Interview With an Artist: Joell Baxter
Lower East Side Printshop
Joell Baxter was a 2012 recipient of the Printshop's Special Editions Residency. She is currently participating in the Studio Rental Program and working towards an April 2014 solo exhibition at Real Art Ways, Hartford, Ct.
This interview was conducted by Oscar Montenegro and
Paulina Beron, who spent the summer at the Printshop as part of the
Studio In A School Internship Program.
What is your creative
process like? Would you describe it as tedious and labor intensive?
In the early part of any
project things are very open and exploratory. I typically start with a very
general idea and start collecting images, making diagrams and charts, and
playing with paper. At some point I settle on a color system and a form, and
then it is really about just executing the work. The piece I am currently
working on is in the production phase, so I will be printing, cutting, glueing,
and weaving for the next 2 months. I can calculate pretty exactly how long each
part will take. Some days this feels tedious, and other days it feels
liberating. Throughout this whole phase, as my hands are moving, I am thinking
and, hopefully, germinating new ideas for future work.
Most
of your work is colorful, can you tell us why they are so colorful?
Color is the
mechanism by which our eyes make sense of light hitting an object. It
simultaneously describes the surface of an object and its shape, allowing us to
understand our physical relationship to the things around us. I like to play
with this duality--color's decorative nature on the one hand, and it's
utilitarian, physiological function on the other. I always use color according
to the sequencing of the visible spectrum (R-O-Y-G-B-P), and develop systems to
build the work based on that. The spectacular patterning that results is
actually a by-product of my attempt to organize colors in ways that make sense
to me.
I am equally
interested in working in gray-scale and have done several projects that don't
use hue at all. In these works I can focus more explicitly on the effects of
light. I also like the slightly fictive experience of looking at a gray-scale
object in real space. Something in gray-scale looks almost like a photograph,
or like something that is slightly outside reality.
What
do you like better, sculpture or painting?
I like them exactly
equally! I am most interested in work that sits, perhaps uneasily, right
between those two disciplines. I love the ambiguity of sculpture. The
differences between a sculpture and a utilitarian object, like a basket or a
rug, can be subtle. In both cases the object exists in the same space with you,
and there is a lot of room to play with that and raise questions about what you
are seeing and how you are supposed to interact with it. With a painting, you
know right away what it is and what your relationship to it should be. But I am
interested in the varieties of fictional space that can be created in a
painting.
A lot of my
current work, the woven pillow forms in particular, can also be seen as
paintings in real space. The weave itself relates directly to the canvas of a
painting, and I incorporate illusionistic painting techniques, such as greying
down the colors in shadow areas to create the illusion of raking light. But the
“illusion” is redundant, since the piece actually exists in real space and is
effected by real light. I like playing with those contradictions to create some
uncertainty around the object.
You
work beyond the boundaries of a printmaker, can you explain your work beyond
paper?
I primarily use
printmaking to generate material, printing full sheets of color that I then cut
down and weave, fold, or stack. So I don’t really think of myself as a
printmaker, but I do think printmaking is a perfect bridge between painting and
sculpture.
Untitled (Magic Carpet), 2013, screenprinted paper and glue 5" x 96" x 96"
Out
of all your work our favorites are “Didn’t I, Didn’t I, Didn’t I (Two)” and
“Reclining Figure”. Can you go into details about both of these pieces?
Didn’t I, Didn’t I,
Didn’t I (Two) was produced as part of the Special Editions Residency at the
Printshop. For this project I wanted to challenge myself to do a more
traditional print. My work is usually labor intensive and takes a long time and
sometimes I need some instant gratification, so I’ll make a colored pencil
drawing in one sitting to work out some ideas. The edition grew out of one of
these drawings. I liked the idea of taking this very spontaneous and intuitive
thing and then subjecting it to the careful analysis necessary to recreate it
as a print. The print has an intensity that comes from that rigorous breaking down and putting back together the parts.
Reclining Figure was
also a kind of experiment. It is actually made using the same woven structure
as extremely large pieces like Untitled (Magic Carpet), but I was curious to
find out how spare the weave could be while still creating a form that
could support itself.
Reclining Figure, 2012, screenprinted paper and glue, 14" x 14" x 28"
How
did you manage to transition from sculptural creations to editions yet still
maintain a consistent theme and style?
Since I always think
of the sculptural work as drawings or paintings in real space, it was actually
interesting for me to then take those ideas back to two-dimensional space. The
edition still works with a woven structure, but instead of strips of paper
physically moving over and under each other, you get an illusion of layering
from the overlapping areas of transparent color. The final prints almost
feel like pressed flowers--like an object with a shallow dimensionality that
has been flattened by pressure, which makes sense since the basis of most
printmaking is applying pressure to an inked surface.
At the moment, do you have any ideas for your next piece?
I'm working on a solo
project for Real Art Ways in Hartford Ct. It will be my largest installation so
far. I will be making two large-scale forms (1 x 8 x 8 feet each) which will
then appear to be effected by two different kinds of light. The pieces will
fill the entire room and the viewer will be able to negotiate between these two
objects. I will hopefully also be showing a series of related drawings.
What
are some common myths about your profession?
I am not sure what
the myths are, but I think the reality is that it is a really gratifying way to
spend your life if you can make it work on a practical level. I’m stealing this
from an artist I heard give a talk recently, who said one of the best things
about being an artist is that anything you encounter over the course of your
day might be relevant to your practice. And I love that idea, that any mundane
object or event can become charged and important.
Stack Overflow, detail, 2011, screenprinted paper, hand torn and stacked with tape, 1" x 72" x 72"
Do
you plan to travel back to your hometown of Evanston, to contribute your
amazing talent to all the residents of the town? Maybe create a mural or begin
an art program if there aren’t any already?
I live in Brooklyn
now and consider that my home. I have a son in elementary school and I have
done some great art projects with the kids at his school, which has been very
inspiring. I plan on doing more projects at his school this year and will
hopefully continue to do that over the coming years.
How has your
connection to the Lower East Side Printshop fostered your art making and
evolution as an artist?
I first came to the Printshop in 2008 to take a screenprinting class, with the intention of making some
wallpaper. At the time my artwork was primarily drawing and sculpture, and I
had never done any printmaking. I quickly realized that this was the
perfect medium to bring drawing and sculpture together, and at that time I
began the body of work that I am still working on today. The restrictions of
the Printshop—such as limited storage, and having to be very neat and
organized—have been paradoxically liberating for me, forcing me to really
focus my ideas and work in a productively disciplined way.
BONUS: Did you
enjoy this interview, if so or not explain why.
I very much enjoyed
this interview and really appreciate the thoughtful questions! I think it’s a
challenge for any artist to talk about what they do, so it’s actually very
useful for me to have to sit down and try to be clear about my ideas and
process.
Ryan McGinness with Erik Hougen; Erik Hougen and Marco Lawrence working in the studio
