Who Is Sam?

Sophomore Sam Leder began his time at WashU as a pre-med, but a love of creating quickly led him to switch to his current majors, Architecture and Systems Engineering. Sam is a receipient of the Steedman Fellowship and this summer will be travelling to Japan to study earthquake-related architecture.

// INTERVIEW

Kuumba: Tell us about your “kite” and the inspiration behind it.

Sam: I’m currently in Introduction to Design Processes 2, and our project is to make a flying machine, and what that is is really left up to our own imagination and interpretation. Some people aren’t even make serious kites, they’re sort of just making typographies that sit on the ground and move in the wind. But I was inspired by a dandilion, and so what im taking that to mean is a kite that is made up of modular parts. I really looked at the way a dandelion seeds – the typical parachute image – interacts with the way it connects to the base of the plant, and I took those two elements and made them into a kite. So I really have, almost a modular design but the modules kind of shift and change. I was inspired by the golden ratio, which is seen in the dandelion, so as you get closer to the more curved part of golden ratio, the modules get smaller. its about detachment, parachutes, floating.

K: What was your process in creating the kite?

S: The way that I started out was basically studying the dandelion. I was really interested in parachuts as more of general thing, so I studied three different types of parachute seeds, one being the milkweed, one being the silverpuff and one being the dandelion. So I diagrammed the plants completey, and I noticed this consistent pattern between the seeds that I really liked. I used a program called Rhino and came up with this super structure sort of shape, which is sort of like a plastic ribbing that mimicks a soccer ball but is basically straight lines that make up a golden ratio curve. I used that 3D modelling software [Rhino] to make the ribbing that I then cut out using the laser cutter.

K: How does the laser cutter work?

S: The laser cutter is run off of a program called AutoCad. Most of the students in the architecture program start out modelling their pieces on Rhino, and then from there make a 2D drawing of each piece they want to cut out and put that into AutoCad. You can cut all different times of materials from styrene to plexi to certain types of paper. once you have your file, you put it on courses, which is the databse through the art schol, and then you bring in your material and the monitor helps you set up the laser cutter.

K: How has double majoring in Architecture and Systems Engineering been so far?

S: I’m studying Systems Engineering right now as well, and I’m not sure how it applies yet. I think of it as the practical side of my brain, and Architecture is the release of that, where I can really explore and do anything. I thought originally that it would isnpire my designs to be more structureally sound, but ive actually found out that architectures really my release where I can really do anything and everything and sort of finagle my way out of impossible situations.

K: How did you decide to go to Japan and what are you planning on doing while you’re there?

S: I just was bouncing ideas off of my parents and came up with this idea to go to Japan to study tsunami and earthquake related architecture, because I’m from New Jersey and after Hurricane Sandy I thought it would be a great thing to study overseas and maybe do some research in New Jersey, too. I’m actually quite nervous to go on the trip because I dont speak Japanese. I heard that in Tokyo a lot of people are very courteous of foreigners and very respectful and try their best to speak English but travelling in the northeast, which is where the earthquake in 2011 was, I’m not expecting to hear much English. I’m actually right now using Pimsler, which is like Rosetta Stone, to try and learn Japanese before I get there.

Collaborators: Brian Benton, Sara Faxon, Taylor Micelotta

Enjoy some highlights from his second cypher this past November! And look out for any of the rhyme-spitters in this video on campus. Be sure to tell them you dig their work!

Collaborators: Luke Terrell, Freeman Word, Justin Nicks

Who is Chris?

Meet Chris Hawley, WashU’s resident yo-yo expert.  Having once been competitive on the national level, Chris approaches yo-yoing less like a pastime and more like a performance art.  His philosophy on progression is dependent on an ability to turn frustrations into motivation and mistakes into innovation.

// CONNECT

Want to talk to Chris about yo-yoing? Shoot him an email: cjhawley@wustl.edu

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Kuumba: How did you get involved with yo-yoing?
Chris: When I was younger, my sister got a yo-yo for Christmas and she really liked it and showed off. Everyone thought she was really good. So I tried because I had never been better than her at anything. I stuck with it for three days because I wanted to be better than her. But I still kinda liked it and kept going. Then I found a book and learned all the tricks. I looked online for more tricks and I bought a video and worked really hard and got all the tricks done. I convinced my parents to take me to the YoMega World competition in Las Vegas (of all places) and I didn’t do well at all. I wasn’t exposed to how good people could be. It really pout me in my place and really opened my eyes to how bad I was. But I just kept practicing and practicing really hard. For hours everyday. I finally went to a contest and didn’t do so horribly. Finally, I got second in a state competition in Missouri. I went to the World Yo-Yo Contest. Crazy good people from all over the world. In the back of my head I thought I was going to get destroyed. But I didn’t do some badly. I got 26th in the division I was playing in and beat a lot of people that I had looked up to. When you get to the point where you are beating the people you look up to, that’s crazy. You realize after a while that other people aren’t making you work harder, you set the bar for yourself so high, you realize you can keep propelling yourself to do better. And that is insane to think about. Bit that’s from beginning, when I knew I was good at something.

K: How does the process of developing new tricks work?
C: I mean, when learning new stuff, the frustration is there, everywhere, you just have to work through it. The hardest time is when you’re doing your own trick and you mess up and you get a cool trick. But when you try to do it again, you can’t. So you know it is possible, but you just can’t do it. And no one else knows how to do it, so you’re really on your own learning it. So you just sit there, hour after hour, and try it and try it and try it until, finally, you get it. And I think the end, when you get a trick that you’ve worked so hard for, is so much more important than the hours that you put into it. Usually that trick shows a part of you. My tricks are really choppy and kinda all over the place and that’s kinda like me. I am a kinda spastic, weird dude who is just everywhere, and that’s what I bring to the table.

K: What is the yo-yo community like and how secretive are tricks to individual yo-yoers?
C: It’s fun to hang out with your friends and share tricks but when you get to the point where you’re doing contests and you are going for the win, you keep stuff to yourself because you know it’s big and it’s going to change some subsection of yo-yoing. You don’t want people to see what you’re doing because someone you’re competing against could take it and build off of it. That sucks, to have come up with something original and see someone else take it and make it their own, You wanted to drop it and show people what you did. It is sharing but only up to a point, especially when you want to win or change something. It is a little wishy washy, there is a lot of tension in the big leagues. But when you’re working with younger kids or people who are just getting into it. You want to show them new tricks and have them build off of it. That is the community part. Then you really build and progress.

K: What’s your take on standing out while competing or performing?
C: When I yo-yo for other people, I tend to wear darker clothes and use more flashy colors. You want to look cool and draw people in. When I am yo-yoing at home, I am probably wearing sweats and less cool colors of string. But at contest, people go out with crazy shoes and sick jeans with these yo-yos that are flashy and complimentary colors. I don’t have that kind of eye for detail. People really like to look good on stage. Especially now that there is more showmanship to competing. People try to get creative. I think it is really cool because trying to get yo-yoing into more of a social aspect is important for the sport and the community.

Collaborators: Brian Benton, Rose McCarty, Max Campbell, Becca Shuman, Luke Terrell

Who is Dave?

David Binstock is a junior mechanical engineer with an impressive array of musical abilities. Starting at a young age with the piano, Dave has continued to hone his musical talent over the years and has now found his forte- the guitar. What makes Dave standout is the quality of his original pieces, including the one featured in this profile. He finds inspiration in personal experiences, and  seamlessly translates them into a musical medium. His talent has not gone unnoticed; Dave’s freshman year band played a set at WILD, and you can often find Dave jamming out at Nico on the Delmar Loop on late night Thursdays.

// CONNECT

Want to connect with Dave? Email him at davidbinstock@gmail.com, and check out more of his music on his soundcloud here!

// INTERVIEW

Kuumba: What was your first experience like writing your own music, and how has that transformed over time?
Dave: I don’t remember the process so much from back then – but I do remember this feeling of words and tunes just coming together. Since then, I’ve written songs mainly about what’s on my mind. Sometimes I’ll come up with a cool tune, and I’ll lay it out on the guitar and try to fit words to it, or I’ll think of a phrase and try to build a melody around it. And other times, I’m just doodling on the guitar, and then all of a sudden I play a chord progression or a riff and it’ll just turn into something. That’s how it is now. Sometimes I’ll notice an hour or so will go by, and I’ll have just been playing chords in the same key that whole time… trying to find all the iterations I can in that. And usually, it’ll turn into something.

K: Do you find music therapeutic?
D: I definitely find music to be therapeutic. Sometimes, I’ll be playing and I’ll have this great big intense emotion of just joy and happiness that I rarely find other times. It’s especially true when I write a song about something that was bothering me. I’ll play it over, and I’ll feel relieved a little – because it helps to have written a song, and to be singing it.

K: There seems to be many different stages in your process. How does your experience with a song change in relation to the individual stages of your process?
D: I think there are two great points in the process. The first is coming up with a cool musical idea for the first time. It doesn’t even have to be a full song, it could be just two chords, but it just resonates with you – that’s a really cool feeling. And the second point is when you finish a song, before you’ve played it to anyone, and you play it to yourself, and think, “Wow, I really like this.” I love that moment. The moment you finish a song, by yourself.

K: Are you hoping to pursue music professionally (we think you should!)?
D: Sometimes I consider leaving everything, and just playing music…. Even if I don’t make it big or anything, it would just be great to be playing music for a living or just every day. I will definitely be playing, whatever I do. But at the same time I’m an engineer because I want to make a difference in other ways, too. But I don’t know. If a musical opportunity came a long, I would probably highly consider it if not take it.

Collaborators: Luke Terrell, Sara Faxon, Natalie Martinez, Becky Daniel, Leslie Salisbury

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Find more of these artists’ work on their Tumblr pages (Georgia: georgiacapra, and Anya: bigdumps), and check out Georgia’s online store at cosmonaut.

// INTERVIEW

Collaborative artists Anya Liao and Georgia McCandlish, a phenomenally articulate duo, were kind enough to invite the Kuumba team into their home for an interview about their work.

Kuumba: You are both known for working collaboratively as artists. How did you first discover the potential of your collaboration?
Anya: Well, it really just came down to the realization of “Hey, you can draw? I can draw too!” and, we noticed that when we drew together, it looked nice.
Georgia: Yeah. Sometimes, you get stuck on a drawing, and its great if you can pass it off and somebody else can add to it –
A: – and make it better.
G: It’s really rare to find somebody who you can do this stuff with and really value it; it feels like a treasure.

K: Talk a little bit about your creative process. Is there a method to the madness?
A: It depends on what we are doing, sometimes it’s a drawing together and sometimes it’s doing individual drawings, passing back and forth.
G: We spend a lot of time together because we’re friends.
A: And that’s part of the collaborative process. We collaborate on everything… We collaborate on making dinner –
G: We collaborate on being friends.
A: We collaborate on hanging out… and going on bike rides…
G:  We spend a lot of time together and talk a lot and often have similar trains of thought and we will share those trains of thought. Like the tapestry we printed, we were talking a lot about the way cities get cut in half by highways and urban planning and how it affects communities. And we ended up with two drawings in both of our sketchbooks on that theme.
A: And we literally cut them kind of in half and pasted them together.
G: Yeah.

K: What factors contribute to successful collaboration in your work?
G: One of the reasons I think we enjoy collaborating and do it successfully is that we don’t have any hierarchy between us.
A: Yeah and solidarity. Solidarity is something that is incredibly necessary. Non-hierarchical decision-making and trusting other people to make their own decisions comes naturally between someone who you feel like you collaborate very well with.
G: Community is obviously something that is very important to us. And having a truthful and successful community is really hard to do on any scale and it can be just as hard having it between two people.
A: But, you might as well start with two… because the relationship between two people can echo the relationship of the whole community.

K: How do you conceptually describe your work?
A: A lot of the times, we think of big phenomenon and how it localizes itself in relationships to other humans and in global justice issues. But its not necessarily a concrete subject… there is a fantastical nature to our work. When we collaborate together, we try to create spaces and interactions of bodies that are more magical and hopefully disruptive of a dominant narrative.
G: The way we exist in the world and live with others is seen and informed by the bodies that we live in and our immediate surrounds. So, it makes sense that that kind of perception translates on larger levels as well, systemically. That’s always an interplay, having an intimately felt, personal narrative that gets blown up and applied. And reapplied.
A: It’s kind of like world building together. We were talking the other day about the notion that just imagining a new world could be an imagining of a future… which is a pretty hopeful and radical gesture.
G: Yeah, and a certain type of future . . . it’s not always a hopeful one. I mean, often it is, but often we get a lot of, “Oh, your work is really creepy.”
A: “Where’s the pupils?”
G: “Where are the pupils in the eyes?”
A: Why are there such weird babies in it?

K: Printmaking seems to cater to art in favor of ubiquity. What is your take on the role of capitalism in the art world? How does it relate to your work?
A: That is a difficult subject because we live in a capitalist society and printmaking can either reinforce or disrupt that kind of system … i.e. the way an artist might edition things and price things. We do sell our work but we try not to sell it for more than its postage and material price.
G: We’re more interested in having it out there and being able to share in others’ work at the same time.

K: In what type of space do you prefer your work to be experienced?
A: Well… we make stuff that goes in shows and we also just make stuff that goes on the internet and nowhere else.  We like to participate in different kinds of spaces but it’s a challenge, trying to find a space we feel we belong in and a space we feel we want to be active participants in.
G: I think that, figuring out which space our art can be a part of and be responsibly a part of is like –
A:  It’s like figuring out your role in the world. The space that your art fills is the space that you, as a person, fill.
G: Because it has to be as an expansion of yourself and you have to take responsibility and accountability for it.
A: Being trained as an artist is a lot about anticipating audience interaction and anticipating response. When you put something up in a public space, you’re not going to have control of that. It’s an extreme form of generality in art, when you make it and put it out there, you are no longer in charge of it. Ultimately, it is up to multiple interpretations…. and (in some cases) multiple vandalisms.

Collaborators: Becky Daniel, Brian Benton, Felicia Podberesky, Chantal Strasburger, Luke Terrell

Who is Phil?

Phil Sutherland may have a familiar face, you may have even been lucky enough to experience his positivity first hand, but not everyone knows of Phil’s inspiring talent as both a musician and a teacher.  Through a long line of experiences with an impressive arsenal of instruments, Phil has gleaned musical aptitude that is overshadowed only by his incredible outlook on life.

// Connect

Want to find out more about Phil? Drop by Bears Den in the evening Saturday-Wednesday and meet him personally.

// INTERVIEW

Q: How did you get started as a musician?

A: I listened to people on the radio and musicians at my church. I started playing the drums at age 2. The ability to play the drums, I don’t know where it came from – a gift from God. In the fifth grade I started playing the violin. Then, my violin teacher started teaching me piano. She started off by teaching me mostly chords, and from there I started listening to other bands and finding the chords on the keys. I’ve been playing by ear ever since then.

Q: How did you start Jammin’ with Phil?

A: It actually started with a friend of mine, Georgie Morvis. He interviewed me for StudLife. During the interview, I started talking about my life and my music background, my chef background, and I guess a lot of students read about the music part, and they really got excited. I started jamming with a few students, and someone overheard us and decided that we would be good enough to be a band. They started asking us to do gigs, mostly fundraisers like Relay for Life and it went on from there.  We branch off – sometimes we do church music, sometimes rock n’ roll, sometimes classical, sometimes jazz. We try to switch it up and give everybody a chance to enjoy.

Q: Who are your favorite artists?

A: Marvin Sapp has to be number one. I met Marvin Sapp at a church convention, and I’ve played with Marvin Sapp for the past three summers. I also like Ruben Studdard because of his style. I love Alicia Keys because she is a great pianist. I also like the Black Eyed Peas style because they know how to jam. And I’d have to say my church choir because we be jammin’ ourselves. I play the drums and the bass.

Q: So, you’re a student, you teach, and work at WashU?

A: Right now, I’m working with a kid’s choir. I am directing and working on vocals. Working with kids is great! They are full of energy, and I learn a lot from them. Without them, I probably wouldn’t have had the opportunity to learn as much piano or organ. I just like giving back, because so many people gave to me. I like to give back and to help other people express themselves through music. I’ve been working at WashU for about three years now. My favorite part of the job is interacting with students. You get to encourage them throughout the day, encourage them during exam time. Knowing that I helped someone throughout their day or their week encourages me to keep going on.  I teach four classes a week, and I give personal lessons also. All of my homework is done between lunchtime at Arby’s restaurant (because I love Jamocha Shakes) and between 12am and 3am. That’s my study time and my music time. I just lock myself into my studio— just study and music.

For more information: Check out StudLife’s article on Phil here

Collaborators: Nneka Onwuzurike, Briana Pickens, Matt Malis, Carly Schulman

Who is Andrew?

A student who believes in a fine-tuned creative process, Andrew founded Bloom Coffee in 2012.  Multiple global adventures in the name of coffee and years of involvement in brewing culture have culminated in Andrew’s unique space for crafting speciality drinks—Bloom Coffee.

Visit Bloom Coffee 7PM-2AM Thursdays and Fridays in the cafe in Ursa’s

// CONNECT

Want to connect with Andrew? Email him at andrew.w.dowd@gmail.com.

// INTERVIEW

Q: Tell us about your background with coffee.

A: I’ve sort of always been interested in coffee.  Definitely a big turning point for me was when I went to Nicaragua.  I went there for a month every summer for six years and I stayed with a community up in the mountains, a coffee-brewing community.  I really got to know the brewing side of it, the production side.  So once I turned sixteen, I got a job working at Kaldi’s as a barista. It was a really cool learning process, and I love the way you get better at coffee—almost imperceptible to somebody else.  It’s just making the movements a little more efficient or understanding the process a little bit more.  I ended up doing a competition for coffee, which is a big deal for me.   I think those types of competitions broaden your horizons beyond the café. It was big for me to see coffee and how it can be a culinary experience and not just a coffee shop thing.

Q: So how did prior experiences translate into the concept of Bloom?

A:  It came about, crazily, basically.  I came back this summer— I was abroad last semester.  Originally I was going to go out to LA and go do an internship with an online magazine, and I was going to be this part-time unpaid intern for social media.  And I’d gotten that gig, and it sounded like what you should be doing, you know that’s what everyone else is doing, and I sat down for a minute and realized, like why? Why am I playing this game?  So I came back here instead and just tried to start making things.   I think the experience aspect is a huge thing.  That’s what you come to a coffee shop for— a sort of culture in addition to just the coffee.  And I think that was something that I really wanted to see happen on Wash U’s campus.  I like the idea of being able to provide a bigger hub where students can come and get together and obviously enjoy coffee, but also share all kinds of creative activities. The educational aspect I offer, the experience, is something that students are super receptive to and they really want to learn about it.  It’s really cool for me, really gratifying.  I have all this stuff I’ve learned over a period of years— a lot of knowledge about coffee and the process. Getting someone to change their perspective on that can be tough.  When I was working in a café sometimes you’d have someone who was forty-five, and they’ve been drinking coffee for their entire life, and they just want to have it their way and get out and have the same experience they’ve had with coffee.  But when you’re serving students, it’s just really amazing when you start to talk about why this coffee is cool or why the tastes are distinctive and they’re really interested in learning about that. A big emphasis on what I do at Bloom is around quality.  That should be the main focus when you’re serving someone.  People really recognize that.  That’s so cool to see someone go out of their way to say that they really appreciated it.  And again, it keeps me going and keeps me wanting to offer something better.

Q: How does Bloom fit into your broader creative approach?

A: When I really undertake any creative activity, fundamentally the way I go about it is with a craftsman sensibility.  I want to keep on changing ways or keep on getting it better.  The whole thing is a process towards a vision. The end goal is just a vision that keeps on correcting and informing the craft of creation.  And that sort of creative power is tough to negotiate for.  So there are a lot of things that I want to keep on improving, things that I think would really widen its appeal and its influence.  I think that came about in me because I’ve always been interested in so many different creative processes.  I really enjoy photography, drawing, design…every field I think, has a lot of appeal for what it offers.  I’ve tried my hand at a lot of things.  Everybody can pick up a camera now, and start shooting videos and edit them together.  It’s really cool.  I think it really has democratized creativity. All of this technology enabled a huge number of people to do all kinds of creative activities.  I think I’ve definitely benefitted from that.  You want to make something that is always asking more questions.  When you create—whether you’re writing an essay or whether you’re shooting a video, making a doodle, making a cup of coffee—I think it’s all sort of informed by an overall goal for an aesthetic quality, an informed sense about creation.  The things that you make should be in that image.   So being able to harness that, being able to harness those different voices and desires in the service of an overall goal, and with physical step-by-step points of creation, is a huge deal and something that is very cool about our present situation.

Collaborators: Max Campbell, Becca Shuman, Carly Schulman, Matt Malis

Who is Stephanie?

Stephanie Zimmerman – a Sam Fox senior who spent a year in sculpture and is now a photo major – is one of the artists featured in the upcoming exhibition Recontextualized. Hosted by the Contemporary Art Museum in St. Louis and sponsored by RARA, BazaarBoy, and Kuumba, this unique event is giving young WashU artists the chance to show off their work in a professional art environment. Be sure to check out her work at CAM on Saturday, October 13^th.

// CONNECT

Want to connect with Stephanie? E-mail her at snicollz@gmail.com, and check out her portfolio at http://stephzimmerman.com/

// INTERVIEW

Q: Who do you make your art for?

A: Originally, I made my art for my mom. But I definitely think differently now that I’ve matured a little bit. Last year I was trying to make it for other people and it got pretty frustrating because it’s hard to know what people want and need from an artwork. I think in the end I needed to make stuff that I was attracted to. I’d either fall in love with something, or get really angry at something – that would be my trigger for creating.

Q: What are you working on now?

A: I am reconfiguring found bags. Interestingly, what happens most of the time when I manipulate the bags is that they generally turn into something very sexual because of how a bag is formed. It has a hole, it has a volume, and when you reconfigure it, it looks like an orifice. It’s just interesting how, no matter how bags you reconfigure, they turn out the same way because they all have the same basic form. Also,  I’ve been working with taking apart computers. In taking them apart, I have been very intrigued by the removal of the screen. A computer screen actually is composed of about six layers. I’m working with making these into hanging light boxes and putting material between them so that there is a physical material where there would normally be a digital image. It’s never a real image but sometimes I want it to be.

Q: How do you know or decide when a work is done?

A: Deciding when you’re done is always very subjective. I think you can always keep going, re-manipulating material to make it something else –  so in that sense it’s never done. But when I want to show work for a critique or have work shown in a gallery, I’ll consider a work finished when the work itself is what it is, but is simultaneously becoming something else –when those two ideas are oscillating harmoniously. And in that regard, deciding if the work is finished is very subjective.

Q: What is 100,000 Ways to Make Something Perfect?

A: 100,000 Ways to Make Something Perfect was a drawing series where I attempted to draw a perfect circle. The drawing ended up destroying the paper, but I just wanted to see what would happen if I tried to achieve something I knew I’d never achieve. I think it had a lot at to do with what I was going through at that point in my practice. I was very frustrated with art and I was constantly asking myself, “What is art for?” and, “ What am I doing by making these strange installations?” I think I got frustrated with thinking about art so I needed to give myself a task –  no matter how arbitrary it was –  and follow through with it. It’s surprising how therapeutic that can be.

Q: Can you talk about Agnes Martin as an influence on you?

A: Agnes Martin was a painter who made huge lined grids. She would take her time with creating each line and always talked about the difference between the loved and unloved line. Her paintings were very therapeutic for her because she gave herself a set task and took the time to carry it out. In that sense, its conceivable to say what resulted was beautiful, but really going through the process was the most important part and the most valuable to me.

Q: How do you see your work relating to your audience?

A: If the art I was concerned with related to nobody, I don’t think I would be making work (nor do I think I would really enjoy living). I hate large art institutions for many reasons, but one reason  why they are great is that – by installing art in a public place – they encourage contemplation. Art exhibitions are best when they’re in a social space—when the work inspires a discussion with a viewer that inspires a discussion with another viewer, etc. If the audience didn’t exist (or isn’t affected), the work doesn’t matter.

Collaborators: Brianna Pickens, Nneka Onwuzurike, Becca Shuman, Matt Malis, Vanessa Gravenor, Max Campbell

Who is Marisa?

If you see Marisa Adesman on campus, you probably would not recognize her as the frosting-covered figure that often takes over her painting studio. This well-spoken senior painting major has recently been exploring “sweet” new mediums to work with, including covering her body in frosting and using it as her paintbrush. If you like what you see, be sure to check out more of her work at the upcoming event “Recontextualized” at the Contemporary Art Museum, on Saturday, October 13th.

// CONNECT

Want to connect with Marisa? E-mail her at marisaadesman@gmail.com, and check out her portfolio at www.marisaadesman.com.

// INTERVIEW

Q: Since you’ve been painting for a substantial amount of time, would you like to talk about the evolution of your style and maybe the direction that your work is going in?

A:  My style pretty typically has always been working from a photographic reference and painting as representational as possible, really fine detailed paintings. But this past summer I went to a six-week program in Norfolk, Connecticut and it was a residency through Yale University.  It was really a great experience and I was able to branch out and experiment a lot with new materials. I began questioning my painting style and asking myself important questions as to why I’ve been painting the way I have, so this is where I’ve kind of departed from the representational work that I’ve been doing.  Whereas I used to paint figures distorted and abstracted by material externally placed on them, I’ve now been considering what would happen if I used my body instead as the brush, essentially, to try to make marks on the page like that.

Q: So in your summer program, what made you take that step back and have that epiphany, so to speak, that your paintings maybe didn’t have to be as representational as you’d always liked to make them?

A: I think primarily it was the fact that I was there for six weeks and I could have done maybe one painting while I was there based on how long a painting realistically takes me.  I just wanted to get the most out of the program while I was there, and so working with these body prints, and also with these photographs and printmaking it allowed me to get through ideas faster and kind of experiment, which was really important and was very helpful.  I wouldn’t necessarily say that it’s easier for me, it’s actually more challenging.

Q: Could you talk more about the movement in the works?

A: With these larger traditional oil paintings there’s almost this stillness to it.  You know, the experience of lathering this person in frosting is completely different than the process of painting the actual oil painting which is very meticulous, very detailed, whereas rubbing frosting all over someone is entirely different. So I think that I’m able to bring back the movement, that same kind of experience, while doing the body prints.  I think that the body prints have a much greater energy.  There’s more direct translation of the body onto the paper.

Q: What will we see of yours at the CAM event?

A: At the upcoming event at the Contemporary Art Museum, which focuses on ideas of contextualization, I’m going to include a few pieces I made over this past summer.  I’m going to include one photograph of the documentation of the process of printing with my body and how I would take on different forms to try to get interesting shapes on the board or the paper. Additionally I’m going to have two body prints, which are the result of the performance.  I’m really excited and looking forward to the event.  It’s going to be a great opportunity to show my work in a different environment, in a museum setting. It’s going to be alongside works by students of all different majors, which is going to be very different than when we show with just the painting majors.  It’ll be a good way to see how all the works relate to one another and I think it’ll be a great way for people in the community to come in and see what Wash U students have been up to.

 

 

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Collaborators: Matt Malis, Sam Shapiro, Carly Schulman, Vanessa Gravenor