Episode 28: Elizabeth Chiles - Weave

Scott David Gordon — Sat, 12 May 2018 16:00:00 -0500

"What are the sensual takeaways from being in a place? When I think about how it feels to be lying in my backyard in the hammock watching the pecan trees it's not static images of green leaves. It's spectral light, it's rainbow light moving through. It has pink and it has orange and it has all of these colors."

Elizabeth Chiles creates photographic collages and complex composites with images she has taken of nature. Growing up her love of the outdoors and the openness of the big Texas sky lent itself to her eventual pursuit of the natural world as her primary subject. As a child each day was an eternity without rules, with time to explore and enjoy her shared suburban wilderness.

She found her innate calling to create art in college while studying art history and went on to study photography, video, performance, and book making in graduate school. During her years at school she also worked at many prestigious art galleries and gained a very useful education there as well. Since moving back to Austin after graduating she has continued to purse the same questions that have fascinated and motivated her from the beginning.

How do you communicate through images the quiet moments and slowness of life in a fraction of a second captured by a camera? How do you make work that is alive and true to what a moment in the world is like? She finds much joy in the making of the work and wants to contribute her own voice to the dialogue happening across time with artists past and present.

Her most recent project and current exhibition at grayDUCK Gallery is called WEAVE. Images of plants, tress, and clouds have been woven together with vivid colors that are based more on personal perception than any realistic rendering. They are sensual takeaways from being in a place, light moving through things, and experiments seeking to shift perspectives and move the viewer through the world in a very alive way. The whole project including the exhibit, poetry, performance, and workshops, is a conversation of lines of interaction, each being an individual consciousness, woven together with horizontal lines of metaphorical text and dialogue to create something stronger and more whole. A textile of reciprocity.

The breadth of Elizabeth’s knowledge of art, history, and photography is vast and we only just scratched the surface of what she could share. Hopefully there will be a part two at some point. Please enjoy the interview and if you come across this episode before May 20, 2018 please make a point to see her work at grayDUCK Gallery.

WEAVE

grayDUCK Gallery

Exhibition Dates: April 13th - May 20th, 2018

2213 E. Cesar Chavez
Austin, TX. 78702
(E. Cesar Chavez & Mildred)

512-826-5334

duckduck@grayduckgallery.com

grayduckgallery.com

Hours: Thur-Sat 11-6pm & Sun 12-5pm

Parking is located in the back of the building via the alley off of Mildred

Some of the subjects we discuss:

Childhood in nature
Texas/family heritage
College/art history major
Finding clarity/crossroads
Move to Houston/then Boston
Krakow Gallery/making work
Commercial gallery education
Client relationships/selling work
Graduate school at SFAI
Fraenkel Gallery/job miracle
Respect for artwork
Move back to Austin
Leap before you look
Lora Reynolds Gallery/teaching
Weave at GrayDuck
Collages/composites
Introduction of vivid color
Performance/collaboration
Text/poetry

Banner image by Elizabeth Chiles

Links:

Episode 19: Deborah Roberts - Dedicated to the Work

Scott David Gordon — Sat, 10 Mar 2018 05:00:00 -0600

"I’ve always dedicated my life to the work, and what ever the work needed that’s what I did."

It has been an incredible year for Austin based artist Deborah Roberts. But after decades of hard work and scholarship it’s not really a surprise. She was already an established artist long before deciding to go back to school to get her MFA in 2014, to study and find the language and direction for her new work. Her imagery started out in a very romantic Americana style but after a time that didn’t completely match the reality of what she was feeling and seeing in the world. The work needed to change. After finishing school she gave herself two years to succeed in art before having to give up once and for all. Then she received a grant from the Pollock-Krasner Foundation in 2016. For the first time she could spend a whole year completely focused on her art full time and create without fear. What has followed is sold out shows all over the country and lots of press praising the work and giving her credit which was overdue.

With a focus in collage, painting, mixed media/installation, and text, Roberts is best known for creating portraits of young black girls, aged 8-10, that ask the viewer to consider how their beauty has been imagined: by art history, pop culture, American history, and black culture. And when and why do these young vulnerable girls have to put on their gloves and start fighting battles? It's important work and it resonates with a lot of people.

Deborah is a delight to be around and the interview was a lot of fun. We go all the way back to her beginnings in art and work our way to the present. She then dissects the meaning and language of the work and talks about the future and her new found fame and power.

Some of the subjects we discuss:

Drawing as a kid
Forced busing
Magnet School/Gifted and Talented
First sold out show
Black Americana romantic painting style
Norman Rockwell
Work becoming more abstract/complicated
The never-ending summer break
Feeling the need for more scholarship
Going back to school/graduate degree
Finding the language for you work
Starting small
Art Palace show
Getting a job/struggling
Avoiding the trap/quitting
Two year agreement
Pollock-Krasner grant year
Creating work without fear
Volta NY/selling out everything
Where have you been?
An incredible year/new notoriety
Listening to the work
Slowing down and scaling up
Incorporating more painting
The structure of a piece
Four freedoms project
New found power

Banner image components by Deborah Roberts
(left to right) Betwixt, Untitled, It's All Good,
Power Has No Use For Truth, Red Stripes.

Links:

Austin Art Talk - Episodes Tagged with “Collage”

Episode 28: Elizabeth Chiles - Weave

Episode 19: Deborah Roberts - Dedicated to the Work