Artist Profile: Marcus Thomas

For twenty-five years Marcus Thomas, 52, has been making paintings one deliberate stroke of paint at a time, using a brush he grasps with his teeth. For Thomas, art is everything. "It is my voice and my method of messaging," he says. "Just the act of painting is critical and important to me. Everything else has become secondary."

The irony is that before the accident that left him nearly completely paralyzed Thomas never thought about art. "I would never have even attempted it," he says. At the time he was freshly out of college and heading towards a career in recreation management. "I think we're pushed away from such things at a very young age and we do things that are more expected of us."

On March 3rd, 1986 at the age of 23, Thomas was skiing with friends in Western North Carolina when he slipped and collided headfirst into a tree, breaking his 3rd and 4th vertebrae. As a result, he lost all ability to move his arms and legs. The accident was devastating and he spent months recovering physically and emotionally. One day his girlfriend, Anne, and his sister, Amanda, bought him a set of watercolors — "a real casual tray of Crayolas" and he made his first painting, which he describes as a "third grade doodle."

Read the full article on Marcus Thomas: The Mind's Eye; BoldLife Magazine December, 2011

MarcusThomasArtist.com

Artist Profile: Constance Humphries

One of Constance Humphries paintings is hanging in the Asheville Art Museum's show, Color Study, and she recently had work in the 2nd Annual UNCA Invitational. A formalist at heart, Humphries says “I’m more interested in visual problems than I am visual solutions.”



“I find mess really interesting,” says Humphries. "Whether it’s in nature, or whether it’s crowds, or in the thrift store where everything is just in piles. I’m simultaneously interested and really freaked out by disorganization.”

To make her gestural paintings, Humphries, an Asheville native, begins by creating an “under-painting” using relatively random marks and colors. Then, she paints the dominating marks, which takes hours. “I have to do it slowly and carefully or else I’ll create mud,” she says.

Read more about Humphries: Mess Marks the Spot, Verve Magazine October 2011

www.constancehumphries.com

Ray Cooper: Looking, Waiting, Doing

Yes, I'm a paint nerd. I love talking about pigments, brushes, mediums, substrates, studios, studio light, palettes, processes -- all of it. I love looking at the way paint drips, and the way it blends, congeals, or cracks.

So I enjoyed meeting Ray Cooper, an artist I wrote about for the September 2011 issue of BoldLife Magazine, who presented an approach to painting I hadn't heard about -- tachisme, where "one carefully made stroke can say it all." Cooper also paints with rollers instead of brushes. Maybe I'll try that out some day.

Here's an excerpt from Looking and Waiting and Doing, BoldLife Magazine September 2011:

When he's in his studio, Ray Cooper is prone to spending long periods of time looking at his work, contemplating the visual problems at hand and what he needs to do to solve them.

These moments of observation are interspersed with bursts of creative activity — mark making and paint dripping — after which the artist is again "looking and looking and waiting." He's spent a lifetime evolving his process. "You have to paint something for at least 5 years before you really begin to understand it and feel relaxed with it," says Cooper. "Ten years in you might hit another plateau."

While Cooper is reticent to categorize his aesthetic style he eventually settles upon the term "lyrical expressionism," saying, "I don't have the angst required to make abstract expressionist paintings."

Learn more about Cooper and his current exhibits in Hendersonville, NC visit raycoopergallery.com

Heather Lewis: Drawing towards the light

Photograph by Matt Rose, courtesy of Verve Magazine

Since she was a little girl, Heather Lewis has been drawn to the light. Growing up in Trinidad next to an oil refinery, Lewis, now 49, recalls the long shadows cast upon her bedroom walls by the factory. It’s not the sort of thing most kids grow up with, but for Lewis, the glowing orange light and elongated shadows were staples of her childhood.

They’ve become staples in her artwork as well—installations and projections that Lewis categorizes as “nontraditional drawings.” A shadow, she explains, is much like a stencil that uses light as a medium—flat, the way a traditional drawing is, and totally accurate. But shadows can also be toyed with, and she’s made a career out of doing so. “I can take it outside and blow it up big on a building,” she says of a projected shadow. “It can be destroyed and created in an instant.”

Read the full article: Shadow Boxer; Verve Magazine, August 2011

Heather Lewis is part of the Green Shadow exhibit at The McColl Center in Charlotte through August 20. Her work will appear in a group exhibition, Waking up with Van Gogh, at the Hickory Museum of Art next year. For more, check out www.heatherlewis.net.

Mark S. Holland

Journey to Jerusalem oil on panel 40 in x 50 in.

Andante acrylic on canvas 52 in by 44 in

I recently came across Mark S. Holland's paintings at Atelier 24 in downtown Asheville. His large floral paintings are breathtaking, and his narrative paintings are quite intriguing. I really like the visual density of his work, his limited color palette, and effortless brushwork.

On his website Holland writes: Archetypes, ancestors, recollection of things unseen, remembrance of the unknown and forgotten pervade my work. I find by painting my own history, desires and passions, I begin to understand myself, my hidden life. We all share similar experiences, much more in common with each other than we realize.

Visit marksholland.com to see more.

Asheville Rites Project: A public art + performance piece

Photo of Molly Rose Freeman by Matt Rose, courtesy of Verve Magazine

For the next two weeks Molly Rose Freeman will be painting five 10' x10' panels for the Asheville Rites Project, a collaborative performance piece that comes together on May 21. The panels are installed in amphitheatre format in the RiverLink sculpture and performance plaza, an outdoor venue located at 117 Riverside Drive, across from the Cotton Mill Studios and 12 Bones Restaurant.

A dance choreographed by Garth Gimball is set to take place at dusk on May 21st (raindate is May 28th) at the plaza with Freeman's panels serving as the backdrop. Live music will be performed by Michael Libramento. The event is free and open to the public. In the meantime, you can swing by and check out the mural as it progresses.

This project is made possible with the help of Kickstarter donations, RiverLink, Arts2People, Asheville Mural Project, The River Arts District Artist Community, and Asheville Ballet

Read more about Molly Rose Freeman: Wall Flower: Verve Magazine May 2011

On Grad School and Art: A discussion with Courtney Chappell

Courtney Chappell is currently finishing up the MFA program at Western University. As her thesis project she created I can see your house from up here, a mixed media installation based on her personal response to images of war, and the dehumanization of the "other." See more of her work at courtneychappell.com

How has being in a 3 year graduate program affected the way you look at art?

School provided the basis of an understanding of various art epochs. I think of the art world --and the recent history of art as we know it -- as a game that you observe from a distance. It’s like the game of the art establishment. It’s a construct that I didn’t really see myself connected to, but school gave me an understanding of the institution of art. It helps certain old or archaic texts seem relevant.

Example?

When I was an undergrad I remember learning about how this painting by Picasso (Les Demoiselles d'Avignon) was the gateway to Modern Art Modern Art. He flattened the perspective, which in turn became self-referential because it drew attention to the artist’s decision to do that – the simplification of form and so on.

In grad school I learned to think more like an art historian or critic. I also gained a global self-consciousness about my work, I had a strong self-awareness that I was very separated from this world of art making as a trajectory, and I never found a place for it in a historical context.

My knowledge of the history of art making became more fine-tuned. I learned about German Expressionism and the various problems that arose, such as the conflation of the victim and the victimizer during the Holocaust. The critics say Josef Buey’s for example romanticized the sufferings of the holocaust. I formed my own analysis of his work but I never felt like I was saying anything new. There’s a feeling with art history that everything’s been said.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that ultimately the difference between undergrad and grad is that the focus is narrowed. There’s a feeling in grad school that your focus is so narrow and that by the time you get out you’ve only touched the tip of an iceberg.

I have to say that there’s nothing in grad school that you can’t learn outside of it it. You just need to get your friends to tell you what their favorite artists are, look at curriculums on the internet for reading lists if you care. It is nice to have someone to talk about these things with though.

Lets talk about your work.

I felt very self-conscious. It’s the only time where you really have an exclusive relationship with your viewers that that is formalized. I always felt invested in the opinions of the people who inhabited this temporary community that I was a part of.

I was very susceptible to changing my ideas to connect to people. When I was finally in a situation where people were offering their suggestions it felt like such a gift, to have people around me who would tell me what they wanted from a piece that would help give voice to your vision. It felt very collaborative.

But I know that a part of grad school is learning to defend yourself against other people’s critiques. So I would constantly find myself wanting to make alterations according to their suggestions but sometimes they would critique without offering a suggestion of what to do better. It would be a blanket suggestion like, “this isn’t working,” or “you need to dig deeper.” I was always asking for specific instructions, “should I paint portraits, should I do more house.” It would feel good to me to relinquish control.

But this is also my own personal issue with relating to the viewer and some people don’t have that instinct to internalize or conform to what people think they should.

Of course, many times I disagreed with the critique.

How did you get to your final thesis project?

I had always been really controlled in my work and it was somewhat masochistic. I wanted to learn how to paint the right way. In a way I felt unworthy of art and if I could paint well I could do anything. This perfectionist instinct became exasperated during the first part of my schooling. Because of that pressure I sort of cracked and started cutting up pieces of my junk mail in an attempt to do the worst possible thing and reject anything I thought I was supposed to be doing. That lead me to create these small cities and little houses, and it was a different way to connect to the people I had been painting in my paintings.

Who were these people?

Individuals. Strangers, humans that I’ve only seen on the Internet basically, or in the news.

Specific to the Gulf War?

I kept it specific to the Iraq Invasion because that was the first war I was conscious of. I feel like it’s useful when approaching a war or an invasion as a topic to keep my focus narrow.

How did the installation come about?

I think that the imaginary pressure of working in a tight knit community that was also an institution led me to work in a frantic and rushed manner which I had always tried to fight when I was painting and which I allowed to be a part of this work. When I was working on the installation I jumped from one thing to the next – one object to the next. I would draw as quickly as possible. Leave things in an embarrassingly unfinished state. Sometimes over decorate or overwork things and then get lazy with the line work. I allowed myself to be easily distracted. I decided that that way of working would tell some sort of story about my role as an American --my experience as American woman.

In what way?

In that I think America is easily distracted.

So in this way the process of making the work became a part of it?

Yes. Very much so.

How do you think the experience of being in grad school will affect your work from this point on?

The main thing that’s been great are my friends. Maybe I got lucky. Two of the people I ended up being in school with were old friends. Everyone in the program was great and that was really wonderful to go through. Beneath all the trappings of academia, the actual connections you make are very real. We have a joke that we actually came to grad school to meet each other.

Locally made art canvases

Gary Grubbs has been supplying artists with his handmade canvases for over 25 years. A Black Mountain resident, Grubbs's business is quite modest. I can't give you his email address or a website because he doesn't have one. When I told him I wanted to write about him for my blog I think he was a little confused as to what a blog is.


Gary's been making my canvases since 2004. I seek out his services when I need something really large, or a customized size, or if I just need canvases in general. I haven't been able to find better quality canvases for the price he sells his at. For example, Grubbs charges $15 for a 18" x 14" x 1.5" canvas. You might be able to find that size at a lower price but it won't have the thick edges, or the handmade quality that brings heart and soul to each piece. Gary can also make the depth of each canvas any size an artist needs. He told me some people get canvases made up to 8" deep.

Gary is not an artist himself and he came into the business by accident. "I was building a staircase for a woman who taught art and she asked me how she could make canvases for her students," he told me. He went ahead and prepared the canvases for her, and realized he had discovered his niche, saying "I'm glad I did, because it's been keeping me alive for the last 25 years."

There are several people around town who make custom canvases for artists. One is Mark Schieferstein, an accomplished painter. Another is Douglas Stewart of Asheville Fine Art Services. In the event you need canvases at a really short notice, I recommend you pop into True Blue Art Supply in downtown Asheville. They frequently run sales on their inventory, and you can always find a good bargain there.

Neal Ashby

A while back I had a fun telephone interview with designer Neal Ashby to discuss his career achievements, the evolution of graphic design, and his creative inspiration behind Thievery Corporation’s Versions CD package.
(Read the full interview here.)

Along the way I asked him if he has pursued any visual arts interests and he admitted that he has recently begun teaching himself how to paint. He said he had found some discarded oil paints while teaching at The Corcoran College of Art + Design in Washington DC and began after being inspired by an artist for whom he was designing a book.

I paint. It’s embarrassing because I’m not very good at it, and I paint what you probably would never imagine me painting. I actually like to do landscapes. I like to paint very minimalist landscapes of the Eastern shore…serene waters, lots of land, big skies, dark moody stuff.

Everything was inspired by an artist in Maryland, Kevin Fitzgerald, who does these paintings and is an expert at it. He came to me and asked me to design a book for him, and in doing that I completely fell in love with his paintings.

It’s strictly on the hobby level. That’s what makes it special – it’s not done to impress somebody or make a statement – just for the sheer enjoyment of creating something visual. It’s cool to do something like that where the only person you have to please is yourself. ~Neal Ashby

www.ashbydesign.com

Molly Courcelle

Made Glorious

Molly Courcelle's painterly abstracts really speak to me, and I've been admiring her work for several months now.

Her paintings are on display at Atelier 24 in downtown Asheville and her website indicates a show at Clingman Cafe in the River Arts District in 2011.

Memory Abides

My work is as much about the process of painting as it is about the final image. Each painting is its own unique experience. ~M. Courcelle

Journey

See more at mollycourcelle.com

Donald Alter and W.P. "Pete" Jennerjahn

As a supplement to the Mountain Xpress article, A Tale of Two Painters about Black Mountain College alumni, Donald Alter and W.P. “Pete” Jennerjahn, I am posting these excerpts from my conversations with each, respectively. The opportunity to speak at length with these two artists was tremendous. Both were incredibly accommodating and very pleasant to chat with.

Donald Alter

Donald Alter lives and works in Newburgh, NY. He was born in 1930 and attended Black Mountain College in 1948-1950. These are some comments Alter made during our telephone conversation November 19, 2010. See more of his work at donaldalterpaintings.com

On Black Mountain College:

"Sometimes I smile at the realities of Black Mountain College, but I think that it is probably one of the main experiences of my life. That was a very very unique experience for me. Specifically there was contact with very exciting people. These were many artists in many areas and they were all accessible. It was very removed from the real world.

"We had a geographical location (Black Mountain) where all these artists could converge. That became a community where any talent could shine and emerge. Nobody would every think that Rauschenburg would be one of the greatest artists of the 20th century. We didn’t realize how unique it was.

"At Black Mountain it was all primarily painting, but I did everything that I could touch. I did sculpture, weaving, all kinds of crazy stuff. Albers encouraged that kind of thing. We did a lot of artwork that required no paint and brush at all.

"In 1948-50 this was a very exciting time for art. Art started to really gel and young people had opportunity. Those are days that I think are gone now. I don’t see that happening today.
This is a lesson I try to impart to young people: they stand in awe of this great place where all of these great artists live but I keep telling these people that there’s great talents all over and you cant recognize it until they develop it and let it emerge.
I’m not particularly excited in the world of academia or how art is taught and what happens to youngsters who get into it.

"[After I left Black Mountain College] I never went back to school. It’s an individual pursuit. Once you learn yellow and red make orange you’re off and running.

On painting and career:

"I went into the textile design field in NY, but I always had a paintbrush in my hand. I was always involved in the arts. At a later age I went back to painting. In my mind I differentiated between the commercial world of art and the fine art world. I opted to go back into the world of painting at the age of 65.

"Back then people needed textiles. There were retails markets that were selling textiles, now that’s all being done in China. The markets have shifted. But that’s a whole other conversation.

"I tried to live my life with integrity as an artist. Being an artist is a very risky endeavor. Really at this stage in the game I feel humble and modest. There’s a lot of nonsense in the world.

"It is a very difficult area to engage in. When I finish a painting I call it a day and that’s all I do. The more arduous the effort the more depressed I can get. So maybe I go back to it later and it becomes alive again.

"There’s a lot of self-doubt and you have to get rid of that -- the self-doubt.

Hudson Valley Weave 2008

On personal creative evolution:

"The subject matter started to change (over the years.) I was no longer painting decorative flowers. If you look at those two paintings, in the gallery next to each other [Transformation 1949 and Hudson Valley Weave 2008]-- I picked up right where I was when I was a student at Black Mountain The biological forms, the colors -- it was uncanny.

"I went back and used the vocabulary I learned at Black Mountain.

On Making a Living:

"Making a living is very difficult. That’s the real test that describes who you are. My neighbors don’t even know what I’m doing but I don’t disrespect them for it. The world is too complicated. You can ask a lot more of it than it’s bound to give you.

"There are people making large sums of money promoting painting. It’s a hard game to play and I don’t play it. I’m an old timer and the world I play in is a lot different.

"When I look at these younger upstarts I get excited, but a lot of it is hype. The art world is a very troublesome place. There are some crazy things going on.

"I figured out a way to make prints and sell them for 4 cents, I call them 4-penny prints. In the market place where art is being sold at Sotheby’s for millions of dollars I’ve been making prints for 4 cents, which I think, is pretty funny.

On criticism:

"It’s very difficult. Sometimes you feel a little bit upset --there’s no question about it. It’s like going to the office and the boss is not respecting your work. Its risky, it takes a lot of self-discipline. You really have to love it to keep up with it.

"Money pressure can get intense. I think that’s part of the real world that no one ever discusses in art school.

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W.P “Pete” Jennerjahn and recent paintings

W.P “Pete” Jennerjahn lives near Sedona Arizona. Below are excerpts from our telephone conversation November 19, 2010.

On Black Mountain College and Josef Albers:

"I started life in 1922. I showed up at Black Mountain in 1948.

"I had already been through undergrad and grad programs at the University of Wisconsin in Madison. The other schools were traditional as far as the art departments – with regulation of tests and credits. But Black Mountain didn’t deal in credits. You were examined by your faculty involved, I wasn’t there long enough to actually get a degree, but what Black Mountain did was they would solicit from the nation someone who had a reputation in that field and that person would come and examine you and evaluate you if you could graduate or not.

"I was focused on whatever Josef Albers was teaching at the time -- primarily color, painting and design.

"I had it up to here as far as responding to teachers in the grad schools I was at. My wife [Elizabeth Jennerjahn] who had been to BMC, recognized that Albers was someone special beyond any kind of other teacher.

"In previous teachers there were the kind of rote lessons on hue, value and intensity –and you did everything based on that kind of thing.

"I passed thru that period of my education during the Depression days when people we looked up to were doing murals in post offices and we were urged to do work murals. Of course that was a phase I passed on thru as I was encountering my teachers in college.

"At Black Mountain they didn’t deal in that at all. It was not the artistic theme we were working on. We were working in basic themes. Colors. In some of the painting classes we would do still life studies and work from the wonderful scenery on campus. There was actually a lake there and we were very influenced by it.

Contrary Shadows, 1952

On Color:

"What was in effect in the US at the time was that you were realistic about color. And the color did not have an independence or a value other than their literalness so if you wanted a whole other feeling to arise from what you were working on you could feel free to abandon the old rules.

"After my working with Albers I taught a color course. I would have the students answer a questionnaire with questions like, “What are your favorite colors? What colors would you not put together? The idea was to have them declare their attitudes towards color at the time. After some time I would have them take the colors they hate and make them shake off those old rules and work freshly with color to have something happen. I told them, 'I want you to use the colors you hate and put them together so that they support each other.'

"Even in my painting now I’m continually challenging myself. The idea of the subject matter now is not important. I’ll put a color down and think which color I don’t want to see next to that color. So I work with those colors to figure out how to make the colors work together. I might give it some ludicrous type of title. More or less I am still struggling to keep from falling into the same combinations of things.

On the art world now:

"From what I gather from the young people I see submitting to the exhibits – they are much freer than when I was going through art studies back in the 40’s. There are still a number of them caught up in the old attitudes in relation to color so they’re not making full use to what the medium has to offer them.

"I remember in Milwaukee there was a contemporary art exhibit that came through [in the 1940’s] and there were things that came through in collage, that we were just scratching our heads over, and now nobody thinks twice about that kind of thing.

"I don’t subscribe to art magazines so I don’t have a good handle on the current art trends but I would say there is more flowing into the matter of not having things flat on the wall. There’s a lot more collage and layers of things, which was unheard of when I went through as a college level student.

"Many people are doing bulky 3D works that are much more tolerated than my time. It was rare to have things made out of metal and pipes and bent mechanical parts. Artists today are infinitely more adventurous in materials than they were back in those days.

On his own paintings:

"Lately I’ve been working with thin washes of acrylic. I started to give up on oils out of a frustration because I had a studio in the Adirondacks of NY and I would be getting all worked up making paintings and then when it was time to pack up the painting was too wet to ship.

"I began to like the flow of working with acrylics and I didn’t have to worry about drying time.
I enjoy working with acrylics because I can work with them in a way I had been doing with watercolors. I could do more things with liquid acrylics. It felt more on the same territory of expression as watercolor.

On mixing colors:

"It depends on what my need is. If I want a certain color that is opaque and it lies between cadmium orange and an earth color I will mix if I have to. I try to be economical about it -- not to indulge so that it takes me 4 tubes to get around to a color. I feel that I should be able to arrive at a color that I had in mind with no more than two tubes.

"Albers would buy tube color but would only add white. He would only add white. The only indulgence he gave himself was to lighten colors with white. To a certain extent I try to keep that same kind of economy. And at time I try to get a variation.

"I have paintings 4 feet high with slight color variations produced as color stripes. I did 10 years in that phase of horizontal stripes. The shift changes very little from stripe to stripe --like in the sky. On most of those paintings there are no two similar stripes of color.

Ladylike: art imitates life

"Exploring the dark side of female relationships" is the theme of Ladylike, a group art show currently on display at Satellite Gallery in downtown Asheville. Guest curator Alli Good came up with the idea when she found a box full of letters passed between her friends in high school, and realized that women's relationships with each other aren't as sugar and spice as they appear to be.

What I find most interesting about the Ladylike exhibit are the thoughtful collaborations that ensued between artists. Gallery owner, Bill Thompson really did a great job hanging the work by allowing each art piece to speak for itself and compliment neighboring pieces.

As a participant, I am honored to exhibit my paintings in conjunction with the amazing work of 10 other female Asheville artists. It was a pleasure -- and admittedly awkward at times -- to get together with this group for planning sessions. I would go to to the meetings with the theme of the show front and center in my mind -- amused and self conscious of my own behavior with these women. In this case life was imitating art that imitates life.

Ladylike will be on display until November 21st at Satellite Gallery located at 55 Broadway.

Read more about the show: Frenemies Like These, written by Alli Marshall for The Mountain Xpress.

Installation by Alli Good. Drawing by Kreh Mellick

Detail of note created by Alli Good

R. Brooke Priddy and Nicole McConville collaboration.

R. Brooke Priddy and Kreh Mellick collaboration

Ceramic figurines by Sarah Danforth. Paintings by Ursula Gullow

Video by Megan McKissack. Photography by Drea Jackson

Mixed media piece by Sarah Cavalieri

Collaborations by Nicole McConville, Julie Armbruster, Alli Good and R. Brooke Priddy

Detail of installation by Tara Jensen

Photograph by Meg Reilley