THE FOCUS

Rachel Bubis: Your work examines sinister social forces seen through the lens of “unreliable” female protagonists in culture - anti-heroines such as Martha Mitchell, the wife of Nixon’s attorney general, Rosemary, from Rosemary’s Baby, Typhoid Mary, and most recently, Suzanne Pleshette's character in an early episode of Columbo. What draws you to these figures? When did this interest begin? Morgan Ogilvie: Moving to Los Angeles county in 2018 to attend the MFA program in painting at CalArts amplified my interest...

The Focus contributor Ansley Gwin recently visited Knoxville's renowned artist-run gallery space Bad Water, caught the exhibition Piselli by Angélique Heidler, and documented her experience. Check it out! Gallery Visit, Bad Water, November 2021 (feat. Piselli by Angélique Heidler) Gallery Visit, Bad Water, November 2021 (feat. Piselli by Angélique Heidler) Attraction and repulsion, innocence and violence, obsession and indifference; in her new body of work, Paris-born artist Angélique Heidler investigates the paradoxical dualities embedded within mainstream depictions of both...

Rachel Bubis: Much of your work explores occult imagery. Have you experienced anything supernatural? Has a spirit ever approached you when sewing beads onto a Ouija board (Ie: Ectoplasm (2015)? Nick DeFord: Even though I am fascinated by the supernatural and unknown, I (sadly) have never had an unexplainable experience. I want to! I have had uncanny things happen to me, but the truth is that I am pretty skeptical of finding supernatural answers to phenomena we can't explain. It seems...