Phil Lique – Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist
School of Art
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11/03/2020
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Description
Printmaker Phil Lique will present the next Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar lecture on Wednesday, Oct. 21 at 5:30 p.m. CDT via Zoom.
The lecture is free and open to the public and available via Zoom.
Lique is a multidisciplinary artist working across print, sculpture, design and installation practices. Hailing from New England, He holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree in graphic design from Paier College of Art and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Western Connecticut State University. Lique lives and works in Miami, Florida.
Lique collects and (more importantly) reads books for historical and aesthetic research purposes. His interest in western civilization, religion, occult practices, and art history often become source material for his work, which manifests in sculpture, installation, printmaking, independent publishing and public programming.
There is a regenerative cycle to his practice as he continuously borrows and reappropriates the content, ideas and connections he has forged between his communities and skill sets. Process is an emphasis of his practice, and he has an insatiable need to manipulate modest means to build upon that which he has already mastered or exhausted. He explores intuitively, makes obsessively, and reconstructs endlessly. He is guided by his own set of interests rather than searching for something new.
To see his work, visit https://phillique.com.
The University of Nebraska–Lincoln School of Art, Art History & Design’s Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist & Scholar Lecture Series brings notable artists, scholars and designers to Nebraska each semester to enhance the education of students.
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- [00:00:01.560]Perry Obee: And okay so
- [00:00:05.970]Perry Obee: We go. Thank you, everyone. Thank you all for attending.
- [00:00:12.690]Perry Obee: This
- [00:00:15.420]Perry Obee: for attending this lecture. It's another session of the 2026 Finley College of Fine and performing arts visiting artists and scholar lecture series. I'm really excited to invite
- [00:00:26.550]Perry Obee: infill aqui to talk to them tonight just to introduce myself for many of you don't know me yet. And sorry, the mask. I'm at school. I'm on campus so
- [00:00:38.100]Perry Obee: I'm following the protocol wearing the mask but my name is Perry Toby and I'm the visiting lecturer of printmaking for the 2021 academic school year.
- [00:00:50.220]Perry Obee: And I come to you, most recently from just receiving master printers certificate from the tamarind Institute.
- [00:00:57.840]Perry Obee: I'm a collaborative professional collaborative printmaker I'm also an artist myself. I'm a painter and print maker and do a lot of drawing as well my own practice, but I also collaborate with professional artists to produce their own work.
- [00:01:13.620]Perry Obee: I've really been enjoying my time here at you and I'll just the short time that I've been here, so far it's been an interesting semester with the
- [00:01:22.230]Perry Obee: You know the coven going on and the social distancing that we're having to do up in the studio. But we've adjusted really well.
- [00:01:29.400]Perry Obee: And the students are making some fantastic work. I'm really proud of the work they're doing really excited about it and just can't wait to see what happens. So I'm really grateful to be here and to be able to offer you know
- [00:01:45.180]Perry Obee: Collaborative side to teaching a UL and then also to have the opportunity to share what I do with you guys.
- [00:01:52.980]Perry Obee: Before we get started, I will just announced that I'm going to be muting everyone throughout the talk. Try to keep you all muted so that we kind of avoid disruptions where we can
- [00:02:04.860]Perry Obee: But I'm going to have the chat open. So if there are any questions that pop up along the way, you can just type those into the chat.
- [00:02:11.760]Perry Obee: And I will monitor that. And I will relay those questions to fill at the end of his presentation, we'll do a Q AMP a session. So I'll kind of monitor that that as we go.
- [00:02:25.320]Perry Obee: Fill the queen is a multidisciplinary artist working across print sculpture design and installation practices hailing from New England. He holds
- [00:02:36.030]Perry Obee: The Fine Arts degree in graphic design from pair College of Art and a Master of Fine Arts degree in painting from Western Connecticut State University likely lives and works in Miami, Florida.
- [00:02:47.820]Perry Obee: Phil collection reads books for historic historical and aesthetic research purposes, his interest in Western civilization religion, a call practices in art history often become source material for his work.
- [00:02:59.610]Perry Obee: Which manifests in sculpture installation printmaking independent publishing and public programming.
- [00:03:06.240]Perry Obee: I know I've, I've known field for a long time. When I lived in New Haven, Connecticut for about 10 years Phil was a major leader in the community. There he is founded a number of arts initiatives and he's incredibly passionate about making art accessible within communities.
- [00:03:25.350]Perry Obee: He's since moved to Miami, Florida, where he is very involved in the little Haiti community and integrating his own art practice with his community engagement efforts.
- [00:03:34.800]Perry Obee: He is constantly working on new and exciting projects and I was especially interested in bringing Phil so that he could talk with my students and share these experiences.
- [00:03:44.670]Perry Obee: He's a great example. The young students of how to forge a unique career in the arts as someone who's got many irons in the fire at one time.
- [00:03:52.470]Perry Obee: He's entrepreneurial creative constantly working socially conscious and aware and incredibly actually driven
- [00:03:58.830]Perry Obee: And I bought it is thank Phil to real quick for meeting yesterday he met with my printmaking students and he's collaborating we're collaborating and he's collaborating with them to create a special printed Xen project. And it's really cool to students are pretty excited about it.
- [00:04:15.900]Perry Obee: When completed, the students will be able to distribute the scene out into the world and Phil has also made
- [00:04:22.590]Perry Obee: A venue available for the scene at the Independent Artists book and Xen publishing organization exile books where he works in Miami, I'm sure. Phil is going to talk a little bit more about all of that. And again, thank you, Phil, I will turn it over to you and just have at it.
- [00:04:43.050]philip: Thank you. That's very gracious introduction, actually she hit
- [00:04:48.420]philip: So, so again we had some technical difficulties. I'm here on my phone.
- [00:04:53.820]philip: Rather than on my laptop so please excuse the you know the jerkiness and everything as I'm as I'm gesturing. But in a moment, I'll transition into actually perhaps right now. I'll just transition into
- [00:05:05.010]philip: A presentation that I have. So if you'll indulge me for a half a second. I'm going to share my screen.
- [00:05:11.700]philip: And you'll be privy
- [00:05:14.370]philip: Share it to zoom
- [00:05:17.400]philip: You'll be privy to see all of my apps.
- [00:05:23.220]philip: Okay, let's
- [00:05:28.110]philip: Okay.
- [00:05:30.510]philip: Can you Perry, can you confirm that you guys can see my screen right now.
- [00:05:34.890]Perry Obee: Yes, I see all of your apps.
- [00:05:36.840]philip: Very good. Alright.
- [00:05:40.170]philip: And we're going to take it over here to keno
- [00:05:44.340]philip: And oh, wow, this is kind of funny to later on I can, I can actually kind of show you one of our
- [00:05:50.700]philip: Our pitches for exile, but that's neither here nor there.
- [00:05:54.330]philip: Here's my
- [00:05:56.010]philip: Yeah, you know, actually in please remind me to touch on this later about especially for the students like what
- [00:06:04.410]philip: How to how to tell people about your work and there's kind of like a
- [00:06:11.190]philip: I don't want to call it a protocol, but there's definitely a way to
- [00:06:15.960]philip: To describe and discuss things in a really critical manner and a pitch deck is where it's at. It's so much of it is just all about showing people how how you working and what you do and why it's important but
- [00:06:30.060]philip: You know, before we get into that, let me tell you a little bit about myself so
- [00:06:37.680]philip: I am from New England and I'm displaced here in Miami.
- [00:06:42.000]philip: Which was an interesting sort of way to start out
- [00:06:47.910]philip: I feel like being in a new
- [00:06:49.740]philip: Setting is really important because
- [00:06:53.220]philip: Simply because I'm new. And, you know, that is very advantageous, when you're in an art scene to have some novelty to you.
- [00:07:02.580]philip: So, you know, truthfully as hard as I worked in New Haven. I feel like having moved four or five years ago to Miami was a really good
- [00:07:11.250]philip: career move to go somewhere where I take all my skills or you can take all of your skills and you put them somewhere else and you know work to kind of get into a different network of people. It's really about expanding your network.
- [00:07:26.370]philip: But, um, you know what I do as an artist, is it multifaceted
- [00:07:36.150]philip: I have skills and use skills as an art handler as a designer as a fabricator
- [00:07:45.810]philip: As a administrator
- [00:07:49.110]philip: It as someone who has co established and established my own spaces and programming and, you know, all of those things are different skill sets but highly related or at least for my career and really have helped me to
- [00:08:13.170]philip: sort of navigate a large pond of the art world here in Miami and also back in New Haven. So, you know, I wanted to start the presentation off with some examples of some of the things that I do with other artists, because you know I am a collaborative, I have a collaborative practice.
- [00:08:33.300]philip: There's sort of like three facets of my practice. And so this this collaborative portion
- [00:08:40.260]philip: Is one that is sometimes devoted to just another artists vision, like, up in the upper left hand side. This was a show that I put together in Miami for an artist friend of mine.
- [00:08:52.020]philip: Named john O'Donnell. And so we work together to cast these weird kind of corn cob banana horse toy dinosaur things that you see there
- [00:09:01.860]philip: The central top picture is a doctor in New Haven who wanted to make a gigantic pinko board, kind of like the prices right and so I worked with him to build that
- [00:09:15.900]philip: The top right is here in Miami at untitled art fair. And so, you know, typically every December in Miami. There's we have art week
- [00:09:27.660]philip: Where Art Basel on titled art fair and a half a dozen other art fairs kind of descend upon the city and you know there's a lot of sales and a lot of exhibitions and it's kind of like
- [00:09:41.760]philip: You know, dare I say Christmas for for the art world where everything just goes crazy. And so I've been working with and commissioned by other galleries and other artists to build things for those spaces. So this top right is the devil's lounge, which was commissioned by a kind of a
- [00:10:03.000]philip: I guess like a punk ish gallery called super chief and you know I worked with their artists to conceptualize and build on a team.
- [00:10:12.420]philip: You know what they gave me was basically like pencil drawings on on scraps of napkins and and pieces of paper and you know we build this entire lounge in about two weeks.
- [00:10:25.500]philip: I've also worked with
- [00:10:27.810]philip: Smaller initiatives through my through exile books which I'll talk about in a minute, but also through my personal connections, where, you know,
- [00:10:37.500]philip: My skills, all of a sudden shift to some facet of my art talents that are that I don't often use like illustration
- [00:10:45.930]philip: So flora and the left hand corner or the bottom left, and in the center. That's a coloring book that I designed and drew everything in
- [00:10:56.520]philip: And that was for a collaborative effort between myself exile books and the Center for subtropical affairs and later on I wound up doing the exhibition design for our
- [00:11:10.830]philip: Kind of CO booth. Also at untitled art fair. So there's, you know, it's like my skill set includes building stuff conceptualizing stuff drawing stuff, thinking about it.
- [00:11:24.300]philip: sending emails, talking to people, you know, ultimately, like the way that I kind of manage my art career is to live it and eat it and breathe it and and there's no separation between it in my life, which is, which can be kind of difficult sometimes but you know it's the way that I do it.
- [00:11:43.740]philip: Now I also have a private practice and in that practice.
- [00:11:48.900]philip: You know I as Perry mentioned earlier.
- [00:11:52.950]philip: It has to do with and kind of focuses on magic and western civilization in history.
- [00:12:01.980]philip: And really what I like to do most is use my skills.
- [00:12:08.040]philip: To build things out of modest materials and to attempt to elevate those materials to a highly finished point
- [00:12:17.550]philip: So,
- [00:12:19.770]philip: You know when I'm, I'm just this kind of obsessive
- [00:12:25.140]philip: Maker.
- [00:12:26.970]philip: And I will constantly be moving my fingers in my studio
- [00:12:33.420]philip: Even if I don't have an end goal, which is, again, good or bad, but, you know, that's just kind of the way that I roll.
- [00:12:42.510]philip: So I divide my time between working for other people.
- [00:12:47.880]philip: Which
- [00:12:49.560]philip: You know, pays the bills, really, but I enjoy it.
- [00:12:54.180]philip: And then I take those same skills and I use them in my own studio and I use the connections that I've built with those people who I've been professionally working with to kind of elevate my own personal career or, you know, navigate the the seam so to speak.
- [00:13:14.070]philip: And then
- [00:13:16.080]philip: I also work as really like one leg of exile books.
- [00:13:22.680]philip: And
- [00:13:24.180]philip: What I'll tell you how I got involved with exile books later on in the presentation. But what exile books is is a, you know, we are a nonprofit organization based here in Miami.
- [00:13:35.850]philip: And our goal is to sort of
- [00:13:41.130]philip: proliferate printed material.
- [00:13:45.210]philip: here in South Florida and that can be anything, really. So it's it's print design. So we're talking posters or silkscreen or
- [00:13:58.080]philip: You know, and really any type of print design that you can think of. But the, I think the main focus is scenes.
- [00:14:06.600]philip: And so
- [00:14:08.940]philip: You know, while I'm at exile.
- [00:14:12.600]philip: I'm exercising this third leg of my practice and that is organizing
- [00:14:20.220]philip: So as an organizer and as a project manager and as kind of someone who is who is dreaming about ways to bring people together through this one funnel of print
- [00:14:34.110]philip: We've done things like post Xen fairs. We've hosted and worked with other organizers to bring
- [00:14:42.540]philip: For instance, this the the top center slide is a traveling backpack that comes from Mexico City. It's called Lucci law and that is a, it's a backpack that's filled with
- [00:14:54.960]philip: Basically south and Latin American scenes.
- [00:14:58.560]philip: That's been moving around the world. And so we hosted it we worked with them to show that off to, you know, again, sort of show off print culture here in South Florida. Other types of print culture that are their current
- [00:15:10.500]philip: We hosted a show of some Kareena Kent prints. So for those of you who don't know who create a Kent is she was a famous or maybe, maybe not so famous, but she should be famous. She was a as soon as a pop artist none.
- [00:15:26.340]philip: Figure that out actual Catholic nun. So look her up, but we hosted a suite of her prints.
- [00:15:34.620]philip: Right now I'm working with exile in establishing a scene pool and so I'll talk more about that later. But essentially we're trying to build a digital
- [00:15:45.060]philip: Archive of scenes that people can upload their PDFs into that archive to share and also for to give opportunities to those scenes tours to kind of be juried into show so we can give them honorariums and essentially like award them money for having made print being start work.
- [00:16:06.150]philip: And
- [00:16:07.890]philip: I also do a lot of a lot of pitch work for them. You know I'm always putting together these ideas about how we how exile can
- [00:16:19.380]philip: Build a more pervasive print culture here in South Florida.
- [00:16:23.400]philip: And a lot of that has to do with presenting an idea and making it shiny and giving a graphic that is that's interesting and and somehow convincing a board or a jury or even as an individual donor that their money is worth this
- [00:16:44.100]philip: You know this this kind of like this project.
- [00:16:48.630]philip: And one of those projects that I do at exile, or have been doing for the last few years, with the exception of this year because of pandemic.
- [00:16:58.290]philip: Is that we run the Miami Xen fair and so it would have been five years running and each year. It gets bigger and bigger. This is basically a giant swap meet that we hold
- [00:17:11.430]philip: And there is 100 and we had last year, or rather, this is from 2018 this dissemination 2018 we had 140 vendors all kind of showing off their scenes and you know we have something like 4000 people roll through and it's a great way
- [00:17:29.970]philip: For anyone who's involved in print design and on the fringes of print and art and music and
- [00:17:38.550]philip: Just, you know, General weird kind of culture to come and meet each other and talk and you know the the part of my job that I love the most about this and in organizing is seeing someone who's
- [00:17:52.380]philip: established as a bookmaker next to someone who is not and you know ultimately everyone kind of begins to talk and get along and you know make friends and make connections.
- [00:18:05.070]philip: So this is something that I'm noticing more and more especially in the art climate now where, as I mentioned earlier, we have, you know, gigantic art fairs that roll through in Miami every December.
- [00:18:18.180]philip: There's an equivalent that happens in Hong Kong and in Basel, Switzerland, there's an equivalent that happens in LA. Every year there are different.
- [00:18:29.850]philip: Groups and galleries and kind of cod rays of people who are putting together art shows that are based on sales and that is a avenue of how artists, make it in in presently
- [00:18:44.850]philip: And you know, when I put together a scene fair. It's really kind of like an art fair except on the eliminating all of the pretension and all of the
- [00:19:00.090]philip: You know, the stress that having that having to purchase a $10,000 booth at a, in a, you know, for your fair costs you know that it's it's very light hearted. So I feel as though we're doing something that's really good to keep a facet of our alive without being sullied by money.
- [00:19:24.990]philip: I've been talking an awful lot about scenes. So I just want to jump in real quick and explain what is Ian is. And then, or at least what what I defined it as and then I'll talk a little bit about how that how I sort of discovered that those ethics really plants of my work.
- [00:19:44.700]philip: So Xen
- [00:19:47.190]philip: Is an independent publication.
- [00:19:50.880]philip: And I like to, to say that there's, there's a few things that make it a scene and not a typical magazine, you know, like what's the difference between People magazine and a theme that you would
- [00:20:02.040]philip: You know, find at the fair
- [00:20:04.500]philip: Right here.
- [00:20:07.170]philip: One is that scenes are typically subversive or radical or even maybe anarchist. So the example that I have here on screen is
- [00:20:19.140]philip: You know this original pamphlet common sense if this was published in 1776 and it's one of the first
- [00:20:26.160]philip: Circulated printed pieces of material that was extremely radical at the time, stating, making the case that the colonies of the United States was that what was still bringing
- [00:20:40.560]philip: That those colonies should separate. So, I mean, that's an extremely radical idea being circulated in print and that is the essence of Xen
- [00:20:54.540]philip: Now as we kind of progress through time. I like to think about print as having a relationship between cost and purpose. So, you know, from 1776 up through as we approach the present day, you know, just kind of think about this, that the catalogs and newspapers.
- [00:21:18.900]philip: They have a purpose. They're there to sell something or make money. So when publishers invest in printing them, there is a specific ratio of cost to profit.
- [00:21:33.270]philip: And, you know, the same with things like religious books or textbooks or large editions of fiction that would have had, you know, like a real purpose for selling that that a publisher would know that it's popular and it's going to make $1
- [00:21:50.880]philip: The divergence from that as we approach from the 1770s up through the present day would have been chapbooks and the chat book is like a they're still around. It's really just that the format of like a 40 or 50 page smaller book.
- [00:22:09.510]philip: Think of like a short softcover book, but the page count in these books and
- [00:22:17.580]philip: The general subject matter was, you know, the page that was smaller the subject matter was a little more pointed or defined, they had a lower edition number. So instead of printing 10,000 you might only print, you know, four or 500 of them or 1000
- [00:22:34.080]philip: But it opened up the door to books being slightly more disposable you know that print and the information that the print was conveying was not quite as precious because it costs less
- [00:22:52.110]philip: You're really the the progenitor of Xen I think are the publications that began in and and kind of like we're proliferating and post war.
- [00:23:06.720]philip: Maybe even during the war, you know, let's, let's just put it in like the 40s and 50s and 60s. And there's a couple of reasons. One is like things like these pulp novels are these comic books.
- [00:23:18.480]philip: Are extremely cheap to produce, hence the word pulp novel. They were printed on just garbage paper.
- [00:23:24.810]philip: They cost pennies on the dollar to print the publishers can just smash them out and then it didn't matter really if the content was any good. They were just there to to be sold digested read and that was it. They were for pure entertainment.
- [00:23:40.320]philip: And the the thing. Specifically, that's interesting about them, to me, is that the subject matter of these because it was so cheap to print them and because they were designed to be printed and then distributed and then almost like throwing away.
- [00:23:58.830]philip: You have a lot of topical matter that's kind of like subversive, so we're back to that that notion of scenes being something that's subversive these books are often talking about
- [00:24:10.590]philip: You know, sexuality or homosexuality or stories that were really violent
- [00:24:16.620]philip: So, you know, think about that in the 50s, that it was extremely taboo to publish anything to dealt with being lesbian or gay or to, you know,
- [00:24:25.740]philip: print something that was a story that had to do with just ultra violent material without sensationalizing it as something that was an access power, for instance.
- [00:24:40.590]philip: So these are examples of, you know, like I said, this kind of pro dozy where it's a disposable in nature and also the work is kind of like
- [00:24:55.380]philip: I don't know, um,
- [00:24:57.510]philip: It's it's entertainment, but it's subversive, but it's it's bringing in also like illustrated qualities. There's a graphic quality to it. You know, there's a combination you know we're we're sort of describing what's in the book by the cover.
- [00:25:15.210]philip: And oftentimes if you've ever taken a minute to read any of these. If you've ever gotten your hands on them. Usually the cover of the book is the best thing, the stories and the writing is just completely terrible
- [00:25:29.310]philip: But that brings us up into the 60s. And so, you know,
- [00:25:32.820]philip: I want to remind you what I'm trying to do here is build kind of like what is the character portrait of what is he is. So we've got subversive content. We have disposable nature. We have a merger of illustration and graphic with with idea and concept.
- [00:25:53.220]philip: And when we get into the say like 50s, 60s era. Then there's this influx of what is modern art.
- [00:26:03.030]philip: And that's happening across the board. So, you know, I've got in here like Burroughs. Naked Lunch burrows is experimenting with
- [00:26:11.670]philip: Words and literature and writing styles and also a very subversive author talking about
- [00:26:18.330]philip: You know, drugs and homosexuality and violence and just writing stuff that the critics were panting and all the time. They hated burrows, but you know he had some sort of a grip on what was going on. And people really understood in and
- [00:26:34.260]philip: Identified with what he was writing, though it was so crazy.
- [00:26:40.620]philip: Another I also have on here, a
- [00:26:44.010]philip: This is john cage music of changes. So you know if any of you can read music, you'd notice that this is written in a extremely strange way but john cage is representing music
- [00:26:59.040]philip: In this kind of Avalon sort of way. So I guess I included that to you know say that there's a subversion again of the written word of noise.
- [00:27:11.550]philip: Or
- [00:27:13.950]philip: Artists like Yoko Ono
- [00:27:16.920]philip: Who are sort of pushing the envelope between what is poetry, what is music and what is art. And in fact,
- [00:27:25.200]philip: That leads me to the next slide here, where there's this kind of motion of the art world.
- [00:27:33.210]philip: Specifically in the Fluxus art movement that is particularly interested in the moment.
- [00:27:43.980]philip: So Fluxus our
- [00:27:46.710]philip: I won't give you a history of Fluxus art, but some examples might be hosting a dinner party where everyone is eating something that is strange or weird or wrong or that the dinner party might be
- [00:28:01.230]philip: Instead of serving food off of dinner plates, you're serving food out of like shoes or boots. You know, so you know it's an experiential moment.
- [00:28:11.880]philip: But the way that you record that is through print so you know this art movement is
- [00:28:20.760]philip: gaining traction and using print design as a way to describe something that is experiential
- [00:28:30.240]philip: And therefore they're breaking all the rules. You know, if you look at this box as publication, it is it is very, it has very modern design aesthetic.
- [00:28:43.290]philip: And speaking of design aesthetic.
- [00:28:46.800]philip: Back into to poetry world another kind of leg of what makes Xena Xena, or perhaps what is the the genetic kind of mix up of scenes you might include the poetry concrete movement.
- [00:29:02.820]philip: So,
- [00:29:04.800]philip: Poetry concrete or concrete poetry, however you want to swap those two words around.
- [00:29:11.580]philip: The whole point of it is that the printed word
- [00:29:16.680]philip: is integral to the poem.
- [00:29:20.280]philip: So poets like for instance, on the right hand side, there's two examples by a poet or a concrete poet named Wally W.
- [00:29:31.560]philip: And he's making a small book.
- [00:29:34.830]philip: handmade by the way.
- [00:29:37.230]philip: And then writing his work in it typing it at the time.
- [00:29:42.480]philip: And then stabbing an ink pen through it, letting the pen bleed into all the pages and then that is part of the work.
- [00:29:51.150]philip: So the you know the poem is the entire book. It's the action of stabbing the book. It's the you know the pages. It's the size. It's the whole thing. So, you know, as what I'm getting at here is that now like publishing itself that the object is the art.
- [00:30:12.510]philip: And aside from these
- [00:30:15.120]philip: Is that prior to the internet where, you know, so many of us don't remember it because we weren't born yet.
- [00:30:25.170]philip: There was
- [00:30:27.900]philip: There was the pension to publish or independently publish your own material using
- [00:30:36.480]philip: The stories and the characters that someone else had invented that this is the the the fanzine
- [00:30:45.300]philip: So if you look into Xen history. There's an entire leg of people who are publishing
- [00:30:52.740]philip: eroticized to Star Trek stories or
- [00:30:59.130]philip: People who are following bands or performances, like the Rocky Horror Picture Show and regularly publishing reviews and books about the goings on each one of the different shows
- [00:31:14.190]philip: So this is kind of like
- [00:31:17.190]philip: A leg of Xen in that we're taking material or we the authors of these beans are taking material that they don't necessarily own but but they have an ownership of it. So the fanzine is this sort of other facet is this additional sort of icing on the makeup of what dizziness.
- [00:31:38.850]philip: And I think the thing that most people identify with Xen is the punk rock poster.
- [00:31:45.510]philip: So now we're really looking at
- [00:31:50.610]philip: art making on a gorilla level where
- [00:31:55.620]philip: untrained
- [00:31:58.980]philip: untrained artists or people that are not formally trained in design or arts or sometimes they are
- [00:32:05.700]philip: Are using the technologies at hand to build something that's, you know, aggressive
- [00:32:12.810]philip: To either aggressively show off what show is going to happen this weekend or how cool their band is or to make imagery that seems kind of off putting and crazy, but really this cut and paste method is something that Xen culture really absorbed.
- [00:32:30.600]philip: So, you know, this is this kind of up through maybe I'll even call it like the 80s into the early 90s. That's like the the makeup.
- [00:32:41.490]philip: Of what is he, we have like punk culture mixed with people just kind of owning the things that they're into and running with those themes mixed up with this idea that the the book itself is the piece of artwork.
- [00:32:56.430]philip: And that the artwork that book is representing something that's larger than itself. You know, it could be representing a particular ethic, or a scene.
- [00:33:08.160]philip: And that
- [00:33:10.020]philip: Related to our we're talking about are in the sense of anything from high brow Fluxus our events to low brow comic book art to just sex and violence and all the way down to anarchist ideas or rebellion ideas. And that's kind of like the Xen DNA so
- [00:33:38.760]philip: When
- [00:33:40.830]philip: You know, kind of to go on a side. That's where I landed.
- [00:33:47.280]philip: And sort of started making a lot of artwork or rather let me let me step back here.
- [00:33:53.580]philip: If that's what dizziness or at least how I identify as being that I find it kind of interesting as I work more and more
- [00:34:02.520]philip: In publishing that is specific to scenes how my work and how what I'm interested often reflects that.
- [00:34:11.340]philip: So,
- [00:34:13.860]philip: This is a example of a small show I put together actually right when I moved to Miami and, you know, I'm an obsessive maker.
- [00:34:25.140]philip: But so much of my work is kind of like in this middle area of illustration and color and
- [00:34:34.590]philip: humor and grotesqueness and rebellion and you know with like all of those things is that the object is somehow sacred and that it's really worked over and that you can tell that I've made it with my hands.
- [00:34:58.170]philip: So that's the type of work that I've always been attracted to. And I've always kind of made
- [00:35:05.940]philip: In to backtrack a little bit more
- [00:35:10.110]philip: When I was in New Haven, Connecticut and making you know this type of work or at least the beginning of it.
- [00:35:22.620]philip: There was a
- [00:35:24.870]philip: New Haven was kind of a place where there's two major art scenes. One was Yale University. And so certainly they had a particular
- [00:35:36.390]philip: You know, we'll have the Museum of their own all their own art students. And then there's kind of a closed community of what the Yale art scene is
- [00:35:44.250]philip: And then there was a secondary art scene that would, that was the New Haven art scene and my partner and I at the time felt that
- [00:35:53.370]philip: We needed to be a third option.
- [00:35:56.970]philip: So that was the first step into me getting involved in actually working collaboratively with other artists.
- [00:36:07.920]philip: Outside of building something for them or you know fabricating or hanging artwork on a wall for a gallery or whoever. So we established a kind of independent art space called we call it no pop
- [00:36:24.090]philip: And no pop was located directly above
- [00:36:29.310]philip: The bubble and squeak dry cleaning and wash house on Park Street in New Haven, Connecticut, it was a it was a great space because it had a lot of foot traffic in front of it and you know upstairs. We were hosting small shows and we had our studios and then it was really a lovely experience.
- [00:36:51.510]philip: Downstairs that we have this sign. Now you know the history of the the entire building was that it used to be a bank. And so there was a lot of kind of
- [00:37:00.270]philip: misnomer technology and doorways and passages and things like that. And this sign was one of them. I imagine that design used to say you know the name of the bank or something or or who knows what or perhaps it was for bubble and squeak. But they didn't use it. But when I moved in.
- [00:37:17.040]philip: I I put it to good work. And so no pops first sort of open call as a collaborative art space was to ask artists to submit work for the assignment.
- [00:37:32.160]philip: And you know, I was very pleased by the response that we got. And so, you know, this is a an artist name now Xiao
- [00:37:40.800]philip: From China with me and it blew my mind that someone from China would actually send in work to us but we got it. And so we featured their work.
- [00:37:51.690]philip: We featured the work of a photographer named Aaron McIlroy who's gone on to you know he he keeps he just keeps photographing stuff. I mean, Aaron. It's like
- [00:38:04.200]philip: He's like the abominable snowman, you know you you can't find him. He'll never die. And he pops up when you least expect him, but he makes some really great work. And I was very pleased to be able to show his work.
- [00:38:18.720]philip: In the wintertime. We had an artist named Linda. Linda off and this is not an illustration. And it's actually like in zoom into it. I can't. Pardon me.
- [00:38:30.030]philip: Linda's work is this is photography. So this is a unwrapped package that she photographed and
- [00:38:40.080]philip: You know we featured it here on the sign.
- [00:38:43.560]philip: Oops.
- [00:38:45.510]philip: And me at know pop. You know, I felt like reaching out to artists and featuring their work was kind of one thing that I could do to to steward a relationship and to bring other artists into into our sphere.
- [00:39:04.740]philip: And the second thing was
- [00:39:08.130]philip: That I began making my own scenes and I kind of discovered it through.
- [00:39:16.380]philip: The, the punk rock.
- [00:39:19.410]philip: You know, Miss have seen making you know going to like a copy center and just make it my own stuff and collage and shit together and you know i i did not know at the time the history or lose the the multifaceted understanding that I have of it now or that I'm presenting to you.
- [00:39:39.810]philip: But you know, I was teaching. And so my first Xen that I made, or one of the first ones was kind of an introduction.
- [00:39:48.150]philip: Not only for my students to make projects, but also for myself to to really like think about what it was. And so this is Ian was the john birchers ways of seeing
- [00:39:59.760]philip: 1972 truncated into a sequence of quotations overlaying excuse me overlaying screenshots of the authors image. Take it from the four part BBC TV series of the same name. I was on this whole tip about making really long titles for a while to I still kind of am
- [00:40:15.750]philip: But you know the Xen is essentially every creation of this vintage TV show that was on BBC networks where john Birger who is a very famous and well respected author on his own right, explains to you. Why are is interesting, or what the history of art is
- [00:40:41.790]philip: And you know Birger was just nailing these one liners that were extremely poetic and I wanted to capture that and kind of
- [00:40:50.160]philip: Build something that that conveyed it. And so that was one of the first scenes that I put together that I felt like was successful. And you know, I still make copies of it every now and again and either give them away or or sell them for cheap.
- [00:41:06.000]philip: But, you know, having began scenes.
- [00:41:10.890]philip: And starting to publish was the thing that got me involved in the arts community here in Miami. So when I
- [00:41:20.580]philip: You know, moved
- [00:41:23.280]philip: Five years ago from New Haven, Connecticut to Miami, Florida.
- [00:41:28.260]philip: The Xen and print scene was
- [00:41:33.270]philip: Very much welcoming
- [00:41:36.780]philip: And since I had began to do some of that sort of work. It was a good kind of entry into a fringe art scene. So, you know,
- [00:41:47.760]philip: I actually participated in the 2000 and I don't know like 16 Miami Xen fair prior to, you know, and that was my foot in the door for meeting the founder of exile.
- [00:42:01.500]philip: Whose name by the way is Amanda Keeley she's a great artist, you should look her up and you know that's what got my foot in the door of exile and that's what sort of began to put me on a trajectory. I'm in now.
- [00:42:13.830]philip: So I've, you know, I've published a few morzine since then. And just to kind of go through them for fun, and I won't spend too much time on them, but I like you know I'm still on this kind of
- [00:42:22.560]philip: Tech of making this, you know, cut and paste sort of stuff. This one is a basically a remix page by page of the original Marvel Infinity War comic book which is
- [00:42:34.740]philip: For those of you who are nerds like I am the Infinity wars, the, the, the story arc, you know, with Santos, and the gems and all that. So I had the original for my, you know, when I was a kid and I rebuilt it
- [00:42:47.670]philip: And that was fun.
- [00:42:49.470]philip: But um you know now.
- [00:42:52.170]philip: As a professionally. I'm building scenes. And so this is an example of a scene that I made for a gallery in in town called their name is Emerson dorsch gallery, they had an exhibit kind of sprung on me really quickly if they needed
- [00:43:10.680]philip: Basically like this scientific texts that the artist had included in the show needed to be shown off somehow so I you know I built it, boom right then in there and
- [00:43:22.140]philip: You know, it follows some, but certainly not all of those ethics have seen making you know that this is a printed piece of material that is literally a piece of artwork and
- [00:43:32.790]philip: In my capacity as a collaborative artist. I'm working with these people in the gallery and the artists to you know make something that represents them. That is, you know, to be touched held look through and revered as something that's that's on the shelf as a piece of work.
- [00:43:53.040]philip: I've had the opportunity to, you know, work with music festivals and you know different art venues and things like that. So this is one that we did for a music festival down here called three points. They're huge. You know, it's like, I mean, I live in Miami. So the music scene is just incredible.
- [00:44:11.550]philip: But you know we wound up doing a fanzine and printing out 100 copies and then distributing them to the artists who were playing at the Music Festival, which was super cool. So I was like, you know,
- [00:44:22.920]philip: I know that a copy of this scene wound up in like the hands of like the RZA from Wu Tang and Ty Siegel and and a bunch of other people who are you know just admire.
- [00:44:36.060]philip: I've done work Xen work that is more like art catalogs for
- [00:44:44.220]philip: This one is for a local art agent agency, excuse me for a an art collective called Lucas projects. They're one of the oldest artists run projects in Miami. And so I worked with them and the artists.
- [00:44:58.800]philip: To build the show, or excuse me while they built a show. I built the scene. So it felt like a little bit of detective work and a lot of showing up and photographing them as they were making things and then
- [00:45:10.560]philip: Taking the graphics that they were providing to me and attempting to sort of put them in order.
- [00:45:17.100]philip: And, you know, doing a lot of handmade stuff with silk screen and you know paying attention to, you know, to add, you know, different elements into the publication itself that make it feel special.
- [00:45:32.880]philip: And, you know, also as a in my kind of capacities as someone who works in in this fringe of publishing
- [00:45:43.380]philip: I've started to build build out my my kind of community and collaborative efforts like I did with the sign back in New Haven. So this one is for an exhibit that we did that I programmed at exile.
- [00:45:58.290]philip: And it was called classwork and essentially we were inviting people to come in and
- [00:46:06.270]philip: Look over these texts that I had put on the wall and all of the texts are art texts or kind of, you know, peripheral to the art texts that you might read on a graduate level or some really heady stuff written by curators or
- [00:46:21.300]philip: Also some just kind of weird stuff that is written by, you know, far out thinkers and, you know, getting people to interact with the texts.
- [00:46:29.370]philip: And physically notate them and then collect all of them back into one volume again to publish this sort of annotated
- [00:46:38.310]philip: Equivalent of a textbook of what the Miami art scene felt were the necessary components that you needed to understand
- [00:46:46.080]philip: To be an artist, you know, what are the ethics of our here in Miami, come and come and write about them or refute what other people have written about them. So this falls a little bit into you know me working
- [00:46:59.370]philip: Again, it's like Subversion, because none of this. It's all copyrighted material and I'm you know I'm definitely not telling anyone that I'm doing this. And in fact, that's kind of my
- [00:47:10.680]philip: You know, I get a smile out of that every now and again there was some of these that were published that were by authors in Miami and by
- [00:47:18.180]philip: The artists who are working at universities in Miami, and it was, you know, it's sort of like my challenge to see if people would come in and see them or recognize other people and you know
- [00:47:29.700]philip: I don't know, I kind of have fun like that that's back to my my punk kind of roots is sometimes I'm kind of a jerk, like that, but
- [00:47:36.900]philip: But I digress. But, you know, building this making the entire exhibit designing the chairs giving people a place to sit and then hosting other events that were related to this that where people could come in and this was available to them.
- [00:47:54.270]philip: You know, so it was up for two months. I thought it was a fun success.
- [00:48:00.420]philip: Working with other art collectives here. This one was for flower box project. And so the background behind this is that
- [00:48:08.880]philip: There is a monthly meetup called the progressive art brunch that many galleries around town had been you know basically hosting a brunch date.
- [00:48:21.990]philip: Everybody would host brunch on the same day and then gallery viewers could go from place to place to place. And, you know, see the artwork that was being hosted at each one of these different galleries.
- [00:48:33.600]philip: So flower box felt as though they were this included from this. So they approached me and said, Listen, we want to do something special.
- [00:48:44.970]philip: In as a reaction or response to this. So last year, during the, during art week which I was talking about earlier, when a million in one
- [00:48:56.070]philip: art galleries and art fairs descend upon Miami. There is of course an abundance of artists in Miami that show up from all over the place, as well as art handlers. That's those people who are putting up the art moving the are taking the art down
- [00:49:12.300]philip: You know they're they're like the backbone, really, of the art community and then also an abundance of galleries and collectors in town.
- [00:49:22.530]philip: So as a response to the progressive brunch that the other galleries, we're hosting flower box decided to host just breakfast, which was during the days that are the most busy for art, music, and
- [00:49:38.310]philip: You know the guy who runs flower boxes name's David, he decided that he would serve better food than the progressive art branches so for $5 you could get a really delicious bacon egg and cheese on a croissant and a cup of coffee, which is a steal here in Miami. Everything is price gouge.
- [00:49:59.670]philip: And, you know, the goal was that you could pay
- [00:50:04.920]philip: If you are an artist or an art handler, but you had to draw on the bill.
- [00:50:09.570]philip: So, you know, basically the entire place was filled up with these $5 bills that everyone that all of these really creative and weird artists and art handlers were just illustrating all over the place.
- [00:50:21.750]philip: So you know I did the design work for this. I did the, you know, a lot of kind of getting a word out in the administrative work for it.
- [00:50:30.120]philip: And we're putting a small book together that features all of these $5 bills and everything else. So I think there's like hundreds and hundreds of them, but these are some of the best homes.
- [00:50:39.120]philip: And just speaking to the gallery and collectors is $50 thing that was kind of our inside joke that if you showed up to, you know, our rinky dink
- [00:50:47.610]philip: Little art, art space and you're a gallery or a collector. You could certainly afford to give us a little bit more money than $5 so that was that.
- [00:50:57.390]philip: Back to the punk rock aesthetic, you know,
- [00:51:00.540]philip: I'm speaking of money. This is another project that I did that involved print and
- [00:51:06.840]philip: Kind of kind of cash.
- [00:51:09.270]philip: Where as a professional in the arts. I think it's extremely important to make sure that you get paid and to value yourself in the work that you do and
- [00:51:23.160]philip: You know I'm
- [00:51:25.590]philip: I'm 37 and I have spent a long time working for free. Sometimes
- [00:51:33.990]philip: And you know, I try to make sure that I don't do that anymore and I make sure that other people don't do it. So any anything really that I do that involves my skills and my talents. You know, I demand that I get paid.
- [00:51:46.860]philip: And so for this one.
- [00:51:50.940]philip: This was a kind of a remote project for me, where a gallery, now I'm here in Miami and excuse me it wasn't a gallery, there was a
- [00:52:02.160]philip: A developer
- [00:52:04.140]philip: Back in New Haven where I'm from.
- [00:52:07.020]philip: Took a building and was revitalizing it and asked artists to come in and put up a giant exhibition
- [00:52:17.430]philip: Which they did. So all of these artists common, you know, they basically made new work spent their time putting things up, you know, built out the space. And then, you know, hooray. We celebrate. Yay. It's an art show. But there's a problem with that because no one got paid.
- [00:52:37.650]philip: And you know essentially when a developer, does that they and they do this again and again it's a trend that's between the developers and the art world.
- [00:52:47.730]philip: Where developers will employ artists or asked artists to come in and do cool stuff in their space. And that raises the price of the property value and then the artists get kicked out. Once the property value is too much for them to afford
- [00:53:03.870]philip: And you know, it's kind of like a cycle. So my answer to this, to remind all of my, my colleagues in New Haven that they should not be doing this was to send
- [00:53:13.590]philip: A text message to everybody, including the
- [00:53:18.120]philip: The person who was running the show and it right like this. So congratulations on your piece in mill Street. I'm happy to see that New Haven is finding new places and ways to support artists like yourself.
- [00:53:29.760]philip: And you know I won't. Maybe it will read it all. Why not, and you're my captive audience we might
- [00:53:35.610]philip: We might know each other, or maybe we don't. I left New Haven in my my left New Haven for Miami in 2016
- [00:53:41.790]philip: While I was there I exhibit in the city taught in co founded an alternative art space that many of you have visited are shown at
- [00:53:49.050]philip: I know how hard it is to keep up in our practice and I'm proud to say that I've managed to maintain and even expand my own over the last four years days ago I mailed $10,000 and self minted $20 bills to the curators of mill Street.
- [00:54:03.990]philip: I've asked that they'd be distributed to you the artist as a gesture. You deserve compensation for the work you do the culture you create and the dialogues you engage in New Haven my contribution to this show is to give you the acknowledgment. You deserve and encourage you to seek more
- [00:54:20.910]philip: Ask for your money divided between yourselves, send me a picture. So, you know, for me, this is just a way to remind really my friends that
- [00:54:32.010]philip: You sometimes an opportunity to show your work doesn't really get you anywhere you know and and it's also again back to my kind of like punk mischievous thing. It was another way for me to force myself into the show so you know it's. There's a funny duality there, but whatever.
- [00:54:56.700]philip: So finally back to some of my own work.
- [00:55:00.570]philip: When, when I make work like this.
- [00:55:04.230]philip: It's very big, you know, this piece measures around six feet tall. By four or five feet wide.
- [00:55:11.790]philip: And so the question is, what do I do with this speaking about having exhibited work and where you put it. And did you sell it, and is it is this really an opportunity, no eventually your artwork takes up space. In fact,
- [00:55:25.860]philip: A friend of mine down here, coined the term future trash. And that's really the term that he uses for all our because
- [00:55:35.160]philip: Eventually, it's all just future trash even, even if it's like you know beholden to a museum or something like that. It takes up space, you know, so, so much artwork just goes away.
- [00:55:50.010]philip: So my answer to that.
- [00:55:52.080]philip: Was to turn these works into something else, you know, to turn them into a print
- [00:55:59.040]philip: And that's something that I've kind of began to do and it's always been in my, in my practice to take my older work.
- [00:56:05.970]philip: And, you know, after its lived a particular life I dismantle it and either destroy it or recreate it or commemorated somehow. So these next three are examples of those sorts of. It's like a momentum or a of a piece of artwork and
- [00:56:22.740]philip: So you know in in kind of step with the theme of weird religious or mystic or occult stuff here. You know, I'm also
- [00:56:33.570]philip: You know, kind of giving this a
- [00:56:39.240]philip: moment of reflection, you know,
- [00:56:42.150]philip: So this is a
- [00:56:45.690]philip: Multi color. Oh boy, I'm blanking on what it's called. It's not a silkscreen
- [00:56:52.200]philip: polymer plate. Excuse me. So this is a polymer plate print that I printed with a with another artist actually at a residency in Storrs Connecticut.
- [00:57:03.600]philip: And so it, you know, in essence, it's funny because the pieces. The thing that I made on my own, but to make the you know the the print. I was working collaboratively with someone who is a printer, much like theory.
- [00:57:18.420]philip: And this is just an example of how those translate. You know, so this is a piece. It's eight feet by eight feet. It's huge. And then, reducing it and making into a multicolor polymer print Intel looks
- [00:57:32.040]philip: So it takes up a lot less space, you know, because now they're the ideas there. I feel like I did the work.
- [00:57:39.510]philip: The theme translates from, you know, a sculptural object to a flat thing.
- [00:57:47.130]philip: And it's just much more accessible.
- [00:57:50.580]philip: So, you know, I take a lot of work apart and it gets translated into more work.
- [00:57:58.740]philip: And these are some examples of that, you know, things that the larger flat work that I did in the past that's been destroyed.
- [00:58:08.550]philip: You know some things get saved, you know, whether if it's a flat piece of paper or if it's a prop or something that was part of the piece. You know, it might make it or or not.
- [00:58:21.960]philip: But then these pieces here are kind of
- [00:58:25.200]philip: You know, the next step I guess in in some sort of iteration of what I was doing that had to do with mysticism and and history and Nicole and and kind of, you know, Western
- [00:58:39.690]philip: Western civilization's traditions. So, you know, I'm, I'm very interested in in robe and I'm extremely interested in how so much of what the Roman Empire.
- [00:58:54.150]philip: Went through and experienced as a mirror almost of, like, you know what the United States is going through right now.
- [00:59:02.220]philip: And
- [00:59:03.630]philip: These are sculptures that are based on this.
- [00:59:08.430]philip: This tool that the Roman army used called the standard. And so the standard was, you know, some some soldiers job was to hold up on a pole this sculpture and the sculpture would represent
- [00:59:24.060]philip: That soldiers say like regimen or army or whatever. And so from afar, a general could view and see that sculpture that that guy is holding
- [00:59:36.990]philip: And then be able to ascertain that we need to send troops over to this part of the battlefield, or that part. Are these people need help, or or what have you.
- [00:59:46.200]philip: But essentially, because it was a physical symbol of these armies sort of veracity to fight they became sacred objects.
- [00:59:57.690]philip: And the idea of sacred symbol or object that means something to many people has carried over with us for years and years and years through generations through different cultures. So, you know, the idea of the standard
- [01:00:12.450]philip: Is translated through, you know, different types of religious ceremonies, you know, or someone carry something through an aisle or present something to a priest or a priesthood.
- [01:00:24.000]philip: Or we can keep going and you know it's the equivalent of like the American Eagle Eye with the American flag. You know, it's the symbol of of our nation.
- [01:00:35.490]philip: And even travels into the territory of you know what that your sports team has a particular agent that describes them, you know, the Chicago Bulls right
- [01:00:48.840]philip: So this was a you know, a kind of an exercise and building those and
- [01:00:54.450]philip: Using some of the cues from Western Civ like you know the sculptures of Caesar and Marc Anthony and then kind of building them out of the materials that I have at hand like cardboard and paint and just junk and hot glue and putting them together.
- [01:01:10.770]philip: You know another thing that I'm very much interested in that also has a lot of kind of draw from Western Civ and magic and Renaissance history is the taro and, you know, for me, particularly, I feel like the taro is it's just a wellspring of of imagery and knowledge and
- [01:01:32.760]philip: Intricacies that blend art and language and mysticism and and whatnot so
- [01:01:43.140]philip: This one in particular is a tarot card that is the four of wands.
- [01:01:50.580]philip: And the four of wands, you know, you can see here it's it's two people gesturing to you.
- [01:01:57.510]philip: While there's these for ones that are kind of like poles planted into the ground and across those poles. There's a banner.
- [01:02:04.410]philip: So what I'm showing you here is this initial sketch that basically that I started kind of like taking some images of the old artwork that I was using
- [01:02:14.790]philip: And then printed them out, and you know, literally, in this kind of cut and paste it back to the cut and paste ethic tried to arrange something and and I realized that I was building this card so
- [01:02:26.670]philip: You know, the next step was to keep on progressing with that. And so that's kind of where this has ended up so far and
- [01:02:33.720]philip: You know, this is a piece that's haven't shown it it's, you know, actually, I haven't shown any other ones that I just showed the two of you guys.
- [01:02:41.430]philip: But, you know, the idea is there and it is again just a lot of like paper and me obsessive we making. So, you know, I really feel like I'm trying to find a way to harness all of that obsessive making that I do in my practice.
- [01:03:01.530]philip: And so kind of a detail shop. Yeah. And again, this is a mix up in a mash up of some of this stuff is, you know, flat work from previous work some of its new that I made specifically for this. I guess it's kind of an installation.
- [01:03:19.110]philip: And, you know, now it's next phase of life is literally to attempt to
- [01:03:26.370]philip: to pitch it, you know, to find someone who's willing to show it, which I'll talk about maybe in a little bit.
- [01:03:35.610]philip: Here's my, uh, you know, something else also speaking of, like, just, just how to kind of get by as an artist, so much of it is talking about what you do and talking about why you need
- [01:03:49.890]philip: Something, why do I need that space. Why do I need that money. Why do I need that that you know opportunity and
- [01:03:59.040]philip: You know if you guys are serious about being artists, then I would recommend that you really load up on your on your writing classes because building a narrative about what you do is paramount 100% you need to be able to write and have a voice that's convincing.
- [01:04:18.060]philip: And so this is my studio
- [01:04:21.990]philip: Actually, it's my studio residency that I got at a. It's called the bakehouse art complex it's here in Miami. Also, and they were offering a temporary residency and I wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote
- [01:04:36.210]philip: And and I managed to get it. So I had a short term residency where I was able to paint and had a you know basically like a really large space to make large work, otherwise I work out of my home, which is a little constricting but I you know I like that too. That's a different talk
- [01:04:55.680]philip: But, um, you know, the pitch was
- [01:05:00.480]philip: To talk to them and to rather the pitch that I use on the bakehouse to get this residency.
- [01:05:08.610]philip: To convince them that I had a project in mind.
- [01:05:12.330]philip: Was to describe to them that I needed the opportunity to flesh out these ideas to build my next large project, which is a
- [01:05:23.040]philip: Makes
- [01:05:25.080]philip: So, you know, in step with my interests in
- [01:05:29.310]philip: History and myth and and like you know just western civ and occult stuff, you know, for me, the mazes this fascinating.
- [01:05:39.660]philip: Element of art and myth and story that I would really like to explore a little bit more as a collaborative practice with other people.
- [01:05:50.190]philip: So my my plan. And what I'm currently doing is I'm writing a lot and I'm talking a lot, and I'm pretty much just like banging the drum all the time.
- [01:06:00.450]philip: To tell people that I'm trying to build a full scale cardboard maze here in Miami.
- [01:06:06.750]philip: And you know this was my effort to say, Listen, you know, I need a space to make a bunch of artwork that's maze related
- [01:06:14.910]philip: So that I can begin getting traction on this, you know, so that I can begin talking about it with other people so they can show work that is kind of in that vein.
- [01:06:24.570]philip: So that I have collateral, you know, that's a buzzword that we use now that I have collateral to to show people you know what something will look like.
- [01:06:34.860]philip: And
- [01:06:37.110]philip: The final kind of step is, how do you, how do you build a maze. You got to raise the money and how do you raise the money is for me. I'm going to be making, making this scene.
- [01:06:52.740]philip: And the Xen is essentially like a gift for people who give me cash for the means. So that's my next phase or my next step as far as like my professional career. So, you know, I feel like so much of this stuff, kind of like
- [01:07:08.970]philip: Falls into
- [01:07:11.250]philip: You know it's it's a mix up in a mash them up.
- [01:07:14.640]Go back to
- [01:07:17.760]philip: Stop share
- [01:07:21.990]philip: Okay.
- [01:07:26.190]philip: I'm back.
- [01:07:28.170]philip: And I'm, you know, I feel like I'm, I'm always trying to kind of build in what it is that I've done and what I'm interested in. Now with, you know, the other things that I'm doing professionally.
- [01:07:41.190]philip: And combine
- [01:07:47.040]Perry Obee: Thank you Phil
- [01:07:48.570]philip: Thanks, that I talked to one.
- [01:07:50.400]Perry Obee: No, no, not at all. We went, we started a little late. So thank you. That was, that was really good and insightful and to where you are and where you've been.
- [01:08:02.940]Perry Obee: I do have a couple questions that have come in privately to me.
- [01:08:07.650]philip: Right. All right.
- [01:08:09.090]Perry Obee: Someone as
- [01:08:11.580]Perry Obee: How did moving to a new location challenge you as an artist.
- [01:08:16.080]philip: Um, it's, there's a few things. One is that your
- [01:08:22.680]philip: What is your, your, the here's the benefit is that when you move you get to you get to choose your identity.
- [01:08:30.120]philip: So,
- [01:08:32.910]philip: Specifically, I did small things like
- [01:08:36.480]philip: I got contact lenses and took my glasses off, or
- [01:08:42.390]philip: started wearing different clothes or something like that. And I know that sounds really surface, but it gives you the opportunity to like be a new person and to break out of some shell that you you feel like your identity has been established in one place.
- [01:08:57.600]philip: The other thing is that
- [01:09:00.270]philip: You know, a benefit of moving is
- [01:09:03.840]philip: That there's more. There's a different art community to work with and you find people that are doing things that are more similar to what you're interested in.
- [01:09:13.830]philip: So making friends is like a big plus. I think the challenges actually getting involved in that community and
- [01:09:23.760]philip: And breaking into it. But is that really just comes with showing up you know so much of it is just you have to be there and you have to force yourself to talk and you know you learn that you don't have to be fake. You know you if you don't feel like being
- [01:09:48.000]philip: You know talkative or whatever, then you don't have to, but you still have to go to the event and you still have to show up to the opening and you still have to, you know, like, try and keep an ear out for what's what an opportunity is or whatever. And I feel like
- [01:10:05.160]philip: The challenges.
- [01:10:07.470]philip: You know, finding who your people are and also not writing anybody off immediately.
- [01:10:18.090]Perry Obee: Excellent.
- [01:10:20.730]Perry Obee: Let's see, Aaron Holtz is asking a couple things. Well, he commented that
- [01:10:27.120]Perry Obee: He enjoyed the history of the scene, the inclusion of Thomas Paine almost everything good eventually gets co modified that first edition of common sense isn't have sold for as much as 540 $5,000
- [01:10:39.120]philip: Yeah, yeah. It's funny.
- [01:10:40.980]Perry Obee: That's interesting. He's asking, will there be an Art Basel Miami this year.
- [01:10:45.900]Perry Obee: No, no.
- [01:10:48.150]philip: What's funny is, I'm sorry, did I cut off your question, was it a multi part
- [01:10:53.940]Perry Obee: Well, there is a second question about New Haven pizza.
- [01:10:57.870]Perry Obee: And people what what you miss about New Haven pizza, especially Frank happy and Sally's
- [01:11:03.540]philip: Your you guys have already answered it. Yeah, I missed the clam pizza from patties de
- [01:11:11.850]philip: With our Basel
- [01:11:13.890]philip: So, particularly, you know, Miami is something I learned again for moving is that every art scene is is unique and each the art world in general is a microcosm, it does not
- [01:11:29.610]philip: follow the rules of any other economic model out there at all. Once you get into, you know, the, I don't know. I don't want to say like the top tiers or whatever but
- [01:11:42.780]philip: You know, galleries and museums when they're working together in tandem create a market for an artist. They that's just how things work. You know, so like money and value are very arbitrary
- [01:11:58.410]philip: That being said,
- [01:12:02.130]philip: Art Basel, and art week and all of the other fairs, that that show up here are often a drive for those you know those people in those organizations to to really like push a particular commodity.
- [01:12:19.440]philip: This year because of coated there's
- [01:12:23.640]philip: No one's going to do very few people are going to do a physical airfare
- [01:12:29.910]philip: Some Basel pulled out on titled art fair pulled out. And then I think nada new American art dealers there they're out to
- [01:12:38.790]philip: But what you're what's going to happen instead. And what I'm already seeing
- [01:12:44.850]philip: Is Miami is going to hold its own thing. So anyone who is a an artist is using this as an opportunity to say, I'm just going to do my thing.
- [01:12:57.450]philip: And see what happens because people are still vacationing here. The, the wealth that comes down here for the winter time to go to the art fairs and stuff. Are there still showing up.
- [01:13:09.420]philip: And you know just speaking to a disparity and in economics, the wealthy people in the communities of people who come to visit for the art fairs are
- [01:13:22.830]philip: Vastly less effective than everyone else by coronavirus so you know they show up. They do their thing.
- [01:13:32.430]philip: And also, like,
- [01:13:34.980]philip: Good or bad, you know, the governor of Florida is kind of like
- [01:13:41.880]philip: Really Lucy goosey about the the
- [01:13:46.860]philip: The quarantine mandates for Florida.
- [01:13:49.950]philip: So we've
- [01:13:53.130]philip: You know either phrase it as enjoyed or or have been affected by or to our detriment is that it's been very loose down here.
- [01:14:02.610]philip: And which is kind of like
- [01:14:04.920]philip: You know, I don't know. People, people are
- [01:14:07.350]philip: Afraid to be outdoors and in run around. There's still wearing masks and all that. But, you know, because there's a lot because it's like more lacks I think that people are more willing to host large events.
- [01:14:20.610]philip: And then put masks on, rather than not host an event at all.
- [01:14:24.690]philip: So, I mean, we'll see. I mean, it's going to be interesting, but Miami wants to any artist specifically wants to really come through and make make a splash without the art fairs and that's, I think that's the intention of all the local institutions.
- [01:14:38.610]Perry Obee: That's interesting. Thanks for sharing that insight, you know, it's good to see that the artists are trying to still do something and then see what they can pull off so
- [01:14:47.730]philip: Yeah, yeah, it's, it's a pricing to, you know, because the Miami artist, want to be known for what they that they have an identity. Not that someone else comes in. Once a year and sells much of artwork, you know,
- [01:15:02.340]Perry Obee: Yeah, kind of taking it taking back ownership for them.
- [01:15:05.550]Perry Obee: Yes, yes, I'm Dustin says do you think it is necessary to reinvent yourself as an artist to reinvigorate your lifestyle and creativity.
- [01:15:18.120]philip: Um, I think every now and again, you should think about what it is that you're doing. And if you enjoy doing it. So if you're if you don't enjoy the work that you're making
- [01:15:32.700]philip: Then it's it's like not a sin to
- [01:15:37.200]philip: To change something or to take a break.
- [01:15:41.280]philip: So I've definitely like
- [01:15:44.340]philip: reinvented myself.
- [01:15:48.720]philip: When I moved
- [01:15:51.510]philip: The world changed.
- [01:15:53.550]philip: And also when I realized that I could work across disciplines than the word change, sometimes it's not necessarily about changing your work, but it might be about changing
- [01:16:06.690]philip: For instance, like who you work with or who you work for.
- [01:16:11.880]philip: And in that can be good. You know, like I would say before I tried to redefine before you try to redefine the art that you make. Think about the distinction between what's the art that you make and what type of an artist that you are
- [01:16:29.130]Perry Obee: Yeah, thank you.
- [01:16:31.020]Perry Obee: Yeah, I got a couple more here see
- [01:16:34.350]Perry Obee: What is the favorite project that you've done throughout all of your time as an artist. Wow.
- [01:16:39.720]philip: Oh boy, um,
- [01:16:43.080]philip: My favorite project.
- [01:16:46.860]philip: The one that I'm working on right it's always the project that I'm working on right now. And so right now I'm doing
- [01:16:55.920]philip: Right now I did some exhibition design for an artist named Lauren Shapiro and so I'm helping her to build out her project. So, you know, right now it's kind of like not even my work that I'm most excited about, to be honest with you.
- [01:17:13.380]philip: I'm, I'm really excited about maze.
- [01:17:16.890]philip: Because it's something that's like a challenge for me to open up doors for like independent funding or asking nonprofits to support me fiscally so that's that's a fun one. But now it's kind of like
- [01:17:34.920]philip: I think what I'm
- [01:17:35.790]philip: Most excited about is the collaborative stuff or making inroads with other people in my community and in my kind of sphere to
- [01:17:47.100]philip: Excuse me, to actually expand my my my practice.
- [01:17:53.130]Perry Obee: Thank you. Yeah, I've got a follow up question to that. But first I'm going to cat asks, How do you manage the amount of projects you are working on. I love how you don't bog yourself down with one style or idea, but it must be overwhelming at times.
- [01:18:07.920]philip: The answer is yes.
- [01:18:10.170]philip: I'm completely overwhelmed like 24 hours a day.
- [01:18:16.680]philip: You know,
- [01:18:18.390]philip: I
- [01:18:20.580]philip: When, when you work.
- [01:18:23.220]philip: I am blessed that I'm self employed.
- [01:18:27.060]philip: And, you know, but that means that I have to maintain. You know, like a level of steam to keep moving forward. Right. So the thing that I do and this is just for me personally, is if I if I exercise regularly that I'm doing great and
- [01:18:51.090]philip: You know, it helps to be. It helps to live, where I live, because I just go to the beach and swim. And for a while I was good, like swimming, two, three times a week. And it was great.
- [01:19:00.900]philip: But the, I think the answer your question is you have to schedule in time that that you devote to yourself. That's not your practice.
- [01:19:13.590]philip: You know, and say, on Friday night. I'm going to work on Friday night. I'm going to go to the gym or on Saturday. I'm going on a date or I'm going to hang out with my friends on this day and then and then do that because if you don't give yourself time to
- [01:19:31.890]philip: You know, to decompress then you go crazy. And then, and then it's like a downward spiral. You know, you just you're freaked out.
- [01:19:39.960]philip: Whatever also saying no, and
- [01:19:44.370]philip: Being able to be there's there's like an honesty factor that you reach with yourself and with other people were
- [01:19:53.100]philip: You know when you get requests and people start asking for things or people start, you know, telling you that that they need something like now.
- [01:20:00.450]philip: A really good one is to learn how to tell them that it's either going to cost twice as much money or that you just can't do it now. And you know that it's not like a
- [01:20:10.470]philip: You know, it's not a thing. It's just, it's not going to happen because because life doesn't work like that.
- [01:20:15.600]Perry Obee: Right. Yeah. A lot of like what you've been talking about is really protecting yourself from being exploited, you know, as
- [01:20:21.840]Perry Obee: As I yeah yeah it's you don't ask your doctor friend to give you a free diagnosis, you know, but people ask, artists, all the time to make free artwork.
- [01:20:33.000]philip: And yes,
- [01:20:33.870]Perry Obee: It to protect yourself and
- [01:20:35.850]philip: And I mean, and there's a time for that to, you know, like, you know, maybe I got off on the wrong foot without one. Like, I still do stuff for free. Every now and again but but it's like it's different, you know, like when when I know that someone is going to
- [01:20:53.160]philip: Win. I know that its advantages for someone else for me to do a thing for free, then I'm like, no.
- [01:21:00.780]philip: You know when when I know that going to someplace and like hanging up a couple of pictures for them, you know, all day long. Like, that's not a favor. That's like, that's a job, you know, so being able to say no to that different than
- [01:21:17.040]philip: You know, sending out an email or connecting somebody or whatever, you know, you just kind of begin to realize that what it is that you what you value yourself out and then
- [01:21:25.530]philip: You know when when that red flag hits that you feel like that's a job and you don't do it unless you tell them that it's going to cost money. Yeah.
- [01:21:32.850]Yeah.
- [01:21:34.320]philip: It does really, you know,
- [01:21:36.090]Perry Obee: Like you said, it's about being honest with yourself and with
- [01:21:38.490]Others.
- [01:21:41.400]Perry Obee: About collaboration, like do you find a you know that collaboration has become such a large part of your work that
- [01:21:47.880]Perry Obee: That, how do you connect collaboration with the creative process. Do you find that it is an extension of the creative process or how does it. How do you think about it in terms of creativity and collaboration.
- [01:22:07.440]philip: It's it's a synergy and that not all collaborations are are good.
- [01:22:17.160]philip: But you, I think that what happens is
- [01:22:22.350]philip: If I come into a collaboration.
- [01:22:26.370]philip: Knowing that everyone is going to bring something to the table and in. I'm going to bring a particular element, then, then that's one thing.
- [01:22:37.830]philip: So like, it can be really easy to to obsess
- [01:22:43.830]philip: And and to want to like control. So, you know, if you want to work collaboratively, you kind of have to trust the other people that you're working with.
- [01:22:53.460]philip: That's one.
- [01:22:54.630]philip: And you
- [01:22:55.530]philip: Can't you can't obsess about something looking a certain way because that
- [01:23:01.200]philip: That's what you're allowed to do when you're working independently, you know,
- [01:23:04.260]philip: So you don't know what it's going to look like until, until everyone's done in the collaboration and that's fine. And the other thing is
- [01:23:13.110]philip: I find that working collaboratively with people again and again and again is a really good way to kind of to feel that one out. So
- [01:23:24.360]philip: You know, it's not that every collaboration has to be with a different group of people
- [01:23:29.910]philip: It can be different kind of clusters of people or different segments of people or whatever that that you're already familiar with. And then so you can kind of begin to draw on what their strengths are and what their, their intuition is going to lead to
- [01:23:45.930]Perry Obee: Yeah. Yeah, I agree. Yeah. Yeah, I was just interested to know kind of what you think about because I think of the collaborative collaborative process as a form of the creative process when we were the collaboratively.
- [01:24:01.530]Perry Obee: It's it's a combination where the, the end result is something that couldn't have existed without everybody coming together to create
- [01:24:11.850]Perry Obee: This the sum of its parts, sort of thing.
- [01:24:15.360]philip: Right. And I mean, being a master printer, you can review the work collaboratively so much that I mean that's the goal is to, you know, see, see what someone has to offer and be able to like elicit
- [01:24:27.120]philip: You know, some something more from what they're bringing to the table because you know you have parties and you even know like right down to the to the nothing the screw in the bulk and came that particular printer, like how it's going to behave so you know people are
- [01:24:43.440]philip: People rely on you for that, you know, and there's a lot of trust and collaboration.
- [01:24:47.280]Perry Obee: Think Trust is really important, right on both sides mutual trust.
- [01:24:51.960]Perry Obee: Okay, last probably will wrap it up here because we went a little over, but Noah is asking
- [01:24:57.990]Perry Obee: How you talked a bit about artists giving value to time spent on their work. Would you have any tips for us art students to help us evaluate our time's worth when it comes to our work.
- [01:25:09.450]Perry Obee: So I think he's asking like, how do you value your time that you put into a work of art. Or maybe it's a question about pricing your artwork.
- [01:25:18.600]philip: That's
- [01:25:21.060]philip: That's a difficult question.
- [01:25:24.750]philip: My categories.
- [01:25:33.930]philip: I think, off, off the bat.
- [01:25:36.930]philip: I would
- [01:25:40.500]philip: I would equate
- [01:25:45.540]philip: Try this. Here's a good one.
- [01:25:48.750]philip: Find someone
- [01:25:52.230]philip: Who does something similar to what you do.
- [01:25:56.790]philip: You know and and that's and that's similar to you, or at least that you would like. Who's your next who's the you that you want to be in
- [01:26:06.720]philip: Five years from now, you know. So for instance, if you're making illustrations and you really like you know this this person's illustrations and you can kind of get an idea for how much they sell their work for, or maybe even how much work. They put into it.
- [01:26:23.010]philip: Then that's a good way to begin establishing a template for what it is that you do and what it's valued at
- [01:26:30.990]philip: And I know that sounds like something that a gallery would probably tell you but but i think that maybe what you're asking is, what is the dollars and cents. Like, like how many, how many bills. Can I pay with this painting, you know,
- [01:26:46.860]philip: So I would I would try and find someone who makes work that is kind of along the same sensibilities.
- [01:26:55.200]philip: And
- [01:26:57.750]philip: Evaluate network and see, you know, if you know that their work is $1,000 for a painting that you can aspire to get your work up to $1,000
- [01:27:13.560]philip: And then do that until you start selling work. And then once you sell work, then you'll know exactly how much it's worth if you let a painting go for
- [01:27:25.260]philip: You know 200 bucks. And it took you 10 hours to make it then. There you go. You can establish a baseline, or if you, you know, if you're selling work for drawings or something like that in an addition, then you know measure that. But the goal is that once you start selling work.
- [01:27:47.460]philip: You always want to sell the next one for either the same price or just a little bit more
- [01:27:54.870]philip: And sell things that are similar out of your studio for for like a similar rate. So if you're making if you're making a painting that's like 18 by 20 and and sales for 200 bucks, then the next one that sells the next one that's 18 by 20 is probably in that same price range.
- [01:28:13.530]philip: And
- [01:28:15.720]philip: But outside of that, it's, it's kind of difficult. It takes a little bit of time to really get an idea for like yeah what your work is worth
- [01:28:24.000]It.
- [01:28:25.890]Perry Obee: One of the hardest.
- [01:28:26.820]Perry Obee: Things till you get. Yeah.
- [01:28:30.000]philip: I mean,
- [01:28:31.230]philip: It was like there was a sterling Ruby. Ruby show here, three months ago where you know the guy had a giant piece of cardboard with an arc cut out of the center of it. And there's $200,000 yeah so like
- [01:28:43.020]Perry Obee: I mind.
- [01:28:43.800]philip: Own when I see what art is worth, but I'm just one more thing to add to that for your question is
- [01:28:52.860]philip: Another thing that you could do to just get a baseline is say my canvas cost 10 bucks I use $200 for the paint this this artwork is definitely work worth $210 you know
- [01:29:06.510]philip: And then
- [01:29:07.800]philip: And then add to it and say already well like what, what's my labor labor is
- [01:29:14.280]philip: It's kind of like if someone really if someone really loves that painting, they're gonna pay for it it you know if you if you try and nickel and diamond and say, like, Well, you know, I worked 15 hours. It's like, people don't really understand that, but they understand
- [01:29:32.880]philip: You know stuff like prestige. So if you sell one and then someone goes well you know it's $200 is a lot of money, it can be like well so so bought theirs, and there are collector, whoever blah, blah, blah, blah. You know, like
- [01:29:47.130]philip: Again, back to that idea of like what's the narrative of your work. You know, like do you you're selling your work.
- [01:29:55.140]philip: You're selling your talent, but ultimately you know you're selling your
- [01:30:00.030]philip: Personality and your, your story.
- [01:30:03.690]philip: So, you know, think about that, you have to be a storyteller.
- [01:30:08.190]Perry Obee: Yeah, that's great.
- [01:30:11.850]Perry Obee: I think that's, that's it, that's a good place to wrap it up. I thank you again, I think.
- [01:30:18.360]Perry Obee: That's a great questions and I really enjoyed your talk and thank you appreciate everyone for hanging out a little longer. Unless there's anything else. I think we'll wrap it up and say, Say Goodbye, I'll probably just
- [01:30:32.010]Perry Obee: End the meeting here in a few minutes. I don't know exactly what to do. But I think we'll unless there's any other questions. Thank you all have a wonderful night. Thank you Phil
- [01:30:43.470]Perry Obee: And yeah. Thanks again guys. All right, I'm gonna go ahead and end the meeting.
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