Adriana Rabinovitch interviews Eileen Weitzman

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56B: Tell me a little bit about yourself and your practice.

EW: I’m educated, but not art-wise. I didn’t go to school for art and I’m self-taught. In my 20’s I started trying things I thought I might be interested in like music, playing piano, which I enjoyed. I wanted to broaden my horizons more, so I took a course at a park district that was offering oil-painting, drawing, and acrylics. It was a short thing, and I was very surprised that I made a few creative drawings. When I was young, I had hoped to be an artist but I felt I was very rigid so I had stopped. I was about the only person who finished the course, and after that I payed the teacher for some private lessons in oil painting, since we’d hardly gotten into that. Since then I have just developed myself.

56B: I read online that you started as a painter and things started to grow out of the canvas. The oil paint got ‘thicker and thicker’ I think is what you said, and you started to add things to the canvas. Tell me about this transition?

EW: Well, I love texture.

[she shows me one canvas in a pile of about 30 huge paintings in the corner of her studio]

This canvas, for example, I painted over some rope to add the texture under the oil paint. And this one I used some paper-mache. It just finally dawned on me. I like making things. Making three-dimensional things felt more like making things than painting things did. 

56B: Because you could create something that you could interact with, walk around?

EW: Yes, and there were fewer rules, actually. It gives a sense a freedom but also makes it more frightening. At least with painting you have this canvas or rectangle or surface or something that you have to fill. With sculpture, it’s completely blank until you figure out what to do with it.

56B: Who are what would you say your primary influences are?

EW: Yes, I’ve certainly been asked that question. I would say that when I did my first real oil painting after that class, which was on one of those oil board type things, didn’t want to start too big, it was certainly Matisse at that time. I loved Matisse and I loved the German Expressionists, particularly Kirchner. There’s certainly many painters I love but I’m not sure there was even any one person in my mind when I was making things. I eventually started really liking people like Eva Hesse and Yayoi Kusama. I also more recently have come to appreciate the work of Annete Messager, especially earlier things. She’s got a show on now, which…some things I like, but I mostly like her older work. She’s very experimental and tries all sorts of things. I like that. I also like the concepts of Sophie Calle. I guess as far as my favorites go, they’re mostly women now. Not that there aren’t many male artists whose work I appreciate.

56B: When I was looking through your photography on your website, I noticed many of the places you visit, like Turkey, India and Egypt, and colors and the textiles that are associated with these cultures. I see a similarity between many aspects of these cultures and you work. Do you feel that this is an influence on you?

EW: I’m sure that it is. I love Islamic design. Old tiles, like in Morocco. That’s why I started going to Middle Eastern Countries. I think I am influenced by them. The tiles, the colors…

56B: Yeah, I see the influence and dominance that pattern has in your work…

EW: One of the first less-frequented, as in not in Europe, places I visited was Senegal. The color and patterns in Senegal are out of this world. It’s unbelievable. India has bright colors and great color combinations but the clothes that they wear are not patterned. In certain African countries though, particularly Senegal and Mali and parts of West Africa, the people put these colors and patterns together that are out of this world. It’s overpowering - a feast for my eyes. 

56B: Like your work. 

EW: Right. I think when I got to this piece [The Scream (In Living Color) featured below] I felt like I could use any colors and patterns that I want to. I just thought, OK, anything can go together. I can make anything work.

56B: Let’s talk about the titles of your work. I think they’re almost always funny, and they seem to come from cliches and ironic statements. What would you say the relationship is between your work and it’s title? And how important is the title to understanding or appreciating the work?

EW: I generally don’t have a title for a piece when I start. I don’t usually have a lot of the idea either. At some point, I’m figuring out what I’m doing. If I think of a title then, that helps me focus on the work. I love colors and patterns and designs. I’m really interested in space and negative space and it all coming together, not feeling crowded even if there is a lot going on. I have also become interested in, especially within the last 15 years, making some kind of statement. I want my work to be visually appealing and emotional, but it also has a political context. Now, that’s not the most important thing. I really want people to get joy and pleasure out of it, but I also do want to say something. That’s usually where the title comes in. To focus in on what the piece is about. The title gives one a little guidance on how to view the piece.

56B: Your work is reminiscent of children’s toys, which seems to invite people to touch your work. Do you encourage tactile interaction with your work?

EW: I always tell people they can touch my work. …kids love my work. But adults want to touch it too, and I let them. I think one of the reasons I started making sculpture was because I wanted to be able to touch it too.

56B: How long have you been at 56 Bogart?

EW: I’ve been here over 6 and a half years.

56B: How have you seen things change since you moved in?

EW: When I first moved in it was all companies, factories. There was a hat factory next door. I was the third artist in the building.

check out Eileen’s website here: http://eileenweitzman.com/

Sean Alday talks to Nathaniel Lieb in his studio.

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56B: Tell me about yourself.

NL: I’m an artist.

I started off studying biology in school and moved on to art. I’ve been a working artist since I moved to New York in ’84 or ’85.

I started off in the Bronx and moved a few times between the Lower East Side, Williamsburg and SoHo and then to Greenpoint where I am now.

My studio in Long Island City was there for a while. It didn’t have an address; it was right off the Newtown Creek. One day I saw people taking soil samples and next thing I knew, the building was sold. So that sent me searching for a new space again.

I looked at this building in 2004 or ’05. At that time the landlord was offering half of the floor for lease. But I couln’t get anyone to go in with me, so it wasn’t something that I could swing then. When I had to move from LIC, I came back here and this studio is what I got. Things had changed, prices had changed; Bushwick became interesting for artists to come to because it was the easiest place to get to with affordable rents.

When I did move in, around ’07 I rented two spaces and sublet one out, after the crash I had to let it go. I think that the landlord had rented the third floor to the guys who run Brooklyn Fireproof, and saw that it worked so he decided to do the same thing himself. This was of course between when I first looked and when I finally moved in. He saw the writing on the wall and went from hat makers to art studios.

56B: What were your initial thoughts when galleries started popping up?

NL: Well, I was one of the first people who put on a gallery show in this building. It’s not well known, but the story behind it was a grad-thesis show.

I went to grad school later in my life, so for my thesis show I turned one of the spaces downstairs into a pop up gallery. It showed the landlord that the possibility was there to have an art gallery in the building.

Subsequently, other people rented it for the same purpose. Never for more than a month at a time but it was a nice space.

NURTUREart was looking at the building at the same time that I was looking, they went elsewhere obviously, but ended up downstairs eventually.

I like the feel of the galleries around here… but now that there are so many in this building I find it irritating.

56B: What’s irritating about it?

NL: I feel like I’m posing in my own studio. I’m in an art building now. It feels less like a working building and more like a display.

Granted, they’re on the ground floor and I’m on the fourth floor. I do like NURTUREart, Momenta Art, and Interstate. I think those are good galleries and I like the work that they show.

I think that Interstate is doing the most exciting stuff.

56B: What about the neighborhood art scene outside the building?

NL: What’s most interesting about the Bushwick Renaissance is that multiple generations run the galleries. Younger people are opening spaces and older people are opening spaces. We get a mix of people looking at the work.

For example, the Lower East Side always felt like a young hip scene. I don’t know that I want to be a part of a young hip scene. But out here, the lines are crossing. The energy is good.

56B: Tell me about your work.

NL: A breakthrough piece is hanging on the wall over my editing station. I was doing a hand-eye coordination piece, where I tried to make a perfect cube in six cuts. And at one point I was working with a handsaw, the piece on the wall is made up of a lot of scraps that I just left on the floor for a while. I tripped over them until I moved them.

As I moved them I looked at it and realized that I could put them back together like a jigsaw. I pulled all the pieces that I could find, and put it back together with glue and a clamp.

Afterwards, I found myself running down the hall to tell my neighbors. I kind of realized that I don’t really do that with my work. I realized that that was important, that excitement. It wasn’t about refining it to a beautiful little piece; it was more about completing a feat. For me the feat became important, because that’s what I was making when I conceived it, not a refined and polished piece.

The work has become more about what it’s like being a human with my particular traits. We all have pride, we keep track of things, we share experiences, and we perceive time differently. In the midst of all this I’m doodling, playing games like children would.

I like to make things.

Hold on for a moment, [he picks up a large glassy stone].  This is obsidian. It’s part of my new work in progress. I want to develop different skill sets and document the process. I’m going to start by making stone tools because that’s when man became man. And I’m a little intimidated to make the first strike [laughs].

I’ll probably tape it.

56B: Will you use the tools that you make, to create more work?

NL: It’s not so much that I want to employ the tools. Obsidian is really too soft anyway, also I’m not a survivalist but the further you go, the more you learn.

56B: If there’s anything that you could teach or impart to the art world, what would that be?

NL: Stop thinking and just make… I teach art school so I’m part of the problem [laughs].

Listen to yourself running down the hallway excited to share something you made that may be kind of stupid or naive. It’s not that you’re proud of it because it’s artwork, you’re proud of yourself and want to share it. That’s a good place to be.

56Bogart: Would you like to introduce yourself?

Amanda Browder: Yeah, sure. My name is Amanda Browder.

56B: And you’re a relative new-comer to New York?

AB: I moved out here because I wanted to live here and find out what it was all about. I grew up in the west and the west is very different from the east. I honestly was very scared of New York and didn’t know what to expect when I moved here. It was difficult for the first two years, but after a little while I settled in. I had a studio in Greenpoint, but had to move out. I found this place and moved in about a year ago.

56B: Where did you study?

AB: I went to undergrad at Beloit College and it was just a fluke. I was really bad at applying and Missoula is such a small and isolated town that I thought that I’d just go to the University of Montana, but my parents convinced me to apply somewhere else too. So I applied to Beloit College, got in and decided to go. Didn’t even visit it before I went, I just left. And after that I realized that I wanted to be an artist after being a math major for two years. I then went to the University of Wisconsin at Madison for graduate school. Again, I knew I would get in so that’s why I only applied there and it ended up being a great school. I taught in the grad program for two years. Right after grad school I moved to Chicago because I got a part time job teaching at the Art Institute of Chicago in the first year program and fibers department. That’s where I started [the] Bad At Sports [podcast] with my friends Duncan MacKenzie and Richard Holland. Then I decided to move to New York for a change.

56B: I was looking at your website and you write that you’re interested in the “transformative nature of materials.” I was wondering if you could speak on this a bit.  Your work is very tactile and you use very particular materials…

AB: Sure. I use fabric because it is a familiar thing that you would see at home and we don’t always relate it to contemporary art. Paint has the traditions in contemporary art or art history and fabric does too, but it also connects with the private space of the home. So, for me I always felt that the transformative nature of fabric is taking all of the awesome qualities of the fabric that we recognize, say, if we were going to a second-hand store and then using them in contemporary art sense. So, it is that high - low conversation of course, but, you know how people explain words, like they have have different definitions? Well I think of objects as having different definitions and whatever thing you place upon it or whatever everybody’s objective understanding of that object changes the meaning. So I combine different characteristics of certain fabrics. We understand the origins of the object because we understand the fabric as fabric and whatever object I’m constructing has its own meaning as well. And the conversation between these meanings is what interests me; the vibration and awkward conversation.
In Japan I built a giant cave. A lot of the fabric and detritus [I used] was donated by members of the local community and I liked that conceptual background as well; the conversation beyond the one between the material and the object constructed.

56B: Speaking of transformative materials and experiences, I find that some of the most transformative experiences are conversations. It doesn’t surprise me that you are interested in inspiring conversations, interacting with communities directly and, of course, Bad At Sports… conversations!

AB: Yea, that’s true. In Chicago a long time ago we had only one art magazine called the New Art Examiner. It was the only art magazine that was coming out of Chicago. It closed and we (Chicago) sort of lost our voice in the contemporary art world. So, Bad At Sports was in response to that. With Bad At Sports we wanted to create a conversational, relaxed environment while talking about art and we wanted to be able to say dumb words. I mean, all three of us went to grad school. We were smart people and it wasn’t as if we didn’t know what was going on, but we wanted to have recorded conversations where it was like you were having a beer with the artist and laughing and making jokes about stuff; making it funny and entertaining versus too serious and over thought.  And, yea, my work kind of connects that too.

56B: Talk to me about your palette; color seems vital to your work and your palette is consistently bright and fun.

AB: I just like bright colors! It is just part of the world that I enjoy. [My work] needs to be vibrant and exciting. The Rapunzel piece that I made, a huge waterfall of fabric coming out of my apartment, was in response to living in Chicago which is the coldest place in the world, colder than Montana. It is grey for a really long time. I took all of the fabric I had collected over five years, sewed it all together into one huge waterfall and threw it out my window. Kind of just like a release, like, “Oh my god, I need color in my life!”
One thing that was great about living in Montana was the connection with the earth. When you live in Missoula there are mountains everywhere around you. You have a comfortable understanding that there is me as a human and there is a larger scale of the earth that’s out there. One of the reasons that I make big work is to remind people of the intensity of the space that we live in, not be so insular, and that the bigger picture can be awe-inspiring.

56B: Has your practice changed at all since you moved to New York?

AB: I don’t know if it’s changed, but it progresses. I’ve noticed that my work is getting more complex and bigger. In Chicago I had a much smaller space. I think one thing I really love about New York, and that I didn’t expect when I moved here, is the openness that people have to either sharing spaces or helping out with projects. I think that a lot of people think that it is wildly difficult [here] and you can’t connect with people in a neighborhood, but I think the opposite. People are very open if you talk to the right people. Respect is very important, always giving back. For example, I cleaned a gymnasium in return for time to set up a piece. Not giving up on people, too. There is a family I worked with from Coney Island on a project a while ago and they are still donating fabric to me. We still keep in contact and I appreciate that. If you give people an opportunity to try something different it sometimes can be very positive.