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Davida Nemeroff
A video from Davida Nemeroff's exhibition California, in which Nemeroff obsessively attempts to discover the American Dream through meditative photographs and videos.
Jennifer Castle + Mira Dancy = Castlemusic's otherworldly witness
Jennifer Castle: Castlemusic [Apr/2011] — OFTEN IT'S BEST not to overanalyse things. So goes the prevailing wisdom of bewitching singer-songwriter Jennifer Castle, whose third solo record owes much of its creation to this approach.
Patiently put together between early summer and late fall of 2010, Castle says that while she definitely crafted Castlemusic with specific intentions, “we didn't ask too many things of the songs, we just let them exist.” Recording sporadically with partner David Clarke and producer Jeff McMurrich in Toronto, Castle admits that the trio did a lot of experimentation that eventually led them back to their bed tracks. “I never exactly know what it is that I'm trying to do, so there's a blindfoldedness about the whole thing. For me, that's when I'm creative is when I'm exercising some sense of discovery or improvisation.”
To choose an album cover for her new discoveries, Castle gave in to serendipity. The previous summer, she'd played a gig in Brooklyn at an event called Whitney's Biennial, which was put together by her artist friend Davida Nemeroff, who'd photographed the cover of her last album, You Can't Take Anyone. Castle performed from an improvised stage, above which hung a diamond-shaped, multicoloured abstract painting that was chained to the ceiling, “probably as large as a person with their arms stretched out.” She recalls the setup feeling slightly dangerous, and that it was “a bit of a fish out of water for a painting to be floating in the air like that.” Nonetheless, Castle immediately liked the piece's psychedelic qualities, and felt it fit nicely with her music. She also hit it off with the painter, Brooklyn-based Mira Dancy.
A year or so later, Dancy's work was suddenly, strangely hovering just above Castle's radar again. While in hot pursuit of a cover image for Castlemusic, both Clarke and another artist friend called her attention to Dancy's website. “I went online and saw the painting Drawback, and I thought it was perfect,” says Castle. “It didn't have to have a sense of meaning that I could articulate, it just had to fit. I like letting it exist as this beautiful thing that I feel complements the overall design of the record and the record itself. It's mysterious.”
One thing's for sure: Castlemusic and Dancy's Drawback both explore a sense of colourful mystery. But Castle is also talking about the album's backside art, a photo that Clarke took which had already been decided upon (pictured, below). The photocopied quality and “really crass black and white” are quite intentional; Castle liked the eeriness, and that her eyes were the image's most reflective element. This feature also explains what made Drawback such a natural spontaneous choice.
“In Mira's painting, you dance all around it, your eye keeps going throughout the whole canvas, but the eyes are so striking,” says Castle. “It was just this perfect complement to this photo really rooted in reality, and then you flip it and the cover is this completely surreal, expressionist, beautiful other world. I liked the complement because I think where they are in relationship is their eyes.”
Incidentally, there's an emerging thread in Dancy's creative process that also mirrors Castle's go-with-the-flow reflex. After Whiney's Biennial, Dancy started “thinking about how I can incorporate more performative elements into my actual practice in the studio.” Using different paint was one way to experiment: “The ink in Drawback is really watery acrylic, so it's sort of this spontaneous event that happens, and it either works or it doesn't.”
She's also began playing around with canvas materials and shapes. For example, her pillow pieces evolved out of practical utility (“It's expensive to ship work around”), but also because “they have an interactive or performative element themselves.”
Dancy also says her work was very abstract for a while, but that she's returned to creating bodies and voices while still working very impulsively. “I don't have an idea before I do it. With Drawback I was thinking of a body and shape, and creating it as it occurred to me, responding to that particular shape. My paintings can be pretty mysterious or surprising when they arrive.”
When they do, Dancy can see confrontation and drama (or melodrama) as recurring themes, as though her characters have witnessed something and captured it. At the same time, she strives to keep a rawness that steers her work clear of perfection or conventional beauty. This also informs her penchant for producing unusual ideas, such as the piece that was chained to the ceiling when she first met Castle (not pictured; the piece below is called Queen of Sheeba).
“It can be such a let down to put up your work up in a clean white space which feels like it's sort of sucking the energy out,” says Dancy, adding that she's more fulfilled when there's something else going on in an exhibit space. “As my paintings have become more spontaneous in terms of the ink and staining with acrylics, while I'm making them I'm dancing or moving around a lot, and so it's more satisfying to think of them going out into the world in a way that's similar to how they're being made. It's more interesting to think of paintings as something that can be activated, or that can activate their surroundings.”
Ultimately, Dancy wants her work to have a physical effect on its audience, to inspire the feeling of something or someone else that strikes you in your reality. “Jennifer's songs have that too. Parts of them, and her voice in particular, it just hits you. You don't know what it is immediately, because it sort of seeps in.”
Sounds like a dead ringer for the way Castlemusic's cover art was picked. Oddly enough, the root of their kinship likely has more to do with depth than instinct, as Dancy also recognizes: “I was really drawn to Jennifer's music and songs because they are like poems. It takes a long time to unravel her narratives. I think I definitely have a similar relationship to that kind of language, and I see it alongside these figures and bodies in my work.”
Paintings by Mira Dancy. Photo by David Clarke. Story by Eric Rumble. Buy Castlemusic from Flemish Eye.