Celebrating wildness
in brilliant summer light and cracked corners
“La Friche,” between the windows in my Chicago studio. It will be included in a show in New York this month.
After a few languishing months, life is springing back into my life. I will be in New York for the opening Perfect/Imperfect, a group show at Lichtundfire, this week. Join me, if you’re in New York!
“La Friche” is an uncultivated place, where nature has taken back over. I learned the term while living in Paris in my early twenties. I lived in a squat in Belleville, in a huge building that had once been the ministry of education. The building had closed because there was a wing of the building that had been condemned, due to water damage. Some of the floors were warped like waves of wood.
painting in my studio in Paris, in the squat
We enlisted a group of architecture students to make the area safe-ish for use, and turned it into art studios. But it was called la friche. It was known for being an enter-at-your-own-risk sort of a place.
When I was in graduate school in Chicago, I was noticing the borders between places. The way nature insistently grew out of and around structures. The interplay of light and weather with built space in a relentlessly urban environment.
I also appreciated patterns everywhere - bronze ceiling tiles and gilded doors and grates through concrete. I began to make paintings that had both loose light and hard line. This piece felt like where structure begins to fall apart and return to open space.
The backside of “La Friche”, which hangs with both sides visible.
I also needed a place to release all my anxiety and uncertainty. I painted on the reverse of a huge swath of canvas lain on the floor (similar to how I paint now). Here I could let loose and scribble out my fear and insecurity at being in grad school. I could splash and spray and make a mess. Then I tore this huge canvas down into door-sized, human-sized pieces, and painted the fronts. The fronts became serene and ethereal, while the backs told the rest of the story.
It fits well with Perfect/Imperfect, which focuses on the unfinished, wabi-sabi and how that kind of aesthetic space opens our minds.
PERFECT / IMPERFECT
LICHTUNDFIRE CURATORIAL
OPENING, AUG 7, 6 - 8 PM
175 RIVINGTON ST., NY, NY
save the date
I’ll be in the Austin Studio Tour this November, with a number of recent large paintings up at KRDB, the architecture firm of my friend, Chris Krager. It’s a beautiful old brick building on East 6th, just east of I-35.
Join us Nov. 16-17!
Otherwise, I’ll be taking a break til the end of August. See you then!
