Praeterita

Part 32 of the interview series in which I pose the same six questions to each artist. Rick Beerhorst is an artist who lives in Grand Rapids, Michigan, host city of Art Prize, the world's biggest and most well-rewarded prize for art of all shapes and sizes. Rick's collaborative venture Plan B won the prize for Best Use Of Urban Space in Art Prize 2012, and this year his painting has just been selected as one of the finalists in the 2-D art category. If you want to see Rick's work in situ, and/or vote for it, click here for details . "Hummingbird Girl", oil on panel, 32" x 32" Philip Hartigan : What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why? Rick Beerhorst : My primary medium is oil painting on wooden panels. For me it is a lot about building up layers. It is a slow process of building up and tearing down and building up again. After I have added a number of layers of paint and the image is beginning to have heft I go at it with sand paper ...

I just filed my report about this year's Chicago art fair for Hyperallergic.com, and have a few photos left over from the ones that I submitted for the article. My overall impression in a nutshell: Expo Chicago looks like a streamlined version of one of the big art fairs in New York, Miami, or Basel, which means that it's not particularly a place to go and take the pulse of contemporary art, but rather a place to see what the contemporary gallery world think will sell to contemporary collectors. To my eye, that means lots of painting (mostly in very recognizable styles or by very recognizable artists, living and dead), some sculpture, and a very little video. That is not at all necessarily a bad thing. On the other hand, I didn't come away filled with huge inspiration or with my mind blown. Here are some of the works that I liked (click on an image to embiggen): Judy Pfaff Paul Nutt Tameka Norris Phillip Taaffe Byron Kim Wangechi Mutu W...

Continuing the series in which I pose the same six questions to artists of different hue and strip. Today's interviewee is Lynn Tsan. a Chicago artist who has a distinctive way with grids, shapes, and colours. You can see more of her work here . "Alphabet 5" Philip Hartigan: What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why? Lynn Tsan : For the past several years I have been creating digital drawings – hand drawn with a mouse using Adobe Illustrator. I create a graphical square then put another next to it and so on and so forth until the piece is finished. I call them “graphical collages.” I began creating these drawings because I was flat broke and had a computer but not enough money for art supplies. In fact, the first drawing was an attempt to create a black and white business card (color was too expensive to print) that was compelling and beautiful. Forty-five quarter-inch pictures later I had my business card. Sometime later, on a night I couldn’t sleep, I col...

So this is worth doing a blog post for: one of my prints is currently on view at the museum in Douro, Portugal, as part of the Global Print exhibition. I was one of the 390 artists from all over the world who were invited to take part. It's invitation-only, meaning you don't apply to be part of it--you get asked, which is very flattering. I've just received a PDF of the catalogue, and there are many fantastic prints on show. Even though I am British, I've been living in the USA for over ten years, and the print I submitted was made here, so I am one of the artists representing the USA this year. Here is the catalogue page with my print: The photo is a detail of a very tall print on Japanese paper, that hangs down the wall like a scroll. I am also pleased to have been invited to take part in the Print Biennial in Douro in 2014, an even bigger and more prestigious affair, which I hope to attend.

Continuing the interview series in which I pose the same six questions to each artist. Today's interviewee is Donna Hapac, an artist from Chicago who makes intricate sculptures from natural materials, twine, and pigment, that extend up from the floor or out from the wall in a process of improvised growth. You can see more of her work here . "Figure 8 Infinity," 2011 ,  21" x 16" x 43",  reed, wood, waxed linen, wood stain PH: What medium/media do you chiefly use, and why?   DH : I primarily use natural materials, such as reed, cane, and waxed linen. I like their flexibility and resilience. I initially was drawn to painting and drawing, which I pursued for many years. Then I discovered fiber art about 25 years ago and was very much taken with the idea of building forms out of these materials. They are drawings in space and containers of meaning. The forms, structures, and patterns that I find in nature inspire me. My process is very meditative and...

A few months ago, I visited the studio of artist Dimitri Pavlotsky at his home in Chicago's Logan Square neighbourhood. I met Dimitri online when we both took part in Paul Klein's Klein Artist Works program last fall, and we then got to know each other IRL (in real life, as they say nowadays to contrast with the spectral 'meetings' that occur via the internet). After I arrived at his house, we sat in his kitchen for a while, drinking tea, and talking about Dimitri's journey in life from an upbringing in Russia to his present life in the United States. The walls are covered with his work--paintings from different times of the last ten years or so, but all having in common a thick impasto style and an image that at least begins in something representational, usually the human figure. The impasto is so thick that Dimitri says it can take months before a painting is finished, as each layer of oil paint, juicy and oozing like cake icing, or a slithering mass of...

Continuing the interview series in which I pose the same six questions to artists, writers, and other creative people. Today's interview is with Stella Untalan, whose stunning works on paper caught my eye one time on Google Plus. You can see more of her work here . soundings #2,  matte vinyl paint, graphite, and white drafting ink on 22 x 30 Rives BFK White, drawing 6.5" x 13", 201 2 PH: What medium do you chiefly use, and why?  SG : I’ve recently returned to drawing with inks. For the past several years my drawings were made with pastels and graphite. Almost all of my work is on paper, museum quality board or synthetic papers like Yupo. My paper of choice is Rives BFK. I use traditional drawing tools but am very interested in using tools co-opted from untraditional sources. These are essential to discovering different ways to create new mark vocabularies. PH: What piece are you currently working on? SG : Right now I have 5 or 6 projects underway--I can’t wor...