Congrats to Glen's First Place Award

Congrats to Glen Cheriton, who won first place in Sierra Nevada College's second annual student symposium (and congrats to art major Jessica Hayworth too, who got third place – and to Troy Mott as well, who placed second). Here's a short interview with Glen:

Jessica Hayworth BFA - Every Night a New Ghost

  "I'm interested in what happens to a prominent thought when it’s not in use, because thoughts never seem to leave us or go anywhere; they tend to rise up from somewhere and then sink back to somewhere. And that got me wondering about the subterranean mental space that thoughts could occupy." Jessica -opening reception for Every Night a New Ghost

Jessica's multiple images and simple line quality of the voice from the depth of the hole  reference her long interest in graphic novels and story telling. While we (desperately) want to know who or what is in the hole, it is not important - it is more an indefinable space. These images are in contrast with the rich, velvety drawings that seem to explore and grasp at memory,perception and interpretation- those things that become faulty over time.  Two large, neutral colored paintings oscillate between graphic simplicity and the unanchored, ghostly quality of the graphite, echoing our need to understand and resolve the occupant of the hole. 

All the imagery speaks to trying to peek into those places we can't fully know about- our anxieties, fear, death, the soul- ultimately with a sense of humor....

Beyond the BFA

When giving your thesis talk the question is invariably asked, "what are you going to do now that you’re graduated?"

grad show, Dec 2011

Like many, I do plan on applying to a Masters program... like many, it may be in a year or two.

I did and do want to keep momentum and find work within the art community.

One of the last classes an art student from SNC will take is Advanced Studio. Among other things we delved into, we explored and developed the tools for practicing as an artist outside of academia.  It can be daunting. It is daunting! Today you have to be diverse and innovative to create and find your niche.

Several years ago, prior to starting my degree, I would not have equated my ski town with having and supporting an art community. I have come to find that the artistic community is surprisingly large, diverse, tenacious, and in places thriving!

I have begun working with  Riverside Studios in Truckee, CA. They are a co-op of women artists and artisans who have created a business from the necessity of needing an outlet for their work.

The co-op was started in 2002 with three people, in a dilapidated house on the Truckee River. Due to zoning restrictions, it was essentially a studio. The space could not be a ‘store’ but could have shows, which they had up to four times a year. Alanna, one of the original members, commented,  “you made a lot of product”, but lacked sales.

In order to have more of a commercial presence, the co-op moved to Brickeltown, a historic area of downtown Truckee, hoping to create a more fiscal outlet. While they still were not able to generate the commerce they had hoped for they did develop a presence and community happenings such as First Fridays. First Fridays was a community gathering for artists to promote themselves and their work. Any artist was encouraged to turn up, bring work and network.

In the summer of 2010, five artists joined together and moved to commercial row in Truckee, again trying to find a better commercial location.


Commercial row storefront



commercial row, Truckee

The studio is presently a co-op of four women who have created a store that showcases their work and that of mainly local artists. The work is primarily handmade and hand crafted. There are two bench jewelers, Sondrea Larson and Mary Guerra, a self described ‘leather lady’, Kahlil Johnson, and a potter, Alanna Hughes. Various 2D artists (painters, printmakers, photographers) sculptors, woodworkers, fabric artists and cottage industry products are sold under consignment.

Heather River, who was a student at SNC, was with the co-op when they moved down town but has recently departed the co-op to open her own store called Bespoke. She hopes to open in early May. She has described herself as a curator, finding ‘one of a kind goods from independent artisans’.

First Fridays is now an established event that is hosted by the Truckee Downtown Merchants Association with multiple business involved.

Riverside Studios now takes the opportunity with First Fridays to showcase an ‘Artist of the Month’. Established and/ or emerging artists are given space to exhibit work. Mary Kenny has participated (and will be ‘artist of the month’ this May!) as well as graduate student Jonah Harjer. Jessica Hayworth will be showing work in early 2013.

Mary Kenny

Jonah Harjer

Jessica Hayworth

I have joined Riverside as shop manager and a contributing artist. I get to delve into the operation of a small business and interact  with a diverse group of artists. I am also learning to create and maintain a studio practice routine and balance new work and production.

I am also this month’s artist. Come down!

Interview with Student Artist Jessica Hayworth

From: South Shore CA
Age: 22
Major: Fine Arts (2D practices)

Interview by Sean Collins and Rachael Robertson

Q: When did you first discover your artistic talent and decide to become an artist?

A: I grew up on comics and illustrations and was heavily inspired by the fine detail of the line work. I was about 8 years old when I knew that art was something that I seriously wanted to pursue.

Q: Do you remember what your first piece of artwork was?

A: It was an 8 page graphic story that I made about a journey to meet the sun. I remember an adult pointing out that the sun's nose looked funny and I was devastated.

Q: Where do you find inspiration? What artists have influenced your work?

A: I find inspiration everywhere. I am a big fan of graphic novelists, especially the works of Stephen Gammell and Dr. Seuss when I was younger. As I grew older, I became more influenced by the work of artists such as Max Ernst and surrealist work.

Q: Describe the style of your work. Do you utilize a lot of symbolic imagery?

A: Yes, I use a lot of personal symbolic imagery. As far as styles go, I often use cross hatching and small, fine lines. Most of my work is in black and white. My work is often described as being dark. I like using the darker stylistic values in my work to transform an image that is humorous in nature. Basically I don't like to make light of otherwise dark subject matter, but I do want to make dark subject matter more bearable.

Q: What is your favorite medium and why?

A: My favorite medium would have to be pen and ink. I like the fine detail and control that I have over the line work.

Q: What role does recognition or awards play, if any, in the creation of your artwork?

A: Awards are not necessarily very important to me, however it is always nice for people to recognize or praise your artwork. Having people notice your work makes you feel like you are doing something right.

Q: What is your favorite critique you have received?

A: My most memorable was from a classmate during a critique in reference to my mural. She said when she walked by it there was "a twinge in [her] heart." It was the sweetest response that I have ever received.

Q: Any words of advice for aspiring artists?

A: Keep at it. Don't be discouraged by any negative feedback. You learn more from your failures than you do from your successes.

(above: Jessica drawing out the number of days she's been alive, on her studio wall; it actually seemed like a lot fewer days than she figured, once she was done)

For posts that Jessica made when she was student blogger of the month, click here. Her blog is at http://jessicahayworthbfa.blogspot.com/

Visiting Artists: Bill Gilbert Response

Two weeks ago, the Visiting Artists class went down to the lake to do individual site-specific nature installations as a response to Bill Gilbert's lecture. They were then asked to write up a paragraph to explain their process in making these installations. Though I'm not technically a member of the class, I went along as the interpreter and was kindly allowed to participate. Below are all the responses I have received so far; I will update this post periodically as more are sent in.

Karl Schwiesow:

Karl: "SO...I wasn't sure how inspired I would be first arriving on the site. After screwing around for about half an hour positioning buckets on and old snag I decide to lock in and commit to something cool. Literally, in the shade and cool. I used contrasting elements, stone and wood, but both of the earth. I formed a vertical row of twigs wedged perpendicular to the horizontal cranny that occurred between the boulder and the ground. Though the process of repetition and measurement a walled in space was created...a home, a vessel. The twigs and stone were a unique contrast when removed from their natural state of rest. I had conceived the idea thinking that it might represent a model of a contemporary living space in Tahoe. Really living in nature. Though the piece turned into a unique technical juxtaposition I still felt there were undercurrents of home, place, and, of course, the natural environment being augmented. Construction, The hand of man, and Nature combine."

Lexy Eich

Lexy: "I don't work much with nature in my art, but my music box fit well inside a tiny rock cave. I used to music box to be the voice of the message [the moss] in the bottle. I had never realized how the most simple organic objects could interact so well with the current concept I'm working on."

Hailey Kries

Hailey: "My piece was about a temporarty balanced structure, where at any moment it could change. Pieces of it could fall, all of it could crumble or it could last longer than I ever thought possible. It related to me in a way of life, that I dont know how long something is going to last or what is going to knock me down, I dont know how long its going to take to rebuild something if it falls but its all about the process and journey."

Evan Cook

Evan: "The driftwood found hiding deep within the rocks has been liberated. Amongst the naturally shaped wood lies a naturally shaped piece of Styrofoam. The Styrofoam just like the wood resembles the rough journey of society. Through what remains, we deduce stress, age, hardship and heritage; though the same cannot be said about the Styrofoam. It may appear to be weathered but we cannot tell what its previous shape was. Although there is some scaring and marking on the surface, they don’t tell much about the life it has lived. We do know that this manmade object was shaped naturally; this is commonly the opposite of art. Most art is created by taking natural material and shaping it by manmade force. Here we see art as an emotional concept created by nature."

Heath Pierson:

Heath: "I picked my sight based on a passed experience and memory of another place that I have been. I was thinking of the small cliff dwellings in Utah and how they were hidden from site high up on the sides of cliffs. I built a small hut out of pine needles where would be able to imagine myself living."

Jessica Hayworth

Jessica: "I've been trying to address a problem with over-thinking my work, and so I tried to let this piece happen more by instinct than by thought. Of course, that didn't happen until the last minute. At first I was spending time looking at the materials - I was using a dead branch (not pictured), leaves in various states of decay, the cigar box, and a found piece of glass, trying to compare/contrast them. At the last moment I put the glass shard in the box, shut it, and piled the rocks on top to act as a sort of lock. The viewer would have to essentially destroy the piece to fully interact with it, which I thought was interesting."

Though I'm still waiting on some more responses from the class, here are a few pictures I snagged myself.

Crystal Phan:


Bianca del Cioppo:


Matt Mattson:

Stop and Hear the Music

In Advanced Studio class, we recently had a discussion about value and the perception of value. Does raising the price of your art affect the viewer’s perception of its worth? It seems to; a piece marked for $2,500 has a very different impact than a similar piece marked for $25. A higher price seems to correlate with a higher status in the mind of the viewer; if it is expensive, it must be important. Later on I was discussing this with another member of the class, and we were both reminded of a perfect example, which I thought might be of interest: an experiment arranged by the Washington Post in 2007, in which Joshua Bell (one of the world’s leading violinists) appeared in the L’Enfant Plaza Station in Washington D.C. disguised as a street busker and played classical pieces on his Stradivarius for 45 minutes during rush hour. Over 1,000 people passed him by; only seven stopped to listen to his performance, and only one person fully recognized him. The perception of his worth was next to nothing. Under normal circumstances, Bell is critically acclaimed and it is difficult to see him perform due to high demand and ticket pricing.

Here’s a time-lapse video of the event:

And a very interesting article about it by Gene Weingarten of the Washington Post, which won him the 2008 Pulitzer Prize for feature writing, here.

Monster

So I thought I’d make a post about the graphic novel I put together last semester. It’s called “Monster” (weirdly, I stuck with the first title that came to mind) and it was probably the most fun I’ve had on a project, ever.

(Not pictured: my good qualities)

I had always been interested in doing something like this, but assumed I didn’t have the patience or the know-how. Then I had the opportunity to set up a project for Advanced Studio, so I started putting images together. Originally, the plan was to make a book about someone trying to make a book about something trying to make a book – the images would start out very realistically rendered, and degenerate more and more into childlike scribbling. To complete the joke, I thought the person trying to make the book should very clearly be me. I started drawing up pages of self portraits in which I would argue with a dead fly on the windowsill, who would act as a sounding board for story ideas, berating any plotlines I might come up with, angry that I had swatted it. This whole book-inside-a-book plan fell through pretty quickly, and I was left with lots of drawings of myself staring down a dead housefly.

I didn’t want to just scrap them. There was something about the wordless imagery that I really liked. When the dialogue was removed, the sort of absurdist element became something more serious. It reminded me of a child poking at a dead thing, trying to wake it up and slowly realizing that it won’t happen.

Not wanting to drop the comedic angle entirely, I split the book into three short sections that address the same issue in different ways. The fly section comes first. The second section is fairly abstract; it’s meant to address the same issues as the first, but in a more internalized way.

The third section is the only one containing any dialogue. Stylistically it’s much simpler and more cartoonish than the first two, and consists of an argument between an umbrella-headed child and a dying/dead fish, which made it the most fun to work on.

Which is all to say that it’s amazing what a little encouragement from professors and a deadline can help you come up with; I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have finished this project without those elements. I’m tentatively sending it around to publishers now, but in the meantime I’m self-publishing on Lulu.com. If you are interested in filling up your eyes with sweet, sweet images, this thing is for sale here. You could also ask for a copy if you see me around campus. I'm usually somewhere around David Hall.