What neighborhood do you live in?
I live in Clinton Hill. I moved here while I was going to Pratt and never left the neighborhood. I love it here; my studio is also in the neighborhood. Clinton Hill has everything I need within walking distance, and sometimes I’ll go a whole week without leaving.

How do you start a new project?
I usually begin a painting with a simple shape or linear element that starts to build the kind of space I want to make. From there the painting can go anywhere. Each successive move then depends on the previous one. I work intuitively, but also deliberately.

Do you have a studio routine?
Lately I've had to cut back on my studio routine a bit. I work four days a week. I also recently switched mediums and my paintings are taking longer to dry, so there's more down time. I'm in there working 3 solid days a week, and then two or three evenings as well. My routine basically revolves around the paintings.

Is there an artist or exhibition that's had an especially significant impact on your development recently?
I've been revisiting Albert Oehlen's Computer Paintings from the 1990s.  These were made using primitive imaging software, and Oehlen chose to manually touch up the images afterwards to smooth out edges or fix mistakes. I think this idea of an humanistic response to digitized images has had a huge impact on my work. There's also a feeling of nostalgia when I view this work, since the first time I picked up a spray can was probably in MacPaint.

You make abstract paintings with colored shapes in the background and squiggles in the foreground. It’s the kind of painting that could easily become formulaic. How have you kept that from happening?
That’s my worst fear! I try to make every painting a different painting compositionally. Sometimes there’s squiggles in the background. I am always trying to introduce new elements into the paintings: new colors, new tools, new techniques, new space. I recently cut a hole in one of my paintings. When I find myself making rules, I try to break them. It’s hard not to get stuck using your favorite shapes and colors, but then that can get boring fast.

You’re under 30 and just joined Horton Gallery’s roster. Do you have any advice for other young artists?
I would say one of the big lessons I’ve learned is to take your time. We all push so hard as artists and we think of opportunities like studio visits to be almost once-in-a-lifetime opportunities. It’s important if you’re not ready to show your work to wait to have a dealer or curator into your studio. You may only get one chance with them.

It’s the other way around with other artists. Ask your favorite artists for studio visits! In my experience, most artists love having company in the studio, and I always learn so much.

Is there another medium or style of work that you’d like to explore or have started to experiment with?
As I said before, I recently cut into one of my paintings. I’d like to find new ways to make reductive moves in my work, not always additive. Lately I’ve been fascinated with additive moves (like painting over) that can have a reductive effect. I’m going to explore more ideas like these, hopefully without the work becoming gimmicky.

How do you describe your work to your parents?
With my Dad I can talk about my work in an art historical context. He gets Lichtenstein, and I think that’s a doorway into my work. My Mom likes to turn the abstract paintings into pictures. I usually tell her it’s just paint.

Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Trudy Benson

By Austin McAllister

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What neighborhood do you live in?
I live in Sunset Park. I moved to this neighborhood from Crown Heights to try and get my studio and apartment in the same area. I love this neighborhood; it’s calm, with great food, and I can be in my studio in five minutes.

How do you start a new project?
I start projects by drawing and looking at a lot of stuff. I draw out ideas; most of them don’t go any farther than a drawing, but some make it out into a piece. For the more site-specific works, I make models. The models aren’t to scale or exact; they are miniature versions of ideas. Using actual material, rather than paper and pen, allows me to think about how the material is going to act in a space.

Do you have a studio routine? How often are you able to work in your studio?
I am in my studio three full days a week, Monday through Wednesday, and most nights. I am trying to get into a steady routine, but I always feel like I am trying to find one and it never stays consistent. It's best for me to have at least five projects going at once so there is always one that I feel like picking up when I get in there.

Your work is abstract and often resembles packages or is made from piles of wood and paper. How do you decide what your work should look like?
I think a lot about the surface of walls, the layers behind walls, and how we compile the structures that hold us. Most of these surfaces are abstract: faux-marble, drywall spray, linoleum, textured wallpaper, etc. In my work these materials are my palette and I am trying to describe an experience with these surfaces.

Is there a driving concept behind what you make?
I use my studio as a test site where I can bring things and look at them. I can move them around, put things together, build, and ask questions. I think about the history of the material, what’s behind it, what will be in front of it, and why this is our visual language.

Is there an artist or exhibition that's had an especially significant impact on your development recently?
I saw a show of Mika Rottenberg’s at Mary Boone a couple of years ago where she showed her video "Squeeze." That video and the presentation of it had such an impact on me—I still think about that piece all the time.

You have a very robust show history outside of New York. How did that happen?
It has all evolved very organically. I had work in Art Chicago a few years ago and that lead to a show in Kansas City, a curator saw my work at that show and told a gallery in Austin, TX, about my work which lead to a show there. I also grew up and lived in Illinois until I was 23 and many of the Midwest shows are from friends and people I know from my time there.

Is there another medium or style of work that you'd like to explore or have started to experiment with?
My background is in painting and drawing. My work is very sculptural, but it is only recently that I have begun making freestanding objects. It is a really different challenge to think about something sitting in space rather than coming off the wall.

How do you describe your work to your parents?
I think my parents describe my work better than I do. My mom is an interior designer of sorts; she mainly picks paint colors for various types of spaces. She did a job recently where she was picking an exterior color for a car dealership in Rockford, IL, and the way she was talking about it made me think, yeah, that’s what my work should be about. My dad is a contractor and does restoration work on older homes. He is constantly building stuff, fitting things together, and uncovering surfaces. My parents are from different kinds of making worlds than where my work fits in, but the language is all the same, and I think they think that is funny.

Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Katie Bell

By Austin McAllister

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What neighborhood do you live in?
I moved to New York in September of last year. I live on the outskirts of Bushwick. It’s an affordable neighborhood, and quiet most of the time.

You were a founding member of Reference Gallery in Richmond Virginia. I sometimes got the impression that it was better known in New York than it was locally. Can you talk about how (or if) the gallery affected your work.
I started Reference Gallery while in school in 2009 with three fellow students.  We felt that the work we were making and interested in wasn’t being represented in Richmond galleries. We were interested in exhibiting work from local artists and also bringing work to Virginia from New York and abroad. There is a strong but small art community in Richmond, and we realized very early on that the majority of our viewership was going to happen online. We organized several shows that engaged the problem of documentation and the dematerialized art object directly.

I thought of Reference as another aspect of my work, not something detached from it, although my work with the gallery happened in a much different head space than my studio practice. The project informed how I consider viewership, display, commodification of art objects, and the exhibition space as a theater. Much of the work I was making while running the space investigated issues of the physical display of work in a gallery setting, specifically when a piece begins, and when it is ready for exhibition.

You may be the only artist we’d describe as a conceptual photorealist. What interests you about representation?
I’m interested in photorealism partly because of its connection to conceptual art. Photorealism and the longer running tradition of trompe l’oeil painting have always been conceptual by nature whether or not issues of representation were initially foregrounded by the artists working in these modes. Problems of representation are becoming ever more complex with the ubiquity of Photoshop and the dematerialization of information storage. While I’m curious about these issues, as well as more fundamental ideas about perception and understanding, I’m also deeply fascinated with the tradition of painting.

Is there an artist or exhibition that’s had an especially significant impact on your development recently?
I recently saw a major retrospective of Roy Lichtenstein’s work at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC.  He was one of the first artists I knew about as a kid and someone I’ve always been interested in, but there was a lot of work in the show that I was unfamiliar with. His paintings of mirrors, studio environments, and reproductions of other artists’ works were amazing to see in person and to think about less as pop problems but as problems of image, reproduction, quotation, and a strangely sincere parody.

I’m looking at "A Home Gallery Doesn’t Need to Be Big, Just Somart* Installation" at Reference Art Gallery on your website as we speak. Can you talk about the concept of the home gallery?
My involvement with the Reference Gallery began by organizing a set of group shows in my apartment. It was through those shows that I met the other co-owners, and where it became apparent that there was potential for a gallery project in Richmond. We decided at the start of the project that we wouldn’t show our own work. The closest we came was a show of our parents’ art. We had exhibited at other spaces as a collective, and felt it was fitting for our final show. My contribution was a set of rooms in the back of the space built to resemble an IKEA showroom with work hung to match the interior design scheme. Much of my work deals with issues of reproduction, so I was interested in the connection with these products as reproduction designer furniture. The DIY ethos of the gallery also seemed to have a nice connection with the process of assembling the store’s items yourself.

Making a home in the gallery brought the project full circle from starting a gallery at home. The four of us had also lived in the apartment above the gallery during our time there, and my studio was upstairs. Because of this, much of my work was made with a domestic scale in mind, and was often informed by domestic subject matter and materials. Another aspect of the installation was to create a meta-critique of the sale of artwork. I wanted to embrace the selling of my work but felt uneasy about the prospect of selling in my own gallery. Although the gallery was technically a for-profit business, much of our programming was in the spirit of a non-profit. Part of this was our inability to sell work, and part was our interest in showing challenging work that wasn’t easily commodified.

Is there another medium or style of work that you’d like to explore or have started to experiment with?
I’ve worked with installation in two recent exhibitions, and it’s a format that I’d like to continue to experiment with. In the last show at Reference I was lucky enough to have continual access to the space and know it in and out. Lately I’ve been working primarily in painting but am also very interested in sculptural problems. Installation seems like a great way to merge the two.

How do you describe your work to your parents?
If my parents ask about my work, I usually describe it to them by texting them photos.

Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Conor Backman

By Austin McAllister

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What neighborhood do you live in?
I’ve been a Bushwicked Klown for the past two years and artist-in-residence at Tandem Bar for the past year. Bushwick is sooo cute! I love the street artist who does scatter pieces of chicken bones and human (?) excrement everywhere in Bushwick—that guy (OR GIRL) has really been getting their message out to the masses in a creative and random way.

Is there an artist or exhibition that’s had an especially significant impact on your development recently?
Shoenice22 on Youtube is a Gulf War veteran who has amassed 50,000,000 views for his ability to consume seemingly inedible products—such as a stick of Old Spice deodorant—in astonishingly short spans of time. Shoenice’s on-camera demeanor is a damaged form of machismo, with a Joker-esque delivery of invented catchphrases and bold promises to feed the starving children in Africa once he gets enough followers. Nearly all of his videos feature a brand-name product, held up to the camera during a couple minutes of banter before being consumed with an aggression and disregard for health that can trigger a gag reflex even from the safe viewing distance of a laptop screen. Though charming and witty, Shoenice is ultimately a tragic and self-sacrificial figure, a court jester performing to appease his own conception of fame: a person who is willing to commit not only his time in the present moment, but his future body and health to the pursuit of attention. He is fully dedicated to the life of a social media avatar and over-the-counter products are his chosen weapons of martyrdom. Despite all the free promotion Shoenice provides for the companies who manufacture the products he chokes down, one gets the sense that this is not the type of unpaid labor companies would like to encourage. Shoenice’s violent consumption stands as a hyperbolic vision of what we each do to our own bodies as we spend our lives munching Doritos and sipping Absolut mixed drinks. We empathize with Shoenice because we understand the grotesque nature of his consumption as an extension of our own gluttony and complicity. As alpha consumer, Shoenice brings shame to the act of consumption and the products consumed. He vulgarizes the names of those products in a spectacular, if unintentional, act of present-day subversion.

You run a popular Tumblr called the “The Jogging.” On it, you’ll see images such as an arrangement of geometrically shaped cheese, followed by a kid proudly displaying a hoof trophy with the caption “Not for sale,” followed by a studio shot of some mustard on a bit of hamburger foil wrap. I’m not sure how to describe the sensibility of the blog, but it does seem to be a monument to absurd and extreme culture. What are your objectives for the blog?
Viewing a newsfeed or dashboard today requires a permanent sense of disinterest on the part of the viewer—to give any one update or image too much attention jeopardizes your ability to understand the news feed as a dynamic whole unfolding in real time. Artists like Lil B or Jogging flip this viewing mode into a mode of production, creating an excess of work that any one viewer probably doesn't have time to view in its entirety. I call this mode of production athletic aesthetics, because its practitioners don't present final products so much as they exercise creativity in an ongoing broadcast format. Part of this way of producing is a response to the now unlimited amount of space to be taken up online—there is no gallery wall or CD with a limited number of songs to be placed on it. A lot of smart people have told me they "tried looking at Jogging for a few pages but didn't get it. Is it just a bunch of random images?" I usually tell them it's important to watch the feed unfold rather than focus on an individual image. Last night I realized part of the reason these intelligent but frustrated viewers might have trouble getting it is because they're ultimately not the ideal audience for the project. The ideal audience for Jogging isn't art experts but Jogging's contributors– these are the only people who follow the project's visual vocabulary close enough to discern and find meaning in the patterns in content because it's a conversation they themselves are creating as they go along.

"But of course the Internet can also become—and partially has become—a space for the strong images and texts that have begun to dominate it. That is why younger generations of artists are increasingly interested in weak visibility and weak public gestures. Everywhere we witness the emergence of artistic groups in which participants and spectators coincide. These groups make art for themselves—and maybe for the artists of other groups if they are ready to collaborate. This kind of participatory practice means that one can become a spectator only when one has already become an artist—otherwise one simply would not be able to gain access to the corresponding art practices." — Boris Groys

Jogging is already more than a Tumblr– we just did a series of stock photos with Dis Magazine, we're doing a residency for making art objects with The Still House group, we've hosted a party in Miami with Stadium Gallery, we're making music videos, producing slam poetry championships, working as a covert advertiser for Tumblr (they give us brands to feature in our sculptures), making our own line of mixed drinks, and much more. The Tumblr is a home base for all of these things to be archived, but the project is branching out.

What is the connection between an object obtained via the Silk Road and the process of bubbling? Are you breaking a buyers code when you sell off seller information from a black market site? Does art-making come with its own codes and moral responsibilities?
I have a body of work called Silk Road Objects that’s separate from what I do with Jogging or my Etsy store. In this Silk Road project I buy items from an anonymous online black market and present obscured versions of those objects that both reveal and conceal their image. Bubbling is a process that uses the negative space from a series of circles placed over an image to reveal/conceal certain details. It’s usually used for porn so that people imagine the person depicted to be nude despite not seeing their actual genitals. It’s a process of addition by subtraction, the viewer creates a fantasy based on what they cannot see. When I present documents of drugs, fake IDs, lock picking devices and more I want to place the viewer in the same position of trust I was in when I anonymously sent my money hoping to receive the items depicted for sale.

How has the reading class you’re running at BHQFU influenced your work?
When I'm reading I'm also writing– so I'm glad to be producing essays again. [These essays are part of Troemel’s body of work.] Chat Room is different from the speaker series because the guests we have don't deliver lectures– for two hours the participants in Chat Room are able to discuss ideas with writers in a conversational format. We usually start by addressing the text but this inevitably veers into other conversational topics. After an hour of talking about the history of Argentine media art with Daniel Quiles our conversation veered into the career of James Franco for half an hour. It's informal, fast paced, and the conversation can cover many topics.

Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Brad Tromiel

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What neighborhood do you live in?
I’ve been living in Bushwick for the past nine months and I love it. When I moved to New York almost three years ago I was pretty against the idea of living in Bushwick because I can be this stubborn contrarian person who doesn’t want to do what everyone else is doing. To be another Bushwick hipster... what a terrible fate. But I don’t really care anymore. Most of my art friends have found their way to this neighborhood over time, and even though I’ve mainly been staying in and watching Pretty Little Liars recently, I still enjoy being part of a community. So being a Bushwick performance artist is one stereotype I accept about myself.

How much time do you spend on a webcam every day?
Currently, I spend very little time on my webcam. Maybe an hour a month. But it wasn’t always like that. In 2008 it was probably an hour a day when I was working on The Scandalishious Project. Five years ago the Internet was a much more anonymous place for me. I barely Facebooked, had no Twitter, Instagram, etc. If you Googled me, nothing would come up. I felt like I could really be someone else and I pushed that as much as I was able to. Being Scandalishious allowed me to perform my sexuality in a way I never felt able to before. Smart Jewish girls like me weren’t supposed to appear sexual. It was very freeing in some ways, but it also took its toll on me, as I dealt with throwing myself into the attention economy.

As I was watching your dance performances and reality show video, I kept thinking about how Marisa Olson, when talking about her well-followed American Idol Blog, said she thought there was no difference between art and pop culture. You often take on characters, but the line between art and general culture seems vague regardless. Where do you locate the art in your work?
I love blurring that line. That’s the exciting part of making art. When people ask me how I figure what I do is art, I often refer to Cindy Sherman’s Centerfolds. These were originally commissioned by Artforum but were edited out because the magazine thought people would confuse them with real magazine centerfolds and no one would know they were actually “art.” That’s a huge reason why Sherman is so influential for me—because she wasn’t interested in parody or satire, she was interested in duplicating and mirroring existing tropes as a way to point them out to her audience. In entering into fields of pop culture and reflecting back what I find there, that is my hope as well.

Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Yes. I guess some people think that “feminism” is a dated concept and I really wish it was, but despite the gains women have made throughout the years, there is still a long way to go. I’ve used my role as a performance artist to explore these inequalities in media culture and the Internet. Before I went on a reality TV dating show, I really believed the women on these shows were moronic sluts. That’s how they were portrayed. But after being on the show I realized they are just normal women, who, like all of us, are trapped by societal standards that dictate their worth and create a desire to fill those standards. Once I realized this, my goal as a contestant on the show was to disrupt this power by taking back control of the character that the producers had tried to fit me into. I needed to be the one to determine my own storyline. This ended up taking the form of me singing a dirty rap song to the bachelor’s parents, denying both the producers and the audience at home their expectations of who they thought sweet, innocent Annie was. My hope was that this reveal would then make viewers at home question their assumptions about the other women they see on reality television.

Do you ever make objects?
Sometimes. Do DVDs count?

Is there an artist or exhibition that’s had an especially significant impact recently on your development?
Meeting Jill Magid when I was finishing up grad school was pretty important for me. During a studio visit, she pointed out that we’ve essentially done the same thing. We both entered into systems of power, often with no agenda and found ourselves caught up in them. She does it with the governments/political systems and I have done it within pop culture.

After grad school I got more interested in live performance, specifically in a gallery setting. Seeing my contemporaries perform, artists like Anya Liftig and Jake Dibeler, has inspired me to work more in the tradition of performance art, exclusively using my body as a medium.

Is there another medium or style of work that you’d like to explore or have started to experiment with?
I’m working on some photographic prints and images printed on foamcore to accompany a project based on a romantic online relationship I had when I was 12 with a 27-year-old man. The piece will also have video and performance elements, but I feel like some parts of the narrative can be better explained through these 2D objects.

How do you describe your work to your parents?
Oh lord. I try to avoid the subject as much as possible. First, let me say they are very supportive of me being an artist, and even though they don’t know that much about art, they “get it.” However, I’m not just making paintings or sculptures here, although I’m jealous of artists who can do that. I often use my body in my work or willingly humiliate myself publicly, so it’s not like I’m “making the family proud.” It’s pretty awkward.

I haven’t gotten around to telling them about the new project I discussed earlier, about my cyber relationship with an older man. I’m trying to explore the complexities of my simultaneous exploitation and complicity in what most people would deem a predatory relationship. I’m kind of hoping they’ll just never find out about it. I mean, I’m sure they’ll still love me and all but... well...

Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Ann Hirsch

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What neighborhood do you live in?
I live on the Bushwick-Ridgewood border and really love it. I used to live in South Williamsburg, and that was fun, but now I prefer living and making art outside the center of activity. There is a certain level of anonymity, which I enjoy, yet it’s still close enough to visit other artist’s studios and galleries.

What made you paint the cement truck?
I decided to paint the cement truck mural after watching the documentary Style Wars, which documents New York street culture and subway graffiti of the early 80s.  There was one term in the documentary that really stayed with me: “going all city,” which meant having your art on a train travel throughout all boroughs. Seeing the painted trains crawl over the bridges and speed through the tunnels really inspired me. I loved how the paintings changed so quickly within different contexts and environments of the city. I don’t care if my mural makes it all around the city, but I do get excited seeing the cement truck in action.

I am also drawn to the actual shape of the cement truck, which reminds me of a giant bead. I have researched beading in West Africa, and I make jewelry with African and Italian beads. It is a dream to paint this shape on such a huge scale. I like how animated the truck becomes when an image rotates on top of it.

You’ve made a lot of large-scale, site-specific work. Does that require a different kind of problem-solving than, say, the smaller paintings you’ve made?
My smaller paintings involve experimentation during the entire process, while my site-specific work begins loosely with drawings and then becomes much more systematic in my execution.

Is there an artist or exhibition that’s had an especially significant impact on your development recently?
El Anatsui has an incredible show up right now at the Brooklyn Museum. A few years ago I visited him in his studio in Nigeria. I’m not sure if he has influenced me directly, but his openness and the spirit of celebration in his work has inspired me.

Is there another medium or style of work that you’d like to explore or have started to experiment with?
I have recently begun painting on silk, and I really love it! I enjoy how the silk takes well to dyes and has a sheen and luminosity to it.

How do you describe your work to your parents?
My parents see me as their daughter rather than an artist. They want me to be happy and they love me but sometimes are confused by the decisions an artist has to make. To answer your question, I tell them my work is abstract, colorful and inspired by textiles.

Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Andrea Bergart

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Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Travess Smalley

By Austin McAllister

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What neighborhood do you live in?
I’ve lived and worked in East Williamsburg for years, but in the past year I’ve spent more and more time in Jersey City with my partner Kaela and her mom Leila. Over the years I’ve had art studios all around Bushwick, including in an ex-textile mill on Thames Street and a former orphanage on Montrose Avenue. At first I was really excited about the cheap rent and how close I was to so many of my friends and fellow artists, but the rent hikes get annoying. I’m currently looking for a new studio in Brooklyn or Manhattan.

How do you start a new project?
My art practice is a process of continual experimentation where one project leads into the next. For example, in the summer of 2011 I began working in my studio on a series of hybrid digital/physical collages that I later made into a book, Capture Physical Presence. These collages were made out of cut-up computer graphic prints that I composed on the scanner bed, scanned, and began to digitally manipulate. I was interested in blurring the line between digital manipulation of an image and physical manipulation of an image. The techniques of Photoshop produce a whole other form of art-making, art education, and technical abilities. In my practice I’m always interested in these ways that the digital and physical intermingle, like how the pen tool in Photoshop mimics an X-acto, and vice versa. While I was working with paper, I began considering what other physical materials are used in the language of Photoshop. My mind jumped to clay, a medium that can be smudged, stretched, and liquified. A few months after finishing my book, I began work on my current project, Compositions in Clay: a series of images made by tightly packing colorful clay on the scanner bed and scanning them at the highest possible resolution.

You went to VCU for printmaking and now make a lot of digital prints. Many of them, at least in reproduction, look like painting. What is the allure of printing?
Yeah! I studied for two years in VCU’s Painting and Digital Printmaking Department. I went on to study sculpture and drawing at Cooper Union, but in many ways I don’t think my mindset ever left the conversation of printing. I’ve been drawn to print because I want to take the computer graphic and digital photograph off of the computer and make them experiential as physical tangible objects that aren’t backlit and can exist without a power outlet. Once digital images and digital creations leave the screen they more easily slip into a larger conversation about the history of the art object.

Is a stretched velvet print actually printed on velvet?
Yes! This past fall I did a project in Glasgow where I worked with a textile printing studio to print some of my newest computer graphic paintings on a tight woven velvet. The velvet soaks up so much ink that they have to be printed on multiple times. The final print is something that is incredibly vibrant and matte. I love how these prints turned out. I’ve also been experimenting with silk and commercial vinyls.

Do you ever miss looking at work on a computer screen once it’s been printed?
After I have the physical object, honestly the digital files are just a letdown. They seem so flat and they don’t carry the perceptual depth that a physical medium provides. Most of the works I make, with the exception of my videos and websites, are made with the thought in mind that these will be actual objects separate from their digital interface. Looking at their files on the computer is a little like watching a film in Final Cut with all of the clips and audio tracks strung together for me to see. It’s too apparent. The computer screen’s light is so static and unchanging.

Is there an artist or exhibition that’s had an especially significant impact recently on your development?
I was really excited that the early digital video artist Lillian Schwartz put her whole videography up on YouTube, but I think she since took it down. I remember finding her YouTube channel and getting so excited that she was doing these abstract visualizers so early in the history of computer graphics and video art. Her short videos/animations created a whole new vocabulary for digital abstraction. I would love to see someone present her work soon in a more formal setting where she could get greater recognition for all she did and the influence she still has.

Also, Matisse: In Search of True Painting. I went with my friend Christopher Schreck and every room was a revelation in process and image making. I loved seeing how Matisse worked through versions of an image, how he documented his process, how his confidence in his personal perception and painting grew. I’ve seen the exhibition twice already and I can think of a handful of artists I would like to go and see it with again just to see how they respond to it.

How do you describe your work to your parents?
My parents have always admired creativity and supported me in what I’m doing, even though they don’t have art backgrounds or care at all about the art world. My mom always says she spelled my name the way it is because she wanted it, and me, to be creative. I don’t need to describe my work to them because they accept it as it is, because it’s from me and they know it makes me happy. I’m very lucky.

Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Travess Smalley

By Austin McAllister

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What neighborhood do you live in?
I live in Bed-Stuy right now. I just moved here two weeks ago and am sleeping on my friend’s couch. Before that I was in Vienna and Amsterdam for a couple months. This seemed like the obvious place for me to live for a long time now, but I think I just need to explore first. I have a show opening March 16 at TRANSFER Gallery in Bushwick, so that’s a nice way to welcome me into the city.

Who or what had the biggest influence on your career early on?
Probably my peers and the people I went to school with. I went to RISD and there were a lot of talented visionaries  there. It was very inspiring. Also the relationships I made and that others made carried on after graduation, and everyone still continues to work closely and support each other’s efforts.

For people unfamiliar with your work, how would you describe it?
Sincere and emotional new-media folk art.

If you could exhibit your work anywhere—not just art institutions—where would it be?
On shower curtains, giant screens on the sides of buildings, in bathroom stalls, and on the back of airplane chairs.

If you couldn’t express yourself through your art, what other medium would you try?
Well, I like sewing a lot. And fashion. When I went to school I thought about going into fashion design, but I opted for painting instead. Probably because I thought it was romantic or something. Plus the patternmaking part of fashion design seemed unpleasant. Also, this sounds cheesy, but when I was younger I thought it might be nice to own a flower shop. I like flowers and they’re pretty and they smell good. I don’t know if that’s a “medium” of expression, but I’m sure to some it is.

What other kind of jobs have you held? Did they help your art at all?
I worked three or four years sewing for small companies that sold handmade goods. I don’t think it directly influenced my art, but I enjoyed it, and it kept me from going insane working shitty jobs in retail or waitressing.

What do your parents think of your art?
My mom thinks its pretty, but I think she’d be more impressed if I had a steady job and health insurance.

Slideshow

Brooklyn Art Stars: Alexandra Gorczynski

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