Between the Shelves : David Strand w/ Margie Livingston
Margie Livingston received her M.F.A. in painting from the University of Washington. Her awards include a residency at the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute in Shenzhen, China, in 2008; a Fulbright Scholarship in 2001; the Arts Innovator Award in 2010; the Neddy Fellowship in Painting in 2010; and the Betty Bowen Annual Memorial Award in 2006. Her work was featured at the Portland Art Museum in 2015. She is represented by Greg Kucera Gallery in Seattle and Luis De Jesus Los Angeles. Livingston’s work resides in the permanent collections of the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute, the Seattle Art Museum, the City of Seattle, King County, the Portland Art Museum, and the Henry Art Gallery.
David Strand is an organizer, writer, and artist. A recent graduate of Seattle University, he currently works at the Frye Art Museum.
David Strand: While the primary focus of your practice has been the materiality of acrylic paint, for your upcoming exhibition at Two Shelves, you choose to work with a brand-new material. How did you come across this material and what do you find compelling about it? Margie Livingston: I found this big bag of black, polyester-nylon fabric in the dumpster behind my studio a few months ago, discarded by another tenant in the building. The fabric felt similar to paint in many ways, but was more practical than paint. I am not sure why I find this material so compelling, but I don’t feel the need to answer that question at this point. It was a gut feeling that I trusted, and it has proven to be a rich, if unknown, territory for me. The first piece I made with the black fabric was Big Black Grommet Drawing, which was a very gratifying and intuitive process. I brought the bag of scraps from the dumpster into my studio and immediately began sorting through them—keeping the shapes I liked and pinning them onto the bulletin board, allowing the composition to evolve organically. It was a very fluid process, composed of rapid decision-making and kind of exhilarating. As soon as I began using it, the material gave so much to me. Also, since I found it in a dumpster, it has a built-in critique of our consumer-driven culture. I’m saving it from the landfill, at least for now. So it’s kind of assuaging my guilt because my practice is pretty hard on the environment, given all the petroleum-based acrylic paint I use. I’m not ready to let go of making objects because it would be good for the environment in the same way that I am not ready to give up my car because it would be good for the environment. But I’m taking the bus, when I can, and just feeling good about this one little corner of my practice.
Margie Livingston, Big Black Grommet Drawing, 2015. Polyester/nylon fabric, grommets, tacks. Photo: Richard Nicol. DS : Have you worked with other materials besides paint in the past? ML : Not for many years. When I first started painting, before I went to graduate school at the University of Washington, over a decade ago, I made a series of objects from various materials that I set-up as still-lives to paint from. However, people would come into my studio and ask why I was painting from these objects rather than just presenting the object by itself. During a residency at the Vermont Studio Center, one of the visiting critics wanted me to ditch the paintings and just make objects because they were more compelling than the paintings. Another critic showed me how to make the paintings stronger. At that point, I wanted to be a painter, so I kept using the objects as part of my process. DS : Now that your practice has moved beyond the limitations of the canvas, what are your thoughts on two-dimensions versus three-dimensions? ML : That is a good question. It’s not that I have anything against 2-D work, it’s just that after all those years of repressing the 3-D in my practice and after finally giving myself permission to explore paint outside the confines of the canvas, I feel that I have found this very rich territory in between the two. It’s neither wholly in the realm of sculpture and nor entirely in the illusional realm of painting. Pouring paint into sheets literalizes this in-between space and is very fertile ground for me DS : Do you consider your piece for Two Shelves a painting then? Does it occupy a similar space? ML : To Knot is a painting-sculpture hybrid. It acts like a painting and uses the language of painting but it’s three-dimensional and not made of paint. I also make objects that act like objects, but are made of paint. I’m interested in confusing the boundaries. DS : Nearly all the work you produced in 2015, with Big Black Grommet Drawing being the sole exception, was white. Why the absence of color? ML : A couple of years ago, I was using very dramatic, psychedelic colors, adopting the seventeen-color palette of an Emilio Pucci dress or using purple, my mother’s favorite color and so forth. Then in 2014, I had a small exhibition at the Armory Center for the Arts in Pasadena, California where the curator, Sinead Finnerty-Pyne, described my work as “paint as canvas.” Before this, I had been thinking of paint as the support and made fake wood, the traditional material for stretcher bars. The phrase: “paint as canvas,” shifted my thinking. I started stretching paint as if it were canvas, tacking the paint skin directly onto stretcher bars. I experimented with color but the color was distracting. Playing the role of the canvas, the paint needed to be white—like canvas. I’ve also enjoy working with white in this way because aesthetically, it is so luscious.
Margie Livingston, Draped Painting, 2014. Acrylic paint. Photo: Richard Nicol
Margie Livingston, Falling Grid with Prussian Blue and Raw Sienna, 2015. Acrylic paint on string. Photo: Richard Nicol. DS : I am also interested in your draped paintings and the paint grids. While they operate differently in visual and conceptual terms I was wondering if they might originate from a similar place, or if you see any links between the obscured folds of the drape versus the open, systematized nature of the grid?
ML : Everything we do as humans is informed by the grid, it’s in music, in writing, in sculpture, in architecture. I make the grids by hand as a way to contrast the implied mechanism of the grid with the body. Having a body make the grid, and then having the grid respond to gravity the way that bodies do, starts a conversation about entropy. Entropy is the link between the grid paintings and the draped paintings. Paint skins are like flesh. The process of making a draped painting is similar to a caress. Like the sensual work of Lynda Benglis and Eve Hesse, the relationship is body to body and feels kind of erotic. Paint skins respond to their environment and are marked by life as they age. They sag and if they aren’t treated carefully, they scar. If they are dropped or leaned against something sharp, the paint will be embossed. Just like the scar on my thumb records a dog bite, the draped paintings accumulate a story of their existence. DS : Joe and Kelly’s home is this really wonderful, warm, cozy space that feels very different from the institutional, white-cube format of a museum or traditional gallery. Did the atmosphere of Two Shelves impact how you approached this exhibition, say in contrast to how you approached and prepared for your APEX exhibition at the Portland Art Museum last year? ML : I wish you had asked me that two months ago because that is such a great description of Joe and Kelly’s apartment, and it might have influenced me. But I saw this as an opportunity to make something unexpected. It allowed me to be more experimental, and try something out that I hadn’t done before. It’s such a gift, to have an excuse to make this piece. Maybe it's a one-off, maybe it’s not, and maybe it will spawn a whole new direction. I don’t know. I am wandering, taking risks, nurturing a choice to surrender to unknowingness, and that is very exciting for me right now. To Knot Thursday, Jan 14th 7 - 10 pm Courtesy Greg Kucera Gallery On view by appointment through Jan 31st.
