Dan & Lindsay, Lovers Enjoying the Park

Dan & Lindsay
(sans bad photo of a guy I know).


Dan & Lindsay, Lovers Enjoying the Park

Sunny. The early spring evenings come to you with a confident balm. To a place like New England, they say, "It's going to be alright. You've suffered long enough without genuine sunshine and its sometime promise of unquestionable warmth. " When these days happen, you see people basking in them. Reveling. Remembering what it's like to walk around with a smile instead of a wind-chiseled scowl. Games are played in fields, people not only smile back but foster smiles, and anything you went through in the winter shall thaw, you say to yourself. Friday of last week was one of those days. I wandered over from my gallery job to Boston Common, essentially to bask in the warmth, take in the refreshing rushes of park people in their spring-mind, and finally, to lie down in the grass and not think heavily, not plan perpetually, and not finish some project.

I guess I'm something of a romantic; though, you'd think by 2007, we could come up with a better word for it, no? I'm a ragamuffin child (by way of Simon and Garfunkel), a wide-eyed flaneur (by way of Walter Benjamin and in this case, Louis Sullivan), a seeker of, in this case, warm fuzzies. Be careful what you ask for. While sitting on a bench, enjoying the polyphony of conversation and foot traffic, I noticed a resolute experiment in early-evening photo-taking (during what's called "the magic hour" by cinematographers) that a man and a women were engaged in, by the fountain. They didn't quite look like tourists. Their attempts had the focus of a pair on a mission, while their behavior was raw play, at almost-sunset. As I am apt to do, I went over and asked if they were visiting from out of town, and if they wanted their photo taken by me. They explained that they were locals, and that they were enjoying doing it themselves. However, once I came over, it was hard to leave the two-part harmony and syncopated rhythm of their voices. They had that stay-a-while-and-talk look in their eyes, and so I did. After a few minutes, I explained this site and asked Mr. Dan and Ms. Lindsay if I could press record on my technological dickey-doo, and they were all for it. The conversation was the perfect sorbet to a week of hoping for spring. Their togetherness was a wonderful antidote to the sometime-feeling of being (as Claire Danes once sighed it into our lexicon) a failed heterosexual. We had a good time explaining, suggesting, declaring, wondering. Talking and playing.



* Note: I have done my best to translate the musicality (accents, syncopation, melody) of the couple's way of talking. The accents and other notations are there for you to better hear the focus and play in the telling. The explanation of action is there for you to imagine our evening with more clarity (there was obviously more laughter than noted). Let me know if this works, as I will be experimenting with elements like these from time to time.


I. Hello's and a Little East Coast Swing

Dan: Give us the questions. Just turn it on. Let's start. I like it.
CE: Boston Common, by the Park T stop.
Dan: By the Titan Fountain.
CE: April 20, 2007. Dan and Lindsay. They're engaged.
Dan: 6:49
CE: They're still engaged at 6:49.
Dan: 6:51...
Lindsay: We're going to have to see.
Dan: We're going to have to see about that.
Lindsay: Moment by moment.
CE: How did you two meet?
Dan: Swing Dancing.
Lindsay: Swing Dancing!
CE: Swing dancing. Where?
Dan: Brown University Swing Club. The "other" swing club.
CE: It's called the other swing club, or is there like one and...?
Dan: Well, Brown is a liberal place.
Lindsay: It could mean, you know, the naughty, experimental swinging. Or it could mean the dance club format of the 40's.
Dan: We were doing the vertical swing.
Lindsay: Yeah. It's great. We still go.
CE: Where do you guys go? Ryles?
Lindsay: Nowadays? To MIT, actually. They have a club there.
Dan: It reminds us of the good old days. Where it's just a bunch of people coming together, dancing. A little less cliquey. A little bit more open. People are still learning so they're still having fun. They haven't taken so many classes that the fun has been mashed out of them.
[CE & Lindsay laugh.]
CE: My friend went to MIT, grad, and met his wife there. Through the ballroom dancing classes.
Dan: But we don't ballroom though.
Lindsay: But yeah, it's funny. I didn't get into dancing to "meet people," but it definitely, definitely can happen.You find couples on their way.
Dan: You told me you got into dancing to meet me!

II. School, Love, Etc.

CE: what did you study at Brown?
Dan: I was a medical student. She was...
Lindsay: I was studying international development.
Dan: Now I work internationally, and the romance continues... on a multinational scale.
[Dan and Lindsay look at each other fondly and laugh.]
CE: That's amazing! That's like, uh, love letters all over the countr-, world.
Dan: That's right.
Lindsay: Sorta, yeah [smiles].
Dan: That's right. We uh, think local, make love... internationally.
CE: That's great, that's great.
Dan: And by love I mean, you know, the vertical kind.
Lindsay: I'm just shaking my head. [Head shakes, face snickers and smiles.]
Dan: My last name is Smith, in case you were wondering.


CE: And your name and address, uh.... Anyway, so you guys were taking these Polaroids. G-rated Polaroids.
Lindsay: PG.
Dan: Distinctly vertical.
CE: Distinctly vertical. Why did you start taking these Polaroids?
Lindsay: I have this Polaroid that I got for this work thing. I didn't end up using all the film, so I though, you know, why not...
Dan: Shoot the beautiful day...
Lindsay: With my honey dear. Because I hardly have any pictures of him. And it's so much more fun to have instant gratification with Polaroids.
Dan: Polaroid is actually the only type of camera that will I will produce an image in.
CE: So, you don't exist?
Dan: The rest are mirrors. It doesn't show. Garlic, I don't like garlic either.
Lindsay: Yeah, big problem. One time, there was this guy carrying a fence stake. Dan just like, ran in the other direction. It took me another day to realize. Stakes, another big phobia for him.
Dan: Unlike my vampire brethren, though, I went crying, like a small dog.
Lindsay: They were tears of blood, so.
CE: Not like, The Band song, "Tears of Rage"?
Dan: Tears of blood.
Lindsay: You know, we had troubles with it. He just can't cry human tears.
Dan: What can you do? It makes me a little anemic sometimes, during those tear-jerker movies. Anemic.
CE: Do you have to like stop yourself from bringing it up in interviews [when they ask,] "Is there something you need to tell us about yourself?"
Dan: I'm just like, "Guys, do you have a transfusion bank?" And they're like, "We do." And I'm like, "That's great."Ah [sigh], kind of a non-sequitor conversation.

Lindsay: Oh, it's like so many other things. Do you tell people these things?. How will you be judged. And you know, you're born a vampire. It's not a choice that you make.
Dan: No. It was more injected into me by a blood-thirsty siren.
Lindsay: Again. did you choose that? Did you wake up one day and say, "I'm going to be a vampire"?
Dan: Actually, I did go to Ryle's that night, and that's where it happened.
CE: The sirens at Ryle's. it's not just middle-aged people drinking cocktails, trying to dance.
Lindsay: Here, across Beacon Hill, it's all the more poignant to be talking about vampires. Where are their rights?
CE: Where are their rights? Don't they work in those big structures [skyscrapers] over there? But they bite and claw into other countries and other banks.
Dan:They suckle the fortunes- internationally. No longer jugular. It's multinationally-jugular.
Lindsay: My, the world has really changed!

III. Politics (good and bad), Jobs, and an Ugly Bug with a Pretty Name

CE: So, how old are you folks?
Dan: I'm 30.
Lindsay: I'm 23.
Dan: Robbing -the- cradle.
CE: So, you met at Brown? You were a grad student?
Dan: I was a medical student. yeah...
CE: Lindsay, did you consider Clark? I went to Clark, and they have a big International Development department.
Lindsay:I didn't know what I was going to study when I entered college. I thought I was going to do, potentially theater.
Dan: She was a child star. Google her!
Lindsay: You can google me.
CE: Google you. I don't know your last name... Lindsay Smith.
Lindsay: I did a couple plays as a child and a couple independent films as a teenager. But I ended up getting more interested in non-profit work and social justice work. Then I got into international development. But yeah, I hear Clark is really cool for that stuff.
Dan: She hasn't been bitter one day since.
Lindsay: About not be an actress?
Dan: About social justice.
Lindsay: No, no, never bitter. Not me.
Dan: Neither one of us. We're the cheery Bostonians.
CE: The "Cheery Bostonians," right here!
Lindsay: They should just call me Lindsay Bitters.
CE: Lindsay Bitters, that sounds like a drink. Can I have a Lindsay Bitters, on the rocks?
Dan: Lindsay Bitters...
CE: Which indie films were you in?
Lindsay: Well, they were indie, you know. They were film festival films. There was one called...
Dan: DVD stock [type films].
CE: My friends just made a movie like that. They're trying to get festivals and/or DVD distribution. Still Green. It's a coming-of-age, last summer before college, summer house at the beach film. Shit is heavy.
Dan: Oh, yeah. This move is called Cicadas.
CE: Beautiful sounding... is it about sitting on the porch and listening to cicadas?
Lindsay: It's about how sometimes in moments of great pain, you can come out of your shell with the help of good friends.
Dan: And become a horrible creature who makes awful noises...
Lindsay: and then suddenly dies...
Dan: and then usually dies by crashing into a window.
Lindsay: It kind of takes the first half of the metaphor. Coming out of a shell. Discard the being alive for but one day, and then dying.
Dan: It's kind of like the butterfly metaphor, the cocoon. But with you know, with giant insect eyeballs and a giant awful body, and not beautiful wings. [All laugh and squirm at the image].
CE: It must have looked beautiful, visually.
Dan: But, it's not true. none of it's true. She's much more of a mariposa than a cicada. I'll tell you now!
Lindsay: It's a cool movie. The same director just made a movie called Jumping Off Bridges. It's screening all over the place, so that's exciting.


CE: Dan, are you doing Doctors Without Borders?
Dan: No, i work with Partners in Health, which is the local game in town. It's the Boston-based Doctors Without Borders. I volunteer with them because I work at the hospital that they're affiliated with. I work mostly in Mexico. In Chiapas. Actually, I just came from Harvard, at the Rockefeller Center for Latin American Studies.
Lindsay: He went to a twalk.
Dan: I went to a talk with John Ross, who is one of the premier left press journalists. He was also a beat poet back in the day. He read poetry and he tells his journalistic tales much like a round table, fire side chat. Or more like a story telling. It was actually a lot of fun. Even though I agree with a lot of what he said, at the q&a session, I asked him a question I knew would be very hard for him to answer: "What are the downsides of all the people you are saying are so good?" Like Lopez Obrador or the Zapatistas. He couldn't answer.
Lindsay: He couldn't answer? I mean, if you're look at individuals, you have to able to analyze the individuals...
Dan: Good and bad...
Lindsay: Well, rigorously, let's just say, rigorously.
Dan: I would personally not join a revolution unless they're going to say, "Okay these are both our goods and our downs." Because once focus only on the good, then you just end up in the same oooollld shit.
Lindsay: Ideologoical , dogmatic rut!
Dan: It happened to the Stalinists... it happened to the Mexican Revolution.
Lindsay: It happens to every good idea, if you don't watch out.
CE: You need good, old self-criticism, right?
Dan: You do. you need to be like, "This is what we're doing well. This is what we need to do better." With a lot of these things, they're up against much, they don't [think they] have a space for self-criticism.
Lindsay: I think it depends who you're talking about. I don't know about Obrador. i think He's pretty much like, "Get in the tent, play my guitar, sing some songs, wave my flag". I think some of the Zapatistas have more self-reflexion. They have really big encuentros, they also have meetings, set priorities. It's about consent these days.
Dan: I would like to see more, personally.
CE: There's a writer, Vijay Prashad. He teaches at trinity in Hartford. He's written a few books. The one I'm reading, The Karma of Brown Folk is about South Asians in America... Their immigrant story, essentially. The ways it's been politicized by various parties. For good and bad. He wrote a new book, The Darker Nations, and it's a look at six developing countries and their plights after colonization. In kind of a self-critical ways, looking at the ways they've tried to gain independence and develop nationhood, in good ways and in ways he's critical about. And this guy! The great thing about Prashad is he's so well-read, passionate-- it's criticism, but it's still very passionate criticism-- and he take on various sides and points of view. It's very enjoyable reading.
Lindsay: I love reading about that.
Dan: South Asia, colonization...
Lindsay: And the end of colonialism and the post-colonial period. It's a period I always find interesting. It shapes so much of everything today. It's so important to understand.

Dan: Just to bring it down to Mexico again, because I know more about that.
Lindsay: Because that's what you know! [Smiles at him, laughs knowingly].
Dan: That's what i know. I'm a one trick pony. So I'm reading right now, actually, an account of one of the soldiers that went with Cortez to Tenochitlan, to defeat, or conquer, Montezuma. The amazing thing about it is, the guy is probably a pretty straight forward Joe, back in the days of Spanish Conquest. His details are from the trenches looking up. It was amazing. You know, [he wrote things like,] "Cortez lost his sandal during the fight, and couldn't recover it." And the language going around, as they're marching to the great capital of Mexico, is one of moral high ground: "We've come here to civilize you; " "We've come here to stop the sacrificing of human beings;" "We've come here to give you the true lord Jesus Christ."

But really, they're in it for the gold. They're there for the cash and the ladies. You know what's so interesting about it, too? Montezuma was such an imperialist himself. That's so interesting. Empire conquering empire. That's how they were able to do it. When they marched on, they were able to get the help of the people in Campeche and Tabasco, and they were able to get the help of all those tribes that were like, "We hate Montezuma."

Lindsay: Yeah, they gave him all their best food and best skins and animals and killed their virgins.
Dan: It reminded me a lot of the language that Bush sold to the world to march on Iraq. This moral high ground talk. Which, in some contexts, just as in Christianity, has some truth to some people. But it's for the gold. Black gold [oil]. It's just so amazing: "Let us learn what history teaches. History teaches." Eh, it doesn't teach. We don't listen.
CE: We don't listen.

IV. Time to Take in the Night

CE: This is so funny, these are three of my old friends, just walking by...
Lindsay: want to go talk to them?
CE: I'm not terribly close to them.
Dan: Want a picture of them, the three of them walking by?
CE: I'll just call them in a minute. I'll keep it up there [pointing to my head]. And I'll write some story about, walking, walking away... in my life, their lives, our lives.
Lindsay: We need to go watch this movie.
CE: Oh, what are you watching?
Lindsay: We might The Namesake, which i think at 7:30.
CE: Have you read the book? I hear it's good.
Lindsay: I read the book, it's good.
Dan: South Asian [stuff], that's her.
CE: I should get your email so that i could email you the interview and email the link, hoping that this was loud enough to be recorded.
Dan: Yeah...

We start our "see you later's", then they're gone, and I'm taking in the early afternoon, the conversation, and the proof [pointing to my head]. Sure, there's tape, sure there's Polaroids, but I'll keep it in my head... the experience. I'll keep it in my head as a distinctly vertical experience.

That guy who likes to talk with people
(Shahin/ conversations, etc./ CE).

Alex Paik: Painter of (Post)-Ironic Sincerity

Two words for you: Alex Paik. Two more: video games. Another pair, for good measure: abstract art. What am I throwing your way? Well, a curve ball from Philadelphia. Alex Paik is an artist whose work I found while looking

Mike Tyson's Punchout (TKO)
acrylic on canvas
66 x 60 inches
2007

closely at the recent New American Paintings (Issue Number 69). I was standing in the Harvard Coop, looking semi-serious and inquisitive (I suppose that's the look suggested for that place), when the issue caught my eye.
I opened it up to find some fascinating work being done in the Mid-Atlantic states, per the regional focus the magazine gives for each issue. Then I saw the work of one Alex Paik.

The paintings were quite striking: their colors suggested humbleness, their subject matter offered up humor and something beyond irony or nostalgia, and their stand-out quality as a series made me feel like he was on to something. He was, and is. In his artsist statement, I heard a voice with refreshing doses of intelligence, irony, sincerity, reverence, and humor. Often times, artists, or the critics and theorists who place them on/bring them down from pedestals, have one or a couple of these qualities, but it's rare-- heck, it's really something else-- when they're combined. In simple terms, Alex Paik provides us with abstract paintings whose literal source material comes from video games. However, there's more going on in his work than the obvious. To find out more about how those six words from the beginning of this introduction work together, or to hear more from the artist himself, read on. You could also visit his website at www.alexpaik.com. It will make you smile. Smiling is good; as Alex would say: "Besides, happy is the new sad".

* The interview is from emails back and forth between Alex and myself over the last week. All images are made by Alex Paik, and have been used by permission from the artist. They can be found at www.alexpaik.com. *

CE: How did you wind up doing what you are known for, painting? How many years have you been doing it? Does it satisfy any childhood or adult passions, desires, or interests?

AP: I actually thought I was going to be a computer programmer for a while. I took a bunch of computer programming classes during high school, but decided during my senior year that I wanted to do hand drawn animation. (I had even declared my major as Computer Science on all of my college applications) Once I got to Penn State, I had to take beginning drawing and painting classess in order to build up a portfolio so that I could transfer to animation school. Then a couple things happened: I got rejected from CalArts (which was where I wanted to go for animation), I realized more and more that if I continued down the animation course I would be a cog in a large machine spending days animating like 2 seconds of a leaf blowing in the background or something, and I also began to really love the fine arts and the ways that it made me think. So I finished college with a Fine Arts degree, went to grad school, and have been doing it since.

Art is really satisfying to me because it is a game of incomplete knowledge, a game of questions. When I was in college, I had all of these heavy handed agendas with my work, but I’ve been realizing more and more that there are never really any answers and I really like that. Even in specific paintings I can decide that a color “works” next to another color or I can like the relationships between different shapes and lines, but in the end there’s no way to say authoritatively what is good or bad. Even a painting made up of all the “wrong” moves can end up being really rich and interesting. It’s all about the relationships between things (the various relationships within the painting, the size of the painting, the materials, the historical context, the physical context) coming together in an interesting way. And those relationships in turn make you feel/think about different things that are specific to your context, and I love feeling my brain jump around from idea to idea while looking at art, listening to music, and even thinking about my own work.

CE: Your artist statement discusses pop art and Abstract Expressionism. These seem to be obvious influences on your work, or at least schools of art with whom your pieces speak. Which artists of either period do you most connect with?

AP: I’ve been really into Lichtenstein recently. He has a great deadpan humor in his work but he manages to still come across as respecting those he is making fun of. His paintings are also really beautiful I think.

CE: Tell me about a few pieces of his you enjoy. Which pieces floor you? Maybe one that is more deadpan, one that is more melodramatic (thinking of the "I'm drowning, Brad/I love you" ones), one that is more beautiful (thinking of the nude women playing volleyball or the abstract expressionistic strokes over his dots). I find your reading of Lichtenstein to echo or mirror the way someone may read you. That's a compliment. A teacher-mentor once told me, so-and-so does not copy x, y,z. if they're good, they're a "student of" x,y,z. They make their own thing, all the while being "in conversation" with their mentor.

AP: “Still Life with Gold Fish” is a favorite of mine that is at the Philadelphia Museum. I love how overt and dumb the reference is to Matisse’s “Interior with Bowl and Red Fish” (http://www.abcgallery.com/M/matisse/ smatisse49.jpg). And if you don’t get the reference, he hammers you over the head by putting not one, but two Matisse drawings in the background! It’s hilarious! But I also think it is a really elegant painting. I really like how the way he alternated the diagonal lines in and around the fish bowl makes the bowl flatten out and become a pattern.

“Little Big Painting” is at the Whitney. Again, he takes a really stupid reference and turns it into a great painting. He takes the really masculine gesture of the brushstroke from the AbEx painters and completely drains it of its authority. But also by flattening the brushstrokes out and stylizing it the way he does, you find all of these beautiful linear passages within each brushstroke.

“Drowning Girl” is at the MoMA. What the girl is saying (“I don’t care! I’d rather sink than call Brad for help”) becomes for me a critique of the idea of artist as authoritative author that was so important to Modernists. The idea that artists are some sort of cowboys that go out on their own to forge their own paths independent of what came before them is ludicrous. He understood that art, even though it is often made in private, is still an active dialogue with both your contemporaries and predecessors. In an ironic way, though, Lichtenstein simultaneously used an aesthetic that removed the idea of the author to create paintings that are instantly recognizable as Lichtensteins.

CE: You seamlessly weave a humor, appreciation, critique, and passion for contemporary art and pop culture in your artist statement. How have you come to these ways of relating to the field?

AP: I think that’s just naturally the way I am. One second I will be snidely making fun of something, and the next second I’ll be passionately defending it. I’m always trying to see both sides of things. It’s a blessing and a curse, I guess.

CE: Do you find it the mixture of sentiments helpful or problematic?

AP: I think my work might come across as on the fence sometimes, like I can’t decide where to be. Either people like that or they don’t. On my good days, I don’t care if people think that. On my bad days, I get really despondent about that and start doubting myself.

CE: Your work is informed by a unique color palette. Overall, the colors appear soothing. Yet, perhaps there is a tension in certain paintings, when color is introduced. For example, the red in "Super Mario World (Untitled)", or the yellow in " Question Mark Block". They seem to pop and call attention to the "objects" they represent. What are key elements in choosing colors for each canvas? Do you have certain notions of color by which you prefer to work?

Super Mario Bros. 2 Title Screen (Arabesques)
acrylic on canvas
54 x 54 inches
2007

AP: I used to joke and say that “It’s Easter every day in my studio.” I think the color choices come across as childlike and even naïve, but I really get off on cutesy things like that and hopefully the work is good enough that people don’t roll their eyes TOO much at the colors. Just a little bit.

Question Mark Block
acrylic on canvas
30 x 30 inches
2007

I also like muted or pastel colors because I like how they relate to each other, the space in the paintings ends up being a bit murkier, less defined. A couple months ago I put a couple black shapes in one of my paintings and was really taken aback - I realized that I hadn’t used black for almost a year! The black never actually made it into the final painting, but it was funny nonetheless. More recently I’ve been trying to bring in some more keyed up colors to liven things up a bit.

A gallerist told me that she didn’t have the normal gag reflex that she usually has when she sees pastel pinks and purples like in my paintings. I was really happy about that.

CE: You approach some of the most classic video games of our generation. Mike Tyson TKO, Super Mario, even Ms. Pac Man. How did you choose these games? Have you explored other video games? Does the canonical disposition of these games, or the fact that they are well-loved, make the painting process stressful? Do you ever doubt your choices in representation? Conversely, what excited you about the games to explore them over and over, bringing out different elements in each painting?

AP: I, like a lot of our generation, grew up playing the NES and it was a really important part of my childhood. I chose those games mostly because those were the canonical games and I was trying to go through all of the most popular ones as I started this series (which was about a year ago). I’ve also used Powerpuff Girls, Pokemon, Hello Kitty, and other cartoons (like Voltron and Transformers) as sources but definitely not as much as the Nintendo ones. I am trying more consciously to bring a wider range of subject matter into the paintings. By wider range, I mean SNES and other cartoons -- maybe even Sega [gasp]-- but when I first started the series I was just going with my first instinct and those were the ones that came up.


In the beginning, I think I leaned a little more toward “representation” in that it was easy to recognize what game I was using as a source if you had played the games as much or more than I had, but as I keep working I’ve been trying to abstract the source material more and more so that in paintings like "Blades of Steel (Untitled)" and "Super Mario World (Untitled)", it’s a lot harder to tell where it came from. In retrospect, I think I was using the iconic status of the images more as a crutch, but I needed it to generate the work at the time.

I also like the source material because it kind of gives people that don’t know much about art a way to relate to the work. They can be like, “Oh! I see it!” and be happy and I can just affirm that and be done with it. That way they don’t leave thinking that the work is too obtuse. In a similar fashion, it sort of deflates itself to elitists because the source material is kind of dumb.

Blades of Steel (Untitled)

acrylic on canvas
66 x 60 inches
2007

In the end, though, my sources are the generators of interesting shapes for me to play with, and I think the way that I reduce them and place them in the paintings and the way the colors interact with each other are as important, if not more, than the sources themselves. I definitely don’t want people to say “Oh, he paints video games” or whatever. I’d rather them say, “Oh, he paints video games, but turns them into these beautiful abstract paintings.”

CE: Have you ever had an unfortunate or unsettling reading of your work? Are there any criticisms which you are annoyed by?

AP: In my last show, someone wrote at the end of their review something like: “Ultimately, a pixel is just a pixel. It’s not substantial.” I guess they thought my subject matter wasn’t important enough. Maybe I should start a series of paintings about life. Or death. Or the living dead.

CE: If you could curate a group show (including your own work), which other artists would you choose to have in the show? Which pieces?

AP: If I was given the opportunity, I would put all of my underrepresented friends into the show.

Regarding Books, Music and Some Things Philly (with returns to "art")

CE: Are you familiar with the band that only plays songs from Super NES games? I saw them in September (my friend's band Family Junction opened up for them) and they were great, albeit a little over the top.

AP: I think you are talking about The Advantage. I think they are fun (I’ve never seen them live, but I imagine that would be a high energy show), but I don’t think they ever get beyond being a gimmick.

CE: Have you collaborated with writers or musicians? Are you interested in the possibility of collaborating?

AP: I was actually in a band for about a year right after grad school called “Nouveau Riche.” My best memories of being in the band was when the three guys who played instruments would get together and jam (I played guitar). The bassist and I also recorded a fake EP that never got finished. But I really liked that collaborative atmosphere of making music together. The grind of playing show after show definitely was not for me, though, and I eventually had to leave because of that and also because I wasn’t painting enough.

I think collaborating would be fun, but I need to be able to do my thing as well.

CE: Would you ever put your work on a t-shirt? In an ad?

AP: Sure.

CE: Do you listen to music when you paint? Which kinds, or which albums?

AP: I listen to anything. I really like Marissa Nadler’s new album and also The Besnard Lakes’s new album. Every year or so I’ll go on a huge classical kick and listen to all the classical music I have. I think I have about 200 cds worth.

CE: What is the last song that grabbed you?

AP: I didn’t think this was their best album, but I love “Phantom Limb” by the Shins. For the record, I hate Zach Barf (sic). I’ve also been into that ELO song, “Sweet Talkin’ Woman,” since they just came out with that Out of the Blue reissue.

Oh, and I just heard that new M.I.A. song, “Bird Flu” which is pretty cool.

CE: Would you want a band to play at an opening of yours? Would you do an album cover, or let them use one of your paintings for a cover/artwork?


AP: Sure, that would be fun to have a band that I really like to play at an opening. Maybe Spoon or Camera Obscura or the Apples in Stereo. I think it’d be cool to do album covers, but I’m not much of a designer (I did the album cover for a band I was in and I really struggled with it and was not really happy with the end result). I would not want one of my paintings as a cover because I think the size of the paintings is really important.

CE: Do certain songs or albums inspire you to visualize certain spaces, landscapes, characters, worlds?

AP: I don’t think they describe specific spaces for me, but definitely moods. I think I’m trying to make paintings somewhere between The Pipettes, Camera Obscura, the Shins, and Spoon.

CE: For those playing at home, who are The Pipettes, and what is so wonderful about them?

I think somehow the Pipettes go beyond their gimmickiness. Maybe it’s that slight hint of riot girrrl in their voices, maybe it’s the strong harmonies and melodies, I’m not exactly sure. But for me they somehow add something else to the table. And their songs are just too damn catchy to ignore. They also have a great consistent image - they all wear polka dot dresses and have choreographed dances for all of their songs live (See: “Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me” video on YouTube).

CE: Are you reading any good books these days? What is so gripping about the book(s)?

AP: I just finished American Fascists: The Christian Right and the War on America, by Chris Hedges. It was pretty interesting to read especially in the recent political climate. It was also refreshing to read something by a professed Christian that didn’t fall into the American Christian stereotype. I also read Hilary Spurling’s Matisse biography which was fun to read but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone unless they were super into Matisse.

CE: What makes you super into Matisse?

AP: I think Matisse had a fantastic sense of color and there is also a great playfulness in his work, especially in the cutouts. His paintings have an effortless grace to them and still seem fresh to me (my favorite room at the MoMA is the Matisse room). Nothing in his best work seems forced or overworked, qualities that I avoid like the plague in my own work. There is kind of a Neverlandish quality to him - his work seems eternally youthful.

CE: Are you a fan of his cut-outs?

AP: I love his cutouts. As he got older, I think he really let himself go and used the cutouts as playgrounds for his imagination. (I think the biography even mentions him covering his walls with his cutouts to look like he was in an abstract ocean). The boyishness that I love about his earlier work is taken so much further in the cutouts.

CE: Speaking of boyishness and youth, I was in Philadelphia in 2004, and they had the Yoshitomo Nara exhibit at the Philadelphia Institute of Contemporary Art ? Did you see it? Does Nara's mixture of sentiments and aesthetics interest you?

AP: Yeah, I saw that show. I really like a lot of his work, I think it is really beautifully made. Sometimes he gets a little too into the teenage “fuck you” sort of thing for my tastes, but in general I really respect him.

CE: I'm in Philadelphia for 3 days. I know about the Philly Art Museum, the Medical Science Museum, and a few good places to eat Philly Cheese Steak. Tell me five more places to go, things to do, secret spots to explore.

AP:
1) Sabrina’s: best brunch in town.

2) The Dolphin: A dive bar that features topless dancing to 80s power ballads.

3) The Kimmel Center: The Philadelphia Orchestra is one of the best in the world. More people should know about classical music, in my opinion.

4) The Barnes Foundation: OK, actually that’s outside of Philly, but it’ll be coming to Philly soon. Great collection of Post-Impressionist work. They have a lot of great Matisses. And a lot of shitty Soutines.

5) Vintage: this wine bar that has a happy hour with inexpensive but really tasty wines.

CE: What is the last thing you laughed or smiled about?

AP: We’ve just discovered that our cat, Wasabi, will stand up on his hind legs and give you a weird head-butt kiss when you greet him. It’s pretty great.

Super Mario Bros. 2 (Mountain of Sound)

acrylic on canvas
60 x 60 inches
2007