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Liane Lang, Margareth in the Dragon, 2015, c-type print
young masters artists interviews
Congratulations to the amazing Jo Taylor whose spectacular work is featured on the cover of Ceramic Review September/October 2020.
We are delighted to have one of her fantastic works available through our first online ceramics exhibition, entitled Clay Today: A Showcase Of Ceramics In Isolation, curated by the Young Masters Maylis Grand Ceramics Prize Judge and Curator Preston Fitzgerald.
Pride & Joy Red I, 2017
Grogged Porcelain
10 × 7 3/10 × 6 3/10 in
25.5 × 18.5 × 16 cm
Unique
1. Describe your experience of professional training and how does it continue to inform your process and productivity?
After obtaining my BFA, I went on to receive my MA and MFA training in both drawing and painting. Having this experience completely changed the trajectory of my career, as I was taught how to create and interact with artwork on a much deeper level. In undergraduate school, 4 years is too short of a time to become acquainted with all the various art media and declare a specialty. So, my MA and my MFA were about digging deeper into the boundaries of paint, intersectionality of paint and other media, and the fluency of art as a language. The 8 years of this education is irreplaceable and I bring this growth with me to the studio every day. It’s how I think.
2. What is your average day like both in the studio and out and about?
Well, COVID has certainly turned my average day in the studio on its head. I became a mother in 2019, but didn’t feel a balance between my roles until 2020 when I took an “artist by day, mother by night” approach thanks to daycare. However, now it’s the opposite. I recognize that her age and this moment in history is fleeting, so it feels right to be “all in” during my day with her. I use nap times for administrative tasks. At 8pm, when she is down for the night, I make a cup of coffee and head to my basement studio where I work until midnight. Knowing that I have solid, uninterrupted time ahead of me allows my brain and energy to settle and delve deep into the flow.
3. How has being shortlisted for the Young Masters Art Prize in 2019 as well as being exhibited in London impacted you and your career?
The experience still brings a smile to my face. Being shortlisted for the Prize and exhibiting in London were career milestones for me. It was the first time I was shortlisted for a prize, the first time I had exhibited in London, and subsequently the first time I exhibited (and sold) at a fair when the work travelled to the London Art Fair. Milestones like these mean everything. Championing emerging artists keeps them in the game. Not to mention, this was a deeply personal time because I had just become a mother and was evolving that part of my identity. The identity that is tied to a child. It was incredible to have focus put on the other part of myself during such a fragile time.
4. Can you share a little about your current work in progress?
I’m currently tying together various loose ends in the studio. In 2020, I introduced vintage cowboy imagery into my work without fully realizing where my curiosities were rooted. However, experience has taught me that the formal aspects of my work usually progress more quickly than their conceptual counterparts, and I’ve thankfully learned to trust my own process. This led to creating drawn tapestries composed of vintage cowgirls, cheetahs, florals and plants. An intriguingly odd assortment and definitely NOT AN AMERICAN WESTERN. Rather, I’m alluding to an idea of allowing ourselves, as females, to become untamed. There is such an abundance of breeding within feminine culture; we’ve become accustomed to holding back, playing the supporting roles in history. Our very essence can become erased. Yet, there’s an attitude when it comes to cowboy imagery, a bravado and cavalier connotation that I want to reclaim as female; while cheetahs tie to the idea of being untamed (and nod to the novel by Glennon Doyle). The format of a tapestry also interests me as an allegorical conduit, as it’s historical background is based in “female” and “craft”. I’ll be developing these as paintings in the coming weeks, I hope you’ll follow along!
5. You previously used to teach at universities. How did your students shape and/or change your point of view as an artist working today?
The best part about teaching (2016-2019) was that I was continually learning and evolving. I researched and experimented because I wanted to be the best example to my students and serve to expand their perspectives. The wonderful byproduct of that was bringing all of this knowledge back into my practice, which became much more technically complex at the end of that period. My work is all the better because of the time when I was guiding others, so I try to take up the opportunity when I can.
6. Are there any particular people, places or things that serve as points of inspiration for you and your work?
Most consistently I’ve been visiting historical paintings and photography which act as a timestamp in my work. I’m attracted to the truths that existed at the time that they were created in juxtaposition to their contemporary renewal. It brings forward a parallel conversation about where we’ve been while exposing belief systems that we have yet to shake. If you sit with the paintings a while, they become a reflection of humanity’s own growth.
7. What do you wish for people to encounter or experience when they take in your work? What are some of the statements people have made about your work that have resonated or stuck with you?
The proudest complement that I consistently receive is from collectors and curators that end up spending a bit of time with my work. They say, “I can always find something new to appreciate about your piece, no matter how many times I’ve viewed it”. My reaction is always one of gratitude and awe, because that’s precisely my goal. During the creative process I’ve poured my energy into building a concept that is then translated into two dimensional materials. The techniques and media are very conscientious choices and I am keen on details. I don’t want a painting to be a one-hit-wonder; it should be a continual discovery. If I’ve achieved that, then I believe it's a job well done.
8. How has COVID-19 and the lockdown affected your day to day life and approach to creative work? (I feel like I answered this more in Q2, so I took this answer more broadly).
This time in quarantine has been a screeching hard stop on the fast pace of normal life. In a strange way, I’m thankful for the pause as it’s given me time to reflect and realign my practice. Instead of reacting to my next deadline, I stopped to ask myself if my craft is maturing into the woman I am becoming. I’ve been given a chance to gather my thoughts and I feel more assured in my pursuits.
1. Describe your experience of professional training and how does it continue to inform your process and productivity?
My portfolio of work to gain acceptance to Massachusetts College of Art was all collage. Once in, I eventually had to choose a department in which to major. While my early collages were very graphic design oriented, I wanted more freedom to be loose and explore and chose the painting dept. While taking traditional foundation courses of painting I specifically chose studio instructors who were known to give good direction to those students who had an independent streak with ideas straying from those foundations (still life, landscape, portraiture). This allowed me to explore mixed media ideas incorporating sculpture, painting, drawing and collage, more 3D and textured than 2D and flat. Combined w/insightful critiques and academic studies, this education further gave me the confidence to pursue my own unique work, blurring lines/boundaries.
2. What is your average day like both in the studio and out and about?
My average day in the studio often consists of hours and hours and hours of cutting detailed and delicate shapes/characters from vintage children’s books. I may be in the middle of a piece and searching for the right character. Scouring thru vintage children’s coloring books, searching for the right one, the right energy, the right size and line… I think I may have found it but I have to cut it out before I know for sure if it works, kind of like finding the right puzzle piece. If it’s not a fit, it becomes inventory. Files full of various cut outs for future use. To pay my bills, I am a massage therapist and typically am working 4 days a week. Weather and season permitting, I love to be at the beach as often as possible, lying in the sun and swimming. It’s play, it’s energizing, close to nature, soulful and meditative. I also spend lots of time scouring eBay for source material for my art, as well as vintage mermaids… a 35-year collector!
Chinese Lanterns 1, 2019
Collage/Works on Paper
6 × 9 in
3. Can you tell us a little more about your work "Chinese Lanterns 1" for which you won the Young Masters & Brownhill Peoples Choice Awards in 2019?
First, I have to say, I honestly love and find great joy in the creation of all my work. Chinese Lanterns 1 and Chinese Lanterns 2 both follow a trend I often pursue, working on top of a pre-existing image or pattern. In this case, a vintage lithograph of paper Chinese lanterns, purchased on eBay. I was drawn to the delicate lines, colors and texture of the lithograph as well as the delicacy, buoyancy and volume of these common items of a foreign culture; functional, colorful and joyful. As with all my collages, images of children are common symbolizing play, innocence and imagination. In Chinese Lanterns 1 we see a boy fishing in between two forces, calm, relaxed, waiting, patient. To his right a jumble of imagery, tangled, overlapping, layered… a cowboy, a horse, an astronaut, children at play, a giant flower that looks like a fire pit. To his left an equally layered structure of imagery… a girl on a swing, an upside down Jack-o-lantern, a colorful kimono, patent leather shoes popping out above and below, standing atop a pile of rubble, an extinct fire pit? The fishing boy squeezed between layered thoughts of his experience and imagination, compositionally balanced on a ledge between two seemingly chaotic forces.
4. Can you share a little about your current work in progress?
I just completed a body of work for what was to be my first actual solo exhibit slated for May but had to be postponed due to covid19 state wide closures. During the shut down and being unemployed I was able to be in the studio every day, all day, 7 days a week. This enabled me to be more focused and unrushed to finish my final piece for the exhibit and my largest piece to date, a 4’ x 6’ collage developed on top of a vintage Asian folding screen with an image of some fanciful green tailed birds in a blooming magnolia tree. Unlike earlier pieces, like Chinese Lanterns 1, what previously was densely layered loosened up and imagery (like the fishing boy) were revealed to the viewer. By doing so, a narrative developed with a cast of characters, circus acrobats, dancers, plants and animals of different sizes and shapes (all hand cut) traversed the screen… parading across the ground, amongst the tree limbs and flowers and flying thru the air, a true feast of imaginative story telling. As two boys slumbered in the bough of the tree comes the title: Dreaming In the Bough of the Magnolia Tree. As with other works developed on top of Asian imagery, I enjoyed exploring the interplay between East/West, old/new, high/low (brow).
Since the completion of this piece I have purchased another smaller Asian folding screen that has an image of a tree branch spread across the four panels with several beautiful blue birds in it’s branches. I have only just begun considering and exploring some preliminary images to insert into this landscape to see how they interact and where it takes me.
5. Are there any particular people, places or things that serve as points of inspiration for you and your work?
Vintage and nostalgic materials…weathered/worn toys, books and clothing for their patterns, colors, shapes, line work and essence. Nature (particularly the beach) for the same reasons but also for the sense of being alive, free, opening and clearing one’s mind, play. The list of artists I admire are vast, varied, multi disciplined, including dance and architecture, famous and not, and a strong love for folk and indigenous arts.
6. What do you wish for people to encounter or experience when they take in your work?
I love when I see viewers drawn in to investigate closer and utterances of joy, wonder and laughter are elicited as they discover hidden images, connections and associations of my works’ construction, detail and messaging.
What are some of the statements people have made about your work that have resonated or stuck with you?
How did you do that? You cut all those pieces out by hand? I love living with your work, I am constantly seeing something different even years later. Your work brings me so much joy.
7. In your Collage/Works on Paper you use many different types of materials and elements, do you have a selection process for this and how do you choose them?
Vintage children’s coloring books and storybooks are my predominant materials at the moment. I seek out vintage as I am attracted to period colors, lines and imagery that vary from decade to decade. For my collaging, vintage paper quality is also very important as far as adhering, typically more porous with more ‘tooth’ than today’s slick print papers. Backgrounds, such as the various lithographs and screens I have been working on, have been chosen not only for the same reasons listed above, but also for a cross cultural play of imagery.
8. How has COVID-19 and the lockdown affected your day to day life and approach to creative work?
It has impacted my day to day life here in Boston quite a bit. I did have my first actual solo exhibit scheduled here in Boston from May 29 – July 7 but it had to be postponed until spring 2021, perhaps for the best. As well as a working artist I am also a massage therapist. The spa where I work had to close mid March. I’m not sure it has affected my approach to creative work, but a silver lining for me is that I have been able to walk to my studio and have the luxury of working unfettered 24/7 while collecting unemployment. A rarity for most struggling artists. There is also something about the city being shut down that is hauntingly peaceful and beautiful, less chaotic, less frantic, less traffic, less city noise. A forced time to slow down, for contemplation and to reset, be it societal, professional, personal, all three.
View Keith Maddy’s most recent exhibition at Howard Yezerski Gallery
1. Describe your experience of professional training and how does it continue to inform your process and productivity?
Coming from a traditional artistic practice during my BFA at Tehran University of Art in Iran to my MFA degree at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts/Tufts University with the focus on the concept, I’ve been challenged in both technical and theoretical aspects of the art-making process. My drawings on paper and casts of my body, as well as textile and sculptural installations, represent a non- Western aesthetics of pleasure and beauty. Working at the intersections of drawing, sculpture, and textile design, I locate my work in a feminist response to Edward Said’s “Orientalism”: ideas of womanhood in the post-colonial world and the
post-revolution generation in Iran intertwine with conflicts at the borders of tradition and (post-)modernity. Meanwhile, I pursue beauty and realism in contemporary art by deploying formality, virtuosity, and delicacy, connecting my work aesthetically to art of the past.
Azita Moradkhani
2. What is your average day like both in the studio and out and about?
I spend an average of six hours a day in my studio. It usually starts with my admin work, research, and reviewing my visual resources for the current project. Then, I start my drawing with a selected piece (I usually work on multiple drawings at the same time) for three to four hours. The rest of the time will be spent on experimental techniques (embroidery, cyanotype printing, dying fabric, drawing on fabric, and tailoring) for my new project. Living in the current visual era bombarded with constant (both welcoming and unwelcoming) images, I try to manage my exposure to images relative to my work. However, due the COVID-19 outbreak, everything, including my access to technical facilities, exposure of my work, studio space, and connection to art professionals have been affected over the last several months.
Azita Moradkhani, Not Too Far Away (Victorious Secrets), 2016
3. Can you speak a little more about your work Not Too Far Away (Victorious Secrets) as this was the piece that won the Young Masters Art Prize and Young Masters Emerging Woman Art Prize in 2017?
The female body, and its exposure to differing social norms, is central to my work. Through my work, I examine the experience of finding ourselves insecure in our own bodies. In my series of colored pencil drawings, “Victorious Secrets”, unexpected images incorporated in intimate apparel intend to bring humor, surprise, and a shock of recognition. Layers of shadowy images reveal stories, with the hope of leaving a mark on the audience. Two worlds–my birthplace and my current home–live alongside each other in my work, joining intimately at a single point.
In “Not Too Far Away,” I use a photograph of migrants arriving in Greece on a Turkish boat in 2015. This piece was inspired by the painting “The Raft of the Medusa” by Theodore Gericault: the figure at the top right side, holding a piece of fabric, is repeated in the figure of a child at the top left side of the image in my drawing who also holds a piece of cloth. Both of these images show immigrants drifting on the sea, risking their vulnerable bodies for the hope of a better future.
4. Can you share a little about your current work in progress?
Over the last few years, my process of making art has transitioned from drawings to more complex layers of body casts that allow the work to interact with the audience beyond the surface. Related to my own roots in Persian textile and inspired by the work of artists whom I admire–such as Louise Bourgeois, who says, "Clothing is a metaphor of the years that pass.
For me fashion is the experience of living in this dress, in these shoes"–I am taking my practice further and transferring my drawings onto actual lingerie fabric. In blurring the borders between artistic disciplines in my studio practice, I hope to interrogate the cultural and historical ideas shaping my work. Using these new images and materials emphasizes the marks of history and memory on the body and its accoutrements. My new body of work seeks a new perspective on wearable art, creating lingerie across the gender spectrum for different identities–an artistic vision that can challenge the public perspective of the most intimate clothing as a personal ideology rather than just a piece of cloth.
Right Image: Labor II, colored pencil, 22 x30 inches, 2020
Left Image: Labor, colored pencil, 22 x 30 inches, 202
5. Are there any particular people, places or things that serve as points of inspiration for you and your work?
Growing up in Tehran, I was exposed to Persian art and culture, as well as recent Iranian politics, and that double exposure increased my sensitivity to the dynamics of vulnerability and violence that I explore in my work and art-making process. A sense of delicacy and colorful patterns connect my work aesthetically to Persian art; from childhood I was surrounded by intricate Persian carpets and textile designs. For me, the patterns are traumas that repeat unconsciously regardless of their aesthetic aspects and the pleasure leads to pain and feeling overwhelmed in my drawings.
Meanwhile, Wangechi Mutu, Shirin Neshat, and Greer Lankton are some of the artists whose careers and work I admire. I’ve been impressed by the way Linkton connects her body’s experiences in her work, which results in a strong dialogue with the viewer about gender and sexuality. I also appreciate the way that Shirin Neshat uses the bodies of women to have conversations regarding women’s issues in Islamic countries and their connection to deeply cultural aspects of these societies. Moreover, I, like Wangechi Mutu, believe that "females carry the marks, language and nuances of their culture more than the male. Anything that is desired or despised is always placed on the female body.”
Moreover, over the past few years, I have participated in such residencies as Yaddo, Virginia C enter for the Creative Arts (VCCA), McColl Center For Art+Innovation, and Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (MASS MoCA). The exposure to different communities of artists, dialogue with arts professionals, and lecturing at universities have helped me branch my ideas out in more fulfilling directions.
6. What do you wish for people to encounter or experience when they take in your work? What are some of the statements people have made about your work that have resonated or stuck with you?
I am fascinated by the stories that I hear of how viewers were surprised upon finding the shadowy images in the drawings of lingerie and how people (from across the gender spectrum) create a connection with an uncomfortable object such as lingerie in a public presentation. My drawings are very subtle and detailed, which requires the audience to get very close to the pieces to see the hidden stories of ghostly images. I use an aesthetic of pleasure to seduce the viewer, who finds, upon closer inspection, through the layers of colored pencil, past the details of lace and filigree, disruptive iconography narrating inherited histories of nation and belief.
Azita Moradkhani
7. When and what was your first interaction with art and how did this influence you in becoming an artist?
My father’s oil paintings were my first memorable encounter with visual art. He is an artist and he used to paint at home after a long day working a glass workshop, supervising workers to cut and design glass for installation in huge commercial buildings. Painting is his passion and he used to have a corner of the living room where he set up his easel to start painting right after dinner. Having a father who is an artist himself was a huge inspiration for me through my whole life.
In Tehran, from childhood, I was surrounded and impressed by beautiful Persian carpets, colorful textile designs, as well as Persian miniatures with their colorful details and the art of storytelling through images which can be seen in my work.
8. How has COVID-19 and the lockdown affected your day to day life and approach to creative work?
During my last residency at the McColl Center For Art+Innovation in North Carolina, before it shut down because of the COVID-19 outbreak, I was solidifying ideas for images on lingerie, connecting with intimate apparel designers, and learning to fabricate clothing for art exhibitions through exploring techniques such as cyanotype, dyeing, and embroidery, alongside advanced tools like a digital sewing machine. In March 2020, my residency was shut down and I lost all my access to the technical equipment and such resources as a printmaking studio, embroidery workshop, textile workshops, and studio space. I also lost my connection to intimate apparel designers/companies that were provided by the institution as resources/guidelines for my project. Following that, my runway show at the McColl Gala on April 3rd was canceled and consequently, my whole project was stopped. Currently, I am focusing on research and experimenting new techniques that are possible in my home-studio. My research includes learning the fashion history of intimate lingerie in the 20th century; creating designs for wearable art pieces in connection to the contemporary fashion of intimate apparel. These days, I am learning new techniques in textile design and printmaking; advancing my skills in embroidery, dyeing fabric, and tailoring; and determining the best materials for fabrication.
