Setting Up the Shot
Mystery of the Lost Tiger
Please give a brief Bio
I was born in Colorado, and with the exception of a few years in Seattle when I was very small, I lived all of my early life in Boulder, Colorado. Boulder is a place that is totally defined by the mountains. Everything is in relation to their massive size. Everything that was grand or majestic when I was small made me think of the mountains; for instance my earliest memories of listening to Beethoven symphonies on my parent’s stereo.
We traveled a bit when I was a kid – when I was ten my parents sold our house and we spent three months in Europe – all with the idea of living overseas – but the job never materialized and we returned to Boulder. I left in 1982 to go to the Kansas City Art Institute in Missouri.
How and when did you become inspired to be an artist?
My mother encouraged me from the very beginning to draw. I’m an only child, and I spent a lot of time alone, and it was a natural way for me to entertain myself. It was always part of who I was. Later I wrote plays and short stories, and adapted one of my favorite books into a play which I tried to stage, and have my friends perform in, in both the 4th and 6th grades. I had a great friend who designed beautiful costumes for the second attempt.
It was always who I was, and the thing that I gravitated towards.
What or who were the influences for you when you were young?
Both my parents had friends who were artists, and we had lots of paintings and prints. My parents are both creative – my father is more literary, I guess, but they both have a highly developed set of very personal ideas about what they like to look at, listen to, read etc. Both are enthusiastic about what they love, and highly opinionated.
My mother would become possessed with very strong visual inspirations and her intense pursuit of them had a powerful affect on me. She could see relationships between disparate objects, and she knew how to find harmony and tension in arrangements of all kinds. I remember when she bought a white Parson’s table for our living room – I was about four years old – and how its clean minimal lines became the center piece of the whole room. At various times she would arrange different groups of things on top of it – dried weeds in various sizes, shells, antique doorknobs, small decorative engraver’s plates mounted on wooden blocks, Lucite boxes filled with chrome plated balls – just to name a few.
She loved Andy Warhol, and had a fantastic pop up art book made in the late 1960’s which probably would be worth something if it had been on a shelf and never opened but which I played with and loved. (And kind of wrecked, sadly)
She took me to museums and showed me how to look at the paintings in different ways. When I was really small she especially loved Lautrec, Modigliani and Klimt. She explained what the word “kitsch” meant. She provided me with a fantastic foundation to develop my own instincts.
In some ways, our sensibilities are really different – like my father, I am a reader. I like narratives, and am sort of old fashioned in my approach, but the invaluable gift I got from her was insight into how to follow a visual inspiration, and that is was completely okay to become obsessed with an idea, immerse yourself in it and see how plays out.
In addition to those very powerful influences, one of my parents’ best friends was an artist. He was highly critical and he tried to structure his ideas as well as his life into the most aesthetically pleasing forms. He lived in a small barn that he had converted into a living/studio space and everything inside this space was considered. He made color woodcuts as well as meticulously constructed collages.
When I was eleven he decided that he was going to work with me on a regular basis.
This ended up being kind of a failed experiment. In spite of this, I have countless memories from my childhood of his very particular sensibility that have stayed with me and that I have considered as I have made my own way. In many ways I ended up defining myself against what he taught me – his approach was very, very different from mine.
Both of my father’s younger brothers are artists. Although I always admired them greatly when I was small, it has really been during my adult life that I have gotten the most inspiration from how they chose to live and work.
Anyone who is reading this probably knows how incredibly difficult it can be to make a living and sustain yourself creatively. Both of my uncles have done so in very different ways, and solved that problem with impressive results. They both continue to create and make their own work, and they have a longstanding bond with each other. Sometimes they even work together commercially.
Describe where you work, and include a photo if possible.
Since the birth of my daughter in 2001 I haven’t had the ability to have a separate studio space. I made some large rigid drawing boards, and have all my drawing materials and everything I need in a totally portable and moveable state, and I basically transform my apartment when I need to (and when I can) into a useable studio space. My drawings tend can be largish – up to 50 inches, and I need space to be able to pace back and forth and look at them. When I had my show last October it was strange during the installation to be able to see them all together. In the year it took to make them I had never been able to do that.
It’s far from ideal, but it is what it is, and it works for me. Mila is so sweet, and is always very supportive. Even when they are in their earliest stages, and it’s difficult to see what they will turn into, she always says something to me about how nice they look. : -)
Are there certain mediums that you favor? What are they and have they changed to meet your different needs?
I have always loved the dramatic high contrast impact of black and white, both in drawings and photographs. For right now, charcoal gives me everything I need, and it’s inexpensive enough that I can feel pretty liberal about how much I use and how much I can play around. I’ve learned that having a sense of plenty is a key factor when it comes to making more challenging work.
For many years I lived across from an industrial scrap yard that was also home to several gigantic pyramids of used tires. (Some of these tires are in my drawings) I collected many scrap pieces of tread that were just laying on the ground from the enormous variety of tires stored there, and then used them over and over again, by coating them with paint and printing the treads on large sheets of paper. I did this with white house paint, and after printing I would rub loose charcoal across the paper and create all kinds of weird layers and strange shades of gray. I made several collages with these.
I often thought of Lester Goldman, one of my former professors, during this time. He would have loved the circus aspect of the scrap yard, the constant activity, and the way the truck drivers decorated and embellished their cabs. And I know he would have loved rolling the treads with paint and printing with them.
My favorite of all of these collages went to live in the house of an eye surgeon who was very, very particular. It really amused me that my messy depiction of a scrap heap was installed in such a pristine environment.
I still love paint, and working with color. But I’m taking a break for a while from all that.
Are there certain art activities that you remember doing as a child that were really enjoyable?
It would have to be drawing, because that was the easiest way to give form to the imaginary scenarios that I was always developing. All it took was any kind of pen and any kind of paper and I would be lost in my own head.
I vividly remember the first real set of markers that I bought for myself – I was about ten and I was so excited. It was a very large set – maybe 72 markers – and right away I separated all of the most neutral shades – grays, pale olives, browns, and shells – and only worked with those. I loved those pale colors together, and I had never had access to anything like that range of colors before.
Considering that you have an artistic spirit and have developed this gift how do you feel that you are passing this along to your daughter?
I was prepared for anything with Mila……….I wanted her to lead me in the direction of whatever she was interested in. It was wild to watch her draw with an intensity and self absorption that reminded me of myself. But we have worked together as well. She loves my digital camera – she concentrates intensely when setting up shots of her dolls – these are always stories she creates and then works to illustrate with photographs. I have helped her with these, making trees out of paper, holding lights, wiring dolls in different poses with fishing wire and tape for various shots. This grew out of making dioramas when she was about three or four. Some of these were so fantastic! I especially remember a clear plastic box that I had saved, which Mila filled with sand, rocks and plastic snakes. Then with pipe cleaners she made a strange knobby little tree, and drew a landscape on some dark blue paper for a backdrop. I added a tiny battery operated flashlight to the lid and it looked so wonderful, especially at night.
I like to think that I will be able to assist her, as long as she wants me to, in realizing her visions in whatever form suits her.
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