Interview with Lauren Nye

Lauren Nye's "Recollect", an exhibition of bronze and paper sculptures,
will be at the gallery from July 5 to August 14, 2011.

When did you start making sculpture?

I was a painting concentration in college. I had never done 3-D work before, so I took an Intro to 3-D class. The teacher recommended that I take Sculpture I. From taking my first sculpture class through the rest of my time in college, I had a few every semester, so it just built up. It was pretty natural to start doing it that way. I wasn't a very good painter.

That's what you initially went to college for? Painting?

Yeah.

Why did you choose to work in bronze and paper?

With bronze, the University that I went to had a foundry. It was one of the few state schools that has a working, large bronze foundry. The sculpture professor that I was taking classes with every spring would have a bronze class. So if you wanted to take sculpture, you had to take bronze. I took it my second semester of sculpture and then every year after that I took one. Then when I did my residency after I graduated, I did it mostly so I could continue using the foundry. It seemed like a pretty natural progression, I think. We had the facilities there and so I tried to take advantage of every possibility that I had. It worked out well and I really liked it.

The paper...I started making my own paper. I wanted to make paper out of clothes, but that ended disastrously. So I started molding paper into clothes, like paper-pulp that I was recycling. That's when I started the paper thing. I started packing paper into all different molds that I had to see what would happen and experimenting with that. Then I figured out a good way to freeze it so it could hold bigger shapes. I started making lots of different little things out of paper to see what I liked.

Could you talk about your inspiration for the paper sculptures?

I started learning how to do mold making. I had a bag of old toys. I was looking through all these plastic toys to pick something to try and learn how to make a mold from and I grabbed that crib. I started making all these molds of this crib to try to figure out how to make it right. At the same time I was collecting all this paper. I got all mine and all the recycled paper from my roommates. Then I started getting it from people in the Art building because I didn't want to use good paper.

I really liked the idea of taking everyone's shredded papers that have these identities of yourself in them and mixing them all up and packing them together into something that then gets spread out. You can look at all of it and see how much went into these little things. People could pick out things they recognized in some of them. It became sort of a collective identity, in that building especially. So I just kept making as many of them as I could for a long time so I could see them all in one big space together.

Could you talk about your conceptual ideas with the paper sculptures? You had talked to me about the idea of nurturing something.

When I started making the cribs, I was also working on this other piece that was not part of the body of work. It was a piece where I was balancing something. It was supposed to look sort of like a trap. It had this long cantilevered piece and I wanted to make the illusion that something was sitting on the very end of it, holding it down, even though there's no way this "thing" could physically hold it down. I wanted this illusion of balance and I wanted that thing, whatever it was that was holding it down, to be this very desired object, like something you really wanted to pick up at the risk of picking it up and then toppling everything else over.

I racked my brain to think of what would be this perfect thing. I started walking around dry stream beds and picking up rocks. I imagined that the perfect thing would fit in the palm of my hands. I was finding all these rocks that I was rubbing and trying to fit in my hands. I found one that fit perfectly. From then on I was interested in the idea of the perfect little satisfying object that would fit in the palm of my hands and I'd be able to hold it. I always thought about it and held my hands out, cupped like that. It sort of looks like a cradle. I had been making the molds of the cradles, too, so it all came together from different places.

I did some installations, with the cradles, where I was filling them with things. I just liked the idea of those becoming little surrogate hands that I could keep things in if I wanted. I liked that when you had this collective identity of everyone around packed into those, it almost becomes a little orphan nursery of people's unwanted things that then make these nice little hand held objects.

In this work, it seems that the end result is self-referencing to the process of sculpture-making and of wanting something tactile, handmade and delicate to nurture - whether that's conceptual or a physical manifest.

I think with a lot of the pieces I was doing, it always seemed like process was really important. The final outcome is good, but the process is equally as important. Especially with the cribs, I got into a routine of making so many in a day. I liked the idea that I was shredding up this paper and packing it and had physically manipulated all that paper.

I packed every single one of those. I had touched each one in this ritual way every morning, afternoon and night before I went to bed. The process was so important. A lot of people knew. Every time I would come into the building, people would know and they would want to keep count. Everyone was curious because they knew I had this ritual going for months where I was making these cribs. The process was very, very important.

Do you think that's why it's important to you to have so many shown?

It definitely wasn't about having just one. I had made 10 molds of them by the end. So I was doing rounds of 10 at a time. It was nice to have a bunch of them. I could manipulate them based on the colors of the paper and could situate them around differently. I liked how they looked in one big mass.

Could you talk about your inspiration for the bronze sculptures?

I had been making the paper cribs, then another bronze class came up, so we were opening up the foundry. I got really curious about not making traditional wax molds, but seeing what else I could do. So I started taking the paper cribs and just burning those out and pouring the bronze directly into them. A lot of other people I was working around at the time, got interested in pouring into non-traditional things too. We would have these pours where I would be pouring into paper that was causing a big fire and someone would be pouring into a bucket of water and someone else would be pouring into dirt. It was a nice atmosphere of trial and error.

I eventually got rid of the whole shell process and would make these big beds of paper. Every time it was just total chance. I liked that I was still using the paper, but in a less controlled way. I would make these huge recycled sections of paper and pour into it and let whatever happens happen. Depending on how the paper was packed, or if it was shredded loosely, or what shape it was in, the bronze would come out different every time.

I thought it was a good way to give up some of the control that I had from before and have to respond intuitively to whatever was left after everything burned down. It was a nice transition to make. To loosen up what I was doing. Whereas before I was making these cribs every day, it was very specific and ordered. With that it was just total chance, which I really like.

How does time play a role in these sculptures, if at all?

The bronze pieces, especially, have a history to them when you look at them. For example, the bronze cribs. They sort of look like they are eroded away and they're really old, which I love. I was expecting them to be solid replicas of the paper cribs. When I poured the metal on the paper for the first time I thought it would just completely get rid of the paper and then maybe I'd still see some of the shred in the bronze. But the paper, because it was packed so densely, really withstood the bronze so much more than I could have imagined.

I liked the idea of still making preparations and thinking about what I think might happen but I didn't have as much control over it. It was very immediate and I was just left to react to it. I never made a lot of plans with them. I would start patina-ing them or working with the metal and it was all very intuitive, like welding things together. Now they look like these really old pieces of metal that have been
eroded. I get people that say they look like old pieces of metal and then other people say they look like they're growing. I think that's an
interesting combination.

Either way, it sort of has an element of time to it - it's alive and it's still growing or it's dead and it's been around for a long time and it's degrading. I like the combination of the two, especially when you think about the paper and where the paper came from and how that's gone now but it was an important part of the process and the timeline of the piece.

How did you decide to pour bronze on paper? Could you talk about that process?

It was interesting whenever we would pour them. I would have these big blocks of paper. I couldn't just put it on the floor and pour into it so I would build little firebrick furnaces around them and I would leave exposed the part I wanted the bronze to hit. Sometimes I would make a paper cup to funnel it down into. Then I would pack the rest of it with wet sand. I'd pack all around it with wet sand to keep the metal towards the paper. Then I'd pour the metal in. A lot of times I wouldn't even see what was going on. I could just see it flaming up. It was so interesting the first couple times. There were sometimes I did it and nothing turned out. It would just be a weird blob of metal that I would melt back down and try again.

It was really cool to see this stuff take shape right there but I couldn't see it. I would dig it out and pull it out into the sculpture yard and hit it with hoses and let all the remaining paper and sand go away. I was left with this weird chunk of metal. It was an interesting process.

It sounds kind of like what Michelangelo said about making sculpture - that with stone you just have to chisel it away to find the sculpture within it - letting the stone be what it has to be.

Yeah. Before that I had been really worried about controlling every little element of everything and having it all preplanned. So it was such a great way to loosen up. After I started that, I also started a completely separate body of work that was totally based on chance and being intuitive and responding to the materials. It led me in a good direction to know when to leave up a little bit on the control.

What is your favorite material to use?

I really like metalworking. There's something so interesting, especially with bronze, with manipulating and taking it back to a liquid state. By the end of my residency I had been experimenting a lot with reheating parts of the metal and getting them soft and being able to manipulate that soft metal. I thought that was amazing because I wasn't used to working with it in that state. I was just used to grinding it and cutting it. Being able to create something soft and tactile out of this hard metal was a nice surprise. I think that's why I took to it as well as I did.

I had an interest before with materials that I had deemed in my mind as intimate materials. Paper was really intimate because it has personal information on it. Before that I was interested in clothes. I thought of clothes as an outer skin and how they are so close to your body all the time. The identity of within your clothes whenever they are taken away from a setting of being worn. It seemed like a strange break between these soft and pliable materials that I can manipulate however I wanted. Once I got more comfortable with the metal working, I found ways to adapt it to work with what I was interested in. It was nice to learn two sides of how to work with it. Especially being able to combine the two and see the combinations of the two.

What projects are you working on now?

I'm working at the gallery now full time. I'm the manager there. A lot of what I'm working on for the summer is managing shows with them. In the spring I'm going to try to get back into the studio more and work on something different. I want to do something different. I haven't decided what. The last body of work I did after the bronze was all natural materials that I had found, like sticks and wax and things like that. It was a pretty big break. I was making small carvings with pieces of plaster, which I liked. I like the idea of having these little pieces that I was sort of carving intuitively, not thinking about it while I was doing it and just responding to it. So probably something like that, but I'm hoping to come up with a different material or something different. I'm not quite sure yet.

So, you graduated from Millersville University and then did a residency at MU right after that?

Yeah. I'm sort of off on my own for the first time for a while. It's nice.

Do you have a studio space that you are using now?

No. I've talked to the professor I worked with before about being able to use her facilities in exchange for monitoring hours and things like that. I think it's something I'm going to try to do because it's nice when you have facilities available to work in. I need to just start doing something now. Something small, probably. Just because of a lack of space.

Have you traveled anywhere lately?

I have! I was in Peru last month. I went for almost two weeks. It was based around the history of native cultures. We went to Lima. We went to a lot of museums. We went out to Machu Picchu and spent a lot of time in smaller surrounding towns looking at ruins. That was definitely an interesting source of inspiration. I have a lot of photos of pottery of theirs that I really like. During a certain period they had these strange clay forms. They had a common strange shape that I found very attractive. Something about smooth rounded shapes together that I really liked. I have a lot of photos that I was doing drawings based off of while I was there of these odd smooth rounded shapes. I think I'll always be attracted to smooth little shapes. Something about fitting them in your hand, maybe.

Are there places you'd like to travel to next?

Yes! My brother, a few years ago, went to Africa. This trip to Peru was my first experience with non-western countries. I've been to Europe and Australia, but this was the first drastically different culture, which I was looking forward to because I hadn't had that. I have talked to him about going back to Africa sometime and experiencing that. He has a million photos and stories. It always seemed like an interesting place to go. It would be so different from anything I've seen before. Something like that. Something really different.

What music are you listening to?

I've been listening to a lot of Odd Future. It's this weird, alternative hip hop collective of kids out of Los Angeles. They're very controversial right now. It's this very strange collective of kids making this music all by themselves and it's really intense and vulgar and graphic. It's really honest and wonderful at the same time. Strangely enough, I've been really loving that. I don't know why. Something about the intensity of it is really refreshing.

I know some people who are really into this strange electronic music that they've been turning me on to. And then completely oppositely, I've been listening to Billie Holiday a lot. It's a weird mishmash of things.

What books are you reading?

I've been in a graphic novel phase lately. I read The Watchmen a long time ago. I started reading the Walking Dead series and Sin City. I'm going to the beach next week and I've got a stock up of a bunch of Sin City, Walking Dead and then one that someone recommended called Y: The Last Man. I had heard about it and heard it was really good but I hadn't read it. So I have four of those waiting and it's been really hard to not read them. I'm kind like, "wait til I get there!" to read them.

I read something called The Stone Diaries. I recently read The Road, which was great and I really liked it. I was slowly making my way through a biography of Francis Bacon. I'm not great with biographies. It sort of loses me. I need something more dramatic than that. But it was interesting. I've always liked his paintings and have been interested in him as a very odd character. It's nice to pick up and look through. For my birthday, I got one of Kara Walkers' books and I've been really liking to look at her drawings.

Watching any movies or TV shows?

Mike (her roommate) and I have been watching Weeds a lot lately.

I just saw 'The Kids are Alright'. I really want to see 'Midnight in Paris', the new Woody Allen movie. I heard it was really good. I still haven't seen it. I'm pretty curious about it.

Any websites that you frequent?

Yes! It sounds weird, but I frequent this website called Gals Guide to MMA. I have a strange love of mixed martial arts fighting. It's this website that a group of women run. They give a female take on professional fighting. It's interesting because they highlight a lot of female fighters that don't get a lot of press. You can keep up with female fighters that you don't see on TV as much. They have all kinds of things. They have fights and do re-caps. All kinds of strange hilarious stuff. For some reason I've been loving that.

Ty told me about it actually. There's this woman who writes these great pulpy fiction novels. Her name is Christa Faust. She used to be somehow involved in stripping and pornography and burlesque. She started writing these pulp fiction stories. One was called "Money Shot" and he (Ty) got it. I read it and it was really funny and just very hilarious. She is also an MMA fan. Now I follow her on twitter. She's releasing a new book soon. I think she has written for MMA too.

It's strange. I don't know what about it I've been interested in. My younger brother and some of my cousins are into it. So I've always been around it and I know people who are fighters. I just can't help but get really into it. I've gone to a couple fights, they have them in Harrisburg sometimes. It's a real event. It's an experience.

What were you like growing up?

I grew up in the woods. Me and my little brother ran around and pretended we were indians a lot. I wanted to be a children's book illustrator. I thought that was a pretty great job. I loved to read ever since I learned how. My parents would always find me books with interesting illustrations. I would always write my own books and do the illustrations.

Growing up in Shippensburg, it was sort of secluded. I can appreciate what that did for me now, growing up like that. It made me independent and able to use my imagination and keep myself entertained. I still love being in the mountains and woods. It feels very comforting.

What new skill would you like to learn?

I always thought woodcarving was interesting. I never had the patience for it; to sit down and try to carve something that looked like something out of one piece of wood. I always saw other students who would very bravely decide to take a block of wood and carve something out of it. It seemed like people who were good woodworkers had a lot of practical skills then.

The frame that I made for the piece upstairs was a real adventure in woodworking for me. I milled the wood. Not completely by myself. I had someone helping me who was amazing. I went to the lumber yard and picked the wood out. It was a rough cut, just half of a tree. I learned how to plane and things like that. I thought woodworking would be a good skill to have. So, just more detailed knowledge of woodworking.

What do you do to start working on a project for motivation?

Write. I find that in a lot of my sketchbooks it's mostly writing. Writing about things and then picking words out and making lists. I find that very helpful.

I have a lot of lists. If it's something that's in my head and I know what I want it to look like, I'll write out steps. Sort of detailed instructions. When I started working more loosely, I let go of a lot of that pre-planning. Then it became more about materials and I would just go out looking for things, like whenever I worked with natural materials I would go out into the woods or in a surrounding area and try to see these things and imagine what they would look like or what they could look like. I would pick them up and manipulate them.

I've always found that writing is really helpful. I can go back then in my sketchbooks and find ideas that I had written out but never made. It's a nice way to keep track of all those things, especially the lists. Then I can go back and see the similarities in my work. Even though I think they are different I can always go back and think, "oh that really plays in", even if I hadn't planned it to. Conceptually, a lot of things seem to echo. I think it's just the things I'm interested in always come out or those qualities always make themselves apparent.

This a questions from your roommate Mike - what does art mean to you?

Art means almost anything. Art is almost like how much you can convince me what you're doing is art. If someone can convince me...

I would have a hard time saying something isn't art if they can give me a good reason. I feel like there isn't' a lot that could be excluded from that. Sometimes you notice things around you. Simple things that you think are really amazing. Simple shapes or objects. Those are the kinds of things I like to write down in my sketchbook. Random objects or shapes or something like that because they are all source materials. So the world is one big source materials.

So, you see art as something really integrated into what you are doing everyday?

Yeah, especially from working and having the training to think that way. Once you go through that and you make that shift to start thinking that way, it's hard to turn off. So you see it everywhere. Which is a great way to see the world. To imagine the possibilities of everything. Yeah. So maybe that's what art is: the possibilities you can imagine in your mind of everything.

This is your roommate Cody's question - who is the best roommate?

Oh! That is unfair!

I shouldn't have told you who's questions that was!

I guess it depends on what aspect of being a roommate it is. They all have their pros and cons. I'd say I've got a pretty good bunch. They're very easy to deal with.

Cody and I were talking about having something called the Roommate Olympics. Having different events to prove how valuable you are to the apartment, skills that you bring to the apartment that you can take care of. We'd have events set up and you'd compete against each other to see who would be the best roommate.

I don't know what the events would be. They would all be really practical things and I think I could beat them in a lot of those. Like, cleaning and organizing and cooking. Cody could take me in the electronics field. Mike can beat us all in sleeping and eating. I guess we all bring something different to the apartment.

Lauren Nye "Recollect" July 5 - August 14, 2011

Lauren Nye
"Recollect"
July 5 - August 14, 2011
Reception: July 15, 2011 6-10pm

The Yellow Wall Gallery at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to present “Recollect”, an exhibit of bronze and paper sculptures by Lauren Nye. This body of work is a spontaneous and intuitive investigation of the transformation that takes place when two unlikely materials meet. Bronze pouring is a traditional process that is merged with the non-traditional material of paper.

Lauren uses dense recycled paper as a surface which to pour the bronze. The resulting sculpture take on an aged, deteriorated appearance as dictated by the intuitive process of the bronze burning away and replacing the paper surfaces. The viewer is presented with a sculpture that is a compelling study of the realization of forms from the juxtaposition of materials.

Lauren Nye is an artist located in Harrisburg, PA, with her BFA in sculpture from Millersville University. She was an installation assistant to the exhibition “Translating Lost,” in Milan, Italy, and at the Venice Biennale. She opened her first solo exhibition, “Communion” in 2010, and is the current gallery manager at Isadore Gallery in Lancaster, PA.

The exhibition will be at the gallery from July 5 to August 14, 2011. A reception for the artist will occur on July 15, 2011 from 6-10pm at the gallery. Light refreshments will be served.

Interview with Stephen Fieser

Stephen Fieser's "Juxtapose", an exhibition of small drawings and prints about the human figure, will be at the gallery from May 17 to July 3, 2011.

When did you start making art?

Age 13, I would say. It was then that I started announcing too often and too loudly that I was absolutely going to be an artist.

Did you study art in high school?

I did. In the last two years of high school, I went to a Vo-Tech. That was the most wonderful opportunity. because then at age 15 I was working at making and learning design and illustration about 3 hours a day, 5 days a week in school. That was the first time I didn't hate being in school. It was wonderful.

I had my first art job working for a TV station. We just called it commercial art back then, but it encompassed illustration and design. I had my first art job at the TV station before graduation and stayed there about a year. I sort of drifted from one kind of job to the next with periods of not working. When I wasn't working, I was self-educating. Eventually, it drifted into full time conventional design work.

I didn't go to college right off the bat. I had visited a number of art school during my senior high school year. I was shocked to find out they were going to force me to take non-art subjects. That was intolerable and I refused to go to school. It seemed like the job of learning to draw was so demanding. I couldn't imagine getting anywhere if I were distracted with these other subjects that, at that time, held no interest. It was very arrogant and dumb, but that's how it was.

I became fairly obsessive about studying figure drawing and anatomy. Everywhere I went I was carrying an anatomy book trying to memorize bones and muscles and trying to draw them from memory. Eventually I did independent study through Syracuse University and got an MFA in illustration. But even that was 75% self-education.

Along the way, I was really fortunate to meet the sculptor Richard Koontz, who died 5 years ago. Richard lived in Camp Hill and we met drawing figures at the Art Association every Thursday. We became good friends. He was a much older man with a really astonishing background as an industrial designer, inventor and sculptor. In time, I began studying sculpture formally with him. For many years we had a weekly date. Either officially studying or I would just go to his house and pull one of his sculpture from some shelf and set it down and start asking questions. He was my real mentor; by far the most potent influence from a living person that I knew.

He shared my interest or point of view that you shouldn't just draw figures from the model, that you should be able to invent them, put them in any pose and draw them from any point of view. In his case he would sculpt without models. There was a certain power of design in his figures that I loved and to this day still keep trying to absorb. I have a few thousand of Richard's drawings he willed Cherie and I through the generosity of his daughters after he died. A lot of his sculpture came to us and thousands of drawings in addition to some sculptures Cherie had purchased for me over the years from Richard. Occasionally I'll still take his drawings and make copies of them to try to think what he was thinking when he drew them.

How does your wife, Cherie, influence your art making?

She absolutely has and does. How to get specific about it, let me think.

Our tastes developed together. We married in our early 20s. I was just discovering what prints were at that time. She joined me in that discovery process. For gifts she would go out and research and buy me prints from artists I liked. We would think about what we liked and made choices together.

Cherie is especially fond of woodcuts. She likes things that are really strong and bold shaped. I do too, but that's not in this show, that's ahead. About a year ago, I began exploring a certain engraving process that was pretty close to the way that I draw. The next step is to begin cutting wood and printing it by hand or by letterpress. That's something I know Cherie will enjoy seeing.

We both like figures, but she's encouraging me to draw cats. I adore cats and they are really really hard to draw. For months I've been thinking about what can I do with cats that's not simply copying what I see. How can I do that as I do with human figures. That is, to absorb the idea and then through invention produce something original.

In so many ways our tastes have developed together. In practice, that has a lot to do with how we put the house together, how we do the garden. We think very much alike that way. That same aesthetic, I think in some ways, informs the art that I'm doing by myself.

What inspired you to draw without models?

It was my practice. Children tend not to draw from something they are looking at. I kept doing that. Then later on in mid-teens when those who did go to art school were mostly drawing by looking at an object or photograph, I did that a little bit but it seemed more natural to draw from imagination.

What really hammered it was a book that was extremely influential. It was Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters by Robert Beverly Hale who was the famous figure drawing and anatomy teacher at the Art Students League. It was around 1972 when I got that book. He was making the case that in earlier centuries, let's say before the mid-nineteenth century when the academic process took over, that it was the practice of old masters to draw with and without models. He maintained that many of those famous old masters' drawings were invented. A person should learn the forms of the figure, the structures and functions of anatomy so acutely so that one is able to draw them. So there from on high, was somebody saying you should do what I already wanted to do. That gave me more of a structure for doing it. That structure was the study of anatomy. I return to that same book and other books by Hale again and again. Right now I'm reading through a book of his lectures.

Once in a great while, I feel like I've come to a standstill and the fire dies out. It's very rare, it has almost never happened. But when it does happen, I go back to the beginning, which was the book by Hale and the study of anatomy. That reignites the motivation and everything grows out of that.

I illustrated for many years. Even then illustrating was a context for drawing people. All of those children's books and all those illustrated magazine articles began not with the setting but with figures. At first trying to tell the story with just the postures, movements and gestures of figures. Like the old masters, starting out with nude figures and later clothing them as a way of getting to the human structure first. That's how I did those children's books. That's exactly how they were done.

How long does it typically take you to finish a drawing?

Some of them come together in a couple of hours, but that's a little bit misleading because I might throw away five to get to that one. Most typically the drawings in the show are day long drawings. Many of them did use references, but bits and pieces of references. I might look at a photograph of a model in some book made for practicing art. I may look at the shoulder area but I'll turn the book sideways. Now it's not a standing figure, it's leaning or reclining. I'll just draw that area and then put the reference aside and do something else from imagination. Then I'll look at a completely different reference, maybe a hip area or leg which might fit, and draw that little area from reference.

So, I'm switching back and forth between references and inventions but the pose as a whole is completely new. Hands, feet and heads are almost never drawn from references. It's actually very hard to do so from a model in a life class or from a photograph that you've set up very carefully. Hands almost always are kind of meaningless they way they are. Fingers coming at you; they look like stubs. It's not a good shape. Feet from many angles are meaningless shapes. It's good, in any case, to be able to change things to make the shapes communicate and have a stronger structure.

It's probably a day long process for most of those. The ones in the show represent those days in which I had pretty good luck, where all that risk and experiment paid off. The prints were generated from those or other drawings.

For the process of making a plate, I work on a plastic plate with various engraving tools. It takes probably about a day to get the first proof, then I judge it and alter the plate. Then it's harder to tell. After the first day of working on a drawing or a print, it's important not to start obsessing over little parts that can ruin the overall effect. So, after the first day of working on it solid, I'll only work on it for an hour at a time at the most. That may happen over months. So it's hard to say what the cumulative time is in the end.

Where are your favorite people-watching spots or places to draw people?

Of course the Riverfront, City Island, the Uptown Plaza, the Broad Street Market.

When we travel, any park or plaza is great. Beaches are good. People are very free in their movements and covered with less fabric. If you go to a mall to draw, it's not very productive. People's movements are very restrained. They don't sit on the floor much. They don't jump around. Their arms don't swing as much. Their heads don't turn as much. But once those same people are outside in a park or something like that, then the range of postures and gestures becomes huge. On a warm day when moods are elevated at a beach or something, the most astonishing, or at least interesting, poses appear to be drawn.

In your notes, you wrote that you feel you have free range to draw people without their consent in those public spaces.

One day I was in Bryant Park behind the New York Public Library on 5^th avenue. There's a drawing in here of a girl sitting beside her boyfriend. She hugging him and kissing him on the neck. There were hundreds of people there, tightly packed. People know they are being seen in a park. That's why I do feel free in that kind of setting because there's some implicit consent. I was sitting, maybe five yards away, in a whole line of people on benches. As I was drawing them, there was a guy a few yards away on his cell phone who was reporting on me. He was saying, “It's a beautiful day! The birds are singing and an artist is here drawing these people!” Then I looked out across the way and there was a guy with a camera with a lens that was, like, three feet long! Okay, I'm exaggerating a little bit. It was pointed straight at me. I know he could count my eyelashes with that lens. He was really really in my space, while I was somewhat in someone else's space, while being talked about by someone else. It seemed just perfect. I tried not to make awkward expressions for the benefit of the photographer. It seemed all very democratic, fair and right and fun.

What are favorite drawing materials to use?

More than anything these days, I'm using water soluble colored leads. The type I'm using most is called museum lead from Caran D'ache. These are loose leads that you fit into a holder. They're extremely loaded with pigment. I can draw with them dry and wet. A lot of the drawings look like a wet media; that was from dipping these in water and drawing with them. I'm using some of those same pigments in the prints. It's a very unusual process. I like to use dry pigments for intaglio. I just stumbled upon a woman's blog in which she invented that process for herself. I've never heard of it elsewhere. I immediately tried it and began developing more ways of doing that.

I love drawing with water soluble leads and a nice soft paper like Stonehenge or Strathmore 400. They really take it nicely.

Could you talk about the influence of calligraphy and sculpture in your drawings?

When we go the city and go to museums, I usually make a beeline for the drawings. I'm always disappointed because they always have very few. Then I go straight to sculpture. Always have. I spent a lot of time going through my own books of sculpture. I'm interested in a lot of sculptors from the first half of the twentieth century who were past that academic period in the nineteenth century. From 1910 up until the early 1960s, there were a lot of sculptors who had this same point of view about absorbing anatomy and making things that were in the category of realist figures. But you know there was a lot of invention going on. People like Carl Milles and certainly Richard Koontz. There were so many sculptors from Northern Europe and the U.S. during that period that were producing a certain kind of sculpture that I love and just can't get enough of.

When I'm drawing, I'm often thinking, “What if this were a sculpture?”. Some of the forms that I draw are really a sculptor's idea of forms. For example, a lot of sculptors would make a plane for the top of the shoulder. So at the collarbone, there would not just be a bump on a lump, but the collarbone would be a division between the front plane and a slanted top plane of the shoulder. With examples in front of me, I could point out scores and scores of ways that sculptors organize form and make it very strong and clear. Take the really subtle forms that are on the body and make them a little bit more architectural and little bit more digestible.

As for calligraphy, I practiced that decades ago. I'm very interested in letter forms. Sometimes I almost practice it so that I could be able to write in cursive legibly, which is really hard for me. I flunked handwriting in grade school and to this day sometimes in odd hours I'll fill pages with cursive practice trying to make legible writing. In my design days I did a lot of hand lettering, which is different from calligraphy. In calligraphy you write out in single flowing strokes, whereas in lettering you sort of draw and build up each letter. I'm really interested in letter forms as well. There's a sculpture and architecture to that.

But getting back to calligraphy. I especially love Asian calligraphy even though I'm not able to read a single character, unlike Cherie who can now. Chinese twentieth century art has a very strong grounding in their old traditions , which are so close together with writing and drawing. Chinese brush and ink drawing are extremely calligraphic. It's like music. The impression of movement is so powerful. More than any other art form, it strikes me as music does. There's a very powerful emotional effect that comes from motion and change. There are a lot of twentieth century Chinese artists whose names I can't read or pronounce, but whose books I go through by the hour. I look at the way that they almost write their figures and plants and mountains and streets. Some of that comes out in my drawings where the same strokes that I use to describe a shoulder blade or something could be a stroke used to write a character.

How is your artwork as an illustrator different from this body of work?

All those years I was illustrating, I was doing the thing I wanted to do more than anything else. I was not a frustrated fine artist by any means. I really loved making pictures that were made to augment the stories. There would be the story of the text and I would invent a whole new visual story that went with it. I was not copying “so and so did this and then they did that'”and then I would draw them doing that. It wasn't like that at all. It was a very free and inventive process of inventing a visual story to go with the word story. When they are together, you don't know the difference when you are looking at the picture book. You think the author is saying what I'm drawing and you think I'm drawing what the author is saying but actually it's only at little points that is the case.

A few years ago, the mural project at the bookstore came up. That had a lot to do with my change of focus. It was the first really big, demanding project in which I was not starting out from someone else's narrative. There were no specific directions from Eric or Catherine [Papenfuse]. They were the most wonderful patrons and benefactors because all they were doing was encouraging my development of the idea. Though the mural is full of history of anecdote, more than anything else, it's a figure composition. It's an abstract design it was meant to be decorative. I was doing what I felt murals should do, traditionally have done and it recent decades have failed to do. That is, to not be an illustration but a decorative surface that is wedded to it's architectural setting. So, it was actually made for outdoors. The horizontal band was a way to lock it to that long stretch of building. That's how the river got in there. I wasn't thinking, oh, I'll do something of the river. I thought, this is a really long wide building; I'm going to have to do something to acknowledge that and then I'm going to have to do something to interrupt that. Suddenly, it came to me that the river could be a unifying line that goes the length of it.

It really developed in the most abstract terms but it became a figure composition. Most of the effort was spent on the original sketch, which was about 9 feet long, working out the positions of figures. Before there were figures I would make these swoops thinking, I know here's a vertical; it'll be a tree. Now I'm going to have to do something to balance or lead to or bypass that vertical. So I would make some swooping lines and then some other swooping lines and then little by little those swooping lines became figures in various positions. A lot of those sections of the mural came from my sketches so they didn't begin as swooping lines, but as a specific anecdote and they were built into that - the general sweep and flow of the thing.

When that experience was over, I was kind of addicted to the idea of designing with figures. That was always a component of the illustration, but the narrative was so demanding I couldn't add 50 different figures just because I wanted to. The mural made me want to do more with the figure as design apart from a narrative. The mural has a setting, but it's dominated by figures. Now I've gotten rid of the setting and I'm working with single figures and double figures. I'll keep playing with fewer and more clusters of figures in sculptural arrangements.

In illustration you're accomplishing a number of different things at once: a narrative, a design. You're partnering with the author, even though in most cases you never meet the author or speak with them. It's a collaborative effort. In these drawings, the driving motivation is to find the most interesting presentation of a figure completely without reference to a story or anecdote or situation even though after the fact they may be imagined into the work. Sometimes I'll add a title that will suggest that, but that is often after the fact. Even the absence of clothing is a way of avoiding setting and time and place and social position, that sort of thing. All of these are very important in illustration, the setting and the clothing are a big part of telling the story. Now I'm saying there's no story and there are no clothes and this is getting closer and closer to pure design and the way you react to the position of a figure.

How long have you been doing illustration professionally?

That started while I was in high school. In that first job I was doing a lot of airbrush. I did a lot of images that were station ID things for special times of the year between programs. They would flash their logo with this airbrushed picture that I would make of some kooky thing. Then by my early 20s I was settled into book publication, primarily as a designer. I was pushing towards illustration, so I began assigning myself cover illustrations in my role as designer. Instead of getting a photograph for the cover, it would be an illustration. Then I began studying illustration more formally through Syracuse University. Really, it began at age 16 doing it for money. By age 20 and onward that was my work, illustrating an designing. The children's books came around age 30. So for a number of years I was designing by day and illustrating nights and weekends. Then I would cut back my design job to a few days a week. Then I started teaching and designing. Now I'm not teaching or designing, just doing this.

Do you have a favorite illustration project that you've worked on?

At the time I did each of the childrens' books, I was absolutely engaged and committed and fanatical about it. There was one called The Silk Route, a historical book about trade between China and Byzantium in the seven hundreds. That had a lot of scholarship, even more than the others. In all of them there's history involved and a lot of research. But that one is the one that if I were to ever do it again, I'd want to do more work like that. John S. Major is the author of that. He's a professor of Asian Studies at Dartmouth, I think. He is the author of many scholarly books on Asian subjects but he stepped into writing juvenile books. In this case we collaborated together directly and became friends in the process.

It was supposed to be the first in a series of six trade routes books. Just as we were working on this, our publisher, Harper Collins, was bought by Rupert Murdoch and they, little by little, changed it from a privately-owned publishing house to a very very commercial one. They fired our editor who was in charge of doing all this history. After that no one was interested in history. The idea of that whole series died, but it's actually the best selling of all the books after all these years. It's the kind of book I'd love to do again if there were the climate for it.

I've heard that you play piano. Do you compose your own music?

I do. I'm not so good at reading, although the last number of years I've been learning to read some pretty complex music. Like drawing from imagination from childhood on, the most natural way to make music was to improvise or to deliberately compose things. For a while in my teens that motivation to draw and to be a musician was probably about 50 / 50. I pretty quickly realized that I didn't like performing. I didn't like being in front of people at which point so much of what I could do would evaporate. So I turned more and more to the idea of composing, just building these musical structures alone. What becomes of that and all those compositions, I don't know. I'm getting older and I'm getting a little nervous about that. But, drawing still has to take priority.

Do you enjoy cooking?

I do. Cherie is a really good cook. But, in the various changes of working roles, me being home all the time, it makes sense for me to cook. I enjoy doing that. I do almost entirely Italian cooking. We love it. Its a way of learning something rather than trying to do a little bit of everything. I want to understand what that cuisine is like.

Are there any new skills that you'd like to learn?

Printmaking is fairly new. Cherie and I really enjoyed looking at prints and learning about them from decades back. It was always my intention to make prints but it's taken me 35-40 years to actually getting around to doing it. I studied lithography with Don Forsythe at Messiah a couple years back. He was a wonderful teacher, but it was so technical that I couldn't continue with it. It was just not the right medium for me. The technical demands were so great that it just didn't' leave me enough room to give attention to the drawing part of it. It was intimidating. I might be able to do it again now. I feel I'm getting more acclimated to printmaking. I want to do wood engraving and wood cutting and perhaps lithography again and all sorts of printmaking techniques. It's very exciting.

I'm 55, I think. I feel really energized by trying to learn a difficult skill. Its as scary now as it was when I was 16 or 18 trying to figure out how to draw a body. It actually makes you feel young and energetic to be in that position.

Are there any places you'd like to travel to?

Highest on the list for both of us are Italy and China. We've never to Europe. I sort of have fantasies of a trip to Italy in which we take cooking lessons. Which region, I don't know because from top to bottom it is so attractive. We have been to China and can't wait to go back. Cherie has been studying Chinese language over the past several years. Chinese culture was an area of great interest for her since childhood. She's the leader in that and I've become equally enamored with Chinese tea culture and Chinese woodblock printing and art. To go there and walk through the parks and see the Asian sensibility that is manifest in everything – on the pavements you walk over, they are different.. and vary varied. The walls and roof tiles, the buildings, the way trees are arranged in the park sin southern china – it's sculpture. There are things that just jar you into realizing you know nothing about what its like on the other side of the world. Its intoxicating. We are very eager to go back.

What do you think of the art scene in Central Pennsylvania?

It's really fun to know how many people are in their studios working and showing in galleries.

Lancaster is very lively. I'm especially thrilled about whats happening in Midtown [Harrisburg] right now. So much of what we now love about this city has to do with the energy and enthusiasm of Eric and Cathy [Papenfuse]. We keep meeting more and more people doing wonderful things. I think with the emerging galleries and venues in Harrisburg, we're suddenly becoming aware of a lot really wonderful stuff that we had not been aware of previously.

Any advice for artists?

Two of my favorite artists are Thomas Hart Benton and Isabel Bishop. I remember Tom Benton writing that art isn't such a bad occupation if you can get through the first 30 years. He sold a few things but he was not living from his art until he was much older. I was shocked to read last night that Isabelle Bishop, even though she was a renowned artist from the 1920s and onward, she was not making a living at it until she was much older.

Richard Koontz was working at the high level of industrial design back in the 30s and 40s for Raymond Lowey (the father of modern industrial design). He went from one rather privileged and very responsible position to the next. But later when he focused on sculpting, he made a conscious decision that he was not going to get tied up with the business of selling and showing. He wanted to make the stuff unencumbered by the demands of the gatekeepers in the art world. So that allowed his artwork to become fully developed. He really reached astonishing heights. He believe in the way of the amateur, in the best sense. An amateur being someone who does it for love.

If it's possible to live by it, that's wonderful, but if it's not, you may actually be able to develop most fully, if you're not connected to the demands and gatekeepers of the marketplace.

Let me replace that. Advice for artists: Do it obsessively. Let's go with that instead.

Stephen Fieser "Juxtapose" May 17 - July 3, 2011

The Yellow Wall Gallery at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore is pleased to present Juxtapose, an exhibit of drawings by Stephen Fieser, painter of the Midtown Scholar Bookstore's mural. The exhibit features sketchbook pages of figure observations from public life and nude figure compositions drawn or engraved without models. The exhibition will be at the gallery May 17 through July 3, 2011. A reception for the artist will occur on Friday, May 20, 2011 from 6-10pm at the gallery. Light refreshments will be served. An "Artist Talk" with Stephen Fieser will happen on Friday, June 17, 2011 at 7pm as part of the Third in the Burg festivities from 6-10pm at the Midtown Scholar Bookstore.

Juxtapose begins with several dozen pages from Fieser's pocket sketchbooks. Here, brief impressions were caught on the fly, as people acted and interacted in public spaces. The park offers the artist a place where he can observe and draw without feeling intrusive, although he must be inconspicuous to be productive.

The bulk of the drawings and prints of nude figures in this exhibit are constructed mostly without models. This is an approach to figure drawing that is less practiced than the typical method of drawing with live, posed models. The resulting drawings and prints are influenced by Fieser's admiration for calligraphy, with his use of flowing, changing and directly executed lines, and for sculpture, with his attention to the subtleties of complex structures of real bodies and his consideration of intersecting forms within those bodies.

Stephen Fieser grew up in western Pennsylvania. While still in high school, he began working as an artist for a television station. Later he designed and illustrated for the publishing industry, eventually concentrating on children’s books and magazines. He has illustrated 6 books for HarperCollins and Henry Holt publishers, and many pieces for the Cricket magazine group.

Fieser has been an adjunct instructor of drawing and illustration for Messiah College, Marywood University, and elsewhere. He also has collaborated with Fathom Studio and others on advertising and design projects.

In 2003, Fieser was commissioned to create an 8’ x 66’ mural for The Midtown Scholar Bookstore. Scores of figures in the mural describe the present and past of Harrisburg’s Riverfront Park.

Fieser earned an MFA in illustration from Syracuse University. His most important mentor in art was the late sculptor, Richard Koontz, of Camp Hill. Stephen and his wife, Cherie, have lived in their Harrisburg home for almost 30 years.

To draw the human figure was Fieser’s early and lasting motivation. His study of anatomy, figure invention and drawing from life has been an ongoing background pursuit, as well as the foundation of his illustration work. In 2010, Fieser’s art took a new direction as he concentrated on the production of figure drawings and original prints for exhibition and sale. Juxtapose is the first such exhibition.

Interview with Courtnye Koivisto

Courtnye Koivisto's "Minimal Taxonomy", an exhibition of paintings and photographs, will be at the gallery from April 12 to May 15, 2011.

When did you first discover your creative talents?

As early as before elementary school. I've always been drawing and interested in art. My big thing used to be dinosaurs. I love dinosaurs! I would draw dinosaurs all the time. In middle school and even into high school I drew a lot of fantasy creatures. I still love dragons. I've been doing it all my life. I don't know exactly when I found out…but a long time ago.

When did you start doing painting and photography?

Definitely when I was in high school I got into both of them. I had always done pencil sketches up until high school. I was taking more art classes and started to paint. I was on the staff of the high school's art and literary magazine. I started taking more photographs then and also explored other forms of art at that point. That's also when I found out that I liked graphic design. That all came out of sophomore year.

I majored in fine art at Shippensburg University. I concentrated in Graphic Design. I had an internship in Photography and Graphic Design.

When did you begin to focus on nature as a subject in your artwork?

It's a tricky question because I've always liked nature. When I was doing it primarily for fun, it would be sketches of animals or fantasy creatures.
Then in college, I kind of put it on the back burner. I did subject matter that interested me, but I wasn't necessarily passionate about. Part of it was being around so many different artists and having to fulfill certain expectations. Nobody else really did nature, so I thought maybe that's not acceptable. When I had to do my senior project, we could do anything we wanted. I still felt strongly about doing stuff like this, so I did a series of paintings on endangered species. I really enjoyed that. So when I graduated, I was like, this is what I love doing so I'm going to continue to focus on that.

Could you talk about the life/death cycle in your artwork?

I've always been fascinated by macabre and dark. When I say I drew fantasy creatures in middle school, I would draw unicorns, but they would be black and dark. My dad thought it was a phase, but I've kind of continued with it. In photography I find some of the more interesting subjects to be decayed things. Even man-made, rusted, old. You can tell they had a life, but they don't now. They've taken on a different embodiment. From that you can see a cycle of rebirth.

Who are artists/artwork that you are inspired by?

I enjoy seeing other artists who have taken on a more natural aspect to their artwork. One photographer that I absolutely love is Nick Brandt. De does black and white photographs of African animals, primarily. The way he photographs them…they're just breathtaking. I love his work.

Another photographer is Andrew Zuckerman. He has two photography books; one is called Creature, one is called Bird. They're beautiful photographs, but sometimes they shouldn't be. The details he captures…you see every bump and crevasse and you're just like..eew! but at the same time you're amazed at things that you don't usually see. One because they are half a globe away and Two you don't ever see them that close. He photographs them on white backgrounds. All your eye is drawn to is the animal itself.

Also Salvador Dali. Paul Klee.

What camera / gear do you use?

I primarily use three different digital cameras and two 35mm. The two 35mm I haven't used so much lately. It gets expensive, unfortunately. Even though I work in a photo lab, it's still expensive. Both of those are Nikons. I've surprisingly been able to take good pictures with my point and shoot Olympus. But right now the one I'm using is a Canon Powershot G10. It's wonderful because it can be point and shoot, but it also has manual settings. It's a great camera. I like how it's small, it's not like a big digital SLR.

Do you have a favorite lens?

For the photographs I've been doing lately, I've been using the macro lens. (interchangeable lenses for the G10)

Could you talk about your choice to use wood panels to paint on.

They are birch panels. I have another one that is umm, I forget what it is. Pine? In my painting class in college, one of our projects was to do a painting on small 12x12 panels. The assignment was we had to do a wet sand layers of paint then cheesecloth to create texture. But the part we had to paint on was just the wood. Painting on the wood, I loved how it felt. It's very smooth. Very natural. I like painting on canvas, but there's something about painting on wood you just can't get from canvas. I also like the textures of wood. I did another painting where I just did a very thin wash for bones over the wood so you can still see the wood through the bones. I like the texture and the smoothness.

What were you like growing up?

My mom has always said that I live to the beat of my own drum. Not necessarily in a bad way. I'm okay being alone doing my own thing, not having people around. I do what i enjoy. But at the same time, I like to have fun. I was quiet growing up, I'm still quiet now. I get very excited about some things though. I was very excitable. I was an easy kid. I never really had much of a rebellious stage.

Describe your workspace/studio.

It's in the corner of my living room. In our apartment, we have two sliding glass doors that lead onto a patio. I have my studio setup right next to it. So when at all possible I can paint with the sun coming in.

Last year we found this awesome antique corner desk. I didn't have anything except stacked milk crates and it was a pain in the butt to have to bend over to get my paints. So I have my corner desk now. Right next to it I have my easel, which was a wonderful gift from my husband. Usually the way it's set up I can look at the TV while I'm painting. It's a little messy. I have extra carpets and towels down so I don't get paint all over the carpet.

How do you decide which birds to paint? Do you research them first? or paint the birds you see and then research later?

It's kind of a little bit of everything. I'm familiar with a lot of bird species, so I just have ideas in my head. I've always had bird books and liked birds. For the series, I wanted to pick birds that are a little more common. Some of them are slightly more exotic. Rose-breasted Grosbeak is one of them. It's a songbird. It's a bird you see around, but not like a robin. For this i didn't want to go into the tropical birds. One is a painting of a European Goldfinch, which you aren't going to find around here. For the series, I wanted to do slightly more common songbirds. Another thing that played into my selection were their colors, their body structures, habitats even. I didn't want to do a series of just red birds or brown birds.

What sort of outdoor activities do you engage in?

I definitely enjoy walking now that the weather is getting nice. I go to Wildwood by HACC a lot. It's a nice place to walk around. When I can, my parents own kayaks, so I go out kayaking or on the boat or tubing. One thing I wish I could do more often is snorkeling! Definitely not something I can do in Central PA though.

Hiking… there's King's Gap, Pole Steeple, Pine Grove Furnace.
My parents house is a great place to observe nature. They live out in the woods. Any of the parks around here too. Long Pine at Michaux State Forest. Whenever I needed a break from school, I'd just drive up there and it was nice and quiet. You can hike and walk around. You can kayak but you can't fish or picnic there. It's the water reservoir for the city of Chambersburg!

I haven't been here recently, but Lake Erie has Presque Isle. It's a nice natural area to go to.

Any music you are listening to a lot lately?

I'm recently on a kick of Mumford & Sons and the Avett Brothers. That style. iI seems to fit with winter going into spring. I'm on a bizarre task of listening to all the song on my ipod in alphabetical order. I'm always listening to Gorillaz. I love them! I'm always looking for new bands or rediscovering old ones. Like, Matchbox 20! I used to listen to them a lot. I recently listened to their first album again and thought, oh! this isn't that bad! I'm always listening to music. One reason is because I have a half hour commute to work. It's nice to put on music and drive.

Any books you are reading? magazines? websites?

I'm currently reading At Home by Bill Bryson. Amazing book! It's so dense with information that it's a bit of a slow read. It's a history of private life. One of the chapters I just finished reading is about why we put salt and pepper on the dinner table. There are long bloody histories to both of them. It's just stuff you don't think of. When you do you're like, yeah why is that? So it's a fascinating read.

I'm not much of a magazine reader. I enjoy magazines. When we go to the bookstore I like to look at Archive.

Websites? umm.. stumbleupon. it takes up a lot of time.

You've been married for a year an a half. How does your husband, Joseph, influence your artwork?

He hasn't really influenced it directly. I've done some drawings of him. Most of his influence comes from his support, which has been great.

Like, the other week we were at Michael's because I needed a tube of paint. The one I wanted was nine dollars and I was like, oh I don't need to spend nine dollars. So he says, oh no, you can get it. So it's stuff like that.

He helps motivate me. Anytime I need a second opinion on something, he gives me an honest opinion. Which is nice because there were times that I thought something was finished but it would've looked like crap. He's been wonderfully supportive even through high school and college. And it's technically his camera that I use. He calls it my camera, but it was his.

Do you like to cook?

I love cooking! I like curries. My dad got me into curries. My most recent discovery is leeks. We went over to a friend's house for dinner and his mom made sautéed leeks and italian sausage. So good! Never thought I'd like leeks, but they are pretty tasty. Part of my cooking I get from my dad. My dad is a great cook. you better enjoy it now, because he might not remember how he made it! I kind of cook like him sometimes. You know, hodge podge, throw it all in and see what happens.

Any recipes to share?

Here's a link to one of Courtnye's favorite recipes: http://www.fieldandstream.com/articles/hunting/deer-hunting/2009/10/how-cook-venison-pumpkin-curry She says: It's for venison and pumpkin curry, but beef and butternut squash make good substitutes.

Any new skills you'd like to learn?

I'd like to learn HTML coding. It's one thing in college I didn't have an interest in. I was more interested in print graphic design. Upon graduating I realized that so many graphic design jobs want you to know HTML for websites. Print isn't' appreciated as much. HTML would be a useful skill that would help me.

I would like to be able to scrape by speaking another language. I've taken so many years of french, I just can't remember it.

Other art techniques. Metalwork.

I'd like to learn more about how to build my own frames for wood. So it would be a built-in frame. I've done canvas frames and then stretched the canvas. But I haven't built my own shadowbox frame for a wood panel. That would definitely help me with my art.

Are there places you'd like to travel to…either new or revisited places?

Oh yeah, I love to travel. Definitely want to go back to Paris. I went there in college. We did all the tourist stuff, it's still amazing. We didn't get to go to the catacombs because they were closed for renovations. And that was one of things i was looking forward to.

We're definitely sometime in the future going to go to Germany. My husband, Joseph, lived in Germany for a few years. His family is in the military. He wants to take me to Germany so bad.

In the states, I'd definitely love to go back to Florida. We always used to go. My uncle has a sailboat. We can go snorkeling. I love that.

Maine. I loved Maine.

I haven't been out west so much. I don't know if I'd want to go to the Midwest again. Went to Oklahoma and wasn't too impressed. I could just skip that and go to Oregon. I do have family in Washington state. So someday, hopefully I'll make it out there.

Do you have any pets?

We don't have any at our apartment. With pet fees, we can't afford it. But I do have a fat cat, whose name is Fatty. She lives with my parents. She's my baby. And they have….I consider them to be my pets because I've known them…Fatty and Skinny cat and then two dogs Penny and Tika. Tika's an Irish Setter and Penny's a Collie. I love them.

We've always had pets. 30 rabbits…yeah..one was a boy. Didn't know that! We've had chickens, hamsters, fish, birds. I would definitely like to, once we can afford it or live somewhere the pet fee isn't so much…I want an animal to be part of my family.

I'd also like to have a scorpion. Joe's not too thrilled about that! So if i ever have a separate studio, i'd get one. I love pets! He's a cat person. I'm a dog person. I want a Corgi! I want a Corgi so bad!

What do you hope your audience gains from viewing your artwork?

An appreciation for things they've seen but not looked too hard at. Just realizing that there's so much beauty in the natural world that you can skip over without a second look. People are running around so fast they don't stop to smell the roses or even to stop and look at the roses. I'm hoping that the next time they're out on a walk they look into someone's garden and see bees pollenating and think that it's beautiful to just watch them. For some of my creepy subject matter, like snakes and spiders, people can see they are beautiful…their colors and patterns.

More of Courtnye's artwork can be found at: http://courtnyekoi.tumblr.com/

"Minimal Taxonomy" photographs and paintings by Courtnye Koivisto

Courtnye Koivisto
"Minimal Taxonomy"
April 12 - May 15, 2011
Reception: April 15, 2011 6-10pm




Artist Statement:

Since I was a child, the natural world has always intrigued me, and I found that different art mediums have allowed me to explore this interest. My work mainly focuses on the subtle and uninterrupted existence of nature, both flora and fauna, and attempts to capture it without the imposition of extraneous meaning.

There are cycles of life, death, and rebirth that occur everyday, yet go unnoticed within our own isolated cycles. Each photograph is a portrayal of the modes within these cycles, thus allowing the viewer to witness a fleeting moment that would otherwise be lost. By meditating on the individual embodiments of life and death in my work, we encounter the unique forms of nature that act without our influence or interference.

While my photographs focus on the natural world as metaphor, my paintings center on birds as portrait subject in an attempt to present them as beings with which we share the world, but may not fully understand. The birds in my paintings are individuals, deserving of recognition; yet, they are representatives of their species as well, perhaps as a symbol of what we do not consciously recognize in the fellow inhabitants of our environment.

More of Courtnye's artwork can be found at: http://courtnyekoi.tumblr.com/