Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist: Michael Krueger

Mike Kamm Author

03/10/2025 Added

1 Plays

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Krueger is a professor of art in the Department of Visual Art at the University of Kansas. For the past 10 years, he has fostered ways to situate traditional printmaking techniques, such as pochoir, stencil-making and engraving in his unique works in painting and drawing. Krueger’s artworks through the years have been connected to narrative, mythology, counterculture, the history of art and personal memoir. Recent works have deepened a relationship with the landscape, storytelling and evoke an emotional awareness through nuanced image making, color, drawing and paint. For more information on his lecture, visit https://go.unl.edu/qe3a

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[00:00:00.000]I am as nervous or more than if I was tonight's speaker for some funny reason.
[00:00:10.240]Originally from South Dakota, Michael Krieger is a professor of art at the University of Kansas,
[00:00:16.060]where he teaches drawing, painting, and used to teach printmaking. Michael studied printmaking
[00:00:22.080]at the University of South Dakota and then at Notre Dame for his MFA. Michael's artwork has
[00:00:27.060]been included in over 300 exhibitions. Recent solo shows include the Academy Bildende Kunst in
[00:00:35.520]Belgium, Ha! Contemporary in Kansas City, Steven's Vitas Gallery in Boston, Massachusetts, and
[00:00:42.120]Blackburn 2020 in New York City. With a practice firmly rooted in drawing, Michael works across a
[00:00:49.680]broad range of media, but I particularly love his drawings. I first saw Michael speak as a
[00:00:56.760]guest of Karen Kuntz here with the Under Pressure Print Club in either 2008 or 2009. It was my first
[00:01:04.520]year of graduate school, and I can remember distinctly the work that he showed. He had prints
[00:01:10.360]with a variety of subjects like Revolutionary War soldiers, floating celestial bodies, wizards, church
[00:01:18.300]interiors, and always the feelings of the handmade and the human. Like you could do it too. There was a whole
[00:01:26.460]series of prints made to mimic pages from a high school student's notebook covered in doodles and
[00:01:32.000]heavy metal band logos. Heavy metal being a term coined by the writer William Burroughs, another
[00:01:38.160]native of Lawrence, Kansas, and another subject of Michael's beautiful prints and drawings that I
[00:01:43.680]remember from his talk. When I look at Michael's work, I am transported to my own experiences and
[00:01:49.680]memories, but also see a strange parallel world of metaphor and mysticism. With many thanks,
[00:01:56.160]to the Hickson-Leed Visiting Artists and Scholars Program, to the Sheldon Museum of Art for hosting
[00:02:01.560]this lecture, and to Michael himself for traveling through this terrible weather to come here. It is
[00:02:06.600]my great pleasure to welcome tonight's speaker, Michael Krieger.
[00:02:25.860]Okay, thank you, Byron, and thank you for inviting me. It's such a pleasure to be here to visit your
[00:02:31.560]university and share my work. It's such a gift to be able to do that, I think, and talk about it. I'm
[00:02:40.080]just going to put a little timer on my phone so I can watch and make sure I don't go over.
[00:02:55.560]Okay, great, thank you. Okay, so I wanted to share just a couple things that are happening
[00:03:03.780]now for me, which it's nice to be able to share. So this is a piece that's up right now in Kansas
[00:03:08.640]City. I live quite near Kansas City in Lawrence, and this is at the Kansas City Art Institute,
[00:03:13.560]their art space, and they do this project, billboard project, on the side of the building,
[00:03:21.120]and I'm just thrilled to be a part of it and wanted to share that with you. So this is a
[00:03:25.260]drawing that I made. I'll talk about it a little bit later, but just sharing that. It's called The
[00:03:29.820]Distance of Time. Byron mentioned that I used to teach printmaking, which is true. I taught
[00:03:38.100]printmaking for about 25 years, and about five years ago, I decided I wanted to do something
[00:03:44.160]else, and the art department was kind enough to let me move over to the painting and drawing area.
[00:03:48.840]I still very much love printmaking. I just simply wanted to try doing something else, and I also very
[00:03:54.960]much love drawing, and teaching drawing is a real joy for me, so I'm really focused on that now.
[00:04:00.700]And drawing, you'll see in my work, is a real kind of important part of what I do, so the activity of
[00:04:10.440]drawing, the experience of drawing, is a real kind of fastball to my creativity, so just engaging in
[00:04:17.040]that activity and being in that space, I can access a lot of my ideas, my creativity, my emotions,
[00:04:24.660]things like that. So I use drawing in almost everything I do to some degree, and even in
[00:04:32.280]my paintings that I've just been working on for about the last 10 years I started painting,
[00:04:36.220]there's a lot of things that are very printmakerly. They have a very printmaking
[00:04:40.560]kind of approach, and I learned so much from printmaking. That's what I kind of
[00:04:46.980]invested in as an undergraduate student, and it became a real way for me to access a lot of
[00:04:54.360]ideas and think about layering, and you'll see in the work how that sort of methodology kind of
[00:05:00.360]continues. So, you know, the way that I'm thinking about drawing is, and for me, drawing is sort of
[00:05:14.040]a way to elicit well-being in a way. Like, drawing is good for you. It helps your mind, helps access
[00:05:24.060]different parts of your brain. So I'm very interested in that kind of component of drawing
[00:05:28.380]and how the activity of drawing cultivates a kind of emotional intelligence. And you'll see that I
[00:05:34.760]talk about those kinds of things as we go on. There's also very much a kind of, we talked about
[00:05:39.600]this a little bit today in one of the classes, a kind of very presentness in drawing that I like.
[00:05:43.440]Okay, so the idea is that the marks that are made in a drawing, you know, if I make a mark like this
[00:05:51.600]and a gesture like this,
[00:05:53.760]that time, I feel like, remains in the drawing. That moment of making that mark remains in the drawing.
[00:06:00.760]It remains in the drawing in a way that creates a kind of presentness in the picture.
[00:06:05.480]And translate, I mean, over time. You could look at a drawing that was made 200 years ago
[00:06:10.760]and you could feel that same kind of presentness. So that's something that I'm also very interested in.
[00:06:15.460]Another bit of good news I wanted to share with you, this piece, which is a little hard to read on the screen,
[00:06:23.460]but I'll show some details, was just recently acquired by the Nelson Atkins Museum in Kansas City.
[00:06:29.160]And it's currently on display. I think it'll be there through June.
[00:06:35.160]It's a very low contrast kind of image. Hopefully some of you back there can see that there's this image of the prairie grasses in this area.
[00:06:47.160]And a very low contrast. So the image is intended to depict just the very moment
[00:06:53.160]of either dusk or dawn. So that moment right as the light is breaking or the light is disappearing below the landscape.
[00:07:02.860]And I'm interested in that little moment of shift in worlds in a way.
[00:07:10.860]It's the only moment where there's a kind of silence on the landscape.
[00:07:14.860]Where the daytime bugs stop talking and the nighttime bugs start talking.
[00:07:19.860]And in between those there's a little moment of quiet.
[00:07:22.860]And I love that, just conceptually.
[00:07:24.860]But thinking about these shifting between worlds, night and day.
[00:07:28.860]And how that can become greater kinds of metaphors.
[00:07:32.860]So I don't know how well you can see that back there.
[00:07:36.860]I think you can maybe find that there's a giant, there's a toad right here.
[00:07:40.860]Can you see that image?
[00:07:42.860]And there's all little things sort of hidden in there.
[00:07:45.860]And it really requires the viewer to go up close and look at the picture.
[00:07:49.860]Which I quite like.
[00:07:51.860]The idea of bringing someone sort of nose to nose with the work of art is interesting to me.
[00:07:55.860]And a challenge to do.
[00:07:57.860]Not a lot of people will go up and look at something very closely.
[00:08:00.860]But this piece kind of demands you to do that if you want to see the details.
[00:08:05.860]And the inspiration, a part of the inspiration for this piece was this Albrecht Durer painting.
[00:08:11.860]Watercolor from 1503.
[00:08:14.860]It's called The Large Piece of Turf.
[00:08:17.860]And it's kind of a rare piece for that time period.
[00:08:20.860]Because this is in the Renaissance.
[00:08:23.860]They're mostly depicting biblical stories.
[00:08:26.860]And then we find this weird Albrecht Durer painting that's just a moment of ecology in a way.
[00:08:32.860]A moment of sort of appreciating the grasses and appreciating the small bit of land.
[00:08:39.860]And that's something I was attracted to.
[00:08:43.860]But what I found really interesting about it was that it's also a collage.
[00:08:49.860]But not in a traditional sense of a collage.
[00:08:53.860]But when we looked back at his sketchbooks, we found all these same plants.
[00:08:58.860]We found the same gesture of the plant.
[00:09:01.860]So we could say that this is the drawing that he made for this image.
[00:09:06.860]And so instead of drawing or painting a small piece of ground,
[00:09:10.860]which we like to imagine he did,
[00:09:12.860]what he actually did is he drew each plant separately
[00:09:15.860]and then he collaged them together to make the great piece of turf.
[00:09:18.860]Which was incidentally the same thing that I did.
[00:09:22.860]Only I took photographs of all of the different prairie plants
[00:09:26.860]that are growing in my backyard,
[00:09:29.860]and then I collaged them together in Photoshop
[00:09:32.860]and then redrew them.
[00:09:34.860]So that idea of kind of compiling images in that way
[00:09:37.860]is really interesting to me.
[00:09:41.860]Okay, so that's just a little bit of sharing about that,
[00:09:44.860]things going on.
[00:09:46.860]I wanted to share this very brief video
[00:09:47.860]that I made during COVID.
[00:09:50.860]So I mentioned that I had started in printmaking,
[00:09:56.860]and I mostly make drawings and paintings now,
[00:10:00.860]but occasionally I'll make a print on my own
[00:10:03.860]or I'll work with a publisher.
[00:10:05.860]And I really enjoy that experience
[00:10:07.860]of working with print publishers
[00:10:09.860]and having a collaboration happen with a printer.
[00:10:12.860]So I went to--
[00:10:15.860]the last print that I shared
[00:10:16.860]was done at the Lawrence Lithography Workshop
[00:10:18.860]with the great Mike Sims as the master printer there.
[00:10:21.860]And then I did several prints recently
[00:10:23.860]with Tamarind Institute in Albuquerque, New Mexico.
[00:10:26.860]And they--after we completed my prints,
[00:10:30.860]then the COVID came, the pandemic started.
[00:10:33.860]And like many, many organizations,
[00:10:36.860]they were sort of desperate for content to share
[00:10:39.860]because they couldn't do any programming.
[00:10:41.860]There wasn't anything to look at.
[00:10:43.860]They asked me if I would make a video
[00:10:45.860]and talk about printmaking
[00:10:47.860]that they could share on social media and stuff.
[00:10:50.860]And I said, "Well, okay.
[00:10:52.860]"Is it okay if I just have my kids interview me?"
[00:10:56.860]And they said, "Okay, sure, why not?"
[00:10:59.860]And so we made this video together.
[00:11:01.860]I hope you enjoy it. It's not very long.
[00:11:03.860]We did our best.
[00:11:05.860]Tell us about printmaking.
[00:11:13.860]Well, I'm glad that you asked.
[00:11:14.860]I'm glad that you asked me about that.
[00:11:16.860]Printmaking is a way...
[00:11:18.860]Tell me about printmaking.
[00:11:26.860]Well, printmaking is a way to...
[00:11:30.860]That was good. We got further.
[00:11:35.860]It was farther. Yeah, that was good.
[00:11:37.860]How good am I in the picture?
[00:11:43.860]Tell me about printmaking.
[00:11:45.860]Wait, he's gonna do the thing.
[00:11:47.860]Okay, don't laugh. It's done.
[00:11:52.860]Tell me about printmaking.
[00:11:56.860]Okay, I would love to.
[00:11:58.860]Printmaking is something you can do together
[00:12:00.860]with lots of other people.
[00:12:02.860]Oh, I love watching that video.
[00:12:09.860]They grow up so fast, you know.
[00:12:12.860]We couldn't really do printmaking with other people, though,
[00:12:14.860]could we, because it was a pandemic.
[00:12:16.860]Oops, there it goes again.
[00:12:20.860]Okay, so I'm going to share some of my work now
[00:12:22.860]that I made in painting,
[00:12:24.860]starting with this one.
[00:12:26.860]And, you know, I was telling Byron
[00:12:30.860]right before this talk that this talk is very new to me.
[00:12:32.860]It's not that the work is new,
[00:12:34.860]but that I just reconfigured my whole talk for this event.
[00:12:39.860]So it's my first time doing it,
[00:12:41.860]so I'm gonna do my best.
[00:12:43.860]But what I wanted to do in the beginning here
[00:12:46.860]is just share some kind of simple ideas
[00:12:49.860]about what I'm trying to do as an artist,
[00:12:52.860]and then maybe those ideas will become better illustrated
[00:12:56.860]as I show more things.
[00:13:00.860]So one thing I mentioned already
[00:13:02.860]was that I'm very interested in drawing
[00:13:04.860]and the activity of drawing
[00:13:06.860]and how that might be a way to elicit well-being,
[00:13:09.860]might be a way to cultivate
[00:13:10.860]greater emotional intelligence.
[00:13:12.860]I work a lot with intuition,
[00:13:15.860]and intuition is, you know,
[00:13:18.860]it's about combining your emotional state
[00:13:24.860]and your intellectual state
[00:13:25.860]and making some choices
[00:13:27.860]with both of those things engaged.
[00:13:29.860]So it is, for me,
[00:13:31.860]a space between feeling and knowing,
[00:13:34.860]and I very much like being in that space
[00:13:36.860]as I'm making choices in the studio,
[00:13:38.860]making choices about things
[00:13:39.860]that I will paint,
[00:13:41.860]things that I will invest my time in,
[00:13:43.860]and I use and I cultivate
[00:13:46.860]my intuition to help me to do those things.
[00:13:50.860]I also lean sort of very heavily
[00:13:55.860]on my skills of observation
[00:13:58.860]that I've been developing for many, many years,
[00:14:01.860]like most of you probably do if you're artists.
[00:14:05.860]We learn by looking at things,
[00:14:08.860]by observing things,
[00:14:10.860]and being sort of better at seeing the world,
[00:14:14.860]which sounds like kind of a strange idea in a way,
[00:14:17.860]but if you think about how a musician cultivates hearing better,
[00:14:21.860]to be able to listen and hear a note and hear this, hear that,
[00:14:24.860]artists really do cultivate the ability to see better
[00:14:28.860]and be able to see differently.
[00:14:30.860]And that's a big part of what I do,
[00:14:33.860]and I'm always cultivating that,
[00:14:35.860]just looking at things to learn about them.
[00:14:37.860]I also have a very rich inner life,
[00:14:42.860]which I think you don't have to be an artist to do that,
[00:14:46.860]but that's something that has always been a part of me.
[00:14:49.860]And just letting that grow
[00:14:53.860]and letting that be a part of your life.
[00:14:56.860]And so, let's see, there was another note here.
[00:15:01.860]Okay, so one of the things that I want to do with my work
[00:15:05.860]is to create a sensorium,
[00:15:06.860]to create a sensorial space
[00:15:09.860]between the artist and the audience.
[00:15:13.860]A space that will foster connectivity,
[00:15:17.860]a space that will help someone experience themselves, okay?
[00:15:25.860]And in a way, connect to the greater continuum of humanity.
[00:15:31.860]A big idea, a lot of--
[00:15:34.860]but simple, also very simple in a way.
[00:15:35.860]But complicated to do.
[00:15:38.860]But that's what I'm after in a way,
[00:15:40.860]is to create this kind of a sensorial space
[00:15:43.860]where someone else can not experience me.
[00:15:46.860]I'm not so interested in them experiencing me.
[00:15:49.860]I'm interested in how they might experience themselves
[00:15:52.860]by looking at the work.
[00:15:55.860]If you've ever been to the Museum of Modern Art,
[00:15:58.860]you might have had this same kind of experience.
[00:16:02.860]So whenever I go there,
[00:16:04.860]and I go through the galleries,
[00:16:07.860]and past the Matisse and the Picasso and these things,
[00:16:11.860]and then I'll see this line,
[00:16:13.860]and I'll go through the gallery and still the line,
[00:16:16.860]and there's 40 or 50 people in the line.
[00:16:19.860]I'm thinking, "This must be for coffee.
[00:16:21.860]"I'd better get in this line."
[00:16:23.860]But then you come around the corner,
[00:16:25.860]and you realize that the line
[00:16:27.860]is in front of Van Gogh's Starry Night painting.
[00:16:30.860]Everyone wants to see it, right?
[00:16:32.860]And it's kind of a celebrity,
[00:16:33.860]this painting, right?
[00:16:34.860]But also, they want to have their time
[00:16:37.860]to stand in front of the painting,
[00:16:39.860]because they're having that kind of sensorial experience
[00:16:42.860]with this work of art,
[00:16:44.860]and getting to hopefully, I think,
[00:16:46.860]experience themselves in some way.
[00:16:49.860]Okay, so this is a painting I made
[00:16:51.860]for a show a few years ago
[00:16:53.860]that was about time.
[00:16:55.860]I wanted to work with the idea
[00:16:57.860]of depicting time in some ways.
[00:17:00.860]And I made this painting
[00:17:02.860]in a very--maybe you can relate
[00:17:05.860]because you all drive through the snow.
[00:17:08.860]And when I made this painting,
[00:17:11.860]I really thought it wasn't--
[00:17:13.860]I liked it, I was happy with it,
[00:17:15.860]but I really thought no one was going to respond to it.
[00:17:18.860]But in the show, it was the one
[00:17:20.860]that everyone responded to the most.
[00:17:23.860]Here's a little detail of the painting.
[00:17:26.860]A friend of mine told me,
[00:17:28.860]and he entirely meant this as a compliment,
[00:17:31.860]and I took it that way,
[00:17:32.860]but it could sound also like not a compliment.
[00:17:35.860]He said, "I love how your paintings,
[00:17:37.860]"when you are at a distance from them,
[00:17:40.860]"they have this real kind of cohesion and detail,
[00:17:45.860]"and then when you get up close,
[00:17:46.860]"everything sort of falls apart,
[00:17:48.860]"and they're just all these funny little pieces, right?"
[00:17:51.860]And I was like, "Yes, that's what I'm trying to do.
[00:17:53.860]"I want them to fall apart
[00:17:55.860]"in a way that they have this kind of duality to them."
[00:18:01.860]So I started the painting by just painting first the road
[00:18:05.860]and as if the headlights are onto the snowy road.
[00:18:12.860]And then I added the--
[00:18:15.860]so I finished that to where I felt it was resolved,
[00:18:18.860]and then I started adding the little bits of snow.
[00:18:21.860]And I did that with many, many stencils
[00:18:26.860]that I cut with the laser engraver.
[00:18:30.860]And then I designed that part of the image in Illustrator,
[00:18:34.860]and then I created these many, many stencils
[00:18:38.860]to layer onto the canvas.
[00:18:41.860]And then I'll squeegee paint through those stencils
[00:18:44.860]directly onto the canvas.
[00:18:46.860]So that is a very printmakerly part of what I'm up to.
[00:18:49.860]So I'm interested in that kind of layering,
[00:18:52.860]but also in sort of using some technologies and things
[00:18:57.860]to get at the final result.
[00:18:59.860]So illustrator, the laser engraver,
[00:19:02.860]the mechanical nature of the stencil.
[00:19:09.860]So again, you are probably familiar with this feeling of--
[00:19:13.860]and what I was trying to--
[00:19:15.860]I was working from some memories,
[00:19:17.860]and I was trying to capture this,
[00:19:20.860]but also that feeling of being inside of this warm car,
[00:19:27.860]traveling at a high rate of speed,
[00:19:28.860]and seeing this sort of visual sensation
[00:19:32.860]of the snow in front of the windshield,
[00:19:38.860]in a way to create that kind of dual feeling
[00:19:42.860]between the interior, you could imagine, of the car,
[00:19:45.860]and then the more harsh world in the exterior.
[00:19:51.860]I made also this--
[00:19:54.860]this is a painting that looks like a paper plate clock
[00:19:57.860]that my son made.
[00:19:59.860]It's just a replica of the clock that he made.
[00:20:02.860]It's all linen and paint,
[00:20:05.860]but there is a raised part where the plate is,
[00:20:10.860]but it's also covered with linen, just painted.
[00:20:15.860]And I love the object,
[00:20:17.860]and I was very fascinated with my son learning about time,
[00:20:24.860]because before you teach someone,
[00:20:26.860]you teach someone about time they don't know about time.
[00:20:29.860]They might understand it in their own way,
[00:20:31.860]but then suddenly it becomes something else.
[00:20:34.860]And I think there's a real shift there that happens
[00:20:37.860]for people when they learn about time in that way.
[00:20:40.860]And I also was thinking about child's time, adult time,
[00:20:45.860]and all these other kinds of ways you might think about time.
[00:20:48.860]So this became kind of a stand-in for that kind of idea.
[00:20:51.860]So here's the original plate that my son made in school.
[00:20:55.860]And learning about time.
[00:20:57.860]And then here's me just beginning to make this painting.
[00:21:01.860]You can see a little bit of that.
[00:21:04.860]I worked quite a bit also with the seasons in this show
[00:21:08.860]because I used the seasons as a way to tell time,
[00:21:11.860]which we all kind of do.
[00:21:13.860]We use that as a way to mark the passing of time.
[00:21:17.860]So there were elements also in the exhibit
[00:21:20.860]that had fall, winter, spring, summer.
[00:21:23.860]So this was the painting
[00:21:24.860]for fall, and incidentally,
[00:21:26.860]these were the most minimal things
[00:21:27.860]I had ever made at this point.
[00:21:29.860]In fact, most of my work was very maximal,
[00:21:31.860]and so it was a real leap for me to do that
[00:21:35.860]and also to be making paintings,
[00:21:38.860]you know, really for the very first time.
[00:21:41.860]I made--the canvases were very unique,
[00:21:44.860]and they had this rounded-edged corner,
[00:21:46.860]which was very difficult to do, I learned,
[00:21:48.860]as I got deeper and deeper into making it.
[00:21:50.860]But I liked it, and I wanted it to feel--
[00:21:53.860]a lot of people said it felt like
[00:21:53.860]a painting on a canvas,
[00:21:54.860]but it felt like sort of like a iPad or something,
[00:21:57.860]which I was totally okay with.
[00:21:59.860]But my reference point was the photographs
[00:22:01.860]that we would get in the 1970s
[00:22:03.860]that always had rounded corners,
[00:22:05.860]and that kind of nostalgic sort of element.
[00:22:08.860]And so in this case, the leaf is stenciled on there,
[00:22:12.860]and the paint is quite thick,
[00:22:14.860]maybe a quarter of an inch thick of paint
[00:22:16.860]onto the canvas.
[00:22:19.860]The surfaces are very important to me for some reason.
[00:22:23.860]Maybe it's because of my history with printmaking and paper
[00:22:26.860]and always thinking about the surface.
[00:22:29.860]So there's a kind of pristine quality
[00:22:32.860]to the surfaces of these pieces.
[00:22:39.860]And then this was the one that was for springtime.
[00:22:43.860]And again, it was all things from my backyard.
[00:22:48.860]And then also in the show, there was these shelves
[00:22:51.860]that kind of ran around the gallery
[00:22:52.860]in certain places that had these painted objects on it
[00:22:56.860]that I made.
[00:22:57.860]And some of the things were meant to have
[00:23:00.860]a kind of metaphorical content to think about time,
[00:23:03.860]and some of them were about kind of personal memories
[00:23:06.860]and seeing how that would translate.
[00:23:14.860]These were these little radios.
[00:23:16.860]So they're like paintings, but they're objects.
[00:23:18.860]So they're two canvases that are stuck together
[00:23:21.860]and then the outsides are painted to look like the radios.
[00:23:25.860]There's a little rat on a snow mound.
[00:23:29.860]But again, it's like a painting that has the sides to it
[00:23:32.860]that are linen, and it's constructed sort of like a painting,
[00:23:36.860]but it's an object.
[00:23:38.860]And then there was this one also and a few other ones.
[00:23:42.860]So that was sort of the first big body of work in painting.
[00:23:47.860]And usually when I'm sort of in between them,
[00:23:50.860]when I'm sort of in between projects,
[00:23:52.860]I will just work in drawing.
[00:23:54.860]And it's at one time a way for me to just be busy,
[00:23:57.860]but it's also a time to kind of explore new ideas
[00:24:00.860]and think about other kinds of things and just to draw.
[00:24:04.860]And these are fairly small.
[00:24:06.860]I made maybe 100 or so of these kinds of drawings,
[00:24:09.860]and just to be drawing and to generate ideas
[00:24:13.860]and think about imagery.
[00:24:16.860]I'm very driven by images.
[00:24:19.860]And combining images to sort of create stories
[00:24:23.860]or to have them be there for metaphorical content.
[00:24:26.860]And in these drawings, I started drawing works of art,
[00:24:30.860]which was a new thing for me.
[00:24:33.860]And so you'll see each one I think that I shared
[00:24:36.860]has a work of art in it also with the objects.
[00:24:42.860]And part of the reason for doing that was that
[00:24:45.860]I just love art so much, and I spend so much time
[00:24:48.860]looking and thinking about art that I wanted to
[00:24:51.860]sort of claim them back as my own in a way,
[00:24:54.860]because it's such a big part of my life
[00:24:57.860]to be looking at art and thinking about art.
[00:25:01.860]And I just thought it was okay that I could just take those
[00:25:04.860]and draw those and incorporate those into the work.
[00:25:10.860]They all had very crazy titles too.
[00:25:12.860]This one is called "Every Day I Wail,"
[00:25:14.860]"Every Day I Wail: Cleaning Up After the Masters."
[00:25:17.860]And they're just colored pencil drawings
[00:25:23.860]on Reeves' heavyweight paper.
[00:25:28.860]This one's called "My President."
[00:25:46.860]Get some droids in there.
[00:25:49.860]This one's called "Mercy, Mercy, It's Not About the Money."
[00:25:53.860]This is Gauguin's "Chopper."
[00:26:07.860]This is a Gorky, Arsheil Gorky painting
[00:26:12.860]that I have been really fascinated with for many years.
[00:26:15.860]And it's in the Chicago Art Institute.
[00:26:19.860]It's actually not on exhibit now.
[00:26:21.860]It hasn't been for many years, which is disappointing to me.
[00:26:24.860]But I know they've got to move things around.
[00:26:26.860]This is a painting that I have spent a lot of time looking at.
[00:26:30.860]Whenever I visit Chicago, I go and visit this painting.
[00:26:34.860]And I love how the painting never changes.
[00:26:39.860]And the persistence of the still image
[00:26:43.860]is something I'm very interested in.
[00:26:44.860]So I change, right?
[00:26:46.860]And every time I see the painting, I see it differently
[00:26:49.860]because I'm the one that's changing
[00:26:51.860]and observing it differently.
[00:26:56.860]And I really appreciate that about still images
[00:26:59.860]and the power of that persistence, right?
[00:27:02.860]They never are changing.
[00:27:04.860]They're staying that way for you.
[00:27:07.860]Let's see, does this have sound?
[00:27:10.860]I'll turn the sound off because it's very loud.
[00:27:13.860]So this is just me drawing.
[00:27:15.860]This isn't that same painting, but it is a Gorky painting.
[00:27:20.860]And I was asked to do this commission
[00:27:24.860]for this very swanky hotel in Aspen,
[00:27:28.860]and they wanted this drawing that I had made.
[00:27:33.860]I said, "Oh, okay, so we'll make a lithograph."
[00:27:35.860]And they said, "No, we want drawings."
[00:27:38.860]And I said, "Okay, you want 300 drawings of the same thing?"
[00:27:42.860]But I did it, and I kind of enjoyed doing it in a way.
[00:27:48.860]I changed each drawing a little bit,
[00:27:50.860]but they all had this painting in it.
[00:27:52.860]So now I've drawn this painting 300 times.
[00:27:56.860]I've really gotten to know it well.
[00:27:58.860]But I really enjoyed doing it.
[00:28:00.860]And so--oh, let's see, is that the same thing twice?
[00:28:04.860]Maybe it is. It is.
[00:28:08.860]Oh, here's a different one.
[00:28:11.860]So there was the painting,
[00:28:21.860]and then there was also sometimes a little vase of flowers,
[00:28:25.860]sometimes something else,
[00:28:27.860]but it was always the painting with something else.
[00:28:30.860]And they paid me very well to do it,
[00:28:33.860]so I was grateful for that.
[00:28:35.860]And I asked them, I said, "Well, maybe I could stay at the hotel."
[00:28:38.860]They said, "No.
[00:28:40.860]It's too expensive for us to do that."
[00:28:43.860]I was like, "Okay.
[00:28:45.860]I'll just have my drawings be there in every single room."
[00:28:48.860]I was like...
[00:28:51.860]I don't know why.
[00:28:53.860]So that was the one that they liked
[00:28:55.860]and wanted to have for their rooms.
[00:28:57.860]I thought it was kind of a cool idea, though, really, to have this.
[00:29:00.860]Everything in the hotel was very boutique
[00:29:02.860]and very handmade and stuff,
[00:29:04.860]but you can't afford it, so don't bother going there.
[00:29:07.860]And so then this was
[00:29:09.860]the next large painting show that I made,
[00:29:11.860]and this was directly after COVID.
[00:29:14.860]And it was called, the title was called
[00:29:17.860]"Just Like Starting Over."
[00:29:19.860]And I was very much thinking, as we all were,
[00:29:21.860]about how do we start over?
[00:29:23.860]What does that mean? What does that look like?
[00:29:26.860]And so I was thinking about that very much
[00:29:29.860]as a kind of a theme,
[00:29:31.860]not only because of the moment,
[00:29:33.860]but because of how you might think about that
[00:29:36.860]in terms of ideas about
[00:29:38.860]recovery or trauma or things like that.
[00:29:42.860]How do you start over?
[00:29:44.860]So the first painting I did was this painting of the sun,
[00:29:47.860]which seemed like a really weird thing to do,
[00:29:50.860]but it was an idea I felt like I needed to do.
[00:29:55.860]And so it started in the studio like this.
[00:29:59.860]Very pristine kind of surface,
[00:30:02.860]and then the sun itself was raised up
[00:30:04.860]about a quarter of an inch with acrylic paint,
[00:30:07.860]solid acrylic paint that I would put on
[00:30:09.860]in layers and then sand and then layers and sand.
[00:30:12.860]So it has a real kind of presence,
[00:30:14.860]a physicality to it, and that's the finished piece.
[00:30:18.860]And then the little bursts on the sides
[00:30:22.860]were also kind of thicker paint,
[00:30:24.860]not as thick as the sun, but thicker paint,
[00:30:26.860]so that they had also kind of a dimensional quality to it.
[00:30:31.860]And then this is the first time
[00:30:33.860]I did a drawing of this meteor,
[00:30:36.860]and in this instance the meteor is flying over the prairie,
[00:30:42.860]or Kansas maybe, so it's just barely just illuminating
[00:30:46.860]some of the field over here
[00:30:48.860]as the light from the meteor is coming down.
[00:30:51.860]And of course I thought about these things metaphorically
[00:30:54.860]in a way as this is maybe a beginning and an end
[00:30:57.860]at the same time, right?
[00:30:59.860]This meteor has traveled for 50 million years
[00:31:01.860]to finally end, to finally burn out,
[00:31:04.860]to finally hit the ground
[00:31:05.860]and be done.
[00:31:07.860]And I'm interested in those moments
[00:31:09.860]of sort of cinematic sort of moments
[00:31:12.860]of transition or moments of beginning
[00:31:16.860]and how that creates a kind of certain sort of feeling
[00:31:20.860]in the picture.
[00:31:22.860]The next one I'll share with you
[00:31:24.860]is a larger painting called
[00:31:26.860]New Growth in an Old Forest.
[00:31:29.860]The title kind of gives you a lot of information
[00:31:31.860]about what I was thinking about in a way.
[00:31:34.860]And it's actually something my therapist said to me one time,
[00:31:37.860]"Oh, New Growth in an Old Forest."
[00:31:39.860]And I said, "Yes, I'm working very hard at that."
[00:31:42.860]But that idea that you can blossom and grow
[00:31:44.860]in different ways,
[00:31:46.860]no matter how old you are,
[00:31:48.860]but also through trauma or through a kind of recovery.
[00:31:51.860]Oops, did it just do that on its own?
[00:31:53.860]So this one came from a photo--
[00:31:55.860]I take a lot of my own photographs.
[00:31:57.860]I still shoot with film,
[00:31:59.860]and I have a big medium-format camera.
[00:32:01.860]And so I do a lot of my own photographs for things.
[00:32:03.860]I also source things online, of course,
[00:32:06.860]but I try and use my own photographs
[00:32:10.860]because I just can have more control,
[00:32:13.860]and I'm also making an image with the camera,
[00:32:17.860]you know, in those places, in those environments.
[00:32:20.860]So this was shot in the redwoods.
[00:32:23.860]And I love the feeling of moving into the forest
[00:32:30.860]and moving from the sunlight
[00:32:32.860]into the coolness of the forest,
[00:32:35.860]and I just love the feeling physically
[00:32:38.860]of that transition into that space
[00:32:40.860]and how calming it is
[00:32:42.860]and how the light is dappling in
[00:32:44.860]and it just has a kind of real magical feeling,
[00:32:48.860]but also in the moment you feel very humble in a way
[00:32:52.860]or you feel this great humility in the face of nature.
[00:32:57.860]And so here's a little bit of the making of the painting.
[00:33:01.860]So here's the beginning where I'm just getting
[00:33:05.860]information down, general to specific.
[00:33:09.860]So I'm just getting information down.
[00:33:11.860]The photograph was a black and white,
[00:33:13.860]so all the color is made up.
[00:33:16.860]I like to use very bright neon fluorescent colors.
[00:33:21.860]And then probably one of the most complicated
[00:33:24.860]illustrator files I've ever made.
[00:33:26.860]I think there was maybe 70 different layers of information.
[00:33:30.860]So I will draw all those layers.
[00:33:33.860]And this one was such an incredible puzzle
[00:33:36.860]to put back together because there were so many pieces.
[00:33:39.860]But then creating all of these layers in Illustrator
[00:33:43.860]that then get translated onto that canvas
[00:33:46.860]where I already have a kind of background started.
[00:33:49.860]So you can see here a little bit of the thickness
[00:33:52.860]of the paint in some places is quite thick.
[00:33:55.860]And I'm just layering all of these things together.
[00:33:58.860]Now, it never really works out
[00:33:59.860]that the Illustrator file gets translated directly to Canvas.
[00:34:03.860]There's tons of negotiating what's working,
[00:34:06.860]what's not working, and to get the final result.
[00:34:11.860]So it was just about this little sapling
[00:34:14.860]starting its life sort of in the shadow
[00:34:16.860]of this enormous redwood tree
[00:34:19.860]and using those sort of places
[00:34:22.860]to create metaphor for people to experience.
[00:34:28.860]Also in that show, there were several drawings
[00:34:31.860]of forest fires.
[00:34:34.860]And yes, I was aware of the many fires
[00:34:37.860]that were just starting to happen and have happened.
[00:34:41.860]But I was also thinking about fire
[00:34:45.860]as a kind of renewal of spaces,
[00:34:48.860]either personal or actual renewal of the forest.
[00:34:53.860]And I really enjoyed the challenge of drawing fire.
[00:34:57.860]And water, I like drawing water also.
[00:35:00.820]There was also some watercolor paintings in the show and these were paintings of spider webs, but kind of very psychedelic in a way, like a rock and roll poster or something, even glow in the dark, which was a dream of mine to do.
[00:35:20.820]I actually do that in a lot of my pieces, but don't tell people, so then when they get it home later, it starts glowing. I love blacklight posters and all of that sort of aesthetic was very much a part of my youth, so I employ that whenever possible.
[00:35:35.820]Here's the other one. So there was one that was at dawn and there was one at dusk, and they both had a glowing element.
[00:35:46.820]And so here's a little example of one of the kinds of stencils that I might use.
[00:35:50.820]Here's one that I might make for one of these pieces so you can kind of see the inside or look of the process.
[00:35:57.820]So in addition to the laser cutter, I do a lot of stencil making on the vinyl cutter, which is just an exacto blade, a plotter blade that cuts things.
[00:36:06.820]So I can cut very complicated stencils, which is what I did for the spiderweb paintings.
[00:36:13.820]Now, is that a time-saving thing? I don't know, because it does take a lot of energy to do that.
[00:36:19.820]And then you have to have a real facility and an interest in dealing with very meticulously tiny sticky things.
[00:36:27.820]I do, I do, and I like that, and it's very gratifying to me and satisfying.
[00:36:34.820]Oh, I don't know why that's on there twice.
[00:36:39.820]And so, yeah, I use a lot of these kinds of complicated stencils to do these things that give the work a way and a kind of pristine quality,
[00:36:48.820]but also there's a tremendous illusion that happens.
[00:36:51.820]So this is another really complicated spiderweb stencil, and this one is the reverse stencil.
[00:36:57.820]So instead of having that positive image, it's a negative image, which is even more of a nightmare to put down
[00:37:03.820]because you have to put down every single piece as opposed to one giant piece.
[00:37:08.820]And this is that tape I was telling you about right here, and this is for this large spiderweb painting here.
[00:37:14.820]So you can see bits of the stencil on there still,
[00:37:17.820]and then you see the web that was put on there with the stencil.
[00:37:24.820]And this is the final piece.
[00:37:31.820]Yeah, the next body of work I want to share is one of those in-between moments,
[00:37:36.820]again, between a sort of larger show and then just...
[00:37:42.820]I'm going to turn that down a little bit.
[00:37:46.820]So I was drawing again, but I was also making some collages,
[00:37:55.820]and just with paper and cutting things by hand sometimes,
[00:38:01.820]cutting with the laser cutter and making these little collaged little objects.
[00:38:09.820]I'm writing the word "forgiveness" onto this, what becomes a train.
[00:38:15.820]And here's another little...
[00:38:19.820]So the objects, the collages became part of a book that I made.
[00:38:27.820]There was actually three different books with three different sets of collages,
[00:38:33.820]and then each collage had also a word that went with it.
[00:38:38.820]And one was shown in Fukui, Japan.
[00:38:44.820]One was shown in Ghent, Belgium.
[00:38:46.820]And the third one was shown in Asuncion, Paraguay.
[00:38:50.820]So I also had the translations for those different readers.
[00:38:58.820]And the books themselves were just made on the color Xerox at our school.
[00:39:03.820]It's a pretty nice Xerox machine, and I just bought really nice paper
[00:39:07.820]and made them myself with my spiral binder
[00:39:13.820]and had them for people to look at.
[00:39:17.820]And then I also had the collages displayed,
[00:39:20.820]and then the text elements were printed also on newsprint and shared.
[00:39:25.820]And so it's just these kinds of things for me are sort of a moment
[00:39:31.820]to indulge in a certain kind of creativity
[00:39:34.820]and kind of be feeding myself in a way
[00:39:37.820]to getting the courage to work on another big project.
[00:39:42.820]And so I just kind of have fun with them.
[00:39:47.820]Here's the train one that you saw me drawing on.
[00:39:51.820]And I'm dipping into a lot of metaphors
[00:39:56.820]from different folk songs, early American country songs,
[00:40:00.820]and things like that, which I really like.
[00:40:04.820]And I'll share a little bit more about that in a second.
[00:40:07.820]But there's a lot of songs about trains.
[00:40:11.820]Now, the idea for making the collages
[00:40:16.820]came out of a project I had done a little bit earlier,
[00:40:19.820]which was some animations for a documentary film
[00:40:22.820]about Drop City.
[00:40:25.820]Does anyone know about Drop City?
[00:40:27.820]Drop City was the very first hippie commune,
[00:40:30.820]and it was started by art students
[00:40:32.820]from the University of Kansas, where I teach, in 1964.
[00:40:36.820]And they bought land in Colorado,
[00:40:38.820]and after hearing Buckminster Fuller
[00:40:40.820]talk about the utopian possibility of architecture
[00:40:44.820]and all these crazy ideas, they built this community
[00:40:47.820]with all of these geodesic domes
[00:40:50.820]entirely out of scrap wood that they salvaged.
[00:40:53.820]It's really kind of an incredible story.
[00:40:55.820]Your library probably has the movie if you want to watch it.
[00:40:58.820]But I did the animations for the movie
[00:41:01.820]and spent a lot of time with the droppers...
[00:41:06.820]Gene and I bought it. It was in our names.
[00:41:09.820]And we packed all our stuff up in a funky car
[00:41:13.820]and we drove to Trinidad, Colorado
[00:41:16.820]to this piece of land that became Drop City.
[00:41:20.820]And then Richard came.
[00:41:25.820]Richard was a friend of Clark's from art school.
[00:41:28.820]Yeah, so, you know, of course I really connected
[00:41:36.820]with a lot of the ideas that they were after.
[00:41:38.820]But also made hundreds of little tiny collages
[00:41:44.820]for this animation.
[00:41:46.820]It was all done by hand.
[00:41:48.820]And so I've carried that on a little bit
[00:41:50.820]through these books.
[00:41:52.820]And so we sold Drop City.
[00:42:13.820]So there was 18 animations,
[00:42:15.820]most of them fairly short in the film.
[00:42:18.820]Drop City, although a great idea,
[00:42:21.820]did eventually fail in a way,
[00:42:23.820]like the idea that--
[00:42:27.820]I mean, it just didn't really work out.
[00:42:29.820]But they had still owned the land,
[00:42:31.820]and the original droppers had all left
[00:42:34.820]because it kind of wasn't what they wanted.
[00:42:37.820]It turned into being more about drugs
[00:42:39.820]and kind of outlawism,
[00:42:42.820]and they didn't want it to be about--
[00:42:45.820]they did drugs,
[00:42:46.820]but they wanted it to be about creativity
[00:42:48.820]and all these other--
[00:42:49.820]they wanted to create a new civilization
[00:42:50.820]is actually what they wanted.
[00:42:51.820]But anyway, it did eventually fail,
[00:42:54.820]and they still owned the land,
[00:42:56.820]and they didn't know what to do with it
[00:42:58.820]because they had to get rid of it,
[00:43:00.820]and one of their ideas was to blow it up with dynamite,
[00:43:03.820]which they didn't do, but I got to animate.
[00:43:06.820]People often ask me, "Why did Drop City fail?"
[00:43:10.820]And that question always bothers me
[00:43:13.820]because for me, Drop City was one of the
[00:43:15.820]very best experiences of my life.
[00:43:18.820]♪
[00:43:47.820]Okay.
[00:43:48.820]So the collages are just really a lot of fun for me,
[00:43:52.820]just something to do that is sort of more like play
[00:43:55.820]than anything, which I think is really important
[00:43:57.820]to do as an artist and to find places
[00:44:00.820]where that can happen for you,
[00:44:02.820]where you can just be experiencing your making of art
[00:44:05.820]as if you were playing like a child, in a way,
[00:44:07.820]and having that spirit exist again in you,
[00:44:10.820]where you're just finding that moment of play.
[00:44:14.820]And so I started using the laser cutter
[00:44:18.820]for the collages.
[00:44:20.820]All the original ones for the movie were all cut by hand,
[00:44:23.820]but then I discovered that I could, you know,
[00:44:27.820]create them also with the laser cutter,
[00:44:29.820]and I did this very printmakerly thing
[00:44:32.820]where I would cut out the thing,
[00:44:34.820]but I would also just engrave the paper,
[00:44:37.820]and then I could wipe--
[00:44:39.820]I used paint, but, you know, the idea of wiping ink
[00:44:41.820]into an intaglio plate,
[00:44:43.820]I could ink up the engraved lines on the paper
[00:44:45.820]to create color in those places.
[00:44:47.820]So something like that.
[00:44:48.820]It's a sort of tiny revelation for me
[00:44:50.820]in the making of these things.
[00:44:52.820]And, uh...
[00:44:54.820]So that's some of those images.
[00:44:56.820]Just a shout-out to a couple of my heroes.
[00:44:58.820]This is James Castle,
[00:45:00.820]who's had a huge impact on me
[00:45:02.820]looking at his work,
[00:45:04.820]particularly in terms of the collage things
[00:45:07.820]and making things in that way.
[00:45:09.820]And then Joseph Yochum,
[00:45:11.820]who's also been a huge influence on me
[00:45:13.820]in the invented landscapes
[00:45:17.820]and the way he uses color,
[00:45:21.820]the way he draws,
[00:45:23.820]the way he creates a very believable world
[00:45:26.820]that all adheres to a very specific language of drawing,
[00:45:30.820]which is something I try to do in my drawings,
[00:45:33.820]is to work with different languages of drawing
[00:45:36.820]that have a cohesiveness
[00:45:38.820]so that the world becomes believable in some way.
[00:45:42.820]So then I did several shows after this
[00:45:45.820]that were just works in drawing,
[00:45:46.820]and so this is a show I did called "Untie the Spell"
[00:45:51.820]from last year, just from last year,
[00:45:54.820]and they're all sort of medium-sized colored pencil drawings.
[00:45:59.820]And I was working with the theme of forgiveness,
[00:46:02.820]and so I wanted to try to make works of art
[00:46:06.820]that not only contained emotional content,
[00:46:12.820]but in this case were--
[00:46:15.820]talking about that very complicated idea of forgiveness.
[00:46:21.820]Could be easy to forgive someone,
[00:46:23.820]could take you a lifetime to forgive someone for something.
[00:46:26.820]So it's this very human experience
[00:46:29.820]of sort of working through that.
[00:46:31.820]And I leaned on other sources that helped me to figure that out.
[00:46:35.820]In particular, Shakespeare's work The Tempest,
[00:46:39.820]which is all about forgiveness.
[00:46:41.820]And so I leaned on that narrative quite a bit.
[00:46:44.820]Although you may not see that in the images,
[00:46:48.820]but I was thinking very much about that play
[00:46:51.820]and translating some of those narratives from the play
[00:46:56.820]through other kinds of images.
[00:46:58.820]And it was also very personal work in a way.
[00:47:01.820]But somehow, I don't know, maybe 10 or 15 years ago,
[00:47:08.820]I had a kind of epiphany where I was able to detach
[00:47:13.820]from the specificity of my own narrative.
[00:47:17.820]Like, you become sort of fixated on your own narratives in a way,
[00:47:21.820]which I'm not saying is bad, but for me,
[00:47:25.820]I was somehow able to detach from that.
[00:47:28.820]Like, I had spent a lot of time thinking about things
[00:47:31.820]that had happened to me or things that I had done
[00:47:33.820]or narratives in my life that gave me pain or trauma
[00:47:37.820]or in some way, and I fixated on the specificity of the narratives.
[00:47:42.820]And when I detached from that idea,
[00:47:45.820]I was able to still use that emotional content,
[00:47:51.820]but I could project it onto other things.
[00:47:54.820]So it wasn't about telling my story,
[00:47:57.820]but it was about sharing this feeling
[00:48:01.820]that ultimately became very relatable
[00:48:04.820]because we all essentially have the same experiences, right?
[00:48:09.820]And so I started to use imagery
[00:48:11.820]in a sort of different way where it had--
[00:48:13.820]I could identify, in a way, that emotional content
[00:48:17.820]in something that wasn't my story
[00:48:19.820]and try to relate that.
[00:48:21.820]So it was very liberating, this moment of epiphany,
[00:48:27.820]for me to be able to do that.
[00:48:29.820]Let's see if this is the one.
[00:48:36.820]Okay.
[00:48:38.820]I wanted to talk about this idea,
[00:48:40.820]but I think I've put the song on a different picture,
[00:48:43.820]so I might just try and see how it goes.
[00:48:48.820]Okay, so this is the first time--
[00:48:50.820]one of the first times I used the horse image,
[00:48:53.820]and I'm using it much more now in the newer work.
[00:48:56.820]The horse is me, but it's also you.
[00:49:00.820]And it was a place for me to put in a stand-in for the person.
[00:49:04.820]I didn't want to use figures in my work anymore.
[00:49:07.820]I had done that quite a bit in the past,
[00:49:09.820]and nothing wrong with that in particular.
[00:49:12.820]It's just that when you have a figure in the picture,
[00:49:15.820]there's a lot of other kinds of associations
[00:49:18.820]people might bring to it.
[00:49:20.820]What is the clothing the figure's wearing?
[00:49:22.820]What is the gender?
[00:49:24.820]There's all kinds of things that you start to associate
[00:49:26.820]with the figure that sort of detracted
[00:49:29.820]from what I was trying to do.
[00:49:31.820]So I wanted to find some other thing
[00:49:33.820]that could be a proxy for the person,
[00:49:35.820]and I used this horse.
[00:49:38.820]Which I'm doing more of.
[00:49:41.820]In these works, I try to include
[00:49:46.820]a multitude of things happening at the same time.
[00:49:49.820]One of my challenges is to do that,
[00:49:51.820]so that there's more than one feeling happening at a time
[00:49:56.820]that creates complexity in the emotional content.
[00:50:00.820]It's sometimes two very opposing kinds of things.
[00:50:05.820]And that's not unusual
[00:50:07.820]for how we feel things, right?
[00:50:09.820]They're complicated.
[00:50:10.820]They're not just sad or happy.
[00:50:12.820]There's many layers to the things that we're experiencing.
[00:50:18.820]And one of the things that I started thinking about,
[00:50:20.820]strangely enough, was the--
[00:50:23.820]I think it was the detail of the horse--
[00:50:26.820]was the idea of "cool."
[00:50:29.820]What's cool? This is cool. That's cool.
[00:50:32.820]What does "cool" mean?
[00:50:34.820]And I started thinking
[00:50:36.820]about kind of that--
[00:50:40.820]how "cool" functions in a way
[00:50:42.820]and has a lot of different meanings, right, for us.
[00:50:46.820]But the one that I was most attracted to
[00:50:50.820]was the coolness that we do, we use--
[00:50:57.820]Let's see, I think the song is on this one.
[00:51:00.820]The coolness that we use to cover up a bad feeling.
[00:51:04.820]And actually, if you--
[00:51:05.820]If you look at the sort of history of cool,
[00:51:08.820]and it's quite a complicated, interesting history,
[00:51:11.820]a lot of people trace it back to this sort of origin,
[00:51:14.820]that it is from someone who is being oppressed
[00:51:18.820]acting like they don't give a shit.
[00:51:21.820]Nonchalance, okay?
[00:51:24.820]And I love the idea of nonchalance.
[00:51:26.820]Just don't care.
[00:51:28.820]Well, if you're being oppressed,
[00:51:31.820]and you want to show that oppressor
[00:51:34.820]that it's not affecting you, that's how you act.
[00:51:37.820]And that coolness, I was very interested in
[00:51:42.820]depicting that kind of idea,
[00:51:45.820]that we use that as a way to hide the pain.
[00:51:51.820]But also, it has this duplicitous meaning to it.
[00:51:58.820]So I listen to a lot of music,
[00:52:01.820]and I really cultivate a kind of music
[00:52:03.820]that maybe contains some of these feelings that I'm after.
[00:52:06.820]So I want to play a little bit of this song for you.
[00:52:09.820]Can you hear it okay?
[00:52:14.820]I might have to turn it up here, but it's really loud.
[00:52:18.820]Oops.
[00:52:26.820]There it is.
[00:52:28.820]Okay.
[00:52:30.820]This is a song by Lucinda Williams.
[00:52:32.820]And it's called "Jackson."
[00:52:35.820]And it's a song about missing somebody,
[00:52:42.820]but pretending like you don't.
[00:52:45.820]All the way to Jackson
[00:52:51.820]I don't think I'll miss you much
[00:52:57.820]All the way to Jackson
[00:53:01.820]I don't think I'll miss you much
[00:53:07.820]Once I get to Lafayette
[00:53:14.820]It's kind of a travel song.
[00:53:16.820]So she goes down the Mississippi,
[00:53:18.820]all the towns she goes through,
[00:53:20.820]she doesn't miss the person.
[00:53:22.820]And the music is uplifting,
[00:53:25.820]but the voice is sad.
[00:53:27.820]And she's saying, "I don't miss you,"
[00:53:29.820]but she really does.
[00:53:30.820]And I was playing this song in the car,
[00:53:34.820]and my 12-year-old said, "I don't get it.
[00:53:37.820]"Why is she so sad,
[00:53:39.820]"but then she's saying she doesn't miss the person?"
[00:53:42.820]And I said, "That's cool. That's cool."
[00:53:45.820]She's covering it up.
[00:53:47.820]And so I'm trying to fold these kinds of things
[00:53:50.820]into the pictures the best that I can,
[00:53:53.820]through metaphor, through the imagery,
[00:53:56.820]through the quality of the drawing.
[00:53:59.820]This is, again, the Tempest, so the riverboat.
[00:54:05.820]This is actually a real riverboat
[00:54:07.820]that ran up and down the Mississippi,
[00:54:09.820]but I changed its name to the Tempest.
[00:54:12.820]So there are some clues hidden in there
[00:54:14.820]that reference the play,
[00:54:16.820]but it also has a very Midwestern kind of aesthetic also,
[00:54:20.820]so to kind of resituate that narrative
[00:54:23.820]in the Midwest a little bit.
[00:54:28.820]The play takes place on an island,
[00:54:34.820]and so I did this drawing of an island.
[00:54:38.820]A little bit about the process I like to share
[00:54:41.820]for people that are learning to make art.
[00:54:45.820]So I also do a lot of stencils on the drawings.
[00:54:47.820]The drawings are colored pencil,
[00:54:49.820]but they also have very thin transparent layers
[00:54:54.820]of airbrush that I'll use to create a gradient,
[00:54:57.820]or maybe I'll just use it to create
[00:55:02.820]some richer color in a certain area.
[00:55:04.820]So I do a lot of blocking out with stencils.
[00:55:07.820]So again, when I get the drawing to a certain point
[00:55:10.820]where there's a lot of information,
[00:55:12.820]I will scan it, bring it into Illustrator,
[00:55:14.820]and then I can create all the stencils I want
[00:55:17.820]for blocking things out.
[00:55:19.820]So here I just wanted to be able to spray a little bit
[00:55:22.820]on the water, so I had stencils to block that out.
[00:55:26.820]And then it's sort of like a puzzle that comes apart.
[00:55:29.820]All the components of the drawing
[00:55:31.820]are there to be revealed.
[00:55:33.820]So it's also really fun to take the stencils off
[00:55:46.820]and see the drawing below.
[00:55:51.820]And it's my many years of doing printmaking
[00:55:55.820]that has kind of led me to work in these sorts of ways.
[00:55:59.820]I had a second show of this same theme,
[00:56:06.820]but different new drawings in New York last year also,
[00:56:10.820]at Planthaus Gallery.
[00:56:12.820]And so these are some of those drawings.
[00:56:14.820]The riverboat again, but from behind.
[00:56:17.820]Another image with the snow
[00:56:24.820]in my first car, the little super beetle,
[00:56:29.820]which I've drawn a lot recently.
[00:56:32.820]I'm nearing to the end, just so you know where I'm at.
[00:56:41.820]This is in my hometown of Sioux Falls, South Dakota,
[00:56:47.820]which is a falls town,
[00:56:49.820]which means that there's a spectacle in the town
[00:56:52.820]that people come to see.
[00:56:53.820]Right?
[00:56:54.820]Many towns in the West have that attraction,
[00:56:58.820]bring people in.
[00:56:59.820]But I spent a lot of time at the Falls Park growing up,
[00:57:03.820]and I particularly like visiting it in the wintertime
[00:57:07.820]when it's frozen.
[00:57:09.820]I just find it to be very magical
[00:57:12.820]and interesting to look at.
[00:57:17.820]And I've also done quite a few drawings
[00:57:20.820]over the years of the Falls.
[00:57:22.820]You notice the one before,
[00:57:23.820]and then this one,
[00:57:24.820]where the Falls is frozen.
[00:57:28.820]And so these were all part of that
[00:57:30.820]second exhibit in New York,
[00:57:33.820]also dealing with the theme of forgiveness
[00:57:35.820]and thinking about the Tempest.
[00:57:39.820]So colored pencil drawing,
[00:57:46.820]and then the airbrush.
[00:57:47.820]This one, I think, a good example of seeing
[00:57:49.820]that gradient fade in the background,
[00:57:51.820]so there was a very complicated stencil
[00:57:53.820]that blocked out
[00:57:54.820]all of the interior architecture
[00:57:56.820]so that I could spray the background.
[00:58:00.820]This is a very new drawing
[00:58:02.820]I just finished a couple weeks ago.
[00:58:04.820]This is how the drawing begins.
[00:58:06.820]So the colored pencil is there,
[00:58:09.820]many different colors,
[00:58:11.820]and then layers of
[00:58:15.820]spraying and paint
[00:58:17.820]until the final image is like this.
[00:58:21.820]And then this is the very last image.
[00:58:30.820]This is a new drawing with the horse again.
[00:58:33.820]And I've just started a new body of work
[00:58:37.820]of very large paintings,
[00:58:39.820]so this one may become a painting.
[00:58:41.820]But working with the horse imagery
[00:58:44.820]and working with these very special horses
[00:58:48.820]that my good friend,
[00:58:51.820]my friend has at her ranch.
[00:58:53.820]She raises horses,
[00:58:54.820]and she raises horses particularly for therapy reasons,
[00:58:58.820]so to work with children that have experienced trauma.
[00:59:02.820]And they're some of the most magical horses I've ever met
[00:59:05.820]because they're raised in this way their whole lives,
[00:59:09.820]so they're very gentle with people.
[00:59:12.820]But one of the ways that they help
[00:59:15.820]is because when you're around a horse,
[00:59:18.820]you become very in the moment
[00:59:21.820]because they're so dominating and large,
[00:59:24.820]and they take you out of those thoughts
[00:59:27.820]and put you directly into the moment.
[00:59:30.820]And then you have emotional connections and experiences
[00:59:34.820]with the horse that helps with therapy.
[00:59:37.820]And so I'm working with my friend
[00:59:40.820]to work with some of these kids also
[00:59:43.820]in bringing in drawing also to the therapy that they're doing,
[00:59:47.820]and then working on this show
[00:59:50.820]with the horses and using again the horses
[00:59:53.820]as a kind of proxy for a figure
[00:59:56.820]and taking off from that idea of forgiveness
[00:59:59.820]and working more with some kind of complicated
[01:00:02.820]emotional experiences and thinking about
[01:00:05.820]ideas sort of of moral turpitude
[01:00:09.820]and using the horses to help me tell those stories.
[01:00:13.820]I have gone a little bit over. I apologize for that.
[01:00:16.820]This is my last image. I had another little thing to share.
[01:00:19.820]But I think that I will pause there
[01:00:22.820]and see if there's any questions.
[01:00:25.820]Thank you.
[01:00:28.820]Yes.
[01:00:35.820]Thank you so much.
[01:00:42.820]I was really interested in this way you were dealing with
[01:00:45.820]this aspect where you talked about later
[01:00:48.820]the tool where you have this very intimate thing
[01:00:51.820]where you're direct with the drawing
[01:00:54.820]but then there's this
[01:00:57.820]removed aspect where you're working through stencils
[01:01:00.820]in a way.
[01:01:03.820]There's sort of an odd reference
[01:01:06.820]but that one, the first image you showed with the horse
[01:01:09.820]looking over that kind of Monet
[01:01:12.820]sort of like
[01:01:15.820]does that have anything to do
[01:01:17.820]with the movie Harold and Maude
[01:01:19.820]or are you a fan of that film?
[01:01:21.820]I do like that film.
[01:01:23.820]I hadn't thought of that though.
[01:01:25.820]I have been watching the Days of Heaven a lot though
[01:01:28.820]and that light is really interesting.
[01:01:31.820]I do, films do play into it a lot for me
[01:01:34.820]because of that interest in that cinematic moment
[01:01:37.820]and sort of freezing that cinematic moment.
[01:01:40.820]Yes, yeah.
[01:01:43.820]You don't know quite why the horse is there.
[01:01:45.820]Is he just curious?
[01:01:46.820]Is he up to something of no good?
[01:01:50.820]I mean, just being there in that very fragile moment.
[01:01:54.820]A question over there.
[01:01:56.820]I just want to say thank you for coming
[01:01:58.820]and I really enjoy looking at all of your artwork.
[01:02:01.820]There's a big variety.
[01:02:03.820]I have a few questions.
[01:02:05.820]What technique brings you peace?
[01:02:07.820]What raises your blood pressure?
[01:02:09.820]Or do you maintain patience throughout?
[01:02:13.820]Because you have so many details
[01:02:15.820]and you went on about how you use the stencils.
[01:02:19.820]Yeah.
[01:02:21.820]Oh, that's such a good question.
[01:02:24.820]I don't know about bringing me peace.
[01:02:27.820]Art is hard, really.
[01:02:29.820]I think that there is some idea
[01:02:31.820]that artists are happily making things in their studios.
[01:02:34.820]And I know that does happen on occasion,
[01:02:36.820]but a lot of times it's really difficult.
[01:02:40.820]I think that the moment of peace maybe
[01:02:42.820]is when I'm drawing something I don't have to think
[01:02:44.820]very much about.
[01:02:45.820]Like if I'm just drawing rocks,
[01:02:47.820]or I'm filling in an area,
[01:02:49.820]and I just am blissfully empty in my mind.
[01:02:53.820]I can just draw this one thing
[01:02:56.820]that I know how to do
[01:02:58.820]without all the other complicated things coming in.
[01:03:02.820]The moment that makes my heart race
[01:03:04.820]is a lot of times using the stencil,
[01:03:08.820]and I can totally destroy the drawing at that point
[01:03:12.820]that I've spent hours making,
[01:03:13.820]and the activity of spraying the airbrush
[01:03:17.820]lasts about this long.
[01:03:19.820]And in that moment, if the airbrush sputters
[01:03:22.820]or the color isn't right,
[01:03:24.820]things could go very badly.
[01:03:26.820]And that's a little moment of blood pressure, I think.
[01:03:31.820]I start things over a lot.
[01:03:34.820]Well, not a lot, but I'm willing to do it
[01:03:37.820]if things go wrong,
[01:03:39.820]which was a long lesson to learn in making art.
[01:03:42.820]I wouldn't do that when I was younger.
[01:03:45.820]I would either forcefully get through making the piece
[01:03:48.820]or I would just throw it away
[01:03:50.820]and start something else completely different.
[01:03:52.820]But now I have learned to start over
[01:03:56.820]and even make the same piece over
[01:03:58.820]because what happens is I'm making it
[01:04:01.820]and then I make a mistake
[01:04:04.820]and it's not suddenly not going in the direction
[01:04:07.820]that I want it to go,
[01:04:09.820]but I've learned from that mistake
[01:04:11.820]to go back in time and correct that moment
[01:04:14.820]and then remake the piece.
[01:04:16.820]Yeah, any other questions?
[01:04:18.820]One down there.
[01:04:20.820]Hi, I was wondering if you could talk more
[01:04:28.820]about your 3-D canvases.
[01:04:30.820]Oh, sure.
[01:04:32.820]And what the meaning behind that imagery is
[01:04:35.820]and also why you chose that specific technique.
[01:04:39.820]It was such a weird thing.
[01:04:40.820]I don't know if you've heard
[01:04:41.820]about it.
[01:04:42.820]I don't know if I'll ever do it again.
[01:04:43.820]But I was becoming very obsessive about painting.
[01:04:46.820]I had just started painting.
[01:04:48.820]And I liked the idea of making the rounded corners
[01:04:53.820]on the paintings so they became object-like.
[01:04:56.820]And that sort of led me to thinking
[01:04:58.820]about making paintings more like objects.
[01:05:02.820]And then I just started doing it.
[01:05:04.820]Like, okay, what do I want to make as an object?
[01:05:07.820]And there was this oil lamp that we had in our house
[01:05:10.820]when I was a kid.
[01:05:11.820]And it was a kid that I loved.
[01:05:12.820]And it would also catch the light
[01:05:14.820]and make a kind of prism thing on the table.
[01:05:17.820]And so I wanted to make that thing.
[01:05:19.820]And so I cut out the shape and made it dimensional
[01:05:23.820]and made it like a painting.
[01:05:25.820]But the objects themselves are wood on the inside.
[01:05:30.820]And I made them on the laser engraver.
[01:05:33.820]I cut out the shapes.
[01:05:35.820]They're hollow.
[01:05:37.820]And so I would make a structure that would go on the sides.
[01:05:40.820]And I would wrap them entirely with linen.
[01:05:43.820]And then jostle them like a painting.
[01:05:45.820]And paint the sides of them like a painting.
[01:05:47.820]Does that answer your question?
[01:05:52.820]I wanted to know what drew you to printmaking originally.
[01:05:57.820]Because I do see a lot of it in your current work.
[01:06:01.820]And I'm curious why you chose it in the beginning
[01:06:04.820]to study in school and then taught for 25 years.
[01:06:07.820]What was the last part of the question?
[01:06:09.820]You taught printmaking for around 25 years
[01:06:12.820]and you studied it for so long.
[01:06:14.820]So I'm curious why you were drawn to it originally.
[01:06:18.820]Well, I actually started my career in art school in photography.
[01:06:23.820]And I did that for a couple of years.
[01:06:27.820]I still take a lot of photographs.
[01:06:29.820]I still love photography.
[01:06:31.820]But as a kid, I had a darkroom in my basement.
[01:06:33.820]I was super invested in photography.
[01:06:35.820]I also drew, but I felt like photography
[01:06:38.820]was the thing for me.
[01:06:40.820]And I went to school and I did that.
[01:06:42.820]And I got kind of burnt out on it.
[01:06:45.820]Like it suddenly became something else.
[01:06:48.820]And I dropped all my photo classes
[01:06:50.820]and I was literally wandering the halls.
[01:06:52.820]What am I going to take? What am I going to do?
[01:06:54.820]And this very enthusiastic grad student
[01:06:56.820]came up to me and he said,
[01:06:58.820]"Hey, you look like you need to take printmaking."
[01:07:00.820]And I said, "What's that?"
[01:07:02.820]And he convinced me to take it.
[01:07:04.820]And I did, and I took lithography.
[01:07:06.820]That was the first thing I learned to do.
[01:07:07.820]And what I loved about it was drawing techniques,
[01:07:13.820]because I like techniques.
[01:07:15.820]Photography has a lot of techniques.
[01:07:17.820]Printmaking had a lot of techniques.
[01:07:19.820]And then I could make multiples,
[01:07:21.820]which was important to me for some reason at that time.
[01:07:24.820]And then I just kept going with it,
[01:07:26.820]kept going with it.
[01:07:28.820]But I always also made the drawings, okay?
[01:07:33.820]Why I stopped teaching it,
[01:07:36.820]I just felt like I had done it long enough.
[01:07:38.820]I had taught it long enough,
[01:07:39.820]25 years seemed like enough.
[01:07:41.820]I wanted to just do something else
[01:07:43.820]with the last 10 years of my teaching career,
[01:07:46.820]and I thought I had something to offer
[01:07:48.820]in the painting and drawing.
[01:07:51.820]So, yeah.
[01:07:53.820]I miss it a little bit,
[01:07:55.820]but I'm also quite happy with what I'm doing, so.
[01:07:58.820]Other questions, there's so many nice questions.
[01:08:02.820]Okay, back there.
[01:08:05.820]I'm just interested in your,
[01:08:13.820]I think maybe color gradient or like the ombre,
[01:08:17.820]because I noticed that you use a lot of colors
[01:08:20.820]in every painting.
[01:08:22.820]Can you like go on that, I guess,
[01:08:25.820]because you said that you were a maximalist.
[01:08:28.820]I was a what?
[01:08:29.820]A maximalist or like minimalist.
[01:08:31.820]Oh, yes.
[01:08:32.820]I guess I still kind of am with the color.
[01:08:34.820]Okay.
[01:08:35.820]Yeah, I don't know quite how to answer that.
[01:08:38.820]I guess I just really love working with color.
[01:08:41.820]You know, I love studying color, using color.
[01:08:43.820]It's a way to evoke emotion, I feel like.
[01:08:47.820]And I just spend a lot of time looking at color
[01:08:50.820]and thinking about color, the color in this room.
[01:08:54.820]I just look at it all the time.
[01:08:56.820]I'm always sort of thinking about it.
[01:08:59.820]In the last maybe 10 years, I've really been preoccupied
[01:09:02.820]with trying to understand color.
[01:09:04.820]Trying to understand color in natural light.
[01:09:08.820]So I'm looking at when light comes through the window,
[01:09:12.820]what does that do to the space?
[01:09:14.820]And it's really hard to do, actually.
[01:09:17.820]You have to really use that super power of seeing better
[01:09:21.820]to really look at that light, because it's also changing.
[01:09:25.820]And really look at that and try to understand
[01:09:27.820]how the light is affecting the color.
[01:09:31.820]I don't know if that answers your questions.
[01:09:33.820]I also love day glow and fluorescent colors,
[01:09:37.820]so I always try to include a little bit of that.
[01:09:41.820]Well, you've been such an incredible audience.
[01:09:44.820]I really appreciate you all for coming
[01:09:46.820]and having such nice questions.
[01:09:49.820]Anyone else?
[01:09:51.820]Okay.
[01:09:53.820]Thank you, guys. I appreciate you.
[01:09:55.820]Thank you.
[01:09:57.820]Thank you.
[01:09:58.100]Thank you.

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Hixson-Lied Visiting Artist: Michael Krueger

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