Monthly Archives: May 2014

This is the twenty-ninth in a series of interviews with each of the Sondheim Award Semifinalists. Finalists have been announced, and will be on exhibit at the Walters Art Museum June 21 to August 17; those not selected as finalists with be exhibited at the Decker, Meyerhoff and Pinkard Galleries at MICA  July 17 to August 3, 2014.

Name: Leah Cooper
Age: 46
Website: www.leahcooper.com
Current Location: Hampden
School: MFA from MICA (2009), BA, Studio Art from University of Maryland College Park (1989)

What is your day job? How do you manage balancing work with studio time with your life? I work as an Academic Advisor for MICA undergrads and teach an occasional course there as well. Balancing work, studio time, life?  Not sure I’ve always felt successful in doing this, but recently, and going forward, my intent is to minimize the ways in which I perceive them as separate entities and begin to consider each as part of a whole.

How would you describe your work, and your studio practice? As an artist who is captivated by the everyday, my focus often narrows to the smallest of cracks on the sidewalk and the faintest of shadows on the wall. Through the exploration of unnoticed properties of the everyday, I aim to formulate work that examines an expanded notion of drawing, questions the edge of perceptibility, and reconsiders the role of art object in relation to audience.  Within these investigations my intent is to produce work that yields questions rather than asserts conclusions. Thus, the effectiveness of my practice is bound to the quality of my questions.

I find art production at the intersection of theory and practice an intriguing and demanding way of working. Questions arising from theoretical studies are articulated in the artwork; resulting products are then examined and mined for further questions.  Although reflexive, this dialogue between idea and object is not insular. Rather, I attempt to maintain an open approach, centrifugal in nature, generating inquiries at the edge of current methods and disciplines.

The preceding described my ‘work’, but as an installation artist I often find defining or describing my ‘studio practice’, for others as well as myself, a bit more problematic.  For me research and physical production of the artwork are equally ‘studio practice’ and for that reason my actual studio space is often seemingly austere, not always a place of ‘making’. When there is physical making, minimal evidence exists: paper, pencils, eraser shaving all are visible, but when the production gives way to study, the space loses any trace of the ‘artist’s studio’ and resembles, or more accurately, IS an office.

What part of art making to you like or enjoy the most? The least? Occasionally, there are moments when I realize that I’ve lost track of time; hours pass without any awareness of duration. I savor these instances. Although, I would describe myself as pragmatic and analytical to a fault, I ascribe a rather romantic notion to such an event; I believe these occurrences, where time seems to collapse, are moments where the space between what I’m doing and who I am has also collapsed.

The source of these episodes are varied; working on an installation, debating an idea with a fellow artist/thinker, renovating my house, and even rearranging items on a shelf.  It is this loss of time that I find to be the most fulfilling part of creating.

Do you ever get in creative dry spells, and if so, how do you get out of them? Of course, there is an ebb and flow to my practice.  I move through lean times by accepting them as periods where ideas may be more dormant.  This has not always been the case; in the past I’ve resisted the idea of lying fallow and struggled each time I didn’t find myself headed to my studio to ‘work’. However, more recently, I have begun to contemplate the idea that perhaps my mental boundaries of what I consider to be my practice need to be expanded or perhaps even dismantled.  A little over a year ago I renovated a large portion of my home.  During that time, I had no studio; it became a victim of the rehab. As a result I felt my practice was ‘on hold’. It was only after the project was complete that I began to reflect and recognize that the very same ideology, questions, and aesthetics that drive my work were also clearly evident in the space I had created in renovating my home. These elements are with me when I walk down the street or hike through the woods. Yes, once again I find the pragmatist in me at war with the romantic, but in this case it is my analytical side that prevails.  How I experience the world is what drives the questions in my practice. If my work questions the overlooked often extraordinary properties of the everyday, then it follows that I would find my ‘practice’ in the everyday and allow portions of my everyday to be included in what I consider my art practice.

What is your dream project? To spend a full week at Walter de Maria’s the Lightning Field, using varied applications of site responsive drawing to reiterate the ‘landscape’ he created.

This is the twenty-eighth in a series of interviews with each of the Sondheim Award Semifinalists. Finalists have been announced, and will be on exhibit at the Walters Art Museum June 21 to August 17; those not selected as finalists with be exhibited at the Decker, Meyerhoff and Pinkard Galleries at MICA  July 17 to August 3, 2014.

Name: Aharon Bumi
Current Location: Baltimore
Hometown: Montreal, Quebec
Previous Education: University of King’s College; Cambridge University

How would you describe your work, and your studio practice? Over the last several years, my interests have been oriented around questions of making, working, and building. For me, this has been a way of acknowledging, or perhaps simply imagining, the various codes in which an artistic practice is implicated. What is the space of our working and thinking? And how is it constructed, reconstructed, deconstructed over and over again? In the studio, I tend to pursue these kinds of questions at multiple levels –with larger projects offset by small material experiments.

What part of artmaking to you like or enjoy the most? The least? I like the moments of drawing with purpose – when an idea (a motif etc.) starts to take shape on a page. I dislike the moments associated with “wrapping up” the work – the showing and the telling, the web-life of the thing, the repeated and perhaps unavoidable return to professional practices.

What research do you do for your art practice? Very often, the research consists of holding onto a particular moment in somebody else’s work – a motif, an image, an aspect or particular part of an image, etc. – and keeping it close by. I’ve met writers who say that they sometimes walk around with a specific book in their pocket – not so much to read it as to re-imagine its contents. . . I think my research operates similarly.

Do you ever get in creative dry spells, and if so, how do you get out of them? Yes, for sure, always and repeatedly. By now, it seems like a cycle of necessary contractions. When it happens, I tend to pack up my things, and move for a while into other ways of working and thinking. That time, however long, allows me to come back into a new set of working conditions.

How do you challenge yourself in your work? For a long time, I have been interested in the way that artists consciously restrict themselves to various sets of working parameters. Most recently, these include people like Lygia Clark, Dorothea Rockburne, Al Taylor and Roni Horn. For all of these people, the serial nature of their work represents a kind of repeated investigation into a particular set of materials. At the moment, I think I tend to challenge myself in a similar way. One part of me proposes a field of limitations. And the other part tries to extend these limitations through various experiments.

What is your dream project? I recently met someone who was working in an aeronautical lab with a 40 foot simulated wind-tunnel. After we met, I fantasized about making a work in the wind-tunnel.  Undoubtedly, I am misunderstanding what the space looks like.

This is the twenty-seventh in a series of interviews with each of the Sondheim Award Semifinalists. Finalists have been announced, and will be on exhibit at the Walters Art Museum June 21 to August 17; those not selected as finalists with be exhibited at the Decker, Meyerhoff and Pinkard Galleries at MICA  July 17 to August 3, 2014.

Name: Martine Alicia Workman
Age: 34
Website: www.martinealicia.com
Current Location:  SW Waterfront, DC
Hometown: Lake Bluff, IL (born in Cumberland, MD)
School: California College of the Arts

Current favorite artworks & other things: Christian and Islamic illuminated manuscripts, Japanese woodcuts and Ehon books, ephemera, early American newspapers, Agnes Martin, Albrecht Dürer & Amy Gerstler

What is your day job? How do you manage balancing work with studio time with your life? I do graphic design and illustration, but right now I’m taking care of my newborn son full time. I’ve also worked in a bakery, and worked as a caretaker for the elderly. If I can’t make it to the studio, I’ll draw in my sketchbook and think about new projects. All of my work first takes shape in my sketchbook.

How would you describe your work, and your studio practice? I make works on paper and artist’s books/zines rooted in drawing. My practice is project based and changes depending on what idea I’m pursuing, although every project begins in my sketchbook.

What part of artmaking to you like or enjoy the most? The least? I love the process of making art, and I’ve always loved to draw. I love making messes and I hate cleaning up. I’m trying to get better at the administrative side of being an artist.

What research do you do for your art practice? I enjoy research and am always trying to learn something new; sometimes it makes it into my work and sometimes it doesn’t. I ask my artist and librarian friends for opinions/help and use the internet. I have collected a bunch of books for my own library I refer to often.

What books have you read lately you would recommend? Movies? Television? Music?TV: I love murder mystery shows and will play them while I’m assembling books or doing production work. Murder, She Wrote and Moonlighting are my favorites but I will watch any mystery show! Music: I’m a huge Prince fan and enjoy soul music. Movies: Pedro Almodovar is my favorite director. Books: I have a newborn son, so I’ve only been reading baby books for a while… Happiest Baby on the Block is pretty great!

Do you ever get in creative dry spells, and if so, how do you get out of them? During dry spells, I’ll do production work, make lists of practical things to do(application deadlines, research/order new materials, etc) and I’ll read a lot and do research on a new topic of interest. I don’t actively try to get out of them, since my work has ebbs and flows that are equally important to me.

How do you challenge yourself in your work? I push myself to learn something new with every project. This is easy to do in the research phase of a project, but can get frustrating when materials or techniques aren’t working out the way you hope they will.

What is your dream project? An artist book with an unlimited budget and large staff at my disposal is a total dream!