Tuesday, March 15, 2011

"What do you think about space and time travel?" "But I thought all travels were done in time and space?"-PABLO GUARDIOLA

It's the air of mystery and slight tease; this black hole between image and didactic experience, the sometimes quirky attributes to art making and ingesting that keeps me completely addicted. Come hell or high water, a good friend of mine decisively said, "I make art because I have to."


On February 24th, I attended a curator talk at the SFMOMA about Shahzia Sikander's piece, Sinxay: Narrative as Dissolution #2, which further pushed my fascination with language and imagery. Its subject matter relates to the greatest Laotian epic poem transcribed by Sikander but because of her unfamiliarity with the language, despite her ethnic ties to Laos, the imagery becomes this huge entanglement of beautiful typography and disassociation.  As someone who is more visually biased, writing has never been my expertise, and I relate so deeply to this investigation Sikander is showing us. 



Which brings me to my next artist, Laura Lineback, who has investigated the posterity of language and its specificity to sociopolitical issues, with some of the best painterly humor around.




Recently, I interviewed Laura Lineback and wish to share some of her words of wisdom.

SM: When and where do you spend time to reflect on your work?
LL: I think I'm the opposite. I am always thinking about my work and then I need time-outs. I really like doing yoga to calm down and reflect or I literally have to write it in my schedule and I keep a planner. I've kept a written planner since I was 16...I've had ones with pictures of Paris or cartoon ones....this one isn't so bad. My boss gave me this sticker that says, "You are young, broke, and beautiful." (points to sticker on planner)

SM: You are partially at home, partially at school, and now at your new studio. How has this change affected you?
LL: The studio is essential for an artist. When you go there, you know you're there to get to work. When you're working at home, it's too easy to get distracted, but when you're paying for a studio space, you really know that it's time to get shit done! Just as it helps a writer to get out of the house and head to a coffee shop or something like that.

SM: You do stand up comedy and I was curious if improv ever plays into your painting practice?
LL: Improv plays a very important role into my life. In improv you learn all these rules: don't deny, don't ask questions and the biggest thing is...which I've tried to teach and it's really difficult; you can't be afraid to fail. With paintings it's the exact same thing. When you become afraid to fail, you become hesitant and it gets really hard.  A painter and Associate Professor at SFSU always says, you make a painting to figure it out. If you already had it figured out, why would you make the painting?



If you would like to read more, "rants from a younger, prettier, less pervy, female Woody Allen," visit
Laura Lineback's website: http://reallycoldice.com/

For the next few weeks there will be short interview recaps in my blog in addition to other writings about openings and art related events. Don't be surprised if there are sporadic pictures of recent artwork made by yours truly, as well. 

To finalize this post, just wanted to give you a short blurb of what personal art-making projects I'm working on. With all the recent interest in text versus imagery; my next series will be paintings attributed to recent museum blog and art critic reviews. A recent study by two universities, one in the US and one in England, have coded the language used by major international company Twitter updates to predict the stock market with 90% accuracy. They took the emotionally alluded words to predict whether stocks were going to rise or fall. This made me ecstatic and now I want to delve more into the over-all-tone of the written art world. Maybe I will even be able to anticipate whether or not art sales will go up! None the less, it will be interesting to see what art comes from those who write about it. Simulacrum! It will be a really big game of Telephone-Pictionary except I'm the only one voluntarily playing. If I have you confused and tantalized; just wait to see the product!