Show Notes
In this episode, I touch on mystery in art—the space between knowing and not knowing that drives us to create and share Philip Guston's essay "Faith, Hope, and Impossibility". Faith, Hope, and Impossibility- Philip Guston
"There are so many things in the world—in the cities—so much to see. Does art need to represent this variety and contribute to its proliferation? Can art be that free? The difficulties begin when you understand what it is that the soul will not permit the hand to make. To paint is always to start at the beginning again, yet being unable to avoid the familiar arguments about what you see yourself painting. The canvas you are working on modifies the previous ones in an unending, baffling chain which never seems to finish. (What a sympathy is demanded of the viewer! He is asked to "see" the future links.)
For me the most relevant question and perhaps the only one is, "When are you finished?" When do you stop? Or rather, why stop at all? But you have to rest somewhere. Of course you can stay on one surface all your life, like Balzac's Frenhofer. And all your life's work can be seen as one picture—but that is merely "true." There are places where you pause.Thus it might be argued that when a painting is "finished," it is a compromise. But the conditions under which the compromise is made are what matters. Decisions to settle anywhere are intolerable. But you feel as you go on working that unless painting proves its right to exist by being critical and self-judging, it has no reason to exist at all—or is not even possible.
The canvas is a court where the artist is prosecutor, defendant, jury, and judge. Art without a trial disappears at a glance: it is too primitive or hopeful, or mere notions, or simply startling, or just another means to make life bearable.
You cannot settle out of court. You are faced with what seems like an impossibility—fixing an image which you can tolerate. What can be Where? Erasures and destructions, criticisms and judgments of one's acts, even as they force change in oneself, are still preparations merely reflecting the mind's will and movement. There is a burden here, and it is the weight of the familiar. Yet this is the material of a working which from time to time needs to see itself; even though it is reluctant to appear.
To will a new form is inacceptable, because will builds distortion. Desire, too, is incomplete and arbitrary. These strategies, however intimate they might become, must especially be removed to clear the way for something else—a condition somewhat unclear, but which in retrospect becomes a very precise act. This "thing" is recognized only as it comes into existence. It resists analysis—and probably this is as it should be. Possibly the moral is that art cannot and should not be made.
All these troubles revolve around the irritable mutual dependence of life and art—with their need and contempt for one another. Of necessity, to create is a temporary state and cannot be possessed, because you learn and relearn that it is the lie and mask of Art and, too, its mortification, which promise a continuity.
There are twenty crucial minutes in the evolution of each of my paintings. The closer I get to that time—those twenty minutes—the more intensely subjective I become—but the more objective, too. Your eye gets sharper; you become continuously more and more critical.There is no measure I can hold on to except this scant half-hour of making.
One of the great mysteries about the past is that such masters as Mantegna were able to sustain this emotion for a year.
The problem, of course, is far more complex that mere duration of "inspiration." There were pre-images in the fifteenth century, foreknowledge of what was going to be brought into existence. Maybe my pre-image is unknown to me, but today it is impossible to act as if pre-imaging is possible.
Many works of the past (and of the present) complete what they announce they are going to do, to our increasin
More from I Like Your Work: Conversations with Artists
Elizabeth Alexander is an interdisciplinary artist specializing in sculptures and installations made of deconstructed domestic materials. She holds degrees in sculpture from the Cranbrook Academy, MFA (2009), and Massachusetts College of Art, BFA (2004). Alexander's work has been exhibited at institutions across the country including the Museum of Art and Design, National Museum of Women in the Arts, North Carolina Museum of Art, Southeast Center for Contemporary Art, and Nasher Museum. Her work is included in collections at the Crystal Bridges Museum, the North Carolina Museum of Art, 21c Museum Hotels, and the Mint Museum. The National Museum of Women in the Arts included Alexander in the 'Women to Watch" series focusing on paper (2020). She has recieved awards from the Harpo foundation, the Society of Arts + Crafts, Blanche E. Colman foundation, Massachusetts Cultural Council, and a Burke Prize nominee by the Museum of Arts and Design. She has been included in publications such as Hyperallergic, the Denver Post, the Boston Globe, Galerie Magazine, and the Modern Art Notes Podcast. Alexander is represented by K Contemporary (Denver, CO and Santa Fe, NM). She is Associate Professor and Sculpture Department Coordinator at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, MA. "Drawing from her own working-class upbringing, Elizabeth Alexander works to unpack the social, cultural, and psychological pressures within American domesticity. Raised to see the possibility in found or unwanted things, she regards the domestic environment as an extension of human ingenuity. Domestic environments additionally act as witnesses, emotional containers, status markers, and value signifiers. Home is where ideas about class, gender, taste, safety, and belonging are first learned and reinforced; sometimes through language, but often through the things we live with. Her studio practice begins with that tension between the domestic ideal and its human inhabitants. Laborious craft is the slow and steady machine behind all of Alexander's work where she spends endless hours breaking an object down and sorting the remaining and extracted parts for future reassembly. Cast paper forms and found material artifacts such as porcelain tableware, wallpaper, and other common furnishings are gathered and manipulated to probe at the many contradictions within their gentile appearance. The form of this work shifts from handheld objects to site-specific installations to photographs and works on paper, but the question remains: how do our possessions carry the values we inherit, perform, and pass on?" LINKS: https://www.elizabethalexanderstudio.com/
Born in Columbiana, Ohio in 1958, the Nick Blosser received a B.F.A. (1980) and an M.F.A. (1982) from The Ohio State University. Their work has been recognized through prestigious national and state awards, including an Ohio Arts Council Fellowship (1983), a Rome Prize Fellowship to live and paint at the American Academy in Rome (1984–1985), and National Endowment for the Arts Individual Fellowships (1987–1988 and 1991–1992). After residing in Ohio until 1989 and later living in Chehalis, Washington, the Blosser relocated to Tennessee in 1991. He taught art at Milligan College from 1991 until 2022, shaping generations of students, and currently lives and works in Johnson City, Tennessee. "The subjects for my paintings come from the out-of-doors. I prefer the ordinary or unassuming over the "scenic " or picturesque. I like to find interesting forms and beauty in what many people hardly pay attention to or disregard. I generally start with drawings that come from direct observation but feel free to internalize what I see, simplify or add imagination to the process. I rarely but sometimes also use photos (when time is limited) but still do drawings from those before painting, which is mostly done in my studio. I'm essentially after what a subject feels to me in an inward perhaps even spiritual way. For over 40 years my main painting mediums are egg tempera and watercolor." LINKS: [email protected]
Danny Balgley is a painter whose large-scale abstract works investigate the archaeology of mark-making, using a process of physical accumulation and excavation to explore how surfaces hold, reveal, and dissolve history. Danny Balgley (b. New York, NY) lives and works in Queens, NY. He holds an MFA from Columbia University, a BFA from Cooper Union, and attended the Yale School of Art Norfolk program on an Ellen Battell Stoeckel Grant. He has been nominated for the Joan Mitchell Fellowship and received grants from the Ellen Gellman Fellowship, the Ethel Cram Memorial Prize, and the Mark Rothko Award. His work has been featured in Architectural Digest, New American Paintings, Arts in Square, and most recently, Friend of the Artist. LINKS: https://www.dbalgley.com/
Welcome to Season Nine of I Like Your Work! In this opening episode, I'm reflecting on something I've been thinking about a lot lately: artists need other artists. So much of our work happens alone in the studio, but getting out into the world, seeing work in person, traveling, learning together, and having conversations with other artists can have a huge impact on our practices. I share some thoughts from my recent experience teaching The Symbolic Landscape in Italy and why in-person experiences like this can be so important—not only for making work, but for building relationships and seeing your practice in a new way. I'm excited to be returning to Italy to teach the course again, and I'll be sharing more information soon for anyone interested in joining me. I also talk about what's ahead for I Like Your Work this season, including our upcoming exhibition at Eckert Art Gallery at Millersville University, guest curated by Heidi Leitzke. As we begin our ninth season, thank you for continuing to listen, share the podcast, support the artists we feature, and be part of this community. I'm so excited for the conversations and opportunities ahead. In this episode: Creating meaningful in-person experiences
Lisa Solomon is a studio artist that moonlights as a college professor and illustrator/graphic designer. Profoundly interested in the idea of hybridization (sparked from her Hapa heritage), Solomon's mixed-media works and large installations revolve thematically around domesticity, craft, and personal histories. She often fuses "wrong" things together--recontextualizing their original purposes, and incorporating materials that question the line between ART and CRAFT. She also is focused on bridging the gaps between being creative, living creatively, and making a living as a creative.She received her BA in art from UC Berkeley and her MFA from Mills College. She has exhibited and works with galleries both nationally and internationally, is in numerous private and public collections, and is continually tweeking artworks in her backyard studio. She resides in Oakland, California with her husband, a teenager, two kitties, a three legged pit-bull, a dachshund mutt and many, many spools of thread. She is the author of - A Field Guide To Color - a workshop work-a-long watercolor journal on color theory and the follow up The Color Meditation Deck, a historical book on Crayola crayons, Knot Thread Stitch, the Illustrator for 20 Ways to Draw a Chair and Draw 500 Everyday Things. Her latest book is Art, Craft, Color is published by HardieGrant. She is also an instructor on CreativeBug.