Adam Smith

‘Lumberjack’ from the ‘Bleed Blue’ series. Acrylic on panel. Date: 2010

Interview conducted on April 13, 2010 at Part Time Studios in Philadelphia.

OPAAT: The image on the postcard for this show is a lumberjack. Could you tell us a little about this image, and about the ‘Bleed Blue’ series as a whole?

AS: Well, I had an idea to do a series about blue collar workers for a long time, probably for a couple of years, back when I was doing my older stuff. I never really found the right way to do it, because I didn’t feel that I could find the style- I was searching. But now I feel that I am approaching that, and that it would probably be the right time to do it. Almost as a way to define myself, and start to get done what I want to get done.

OPAAT: Is this something of a statement of intent for you?

AS: The series? Um, kind of. I guess that is where I was heading with my explanation. Stylistically it was a really good way for me to just expand everything that I had been looking at, and had been influenced by and just developing in the last two years. To take that and melt it down together and try to put something down on a panel.

OPAAT: What are those things? Can you describe some of the things that you have been looking at, and that have influenced you?

AS: A lot of it comes from a younger urban art generation, which is documented in magazines like High Fructose and Juxtapoz. So that kind of stuff, and skateboard art. I grew up skateboarding.

OPAAT: Still skateboard?

AS: I do a little bit, but nowhere near seriously. I love it, but just for fun, which is essentially what it is all about anyway. I am not trying to progress. I do skateboard occasionally, more often I’ll ride BMX. But that whole world is like its own subculture.

OPAAT: It is. One of the things that I thought of when I saw the series – as a kid in the 70s I grew up, not just on Mad Magazine, but also on Cracked –

AS: Yeah, I’ve seen Cracked before.

OPAAT: One of the things when I first saw the ‘Bleed Blue’ paintings. One of the things that they brought to mind was the Cracked mascot – where you have the same sort of iconography of work: overalls, bandanna, painter’s hat.

AS: Well, in the Bleed Blue series it is very cartoony. But I am also trying to preserve the attributes of the workers. To create a reliquary of sorts.

OPAAT: To honor them?

AS: To create this atmosphere of them being more than just blue collar, of them being the class that America runs on. But, I am trying to say that kind of discreetly – I don’t want to make it really blatantly obvious and overstated.

OPAAT: What about humor, because there is really an element of humor here. If you hang out with contractors you know that humor is always present, it is often self-mocking, but you also have to be very careful, if you’re an outsider.

AS: They own it.

OPAAT: Right, they own it, and you don’t own it.

AS: Right. I see that a lot with race too, you know. Different races can call themselves names that I can’t.

OPAAT: Only in the same very specialized context. So that tension – tension is power, and I think that that tension works to the painting’s advantage here. Obviously you as the artist are allowed to portray them like this.

AS: Humor has always been a little bit part of my work. You know, the electrician has his fingers crossed so he doesn’t get electrocuted; the lumberjack has got a stump for a hat.

OPAAT: He has a stump for a hat, but he has all of his fingers, which was one of the first things I looked for. He does have all his digits – if you had a butcher it could have been something else.

AS: They all have a little something like that.

OPAAT: I think the other thing that really is impressive is the fullness and the depth of the iconography, of the symbols that you use. The more you look at the paintings the more you see. I guess one of the first coats of paint that you put down was a wall paper of a sort. Each of those designs, behind the figure, is specific to the type of work that the figure portrayed is doing. So the lumberjack, what does he have there?

AS: It is two axes, and then an acorn above. Those were all patterns that I designed, and then screen-printed on the panel. Then I would go in and sand it out a little bit, and put washes and glazes over it. And then paint it some more, and put more wash in. So it recedes pretty far into the background, which is what I wanted it to do.

OPAAT: There is a really great sense of depth, and of depth across each of the palettes. You are thinking about colors in each work, at the same time that you are doing the others?

AS: I would paint the panel one color – actually I designed the colors in the computer. So, the background color that I painted the panel, with a brush, initially, I tried to match as closely as possible to what I had on the computer. And likewise with the screen printing, I tried to mix it to match the computer color. So I could kind of essentially design it on the computer. I tried to make them – because I had a theory that I wanted them to all show well together – I tried to really vary all the colors that were in the background patterns.

OPAAT: So you were trying to come up with a color set for each work, within the work, and then the work within the series?

AS: Right, right. And they’re not all drastically different. I think that the lumberjack and the electrician are both in really cool greens and blues.

OPAAT: If you look at the lumberjack’s hands, they are sort of a Smurf blue, they are still cartoony colors in some ways.

AS: I chose blue because I called the series ‘Bleed Blue’, as in ‘blue collar.’ I guess that is where some literalness comes in, in making them actually blue.

 (full interview here)

 

Peter Kinney

Slingshot Canyon. Medium: ground earth, water color and acrylic medium on 300 pound Fabriano watercolor paper. Date: 2008

Interview conducted on March 5, 2010 at Coyopa Films office in Philadelphia

OPAAT: Peter, could you tell us about the circumstances of painting this image?

PK: The first inspiration was Utah and Nevada, where I travelled the late summer of 2008. I gathered these materials then, the sand, including this pale one in the background. The red sands, the purple sands, the green—there’s all different colors out there, and when I travel I try to pick up as many different earths as I can.

OPAAT: Were all of the pigments from there?

PK: All, with the exception of one. The coal–the darkest–is from the Schuylkill River valley, because I couldn’t find anything that was really dark.  I did find the dark grey and the purple, but for that dark note I needed the coal.

OPAAT: So, how deep did you have to dig to get the coal?

PK: The coal comes from mines. The machines have already dug it up, and they are crushing it in crushers. The powder that is left behind from the crushers is what I find. I go into mines that are abandoned or not working that day and I pick up what’s lying around. Sometimes it’s in runoff, in stream beds mixed with sand. Sometimes it’s pure.  Every time I gather it, it is different, a different granularity. Sometimes it’s pretty thick, or it sparkles.

What I liked about the coal when I found it—above Pottstown, New Philadelphia, that area—is that glitter. It has a facet. And even when it’s very crumbled into powder it has a glitter about it. I like that it came from the earth, and has such a potent history in many ways.  I did a whole series of works in 2000, what I called Mother Night, using coal and medium only. Large work and small work—you’ve probably seen some of those.

OPAAT: Absolutely. And I’ve always wondered in looking at those works, and in looking at this work, as to how temperamental that pigment might be, how easy is it to control this medium.

PK: Not easy. Each batch, I mix in a bowl, a plastic bowl with some medium and some water. And it’s tough to figure out—there’s no formula, you have to guesstimate the amount of medium. You don’t want too much or it will look too soupy or gooey, you don’t want too little or it will flake off or powder. So, somewhere in between. With each batch there’s that element of risk.

“I love that moment just before the sun peeks over a ridge. You can look at the distance and not be blinded by the sun. You see the whole light change, and see a mountain range that shields the sun change as well.”

OPAAT: And here you are working on paper, so you don’t really get to scrub it down and start over again.

PK: Yeah.

OPAAT: You’re working with at least seven or eight pigments, layered in a cross pattern. So, how long did you take to create this, and was it a performance or was it composition?

PK: It was composition over time. It was probably a month that it took to do.

OPAAT: You had to let each layer dry?

PK: Yeah. Each layer has to dry thoroughly. So that when I drag layers over, I don’t want them to mix. I found that it muddies them up.

OPAAT: In a way that’s almost disappointing, because when I look at this, I just see a dance. I see the different layers thrown on top of one another and I think of a spell or an episode. But this was actually more built over time.

PK: Yeah, good point. You know if they were human dancers, or if they dissolved or they could mix. But I’ve tried that and the work hasn’t been very successful. I don’t get the depth. I don’t get the layers. I don’t get the integrity of each color next to another color and through it—which I like in this particular series of works.

And then the lightness in the background comes from staring at sunrises and sunsets, at mountain ridges out west. I love that moment just before the sun peeks over a ridge. You can look at the distance and not be blinded by the sun. You see the whole light change, and see a mountain range that shields the sun change as well. It almost that when the sun gets near the top, it actually spills over and dissolves the ridge into transparency. That’s one of the things that draws my attention, and that I tried to capture in this particular series.

OPAAT: An unveiling of the sky?

PK: Absolutely, with the sky charged and constantly changing ever so subtly, in the early moments of the morning and the late moments of the afternoon.  But I spend the hotter part of the day more for gathering.

OPAAT: Hunter-gatherer by day, painter at dawn–

PK (laughing) Yeah. And twilight –and maybe moonlight too.

(full interview here)