by David Hall
So, I cannot really review anything from the
PowerHouse with any shred of objectivity, but I intended to review Mary and Jonathan’s wonderful collaborations back in May, when they did the gig at Askew, Nixon, & Ferguson--
Myths & Marks. Man, being a teacher is just all-consuming, and I hated letting them down, but I found myself under an avalanche of school-related chum.
What I proposed is perhaps conducting an interview with the two of them regarding the radical artistic transition precipitated by their collaboration. In a nutshell, I’ve always associated
Jonathan’s photographs with a stripped-down, documentary aesthetic—know your craft, yes, but the central factor is anticipating the golden moment.
Mary’s encaustic paintings would seem stationed on the opposite side of the aesthetic universe—intuitive, abstract, jewel-toned, and whimsical. I would never have imagined a merging of the two. The result is edgy, sensual and with nods to kitsch or nostalgia.
One of the pieces at Askew, Nixon & Ferguson, "
Vulcan Forging Wings," is included in Everywhere, Nowhere, Somewhere…a group affair at the PowerHouse, curated by director
Rehema Barber. Bill Ellis of the
Commercial Appeal suggests that the subject, a muscular African-American man hammering at an anvil, is a metaphor for “African American labor from the plantation system to the industrialized re-centering that took place during the Great Migration.” I had no idea until I read up on the mythology of Vulcan, the ancient Roman god of fire, who seemingly was always working at some other god’s bidding..
“Vulcan Forging Wings” is not a simple photograph, however. The sepia image is tinted with flecks of bright color and illuminated inside a light box constructed from a pitted and chipped old window frame. The duo has appropriated all manner of window frames and vintage televisions for their collaborative body of work. An element of kitsch is implied by the burlesque eroticism in many of the images and the cathode ray antiquity of the supports.
David: Jonathan, we briefly discussed the effect that digital technology has had upon photography and why you feel compelled to now make work that borders on sculpture. Would you please elaborate?
Jonathan: Photography, when I first started taking pictures, was valued as evidence or proof of both the world we live in an individual’s interpretation of that world by virtue of emphasis and wit. That is to say a photograph was taken and looked upon as evidence of a truth. A photograph could be used in court to put someone away or a plot point in a Noir film when doctored effectively. The first thought wasn’t that a photograph is altered--now when I look at a photograph, the first thing I wonder about is which bits were hobbled together.
In a way, this technical and aesthetic rigor prevented photography from the post war self-indulgences that plagued the visual arts and some forms of music. I don't know, perhaps this attitude was fostered by an environment where highly visible patrons did not make themselves known, thus freeing artists to please themselves. I feel this resulted in a loss of certain basic skill sets.
The best of photography (of course, in my opinion) lay with the journeymen who lived in-between art and the skills needed to operate these machines that capture the light, such as Robert Frank and Henri Cartier-Bresson. There was also the important aspect of the manually produced silver print. To see a beautiful print was to reflect on the time spent in a darkroom with chemistry molding the light--squeezing it out of your hands; in a sense painting the photograph with light.
Now with digital photography, all bets are off--the shots exist in an electronic format, either to be downloaded and manipulated in any way you could wish, and then as many copies spat out of a computer as you wish, all exactly the same. Now this does not affect the idea or instinct involved in creating an object of artistic value--but it does put into question for me the value of the physicality of the work.
That is to say, you now possess an object of value--something you can love.
It could be said that digital photography works best for me while still living inside the computer. To me, the image looks its best on a good screen.
So following these instincts I felt I had to resolve two issues. First was a decision to embrace the digital game as my tool. Photography has never been an art form to live in the past. It was born with machines and advanced with them-so in my case, I felt it cowardly to abandon this aspect.
The other issue was how I might take my ideas and produce an object of value--work that could be held dear for both its conceptual inspiration and physical rendering. This is what I started thinking. I need to develop my latent skill sets that I have readymade (which would be drawing stuff and building stuff) and take pleasure in the freedom that the digital pallet allows me. So I started, in a way, making little films. The story was up to the viewer. but I wanted to give them lots of rope.
First I started printing the images on canvas and painting on them. It didn't feel right to just slap brushstrokes about just to make them unique. I painted in glazes covering the whole image and gently changing the image as I grew more confident in my eye to hand coordination. It became clear soon if I wanted to keep more of the photographic element I would have to have color under the photo image too. I am still working this out but feel good about the direction.
Then it occurred to me that a natural place to view the image would be on a TV. I found a 60's TV that sort of reflected my feelings in that it was made of wood and not built with the intention of being obsolete in 3 years. I put in a backlit image and got it all up and running a felt pretty good about the object I had made. A kind of satisfaction I had not felt in a while. So it went from there.
David: Mary, you have said the collaboration with Jonathan is a fairly recent development for both of your studio practices. Artists tend to be independent, idiosyncratic and territorial in their creative endeavors. How do two seasoned artists with starkly individual styles collaborate? Are there any conflicts, or is it smooth-sailing?
Mary: Well, I had many concerns stemming from my expectations of conflict in all these areas (idiosyncrasies, egos and amount of personal control); in addition, our teaming up earlier to work on graphic design projects had been quite bumpy due to differing work styles. And throwing in the fact that we were in our first year of marriage, I was the one with the pessimistic outlook. Jonathan has been a photographer much, much longer than I have been a painter so one of my fears was of being overshadowed or pushed aside. However, once we set down our ideas on paper and the concepts began to take shape, for the most part it was fairly smooth sailing save for a couple studio related disasters (breaking a finished piece - ouch!).
I don't think anyone, including the two of us, could imagine our disparate styles and mediums being combined. My idea was to step back a bit to a time when I worked more with collage, assemblage and such; keep the current medium I work in--wax encaustic--and use Jonathan's work in a collage-like manner, which would mean actually pulling apart his work. I had concerns that this would be viewed as destroying his work--tearing out a part of something he had carefully composed. It seemed almost sacrilegious. Jonathan's attitude was mixed, there were images that captured him that did not inspire me and vice-versa; we were able to work most of that out.
What was most amusing though was the takes on myths. Jon went for classic stories and symbols; I went for the more day to day myths--the myth of security, home and family (the house and fence marks and icons); myths of American opportunity and racial equality. The Vulcan piece in particular seems almost prescient when we had Pat Buchanan opining last week that America was built entirely by whites. Another piece, "Homesickness" which has a woman who appears upset in the background and a home with wings in the foreground, was taken by many to be very sad and sentimental, when the piece, for me was someone sick of their home or place and yearning to break free or fly away.
In the end, once the initial idea for the piece was decided and Jonathan provided or composed the primary photographic elements, I was mostly given free rein and we were both pleased and surprised with the results.
Jonathon: I had never collaborated on my art—however, as a commercial photographer. I had worked on publications, books and films, so I knew the mind set. I respect Mary's work and taste so I felt pretty safe. I think it was harder for her than me. The ideas seemed to flow well together and some times she would take the lead on a work and sometimes I would—sometimes we would switch off depending on who had the clearest vision of the work at a given time. I was pretty much happy and inspired from the first image on. We did over 20 pieces in just a couple of months, and I think everything just kept getting clearer for me.
David: Mary, your handiwork is ever present, yet it is seamlessly integrated with the other elements at play.
So, you've been painting in what seems to be a formalist style up until this collaboration. This work implies provocative narratives and gothic characters. I cannot really isolate why, but it seethes with a kind of pulp eroticism. You are in several of the photographs too, yes? Do you transition easily from abstraction to more literal modes of expression? I've watched many artists, myself included, struggle with this.
Mary: I don't really transition well to the more literal, I prefer the expressiveness of letting a painting build and “happen.” However, regarding this collaboration, I feel my adding elements of collage, mark making, and seemingly random fields of color along with Jon's disassembling and rearrangement of several photographs push the work in the additional direction of Dadaism --I was destroying Jon's prints! And making artwork that wasn't palatable to decorators or corporate collectors! There was a sense of freedom and departure from my usual work, not that I am disparaging that work or my wonderful patrons, but I have always chafed at being “pigeonholed” and performing to specific expectations.
I don't believe I am in any of the works in this show, but I am in some previous work I have always been attracted to the gothic, and although these names may seem cliché to toss out, I love Flannery O'Connor and the earlier work of Cindy Sherman--I believe the series was called “Film Stills.”
Regarding the pulp and burlesque, when I was growing up, in the late 60's and early 70's, the newspapers and billboards had all of these adverts I found interesting, intriguing and humorous: movie ads for sex and exploitation and horror films--Poor White Trash, Last House on the Left, some S&M--nazi "Ilsa" and women-behind-bar' sorts of things. This was when newspapers could afford to run large graphic ads. For some reason these really stayed in my visual memory. Also I enjoyed all the old horror and film noir movies reruns on TV. So in this sense I did collaborate in some small way when Jonathan did a previous series with noir images made into paintings and the first run of TVs, he wanted to create scenarios that could be from a movie.
David: Will the two of you continue to collaborate and has the experience offered any insights or revelations that you wouldn’t have discovered otherwise?
Jonathon: I think we will continue working together. And in a way even work I do alone is now irretrievable informed by this experience and Mary's presence and input. I feel that I have been given a freedom in a way to approach creating work. While I will certainly go back and shoot black and white photography again with all my rules and printed in the darkroom--this has been a game changer
Mary: I most certainly believe we will, I recently sent some pieces on paper to be in the Perry Nicole group show that included more collage elements and house icons than my previous work, so there has been some overlap but my solo work will stay on its own course.
Trying new things with the materials pretty much pushed me to the limit physically and mentally. Some things take quite a bit of time and work but I learned quite a bit about the possibilities and limitations of the encaustic medium.
I also learned that given enough time, I can work with subject matter suggested by Jonathan, that I perhaps dismiss too easily if there is not an immediate spark at first. Some of the better pieces actually started out with me saying, "oh, I don't know, I'm just not feeling anything about this," but after a few days on the back-burner or by happy accident the moment comes. So, I am learning to trust his ideas and in the outcome the same way that he has trusted me.
It also revealed to me the need to sometimes work outside of the boundaries that the galleries expect and take some risks. I feel this re-energizes my own interest in my solo work in some odd way. Like taking an art-vacation with my husband!
By David Hall
