Dana Sikkila Murphy, Gallery Director, Artist, Teacher, Biker

Hello everyone! This is Jackson and welcome to the 16th interview for my blog, 3 Art Questions With Jackson. This time I interviewed Dana Sikkila Murphy, who is a gallery director, teacher, great artist and much more! I am lucky enough to be in her Project Bike documentary which premieres in Minneapolis on October 20th. Dana is great! I think you will agree! Thank you very much for reading!


Jackson: How did you get the idea for Project Bike? It is such a great idea.


Dana: I got the idea for Project Bike in 2013, I had just taken over being Director of the 410 Project and was looking at myself as a leader and trying to figure out what I could do different than others but still be true to myself. So I took my two passions, biking and art making and combined them together. Why couldn't I bike around the state and meet with artists in their studios or homes? Seemed like a really simple idea and I wanted to make it happen, even though I had never toured on my bike more than two days at a time. In 2015 I received some grant funding for the project which gave me the kick in the butt to do it. So in 2015 I set out for 14 days, biked about 470 miles, and met with 10 artists. Since it was my first year it was really hard for me to convince artists to meet with me and then pack up their art works and allow me to take it on my bike. But with this being the 4th year of Project Bike, it is gained momentum and a great following but it took many years of hard work and trial and error.



Jackson: How did you know you wanted to be an artist? How old were you?


Dana: I grew up in a very small town and there was not very much exposure to arts and culture. When I was young I never knew being an artist or working in the creative field was a actual thing. I did not have a very good high school experience and ended up barely graduating. One thing I did learn about myself in high school was that I learned best from using my hands, building things, making things work through construction. I was lucky enough to be accepted to MNSU for college. After attending one semester my eyes had completely opened up to what art was and that being an "adult" and being an artist was a thing. I had found my group of people and it all took off from there. 



Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be?


Dana: Billie Holiday. Even with many personal struggles she used her music and voice as a platform. She stayed true to who she was and what her voice meant and what it could stand for. 

Susan Solomon, Artist

Hello everyone! This is Jackson and welcome to the 15th interview for my blog, 3 Art Questions With Jackson. This time I interviewed Susan Solomon who is a great artist and has been very helpful to me. She is great and very nice. I think you will agree! Thanks for reading!


Jackson: How old were you when you first became interested in art and what made you interested?


Susan: I remember always loving the big box of crayons, especially periwinkle, and would play with the crayons like they were alive. I grew up in Queens, New York. Once in 3rd grade we had a school contest where we had to draw a garbage can. I actually HAD a favorite garbage can; it looked like metal mesh. I drew that, won the contest and had my drawing posted on the bulletin board. That was a proud moment! It made what I loved to do the most seem important.


Jackson: What are you thinking about when you make your art? Do you try to clear your brain first?


Susan: This is a great question and oh so much better than the “what is your process” question! When I make art, there is only that on my mind. Sometimes I’ll catch myself actually saying out loud the tube of color I need to grab. Sometimes I sort of sculpt into the paint with a paper towel, as if entering the space. Entrance and layers of color and light are important. Angles are key. I don’t really need to clear my brain. On its own, it clicks into art mode and everything else disappears. Many, many times I will think about what I want to paint long before I do it, so the actual painting session is the final step after all the initial thinking.


Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead, who would it be?


Susan: I would spend time with a former teacher who died a few years ago. His name was Murray Dessner, and he was the kindest and most gentle man you’d ever want to meet. I took drawing classes from him at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia, where I graduated from. Murray was an abstract expressionist painter, and he taught about the elements of art and how you find the same basic structures in all kinds of painting. He spoke about light and layers and composition, entering a painting and how that knowledge applies to every piece. He said things like, “think about how every corner of the canvas is painted.” And then in his drawing classes, he’d have us draw so fast that a kind of intuitive art possession took over. He always, always, stressed foreground, middle ground, background, and the art of making marks. I would meet him again for sure if I could meet any artist. 

Bridget Kranz, Artist and Writer

Hello everyone! This is Jackson and welcome to the 14th interview for my blog, 3 Art Questions With Jackson. This time I interviewed Bridget Kranz. Bridget interviewed me and my Dad for mplsart.com and she did a really good job! I think she is a really special person and a great artist and writer. Thank you for reading! 


Jackson: How did you know you wanted to be an artist? How old were you?


Bridget: I never really thought, “I want to be an artist,” I just kind of fell into it. When I was 16, I tore my ACL, and applied for the Access/Print Program at Highpoint as a way to pass the time. When I applied, I didn’t know the emotional impact that making art would have on me. It gave me an outlet to express the disjointedness I felt at the time - I was finishing high school in Saint Paul, having just come back from a year in France, and my mom had recently moved to Southern California. It was so powerful to be able to combine these different worlds through my prints, and to envision ultimately what I wanted my life to look like. That was when I knew that I wanted art to be a large part of my life, as a way for me to express, shape, and commemorate my experiences. 


Jackson: You did such a good job interviewing me and my Dad. Do you see yourself doing both writing and art?

Bridget: Yes, I would love to continue to write and to make art! For me, the desire to write and the desire to make art come from the same place. Namely, that I love to document things! Through writing for an online art magazine, I’m lucky that I get to meet new people, hear their stories, and help document them.  

Jackson: If you could meet one artist living or dead, who would it be and why?

Bridget: Right now, it would be Lois Dodd. Going to school in Maine, her style of painting was so influential for me, along with Fairfield Porter and Alex Katz. There’s this whole group of 20^th century painters who began migrating up the East Coast and spending a significant amount of time in Maine. Specifically, I love the way Dodd zooms in; she crops and distills mundane scenes into these recognizable fragments. It would also be important to me to meet an artist who’s a woman. I’d like to hear about her specific journey and the ways in which her experiences as a woman have shaped her painting (if they have!). 

Shana Kaplow, Artist and Professor

Hello everyone! This is Jackson and welcome to the 13th interview for my blog, 3 Art Questions With Jackson. This time I interviewed Shana Kaplow. I noticed one her artworks walking into Rosalux Gallery a long time ago and I have liked her art since then. Shana is a talented artist and professor. I think her answers to my questions are super interesting and I think you will too! Thank you for reading! 


Jackson: How did you become interested in art? How old were you?



Shana: I think I was always interested in art, which started with drawing. My mother is an artist so I grew up around her paintings, her art magazines, her studio, and going to art museums, so art and art-making were always present. It was a natural activity - a way to engage myself. I have favorite memories at around age 4, of a new big box of crayons, the one with the built-in pencil sharpener - so exciting! When I was 6 yrs. old, I was given a gift of a new set of colored markers, and I still remember the thrill of seeing all the colors. When I was 9 yrs. old, I remember seeing a Lynda Benglis sculpture and some deeper ideas clicked for me - that a visual object or image had the potential to hold multiple ideas within it. An object could be both solid and fluid, or it could wake me up to see things in a new way, or it could be totally unfamiliar and I could notice my mind working to figure out how to relate to it. These realizations were really expansive for me and I have later looked back upon that experience as very formative. As I got older, I struggled with the idea of making art as a career - perhaps it was because I wanted to individuate and do something different than my mother, but I also saw that it was a hard choice to make professionally and financially. However, when I got to college (planning to major is psychology), I realized that I really felt most alive when I was making art and learning about artists’ works, and decided to major in Studio Art in my second year. After that, I was totally committed to pursuing art as my priority and set out to figuring out how to make that work.


Jackson: How did you hit on your current style with the chairs? It is so unique.


Shana: I had included images of chairs, off and on, in my paintings over the years. Sometimes I would just paint a chair when I didn’t know what to paint. It is a form and structure that interested me because it reflects the human body. But I didn’t originally make the chair an important subject in my work and it was much later that it became a more full-blown image that I keep returning to. Now I am exploring how objects, like furniture, that we live with are meant to support the body, are often manufactured very far away. I think about who is making the things that I use intimately in my life and what their body’s relationship is to the object. What are the conditions of their lives? And what are the conditions of my life, my decisions, etc? I’m interested in what we don’t see, and the chair or the table become edges and structures that I am looking “through”, so to speak, as a way to see what is ‘unseen’. I’m curious about the relationship between what is close and what is far away. I am looking at my role in that relationship. I’m still trying to figure out how to ‘talk’ about that with visual language. It seems like there is something I keep being interested in that involves realism and abstraction simultaneously. I’ll also say that I don’t think much about the word “style”. I just make my work, and it keeps changing, developing, evolving. It’s never the same twice.

Jackson: If you could meet any artist living or dead who would it be?


Shana: Oh, so many! But one that comes to mind would be Louise Bourgeois. She was a very influential artist for me years ago. She was an incredible role model to see out there working as a woman who made powerful and honest sculptures and paintings. She is an important artist for a whole generation or two of younger artists. She was fierce in her opinions and fearless in her art-making. She was kind of a fiery personality and had many bold and original things to say. You can watch a documentary film about her called "Louise Bourgeois: The Spider, The Mistress, and The Tangerine”. 
 

Allison Ruby - Artist, Red Garage Studio owner, Creative Gardener

 

Hello everyone! This is Jackson and welcome to the 12th interview for my blog, 3 Art Questions With Jackson. This time I interviewed Allison Ruby, who is a wonderful artist, gardener, and she also owns Red Garage Studio! She put one of my paintings in a group show last year and it was very exciting for me. Her answers are great and her story is very surprising and inspiring. Thank you for reading! Let me know what you think!



Jackson: How did you get the idea to put a gallery in your garage? I would like to do
something like that with my Dad.


Allison: For several years I’ve been working out in my garage during the summer and always dreamed of having a more bright and pleasant space to work, so I decided that once I graduated from art school I would finish off the space and turn it into a dedicated studio. But after leaving school I realized how much I missed the creative energy present in a space where there were many people working, creating and collaborating, and how much it fed my creative process. Also I was feeling a little lonely and looking for ways to meet new people and make new friends. Furthermore, I had done an internship at the Nash Gallery where I got very interested in the curation and installation process. All these things inspired me to open my studio space up to occasional pop-up shows and it grew from there.
 
Garage galleries come out of a long tradition of home or apartment galleries that have
been going on for more than a century. With the art world’s economy evolving I think
alternative exhibition spaces are becoming ever more common. I like these spaces for
their intimacy and funky DIY aspect. Galleries can be intimidating and often seem to
separate people from art, literally putting it on a pedestal (an item verboten at Red
Garage.) I like spaces that bring people together so that they engage with one another
in meaningful ways that create connection. This is something that is not only integral to
my artistic practice but what I strive for in general in life. I want to know my neighbors
and energize my immediate community. My goal is to use the events at Red Garage to
help accomplish that. It is also a way for me to support other artists.
 
I say if you want to do your own art shows go for it! I will caution you that it is not as
easy as it looks. It requires a lot of time and hard work to do well. 


Jackson: How did you become an artist? Was it something that just happened?


Allison: All my life I have engaged in creative activities, not specifically visual arts. As a child I was especially involved in theater, music and dance. I really liked art until third grade when the art teacher at my school yelled at me for putting red flowers in the tall savannah grasses in my section of the African safari mural the class was making. That ruined art for me for a long time. In my late twenties I became very interested in Waldorf education and eventually became a teacher. The arts are integrated into all subjects at Waldorf schools and made me understand art and success in a new and more encompassing way.
 
Then in 2005 I was hit by a car while riding my bike to work and was very badly injured.
I had a brain injury and basically all the muscles in my neck and back were torn or
severely sprained. I had to retire from teaching and ended up more or less bedridden for several years. I was seeing many doctors and specialists to help me heal, but there was not much progress and I was told I would probably always be like that. One of the people I saw was a speech therapist whose exercises were useless to me and instead of looking deeper or admitting she did not know how to help me, she got irritated with me for not improving! I had mentioned to her how I had been a teacher and that some of my problems I had seen in young children who had learning difficulties, so at what turned out to be our final session, when I said what we were doing did not seem to be helping me, she took it personally and very crossly said, “So what would you do for one of your students instead?” She said it in a sarcastic way, but when I went home I really took that question to heart and thought about it.
 
Part of the answer I came up with was drawing my body. I was so disconnected to my
physical body after the accident that I could not even tell if I was holding my head
straight or sideways. I started drawing my body in parts, and that process really helped
me. That led me to do more painting, which really helped my spirit. I was so weak I
could only work for about 15 minutes before I would need to go lie down again, so I
used watercolor palette paints that did not require a lot of set up or much strength. Over
the years as I healed I continued to paint, until several years later I was finally strong
enough to go back to school and pursue an art degree.


Jackson: Everyone seems to like this question so I always ask now: If you could meet
any artist, who would it be and why? 


Allison: I would love to meet Caledonia Curry, aka Swoon. I love her work and I love how she thinks about her practice and its role in the world. I would have given anything to be part of her Swimming Cities project. I admire the way she brings art out into the world to draw people together and build community. Plus her work is gorgeous. I love the grand scale installations she has done and all the different media she incorporates. I have heard Callie speak and she seems like an incredibly genuine, fun, and dynamic woman, the kind of person I look for as a friend.