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I\W: Your inspirations are very pictorial, yet your paintings could be described as abstract. What pieces of your inspirations stay a part of your work?

Candida Alavarez: My work is so embodied that in my mind, it is not really abstract. I am retooling and reassembling a different kind of body, which is picture body. My work is such a fusion because it has these embedded bodies and skins that get shredded down and recomposed and serve the painting in different ways. Many times you wouldn’t see that as the viewer, but for me that is what helps me start each piece. When I enter the studio, the “I” leaves, as the world, leaving space for the painting. An archive of pictures, cultural artifacts, and oral stories are compressed into my paintings and drawings like a bibliography. The pictorial spaces in my work are informed by biography, daily events, synchronicity and alchemy. My work is conceptually driven within a studio practice where intention and content is deeply embedded in the optical body of the paintings. I am interested in the architecture of space or what holds the experience of space. Growing up in an urban environment, windows behave like a huge camera shutter, shifting constantly between a macro/micro lens perspective. Over time, I realized that this was a marker between my private life and everything else, giving me visibility, transparency and material for constructing my paintings formally. My aims in the studio are to listen and wrestle with the chatty variables that give life to a painting that embodies that time knowledge.

(Candida gives herself over to each of her paintings, inserting her own historical references as well as that of the world around her into shapes that fragment on the canvas. Influenced by the attention-grabbing images on the front of the New York Times, Candida formats her works to express her current obsessions, also including merengue, cartoons, and words that refuse to leave her consciousness. Using cheap materials, Candida begins each work from a non-heroic place, using everything from hardware store paint to cloth dinner napkins.)

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I\W: How does mining others’ images coincide with your own photographic eye?

Jason Lazarus: I think at a certain point in my practice I realized that cast-off material from the rest of the world had just as much value, if not more, than my own photographs. I decided that I am going to be the type of photographer who makes images and works with the vernacular. That's kind of a literal and metaphorical strategy because I am very open to the sort of political, cultural, and historical paradigms that are shifting behind me or that I am a product of. Working with vernacular images makes me a much stronger photographer when I do choose to make images, and vice versa, this philosophy extends to my teaching as well. This project (on the wall behind Jason) Recordings focuses on the text written on the back of found photographs. Working with this ‘snapshot-writing’ is revelatory for thinking about personal and public archives, and the various strategies now used to "tag” images. I design these installations knowing the audience is intelligent and complex, and I only have to push over the first domino in order to create photographic experience(s). This project asks what happens if we don't need to see these images anymore, but we just need to be asked to envision them, alone and in small groupings, woven into bigger constellations (installations) of non-linear narratives. The project has a sentimental veneer that belies many meta ideas about photography, language, human vision, archives, and history-making. I think there there is a lot to learn from this material–it informs and contextualizes how text and image work with current image making, archiving, and broadcasting. For example, now more than ever I see current hashtags as performative—text-play enables identity-making and a fantasy space upon which to project ourselves…

(Jason uses image to build community around certain historical events and moments, often involving his subjects directly in the process of each of his ongoing projects. Understanding the social nature of photography, Jason has moved beyond pure documentation, layering his images with meaning that can either be digested or taken at face value. Looking outside the typical frame, Jason observes subjects from all angles, creating alternate ways of looking, even turning the picture to the wall to make the image something that can only be envisioned.)

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I\W: Do you feel like you can be the most expressive while working with ceramics?

William J. O'Brien: I really love ceramics because they are so physical, which is one of the main reasons I gravitate towards that material. I never thought of myself as being an athlete or physical person growing up. However, I think one thing that I learned in grad school is that I am really interested in embracing both gentle and aggressive manifestations of physical expression. It is interesting for me to challenge myself to be both gentle and aggressive. A lot of time art is confined to sensuality and beauty, which is something that I am interested in with my colored pencil drawings.

(Drawn to physical forms of making, Bill produces ceramics, drawings, and collages, often using humor within each of his mediums to address a latent darkness in his work. Through his physical processes he is able to address a range of emotional states, calling attention to the way his own body expresses these forms of consciousness. Flipping between gentle and aggressive making, he moves from quiet creations to those that are quite heavy and messy, producing ceramic pieces that are confusing or hard to reconcile.)

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I\W: How did you start working with students in the communities in which you are producing work (Pilsen/Logan Square)?

Victoria Martinez: I grew up in Pilsen during a time when gang violence was much more apparent. This inspired me to pursue art school in Minneapolis at the age of 18. I returned after five years and started teaching for the National Museum of Mexican Art (NMMA) at Yollocalli Arts Reach. After getting to know the youth while also applying for shows, I found an opportunity at Duke University and pitched an idea to create an installation with found objects incorporating my students. My proposal was accepted, so I lead a soft sculpture and printmaking workshop at Yollocalli. The students and I went to Rudy Lozano Library across the street and I asked them to research topics they were interested in. During this time I was also tutoring at Benito Juarez High School, and had noticed that my students were participating in “bench marks,” which required no thought or significant research, yet youth were required to complete these worksheets in order to pass the academic school year. I wanted them to research what they really wanted to spend their time and energy on. After researching their specific interests (including nature and women’s rights), we bought fabric at a local thrift shop to print on, which supported local establishments. We stitched all of these individual fabrics together and the final project was both exhibited and catalogued at Duke University. It was a great opportunity for my students to put this experience on their CV, and to gain exposure in academia. For my current show at the Comfort Station, Jordan Martins approached me to do a similar project with the youth group from the Logan Square Neighborhood Association. It is up to their memories where they want to dedicate their work to, and the materials will be a little different. I have fabric scraps to provide for them, but I also want to visit stores with this audience so they know about the materials to be included in their installations.

(Victoria makes physical and metaphorical marks on the communities around her, engaging with local students while creating outdoor sculptures she places in environments with strong nostalgic ties. Existing in a nomadic work state, Victoria’s studio is wherever she is currently making work, producing soft sculptures and tapestry-like pieces in the gallery or urban environment in which they will live. To build her pieces Victoria collects scraps and abandoned materials found in the neighborhood she is producing work, scavenging for materials in local thrift stores and alleys.)

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I\W: What inspires the relatively unremarkable landscapes and environments present in your films?

Jennifer Reeder: When I left Ohio to come to grad school at SAIC, there was a trail of scorched earth behind me. Once I got here I realized that I had no business being in the city and certainly no business making work that was about the city. I have been here for 20 years and I have still not made a film that has a shot of the skyline, train, etc. We have shot a bunch of stuff in and around Chicago, but it is shots of interiors, or framed so we eliminate any traces of it being urban or interesting. When you grow up in a place that is unremarkable and you yourself think you are unremarkable, you create your own remarkableness and maybe it is in some sort of internal resistance. You either become super unremarkable or get super weird. It’s not even like I try to inject the unremarkable into the films, it is just simply what my aesthetic is—this ham-fistedness, this trudging through your day and making a bunch of little mistakes.

(Hailing from Columbus, Jennifer writes and directs films about places that are overlooked, the day-to-day scenes otherwise dismissed as filler. Injecting these stories with feminism, telekinesis, and multiple sub-plots, she creates worlds in which teen girls are often the stars, underdogs reigning as leads.)

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I\W: You paint lots and lots of plants. Is there a specific environment in which you like to place these pieces in your mind when you are making them?

Josh Dihle: Sort of, but not exactly. Everyone in my family is sort of a plant person. My dad has a degree in botany and my mom is a therapist and a gardener, so there is this mishmash of psychology and plants. I am a little specific about my plants because I am from the mid-Atlantic; they’re not palm trees. I make these forms up as I go. A lot of what I make are referenced from, say, memories I have from fishing on the Potomac River with my brother and what I remember of the thing that’s poking out from the rock next to me. They end up looking Cretaceous and primitive, but they are all made up. Maybe they are coming out of a deep psychological well, but I don’t have a concrete answer.

(Josh balances his practice through several mediums, allowing his 3D work to influence the content of his paintings and vice versa. Drawn to organic structures, Josh often incorporates this subject matter into his work, creating paintings with material ranging from mid-Atlantic plants called from memory to fossilized shark teeth imbedded into the canvas.)

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I\W: What is the purpose of camouflaging the words you have been incorporating into your newest drawings?

Jessica Campbell: Over the last few years, I have started to draw these connections in my mind between stand-up comedy and adolescence, both of them existing as these positions of vulnerability. Comedy is a performance of vulnerability; the comedian is vulnerable, but it’s a controlled vulnerability, directing the audience to look one way as opposed to another. Adolescence is similar to that in some ways; it’s a position of vulnerability that the adolescent is constantly trying to obfuscate. Both comedy and art act as venues for expressions of vulnerability, but guarded and masked ones. There is this deflection and determining of how people see you. That was the impetus of masking the text. I like the idea of using text, incorporating it, but also having it be unreadable. Texture and pattern does this obscuring. The text directs the viewer, controls the viewer’s interaction with the drawing in a way not unrelated to how a comedian surreptitiously controls an audience’s perspective.

(Often using comedic tropes as the subject matter of her practice, Jessica focuses on humor within her performance, drawing, painting, and comics. Relating comedy and art through their guarded expressions of vulnerability, she has begun to mask text within her work, forcing the audience to slowly absorb the words within their camouflaged environments.)

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I\W: How is your current studio acting as both an installation and workspace?

Brandon Alvendia: All and all it has become this performance piece, which makes studio visits kind of weird. The first thought I had about this arrangement was when I knew there would be an open house at Mana. Everything in the space has been curated entirely about what it means to be in this space. It is fake but kind of real because I can come in and still use the objects. My work is born out of connections with people, so working out in the world is something I’m drawn to. So it has to be about real life so it manifests here as a kind of artist’s self-portrait. Making things is maybe something I have done for installs and other projects, but people often think of my practice as performance, organizing, and writing among other things. This installation is this meta-thing about trying to be an artist in the 21st century. Pulling an install like this together is pretty intuitive—at first just building up an illusion. There was one idea that sparked this and then everything else just cascaded off of that.

(Recently moving his studio into Mana Contemporary, Brandon has created a 13-foot installation that serves as an artist's self-portrait— a snapshot into his own practice through his performance within the work. Although the floor of his studio was installed against the wall, the inverted studio still acts as a functional space in which he produces work.)

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I\W: What interests you about working with such cheap material?

Cody Tumblin: Fabric is just a great material to live with, to toss around, to fold up and sit on while you eat a piece of leftover pizza. One of my favorite paintings was draped over my studio chair for at least 2-3 months before I picked it up again. I’m pretty sure I’ve spit food onto it, splashed dye onto it, sneezed on it, walked on it, everything. I lived with it. A lot of my materials are on the floor and all over my studio. It is part of my surroundings, and they are not overly precious. A good friend of mine, Wyatt Grant, once told me “You can eat your lunch on it” when digging out a pile of old paintings and screen prints on fabric. That always really stuck with me, trying not to treat your work as a holy relic. When painters prime and gesso and sand a canvas down, they’re essentially preparing the work to become another kind of object other than cloth. I don’t like that. I like the work to hold the personality of the cloth, for the color and texture to have its own presence. There’s no mystery to what you’re looking at in some ways. I don’t need there to be too much illusion. Cutting and sewing my works has also helped mediate this, even if to nod at least a little bit to the material and say that these aren’t just paintings. When I think about making an image, I think about constructing an image physically and how you build up the layers, piece by piece. When I need to make a painting larger I just sew on a few new sides. I think of sewing as the same act as painting or drawing, it’s part of the image and how you carve into it. In some ways it will give me a structure to rely on, and in some ways it helps me break up the monotony of color and image and deconstruct its self-assuredness. Or just give me something else to do other than screw around with a brush.

(Meticulously mixing dye like a mad scientist, Cody (who a plethora of beakers) uses the highly calculated process to paint onto cheap cloth. The material, which is often casually strewn around his studio, tends to be hung untraditionally after completion. Recently pieces were stretched into the shape of books from his personal collection as well as hung dangling from a laundry line. Paying attention to the personality of his materials Cody often sews pieces of fabric together to create one piece, using the seam as an opportunity to draw on his works.)

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I\W: Has this loosening of your practice inspired the new materials you have begun to incorporate?

Allison Reimus: Yes, I think so. In my newest piece, I glued pieces of ceiling tile that fell on my head while painting. Like in cartoons when someone is trying to think of an obvious answer to a question and something literally falls on their head, that’s what happened. We recently became homeowners and that stuff happens—pipes leak and the ceiling falls on your head. Instead of getting mad, I thought it could be an interesting addition to the painting. Why not? I’m always thinking about what my imaginary vessels contain. This particular vessel now holds the ceiling chunks, which I covered in oil paint and metal powder. Obviously, they no longer identify as being part of a ceiling, but have become a decorative element admired by me for their texture and shape. They will cast real shadows on a real painting of a fake thing. That’s the stuff that really gets me going. I noticed that the light on the wall was casting a shadow from the chunks, so I decided to paint that shadow in. I don’t know if it matters to me if people notice it’s a fake shadow, but I appreciate those things in other paintings. I like the little decisions that slip under the radar.

(Allison flattens 3D vessels onto her canvas, concentrating on the static object as an active subject. Constantly thinking about what her vessels should contain, Allison has begun to add texture to her works—first discovering the idea to layer alternate materials after a piece of her ceiling literally fell on her head. Observing both the subject (vessel) and painting as objects, Allison continues her paintings to the edges of her canvas, allowing the often looked over area to become another focal point in her piece.)

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I\W: How do you want your works to converse with the body?

Andrew Holmquist: I want my paintings to hook people from a distance. I want them to get waved in—a friendly hello that brings you up close. Once you are up close you get trapped and stuck in this mud, this kind of controlled experience where I am dictating how you enter the space and move around it. This thing that seemed clear and playful at a distance is actually a trap up close. It almost has an aggression to it and is not going to let you go. I am not sure if aggression is the right word, but I want there to be this experience of you getting sucked into the painting when you are standing close to it. I have a painting that is more or less lifesize. The body parts buried underneath all of the painted layers are about lifesize too, and you can see hands and feet poking out. When you get up close you can see these things more clearly and then you link your hand to that hand and it places you all of a sudden on the flip side of the mirror. All of a sudden you are trapped on the other side of this portal. It is like a venus fly trap in a way.

(Embedded within Andrew's work are the subtle and not so subtle instructions for its final composition. This process is also explored within his video work, 4-5 minute pieces that trace his compositional decisions while keeping a steady beat to move the audience along at a steady pace. Andrew's work seduces the viewer into engaging longer than the typical once-over, making sure to entice one from any distance they stand from the canvas.)

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I\W: How do you view the temporality of your sculptures?

Laura Davis: The longevity of sculpture is something I think a lot about. When you don’t really have gallery representation and you don’t really sell work, what do you do with all of the stuff you create? I have enveloped this aspect into my practice. Things stick around for a certain amount of time and then if I lose interest in them or it seems like they are not going to show again, I will start to reuse the parts. That is one of the reasons I like working with metal. You can kind of indefinitely reuse the parts. My storage shelves have become a library of objects. If I know what type of shape or content I am looking for I can usually find it within my studio from previous sculptures or unused material.

(Utilizing her background in jewelry and metalwork, Laura's sculptures are often focused on the armature which acts as a display for the smaller works she places delicately upon the structure. Balance for her is often found in twos, bringing opposites together in combinations of light and dark, gold and silver. Laura also focuses on the regenerative nature of the work she produces, constantly saving and refurbishing elements of her sculptures for future pieces.)

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I\W: How are your works an exploration into an individual’s relation to megalith buildings and other pieces of notable architecture?

Susan Giles: Where I come from in New Jersey, there are no significant pieces of architecture. After I become a Chicagoan however, I would tell people where I lived and they would immediately respond with “The Sears Tower.” I thought that was interesting. They weren’t instinctually responding with the hot dog or the Bulls, or some other cultural identifier. It was the first time I was associated or identified with a piece of architecture. This was my building now and my identity. I studied the intersection of tourism and culture in Bali, Indonesia on a Fulbright grant in 1998, especially the buildings that were tourist icons and visitors reproduced images of over and over. Not the buildings that were representative of daily life, but rather this idea of what they thought daily life was like. All of the buildings that I work with in my practice now tend to be touristy and cliche.

(Currently working in miniature and large-scale, Susan builds replicas of buildings to explore how we yearn to own and manipulate the structures we visit as tourists. Fascinated by aerial views, Susan's latest project involves building four of the world's tallest observation towers, exploring their function as both a tourist object and a way for modern cities to aggressively expose their technological progress.)

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I\W: How do you approach idea of ownership—having a miniature version of the actual sculpture?

Tom Burtonwood: Well in terms of copyright I’ve been careful to only scan pieces that are in the public domain, so the idea of ownership is somewhat moot, as in theory these works belong to the public commons. As for appropriated works from the internet again I try to make sure anything I use has been shared using Creative Commons with a commercial license and that I credit the source.

Both Folium and Orihon are meta objects. They contain copies of a things, they are things in themselves, and a means to make more copies both directly as molds and indirectly as STL files. When I was developing Orihon I was thinking about how someone might make a photocopy of it, in the same way they might do that with a normal book. They couldn’t easily just put in on a copier. I realized that if I made the positive and the negative someone could take a piece of Play-Doh or another malleable material and knead it in the back to make a copy of the object. In this fashion the book is not just an object, but a producer of objects. Then when the files of this are online you have a producer of a producer of a producer of objects. I love sharing my things on Thingiverse because the interface of the website really makes clear the linkages and lineages between objects and reference material making those things evident and explicit. Content creators are constantly borrowing, appropriating and referencing the images and objects from a range of sources. Nothing is created in a vacuum, yet that is not really made explicit. So the Orihon page on Thingiverse for example links to the scans of the Olmec Head, the Roman Armor and Bodhisatva scans plus the pins I used to connect the pages. In this way it provides a measure of transparency regarding source material and inspiration.

(Due to his interest in the lineages between art objects' reference material, Tom produces 3D printed work that can be quickly linked back to its original source. He has designed and printed two books that allow one to easily copy the objects within their 3D pages—serving as a source for continuous reproduction and an open-sourced object that features the instructions for its creation online.)

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I\W: Can you talk about the pictorial language you have developed in your paintings?

Kenrick Mcfarlane: When I am painting it is like meditation, so in that sense I channel a lot of ideas, thoughts, and excitements that might be subliminal. For example, in my latest painting there are a lot of references to classical painting, but then there is also this animated or cartoonish language that evolves. I think my contemporaries are starting to see that a lot, that is how we grew up. That illustrated pictorial language is embedded in our visual language as artists. Animation tends to represent what is happening to us internally in an interesting way. When a character blows up or screams out and you see vibrations coming out of his mouth, there are certain things within that language that can really communicate emotions that perhaps words couldn’t do. The same potential is in classical painting. It is able to communicate certain things that are very profound and mysterious. Putting those two languages together wasn’t a conscious decision. I was just in the moment and following my excitement.

(Consciously leaving the details of himself and present worries at the door, Kenrick uses his studio as a way to play with the inner matter of his subconscious, folding deep memories and scattered inspiration into his work. Simply applying materials to canvas without plan, Kenrick chooses to analyze images only after their creation, often circumventing intention and relying completely on a meditative flow.)

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I\W: How does your work access personal memory?

Lyndsey Marko: When I began The Searchers there was also an incredible and simultaneous need to start painting from memory. I was thinking about my childhood and early influences. I grew up on the West Coast of Florida, but would often visit my grandparents on the East Coast. They had this great old house in Cocoa Beach and everything seemed untouched since the 70s. It was all red and orange and brown with built-in book shelves. Both of my grandparents were incredibly interesting people. My grandfather worked as a rocket scientist for NASA and was good friends with Les Paul. Years after they passed away and the house was to be demolished, I realized a need to transcribe these memories as they were, and that's when I began the “Anamnesis” series. When one revisits a memory, there is an opportunity to change it. In order to remember this place as the last time I left, I made a bunch of these 11" x 14" paintings until I felt everything was recorded. I would situate myself amongst the rooms and try to recall the details. What did it smell like? Who was calling my name in the next room? The series ended with a larger piece that introduced the mirror, reflecting ideas from Douglas Sirk's 1950's film "Written on the Wind" with Lauren Bacall. In the film, every character is introduced through a mirror. The way the movie approached the interior, I also used to approach my memory. You start with this really clear vision and then when you start painting and recall the details, you forget things and maybe that is where you have to leave it, leave it a bit unfinished.

(Inspired by cinematic moments, her personal history, and bright florescent accents, Lyndsey paints abstract images of tropical scenes that call forth her childhood in Florida. Previously painting straight from memory as a way to transcribe the last traces of her grandparents' home, Lyndsey has moved to painting more abstractly, using a mix of oil and spray paint to produce works that play into a common nostalgia.)

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I\W: Where do you get the content for each of your sigils?

Elijah Burgher: The content largely comes from private wishes and desires, although I also have other symbols on which I’m working that I didn’t arrive at using the prescribed method of symbolizing a specific desire. There are a set of solar symbols loosely based on the black sun and solar anus. The black sun is an alchemical symbol, a paradox, a sun that sheds darkness rather than light. The solar anus is a concept of George Bataille’s, the renegade surrealist. I also have a set of forms that loosely combine the lineaments of a face with anal asterisk forms that I’ve been calling “demons.” I’ve been doing a lot of writing about those, trying to figure out what they might mean.

(Focused on sigils, Elijah turned his drawings into portable ritual spaces, a way to propel his images on paper into real space. His history of experimental rituals now informs his large, drop cloth paintings, charging them through the act of making each work. Focusing on a specific group of symbols at a time, Elijah allows them to fall out naturally as desires and worries emerge or evolve.)