Summer 2023 Artist Mini-Interviews
To give artists a chance to talk more about their process and craft, or just to give us a little more insight into their piece, we provided them with a list of questions from which they could pick one to answer. We hope you enjoy this peek behind the curtain!
Ruby Wang
Q: What do you do when you’re stuck or have a creative block?
A: During these periods, I like to engage in media that inspires me and then reflect on what evoked that kind of inspiration. I turn to songs I've loved, clips from my favorite movies, excerpts in beloved books and ask myself: why does this connect to you?
Usually, that helps me distill this notion of "creativity" that, while empowers me, can be immensely overwhelming. Having a smaller, concrete starting point allows me to play and experiment with less restrictions or side thoughts that might distract me.
Juan Sebastian Restrepo
Q: Tell us about the place where you do your best creating.
A: I do my best creating in my art studio, it is located in Miami Florida in the Bird Roads Art District. It is perfect for me because I come in the evening alone and it is rather quiet. I sometimes don't paint and instead read a book or eat. I love having a designated place for painting and creating sculptures, and most importantly thinking.
My art studio is rather special for many reasons. One being that it is a place where I can place all of my focus on small details without any distractions. Driving to my studio also helps me mentally prepare to enter into another world, if you will. My studio is located in-between my home and work, so it fits perfectly within my life-style without putting a lot of effort.
David Goodrum
Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?
A: Recently, I have focused my time more on what is underfoot, hidden away, ignored, disintegrating, etc. In the quickness of our modern lives, we often lose the small details as we step over them, look away, stare straight ahead, distract ourselves with devices. Instead, my photos are from experiences of pausing and contemplation. The photo “Post Canvas #13” is from a series entitled "Desiccations" which is comprised of photographs taken in January 2022 of the 4-inch square tops of boardwalk support posts in the riparian hardwood forest of the William L. Finley National Wildlife Refuge located in Oregon's Willamette Valley. I gazed in amazement at these small ‘canvases’ covered with art created by nature herself and worked to capture them in all their intricacy and vitality. New life springs from fallen leaves and other organic matter, which provide a food web that sustains the fungi, bacteria and invertebrates that feed on them. After the color of fall fades, most of us sweep, pile, and discard leaves and other plant matter away. But with this series of photographs, I hope to show how their natural cycle continues, a process that touches all living creatures.
Bríd Moynahan
Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?
A: I've been working on a series of doll houses for the last couple of years. 'Home is where the Heart is,' is the third in this series. This piece is loosely based on the structure of the heart. The chambers represent a mixture of childhood memories and the various stages of life and their interconnectedness. I knew what I wanted in the rooms, and I used the structure of the heart to bring the rooms together as a coherent whole.
J.C. Alfier
Q: How did you land on the title for this piece?
A: For my collage, the title “Flight” was chosen because the shape of the woman’s hand mirrors the curve of the wings, as both the woman and the birds appear to suddenly react to a startled moment.
Roger Camp
Q: How did this piece begin? What was its seed idea?
A: I've spent the last thirty years photographing the streets of Paris. One of the common things in more recent years is the proliferation graffiti which has replaced the traditional poster on many walls. No one likes graffiti (except its makers) but I look for those instances where the graffiti has in some way transformed the surface, consequently resulting in a more complex and original statement than the graffiti itself. I believe this image does that.
Matthew Fertel
Q: How did you land on the title for this piece?
A: The titles of most of my artworks are usually both figurative and literal. They contain obscure references and in-jokes that are often only apparent to people familiar with me and my body of work. Sometimes I am the only one who is in on the joke.
This piece is literally an image of clay slip that was accidentally spilled on the ground. Figuratively, the title references an item of clothing that is seldom used anymore and an era when having your undergarments exposed was an embarrassing mistake.
Holly Willis
Q: What’s something you’ve read lately that you really loved/found inspiring?
A: I just read Diane Seuss’s collection of poems, frank: sonnets, which won the Pulitzer Prize last year. The book is composed of 127 sonnets, each consisting of 14 lines and with each line holding 17 syllables. While the form might sound like it would create poems that are repetitive or constrained, it didn’t. Each piece is a vivid, surprising revelation placing personal anecdote next to quotidian detail alongside poetic epiphany. The jumble moves quickly and in exhilarating ways and I couldn’t stop reading the book my first go-through. In an interview in Publisher’s Weekly, Seuss says, “I discovered in that sequence that somehow the compression and even distractions of composing in that form helped me access intuition, and to discover unlikely intersections that my conscious mind hadn’t considered.” I love how form can offer a sense of constraint that then renders something so beautiful and surprising, and I appreciate how Seuss knows to call this discovery intuition, that way of knowing that seems otherwise so elusive.