THE FOCUS

Joshua Bienko: I’m interested in how you construct a painting. I just saw “Unfinished: Thoughts Left Visible" at The Met Breuer. It was incredible. There’s a Rubens painting where the horses and people in the background are rendered in high detail, like 30 or 40 of them. Right down to the kind of thread they’re wearing, but in the foreground, the horse’s head that carries Henry IV, is still sketched out in two or three different positions. It’s trans...

Mary Addison Hackett: The first thing that struck me about some of your recent work was the ambiguous reference to water. You grew up in Haiti, before settling in Palm Coast, Florida—a community developed under the guidance of William Levitt, whose nickname was, “The King of Suburbia.” Can you talk about how your background and coastal living has informed your work? Abigail Lucien: Growing up I was never too far from a body of water; it hadn’t struck...

Amelia Briggs: In Equal Parts you pulled ideas from two different bodies of work. What are those individual bodies of work and what is their relationship to Equal Parts? Virginia Griswold: Sometimes I feel like I am making one long continuous body of work with no beginning or end to it. Exhibitions offer an opportunity to pause, reflect, frame-up ideas, package, and diverge. They offer punctuation on what would otherwise be a long (maybe too long!) run-on sentence. I would...

Denise Stewart-Sanabria: You grew up and got your bachelors in Bogotá, Colombia, your MFA in London, went back to Bogotá, but ended up in the United States? This is pretty exciting- how did you make it all happen? Nelson Gutierrez: After studying in London I went back to Colombia and I met my wife, who is from Miami. She was working in Bogotá at that time, and after a time we decided to come here. So we moved to Miami fro...

Jodi Hays: I love this sentiment your mention in your writing -- “we can complicate and unpack the narratives of everyday life”. Can you name an everyday life narrative that you are most interested in this season?   Katie Hargrave: Right now I am interested in exploring the conversation in our culture surrounding the learning and teaching process. I am a teacher (I teach first year foundations at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga), and I am fascinated by t...

Erica Ciccarone: Your work is in constant conversation with history. Has that always been hand in hand with your thinking about art?  Coriana Close: It started when I was in college. My interest in history is an interest in truth. I'm most fascinated with a question about eternal truths. Are there things that have always been true? I'm not really interested in present biases. What can we learn that we can really stand on? It doesn't matter if you...

Jessica Gatlin: I think process is an important question for me… to ask myself. Because I really don’t know how my work comes about. Corinna Ray: So, we’ll start with process. A Curious Reality, silkscreen on paper and fabric, assemblage, dimensions variable JG: I don’t want to talk about it. [laughs] CR: Do you decide the thing before you make the thing? JG: I think so… I decide some things before I make the thing....

Jody Stokes-Casey: With being selected to exhibit in State of the Art at the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art and being named a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, you’ve had an impressive bout of major successes recently. Congratulations!  John Douglas Powers: Thank you! Being named a Guggenheim Fellow is a tremendous honor and has certainly been a welcome surprise. My inclusion in State of the Art was—and continues to be—a re...