Where Back When

January 11 – March 23, 2016

Reception: January 22, 6 – 8 p.m.

Large-scale paintings by J. M. Culver reconstruct the past and explore new perspectives in generational storytelling with narratives that vary from the mundanity, absurdity, gravity, and humor of life. These intimate paintings take a look into the transitory nature of memory, inconsistency of perspective with mental illness, and the ownership of stories and secrets.

Artist Statement

My paintings reconstruct the past and explore new perspectives with generational storytelling. They are personal interpretations of my grandfather’s stories, both lucid memories and surreal moments skewed by his altered mental states from schizophrenia. My large-scale paintings explore the transitory nature of memory, the ownership of stories and secrets, and the inconsistency of perspective with mental illness. These narratives depict scenes that range from mundanity, absurdity, gravity, and the humor of life. They represent universal themes of the human condition and of life at its brightest and darkest points. A video documenting my inspiration and creative process for these paintings will also be on display for this exhibition.

Artist Bio

J. M. Culver is a contemporary figurative artist that creates psychological narratives with universal themes. She explores figuration and abstraction through a combination of painting and drawing. Prominent themes in her work are identity, the transitory nature of memory, and personal allegories that give an intimate and tangible glimpse into the human psyche. Culver attended Syracuse University in NY for graduate studies and holds a BFA in painting from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. She actively exhibits her work, which is held in private collections internationally. Culver lives and works in Minneapolis, MN.

J. M. Culver is a fiscal year 2015 recipient of an Artist Initiative Grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board. This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.

jmculver.com

Q&A with J.m. Culver

Describe your creative process. How do you get started? Do you ever face an artist’s block? If so, what do you do to avoid/get out of it?

I like to work on multiple pieces at a time. If I feel stuck, I can just move on to the next. Each painting helps inform the other. It’s always interesting to see how it develops as a whole. I don’t have an artist’s block in terms of coming up with ideas for my work, but I have issues with motivation. It’s hard to always feel motivated in the studio on a daily basis. I think the most important thing is to find a theme that you really care about and can connect with. I think you have to remind yourself that it’s okay to make a bad painting. Just get up and paint. If it’s bad, then you can paint over it, try the same idea in a different way, or just move on to the next idea. The longer you procrastinate, the harder it is to go over to the canvas.

How many hours a week do you set aside to be in the studio?

I’m a full time artist so I work daily in my studio, including studio work and marketing. When I have a large project or overlapping deadlines, I work during the day and night with just a nap in between so I can efficiently utilize all my time. I work on both personal projects and commissions throughout the year.

What are studio practices you recommend to emerging artists?

For emerging artists, I highly recommend keeping a specific studio schedule. It’s a lot harder to motivate yourself to work in the studio when you are an independent artist. You have to make your own schedule and deadlines. Even if you have an outside job, set specific days and hours to be in the studio. Create project outlines and to-do lists. I personally like to use an annual planner for my yearly goals and break it down into monthly, weekly, and daily to-do lists. I also keep a dry erase board for the month and have my phone calendar to remind me of deadlines. I’d also recommend reading articles and books on marketing and the business of entrepreneurship. A former professor once said to me “There are 24 hours in a day; make it work!”

What challenges do you face when starting a new project?

I spend a lot of time researching and writing out my ideas in my visual journals. I have a new journal/sketchbook for every project to keep things organized and to revisit old ideas. It’s very helpful, especially if you work on multiple projects in your studio. I spend more time writing than I do sketching. I do basic sketches of my ideas and for the compositions. I don’t like to plan all the details or the work doesn’t feel fresh when I start on the canvas. For large work, I hire someone else to build my stretchers and do the prep work. Sometimes I’ll start paintings pinned to the wall, then I’ll figure out the specific size and have the stretchers made. Delegating the prep work allows more time for my painting and marketing.

Through your exploration of memory, are there any themes that tend to resurface in terms of how you express a certain situation/feeling/memory?

A lot of my work pieces together fragments of memories that I find connect with one another. Some of these fragments and images have become part of my own visual language and resurface in new work. I think that they can start to create a new narrative and possibly a new interpretation of the original memory or experience. Sometimes these characters and objects seem to take on a life of their own in the work where things come out on a more subconscious level. Sometimes it takes the viewer to even point these things out to me, or I step back and discover it after the piece is finished.

What new projects or exhibitions are you looking forward to next?

I’m looking forward to my work being in the Christie’s Auction at MCAD in May. I also have some commission projects lined up. My grant project has sparked a lot of ideas for future paintings and drawings. I’m looking forward to continuing to explore my current theme and see how it develops this coming year with both drawings and paintings.

Questions by Gallery Intern Johanna Goggins.

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Circumstantial Evidence

January 11 – February 19, 2016

Reception: January 22, 6 – 8 p.m

Something of a peek into the artist’s archives, this exhibition will present new books and boxes along with older works that have rarely been exhibited.

Artist Statement

I have been obsessed with creating order out of chaos (or even slight disarray) since I was a child. With five siblings, and four major relocations before I was ten, I found it necessary to keep my possessions small, contained, and protected. As an adult, the compulsion to collect, organize and find containers for things has remained with me, and has directed much of my artwork.

Inspired by Joseph Cornell and other artists working with boxes, I created the first of what would become an ongoing series of “not empty” boxes in 1991. Originally, the boxes contained artificialia – manufactured, as opposed to natural, specimens. The small objects and elements that I found or constructed were included and arranged primarily based on their visual qualities. The Small Files, 2000, evolved from those early boxes, but was much more personal, serving as something of an autobiography through tiny objects I had collected since childhood. It is the earliest complete piece in this exhibition, but it closely relates to the most recent ones created over the past several months.

About ten years ago, I began focusing on the natural world and its small inhabitants; many boxes since then (and two artist’s books) have included natural specimens and artifacts that document specific moments in specific places. A number of experiences influenced this focus, including intensive beachcombing on Nantucket with my friend Rose Gonnella, a commission to create a Cabinet of Curiosities for the Carleton College Library, taking a course at Hamline University in the natural history of Minnesota, and a semester of collecting specimens in County Clare, Ireland, where I was a tutor for 13 students from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design at the Burren College of Art. Some More Specimens was originally a prototype for the Carleton Cabinet of Wonders, but was re-purposed to contain objects and memorabilia from Ireland.

Several newer not-empty boxes were created specifically for this exhibition, and delve into my own archives. Books not for sale houses books I have made since 1991 specifically for myself, family members or friends – books that I don’t necessarily consider “artist’s books” and have never exhibited. A set of three books contain reproductions of drawings given or sent to me by my nieces, nephews, and friends’ children. The box for From Friends was given to me by a friend, and it seemed the perfect container for gifts from friends; it includes small images and objects, often handmade, that I have received since 1979.

A slightly different series of pieces made for the show include artifacts from the archives of close relatives who have passed away. The containers for these all have a strong connection to each person, although most have been altered. Nana’s Handbag, the actual purse itself, was the inspiration for these homages. I chose this perfect container from among her possessions when she died in 2003, and have been meaning to do something special with it since then. Circumstantial Evidence provided the perfect excuse to finally make this piece for Nana and Pop Pop, and also to make boxes for my father, my brother, and my other grandmother.

This exhibition came along for me at a time in my life when I have been looking backwards and forwards from different points of view, and I am thankful to Jenny Wheatley and Augsburg College for the opportunity, as I am thankful to the many, many friends and family members who are represented in the work, either with physical objects or in spirit.

Artist Bio

Jody Williams publishes artist’s books under the name Flying Paper Press. She has taught workshops and presented lectures at museums and colleges across the United States and in Europe. Her work is in the collections of the Walker Art Center, San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, Minnesota Historical Society, and numerous other museums, universities, and libraries. Honors include Jerome Foundation fellowships, grants and awards from the Minnesota Craft Council, the Minnesota Center for Book Arts and the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. In 2008, Jody Williams received the inaugural Minnesota Book Artist Award from the Friends of the St. Paul Public Library, and she was awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Initiative Grant in 2013.

CIRCUMSTANTIAL EVIDENCE – Studio visit

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all that glitters

Exhibition Dates: January 12 – March 12, 2015

Closing Reception: Thursday, March 12, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m.

For Boulay’s installation of over 1,000 gold paperback book covers, he collected pulp and popular fiction paperbacks with gold-embossed elements and meticulously painted the remainder of each cover gold. The work raises questions about value, taste and permanence.

Artist Bio

Roger Boulay is originally from Massachusetts. He earned an MFA from the University of New Mexico in 2011. He moved to the region in 2013 and now lives and works in Winona, Minnesota with his partner and two dogs. He has exhibited his work nationally.

Artist Statement

My work is about transition, precariousness and beauty. My current work uses books to investigate notions of instability and erosion. In this work, stories are layered upon one another, visible in fragments that collide and connect. I am exploring literal and metaphorical entropy at the intersection of language and material culture. For the last eight months I have been working on a site-specific installation. This piece involves over 1,200 popular fiction paperback book covers. Each cover has been selected because it contains gold-embossed lettering. I paint around each gold element with gold paint so that the entire book cover is covered in gold. It is detailed and methodical work. I am curious to see how erasing or camouflaging gold with itself could make the viewer think about the cultural and monetary value we associate with both gold and popular fiction.

#RBallthatglitters

ALL THAT GLITTERS – q/a with artist

First I want to thank the Augsburg Art Department, Jenny Wheatley and her staff for accepting my exhibition application and being very gracious hosts. I also want to thank my family, Harvey, Shirley, Dekker, Charlotte and Brian for their support. A big thank you to Janet Hawkes, Rod Hawkes, Joan Lawrence and Joyce Lawrence, who helped me obtain a good chunk of the books for the piece. Kate Hawkes, my partner, has been wonderfully supportive and inhaled way too many gold paint fumes because of me and is a great accomplice in all things art and in life. – Roger Boulay

Where did the books come from?

The books came almost entirely from library book sales, where I could purchase fifty or sixty books for a few dollars. I also bought a few lots of books off of ebay to obtain specific genres for the piece that I couldn’t find at library book sales.

Have you read these books?

I have read a few of these books previous to making the piece. One hope I have is that viewers will identify certain books they’ve read in the piece and then have a connection to a few of the stories alluded to in the work.

What was the selection process for the books used?

The piece is made entirely of paperback works of fiction. I selected books that had some gold element on the cover, often embossed gold text. A book had to have a gold element on the cover and be fiction to be in the piece. Some books appear more than once.

How did you assemble them?

The covers are glued to each other. I used the backs of many of the covers to attach the piece together. First I made fourteen 3′ x 5′ rectangular panels and then attached those panels together and filled in around them to create the final composition.

What will you do with the text pages of the books?

I am not entirely sure yet, but I have some ideas for a sculpture or to reform the text pages into a recycled paper.

Can you explain the similarities and differences that “All That Glitters” and your previous exhibition titled “Pulp” share with one another?

Both bodies of work use paperback fiction as a starting point. Both projects are about erasure and disappearing. My process for some of the work in “Pulp” is a little different in that I’ve photographed some covers or pages to create larger panels that make shifts in scale or accentuate markings. “All that Glitters” is made exclusively out of actual book covers. Both projects reference building facades. Both works are about deterioration and change.

“All that Glitters” is different in that I’m concentrating on the possible meanings and associations of a particular color (gold) and how it relates to the mash-up of genres and time-periods and stories of the books in the piece.

Why did you organize the books into the shape you did?

On a basic level, I designed the piece for the Christensen Gallery. I didn’t make a piece that was thirty feet tall, because it obviously wouldn’t have worked for the space.

I want the shape of the piece to have different associations. For example, to me it references the periodic table, a fragment of a building facade or a big pile of gold bars.

What is your favorite genre to work with?

I enjoyed working with pulp fiction because the stories are so strange and the covers are really unique.

What kind of recurring themes did you find while working with the covers?

A lot of the titles use cliché in a specific way. There are tropes of particular genres such as the “damsel in distress” on the front of romance novels. By painting around the blonde or “golden hair” on these covers, it becomes more ambiguous as to who is male and female. That particular trope gets put into question.

What are some of your artistic influences?

I was thinking about the work of artists like Annette Messager, El Anatsui, Robert Heinecken, Adrienne Salinger, Patrick Manning and Mark Bradford while I worked on this project, all for different reasons. I also watched and rewatched a lot of Law and Order (the original series) while I worked on the piece.

What would you like the audience to take away from your show?

I hope people have an enjoyable visual experience and make connections to certain titles and text or some of the bits and pieces I didn’t paint gold that are floating through the piece. One of the strengths of this particular gallery is the ease with which the viewer can see things from a distance and also up close. I hope this enriches the experience of the work. I also hope the piece makes people think about value and how we assign value.

What would you like future generations to take away from this artwork if it is rediscovered a century from now?

That is a difficult question. I guess I wonder if print media will have mostly disappeared by then so this piece will speak to a particular moment of transition in our culture. I also hope the piece will describe how we constructed narrative and thought about color in some ways. Hopefully we are still around in a century…

Questions by gallery intern Megan Bartylla.

ALL THAT GLITTERS – images

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