Camilla, Artist, Instagram Star

 

Hello and welcome to the 33rd interview for my blog 3 Art Questions With Jackson! This time I have interviewed London based artist and Instagram star Camilla! We've been following each other on Instagram for a long time now. She is a lot of fun and her art is really cool. I really enjoyed what she had to say in this interview and I enjoyed getting the perspective of someone who lives in a different country. Thanks for reading!

Jackson: What made you want to become an artist? Do you think where an artist lives influences the work?

Camilla: Good question! I honestly tried art when I had lots of free time and nothing much to do. It was suggested to me and I said "sure why not" because I love to try new things! I really enjoyed it and liked the results. I ended up showing some friends and some people I was working with and they were really impressed. Almost right away a friend of a friend wanted to buy a painting I had done and it just went from there really and so my ideas kept flowing. I had to paint! I filled a small room with so many paintings over summer and decided to call it my studio. There's always something in there drying!

I think where an artist lives can definitely influence their art! Although I have so many abstract ideas which even I don't know where they come from, I just paint them out when they arrive. I have always been surrounded by beautiful trees and I love nature so I paint a lot of trees! 

Also, I live in a big city and always visit different beaches often so I've done a few beach paintings. My first one, which is of the waves, I am so lucky that one of my followers from my art page bought it as a surprise for his girlfriend because she loves the beach. He thought it would be lovely for her to have in her home since she did not live near a beach. I've just finished a set of buildings too.

Jackson: Has the pandemic influenced how you make art or how often you make art? Have you lost any opportunities in the last year?  

Camilla: Another good question! I definitely think so! I always do art whenever I can or whenever I just have to paint - or when a new idea comes to me and I just have to paint it out right away! I have definitely painted more than usual. Luckily I'd just stocked up on art supplies so I could have started my own art store! 

I used my time to try something new and did a series of abstract collages and pop art collages. I have been very lucky to sell some work throughout the pandemic. I also donated money from sales to buy food and supplies for vulnerable people and safely and securely delivered them and sent thank you paintings as gifts to my lovely buyers for their kindness. I'm beyond happy I could help and doing it through art makes it super special. 

I was asked to do an exhibition in New York City and haven't done it with the pandemic, which can't be helped. I'm sure something will go ahead soon and I am beyond happy to be asked.

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

Camilla: Oh, easy! Salvador Dali! I absolutely love his work. My favorite piece by him is The Persistence of Memory from 1931. I would love to chat to him about it and ask him some questions. I think it would be fun to chat with him and hopefully hear some of his ideas.

Instagram: @i.l.l.a.rt 

Susan Wagner, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 32nd interview for my blog 3 Art Questions With Jackson! This interview with Susan Wagner is really cool because she is a great abstract painter and she is friends with someone who taught me in elementary school. Small world! Susan's paintings are really deep and her answers were very thoughtful. I can really relate when she talks about the emotional part of making art. Thanks for reading! 

Jackson: What inspired you to begin making abstract paintings? Did you always love art or did you have a specific experience?

Susan: I started out as a landscape painter and just kept digging deeper into what attracted me to it. I decided to keep going with abstraction after I took a painting I had done and, using only black oil paint on gessoed paper, I painted just the shapes and lines that were the essence of the composition and the heart of it. I did that a lot, years ago, and it got me going in that direction, which was very satisfying for me on many levels. I found that I was attracted to the interplay of shapes and it's interesting to work out the problems, but I was also connecting to my emotional stake in it. It's definitely bringing the inside, out.  

I always loved art on some level. My mother has art books around when I was growing up and she had a knack for color combinations and harmony in the way she decorated her house. She was also deeply into poetry and was usually thinking about it. I think that maybe closely observing a mother who was closely observing human behavior and other things set me up to feeling a connection with art. 

Jackson: How has the pandemic changed how your make your art? Were any of your shows postponed or cancelled?

Susan: The pandemic really didn't change the way I make art - I did make less work. The enormity of what was happening around me was all consuming. But I eventually starting working in the studio again. In terms of show fallout, all my open studios were cancelled and some group shows I was in ended up being online. And so, there was no way to interact with people responding to the work. In my view, that's a necessary energy to have. That in-person energy between the viewer, the artwork, the artist, and even the space it all takes place in. 

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

Susan: There are quite a few artists I would love to meet. Very hard to narrow it down. Today, I'm going to say Peter Doig because of the ways he paints, and what he paints feels deeply personal yet accessible. 

https://www.susanwagnerart.com/

Melissa Loop, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 31st interview for my interview blog 3 Art Questions With Jackson! This time I am very happy about being able to ask excellent painter Melissa Loop questions. I have always been amazed by her paintings and I love how I can tell it is her right away. She gave very thoughtful answers to my questions and I think everyone will really enjoy them. Thank you for reading!

Jackson: What was it that inspired you to make art? Do you feel like you were born to paint?

Melissa: All of my art is based on places that I have visited in the past. I have a deep interest in anthropology and ways that Western culture tends to misinterpret other cultures so that tends to be a common thread in which places I choose to paint. Having a child and watching her I would say that all humans are born to paint. But for myself, painting centers me in the world and I become very off balance without it.

Jackson: Where do you get the ideas for your art? Have those ideas changed during the pandemic? 

Melissa: My painting are all based on photographs that I take while traveling. I find I need that framework to keep my focus otherwise I can go all over the place. The pandemic definitely changed what my future and I started reexamining what would make an interesting painting and what types of things I wanted to paint. My paintings take a lot of planning and time so I am actually just finishing paintings I started over a year ago before the pandemic. So people will notice the shift much more in my next batch I think.

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

Melissa: David Hockney. He is someone who has shifted through so many ways of working and doesn't mystify the idea of painting. I just want to sit and have a conversation about seeing because he has spent his whole career on it.

melissaloop.com 

Kordula Coleman, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 30th interview for my interview blog 3 Art Questions With Jackson! 30! I am so happy to have the 30th interview be with the wonderful artist Kordula Coleman. I have been amazed with her art from the first time I saw it and now everyone in my family loves it too. We have her art hanging on our Christmas tree right now! She was kind enough to give her answers a lot of thought and I think everyone will enjoy the interview. Thank you so much for reading! 

Jackson: What made you want to use clay for your art? Did being in Germany have anything to do with it?

Kordula: The most important factor for my investment in working with clay was my mother. My first love was drawing and painting, and my focus settled on humans early on. I was obsessed with human anatomy and really wanted to get it right in my drawings. My mother was a potter, and had a pottery wheel at our house. At some point - I think I was around 6 - she introduced me to clay, and showed me the basics of working with it. My mother was never attached to having an impeccably clean house, so whenever I felt like it, I could work with clay, right at the dining room table. I think the supple, forgiving nature of clay, and the possibility to undo mistakes - won me over right away - and I loved having the option to explore the amazing possibilities of showing of showing a figure from different angles. I was often an anxious child, so I'm sure the therapeutic qualities of working with the cool and supple clay - the tactile experience - calmed me down. I drew voraciously at the same time, and as I became a teen, I often sketched my sculptures before executing them in clay. I realized more and more how much I loved having the option to create something in the third dimension - it just added so much more possibility of expression. My mother kept on supporting and encouraging me, and always saw to it that my pieces were glazed and fired. This sent a powerful message to me that was I was doing had merit and was valued. I also remember being hugely encouraged when the ceramic artist who fired my pieces told my mom that he thought I was a talented clay artist. In Germany, that is a big deal, because people in general are a lot more stingy with praise, and to get this kind of compliment from an artist we respected meant a lot to my mother and me. After high school, I became a ceramic journeyman at a company that builds large handmade tile ovens, ceramic fountains, and architectural pieces. I don't know if you know of the artist Friedensreich Hundertwasser - this company made many ceramic columns and mosaics for a famous house he designed in Vienna, Austria. I learned many important technical and artistic skills during that time. After getting my journeyman degree after 2 1/2 years, I took a detour studying graphic design and illustration and becoming an art director for some years, working in ad agencies in Germany for some years. During that time, my love for working with clay was buried under my demanding job and crazy working hours. But after coming to Minnesota in 2000, and being free of the restraints of a full time job, I rekindled my love for clay and have never stopped working with clay since then. While my children were small it was often difficult to find the time or mental focus, but over the years clay has once again become a huge stress relief, vehicle for expression, and island of sanity in difficult times. The possibility to show the human figure from different angles through clay gives me so many tools to express a mood or an emotional process. The mood and expression can be enhanced even more through different surfaces and treatments and glazes. I also love the fact that the pieces I create will outlive generations to come, and might even become beloved family heirlooms. The fact that a ceramic piece literally goes through fire twice - first for the bisque firing, and then for the glaze firing - is also a powerful symbol to me. You have to build it thoroughly and with care - you can't fake any strength or stability. Otherwise it will not survive the firing process. It reminds me of the strength a person will eventually develop, when they go through their life's challenges with patience and integrity. Their defining qualities will have become permanent, and resilient to the encroaching chaos of life.   

Jackson: How has the global pandemic affected your art or your art career? So many artists have had things postponed or cancelled.

Kordula: I am happy to say that the global pandemic has not had a noticeable effect on my art or my career. I have always worked from my home studio in our basement, and loved the solitude and seclusion, but also the closeness to my family and pets. I get my ideas anywhere, and being limited to mostly being at home, walking in nature, watching movies, listening to music or reading hasn’t hurt that. There is a certain lassitude and heaviness in the air because of the pandemic and the hardship it has brought to so many people, and that is palpable to me, but it hasn’t affected my drive to create art. I am immensely grateful to the Northeast Minneapolis Arts Association for setting up an online shop for every interested member artist this year, right in time for Art- A-Whirl 2020. I was able to show and sell my art very effectively during this event and ever since. Also, I am glad that I started taking the role that social media can play for artistic presence seriously some years ago. I started to invest time and thought into how to establish an online artistic profile that would keep people interested and captivated. That way, I had an online following when the pandemic hit that wasn’t greatly affected by my inability to meet people in person at art events. It also enabled me to be an independent artist and sell my work directly and on my terms, such as offering a payment plan for larger pieces. I will have my first solo show at Lanesboro Arts in Lanesboro, MN, in October 2021, and it was admittedly sheer luck that this show will open when a Covid vaccine will most likely have been widely distributed, and art openings and shows can happen in person again. I am immensely grateful that this opportunity for me to connect with people in person, and for people to see my art in person, has not been taken away by the pandemic.

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

Kordula: I found this to be the most difficult question! There are many artists that I admire and have drawn inspiration from, and would like to thank for motivating me to keep on expressing myself. There is, for example, Maria Zherdeva, a figurative paper maché artist working in Moscow, whose work I find mesmerizing because of its storytelling character and atmospheric density. There is Kelly Garrett Rathbone, an American figurative ceramic sculptor whose work I saw at the Northern Clay Center and deeply admire because of her technical mastery and the intriguing characters she creates. Then there’s the Russian born sculptor Sergej Isupov, a figurative porcelain sculptor, whose work I saw at the Museum of Russian Art, and who completely blew my mind. But it’s not just visual artists, but also writers, composers, musicians from all kinds of genres, and film directors that have given me a wealth of ideas and inspiration. What I am most grateful for is when art helps me enter a frame of mind where I feel inspired to create my own work, confident that I will be able to create something that will be genuine and satisfy me. That often works best for me when the art I’m experiencing isn’t too close to what I do myself - otherwise I feel that the danger of unconsciously copying what that artist is doing, or comparing my work to theirs, is too great. So for now, after much mulling over this question, I will pick Cary Joni Fukunaga - the film director who directed the 2011 movie version of the novel ‘Jane Eyre’ by Charlotte Brontë. I feel so much at home in this movie - the emotional depth and also heaviness that is so well portrayed through light setting, nature shots, music, and costume design, and the redemption from this heaviness in the end. I grew up in a home that was burdened with my father’s intense mood swings from happy and creative to depressed and anxious. He had been a German soldier and then a prisoner of war in a Russian camp in WW2, and his trauma was ever present and colored the atmosphere in our house with the same bittersweet, changeable, deeply contrasted light situation that I find in this movie. Because of these early experiences, I have always been drawn to stories of survival, and I have always been deeply moved and inspired by being outside in untouched natural environments, and by classical music. This movie offers me all that, and the emotional depth and intensity that I am trying to express in my sculptures. I would like to meet this director and tell him how much his movie has inspired me, and ask him about his own inspiration sources.

 

Petra von Kazinyan, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 29th interview for my interview blog 3 Art Questions With Jackson! This time I interviewed the amazing Vienna based artist Petra von Kazinyan. This is my second interview with an artist who lives outside the United States. I've always loved Petra's art on Instagram and her website and she has been nice enough to look at my art too. Petra took the time to give some really thoughtful answers, which I really appreciate! Thank you for reading!

Jackson: What inspired you to make art? Did you have a specific experience?

Petra: Since my early childhood, I had the desire to transform my life into art. I was never not painting or drawing. When I was six years old, I started to sign my works; the first one I ever signed was a small landscape painting, a forest scene. Funnily I wrote my age not my name in the bottom right hand corner....

So to me, art is all about self-expression, coping with reality - it's just something that has always been there and can't be separated from my inner self. Like Christo once said: When you're an artist, you're always an artist, there's not one second in your life when you are not an artist.

Jackson: Has the global pandemic changed your art or your art career? I had some things cancelled or postponed. I think it might be different there in Europe than it is here in the United States.

Petra: It was (and still is) the same here - due to the coronavirus, I also had to postpone a planned solo show to next year. A group show in Venice, Italy fortunately happened to take place, under strict measures for protection and hygiene.

And to sum up my feelings in 2020 so far: being an artist, self-isolation is nothing new to me; nevertheless, I felt different during the lockdown because it is something else to choose isolation of your own free will. So being told to stay in for public health reasons was kind of a new experience - and it was a very interesting, highly creative one.

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

Petra: Lucio Fontana. I'd love to have a philosophical discussion with him about the concept of space in art. What the terms "space" and "place" mean today, in our liquid modernity as Zygmunt Bauman once called it - in a globalized and digital world where the only constant is change.

WWW.PETRAVONKAZINYAN.COM 

Kim Matthews, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 28th interview for my interview blog 3 Art Questions With Jackson! This time I interviewed super talented artist Kim Matthews who makes art that is different than anything I've seen before, which is not easy to do. I really like Kim's art in person in galleries and online. She is the 2nd artist I have asked about the global pandemic. Kim took the time to give me some really great answers and I think you will like them too. Thank you for reading!

Jackson: What inspired you to become an artist? How did you settle on your totally unique style?

Kim: I don't know of anyone who just decided to become an artist, although I guess it happens. It's a weird affliction; I suspect you're "born that way," as the saying goes. I started making stuff when I was really little and from the time I was in kindergarten or first grade I knew I wanted to be an artist when I grew up. I drove my mom nuts because I was always making paper cutouts and there were bits of paper all around the house. I grew up in rural Maine, so we didn't have much in the way of art classes or anything else; we shared an art teacher among the three schools in our district, so art class was like a half-hour long every other week or something. It seemed like I never finished my projects.

 

Thanks for the compliment on my "style." I'm not sure if I have a style as much as a way of working that's based on the materials at hand or of interest, available time, whatever skill I can bring to bear, physical limitations, and some mysterious, unnameable impulse that comes from the universe. I'm working on two distinct bodies of work now: the modular sculptures you saw at Minnetonka, and a series of 108 meditation drawings that I started late last year. To maybe answer your question a little better, my first sculptures were constructed of reed or wire armatures covered in paper I made. In addition to being really into materials, I'm a process nerd, so I was working with Eastern fibers, cooking the raw material, beating it by hand, and so on, which is really time-consuming and a fine craft unto itself. And the work was fragile and I got concerned about things getting destroyed in shipping or at an exhibition, because by then I was showing my work at a gallery in south Minneapolis. So gradually I started working with commercial papers, fabric, etc., and kind of went from there. The next thing I knew, I was being referred to as a "fiber artist," which I did not like one bit. People like to label, and as soon as they've done that, there are no more questions to ask and they can feel satisfied and move on. This is also why I gradually moved away from strictly organic forms to the wonky geometry that you know. I'm interested in work that's open ended and asks more questions than it answers, so there's nothing worse for me than for someone to come up to me at a show and say, "I know! It's an ACORN," or whatever...because any reference is a point of entry into the work, not the purpose of it. I mean, you make something, and people respond to it as they will, with their own level of interest, education, expectations, and so on, but the artist has some say in it--so I just moved into a nonobjective approach so viewers were sort of forced to consider the work as itself first.

Jackson: Has the global pandemic impacted your life and how you make art? Has it affected your shows? I had some things cancelled or postponed.

Kim:  This has been the weirdest year ever. I support myself primarily through contract work and have always wanted to work from home so I didn't have to commute or deal with the office politics or the distraction of people having conversations around me while I'm trying to hyperfocus. So I finally got my wish but I suspect I'm going to be looking for work after the first of the year.

 

Deadly plague aside, it's been great to be at home. My home office is my studio, so when I get up to stretch my legs or rest my eyes, I can look at what I'm making or tweak something. Plus my cats are super-happy and I get to listen to music all day without headphones. But I'm sure it affects how I make art because everything affects it. Being in a considerably less stressful environment has given me more time and energy to do my work, so that sure helps with the sanity level.

 

I shipped a work to a university in Tennessee months ago for a show, and by the time it got there they had shut down the campus, and then the work just sat there for months until the gallery director could get back in and send everything back. I was in North of the 45th at the DeVos Museum in Michigan this year, and that had to go digital, but they produced a nice catalog and website for the show that they might not have done otherwise. I have a piece IRL! at the Rockford Museum for the Rockford Midwestern Biennial now. The real bummer has been not being able to travel. I try to go to New York a couple times a year, and my friend and I were all jazzed to see the Donald Judd show among others, and then we had to cancel. But I've also been in some online shows and am part of a pretty exciting project with Odetta Digital, so we'll see where that goes. It's such an odd time--some interesting opportunities that might not have existed without the pandemic, and then economic uncertainty and political turmoil. I have been extremely fortunate to have good health, and as much as I miss my mom, who died in 2012, and my best friend, who died right around this time two years ago, I'm so grateful they didn't have to be subjected to what we're dealing with now.

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

Kim: I think it would have to be Constantin Brancusi. Some of his work hasn't aged well--the figurative things--but he was groundbreaking in the way that he conceived a sculpture and the support on which it rests as a fully integrated whole but using contrasting materials. And he was masterful with all of them: cast bronze and carved marble, wood, and stone. I wish I had a fraction of that know-how...goals! Plus, he was a deeply spiritual man, involved in Theosophy, as were Malevich, Mondrian, Kandinsky, and others, so we share an interest in Eastern religion and philosophy. Isamu Noguchi, another one of my heroes for similar reasons, studied with Brancusi in Paris. There are other important artists too: Eva Hesse, Agnes Martin, Lee Bontecou...and I'm trying to get my hands on everything I can find about Tony Smith who, aside from being sculptor Kiki Smith's dad, was a designer, architect, painter, sculptor, and mystic. I think it's really important for artists to know where they come from, so I read a fair amount of art history, which I love, and which informs my work a great deal.

kimmatthewsart.com 

 

 

 

Dyani White Hawk Polk, Artist and Curator

                 

Hello and welcome to the 27th interview for my interview blog 3 Art Questions With Jackson! This time I interviewed amazingly talented artist and curator Dyani White Hawk Polk. I have always liked Dyani's art in person and online and she is the first artist I've asked about the global pandemic. I thought her answers were really interesting and I think you will too. (David Ellis took the above picture for the Walker Art Center)

Jackson: What inspired you to become an artist? Did you have a specific experience?

Dyani: I've been making things, drawing, and creating since I was little. Making and creating has always been my favorite thing to do! But I didn't always understand that this meant I was an artist. My mom actually used to tell me quite frequently as a teen and young adult, "Dyani, you're an artist, and one day you'll believe me." It wasn't until I sold my first painting as an undergrad that I really started to believe her and truly understand that making art was more than something I like to do, but something I was, something I am.

Jackson: Has the global pandemic impacted how you make art? Has it affected your shows? I had some things postponed.

Dyani: YES! The pandemic has prevented me from being in the studio. I had a show in New York City the first week of March. By the time I got home the pandemic was really starting to hit the States and we were all adjusting to the idea that we were going to have to start isolating ourselves. I came home, wrapped up a few things for my exhibition currently up at the Plains Art Museum and then started gathering supplies and getting ready to stay at home. 

I live with my mother and her husband who are both in their late 60s and have pre-existing medical conditions that place them in the high risk category. Because of this our entire family has had to practice extreme caution and focus on maintaining the health of everyone in our home. I have not worked in the studio since the second week of March! We have had to focus on keeping our folks safe and at home, which means me and my husband have taken on all of the errands that need to be done outside the home as well as sanitizing all groceries and supplies that come into our home. In addition to this, we were faced with the transition to distance-learning for our first grader and senior in high school. Then, our lease ended in May, which means we also had to move! Finding a new home, packing and moving our multi-generational home became an all encompassing effort for a few months. 

I have had to maintain a lot of administrative style work from home, on the computer. Unfortunately, the only artwork I have made since the pandemic hit was finishing a pair of moccasins that were already 75% done and making a necklace for my mom for Mother's Day. Now that we are moved and slowly settling into our new home I will be working on finding a way to start getting back into the studio slowly and safely. 

As for shows, yes, it has. As I mentioned, I have a solo show up at the Plains Art Museum right now. This show was supposed to open in March but the museum just recently reopened with social distancing practices in place. I'm not sure how many people will get to see the exhibition, especially considering how much travelling is still a risk. It is up through October 3rd though so hopefully people will still have an opportunity to experience the show!

I had a residency that was scheduled for April that had to be postponed until sometime in the future when things of that sort can begin again. I had an important speaking opportunity at a conference cancelled, as well as a couple of museum acquisitions of my work that had to be cancelled due to budget freezes. I am grateful though that I still have a few exhibition opportunities scheduled far enough into the future that they are still scheduled to proceed as originally planned. A number of acquisitions have still gone through despite the pandemic as well. 

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

Dyani: This is a tough question! There are so many artists I'd love to speak to, both living and dead. SO many!

I thought about this question for awhile last night and got excited about the various people I'd love to talk shop and life with. But what I landed on is this. I would like to speak to someone in the past, from within my family lineage that was an accomplished beadwork or quillwork artist. I don't have any immediate family members to turn to in this way. But I am certain there would have been someone in the past. Whomever that woman is, I'd love to visit with her!

www.dyaniwhitehawk.com