#john keppelman

[twoshelves]

John Keppelman @ Two Shelves Interference Paintings, 2015. Acrylic on canvas, on aluminum. 

[twoshelves]

Between the Shelves : Jim Demetre w/ John Keppelman

Recently, at the request of Two Shelves curators Kelly Bjork and Joe Rudko, I drove to Bellingham, WA to visit painter, sculptor, and long-time Western Washington University School of Art faculty member John Keppelman, whose series Interference Paintings will be on view at Two Shelves the evening of June 11.

I am always delighted to be introduced to an artist whose work compels and engages me. Most often, such newly-met artists are young men and women at the beginning of their careers, full of talent, promise, and ideas. What is more rare and exciting, however, is to encounter an artist who is a grandfather and esteemed art professor who possesses the same inquisitive mind and keen powers of observation as his former students.

In the former farm house where he lives, we discussed his current body of work and touched on some farther-reaching matters.

(detail) Interference Red, 2015. Acrylic on canvas on aluminum.

Jim Demetre: The Interference Paintings, while small in scale, bring to mind the work that Larry Bell and Robert Irwin were doing in the late sixties, with their translucence, reflective properties, color field vocabulary, and use of metal surfaces. At that time, such work seemed to radically challenge the way people thought about art and perception, but today this kind of abstraction feels more grounded in ancient traditions of asceticism. Is there a spiritual dimension to this series of paintings? How would you describe it?

John Keppelman: These pieces started out as a rational process for me. I deliberately chose the format, dimensions, the box structure, the rigid surface to allow blading, the areas into black and white whose equal division wouldn’t suggest a horizon line. Because they come so readily and lock onto familiar associations in the brain I wanted to avoid any pictorial references. I chose the pearl paints because they have little inherent color as we think of it but surprising, dramatic highlight properties. Color as an aspect of only reflected light. So there was a kind of austerity, unknowing, in the concept at the outset. I really had a limited sense of what the possibilities were, and my first efforts were pretty constrained. With this group of 6 pieces I let the bladed black and white basecoats run wild at the edges and that encouraged a new playfulness in the application of the interference colors. Working them, I began to look into and behind the surfaces rather than just at them. That was startling. You mention Larry Bell. Morris Louis comes to mind too where on a much grander scale there is sometimes a void. The unknowing thing. If there is a spiritual dimension, it’s new to me and I’m wary of dwelling on it verbally because I don’t understand it. It is the number one question for me about the pieces though.

Untitled 2. Acrylic on canvas  11 x 9 x 2.5" JD: Your diverse body of work includes figure painting and large-scale abstract sculpture as well as these narrow, upright panels with their juxtaposition of white and black essences. But the longer I look at them all, the more I see a similar energy at work. The swirling movement and elusive forms that surround your poised and static human figures remind me of the sublimated fire beneath the surface of the Interference Paintings and the force that emanates from the vortices of your metal sculpture. Is there a larger cosmology that holds forth in all of your chosen genres and mediums?

JK: Very interesting question. When I went to art school we really weren’t taught anything. Artist teachers stood around with their hands in their jeans and glowered, as I remember it, while we tried like crazy to get their attention. It was called creative discovery and it worked pretty well actually. One day I was coming out of a classroom and Elmer Bischoff was standing with someone in the hall. He said to me, “Keppelman, you need to get off your motorcycle and into your painting.” He was a rider too and I knew exactly what he meant. Passion, feeling.  I think the general answer to your question is the energetic enjoyment of making visual art. I‘m thinking about all the tricksof the art making game, some from before Cezanne, some after, especially the balance of 2D and 3D perception of space. Pictures since Cezanne are always simultaneously saying “look, I’m an illusion and look, I’m a flat design.” That’s exhilarating. To work, both have to be inferred enough to be convincing. So I try in painting to be articulate formally at the same time that I stir the image up to allude to the flat picture plane. My sculpture is the same because its orientation is pictorial; it tells you to get in front of it like a sign. At best, in my case, there is something haptic or kinetic, maybe ecstatic, a pressing expressive motive or urgency that you may be referring to.

Untitled 12. Acrylic on canvas. 11 x 13.5 x 2.5 inches. JD: For many years you were on the faculty of the art department at Western Washington University. How has teaching and interacting with new students over the years influenced your artistic practice? How important is it for mid-career artists to gain an understanding of the sensibilities of younger, aspiring artists like your students?

JK: Western’s students in studio and design are good and many are eager to figure out who they are as artists. I taught mostly the foundation classes which I enjoyed because those skills are essential and very teachable and students clearly enjoy their successes with them. The process was very useful to me because teaching something, perspective systems, for instance, brought all of that up for me and made it fresh and useful again. I taught one visualization class where the available required texts were unbelievably dull so I wrote a bunch of little lectures, 15 or 18, with lots of slides to cover all the basics of picture making. “Description is revelation,” as Stevens says. Doing that was great fun because I relearned much that I’d forgotten and had an excuse to look at closely at new art concepts that might interest students particularly.

As to your question about what we can learn from student sensibilities, I find them very tech oriented. Image seeking is internet first, camera second and rarely observational. So, optical rather than kinetic and the peculiarities of point and shoot seeing are taken as real. Internet media sampling has a peculiar timeless, placeless impersonality that doesn’t relate to here and now. I focus in classes on direct, playful experimentation with picture making media, charcoal, gouache, airbrush, etc., as sensuous and compelling, motives in themselves. Gesture drawing is key too.

Glad, 2014. Oil on Canvas, 11 x 18 x 2 inches.  JD: Kelly and Joe are two of my favorite people in Seattle's art scene. Both were students of yours at Western and speak of you with an affectionate reverence. What are your thoughts about participating as an artist in their Two Shelves exhibition program?

JK: Well, the tables are turned! I am the peddling rogue artist (think Gulley Jimson in The Horse’s Mouth) and they run an innovative residence gallery that has good shows, cheekily named Two Shelves. I am flattered and pleased to be invited! Both Kelly and Joe are successful artists in their own right now, of course. Interference Thursday June 11th 7 - 10 pm

[twoshelves]

Interference John Keppelman Thursday, June 11 7 - 10 pm

Two Shelves is honored to present 'Interference', an installation of paintings by Bellingham-based artist John Keppelman. "In these six little paintings I am interested in the essence of captured light, making visual weavings of color from light reflected, transmitted and absorbed simultaneously. In terms of affect there is some unexpected turbulence and depth in these pieces, of seeing into and behind the brilliant surface veil of reflected light into clouds or darkness." johnkeppelman.com