This is the eighteenth 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: Sebastian Vincent Martorana
Age: 33
Website: www.sebastianworks.com
Current Location: Baltimore, Station North/Barclay
Hometown: Manassas,VA
School: Syracuse University, BFA, Illustration.   MICA, MFA, Rinehart School of Sculpture.

Current favorite artists or artwork?  Beth Cavner, Fabio Viale, Ron Mueck, Phil Hale

What is your day job? How do you manage balancing work with studio time with your life?  How would you describe your work, and your studio practice? After I graduated from Rinehart in 2008 I founded Atlantic Custom Carving, LLC, which is basically the trade name for my freelance and subcontracting work. I do carving, design, restoration, fabrication, consulting, etc. I work primarily in stone, but I also carve wood and do fine art restoration of sculpture in various media. Additionally, do a bit of freelance illustration and teach a couple of courses a semester in the Illustration Department at MICA.

About the same time I finished grad school and founded ACC, I began working with Hilgartner Natural Stone Company. They are the oldest stone company in the US and are located here in downtown Baltimore. I am basically their resident stone carver and I am able to hire them for the kind of things that I need assistance with. I’m lucky to stay pretty busy with commissioned work that comes to me directly and also through Hilgartner. I try to get as much of my own work done as I can in between jobs. However, my wife and I had our first child about a year and a half ago, so finding that time has become ever more difficult. I’m very fortunate that there is a lot of crossover between my “work-work” and my “art- work.” So my day job keeps me mostly in the studio, even if I’m not always working on my own concepts.

What part of art making to you like or enjoy the most? Hammer hitting chisel, hitting stone. The least?  Paperwork.

What research do you do for your art practice? The usual stuff, I guess. I do a lot of looking at things very hard and thinking about them. Because making a single large scale piece out of marble is a pretty big commitment, in terms of time and money, I really want to make sure that I am devoted to the concept. I need to be into it on a practical and conceptual level. I may do a lot of background reading if the art piece relates to other real word phenomena. Depending on the complexity and required precision, I might do sketches, drawings, technical and otherwise and full or scale models. I usually do lots of photography for visual reference.

What books have you read lately you would recommend? Movies? Television? Music?  I’d recommend Not in My Neighborhood by Antero Pietila to anyone that lives in Baltimore. Very enlightening. As far as music–actually fast, up tempo rock/punk. I think that people get the impression that stone sculptors listen to classical musical all the time, probably because of the soundtracks of ridiculous TV/movies montages, wherein the romantic artist knocks out a life size marble figure in a few delicately placed strikes. But that’s movie magic. Rocks are hard, so: hard rock just makes sense.

Do you ever get in creative dry spells, and if so, how do you get out of them? Honestly, no. Not because I’m so creative. But like most artists, I only have a limited time to work on my own sculptural ideas, and since every piece takes me so long to produce, I never catch up with the backlog of ideas that I would like to work on. I wish that someday I could get to the point where I got to do everything I thought of, but I suspect that if I did, I’d be disappointed.

How do you challenge yourself in your work? I try to do things that I’m excited about. I get really into trying to do something that I haven’t seen before. Often this involves material that is, in part, salvaged, or combining materials. Since I can’t buy this stuff at an art store, it doesn’t come with instructions, so the challenge is not only in doing something that is difficult well, but in figuring out how to do it at all. It can even be just a new and unique texture. That part is like being an impressionist painter. I’m not creating a replica of a thing, but an interpretation of a thing. It all starts with experimentation.

What is your dream project? I have been working on a series of pieces about and made from salvaged row home steps that came from razed neighborhoods. I have made some of these look like comfortable cushions based on the furniture in my own home. I would like to have the time and money to take salvaged stones from my own neighborhood and re-make a full stoop (2 or 3 treads and a landing set together) that was carved to look like an entire piece of soft, upholstered furniture. I would install it in a public place in the neighborhood that now has new construction, which lacks the historical marble steps. It would act as a proud and positive reminder of the buildings and people that used to exist here and call this place home. It could be a place where people could still sit and hangout on marble stair steps, even if their homes didn’t have them anymore, and take part in that aspect of Baltimore’s cultural history.

This is the seventeenth 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: Paul Shortt
Age: 32
Website: http://paulshortt.com
Current Location: Mt. Vernon, Baltimore, MD
Hometown: Floyd, VA
School: Kansas City Art Institute, BFA Painting, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, New Media

Please No Photos, 2012 Performance

Current favorite artists or artwork: Pilvi Takala, Ana Prvacki

What is your day job? Artist Registry Coordinator and Program Assistant at Maryland Art Place (MAP). The MSAC website and Artists’ Registry recently went through an upgrade, and I would encourage you to check it out and sign up. It’s a free resource for Maryland residents. As part of my job, I also run the Resource Bulletin for the state, which is housed on MAP’s website and has tons of regional, national and some international calls for art. I feel that part of my “job” as an artist is to create opportunity for other artists and contribute to the local art scene. I’m happy that my day job at MAP allows me to do that.

How do you manage balancing work with studio time with your life? Working part-time helps, in addition to having a very understanding fiancée. I’ve also found going to the gym everyday is a good way to decompress and stay focused. Much of my practice takes place in my notebooks or on my computer so I spend a lot of time in cafes. I spend about 70% of my time trying to get the work I’ve created out, proposing projects, or applying for grants, and the other 30% developing and creating new work.

How would you describe your work, and your studio practice? I keep a notebook of ideas that I constantly go back to and update. From there I usually discuss my projects with friends for perspective. Then I tend do drawings, mock-ups, test videos, and write about it more. I lot of time is spend figuring out what the best way to convey the subject matter is and what would be the best materials and media to create it. Then making it could mean sending a file off to be printed, spending hours in the studio to create it, or finding the right collaborators to make the performance or video happen.

What research do you do for your art practice? I tend to find as much information about a subject that I can, which means I end up reading a lot of non-fiction, and spending tons of time online.

What books have you read lately you would recommend? I just read Herzog On Herzog, which is an incredible collection of interviews with the filmmaker. Also Kippenberger: His Life and Work about the artist Martin Kippenberger. The book was written by his sister, who’s a journalist, and the first 100 pages really lay out the complexities of not only who he was but also the contradictions you can find in everyone. I also recently enjoyed Killer on the Road by Ginger Strand, which combines a history of the highway system with true crime to explore the realities and myths around the idea of the killer on the road. Movies? “How To Survive a Plague.” It’s heartbreaking but really shows how information and activism can bring about change and save lives. I also really enjoyed “The Lego Movie.” For a film that is about a product it does a good job of exploring rules, conformity, and creativity. Television? “Mad Men,” “True Detective,” “Parks and Recreation,” and “Community.” I’m also re-watching “The Wire” to see how many locations I can spot now that I live here. Music? Arthur Russell, Lonnie Holley, Idiot Glee, Tame Impala, Mark McGuire, Sam Cooke, The Swans, John Maus, Bill Callahan. My music taste is always evolving and changes depending on mood.

I would add: Radio: Fresh Air with Terry Gross. Favorite Coffee shops: Milk and Honey and Spro. Museum: I went to the BMA for the first time recently and loved the contemporary wing. They have a really incredible collection.

Smog, 2014, HD Video Still

Do you ever get in creative dry spells, and if so, how do you get out of them? Everyone goes through rough patches. I clear my head out by going to the movies, reading the New York Times, walking around thrift stores/antique shops/libraries, etc. I’m of the belief that you have to go out and live a little to have something to make art about.

How do you challenge yourself in your work? I’m constantly challenging myself to dig deeper and get to the essence of what my work is about and attempting to do. Right now, for me it’s about having a large scope to my projects. I tend to be working on multiple projects at the same time that on the surface may seem separate, but often are interrelated, and as a whole speak to the larger vision of where I’m growing.

What is your dream project? I would love to create an interactive public art project that becomes a part of a city’s identity, like Anish Kapor’s “Bean” in Chicago and Chris Burden’s “Urban Lights” in Los Angeles. That said, I have a lot of other dream projects.

This is the sixteenth 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: Stephanie Benassi
Age: 33
Website: www.stephaniebenassi.com
Hometown: Providence, RI
Current Location: Charles Village, Baltimore
School: Undergraduate: UMASS Dartmouth
Graduate: VCU

Favorite Artists: Joachim Koester and Sarah Charlesworth, John Divola

What is your day job? Adjunct teaching in Photography and New Media at George Mason University

How do you manage balancing work with studio time with your life? Managing a day job while maintaining a consistent studio practice is a difficult juggling act, as many artists know.  Art is a way to “stop” doing a day job and escape the bureaucracy of academia, meetings, schedules ect… Teaching is responsibility and not always in the good way. It can drain me, limit my studio time and force me to interact with “protocols,” “course objectives” and other office jargon but I do it anyway. I wanted to be an artist to get away from that but, I too, needed school to help me become more disciplined and raise the level of my work. I learn a lot from students and teaching can help reinforce good studio habits. Seeing them struggle and helping them understand that is part of the process.  When I am in the studio and I am struggling, I have to stop sometimes and take my own advice —- that I am not making art for an institution or to be liked but rather, I am there to make discoveries. Art and its making allow me to be more “reckless,” but, I believe that this balance of “responsible” teacher and “reckless” artist help me find myself in my practice. I do however think that I could make art if I was not a teacher but I don’t think I could teach art effectively if I was not making art.

How would you describe your work, and your studio practice? My art practice concentrates on the use of photographic images and processes to conceptually engage the contradictions, limitations, and fragmented simplifications that are inherent
in photography. Specific research, travel, and material experimentation are developed into gallery installations that incorporate straight photographs, performative process-based works and sculptural elements in order to create a complex visual and material experience. Drawing from diverse photographic genres such as landscape, forensic, Victorian momento-mori, occult, and camera-less photography, I investigate the ways in which the material conditions and specialized languages of the photographic medium shape our relations to history, power, and the production of images.

What part of artmaking to you like or enjoy the most?  Making the art is really exciting, fun and it keeps my mind and hands active. It is exciting to make new discoveries in the studio and darkroom. Traveling and first hand research is also a major part of my studio practice, which is always fun and fruitful. The least? My least favorite part of art is self-promoting and advertisement, website maintenance and “CV building” all of which are outside of art making itself but are necessary. I find “professionalism” is a real drag. I am trying to get better at it, become more assertive and I am attempting to become more organized and set more time aside for those kinds of things.

What research do you do for your art practice? The way I go about research depends on the individual project. Much of my work starts with an investigation of a particular historical, material, or cultural aspect of photography, which may then lead to travel to a specific site of interest to gather information and some preliminary documentary photographs. Sometimes a project may also present itself through direct experimentation in the darkroom, creating crude pinhole cameras, or collage. These preliminary field and studio-based studies will then lead to further content, research and then the cycle begins again until overtime I develop a catalog of related images and objects. Much of my process then involves editing and organizing these fragments.

What books have you read lately you would recommend? Mike Kelley’s Foul Perfection, The Metropolitan Museum of Art catalog, The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult, Anything by J.G. Ballard, Agatha Christie novels- Guilty Pleasure, Bill Bryson’s Lost Continent: Travels in Small Town America. Movies? anything by Werner Herzog

Do you ever get in creative dry spells, and if so, how do you get out of them? I wouldn’t say that I have dry spells, but rather moments of panic and anxiety, as well as issues with confidence in the work I am making. More often than not, I will begin a project and it will end up going nowhere. I try to will it and wrestle with it as if it were an alligator and this often leads me to a dysfunctional mindset about my practice. (Friends refer to this aspect of my personality as “oh no, she’s on the ledge again!”) Often I have to set projects aside and move on to something else completely different. I keep the abandoned projects including research, sketches, prints, or materials in storage bins in the studio. Every now and then I go through these bins later and see the work with more clarity and then declare… “Oh, it’s not as bad as I thought,” and I can work with it again or change the focus of it so the work transforms into something else.  I am beginning to make some progress in trusting this cycle of attack and retreat, and I am becoming more comfortable with being uncomfortable.  The projects that seem most resistant or uncomfortable in formation often are the ones that prove to be the most challenging and interesting in the end.

How do you challenge yourself in your work? I try to challenge myself every day in little ways in the studio or change the way I approach the work in general. Sometimes I decide that I don’t like a certain method or trope in photography. I let it stew underneath the surface and then I try to consciously ask myself why I don’t like it. This simple questioning of my own taste may then lead to deeper questions about this particular photographic or artistic convention. After sometime I find myself asking what this mode or convention may be useful for and it may force me to try things that I may have dismissed. For instance, a good example is cyanotypes or sun printing. To me it has a certain “handmade” nostalgia built into the method. Often I will see it presented as “old” or “traditional.” I will start making cyanotypes and ask myself, what can I do to make it do something different or dialog with the present moment rather than pretend it is of “another time”? How can I defeat its nostalgic, romantic quality?

What is your dream project? My dream project would be to travel and document silver and salt mines. I am becoming more interested in looking at the materials of darkroom photography. Sometimes because of the romance of the darkroom, we forget that there are complex geological and industrial histories imbedded in these materials.