Interview with TYLER SPANGLER

q)Walk us through an intimate day in your life

a)I usually wake up early, around 6am. I will go to the end of my street and check the surf. If the waves are good I will grab a banana and go surf for a couple hours. After surfing I will make some black beans and spinach and start responding to emails. I then put on my headphones and start working for the rest of the day. If the waves are still good I will have another surf before dinner. I usually go to bed really early, like 930. 

q) Where did you grow up/where do you live now and how does that contribute to your art?

a)I grew up in Orange, California up until high school then moved to Huntington Beach where I finished high school. Surfing is my biggest influence moving closer was amazing. I just recently moved to Pacific Palisades and I love it even more. I can see the ocean from my workspace. I take the rich and vibrant colour palette of the ocean as my main inspiration. 

q) What is your earliest memory that propelled you to create?

a)I remember being fascinated by Ren & Stimpy, The Simpsons, and video games. I loved how something that someone created could have such a powerful influence. I initially started imitating and drawing cartoon characters. However, my drawings had a bit of a morbid twist to them, containing dismembered limbs and pools of blood. My teachers were not enthusiastic about it. I began getting into surfing and again being influenced by psychedelic art. Shortly after that, punk music and all of its appearance found its way into my work.  

q)Tell us a little bit about your creative process.

a)I like to give existing objects new meanings, a commentary on culture. My work has a colourful, nihilistic playfulness to it. I find textures that are intriguing to me and pair them with body parts to create a mood filled narrative. I dont like to do the same thing over and over so I find myself experimenting with patterns, typography, collage, and imagemaking to keep things fresh.

I love tearing things apart. When I work on a piece, I find that I create a majority of it only to break it into pieces and disconnect the forms suggesting an intended flow or movement. I am always listening to music while I design. I find that slow, repetitive, heavy music has the best effect on me.  

I cant sit still. If I am not working on a clients project, I am making something for myself. I am always reaching out to other artists and designers for collaborations because I think that sort of connections reveals a lot about myself and how I work as well as making an awesome friend. 

q) How do you wish for your art to be perceived?

a)I want people to be mesmerised. I want people to feel happy and introspective at the same time. I want my work to tell a story. I want people to view my work as a progressive journey. 

q)What do your internal dialogues sound like?

a)How can I fuck this up and make it beautifull. I love marrying harmony with chaos.


q)Do you feel that there are limitations to what you want to create?

a)Absolutely. I want to have my work on everything in the world. I am a bit overambitious. I want to see my patterns on airplanes, houses, bridges, sky scrapers, highway roads, everything. I dont think art and design should be limited to a gallery or a book. There are so many possibilities to spread beauty with art. 

q) Do you feel art is vital to survival and if so, why?

a)I think it is a great release for a lot of people. I couldnt imagine a world without art. People are always going to create something. Art to one person might be packaging milk cartons in an efficient way or how a chef prepares a dish. I think art is each persons way of doing something. So yes, I think art is vital to survival. 

q) Describe a world without art.

a)Homogenised blandness.

q)Tell us a secret, and obsession.

a)I dont have any secrets. I am obsessed with surfing and music. 

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)My website is the best option: www.tylerspangler.com It pretty much contains everything I’ve ever made.

Interview with Ryan Greenly

q) Walk us through an intimate day in your life

a) I’m much more of a night owl.  My evenings and nights are usually spent collecting.  I find myself collecting vintage books, scraps of paper, wood scraps, plants, flowers, etc. to create art.

q) Where did you grow up/where do you live now and how does that contribute to your art?

a)I grew up in a small agrarian town of 4,000 people in the hills of Pennsylvania.  I grew up with my hands in the dirt and reading William Blake and Ginsberg.  For one year I hitchhiked solo across the USA squatting, Dharma bumbing, committing Anarchy.  At the age of 21 I moved to Hawaii for 10 years, where I was surrounded by amazing natural beauty, not to mention the best surf.  Currently, I’ve been living in Taipei, Taiwan for 2 years.   I have a deep respect for Taiwanese culture and history. 

My hometown really influenced me in my regards to the imagery I use in my work.  Images of homeless friends, authors, hermits, and farmers.   Hawaii’s influence is where I became impressed with bright, bold color usage in my art.  Taiwan has only pushed me further because of the huge support and opportunity for artists here. 

q) What is your earliest memory that propelled you to create?

a)I think it began with my grandmother, my uncle, and my father.  My father built old air cooled Volkswagens and Porsches and would create these amazing paintings that were a cross between Pollock and 70/80’s Sci-fi fantasy paintings.   Artists like Peter Elson, Dan McPharlin, and Chris Foss.  My grandmother taught me to keep my heart low to the ground and keep my hands dirty, close to the soil and vegetables.  She truly showed me self-reliance and sustainability.  My uncle was a well-known local landscape artist.

q) Tell us a little bit about your creative process.

a)I’m a heavy researcher.  Authors, philosophers, and subversives fascinate me and it crosses over into my art making process.   It usually takes me a good hour to get into the “zone” for actual painting.   I rely heavily on a more instinctive or intuitive approach to design and layout.   I have a bit of an OCD with placement and literary connections.  Most of my collage material is actual photocopies from the reading that influences me the most in my general way of thinking.

When working on installations this could involve building actual structures and occupying them for long periods of time and creating a scene from found and made objects.  

With video and sound work I find I’m fascinated with the use of the loop and the act of reappropriating images and stories based around wildlife created in Hollywood.   It relies heavily on the contradictions and hypocrisies found in mainstream film.

The manifesto work is more done under the influence of literature; which delves in the areas of autonomy and the function of art, with a sort of tongue and cheek approach.

q) How do you wish for your art to be perceived?

a)I suppose; first, as aesthetically approachable and secondly, function as informational.

q) What do your internal dialogues sound like?

a)I’m at war with the disconnection of ego in painting and the overall function of art in society and it’s role or duty to the rest of society.  I’m fascinated by this sort of isolated, yet shamanistic ritual that every artist embarks upon; in his or her attempt to find something spiritual and unexplainable and then sharing or influencing society with the results.  There are two possible ways this exploration can be interpreted:  First, the need to withdraw from society to become comfortable with oneself.  Second, the return from isolation to share this knowledge with others.  Artists make the complete journey, both the withdrawal and the return.  The artist begs the question, “What is the most difficult of all things?” and simply answers, “To truly know yourself.”

q) Do you feel that there are limitations to what you want to create?

a)I’m at odds with art functioning as a commodity, limitations of size or material always seems to influence island art.  I tend to fall in the category of smaller artworks just because I have lived on islands for most of my adult life.  Things like shipping costs and storage become a factor.  But at the same time I loathe being held down by objects or “things” so this as well could result in smaller objects.  I also find a stronger intimacy with smaller paintings.

q) Do you feel art is vital to survival and if so, why?

a)Yes absolutely art is essential to survival.  Art must act as a tool for social change and enlightenment.   Art speaks of self-reliance and assurity.  Art has a greater purpose than merely to reflect reality and depict existing things.  The greatest theories that reflect on utopian societies were in themselves created in isolation, art to holds the same function.  It provides a deeper picture of what is possible.

To quote Thoreau in regards to Walden, “I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived.”

q) Describe a world without art.

a)It would have to be a world without creation or imagination.  A world without true hope.

q) Tell us a secret, and obsession.

a)I loathe American domestic and foreign policy.

q) Where can people see more of your work on the Internet?

a)At my website ryangreenlyart.com

Interview with Carl Heyward

q)For the people who don't know your work - how would you describe it ?

I am a mixed-media artist with an interest in juxtaposition of imagery and themes through various media; there is something appealing to me in the combination of fractured or fragmented images that coalesce into something new and different especially in that the "rough-edges" of the units have meaning

and can't be broken down any further as "morpheme" in language; these visual units are then put together with other, often dissimilar, morphemes producing something between the lines, so to speak; an alchemy beyond intention; the parts not distilled, but united with other units of visual meaning, information producing a higher plane of communication.

q)What are the key themes running through your practice?

Ethnicity, topical items, separation, exclusion, cultural absurdities, language-based gestures, art history what's in the news at the moment or on my mind; there is a great pleasure in improvisation which recalls my musical youth  playing in all sorts of situations, the most satisfying being jazz, space and ambient genres. Depending on the moment, the instrument, in the case of art, the paper, to guide; to be involved in the gesture and not an over-dependence on the brain; to trust self and the pure intention of involvement in the process to distill everything I know into nothing, newness, NOW toward a product that may be both beautiful and telling all at once.

q)Your favorite place on earth?

At the moment: the best of San Francisco (and that preference, unfortunately, dwindles moment to silicon moment); equally: Prague and Lecce, Italy (definitely)

q)What influences your work?

Time, feelings, joy, space, opportunity...Rauschenburg, Romare Bearden and Basquiat ...necessity.

q)What music are you into right now?

Always Miles; Henry Threadgill a composite tape FUNNY COLORED MONEY, Jack Bruce/Carla Bley: ESCALATOR OVER THE HILL, Eno.

q)Describe your thought & design process...

I like the vertical right side beginning...do not know why. When I began to commit to mixed media, I had (had) a reliance on geometry and division of space which guided the visual direction of a piece. These days, that process is probably ingrained and I am less conscience about the math (upon later inspection of a work-in-progress, however, that tendency seems to remain intact). I quiet the inner critic as best I can and bounce between a series of techniques to get the work done. Self doubt and the sheer ridiculousness of making art comes up a lot before, after, and during the process and I have learned to gently tell myself "do it", without judge and jury deliberating too much. It is exciting to shift the weight of self-criticism and carry on especially if from time to time the end result is satisfying.

q)Which emerging artists are you looking forward to seeing more of?

Katrien de Blauwer a great collagist from Belgium. She has the knack for synthesizing disparate photo elements, usually portraiture, into something far greater than the parts and tells an emotional truth powerful, surprising and disturbing about existence, desire and expectation. She is great.

Jeffrey Thompson, Lorna Crane, Akiko Suzuki, Kathleen Migliore, Joan Stennick Margaret Glew, Vered Gersztenkorn; all brilliant artists who lay claim to a unique vision and a committed practice.

q)Favorite place on the internet?

most visited is Face Book for reasons of "business", as well as Art News Daily, Black Art in America.

q)Do you have any upcoming projects/exhibitions we should know about?

Finishing up KNEE(jerk) Fragmentation (mail art) Project, which began in 2011 as a face book online process; attracted 500 artists from all over the world and has resulted in 3000 pieces of art mailed as one-for-one art exchange beginning with large original works, cut-up, fragmented and mailed to participants, repeated, with some echoing the process, others designing a single card (A5 or 5" x 7") and receiving one from submitted works or one of my fragments in return. This opened up many of the artists to work in a manner or medium unfamiliar to them, to play with an aspect of mail art, to collect work from diverse international artists and to create ongoing offshoot collaborations with artists that they would not have encountered otherwise. We have participant commomerative works for all, working on traveling exhibitions, participant catalog and limited edition book to document a fun and exhausting project.

q)Tell us something we don't know - but should...

Art makes it all worth while.

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

http://faprile.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/carl-heyward-corrispondenze-urbane/

http://ahiceglie.blogspot.it/2013/04/garage-21-carl-heyward.html

http://iltaccodibacco.it/puglia/eventi/78034.html http://faprile.wordpress.com/2013/04/12/carl-heyward-corrispondenze-urbane/ http://www.salentoinlinea.it/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5360&Itemid=41 http://spontaneouscombustionlanguageimagelab.wordpress.com/2011/12/25/eleven-notes-on-joan-stennick-carl-heyward-and-the-death-of-cy-twombly/ http://oggiarte.blogspot.com/2013/04/mostra-carl-heyward.html http://pictify.com/240528/homage-to-carl-heyward https://blogs.wellesley.edu/rare/2012/01/26/celebrating-black-history-month/heyward2/ http://highbrowmagazine.com/1618-art-carl-heyward http://books.google.com/books?id=X8ZPAQAAIAAJ&hl=it http://arteculturaok.blogspot.com/2013/04/carl-heywardbus-portrait.html http://www.artwork100.com/1/post/2013/02/i-am-very-pleased-to-announce-that-artwork100com-has-officially-launched-today.html http://www.apionline.org/citizenartist.html http://justanothermasterpiece.tumblr.com/post/37811672134/carl-heyward http://justanothermasterpiece.tumblr.com/post/31376429219/carl-heyward http://flcourier.com/2012/05/10/art-and-the-process-of-liberation/ http://altroaltrove.it/2013/04/07/carl-heyward-mixed-media/ http://altroaltrove.it/2013/04/07/carl-heyward-mixed-media/ http://www.rawwater.net/LaRawBlog/carl-heyward/ http://pinterest.com/pin/167829523586276507/ http://www.arteeluoghi.it/na/1146-mixed-media http://www.arteeluoghi.it/na http://ricerca.gelocal.it/repubblica/archivio/repubblica/2013/04/19/mostre.ba_031mostre.html http://oggiarte.blogspot.com/2013/04/mostra-carl-heyward.html http://new.wellesley.edu/sites/default/files/assets/departments/libraryandtechnology/files/wellesleyartistsbooks.pdf http://arte-bari.blogautore.repubblica.it/2013/04/26/3325/

Interview with Thierry Cauwet

q) Introduce yourself, name, age, location.

a)My name is Thierry Cauwet. I was born in 1958 in France. I have lived in Sèvres (Parisian suburb), 
Rome, Martinique, the island of Reunion and then in Paris...

q) Can you describe your path to being an artist? When did you really get into it?

a)I settled in Sèvres at the age of 17, in the squat of the "rue des Caves", where we founded a house of artists (which seems to be the first squat of artists in France) with painters, sculptors, photographs, writers, poets. Political claims and esthetical experiences went together. There I discovered the direct 
administration (auto-administration) and the relation of the individual to the group, with its richness, its
complexity and its limits. There I started my research around the body and its representation.

q) Describe your ideals and how they manifest in your work.

a)What motivated me at that time was the impossibility to leave aside the real body for whatever representation. "We want the world and we want it now" (Jim Morrisson). The real body thus imposed itself quite soon in my work. Video actions followed one after the other, filmed almost always in an empty room of the squat which served as a space of experimentation. Little by little, the actions gave place to immobility, the film to the photography and I created a series of living pictures.
After a period, long enough, of a work mixing presentation of the real body and pictorial representation, I created paintings without real bodies lying on them and I abandoned photography at that time as a medium. Since then, apart for some exceptions, I almost always paint bodies.

q) Is music a part of your studio time? What do you listen to ?

a)Yes music is very important to me when I work. Jazz mainly. I think my actual painting is a form of jazz.

q) How would you describe your work to someone?

a)Let us come back to the chronology, if you don mind. My passage from living pictures to the painting was accompanied by the discovery of a new world when I settled in Martinique in 1988. It was an important experience in my existence, it marked my life and my work. I discovered myself as a "crÈole" and I remained so, I think, in my own way. Gradually, during the following years until now, I developed one by one "pictorial functions". (I have just written a book with this title, published by Ulisse editions). Each "pictorial act" (or function) intervenes in a given moment of the painting making process. My painting is not idealistic, I don' t do sketches, nor projects. My painting is in this way very materialistic. On the other hand, my work wants to give account of a particular connection between plan and space, which for a long time I called "space guillotine", that is to say the cutting out into parallel plans. This is linked to a vision experience I had when I was 17 in the Parisian metro when, in a train, I had the very precise impression that everybody was flat, painted on a glass plan. I had for the first time maybe that day the impression to SEE

q) Influences ?

a)They are of course multiple !.

In bulk : the illuminations of the middle age (in particular the mozarabs), Matisse, the body-art and the Viennese actionists, Yves Klein, support-surface, François Rouan.
I also maintained a privileged dialogue with my Martinic friend Ernest Breleur. I think that we influence each other mutually, which is very stimulating and a great source of joy.

q) Describe your process for creating new work.

a)It would be too long. I refer you to my book "Les fonctions picturales", Ulisseditions.

 What advice do you have for artists looking to show their work ?

I have no advice to give except never to yield on the essential of their work for opportunism.

q) What are you really excited about right now ?

a)The Peinturie and here is the founder text.
"I/we, at the beginning of this year 2013, decide :
Your world is over, your countries are worn out, your frontiers are down-at-heel.
I/we declare found this day the Republic of the Peinturie, independent and autonomous nation.
The Peinturie does not recognize the right of ground, even less the right of blood.
The Peinturie has supple and moving frontiers. 
The frontiers of the Peinturie may be the carnal envelop or any other envelop susceptible to include one or several people. The Peinturie is in the world and out of the world.
The Peinturie is less to do with geography than with time.
The plan of Peinturie is supple and moving.
In each place you find yourself you can declare yourself painting, inhabitant full right of the Peinturie.
Every territory painting may be linked to the others by ties invisible or not, it is for each citizen to decide.
The Peinturie is the memory of the future and, curiously, it is also the future of this memory.
A better world has always been possible, which does not mean that it will come. The Peinturie is the refuge of this expectation.
The Peinturie is an ark, bad times are to come.
The Peinturie is protection, it is expectation, no hope in its territory.
The paintings may paint or not, it is their free will and the paintings painters have no more rights than the paintings who do not practise painting. If our country bear this name, it is because of the vessel the "Peinture" which helped us to discover it.
The Peinturie is not a state, as it has a soul, that is to say a movement.
The Peinturie is one or more animated bodies, conscious of their movement and of that of the other. The Peinturie is a dance.
The painting may have double nationality. We can be painting and French, Belgian, Iranian or from Central Africa. If the painting citizen draws a certain strength to live in Peinturie, he does not forget the fights for the emancipation and the liberation of the individuals in all the other countries of the world. From the oppression was born the Peinturie, which will not forget the oppress.
The Peinturie is not a lick of the real, it is its laboratory.
The Peinturie knows the power of money without believing in it.
The economy of the Peinturie is not based on money but on the libido, that is to say on the desire.
The Peinturie is a provisional nation. The whole painting federations have for vocation to gather in an international confederation of painting territories, the ICPT (or CIPT). We know that this is only possible after climatic disorders have provoked the ecological catastrophes foreseeable
because of actual irresponsibility of the nations.
The Peinturie, in view of this perspective and by strategic necessity requests its recognition by the United Nations Organisation".
T.C.

q) What do you love most about where you live ?

a)See previous question.

q) Best way to spend a day off ?

a)Alas ! I have less and less time to rest.

q) Upcoming shows/ projects ?

a)In June a show at the MaÎlle gallery in Paris and next year at the Alain Oudin gallery in Paris. The salon of the book in Paris and a festival of contemporary art in Brussels. Also the development of the activities of the group "humainternational" (Ernest Breleur, Jonathan Hecht, Thierry Cauwet). I would also like to have an expo with Jean-Louis Magnet and Yann Purcell.

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)www.thierrycauwet.com 
www.enseigne-des-oudin.com
and on Face book..

Interview with Andrew Lundwall

q)For the people who don't know your work - how would you describe it ?

a)I don’t think that it would be fair to describe my work, because I’d hope that it resonates with different people in more ways than one.

q)What are the key themes running through your practice?

a)I work in a very improvisational & intuitive way, so I don’t really create with a specific subject in mind. 

q)Your favorite place on earth?

a)Right now.

q)What influences your work?

a)This is something that’s very hard to put my finger on. A lot of things can happen in the course of a day that trigger me to want to create, it could be anything from the most mundane incident to a film I’ve watched or something that I’ve read.

q)What music are you into right now?

a)I’ve been on a bit of a jazz bender for the past month, especially recordings that feature Bud Powell, Eric Dolphy, Charlie Haden, or Max Roach in some capacity.

q)Describe your thought & design process...

a)Normally, I’ll start out with a few images that seem to correspond with each other in some strange way, then I tear or cut the selected images into fragments & rearrange until a piece feels like it makes some sort of sense to me.

q)Which emerging artists are you looking forward to seeing more of?

a)The emerging artists I’m looking forward to seeing more of are those that are featured Schematoscope, an FB-based blog of mine:
https://www.facebook.com/Schematoscope

q)Favorite place on the internet?

a)I don’t really have any favourite places on the internet.

q)Do you have any upcoming projects/exhibitions we should know about?

a)Not at the present time.

q) Where can people see more of your work on the internet?

a)My Facebook page:
https://www.facebook.com/andrew.lundwall
or my Flickr:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/alundwall/