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Interview: Rachel Lee

A conversation with Rachel Lee

By Cindy Becerra

March 2017

Rachel Lee is a Miami-based artist and prospective graduate of the New World School of the Arts. Her work is based on 90’s alternative music, video games, and her suburban neighborhood. She combines these sources to create artificial realities through a default state of escapism fueled by isolation. Rachel has participated in several group exhibitions including the NWSA 2017 BFA Unbound Exhibition at the Cisneros Fontanals Foundation and the Miami Biennale: Unfolding Series I.

Cindy Becerra: What are you working on right now?

Rachel Lee: For BFA I’m working on three large scale paintings that are landscapes and they are a combination of video game spaces with concert equipment. They are in and out suburban landscapes made up of street lights, grass and trees.

CB: Is it only for your BFA?

RL: BFA gave me the opportunity to focus on it and deal with it as my thesis because it’s something I feel like I’ve been trying to get closer to this whole time that I’ve been practicing art making. It is the end goal for me to figure out how to deal with these things I care about into one mass.

CB: What medium do you use to make your landscapes?

RL: I use oil paint on canvas or found material. Recently I’ve been doing more collage type of work where I’m taking cheap paper and I throw painting on it, sharpie, highlighters, or I’ll take a screwdriver and make some marks that way which is readily available. I use cheap materials that I can replace easily.

CB: So you are being resourceful

RL: It’s like a mix of me just being mindful of my money because I don’t have a lot of it and I can’t really rely on many people to help me financially. Also, the philosophies and art making that I’ve been getting into relate with bands that I listen to. A lot of them were their own record label. They would send out live concert flyers for themselves, make their shirts, send out and manufacture their own albums. I internalized that and try to keep that going with how I make things. A lot of this stuff we use we don’t really need to go to art stores to get it; we just need to know where things are left.

CB: Are you looking to be represented from a gallery?

RL: It would be nice. I don’t know if I’m necessarily ready for that because I’m only 23. I feel like just coming out of art school and being represented already might be a bit much at once. So I would like to know that I’m able to get myself out there and know that I’m resourceful enough to make sure my work is in different places and is seen properly. That I don’t have to rely on someone immediately coming out of an institution that already babies you.

CB: You mentioned that one of your main sources is video games. What other sources do you use to make your work?

RL: I realize that the way I’m putting these images together and the sources I’m taking them from, all of them have to do with things I have been around and things that I have used as either coping mechanisms to deal with being at home all the time or interests that I’ve picked as a kid like you do going into adolescence. I’ve always played video games with my brother, and I’ve always loved them visually. I grew up playing super Nintendo and Nintendo 64 and those are now considered old school or obsolete graphics. They are very square and pixelated. They try very hard to be realistic and 3D as possible, but the technology wasn’t there yet. So I played those games and I still was able to let my imagination go crazy even though they weren’t hyper realistic like how games are now. So I still love those places that existed in those games. I still want to wander around in them and have my own adventures in them.

The concerts that I’ve always wanted to go to- half these people are dead- because they all came out of a scene were people were taking drugs and being foolish. A lot of those bands are not getting back together, some of them have and I have seen some of them. People my age love them and we are all going to their reunion concerts. But I don’t get to have the experience of seeing them in small clubs where everyone is piled and enjoying these bands that are throwing themselves off the stage and mingling with the crowd. So I have memories of something that I did get to experience and things that I wish could have experienced that were happening when I was baby that I was not aware of. Those two are my biggest interests and influences.

I’m completely aloof and day dreaming all the time so those are the things that are in my head a lot. Part of playing video games is not wanting to be in life currently. The only place you have is a game that is an open world and has things to do in it. You want to go to a concert so badly, but you know those bands are not going to play those shows because half of them aren’t around anymore. Or you are a teenager and you don’t have the money to buy yourself concert tickets, you can’t drive a car and take yourself to a gig. And the fact that being homeschooled and not really having friends for a long time until I got on the internet and met some people. So that’s your bubble and that shaped how I think about things and how I cope with loneliness or having a yearning to be part of something that isn’t happening anymore or something that I would of fit into but I can’t just bring myself into it because it is not there anymore- which is that scene of music that I listen to. So I figured the best way to deal with it is to physically manifest it so that I can get it out of my system. Have these places exist visually so that I can look at them and know that this is my space and I can walk through here whenever I feel like it. If anyone feels inclined to feel the same way or they get any of the references that I’m putting in the paintings like speakers, or trees stumps that are specific to a Zelda game from 1999 or 2000. If someone recognizes those and they are like, “I don’t know why I know where this is from, but I get it even though it is out of context” I want people to either relate to it and get it or not know where any of this stuff is from at all but still have the need to explore it.

CB: How do you feel now that you are coming to an end in your college experience? New World provides you with a studio space to work in and soon it will be gone, how will you deal with that?

RL: Not having a studio is already sort of freaking me out because I have to think smartly about how I plan to get out of here and where I decide to work. I need to get a job and I need to make sure that I can pay bills that I will have in the very near future. I need to be able to be an adult but I also know that I need to make time for this regardless of whether I have a big space or not. So I sort of do have a plan of how I’m going to work it out and what scale I’ll be working in in the weird intermediate time before I move into my own place and while I live with my parents. I’ve had the small space struggle before so I sort of know how to deal with it.

CB: How has your work changed throughout the semesters?

RL: When I started painting I was taught technical skills. I’ve always liked renaissance and old style kind of paintings that were technically correct and used thin paint and glazes. Once I got here, that wasn’t enough to facilitate what I needed to do. Everything I know how to do and being able to have different ways of working I got through Aramis because he taught me to not be freaked about not being perfect. I had to come to him several times and be like, “I’m not feeling it for some reason, I’m freaked out that I don’t care anymore, I don’t know why”- that was during Painting I. He figured I had been painting the same way for a long time and I needed to learn to loosen up and just enjoy the act of painting. I have that to carry with me so that helps me a lot. I’m in tune with physically dealing with the paint itself and I don’t really have a fear of messing something up anymore because I know I can just fix it by doing something else. So my paintings don’t have to suffer being hesitant or afraid of things happening.

CB: So you’ve reached a certain level of maturity.

RL: Yeah, I’ve only been painting since I was 15 so that’s 8 years of painting. That’s not a whole lot but it’s good to have that.

CB: We can move on to talk about one painting. Let’s talk about the last one you did. Do you have a title for it?

RL: I have titles for all of these [paintings] now. They are lyrics I pulled from specific songs. I’m calling this one “I Can’t Meet You Here Tomorrow” it’s from an Alice in Chains song. It’s a song about someone telling their friend that they are running away. I picked each song title lyric for the three bands that I want to reference through words to see if anyone recognizes where the lyrics come from. This is an accumulation of references that I have from around where I live. The trees, the water, and the plants are all things that I have nearby. I threw in some amplifiers and a couple of little characters. It’s mostly based in reality but it’s me rearranging where these things exist and not making too big of a difference between what is real and what is not.

CB: So it’s not too abstract.

RL: I don’t think so. Compared to the other two I think it’s the most naturalistic painting.

CB: How does this one differ from the first two?

RL: I approached it differently because at this point I already had the tools and strategies that I had developed through these two. Because these two were already sort of hurlers I needed to get over and they were working out problems that I had not dealt with yet. So this first one specially is so loaded with experiments and trial and error and being worked over so much to get to a point where I am okay with it. And this one is me understanding how I got to this place without having to do all that fumbling and back and forth with what I want to reference and or what I think needs to be referenced or not.

CB: So it’s a direct representation of what you want both in terms of the imagery and the process because you were able to go to it directly and make it directly without having the struggle of the first two.

RL: Yeah. There’s some stuff in there that I could include. Like more video game stuff or may be have an extra piece of stage equipment, because I always want to balance out the space that I want to deal with. It has the things that I feel like my work needs in order to get the point across which is loosely rendered landscape and different forms of paint of application. The figures and the objects that are in the distance that aren’t completely explained but I would assume someone looks at it and they would want to care to figure out who that is or what that is and why is that standing there. Just like the whole trailing off and wondering into somewhere else idea.

CB: Is there anything else you would want to say?

RL: I feel like I’ve covered everything because I’ve rambled a lot. I guess my only thing is that I feel like I need to know wrap up my explanations for these things better because they are sort of loaded and it’s loaded with personal history and I want to be able to communicate that. That is my struggle at the moment. The paintings are coming out fine, where I would like to be. If I knew I was going to paint these when I was sixteen I would have been very excited and hyped up. Explaining it and having the proper wording that’s where I’m still falling short.

CB: You are not.

RL: I long winded.

CB: Long winded?

RL: Yeah, it’s a lot of verbiage. I have this much to say and I need to narrow it down to this much.

CB: Okay, I think we are finished with Rachel’s interview.

RL: Yey

"Don't Follow" Oil on canvas 72" x 48" 2017

#NWSA #Painting #Video games #Concerts

to delight

to delight- a constant communion between us and It/They.

in the beginning - the garden of Eden - and now, a veil in between us and It/They. Before, we were in delight and now we look for a vehicle in our work to reach back to that place of delight. Something in the process helps us recognize the truth in us. We can find sincerity in delight. An effective force inside that object that we create. It makes the trauma in those who experience that object.

How to be as if we were the material? They are as if they were the material- artists such as Eva Hesse, Jimi Hendrix, and Frank Gehry.

Perseverance and Chance shake hands. We are a tool for great things to come only if we recognize what is in front of us and reach out to greatness.

-notes from Tuesday, October 3rd, 2017 @artseenstudios

Interview: Juan Miguel Urbina

Original post: https://artseeing.wordpress.com/2017/09/29/interview-juan-miguel-urbina/

Interview with Juan Miguel Urbina

By Kali Geiger

from May 2017

Typically, Juan’s presence when he enters a room has a palpable, bubbly energy. You can tell by his face the mood he is in, and it is typically a good one, enhanced by his charisma and outgoing personality. His 6’2” muscular frame makes his entrances undeniable and his assured tone of voice travels easily through a room, lightly bouncing off the walls with ease. Juan is also a thinker, wading into the waters of critical and philosophical theory in order to grow and feed himself and his work. A young Venezuelan-American, Juan is an up-and-coming triple-threat: artist, musician, with a gifted perspective on life that he has been working to translate into art.

His work, in his own words,

“represent[s] something otherwise nonrepresentational. I am two-dimensionalizing the filter I see over the physical; I can see it, I can hear it, I can feel it, I can smell it. It governs my understanding of the world.”

He has described his perception as something akin to a simultaneous overlay of another dimension on top of his own; A topographic mapping matching our reality with floating auras of color that vibrate on top of conventional boundaries of sight. Upon seeing the moon, he told me “his” moon is seven strata layers of color, and upon concentration, he can see its normative white glow. Wassily Kandinsky brought it to the world’s attention and Juan lives through his own version; the sensory perception condition known as synesthesia. Synesthetes’ sensory perceptions can vary greatly from individual from individual, creating associations between and among the senses almost unimaginable to the outside viewer.

A self-taught multi-instrumentalist to boot, Juan has been producing “conventional” songs that expertly combine blues, rock, and Latin rhythms. This creative channel widens his pursuits in communicating the links in his sensory experiences, which are all connected in various overlapping ways due to his abilities. I fondly recall him dancing through musical phrases on his guitar, explaining a specific connection of chord progressions as a certain color. I listened hard and tried to imagine his colors, yet as someone who associates emotion with color and sound more conventionally, I didn’t necessarily agree with all of them. This made me excited and got me engaged; it was challenging my perception and preconceived ideology.

In some of his latest work, he has explored representing his perceptions through plein air painting. This work, Downtown, was done in a 20 minute, one session time frame. Juan explained his need to work quickly as a necessary preventive measure, as the intense nature of his perception can cause him headaches upon over-stimulation. He laid out a palette based on his own color vision, a highly chromatic sampling of warm and cool colors, set up a spot to paint on the curb and began painting what he saw. In less that 20 minutes of frenzied painting, he had produced this large-scale work (approximately 6 feet across, 4 feet tall), a personal representation of the sensations and overall representation of downtown Miami.

Initially, my reaction to learning about Juan’s unique sensory perception was awestruck. I thought it was so amazing someone could experience the world so differently, and I wished that I could see it too. I immediately compared him to the other synesthetes I knew of as a force of habit, wondering if their experiences were similar. It was in that thought I realized I had done something damning : categorized him as different. I created the hierarchy of a homogeneous, anonymous group of normalcy in comparison to “the other,” something I have been learning about and challenging. I realize now that even though Juan may be experiencing something extra-sensory to me, there are many others who experience completely different sensory perceptions everywhere around the world. In fact, I would argue that no two individual’s sensory perceptions will ever truly be the same, because ways of seeing will always be different for different individuals.

We are all different; There will never be a way for me to experience Juan’s perception, because his perception is built by many different factors layered together that I could never replicate, and synesthesia is just one of them. Juan isdifferent, and I think he is special, but we all have that potential. By categorizing him as a specific other, though; by only seeing him for this singular difference/through the lens of this singular difference is when prejudice/societal hierarchical structure comes into play (specifically the creation of an us/them dichotomy). I believe it is this idea of sameness Juan is challenging through his work, by existing and thriving as a brown person in a white world, making work for himself, producing a direct representation of his real life that reads, to some majority, as abstraction. “Let them see what they see,” he says, as he focuses on “living my truth.”

Image by Juan Miguel Urbina; Downtown, acrylic on wood panel, 2017.

To see more of Juan’s visual work: click here.

To hear Juan’s music: click here.

Written by Kali Geiger (see her work here).

#NWSA #Painting #Perception #Plein Air #Interview

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