Kimberly Corday is a young artist living in North Hollywood, California. Some of her luxurious textiles and more subtle paintings from her Portal Series are available on Buy Some Damn Art. Below I ask Corday about her practice, how and why she makes what she does and what she’s up to next. Check out Kimberly’s show here.
Corday’s Portal Series
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You graduated from RISD in 2014. What kind of work did you make while in school and what have you been working on since?
Much of my education at RISD was centered around abstract figurative painting. I was looking at a lot of Cecily Brown and Abstract Expressionists but eventually hit a wall and wanted to dip my toes in something new. Senior year, my professor Laurel Sparks encouraged me to dabble in unconventional materials. What transpired was a completely invented process incorporating hand-dyed string and found materials.
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“My practice is rooted in the notion of an ideal natural world – a concept that marries
the spectacle of nature and the spirit of 18th century Romantic landscape painting.
Through a Frankensteinian process that borrows aspects of painting, relief sculpture,
and embroidery, I create textured objects that conjure up an amalgam of natural phenomena
like threadbare pelts, plumage, and patterns found in the wild.” – Kimberly Corday
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Pinkie (above), Beryl (below) and other recent works of yours are made with hand-dyed wool on canvas. How did you come to combine these materials and why?
After graduating, I stumbled across a sheepskin duster at IKEA (of all places) and was interested to take it out of context. I then dyed, distressed, and manipulated the wool in order to transform it into a lush, abstract wall-hanging reminiscent of say a threadbare pelt or strange, ancient relic. Thus spawn my practice as a fiber artist.
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What are you working on now? Are you experimenting with new materials or process?
I’m working on a series of wall hangings prompted by both my rococo aesthetic and interest in a Japanese textile tradition called “Boro”- meaning “ragged” or “tattered”. Stay tuned!
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In your Portal Series the predominant form is a circle. What do they represent to you?
It’s funny, I was noticing a lot of circles in my sketchbook around that time. The shape’s recurrence in my work is unconscious, but I’ve learned to embrace it as a representation of my curiosity in both literal and figurative portals. They’re openings meant to summon associations, sensations and emotions.
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Could you explain what a monoprint is?
Monoprinting is the process wherein a painting or drawing is made on glass or Plexi and rubbed onto paper. The image can only be transferred once- hence the name. It’s ephemeral, unlike most printmaking methods.
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Marianna Peragallo is a Brazilian-American artist whose show on Buy Some Damn Art includes drawings from two of her simple yet mesmerizing series, Two Women and Braids. Below is an interview with the artist about this work and her approach as an artist.
1. What is your series Two Women about?
“Two Women” was inspired by a mentor of mine, so I thought of this series as an homage to her. Some of my works have the subtext of female relationships with other women or themselves. This piece documents a series of simple but intimate moments between the two women, like film stills. The two women are performing a ritual symbiotically in the first few drawings. They wash and brush their hair side by side and their hair braids together. Then one woman, presumably a more experienced woman, teaches the other to braid her hair. She is then able to do it on her own, and returns the favor to the woman who taught her. So there is an exchange happening between the women, a transfer of knowledge from one to the other. For BSDA we chose 6 drawings from the full series of 12. The last drawing (Two Women 6/6) shows one woman with her hair braided, which signifies the end of that cycle. The last drawing in the full series shows a woman undoing that braid, and re-starting the cycle.
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2. Can you speak to the fact that the figures in your drawings have hair and arms but no faces?
Originally Two Women was a video, but I realized that having all the other visual context was distracting from the core of the work, which is the gesture of the women’s hands and their hair. When we reflect on memories, we often remember in fragments and specific moments. So the omission of their faces and bodies highlights the essential elements of the story.
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3. What is the appeal for you of drawing, simply working with graphite on paper, in an age of so many other forms of media?
Drawing is so timeless, which makes it the best format for my conceptual interests right now. It’s one of the oldest way of communicating and making art, and it’s also very contemporary. Drawing is also such a tremendous pleasure and challenge for me, which is important. For some reason I used to think that I couldn’t draw, and now it’s such a big part of my practice.
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4. You mention the longevity of drawings in your artist statement. Do you imagine your work will be viewed by people a hundred years from now?
That would be amazing! I like the idea of my drawings outliving me. But what I meant in my artist statement is that drawings in earthy materials like graphite and charcoal have a unique dual nature because they are erasable and can be smudged, yet those materials are so archival and can withstand hundreds of years. Surely paper can tear or yellow, and the drawing may fade a bit, but carbon based media is very resilient. Cave paintings, drawings, and letters from centuries ago have taught us so much about the world. It is incredible that they survived to tell the stories of their makers. So the longevity of drawing is more interesting to me as a concept because it creates a parallel between drawing and the function of memory. Memory can become faded, colored, or altered but the essence remains and gets passed on through stories.
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5. You are originally from Brazil, lived in Philadelphia and now Brooklyn. Has location and local culture played into your art?
You are correct, I am from Brazil! My family moved around a lot for my dads job once we came to the states so I’ve lived in Virginia, Georgia, Maryland, Mississippi, upstate New York, Philly, and now New York City. I think my work responds to local cultures in subtle ways, but it’s not a focus. Moving frequently certainly informs my interest in memory, time, and the flexible boundaries of past, present, and future, and the mind’s ability to traverse and compress them. I suppose when you move around a lot, there can be a sense of displacement and nostalgia for people and places that are not a part of your present. Ultimately my recent drawings aim to simultaneously solidify a moment and emphasize the transience of time and memory.
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Kayla Plosz Antiel is the latest artist to exhibit on Art Hound’s sister site, Buy Some Damn Art. Antiel received an MFA in painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design and currently lives in the greater Washington D.C. area. Her square paintings with their bold colors and texture are fresh, playful and approachable.
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Tell us about your art practice
I paint in that sort of “call and response” method a lot of abstract painters share: making a mark, responding to it. Because I’m really motivated by color and the materiality of paint, my process is an ongoing dialectic between my initial and intuitive bodily response to color and texture and my more heady or logical decisions regarding form. I’m always working on a thousand paintings at once, continuously building up surfaces. Yet, I often find myself reworking pieces I was certain were resolved. It’s a frustrating process. Newly primed panels make me uncomfortable, so I tend to rework existing paintings until I have to begin new ones.
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What inspired the paintings in this show
My respect for classic forms like still lifes combined with my interest in color and abstraction. At least that was the starting idea—my paintings sort of take over as I’m working.
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How has your work changed over the years? Have you always worked abstractly
This is a tough question as I vacillate between abstraction and representation. I’ve been painting abstractly in one form or another since undergrad, but I’ve always maintained an interest in representational work. In graduate school I used suggestive representation to confine or limit my abstract work. I often began with a concrete form which tended to become more abstracted through the process. I do see myself slowly coming back around to a more pure representational mode of painting, but there’s something exciting to me about working in the space between.
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What keeps you going as an artist
I’m inspired by the exciting new work I see coming from other artists, by discovering new things or new ways to see old artists, and through watching the ever-changing, always new ways my son discovers the world each day.
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Rachel Stuart-Haas is an artist based in Louisiana who paints enigmatic portraits of women that I’d describe as both playful and soulful. There is unabashed femininity and playful sensuality in Rachel’s portraits, but beyond that there is also sadness, mystery and longing. Six of her paintings are now featured on Buy Some Damn Art. Check out Rachel’s show and read the Q/A below.
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How long have you been painting portraits of women?
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Since my senior year at art school (Kansas City Art Institute). For my thesis I created three large images around The Black Plague and they all featured these long, lanky women with smudged eye makeup. I’ve just sort of kept up with that theme ever since. Maybe one day I’ll branch out, but honestly men just don’t really do it for me artistically! Plus I kinda suck at painting them.
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There is nudity and vampy playfulness in some of your paintings. Does sexuality play a role in your work?
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Absolutely! It’s one of the best parts of being a woman. I just love the whole burlesque and pin-up theatrics of it all, without being too obvious and blunt.
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The women in your paintings look very young with their huge doe eyes. Why that particular look?
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Truly there is no real conscious reason for that, but I wonder if they’ll start looking older as I age too. A little crow’s feet here, some varicose veins there… A lot of people ask if the girls are self portraits, but they’re not. At least not intentionally anyway. But the eyes are the MOST important to me. I LOVE big eyes. Unfortunately, I do not possess these.
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What kind of people respond to your artwork?
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Really all kinds. You would think it would be mostly women, but I don’t always find that to be the case. Honestly, I’m thrilled with anybody who responds to it!
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How does symbolism play into your work?
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There’s actually quite a lot of symbolism that I throw in, but it’s usually not very overt. Or I hope it isn’t. I get bored if I don’t try and incorporate some layers in here and there. And they usually happen during the progression of each piece. I just try and let that evolve as I work.
We launched yet another great show on Buy Some Damn Art by Sophia Flood. I was lucky enough to visit Sophia’s Brooklyn studio (on foot) – a luxury I don’t always have. The great thing about studio visits is that you always walk away with a slightly different impression of the work. You’re also more likely to be influenced by outside factors – the locale, how well the AC works, how the work is displayed, the artist’s stuff! Upon seeing the work in person I left with the impression that these paintings had a very unique, slightly unsettling quality: the colors were at once deep and bold and faded. The artist aptly describes this quality in the interview that follows as “a dark light”.
Your Fountain
Where are you from originally and where do you live now?
I grew up in Ipswich, Massachusetts. I moved here to Brooklyn a few years ago from Wisconsin, where I went to grad school for painting.
Glass House
You work out of a shared studio space with a few other artists in Gowanus, Brooklyn. What’s the studio experience like post-art school?
It took some getting used to—I came into my current studio after years of working in solo spaces. I’ve always been somewhat private about my work, and really valued my four walls and door as both a mind set and spatial set for an evolving activity. But here, I’ve found studio mates are indispensable. There are no guaranteed visitors and it can feel oddly isolating to live in a huge place. We’re all close outside the studio so there is a built-in ease working together, yet we tend to keep different hours and everyone respects the need for solitude. It forces me to clean up after myself, too. That’s probably good for me.
The Bottom
There are a lot of deep blues and greens in these paintings. What was the inspiration or intent behind this color palette?
My understanding of color has been changing, moving from working with found color (in found materials) to mixing color in paint. The selection process now has less to do with pointing to a color, declaring my affection for this peach or that blue, and more to do with relationships between colors that create an atmosphere or world. Specifically in these paintings, there’s a dark light that I want to articulate. A friend called it dusk; when something is visible yet slipping away. It’s an emotional space reverberating in the physical world. Other reference points include the shuffled shapes of my apartment at night, empty nightclubs, objects in a neon-lined window, and the back-lit, lifted-off darks in certain Vuillard paintings.
Ninth
Your work is mostly abstract, but not completely. How would you describe the kind of paintings you make? Does it matter to you if they are considered abstract or figurative?
It’s funny, I really don’t think of my work as abstract, even though I recognize it reads that way. I guess what’s important to me is that it sits on the line, it can shift back and forth. When I begin a painting, I have a certain image in mind, but I have to lose track of it in order to find anything interesting. And I never set out to control what a viewer sees. What excites me is when a painting reveals itself slowly, within the picture plane but also in the mind or memory. There is something specific or palpable and you might never know what it is for the painter, but the unfolding process can create a parallel experience.
You sometimes show sculpture along with your paintings, pieces that are fairly amorphous and ambiguous. What are these pieces and how do they fit in with the paintings?
Sculptures and sculpture-painting hybrids actually predate these paintings. I’ve always had a strong interest in materials; even in my painting, before the imagery is imagery it is often an experience with a tangible space or object. My current sculptures are both outlets for this material investigation and elaborated parts of the paintings. I try to work on both at the same time, figuring out color and form in these two separate yet connected planes. When shown together, I hope for the sculptures to act as markers. Like signposts, headstones, rocks, steps, or stumps they grow up from the ground and delineate a space.
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Read / view more about the artist on Great Big Iceberg.
Darek Bittner is an artist and designer working primarily in collage and letterpress. A grouping of his collages are now available on Buy Some Damn Art.
Mad Tom Notch
You are a collage artist, printmaker and designer. How do these different practices relate to one another?
Each medium is an opportunity for me to explore my different interests. Having several different ways to work helps to keep things fresh. After a few collages it’s nice to go make a print. Each medium requires a unique approach and pace of work. Collage is faster and more reactive, whereas printmaking is slow and decisive. Switching between mediums helps me prevent my art from becoming formulaic.
Letterpress print (not in show)
What elements link your work across collage, print and design?
I like the idea of arranging found shapes and colors to underlying rules, and then consciously going back in and breaking those rules. The trick is finding a balance. It feels awesome when I get it right. Each piece I create is me going after that experience. I gauge the success of each work by how the piece makes me feel during its creation, regardless of medium. What links my work across each medium is the same emotion I am chasing down whenever I make art. That
emotion ties into the whole High Peaks theme. If you think of every work of art I ever made as a book, the setting would be the High Peaks region of Upstate New York. It’s like taking your boots off after a long day hiking, the feeling never gets old, but you got to work for it each time.
Cold Snap
Where do you look for source materials for collage? What kinds of images do you look for?
I pick up a good deal of trash off the street. The spring time is awesome because the curbs are not yet swept, the snow is melted, and paper is plentiful. Spring is also the best time for yard sales where you can find tons of used books. The annual library book sale is also a gold mine, old office supplies are great too. I never use newsprint or anything that will fade too quickly. It’s also important to juxtapose found paper with artist papers from the art supply store. A pack of Color-Aid is a worthy investment. I’m always looking for stuff that has to do with the Adirondack Mountains of Upstate New York.
Ore Bed
Letterpress can be viewed as old-fashioned and laborious, yet here you are, a young artist, doing creative stuff with it. What is the appeal for you?
To me the Vandercook represents the grand finale of print design. The press I print on is well over half a century old. I seriously doubt my desktop inkjet printer will still work in fifty years. Printing wood type on a Vandercook is like pairing a fine wine with steak, whereas printing an inkjet poster is like waiting in the drive through line for fast food. Just because I print on an old press doesn’t mean my prints should look old too. I like to keep it contemporary.
Keene Valley
What’s it like as an artist in Portland, Maine these days?
Portland is the best. It’s a very small city packed with creative talent. It’s impossible to keep up with everything going on in town. Everyone is buzzing with energy and doing their thing, which makes it easy to stay motivated. Also our craft beer scene is world class. Feel free to come for a visit!
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See the artist’s website for more of his work.
