BARBARA BERNSTEIN

By Deborah McLeod

Barbara Bernstein is a resident fellow at the VCCA in San Angelo, VA, and an adjunct professor of sculpture at RISD several days out of the week. Barbara works in a grand scale skewed-perspective, and highly elaborate drawing mode that borrows from and integrates Eastern and Western traditions.

In her recent site-specific solo installation at Hollins University,"Things are not what they seem, nor are they otherwise" she used black tape and white foamcore to "draw" the historic Hollins campus as a compelling 3-D trompe l'oeil environment.

In her current show, Patterns of Love and Beauty, at Riverviews Artspace, she integrates interior and exterior scapes in an homage to her dying father. Bernstein's work explores counter valances; simplicity and complexity, weight and lightness, foreground and aft, stillness and action. Speaking to me in her apartment workspace, amongst countless marker drawings, pencils and paper collages she shares some of her processes.

DM-Can you give us a little back story into how your paint and ink drawings have evolved from two to three dimension. What initiated that direction?

BB-It really started with two subsequent events. The first was looking at Jackson Pollack's " Autumn Rhythm" many years ago. I first saw "Autumn Rhythm" as a child of about ten. Growing up in New York City I visited museums at an early age. The feeling of looking at that large canvas was the awareness of being tremendously encompassed. I came to find myself understanding that I what I really wanted was to be a participant in a drawing instead of an observer. My wall-sized black and white drawings began to get thicker - often with encaustic - in my evolving attempt to create an environment. But it was something I couldn't really afford. Receiving the Pollack Krasner award in 2002 - was when I was finally able to afford the wall sized reams and rolls of beautiful, sturdy BFK paper that would allow me the luxury of working on that encompassing effect.

DM-Pollack Krasner has come to so many artists’ rescue! Was there a specific threshold work for you before or after that, pushing you outwards into the gallery space and seizing your objective?

While working on a 9'x5'wide drawing with primarily vertical marks that was feeling unresolved, I found a discarded remnant of long rubber cable on the street. It was the line I had been looking for. The pliant rubber cable became my line that reached through space - I attached it near the top of the drawing so that it arced out into the room, reflecting the drawing's existing marks to encompass the room and the viewer. A year or two after that piece I got the Pollack-Krasner. Really, I fell to my knees when I got the Pollack-Krasner phone call and cried.

DM-What subtle discoveries have you made by staying purely with black and white?

BB-I'm still learning from black and white. It was and is power, and mystery. I'm fascinated by what happens to space when a single mark is introduced. My somewhat limited understanding of Japanese aesthetics has particularly led me to appreciate the mystery of the space in between.

DM-Do you see this happening in the standard terms of negatives and positives?

BB-Negative space isn't, it has presence and weight. The mutual dependency of black and white is for me - presence and presence. They co-create each other, like the inside and the outside of a teacup. I have learned that in simplicity whole worlds are revealed. That is a lesson found in the study of Asian art has been particularly impactful. In high school I encountered a Zen garden at the Huntington Gardens in Southern California. I remember the palpable shift being in that space, a simultaneous quietude and
largeness.

DM- And do you see a relationship between the Zen aesthetic and Pollack's Autumn Rhythm?

BB-Pollack offers a different kind of silence, it is instead the situation of being awed into silence. The brain must stop talking.

DM-You've just closed your Hollins installation on the history of the campus and have one going on now at Riverviews.What do you have coming up on the horizon that you are working towards?

BB-Two coming up...a solo installation in spring of 2010 in the Babcock Gallery at Sweet Briar College. And, as a result of the Riverviews show, the Lynchburg Neighborhood Development Foundation offered me an old corner service station - conveniently already painted black and white! I will begin next week drawing on its 9' plate glass windows.

DM-It seems that many of your recent installations are dealing with selective landscape, the process of emphasizing extant symbolic landscape features, while omitting others, on behalf of emotional impact and spatial silence. Would you comment on that?

BB-Perhaps it was because of being born in New York or despite it, the landscape and particular trees offer a quietude and expansiveness that is comforting to me, engaging and mysterious in their movement and presence. This holds true for me whether its images are from Eastern or Western art or simply from being in the woods. DeKooning talked about "glimpses" and being a "shifting glimpser". I like the idea of holding fast and letting go simultaneously.

DM-Tell me about your residency at the VCCA. How did that come about for
you and your husband? And how has that experience impacted the development
of your ideas?

My husband, David Garratt, and I were both VCCA fellows in late in 2007. At
that time a number of other fellows asked us to become the Resident Artists.
It is essentially an unpaid staff position. In exchange for housing in this inspiring place my husband works on the building and grounds, and I work in the kitchen. We are on call 24/7 as first responders. Unlike the resident fellows who come there for seamless time with their work. I work in components of time around my duties. It has changed how I work, I balance my hours and occasionally my media. I often do collages to take me to a more flexible, fluid almost frivolous place. If I just can say...fun.

KRISTINA BILONICK

b. 1977, Washington D.C.

Kristina in her spacious studio stocked with a full kitchen, bathroom and darkroom.

Ever since she was five years old, Kristina wanted to be famous. Even her career path as a grade school child simply states “being famous”. And she is famous. Now, Kristina is a printmaker and designer living and working in Washington D.C. She is the Program Director at the Washington Project for the Arts and shows her work throughout the area and boasts her own line of clothing and accessories. We talked about her fame and her artwork at her Gold Leaf studio that she shares with two other artists (recently featured in the Washington Post) located in downtown DC. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/gallery/2009/09/24/GA2009092402858.html

Above: Recent work "Kristina Says Relax", and Right, supplies and her art on the wall.

Below: Her most recent installation based and interactive piece was at Honfleur Gallery in Anacostia this past July 2009.

Drawings by gallery goers from Bilonick's show at Honfleur Gallery this past July 2009.

“The works in this show capture my fascination with fame as a child.” She gathered a lot of her inspiration from a journal she kept that expresses her desire to be famous. “Although a specific reason for this fame is never defined. The confidence that comes out in my early writings surprises me when I look back at it now. It makes me wonder if individuals start out with a certain amount of confidence and enthusiasm for life that is slowly weathered down by our surroundings, social situations, demands or pressure to succeed in some kind of traditional career.”

Her work for Honfleur comprised of a limited edition vintage book where she incorporated herself into the “how to” steps of drawing a face of herself as a young girl. By including herself into the pages with famous actors of the time period such as Burt Reynolds and Brooke Shields, she vicariously is able to relive her desire to become famous and in such a way that invites others to do it for her by having them go through all the necessary steps in this step-by-step process. See the video clip above of all the drawings from the gallery goers. Moreover, she ultimately rewrote history by creating a piece of evidence that proves she was amongst the stars. As her statement suggests, perhaps it is something we only possess so vigorously as a child and as we get older discover this desire can so easily be demystified by the daily events of adulthood. It’s poignant and absolutely honest.

Kristina writes: “Throughout my own personal journey, I continue to carry around a little of this ‘famous’ feeling I had when I was a child-like a lucky penny in my pocket….I think everyone deserves to feel a little famous in their own way, whether it be amongst family and friends or as a person who is active in their community.”

And she gives viewers the opportunity to further her cause by hand printing t-shirts with motifs and designs all inspired by her childhood as well as her current surroundings. Kristina’s work can be admired and purchased at this weekend’s Crafty Bastards Fair in Adams Morgan this Saturday, October 3, 2009. Watch the whole video clip above to see some of her amazing t-shirts and neckties that will be for sale at Crafty Bastards!

http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/craftybastards

T-Shirts drying in a smaller space of her studio. The neck ties ready for sale!

Her two dimensional work on the wall with her shirts and neck ties.

Contact Kristina and see more of her work at www.kristinabilonick.net

ELLIOTT WRIGHT

b. 1984 Junction City, Kansas

In front of a current painting he's working on.

Elliot Wright is a young artist from Richmond, VA who currently lives and works here in Washington, D.C. He received his BFA from Frostburg State University in 2007. I caught up with him at his northwest studio to talk about his works in progress and the direction he's taking them.

Here is an excerpt from his artist statement.

"The influence of this work is on the death of my father on April 2007, and the possibility of his presence occupying my daily life. The work was a means to address this episode and to cope with what had happened that spring. In the works “Lullaby” I use interior space to ground the work in a spatial context of my apartment. The geometric figures occupying the space represent my father’s presence in a particular moment. As for the newer work I wanted to incorporate flesh without rendering the figure. I felt it was necessary to illustrate these episodes in a series called Nausea. Nausea, written by Jean-Paul Sarte is an existential novel in which the main character experiences bouts of nausea and later reflects on his experience. These visions of buildings, grass, trees, people, park gates suddenly loose their definition, their individuality becomes only an appearance a veneer, this veneer had melted leaving soft monstrous masses naked and in chaos."

Many of Elliot's paintings have the juicy texture and blending of oil paint as Cecily Brown and Jenny Saville, both of whom he mentioned as painters he admires. The colors are intense and the thick application of paint is a nice contrast with the representational spaces he continues to depict.

One drawing table displaying his most recent paintings which are about 6" x 6" on wood. The large painting is approximately 60" x 50" on canvas. Another table with his paints and brushes. A wood airplane hangs on the wall which reminds him of his dad who was a pilot.

Elliot taking out an older (2007) piece with the geometric presence (he talks about the symbolism of these shapes in the video clip) imposing into the representational space. The painting he is talking about in the video is wrapped up ready to go to a show. His smaller pieces on wood are juxtaposed next to painted pixelated text. One of them says "Run Boy Run Run". Installing them all at eye level in one neat row lends the work to become more narrative and the textual insertions function like visual pauses.

Although he is busy working for Artex most of the time, he is also showing his work regularly. He has a show this year at the Saville Gallery in Cumberland, MD. He currently has a show at Prince George's County Community College. The opening reception is on Thursday, Sept. 10 from 6 - 8p.m. Elliot's work can be seen on his blog at www.elliottwright.blogspot.com and he can be reached at elliottjw@gmail.com

BRADLEY CHRISS

b. 1980 Toledo, OH

Grew up in Columbus, OH where he attended the Columbus College of Art and Design

Bradley sitting at his work table, and below, his 40 paintings laid out on his work/dining table (out of 50) for his solo show at Flashpoint opening this September, 2009.

I visited Bradley Chriss at his home studio up in Northern Bethesda the other day, and as it turns out, my timing couldn’t have been better. He had forty pieces on paper he presented to me that evening that he’s made over the course of a year for a solo show he’s having at The Gallery at Flashpoint in downtown DC opening this September 11.

Each painting is 10" x 4" and goauche on paper.

What strikes me most about Bradley’s work is his fear and imagination of a dark other world and how he manages to create each depiction of this world to be jewel like and something to be coveted. It didn’t help that all 40 paintings were stacked neatly inside a handmade box set in the middle of his studio table covered with a blue flannel cloth. You don’t notice anything violent immediately. Abstract forms slowly become specific. A blue wash evolves into the monster character that is repeated in each painting and is represented by a single eye. This eye can be hovering above an ambiguous horizon line or right there embedded in the flesh of cavorting male and female body parts that are erotic and grotesque at the same time. Appropriately his show at Flashpoint is titled “Visions From the End of the World”.

Many stories came up about his childhood including one when he was 3 years old and was allowed to watch Children of the Corn at an aunt’s house. Hmmmm. At age 5, he came upon a Penthouse magazine of two males dressed up as aliens trying to abduct a passive female victim. See the video clip below right to listen to Bradley's first hand account. Another time at age 4, Bradley remembers a pet hamster that ate half of one of its offspring leaving the other gory half in the cage to rot. He still remembers the horror of seeing the half eaten carcass and the mother hamster (or father) sitting happily full dozing at the other end of the cage.

All these past experiences consciously and sub-consciously inspire his ideas of the apocalypse. Ultimately his work is ironic in his use of bold and sumptuous color coupled with delicate line towards expressing these intimately sized ‘voidscapes’. “It’s the comical and the tragedy co-existing”. And a quote from his website statement: “Humanity has attempted and is attempting to come to terms with its inevitable extinction. From seas boiling and rivers filled with blood, to a wolf swallowing earth, as lotus blossoms containing everything open and close in instants that last billions of years. By using an intimate scale and saturated color to seduce viewers I want to bring them into the ultimate conflict of power and control that humanity has with their own environment. I am not aiming for allegory, just the void.”

Bradley's art table

It is also of note that Bradley is a founding member of the DC cell of the Post-Neo Absurdists. They are a U.S. and U.K. based artist 'anti-collective' that come together in theatre, music, performance and visual art. http://postneoabsurdism.blogspot.com

Painting on door at the home of Philippa Hughes

A recent installation project was a private commission for Pink Line Project's Philippa Hughes. His opening on September 11 is going to be a presentation of a total of 50 paintings on paper in conjunction with live cabaret performances, readings and delectable food items. Be sure to be there. For more details on Bradley Chriss and his work, check his website at: www.bradleychriss.com and http://www.flashpointdc.org