Austin Art Talk

Latest Episodes:

Episode 57: Ariel René Jackson Mar 04, 2019

Show notes

"For me the success of a piece is if I’m able to create a weird sense of peace and disturbance to keep people there longer to sort of sit with it. Sometimes it can be hard because a lot of my work on the surface level you’re not able to see that research, you’re not able to receive that information. So a lot of it is the form and the experience with the form. I’m not necessarily interested in making didactic work. I’m very interested in using research and personal archives and communal archives to pull out some kind of poetic feeling that sort of takes from all of that research a feeling."
Statement courtesy of Ariel's website

Throughout Ariel René Jackson's family's history, land has been both a permanent reminder of systemic racism and temporal unfolding of possible transformations and outcomes based on individual and communal actions. Material remnants of a legacy of farming and traditions of black epistemology throughout the diaspora functions as a guide to sourcing materials and research. Jackson often uses installation to situate her practice into ideas of spatial matters as black matters understanding landscape as palimpsest, something reused or altered but still bearing visible traces of its earlier form. Jackson's installations incorporate physical, virtual, and aural elements. Jackson often encases found objects, embeds molds of material archives, and enlarge communal structures using naturally ephemeral materials like soil, clay, and chalk. Performance for Jackson is an opportunity to collaborate or engage with video projection, thinking of the body as both virtual and physical. In different and at times concurrent moments the body, materials, and objects become themselves and leave traces of themselves in Jackson's landscape(s).

Ariel René Jackson (b.1991) grew up between New Orleans & Mamou, LA. She currently lives and works in Austin, TX where she is completing her MFA at The University of Texas at Austin. Her work has been shown in New York City (Studio Museum in Harlem, 2016; CUE Art Foundation, 2018; SculptureCenter, 2019) as well as at the RISD Museum (Providence, RI 2017/2018), Depaul Art Museum, (Chicago, IL 2018), and the Contemporary Art Center (New Orleans, LA 2018).

Some of the subjects we discuss:

Deborah Roberts
Introduction
Masters at UT
Research practice
Grandparents farm
Forty five acres
Collecting/systems
Grandmothers chair
Palimpsests
Use of soil/location
Austin redlining
Cage match project
Artistic origins
Grandmothers habits
High school/college
Confuserella/blues
Grad school
Dressing yards
Mary Gilmore
Being in the wake
Chalkboards
Education
Grid machine
Peace/disturbance
Nod to the past
Intuition
Differences
Awareness

Upcoming:

2019 Studio Art MFA Thesis Exhibition

May 10 – 25, 2019

Visual Art Center
The University of Texas at Austin
Art Building
2300 Trinity St (directly north of DKR – Texas Memorial Stadium)

This exhibition presents culminating work in a range of media by students receiving their master of fine arts degrees in Studio Art from The University of Texas at Austin.

The opening reception is on May 10, 2019.

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

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**Episode 56: Koichi Yamamato - Making A Mark** Feb 11, 2019
Show notes

"Failure or success is really subjective, and it’s conditional. The one moment I might consider a failure, I learned something so I guess since I learned something maybe it wasn’t a failure. By having those prints I will open up another possibility that I didn’t even consider thinking of. I think those are fertilizer. Probably it stinks in the beginning but it will eventually become part of a very important fuel for the creativity. Then try to solve the problem from the difficult condition in a way. I think the failure is extremely important."
***Bio courtesy of Koichi's website***

Koichi Yamamoto is an artist who merges traditional and contemporary techniques so as to develop unique and innovative approaches to the language of printmaking. His prints explore issues of the sublime, memory, and atmosphere. Koichi has worked at many scales, from small and meticulously engraved copper plates to large monotypes.

He completed a BFA at the Pacific Northwest College of Art in Portland, Oregon and then moved to Krakow, Poland, later he studied engraving at the Bratislava Academy of Fine Arts in the Slovak Republic. Koichi also studied at the Academy of Fine Arts in Poznan, Poland and completed an MFA at the University of Alberta, Canada. In addition he has worked as a textile designer in Fredericia, Denmark.

Koichi has exhibited internationally. He has taught at Utah State University and the University of Delaware and is currently an Associate Professor at University of Tennessee, Knoxville.
**Some of the subjects we discuss:**

Introduction
Wyoming/ceramics
Gyotaku/Japan
Art school in Portland
Myrna Burks/Printmaking
Communal art
Clay, Prints, Drawing
Light & atmosphere
Dr. Gordon Gilkey
Move to Poland
The Artist union
Improvisation/adaptation
Economic optimism
Letter to Liz Ingram
MFA in Alberta
Large relief printing
Drawing/human body
Move to Denmark
Immigration/language
Utah State University
Starting Intaglio
Knoxville,Tennessee
The physical mark
Kite surfing
Making kites
Japanese gods
Symmetry/faces
Monotype/light
Making decisions
Failure and fear
Sketchbooks
Good shoes/health
Sports/decisions
Risk/safety
Traveling/story
Kite with history
Role of artist
Communicating
Final words

**Gallery Shoal Creek**

**KOICHI YAMAMOTO / Aspect Ratio**
An Installation of Intaglio Printed Kites

**January 19 - February 23, 2019**
January 19 / Gallery Talk at 4 pm
Opening Reception from 6 - 8 pm

Photos by Scott David Gordon of Jan. 19th Artist Talk w/ Judy Taylor
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.
Links:
Yamamoto Printmaking
Koichi Yamamoto (@koichi_yamamoto) • Instagram
Gyotaku - Wikipedia
MYRNA BURKS - Home
Gordon Gilkey - Wikipedia
Liz Ingram
Gallery Shoal Creek : Koichi Yamamoto

Episode 55: Alyssa Taylor Wendt Jan 28, 2019

Show notes

"As an artist you have to remember that you are always working. And you’re not just working when you are in the studio actually making something. You are working when you’re sleeping, dreaming, reading, looking at other peoples art, having conversations, and tripping over a rock. It’s all a part of your practice. To be able to embrace every element of your life as being a part of your practice takes the pressure off of going to the studio and the blank page. Just think of your studio as another tool."

Bio courtesy of Alyssa's website

Alyssa Taylor Wendt is a multidisciplinary artist, filmmaker and curator that works in Austin, Texas and Detroit, Michigan. Her recent projects reference themes of ritual, animism, monuments, mysticism, the primordial, architecture, gender and mortality using video, sculpture, staged photographs, sound and performance. The work tends to provoke questions in the viewer with dark and evocative aesthetics and multiple layers of perceived truth. She earned her BA from NYU and her MFA from Bard College. Transplanted from New York City, she has shown in numerous national and international exhibitions and performed at The Museum of Art and Design in New York, envoy gallery, The Fusebox Festival and Deitch Projects and completed residencies in Iceland and Norway. She is currently finishing her opus multi-channel video work HAINT and just curated an epic exhibition about death and transformation with over 60 artists at DEMO Gallery in Austin. She enjoys darkness, gospel blues and bad jokes.

The following text courtesy of the Visual Arts Center website

Alyssa Taylor Wendt: HAINT

January 25 – February 22, 2019

HAINT is an immersive, three-channel video installation by Austin-based artist and curator Alyssa Taylor Wendt. Filmed over the course of three years in Croatia, Detroit, and Texas, the individual channels unfold in counterpoint with one another to create a haunting meditation on the ways we process history, both as individuals and as a culture. The piece draws on motifs from Wendt’s personal cosmology and explores the associative powers of perception, cycles of history and ruination, and the spiritual energy that objects, the landscape, and architectural spaces carry with them. Using Eastern European songs, voiceover, opera, black metal drones, and ambient sound, HAINT combines images of post-war architecture, monuments, and ruins to create a poetic investigation of war, memory, and storytelling. In addition to the video, the exhibition includes sculptural elements and a collection of staged production photographs that intersect with the video’s multifaceted narrative.

This exhibition is organized by MacKenzie Stevens, Director, Visual Arts Center, with Clare Donnelly, Gallery Manager, Visual Arts Center and Robin K. Williams, Ph.D. candidate in Art History at The University of Texas at Austin.

Visual Arts Center
The University of Texas at Austin Art Building
2300 Trinity St (directly north of DKR – Texas Memorial Stadium)
512-471–3713

Hours
Tuesday – Friday 10am – 5pm
Saturday Noon – 5pm
Sunday / Monday Closed

HAINT Viewing and Q&A with Alyssa Taylor Wendt
Tuesday, January 29, 2019
12 PM
Visual Arts Center

Artist Talk: Alyssa Taylor Wendt
Tuesday, February 5, 2019
4 PM
Art Building, Rm. 1.120

HAINT Viewing and Q&A with Alyssa Taylor Wendt
Tuesday, February 19, 2019
5:30 PM
Visual Arts Center
Some of the subjects we discuss:

Intro
Project based
Bard college MFA
Starting with photography
Nayland Blake
Using all her skills
Artistic origins/childhood
Getting into music
The punk scene
New York/NYU
San Francisco
Acting in movies
Back to NYC
Studying acting
Dilettante?
ICP photo program
Thesis project
Highlights
Move to TX
Austin career
Current practice
Vulnerability
Listening/animism
Communication
Art fairs/zeigeist
Collaboration
Filmmaking
Utilizing skills
Everything
Too polite/pleasing
Embracing darkness
Personality vs work
Haint details
Drone metal
Singing & Music
Inter-editing
Narrative film
Fathers stories
Ruins/cycles
VAC event details
Film/photography
Thanks!
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

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Episode 54: Alejandra Almuelle - Revealing the Presence Jan 21, 2019

Show notes

"Seriously it's like being in love, staying in the studio."
Alejandra Almuelle is a full time ceramic artist who creates sculptures and pottery that often merge traditional and contemporary styles and often feature the human figure. Her most recent and largest exhibition of work to date titled The Journey, interpreted the hero’s journey and was inspired by events in her own life. By making pottery, which she sells online and at art fairs, she is able to create her sculptural work and explore it under less pressure to make a living. The creation of each piece is a dance of control, her unconscious, the limits of her abilities, years of experience, and the same doubts we all have bringing something new into the world. She persists until the presence inherent in the clay reveals itself to become its own entity. Being of service to something beyond herself she daily finds joy and love through her work. What a great interview. Have a listen and enjoy!
Bio below courtesy of Alejandra's website

Alejandra Almuelle was born in Arequipa, Peru. She spent few years in Pizac in the Sacred Valley of Cuzco, a center for ceramic making. Peru is a country in which the abundance of clay has made this medium a language of artistic expression. Clay is its own idiom, and being there, she began to speak it. After she moved to Austin, she started working with clay. Addressing the functionality of the medium as well as its sculptural expression has been equally important for her. She has participated in art fairs, galleries and museums with both pottery and sculpture.

The exploration of an idea in a piece is central to Almuelle. She works in a series until the idea is exhausted within the form. She has completed several series in which the common thread is the human shape. She usually finds herself in between the pull that lures her to work to see “it “in front of her and the challenge to translate into form what has an intangible shape in a corner of her mindʼs eye. “While working on a piece, the piece is also working on me, working as a way of revealing, making visible, bringing into light”. As a base medium, she feels that clay is appropriate for expressing the human journey because it is the stuff we are made of.

Some of the subjects we discuss:

Intro
Ceramics & pots
Growing up/influences
The valley of Cuzco
Move to Austin
Realizing the work
Being in love
Saving your life
What is real
When it flows
Conscious narrative
The Journey work
Hero’s journey stages
The departure/threshold
The state of things
The hungry ghosts
What falls away
The epiphany
Reconfiguration
Memory of essence
The return
Power of the exhibition
Creating the work
Can’t take credit
Doubt and blocks
Working on now
Persistence
Levels of attention
Clay/we are it
Revealing
What drives you
Sacrificio
Joy
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

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Episode 53: Seth Orion Schwaiger Jan 07, 2019

Show notes

"In a way you can use words as a lure to get people to think in a way that’s more expansive. To think in visuals, and in space, and in symbol that’s beyond language. To find meaning between words. So writing about art is really fun. Because art can mean things that really can’t be touched on with language. But you can kind of lead a reader to it. You can take these glancing blows at what arts meaning is and maybe through that long series of glancing blows map out a silhouette. And maybe people who are doing all this reading can guess at what’s within that boundary. I love that it is so populist and accessible, language itself. The written word can bring people to something that’s for a lot of people inaccessible."
Seth Orion Schwaiger is an artist, curator, critic and arts writer, and teacher, who splits his time between Austin and New York with his wife Elizabeth, who is also an artist. As a writer one of his goals is to attempt to communicate intelligently about art in a way that everyone can understand. In recent years the art creation side of identity manifest in three exhibitions of work in different cities, which were called Complex 1, Complex 2, & Complex 3. In the interview we speak in detail about each exhibition, his approach to the different aspects of his practices, the Austin art scene, its strengths and weaknesses, and his future plans. Have a listen, share any feedback, and be sure to check out Seth’s work if you have the chance.
Some of the subjects we discuss:

Experience
Yearly schedule
Artistic origins
Meeting wife
Glasgow
Criticism/writing
Role of the artist
Aspects of practice
Complex series
Pump Project space
Complex 1
Something to prove
Complex 2
Processing the past
Complex 3
Christian cult
Dance production
Exhibition details
Manipulation
Any clarity?
Forgetting
Scott’s work?
Vulnerable
Pushing limits
Writing & words
Masters thesis
Merit of work
Future hopes
Austin art scene
Resources
Collectors
City funding
Gentrification
No advice
What’s next

This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

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Episode 52: Sharon Bridgforth - Circles Of Relationship Dec 17, 2018

Show notes

"We need to not only find ourselves but we need to find a way to each other. It’s really hard to show up fully for others if you haven’t shown up for yourself. It’s really hard to have the hard conversations we need to have right now, so that we can move together collectively, so that we can tend our relationships, if we haven’t done that for ourselves. I think it’s really hard to make courageous choices as artists if we haven’t done that work. Because our fear and the things that we are hiding from inside of us will govern us. And it will never be the brave choice. It will never be the free thing. It will never be all that we are capable of. And I think it’s hard to hold onto our wealth if we haven’t done that, because we won’t on some level believe that we deserve it."
Sharon Bridgforth is a writer and performing artist who collaborates with actors, singers, dancers, and audiences to share works that explore, celebrate, and put forward African American migration stories and performance traditions. The work is also a form of prayer to tell stories, transform, remember, and pass on language of the heart with the intention to bring us all along and create space to be shaped together.

A strong interest in reading as a child led to a life of writing that was mostly kept hidden for many years. At the insistence and encouragement of others Sharon started to share the work which turned out to be well suited for performance. That was the beginning of a long career which has always emphasized creating and nurturing long term collaborative relationships with people of different backgrounds. These experiences for the performers and the audience allow for deeper connections with others and ourselves.

What a treat to be able to sit down with Sharon and talk about living as and artist. Such wisdom and grace and clarity. In the interview we talk about Sharon’s beginnings and there is a big emphasis on the importance of relationships, and financial stability and knowledge. And most importantly what is in the way that is keeping you from living with joy? Have a listen and share any feedback or thoughts you might have and be sure to check out Sharon's writings and performances!
Some of the subjects we discuss:

Introduction
The great migration
Family origins
Starting to write
College classes
First performance
Predecessors/we
Relationships
Transgressing
Perfomance/prayer
Not one sided
Circles of relationship
Academic world
Connected/dispersed
Financial stability
Money/wealth
dat Black Mermaid Man Lady
Home Project
Tipping point/jobs
love/rituals & rage
Living as an artist
Playwright residency
Genevieve Vaughan
Life challenges
Self exploration/writing
How to live joy
A way to each other
Role of the artist
Prayer and ritual
Gratitude
Last words
Allgo/thanks
Banner image by Nia Witherspoon
This interview has been edited and condensed for clarity.

Intro music generously provided by Stan Killian

Support this podcast.

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