateways.

November 29, 2021October 29, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Juan Hinojosa: Ensemble Iconographies

A person standing in front of a wall with art on it

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — Juan Hinojosa in studio during LMCC residency

New York based artist Juan Hinojosa collects found objects from everywhere he passes by. A toy snake, a wooden bird, a Good Luck charm, fragments from advertisements and billboards—find their way into his intricate compositions, creating altogether layered sculptural assemblages and intricate two dimensional collages. In both dimensional and flat formats, Hinojosa’s vocabulary is grounded in Pop aesthetics with a tint of Surrealism. Through super vivid colors and elaborate graphic shapes he depicts imaginary worlds where extravagant shrines and hybrid flowery creatures become a convincing presence. When you get closer, you can most likely trace where they came from.

November 22, 2021November 23, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Baris Gokturk: Danse Macabre in Public Spaces: Painting Euphoria and Madness in Times of Crisis

Baris Gokturk, working on All Saints at The Boiler@ ELM Foundation

Baris Gokturk’s installations are intricate, layered, and admirably ambitious in both meaning and form. The Turkish born New York based artist asks the big questions – what is his role as an artist, individual, immigrant within the larger context of a world in crisis? In All Saints he exhibited at the Boiler space at the ELM foundation he combined imagery of dance and fire into a monumental installation.

November 15, 2021October 20, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Theresa Hackett: Flipping the plane

The PA based painter Theresa Hackett has been reflecting on landscape and environmental issues throughout her extensive body of work, Her paintings combine elements of drawing as well as different materials such as earth material and plastic. Altogether the process of coalescing all these elements is readily visible on the surface —the marks, bold shapes, vivid colors, texture— create landscapes resonating with vitality but also with an urgent sense of loss.

November 1, 2021October 4, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Franziska Warzog: The Joy of Tactility

A person in a costume

Description automatically generated with low confidence — Franziska Warzog, Creature covered by tongues, textile sculpture, 2008, 134 x 27 x 12 cm, (52.8 x 10.6 x 4.7 in), photo taken by the artist’s husband

The Hanover based artist Franziska Warzog makes textile sculptures characterized by bold shapes and vivid colors reminiscent of patterns in nature. As a daughter of two visual artists, she was introduced to design principles since early on.

October 25, 2021October 4, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Hedwig Brouckaert: Un-Informing

PORTRAIT3 copy.jpg — Hedwig Brouckaert in her Studio in the Beginage in Ghent Belgium, August 2021

New York city based artist Hedwig Brouckaert is currently working on a body of work for two solo shows, one at the Emory & Henry College in Virginia, where she is invited as visiting artist in January 2022, and one for Galerie El in September in Belgium. She has been developing Peel (America), a collage series of magazine images of skin on marble tiles, which she started during the lockdown. She says the tiled walls in public spaces have become like skin surfaces that were feared during the pandemic, as touch has become complicated. She is fascinated by the contrast between the depth and time visible in a marble tile, created by age-old geographical processes, and the temporality of magazine paper. “Even though magazines – and mass media images in general – arrive as pristine, glowing objects in the mail or on the newsstand they are meant to disappear quickly and to become trash, to be replaced by the most recent up-to-date information,” she says.

October 18, 2021October 4, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Rita Grendze: Material Exploration

A picture containing person

Description automatically generated — Rita Grendze installing “Susurrations” , 2013, Krasl Art Center, St. Joseph, MI

Chicago based artist Rita Grendze draws, sculpts and makes large scale installations that bring the two and three dimensional forms together in imaginative ways. She creates visceral environments utilizing mostly found materials, ranging from music sheets to textiles.