OPEN LAB ARTISTS

Aidan Koch

How did you get into comics?

I didn’t really start drawing comics until college. I decided to attend art school and ended up around a lot of people who were involved in the comics scene in Portland, OR. I was an illustration major so it was easy for me to see how comics fit in with how I was thinking about drawing and where my ideas were beginning to expand. I started out making zines with drawings, words, and lists. From there I began integrating those ideas further and building narratives. I’ve never read many comics and I still don’t. It helps me keep a clear perspective on the type of work I want to make, rather than being influenced by what’s already been made.

You have an amazing hand - what is your drawing background?  Who have you studied and  admired?  

Both of my parents were artists so I was drawing and crafting from a very very young age. My sister was always a little better at the hands on projects though so I think it was easier for me to just dedicate myself to drawing. I have countless sketchbooks starting in middle school and used to draw on everything. Naturally, choosing an art school for college solidified it as more than a hobby. Right now I do art full time. 

My tastes have changed quite a bit over the years, but I will always be obsessed with classical and impressionistic art. My favorite artist of all time is Odilon Redon. Others to note: Balthus, Matisse, Degas, Titian, Delvaux…

Was it intentional to use variations on the golden ratio/divine cut for almost every page of The Whale? If it was intuitive, then your sense of design could very literally be called divine.  

Thank you. I must admit is was very much unintentional. Even looking at it now, that book is quite raw. I came at it with basically no forethought as to how a person ‘makes comics.’ I’ve always worked very intuitively, but I’m much more aware of tools and constructs in comics now.  

How did that story emerge?  It subtly resonates.  

It really started with about the last ten pages. I was living back on the Puget Sound, and there was a news story about a tropical whale getting beached on a nearby island. The character and scenario just grew out of that initial inspiration.

Where did your travels for Field Studies take you?  Can you tell us about that project?

That was a really incredible project. I happened to already have a good deal of travel plans for the year and as they continued to expand and grow I became much more compelled to find a way to tie them all together. The first step was simply creating a blog from which I could share small drawings from my various settings. It worked in so many ways. I didn’t have a camera most of the year, but I did have a scanner, so I used it to share with my friends and family where I was and the special little things I was experiencing. It helped me to raise extra funds as I was traveling so that I wouldn’t have to get nervous about being gone so long. On a personal level too, each time I would sit down in a new city or home to draw, it would connect me deeper with the physical reality of my environment, by having to really study it. 

I really believe in maintaining a strong life drawing practice to the point that this project felt very indulgent for me. And then getting to publish a book of it all at the end! 

Was Asymmetry based on a real experience?  

No. I have given quite a number of tattoos in my day, as well as received them, but its all fiction. I think I just wanted to express the intimacy of that experience. 

Can you tell us about The Dark?  

This was one of my first minis. When I started drawing comics, I was especially interested in more abstract content and visuals. I still am, but the form it takes is much different.

What art materials do you have on you at any given time?  

Only a mechanical pencil. I keep a lined notebook with me, but I very rarely draw in it. 

Are you still working on the Letter Project with Jaakko Pallasvuo?  

Oh, no. We ended it quite some time ago. It was a really interesting endeavor but we did it without any objectives or constraints, so it just naturally tapered out as our lives got busier.

What sorts of projects do you have in the works right now?  

I just made a big move to California. I’m hoping to make this my base, so its a bit more serious than the traveling I’ve been up to. This has taken away from my being able to focus much on any personal projects. I’ve got ideas, but mostly I’ve just been doing a little this and that for other people. Once things have settled down here a bit, I’m hoping to start oil painting again. I’m quite excited to see where that might go. 

Any upcoming shows or publications we should be looking forward to?

I have a show opening May 3rd at Nationale in Portland, OR and a show in December at Farewell Books in Austin, TX. Those are the bigs ones this year. As far as publications I’m in the upcoming Sonatina anthology edited and published by Scott Longo as well as putting out a little collection of artist related comic strips I did for The Comics Workbook blog with the help of Colour Code printing in Toronto. 

Baltimore-based artist Christina Barrera.

How would you define a universe?  What does a universe mean to you?  

I think that like everyone else I have a more superficial level where I think of the universe in this very basic way as everything that we know of and everything that we do not know of, including planets, and stars, and galaxies, made up of a finite number of elements that is potentially limitless and expanding.

When I’m really thinking of the universe in the kind of grander terms that I always want to be thinking in I think of it as everything existing as an energy field where we and our atoms and everything else in the entire universe and its atoms; made mostly of air, so much more blurred in our boundaries than we think, are simply parts of everything that has, does or will ever exist. It’s a lot like The Force.   

So I think of The Universe just being everything there is, but I think A Universe can be made of anything there is on whatever scale. What I think I mean by that is that for me a universe can be any “cosm” micro or macro or middling, while The Universe would contain everything including all the other universes. I like to think about multiple universe theory and how I would always think of all those multiple universes as being a part of The Universe, because The Universe consists of everything, regardless of how much scientific sense that does or doesn’t make. That’s just me being potentially illogical and maybe stubborn, but a big part of my practice is using theory that interests me and using it to create whatever I want. I’m not so much interested in whether or not people understand my view of a universe as I am in creating a space for people to think about what their universe is in a more aware and fluid way. 

Why were you drawn to the möbius strip for some of your oil on inkjet paintings?

I’m just now remembering that the first time I saw a möbius strip was in a bracelet that my sister got when I was very young. It was just a silver band with the twist in it and she showed me explaining how it was symbolic of infinity. It’s funny because I don’t remember thinking about that at all when I first started using the möbius strip. The first piece I made involving a möbius strip was kind of a fluke, it was actually for an assignment while I was in undergrad. My favorite professor had us read Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman and gave us the assignment of “Time”. We didn’t have to draw from the book, but it really struck me so I made Vignette of Another Universe (time) thinking about these little vignettes of time, these tiny universes and theories of time that Lightman creates. I think the möbius strip came about because one the pieces that I found particularly beautiful was about a universe in which time was cyclical, so that form came to me.That piece also incorporates a meander that I found in the tomb of Galla Placidia in Ravenna; this was an important step for me because I realized that infinite forms and patterns were important to me. I was already attracted to the ellipse or vortex shape and I can see now that the möbius strip as a physical and mathematical model of something which seems paradoxical but also a form symbolic of infinity or eternity was a logical addition to my vocabulary and that’s why I think it’s stuck with me.

What does color mean in the Candidate Universes?  Is it random, or do you have a system? 

I have less of a system or systems of meaning than I do intuitive connotations and seemingly unconsidered fixations. I’m  weirdly a pretty rampant colorist when using color observationally which you wouldn’t think looking at my current work. Since I’ve moved away from painting observationally however my color preferences and choices have narrowed dramatically on their own. I think that when my goal is not to replicate a color situation but rather to create one I get kind of minimalist, doing more with less. The colors that make up my vocabulary are fairly arbitrary in that I don’t sit around and choose them in some sort of systematic way. Usually I start using a color when it becomes a part of my life in some way but I am also heavily influenced by a pigment’s historical and cultural usage or connotations. Cobalt got really trendy in fashion a few years ago while I was looking at a lot of European stained glass, ceramics, and ceiling frescos so cobalt or ultramarine shades became really important in my very cosmic or night images. The orange I’ve been using is a slight shift from the cadmium red I had been using for years, and all shades of pink became a big thing for me after spending time in Italy. Kelly green and a kind of acidy yellow are new on the scene. I don’t know where those come from so we’ll see how that goes.

What led you to create the Vortex series?  

I wish I had made a whole vortex series! For how much I’ve thought about vortexes, energy points, or weak points between dimensions and universes I haven’t actually made that many. The first drawing Vortex I had a lot of precursors that weren’t outright vortexes but kind of allusions to vortexes. Once I drew it I kept coming back to it but somehow I couldn’t seem to get more out of it than what I had already drawn. It was certainly the beginning of the elliptical shape as a kind of short hand for a vortex and later a universe. I only made one or two more over the next few years after that, it was like a touchstone, something to do when I didn’t know what to do. I think I knew that I had a shape but I didn’t have a structure or consistency for that shape and in some ways I think that’s what I’m doing now.

Tell us about Things I Didn’t Know I Know.

That painting has endured and stayed relevant for me in a way that few other pieces have. It’s really important to me because it felt like a sketch when I painted it in the summer of 2009, in fact I think I didn’t even like it very much, something about the colors seemed not to my liking. Anyway, I found it again going through old work when I was working on my undergraduate thesis. Suddenly it seemed like this was what I had been trying to say and achieve and it seemed so fresh and current to me. I couldn’t believe I had done it years before, it eventually made it into my thesis show even though it was from so much earlier. In any case I think when I painted it I was just looking for some way to talk about landscape in a way that felt like landscape and earth, but alluded to some sort of energy web or connectivity with the landscape as well. There’s a sort of incognito little figure in there that was meant to blend in with the ground, to be “tapped in” to the ground. I was beginning to fade the figure out of my work in order to move away from illustrating through the figure and move towards focusing on the structure of the forms and spaces that the figures interacted with.

What is the origin story for the works of The Event?  

 When I was making those pieces (which are in themselves a part of a larger body of work titled A Story I Do Not Know) I was working with the idea of a personal narrative and I was really interested in place which I had previously kind of ignored. While I think it was ultimately my own narrative metaphor for the fact that I was unsure where I was going, I was really concerned with the idea of getting at the kind of mythic feeling around a spiritual happening or event by highlighting the moment right before or right after something other-worldly was about to happen or had happened. I think I used to feel that I was making these discreet scenes from a journey whose purpose and linear story I didn’t know and that somehow I was only privy, or I only wanted the viewer to be privy to, snippits of it.  For about a year I was working through my ideas about narrative and my want to work narratively in a way that felt different to me and my work because I had always been told that my work was “illustrative”. The thing is when professors or other mentors critiquing my work used the term “illustrative” they were always unsure if they meant that positively or negatively, like they felt positively about the work but they were confused that they wanted to use the term “illustrative” in a positive light instead of a negative one. Unfortunately I think that led me to stick with this work a lot longer than I really needed to because I felt like I wanted to push back against this kind of ridiculous idea that illustration is somehow lesser or “easier” for both the artist and the viewer. Ultimately I think that the small watercolors that marked the end of that work are the most successful because they’re less concerned with the specificity and drawing of a place or moment and more concerned with the mythic element of the happening. In these works I was really fixated on a moment someone would make themselves light enough to levitate, a moment someone would dissipate their atoms to melt into the universe, and a moment in which I and all my parallel universe selves might gather.

How do you view the creative process, especially while dealing with themes of energy, time, and potential?  

I don’t think that what the work is about shapes my creative process so much as my creative process shapes my work. Things that are paramount to the process are pretty basic, like showing up to the studio on a regular basis and have ample time, space and materials. These kinds of things seem really material and unimportant compared to immaterial experience that most people expect the creative process to be, but I spend an immense amount time and energy ensuring those things. That being said, I do spend a lot of time in and out of the studio meditating on nothing at all, making lists of things that come to mind, and managing my own energy or state of mind so that I feel more capable of channeling something larger than myself. I often sit around searching the universe’s collective unconscious and my own for images by just allowing myself to connect or catalog new or saved images, either physically or mentally. This is the kind of process that usually ends with a sudden striking image or idea that comes seemingly out of nowhere and then I will go and make it, often many times until I get the material manifestation right. I think ultimately I view the creative process as a job where you have to show up, you have to be prepared,and you have to do certain things to get yourself to work; not as a mystifying process of genius outside your control.

Do you see similarities between contemporary physics and your own personal experiences?  

I think it’s not that there are similarities between my (our) experience in the universe and physics, so much as my (our) experience in the universe is physics. I’ve always remembered something my eighth grade science teacher said when she was explaining that atoms are mostly air. The fact that atoms didn’t have very much matter was something we’d heard before so we weren’t really impressed, but then she said “so when you think of yourself as sitting in your chair right now, you’re not so much sitting on a surface as your atoms and the atoms in the chair’s surface can not occupy the same space and since both your atoms are mostly made of air you are ever so slightly levitating on the chair.” I think it struck me then as this incredible thing that we know only because we care to see beyond our immediate scale of experience, but I think it’s stuck with me because the more I thought about it the more I loved thinking about how the air on the outer part of my atoms is constantly mingling with the air on the outer part of the atoms of everything I interact with. 

In a deeper way I see a lot of my personal practices in theoretical physics when I read about how some physicists are starting to theorize that the consciousness or intention of a being can actually shape or alter matter and can create variation in atomic and molecular ground state energies. This is essentially the parallel physical theory to ideas found in countless ideologies that involve what they would say is moving your energy, or raising the vibration of the magnetic energy field your body creates. A lot of what I think about is grounded both in what people have thought about the way that consciousness and intention manifest themselves in us and connect us but also what physicists theorize about how our universe is shaped around us and our consciousness. Those things are very closely linked for me. 

 Do you ever dream of universes?

I almost never remember my dreams! It’s a sad story. 

What does the concept of recurrence mean to you as an artist?  

I think that ideas of or around recurrence are so basic to me as a person that I don’t even really think about it as a concept that I apply to my work, just like something that is always there. “What goes around comes around” was a pretty big part of my upbringing and I used to imagine that I was on some sort of invisible circular track that I would push things out along and then they would slowly make their way back around to me. In a really basic way it comes up in the fact that I will make the same things, the same figures, the same shapes, for years. I have things that I’m still working with in some iteration or another that I started working with in early high school, and I’ve always been that way in my making process. In less literal ways I think it shows up in my work because I really resonate with ideas of infinity, eternity, and reincarnation. I think about cycles and loops and milky ways being elliptical and all these things that speak to elliptical existences and all of that makes it back into the work even if I’m not consciously working towards ideas of recurring events or themes. 

What are you reading, listening to, watching, and thinking about recently?     

I’m about to embark on The Culture of Curating and the Curating of Culture(s) byPaul O’neilland I’ve slowly been working through Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time forever. Things I’ve read pretty recently that have been really important to me are Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino, The Intention Experiment by Lynne McTaggart, and Einstein’s Dreams by Alan Lightman, as I mentioned earlier. I also obsessively read the Free Will Astrology horoscopes in Baltimore’s City Paper because they are really excellent at not really being horoscopes but being really wonderful to read.

I pretty much exclusively listen to WNYC’s Radio Lab in the studio, I think it’s really awe and wonder inducing and it makes me feel really good about everything being perfect which is a great place to be in the studio. Sometimes late at night or when I really need to be transcendental I like to listen to William Basinki’s Disintegration Loops. In a hilarious cross over of my interests Radio Lab’s episode on Loops features William Basinki. 

I love movies so much, and I watch a lot of them but weirdly I don’t think they influence my work in a very tangible way. I’ve been watching a lot of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos in the studio because it’s so beautiful and makes me want to hold hands with the whole universe. Everything Carl Sagan says is just so dreamy and inspiring. The other thing I watch a lot in the studio are TEDtalks, I listen to them in the background more than watch them I guess. A good one about candidate universes is Stephen Wolfram’s Computing a Theory of Everything. Some other great ones are Elizabeth Gilbert’s Your Elusive Creative Genius, Briane Greene’s Making Sense of String Theory, Shawn Achor’s The Happy Secret to Better Work, Richard Dawkins’ Why the Universe Seems so Strange, and one of my all time favorites is John Hodgeman’s Love, Aliens - Where are They?

Maybe because all of these things make me think about my intangible existence I find myself interested in creating sculptural or semi-sculptural works these days. So I’ve been thinking a lot about the kinds of objects that I think are missing from my life and how to make them.

What upcoming works and projects can we look forward to?

 I have a few projects with some other artists going and some things of my own to release soon. My boyfriend Ricardo Contreras and I have a collaborative body of work titled A Glimpse Through bringing together his photographs and my collage practice to create the moments when one universe bleeds into another one like visual interference or static. My friend and talented printer Ian Jackson are starting a collaborative body of prints; right now we’re thinking very large which is exciting. I’ll be releasing a very limited edition zine Letters to Ghosts very soon and I’m working on a more involved publication that I can’t really talk about right now, but there will be whispers in a few months! (it’s just me, I’m the one who will be whispering) Last but not least, I’m always working on my own work and you can check my website and my sketch blog for new works or get updates by joining my mailing list on my website.

Oriol Angrill Jordà on Liszt, colors, and drypoint.  

Tell us a little bit about your artistic background.

I can’t say that I’ve always known what I would like to be when I grew up. I guess it was more like choosing what I did best. I was not a good student at all so I spent more time staring at light and shade than listening to the teachers…(kids, do not do this at school).

I began to undertand my path when I was 17 at the Artistic Bachelor. I only knew that the thing I did best was drawing and that I should keep on this artistic path. I began Illustration at “Escuela Superior de Diseño de las Islas Baleares” where I found a motivating team of friends and great teachers as well. I was 19 when I realized the path I wanted to walk on.

After that, I was completely immersed in the art world, learning new technics to apply to drawings, learning about artists, and also trying to understand what Art means to me.

What’s the inspiration behind the Wildlife series?

The first Wildlife’s artwork was Campanella Wildlife made in London. This first artwork was a proposal for an exhibition dedicated to a classic composer called Franz Liszt from whom I had never listened to anything before. While I was listening to the whole of his music, I felt something amazing with one special song that made me mentally travel to a cold dark forest surrounded by high bushes and tall trees, hearing a vast variety of wild animals…I didn’t feel afraid at all, just ready to meet them all. The song was called Campanella.

Could you tell us a little bit about color and what that means to you and what it means in your drawings?

Means a lot. I had never used color when I started Illustration, where a great teacher made me try it and lose the fear of it. I didn’t feel comfortable with it. I’m really bad using colors, I think I badly blend them all. I’m certainly sure there are two kind of artists; the ones who have good coincidences at random and the ones who don’t. You should try watercolors to understand what I’m talking about. However, the more I use it the more I like it. It changed my whole life, because I was really depressive, tired and negative before and now I’m the other way round. Colors make me (quite) positive.

Your drypoints are amazing. It’s rare these days to stumble upon practicing artists who are also etching - how did you get involved with the drypoint process?

I was living in London the last year to learn english (I take the opportunity to apologize for my mistakes) and I applied to an etching course in Central Saint Martins College. I found out a very awesome technique that it is astonishly amazing. Pure magic. I really recommend it.

And I think it’s not that rare. Lot of people use it but the problem I think is that it has not the value it deserves because buyers pay for each unique piece, not for copies.

Drypoint has the possibility to become a unique piece in each print, though. Everytime you print it, you put oil on it and even if the lines draw on the plate would be exactly the same on each time, the paint/color you add won’t be exactly as you did before. Besides, you can use completely different colors and also add new lines or even paste fabrics on it.

What upcoming projects and shows do we have to look forward to?

Actually, I’m preparing for a huge project for a well-known gallery in Mallorca by May 2013. It’s a good coincidence you asked me about the drypoints because I thought no one really realised that I worked with it.. I’m glad you like it. I just can tell you that I want to use drypoint with a new technique and it will be entirely new work, in very big sizes too. I’ll be showing some detail photos during the progress on my facebook fanpage. 

We had the pleasure of interviewing Gala Bent for Open Lab’s Minimalist Issue last year, and this month we got a chance to catch up with her and her numerous new projects.  

Tell us about the “Contemplation” drawings you’ve been doing recently.

Some my recent focus has been on the idea of the internalized landscape—one that is not based as much on observational copying or photographic representation, but on a sense of visceral recall. I have what feels like a nutritional need for wilderness, and so have spent countless hours just walking, looking and thinking/praying outside. Even though I am clearly influenced by other examples of drawing in history, I like to think I’ve learned a lot about how to see and draw by all of this staring. I have been peeling back only the first couple layers of Chinese landscape painting in order to find out whether my practice might echo or mirror the practice of painter-monk-scholars, whose wandering around Mountains and Water (shan shui) in contemplation might have a link to my own wandering and staring. On one hand, there is such a vast gap in time and geography between a Song Dynasty painter and me. On the other, it’s satisfying to think about the fact that these painters had skin and eyes and feet that were reacting to rock and tree and cloud, not at all unlike what I’ve spent my life doing. One other side is that even though I do take all of this really seriously, I’ve never passed well as a contemplative with a straight face. At some point, cartoonish slips always seem to sneak in.

Your animations are awesome!  How did this project come about?

My husband Zack and I have done some freelance work over the years for Asthmatic Kitty records, and I really loved the music of one of their musicians, Roberto Carlos Lange, who lives in Brooklyn and records under the name Helado Negro. I pitched the idea of making an animation for one of the songs on an album that was going to be released. I worked on two songs for him. One was released (Obra Uno), but the other didn’t quite work out in time for the song. Roberto offered to score the other animation that I’d worked on—a sort of reverse volley. His sound for the piece that became BioGeologia really cinches it for me. That collaboration has had good legs, showing in festivals from France to Greece, from Seattle to Indianapolis to Lexington, Kentucky.

Any more animations in the works?

Yes, I’m working on another video for a different band, to be revealed in the next month or so! I’m interested in exploring approaches to get my drawings moving. I have felt for a good while that my drawings are like film stills. So often, something is falling or floating or disintegrating, spilling or smoking or leaking.

You mentioned you had some upcoming events.

Here are some things that are coming up for me in the next months:  

ELLES: SAM Gallery, Seattle Art Museum Gallery (Oct 25- Dec 1, 2012)
Homage to Elles, G.Gibson Gallery (Oct 4- Nov 10, 2012)
End of the World, Compound Gallery, Portland, OR (Dec 2012)
Venn Diagram Show, Curator Lori Gordon, San Francisco, CA (2013)

Interview with Steven Russel Black about upcoming projects, his many on-going series, and his new book featuring 100 reproductions of his “100 Souls” drawings.    

What’s your artistic background?

I was raised in the southeastern city of Cambridge, Ohio near the Appalachian Mountains. There’s not much to do there, so I lived in my head - I read comics and drew all the time. My high school art teacher, Michael Seiler, got me into life drawing classes all four years while I was there. That was really a huge leg up at an early age. From there I attended Columbus College of Art & Design where I split my time between comics, illustration, and fine art. After leaving CCAD, I spent a few years being really unproductive, so I moved to California for a new start. Go west, young man…and all that…ha ha.

How did your “100 Souls” project come about?

I just wanted to make a start. The subject could have been anything - that didn’t really matter. I love drawing eyes, so I started there. What did matter to me was to craft them in such a way that showed I cared and have that translate into a connection with an audience. Everything I’ve managed to achieve since I started the project on September 7, 2011 I owe to those little eye drawings and hard work. This article is nice since it will be exactly a year since I started working in earnest.

How do you find time to maintain your obsessive “drawing a day” series? Your work ethic is astounding.

Thank you. Working hard is caring in my eyes. The truth is - sadly, I had to put the series on hold for now. I have made several attempts at keeping it up - the first one lasting the longest at 75 consecutive days. It’s really a special series to me, but work and other responsibilities have made it next to impossible to keep it going. I hope to one day quit the day job and have time to do it all. Comics, illustration, and fine art…the visual triple crown!

What upcoming projects and events do we have to look forward to?

After a successful KickStarter campaign, my “100 Souls” project will be a printed book coming out in September 2012. Look for it on Amazon.com and NSNArt.com

My new small works series is “Lip Reader; A Dialogue Without Sound“. It’s similar to the “100 Souls” in size, materials, and price point. You can find those for sale at NSNArt.com

I am in the group show “Trees” on Sept. 22, 2012 at Creative Framing & Gallery in Oakland, California. 

My first solo show will be opening on November 2 , 2012 at Framecrafters Gallery in Greenbrae, California. framecraftersgallery.com

I’m really active on Facebook and always post new work, links, and info there. 

Gorgeous graphite drawings and interview by Stefan Zsaitsits 

 Tell us a little bit about your artistic background and the contemporary art scene in Austria. 

To be honest, i don´t know much about the contemporary art scene in austria. I´ll try to stay in touch with my gallery in vienna and visit a few recommended exhibitions but thats it. Staying up to date with the scene itself isn´t my thing and not that important for my own work.

Since when I was a child I loved drawing and painting pictures. I realized pretty early that this was my favorite thing to do in life.  My family has no big artistic history or background but always supported me and my passion.

What prompted the switch from painting to drawing?

I always preferred painting much more than drawing. But two years ago i found myself  painting over the same picture again and again. I struggled, wanted too much and didn´t come to a satisfactory result. I wanted to free myself from my expectations on painting and started drawing.   

What are the benefits of a more sensitive material like graphite compared to paint?

To me it´s the most puristic way of expression in visual arts. A pencil, a paper is all i need. Even if it is hard to compete against the sensual characteristics of oil color, the restriction on lines and shades of grey are making it more interesting to me. 

  Tell us a little bit about the process for making your  “head” drawings. 

It starts with an idea in my head which i´m trying to bring on paper. Sometimes i suceed and on other times i overdraw my first idea, start with a new one, erase it again until the paper tears up and work on it until it´s good for me.  

What are you influenced and inspired by recently – music, books, film, art etc. 

Music had always a great influence on me and my works, but i get most of my ideas by daily life.

What kinds of projects and shows do we have to look forward to? 

I´m still focussing on my drawings and there´ll be a show with my new works in spring 2013. Besides that i´m working on a book-project in cooperation with the austrian writer Barbara Frischmuth which will be published in october.

I have a few new large pieces in the works, I haven’t had much of a chance to work on them lately because I’ve been doing so many group shows and smaller commission pieces.  Hopefully within the next few months I’ll complete the two large pieces I have in my studio! I have a piece called “Time in Captivity” that I am working on, it is 54” by about 60” I believe. I have actually been working on it for over a year because I’ve been so busy with small works I haven’t been able to finish it. It features a crouched human figure, wearing large bird skull mask, out of which branches and flowers grow and bloom, and hummingbirds are tangled in those branches. A wing comes down from his shoulder, sloping out of where his arm should be. All around him are bird cages, some empty, some containing fluttering hummingbirds. The hummingbirds are what give the piece it’s title, “time in captivity”, because in many cultures hummingbirds are considered to be symbols of Time, or the keepers of Time, they represent the ability to move through Time at will, back and forth, because of the way they can hover in the air. In this large piece they are held captive, caged and tied, some being devoured, because we are all desperate to keep Time or to stop Time, to go back to when we were young or to travel to an age we feel we would better fit in. It is the impossible dream to control what cannot be stopped, the powerful and intangible force that is time. 

I have one other very large piece in my studio, it is just in the early stages, parts of it haven’t even been inked in yet, and it does not have a title yet. The piece is 54” by 73” inches approximately, it features a human woman with the head and forelegs of a doe, sitting beneath a tangled flowering tree. The human figure is slightly larger than life size, to fit the head of the deer on her shoulders. Behind her a vast plain spreads out, and massive bees flit about the tree behind her. I don’t know when this piece will be done, I am so busy with commissions right now I haven’t had a chance to touch it in weeks, but I am truly looking forward to completing it. I love to work large, though they take a great deal of time to finish with all the detail work I put into them. It is challenging because to make a living I have to create smaller works, and since I do a great deal of group shows there are usually size limits for the pieces put in. I spend a lot of time creating tattoo designs and album covers for clients, which is fantastic work, but it doesn’t leave me much time to do my personal large scale work. Another difficulty is framing, which is very, very expensive for such big pieces, but since I work on paper it is necessary to protect them. Since they are so large, once they are framed they can really only be moved with cargo vans! 

Are works like “Roseate Dusk,” “Ghosts from the Flood Pain” and “The Last Gorgon” directly influenced by particular environmental disasters, or more subtle warnings?  

A little bit of both, these pieces were inspired in part by some of the natural disasters we’ve had in recent years; the earthquake and tsunami in Japan and the resulting nuclear melt down, the destruction caused by hurricane Katrina, the tsunami in Indonesia, etc. However they are also meant to reflect on environmental issues in a more symbolic way, mainly the destruction of wetlands across the country. Swamps and marshes have long since held a kind of mystical position in the human psyche, a place of magic, horror and change, a secret lair the witches and wild folk, fairies and prehistoric monsters alike. This mythical appeal is perhaps due to how inhospitable they are for humans, we cannot easily build houses or roads within them, and marshes tend to be treacherous to traverse, full of hidden sink holes, shifting land masses and waterways, not to mention swarms of insects. It is also perhaps because of their strange denizens, muskrats and mosquitoes, alligators, snakes, bizarre amphibians, night herons and waterfowl, catfish and newts abound in the strange mixture of land and water. 

I also believe that wetlands have such a mystical pull because of their in-between nature; they are transient, ever shifting somewhere between land and water. There is something powerful about this ability to be uncharted, to change so swiftly with the changing weather. 

Marshes and swamps across the country are being filled in and developed, and we are losing many rare species as a result, and damaging our already vulnerable coastlines. The loss of marshes along the coast leaves towns and cities more open to damage from storms and hurricanes, as marshes act as a buffer to the sea in rough weather, taking in the excess water much better than say a city suburb can.  The loss of habitat has crippled many populations of migratory waterfowl, rare amphibians and fish, as well as unique mammals and crustaceans dependent on these fragile ecosystems. As it is we are losing marsh and swamp lands at an unprecedented rate as human development expands ever outward, and people demand ocean side and lakeside views for their new homes, without regard for what is lost. The bottom line is that there is money to be made filling in wetlands, and building new waterfront develops is great business if you don’t mind the threat of having your new development literally sink.  

These paintings also allude to all of these issues, both natures violence with water in the form of floods and hurricanes, and the violence of mankind against our fragile water ways. Water is a powerful and valuable resource, it is essential to life, and it holds a mystical potency in the collective human psyche. We want to live near water, we are drawn to it, we need it and desire it, and yet we destroy and pollute it in the process of drawing near. 

What kinds of projects and shows do we have to look forward to?  

I have a few group shows coming up this fall and winter, I have a piece up in a show “Pigment Deficient” right now at Jinxed in Philladelphia, that show is up until October. I have a piece up as part of the “Blood” show at WWA gallery open until September 22nd as well.

 I will be in a show at Fine Grime in London called “Milk”  opening November 4th, a group show with the PRISMA artist collective I’m a part of. I have another group show called “Glass, Thorn and Cinder”, an all female artist show that is fairy tale themed opening this November as well at 323 Gallery. I will be putting 4 to 5 pieces together for a small group show at Thinkspace Gallery opening February 9th, and another piece for “The Animal In Me”, another PRISMA collective show opening on February 15th at Subtext in San Diego. 

I also just completed illustrating the Lilac Fairy Book by Andrew Lang for Folio Society, that book should be coming out this  fall/winter. 

I am currently working on putting together a t shirt company in my non existant free time haha, with the help of a very talented graphic designer who is a friend of mine. The company is called “Fabled Apparel”, and will feature shirts using my artwork, the website and products should be up and out by this November/December.