Sarah Struck, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 61st 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed the fantastic abstract painter Sarah Struck. I discovered her work at Hopkins Center for the Arts in 2019 and I have paid close attention to what she does since. I feel like she and I have a similar approach to making art. Her answers are great! Thank you for reading! (All images courtesy of the artist / Instagram: @sarah_struck_art)

Jackson: Did you always feel like you wanted to be an artist? Or did something specific happen that put you on this path?

Sarah: I did not have being a practicing artist on my radar although I have always been highly creative; visually inclined and loved color, typography, decor, and fashion much like my gifted matriarchs. I thought everyone was like that, until I realized we had something special happening. 

In 2014 I needed a change from long work hours and raising our son. I asked my work manager if I could do full time in 4 days instead of 5 - so that I could take an art class on Fridays. I never looked back! Everything hinged on him saying "YES".

I knew I wanted to paint and the only class that was of interest or even open (at Minnetonka Center for the Arts) was local and accomplished artist Ellen Richman's contemporary class. Thus, the adventure began. I had no idea how impactful and life-changing this class would be.

It is going to be 10 years in January since I took my first class - which was a 6+ year run until Ellen no longer taught it and then COVID muddled things too.

Jackson: What inspires your abstract paintings? Do you have an idea in mind or do you begin and let the painting happen as you go?

Sarah: The feeling of beauty or awe inspires me to create on my own. Its source may be anywhere - from Architectural Digest, or The Project, to a visit at the MIA, or just a beautiful peaceful day where I often walk in the park. Oftentimes I am not inspired to paint so then I make a conscious effort to just practice painting. Building a practice makes it possible to bring in inspiration (or not) and gives me an experimental and safe zone to create something. I do not have ideas, but more like color feeling or a size or scale of artwork that I want to create. Looking at something like birds, pottery, photography, or beautiful spaces simply gives me something to respond to when I get to a piece of paper, canvas, board or otherwise. Art for me is always about responding to something that is living inside or outside of me.

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

Sarah: Lee Krasner was born in 1908 which is near the birth of my grandmother. Krasner did abstract works and had a design degree. I would like to paint with her in the studio and hang out, find out what life was like in the early 20th century for female artists. According to my Grandma, her own choices were nurse, secretary, or teacher. None of which she was too excited about.

I also love the free approach of Krasner's brushstrokes. She led the way for other abstract female artists who were known in the 1920s. I'd like to see what else she created apart from her abstract paintings and to understand her inspiration or ideas (similar to question #2 above).

Petra von Kazinyan, Artist (Repost)

 

Hello! In honor of The Big Clouds, Petra von Kazinyan's new exhibition at Art Circle Wien in Vienna, Austria, I am reposting my November 2020 interview with Petra with some updated photos. It was in the middle of the pandemic and things were weird but her answers were great and also comforting. (All photos courtesy of the artist / Instagram: @petravonkazinyan / Website: www.petravonkazinyan.com)

 

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 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.

Lisa Bergh, Artist (Repost)

Hello! In honor of Topography, Lisa Berghs's awesome new exhibition at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, I am reposting my 2019 interview with Lisa with some updated photos. (Artist photo courtesy of the artist / Instagram: @lisambergh / Website: www.lisabergh.com)

Jackson: How do you get your ideas? Your art is different from anything else I have seen.

Lisa: I am always looking at and thinking visually about the world around me, the mundane visual poetics of the day to day are often a formal source for my creative output, but rarely the direct content. For example, the installation you enjoyed titled "Unfurled" was cued visually by watching my young daughter flying a kite, but the piece has nothing to do with that experience, me, or my daughter. The piece is ultimately about moving through landscape, engaging the architecture of the specific gallery it was created for, the language of painting and sculpture, visual gestures, beauty, movement, engaging the audience in a way that questions who the real actor is - is it the sculpture that is walked in and around, or, is it the viewer moving around the work? I also allow the objects and ideas I am experimenting with in my studio to organically inform and lead me to the next project or point of inquiry. There is a list of ideas/concerns/goals I am continually working to dissect/contemplate/achieve in my studio practice:

objects which are simultaneously presented as drawings/paintings/and sculptures 

abstraction and conceptualism with figuration and narrative 

tension and gesture - formal, intellectual, and emotional 

beautiful and thoughtful moments and casual and residual artifacts 

specific and vague experiences intimacy and aloofness 

I am trying to connect all these dots in the most visually direct way I can.

Jackson: How old were you when you first became interested in art? Did something happen that made you think wow?

Lisa: I was not a child who plugged into the arts beyond the basic art classes in school. I drew and wrote stories, but I did not have a kind of overt affinity for picture making that when children showcase it, adults immediately nurture it, until it becomes natural for a child. Instead I was given real access to the arts in college when I was working towards a degree in Cultural Anthropology and was required to take a Basic Design Course. I loved the process of making and thinking about ways to articulate the principles of design for the class assignments - learning a new language. After that first class I signed up for a photography course. The next thing you know I had a BFA in printmaking and photography, and soon after, an MFA in spatial arts. My visual language was developed and nurtured through the practice of photography and I still feel a strong aesthetic alignment to the works of Diane Arbus, Robert Frank, and Edward Weston - photographers I deeply admired as a beginning art student. My work may seem different than theirs, but the foundation of my art ABC's was constructed by studying these artists.

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

Lisa: I would relish a conversation about art, aesthetic experiences, materiality, New York City, politics, and the 80s with Felix Gonzalez-Torres. I have long admired his work. While I am not driven to create art rooted in political activism, I am deeply drawn to his aesthetic, his ability to change mundane materials with intense poetry and intimacy, and of course, the theatrical nature of his work. While has long ago ago passed away, when I have the opportunity to experience his objects in a museum space they feel incredibly alive and present. It is always exciting for me to stand in front of his artwork. I marvel how he masterfully achieved many of the objectives I strive to achieve in my studio practice. His works are tools for experience and contemplation; curious and mysterious while being incredibly direct and intimate. I can't think of an art work by Felix that is not a slam dunk. He died so young...I wonder what he would be interested in making/expressing if he were still here. Oh and I would love to time travel to 1927 to spend a long weekend in New York City with Dorothy Parker - that would be a real education.

Deb Grossfield, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 60th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed Deb Grossfield who I both recently discovered and recently met. She's great! The thing I really enjoy about Deb's art is that it is unlike anything I have seen before. I really enjoyed her answers and I think you will too. Thank you for reading! (All images courtesy of the artist. Instagram: @debgrossfield / Website: debgrossfield.com)

Jackson: When did you first become interested in visual art? Did you have a specific experience?

Deb: I've a strong memory from when I was about six. I was playing with watercolors when I was introduced to my aunt who was visiting from out of town. She asked to use my brush and drew a portrait of me with the paints. It was a huge moment for me. It was like an immense door opening to a new world. It was a moment when art materials were no longer toys to me but instead became tools. 

Jackson: When I met you recently you said you had stopped making art for awhile. What led to you beginning again? Has your process changed?

Deb: I never stopped making art, but I did stop engaging the art world. I don't know any artists who really enjoy the business side of being an artist and for me, it requires a draining amount of energy. I am not a natural self-promoter. I had to steel my nerves and work up the gumption to approach curators and gallerists.

Then about 20 years ago, my family obligations increased quite a bit and I was working full time as a controller/bookkeeper for several small businesses. Something had to give and that was the work involved in finding galleries, maintaining my website, and entering juried shows. Over the last year, I've been able to shift my time away from accounting to focus on the art world. 

My process has not changed much over the years but my artwork is always evolving. The biggest difference now is being able to follow my ideas through without interruption and I have more time to experiment.

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

Deb: Sometimes you can love a person's work and find out that they are a terrible person. Sadly, the work you loved is tainted and you can't ever see it the same way again. That is a risk. 

I'm from Minneapolis and I started going to MIA sometime during grade school. I'd make regular visits and sit in front of my favorite paintings as if they were friends. While I didn't speak out loud to them, these encounters were important to my development as an artist. 

There are several pieces in the MIA collection that I admire, but my first real love was Vincent Van Gogh's "The Olive Tree." I collected postcards and books of his work. A lot is known about Vincent Van Gogh and my understanding is that he was a very gentle person who had bouts of self-destructive mental illness. I finally had the opportunity to visit the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam a few years ago. This may sound silly, but my eyes welled up with tears as I walked from one drawing or painting to another. If I could, I'd hang out with Van Gogh for a while and watch him work. I'd give him a big hug and thank him for making such beautiful paintings. 

Priscilla Briggs, Artist

 

Hello and welcome to the 59th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed super skilled artist Priscilla Briggs who is currently doing an arts residency in Italy. Her art has always been very impressive to me and I first saw it when I was 11 years old at Rosalux Gallery -  a picture of an ad for luxury homes in a not very luxury setting always stuck with me. I'm so glad Priscilla agreed to be interviewed and I think you will enjoy her answers as much as I did. Thank you for reading! (All images courtesy of the artist / Instagram: @priscilla_briggs_ / Website: priscillabriggs.com)

Jackson: What inspired you to become an artist as a way of life? How old were you? 

Priscilla: My grandmother was a painter and had a studio in her house. My siblings and I all inherited a creative gene that was fostered while we were growing up, but my understanding of "Art" was mostly painting and sculpture and it wasn't something I ever saw myself doing as a career.

My mother gave me my first camera as a birthday present when I was in high school. I experimented with it in art class and then took a class in college as part of a graphic design program, but the school only offered that one class. I was smitten with photography, mostly for portraiture, and used the darkroom as much as I could until the professor told me I wasn't allowed to use it anymore. I still wasn't thinking of art or photography as a career. 

After college I moved to Tokyo to work for an English communications company. I edited scientific papers and taught English for a year, and then spent a year backpacking around Southeast Asia. When I returned to the U.S. I didn't really have a plan. I tried to get work as a writer, but there was a recession going on and every job I applied for was given to someone much older than me with a lot more experience. I did temp work, and, in my free time, took another class in color photography at The Pittsburgh Filmmakers. After a year or so, I got a job managing a small photo gallery. I was poor, but spent every spare cent I had on photo materials. Then a friend told me about a photo teaching position at the Manchester Craftsman's Guild, a community art center for youth. I thought it was a long shot because I didn't have a degree in photography, but I applied with the portfolio I had developed and got the job! It changed my life! 

I worked there for four years teaching photography to teenagers, but I also was able to use the facilities and unlimited materials to make my own work. I experimented with every process I could and learned how to mat and frame work for exhibitions. It was an education for me. Just as important, all my colleagues were artists! Those of us who didn't already have an MFA eventually left and went on to graduate school. By the time I started graduate school I was 30 years old. Prior to my job at the Manchester Craftsman's Guild, it had never occurred to me that I could make a living as an artist.

Jackson: Where do you get the ideas for your work? Do you intend the photos to be social commentary or is that secondary?

Priscilla: Generally, my methodology is to identify as subject that interests me, and then to explore it photographically. I never know what I'm going to come up with ahead of time - it is an investigative process. I suppose the social commentary is inherent in that process and the final editing, but I try to leave the photographs as open as possible. 

My collage work in the exhibition Reading Between the Lines was definitely a social critique. It was also somewhat depressing. From that point, I made a choice to work on a subject that is both close to my heart and more positive. I am currently investigating different models of sustainable farming. The project was instigated by an artist zine I made about my dad's organic farm. My goal is to put together a series of zines that represent case studies in models of sustainable farming that offer alternatives to industrial farming. I'm thinking of sustainability holistically in terms of environment, economics, and community.

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

Priscilla: A living artist I greatly admire is Hito Stereyl. She is a brilliant thinker and interdisciplinary artist/writer who addresses the issues of our time (media, technology, surveillance, image distribution) in a wholly original way.

A historic artist I admire is Artemisia Gentileschi. I recently had the opportunity to see her paintings in Florence. Specifically, the painting Giuditta che decapita Oloferne (Judith beheading Holofernes) reflect her rage toward the male painter who raped her. She made the painting shortly after she won a court case against him. I imagine she was a courageous, independent woman working as an artist at a time when women artists were rarely acknowledged.

Rajine the Queen, Artist

Hello and welcome to the 58th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed super talented visual multimedia artist and teaching artist Rajine the Queen. I discovered her art at Rosalux Gallery and then went and looked at her Instagram and website. So cool, so much unique art to see. I enjoyed what she had to say about her relationship to art and I think you will too. Thank you for reading! (Instagram: @whataweirdkidcreates / Website: www.rajinethequeen.com/ Images 1, 2, 4 and 5 courtesy of the artist) 

Jackson: How did you first become interested in art? How old were you when you knew you wanted to be an artist?

Rajine: I've always been inclined towards creativity. My first memory of doing something "artistic" was when I was 7 or 8 years old. I was at an after school program called Rainbow Kids Club. I was transfer tracing a Betty Spaghetti character (2000's throwback toy, IYKYK). I remember the older kids and the teachers being amazed at how good it was. I was like, "What's the big deal? I'm just copying it." But the level of dexterity I was exhibiting at such a young age and not even being taught beforehand I would say looking back is impressive. I guess being encouraged by peers and adults swayed me towards art.

I went through adolescence drawing, (mainly during classes I should have been paying attention to) taking every opportunity to explore any other creative outlets like pottery (in middle school), and drawing in high school (I failed btw). I didn't see myself as an "artist" or a creative. 

I didn't claim myself as an artist until I was at a crossroads in my first semester at the U of M Twin Cities. I transferred from Inver Hills Community College on a pathway program track for communications. The semester was rough, I had no interest in my classes, oddly enough my family was trying to persuade me to study art. I finally decided to pursue an education in art. Even then I didn't consider myself an "artist" when I was an art major in college. Yes I was studying art, yes I was making art, but I never claimed to be an "artist". It wasn't until 2019, my last semester of school, that I claimed to be an artist, since then my practice has evolved into what it is now. I'm a visual multimedia artist and teaching artist.  My artwork centers around Black femininity, Identity, and body. My aesthetic is Afrocentric eclectic, I explore with different elements and mediums what Black women do with their hair.  

Jackson: I've noticed that you make many different kinds of art. What is your process? What does art mean to you personally?

Rajine: I like to showcase through my art what it means to be a proud Black woman, especially in America. I like my artwork to tell a story (all art tells stories) that looks fun but has many different meanings to them. I don't want to be the "Black" artist that has to be hyper political, I not very much into politics but my work tends to always tie back to commentary of my Black experience. 

I like using found recycled materials in my artwork. My first piece I made that I exhibited in undergrad was recycled Coke products. I still have the piece to this day. It's sentimental to me and surprisingly is holding up. I have an inception of the piece that I want to make. I don't sketch it or really plan it out. I just do it, putting it together piece by piece like a puzzle.   

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

Rajine: I would want to meet Bisa Butler. I'm not very well versed on all the famous artists, styles, and techniques (people get art history confused with art, a lot of people are shocked that I don't know every artist and art style to exist!). 

Bisa Butler is a textile artist famous for her quilts that she makes. Her quilts feature famous African (American) iconography. As soon as I saw them I was enthralled by her work. She is a huge inspiration to me as she started out similar to me. She was a high school art teacher way back when and her work exhibits across the world. One of her pieces was valued at $37,000! I would want to meet her. 

Tim Tozer, Artist

Hello and welcome to the 57th 3 Art Questions With Jackson interview! This time I interviewed the talented painter Tim Tozer. I met him years ago at Rosalux Gallery and I liked him and his paintings. His paintings are amazing! I have wanted to interview Tim for a long time and I am glad that it has happened now. I enjoyed what he had to say and I think that you will too! Thank you for reading! (Instagram: @tim.tozer / All images courtesy of the artist)

Jackson: How did you become an artist? Were you around art or did you have a specific experience? 

Tim: I was lucky to grow up in a household where art in most forms was always present - music, literature, painting, etc. My dad was an architect and my mum was an art teacher; I think I draw more like my dad, but my mum took me to London to see the exhibitions that would inspire me to become a painter. There was a Lucian Freud retrospective in 1984 that was particularly important to me; I remember looking at a painted knee and thinking that yes, this was what I wanted to do!

Jackson: Do you think being from England has informed your paintings? Do you ever feel nostalgic?

Tim: I've been in the US for over half my life now, but I still think of myself as a British painter. I'm skeptical of that kind of sentimentality, but yes, I think a lot of my figurative work has been a way to relive a sort of unfixed version of my past. My more overtly abstract work has been my attempt to strip away the nostalgia and exist in the present, although of course everything shares the same formal DNA. I do miss England all the time, however, and I can't separate that from what I do.

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

Tim: This is a really difficult question! I'm afraid that if I met an artist I admire, something in their personality might taint the work for me forever - not necessarily in a negative way, just in a way that limits it. However, it would be fun to sit in a corner and watch Vermeer paint; I wouldn't want to chat (I don't speak Dutch anyway), just to see how a human made those paintings. I'd like to shake Julie Mehretu's hand to salute their epic accomplishment; that retrospective at the Walker was one for the ages. And having a drink with Francis Bacon would've been something to brag about, even if you couldn't remember much of it afterwards.