Sam Gibbons

Best of Luck, 2008, acrylic on carved wood panel, 66" x 48" x 2"

There are so many things to enjoy about Sam Gibbons’ shaped paintings and I'm not sure that they're all that obvious or defined. His work elicits an immediate feeling of nostalgia that after a time, turns on you. Instead of exploiting the simultaneously attractive and nasty nature of the characters a by singling them out (I'm thinking of Nara or Dzama), they are intertwined to the point that you have no place to rest your eyes, much less contemplate their cuteness.

Check out his show now up at Claire Oliver through March 14 and see his website here. See the interview below and my previous post on Sam here.

Jon Lutz: I think I’m seeing a lot more bones and blood in this show as opposed to the last…Is there a concept behind a show title like “Bone Meal”?

Sam Gibbons: If there is an overall concept for the show, it would be mortality. That is where Goya’s “Disasters” series fits in. His is probably the most poignant series of work on the subject of death. There are bones that appear in all the paintings in the show but they perform different roles. Some are used to prop up bodies, some signify life leaving a body, some spell out messages, some are discarded refuse. A lot of times, the bones connect parts in the paintings like they would in a living skeleton. The title makes reference to the bones that appear in the work but also refers to the idea of accepting (“eating”) something unpleasant such as death.

JL: You’ve also introduced a kind of greeting card text…where does this come from?

SG: The phrases are a sort of farewell message. Their hollow optimism also makes an attempt at trying to counterbalance the unpleasantness in the paintings. They come up a bit short though--- phrases like “best of luck” send you off to deal with a lot of shit, violence and death without a whole lot on your side.

Strung up on a Dead Tree, 2009, acrylic on carved wood panel, 60" x 48" x 2"

JL: As we saw in the previous post, there are some clear formal differences between your earlier, more narrative works and the newer, symmetrical ones. At the same time, distinct, pseudo-iconic cartoon characters have been your muse throughout. To what degree are the characters self-invented vs. directly appropriated?

SG: There was a lot more outside source material used for the characters that appeared in the earlier work. Even in the earlier work though nothing was directly appropriated. I was still figuring out how to draw cartoons so the source material was used mainly as a drawing reference. I liked seeing the allusion to popular figures and styles in the work though. It plays on the idea of there being a history or lineage of cartooning as well as inducing the feelings of nostalgia. It makes reference to the evolution of cartooning but also to my own evolution in creating cartoons.

JL: Particularly in the earlier works, what role did more common/popular cartoon characters have, especially if not copied per se?

SG: These are the types of cartoons that I grew up loving – especially Chuck Jones’ Looney Tunes and old Disney comics. These paintings dealt with childhood and ideas of innocence. I was drawn to the characters that I responded to the most in my youth.

Bunny Cummy Buns, 2004, ink on paper, 8" x 8"

JL: What initially drew you to such sources in the presentation of a narrative? How has this changed over time?

SG: In these earlier paintings I was trying to subvert the innate qualities of the cartoons. At the same time they also became an homage to the cartoons that I loved as a child. As my drawing ability developed, the characters became more self-invented. As the paintings developed over time, the characters were created without source material. A lot of the characters did retain remnants of the styles of the original sources that I used when learning to draw cartoons. In the work that I’ve been doing lately, if there is a visible outside influence, the characters look less like they are from the Looney Tunes era and have more of an influence from current more adult themed cartoons.

JL: Which ones?

SG: I’m into a lot of the shows that are on Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network. Shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Superjail, Tom Goes to the Mayor. and Home Movies. I also enjoy shows like South Park, Ren and Stimpy, Tim and Eric Awesome Show, and even SpongeBob. This isn’t research work though. I just really enjoy all of these shows --- for entertainment as well as their visual appeal.









JL: What visual artists do you see as influences?

SG: For this last group of work, there is a lot of influence from Goya---specifically from the “The Disasters of War” series. There are bits and pieces of images from his etchings scattered in the new work -- in fact one painting is basically a transcription of the etching “Wonderful Heroism! Against Dead Men.” I’m a big fan of Peter Saul, Philip Guston, and Takashi Murakami, the obvious attraction to these artists being their use of cartoon elements. I am also attracted to the psychedelic, surrealistic, and transformative nature of their work. Like me, a lot of their inspiration comes from cartoons ---but I think the most interesting aspect of their work is seeing how each of them attempts to transcend or reinvent the use of cartooning.

JL: Are you looking at any artists that one may not assume?

SG: Some slightly less obvious influences are Mike Kelley and Paul McCarthy. While they both utilize some cartoon and caricature elements in their work, I am really attracted to their ability to critique societal issues through the use of debasement and transgression. They both have a certain way of walking the fine line between making you want to laugh and making you want to throw up.

Gina Beavers

Check out her show Conversations, which opens tonight and runs through March 5. Also see her website here.

It was a good day, 2006, acrylic on polypropylene paper, 40” x 26”

Z to the A, 2007, acrylic and flashe on polypropylene paper, 26” x 20”
Combat Rock (from 99 Luft Balloons Installation), 2000, tape on faux lizard paper and plexi
Doctor Free, 2006, acrylic on paper, 26" x 20"
untitled, 1999, charcoal on paper, 18” x 24”
Shoddy Journalism, 1997, charcoal on cardboard, 48" x 50" and detail
Sept 50th, 2008, acrylic on canvas, 30” x 40”

Mark T. Stockton

Poised, 2007, 1983 series, charcoal on acid free paper, 108" x 72",

Madonna I (After Lee Friedlander), 2008, 6” x 4", graphite on 26" x 20" BFK Rives

Mr. Olympia (small), 2008, 1974 series, 9", graphite on 26" x 20" BFK Rives

Last year, Mark T. Stockton was gracious enough to participate in my show, Perfect Strangers Daily Operation. I’ve been keeping up with his work on his website and noticed some new gems. I'm not often drawn to work dealing with celebrities, but Stockton's drawings have something good going on. They are more about the former lives of the stars and how their new lives contrast with the original context of the photos; Tom Cruise as a teen idol on the cusp of stardom, Madonna as a struggling artist’s model, and Arnold Schwarzenegger as a championship bodybuilder.

One of the original Lee Friedlander photographs of his Madonna group, from which Stockton's Madonna I after Friedlander comes, is actually now up for auction at Christie's. Check out his Madonna and others in an upcoming at exhibition titled, Drawing in the World, at UArts in Philadelphia. It will be on view from January 22 - February 22. The reception is February 6, 5pm -8pm. There will also a lecture by James Elkins "Can Drawings Think?" on January 27 and a panel with John Yau on February 4.

Sue Havens

More Sue Havens here.

Blue Wrap, 2003, acrylic on canvas, 30” x 36” x 3 1/2”
Before (Green), 2008, acrylic on panel, 12 “ x 16 “ x 1”
Live Ladies, 1995, drawing, collage, xerox, and plate lithography, 15" x 20"
Untitled, 2001, acrylic on wood panel
Coney Island Lagoon, 2005, acrylic on canvas, 54" x 62" x 2"

board at work

Back in 2001, I was working as an art handler at an American art gallery. These three pictures are of the group doodles that we used to do on the table in the back room. I’m not sure that these are the best examples of what we did, but they are the only pictures that still exist, as far as I know (hence the bad quality). The contributors to these works are Matthew Fisher, Bill Fiddler, Stephen Thornhill, and Garth Freeman.

I’d love to show more works done by people at work. If you have something you’d like to submit along those lines, send me an email...

Martin Bromirski

Humberto, God of Knowledge and Rapture, 1991








Two Potatoes Two Worlds, 1989
Celestial Potato, 1989

from Circus on Mars, 2008

Texas Potatoes, 1989

Untitled, 2006

Martin Bromirski's show, Circus on Mars is up now at John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY. The works are hung in an old carriage house and it closes on Nov. 2. See a discussion with Martin about the show and his work in the comments...

Jaime Gecker

I will do a typically Old Gold post and interview soon with Jaime Gecker. In the meantime, check out these fresh new works and her new website for many more. Also see her sculpture from The Longest Day and work in Perfect Strangers.


Renoir Times Two, 2008, ink jet photo,collage and spray paint on paper
12 ¼” x 8 7/8”
Geode, 2007, ink jet photo,collage and spray paint on paper, 4” x 6”
3 Steps, 2007, photo transfer and latex paint on canvas, 10" x 12"
Generation, 2007, polaroid film and collage, 4” x 4”
Ernestine, 2007, polaroid film and collage, 4” x 4”
Safari, 2008, photo transfer and latex paint on canvas, 12” x 16”

Eunice Kim

Eunice Kim’s show Moon the Magic Loser, now up at Canada, might look something you've seen before, but there are many subtle surprises. On paper, you have a grouping of thrift store objects placed in a gallery where old New York Times cover the wall. Instead of being too clean or deliberate (Nick Hess at the Project), her assemblages, collages, and found objects are yellowing, dusty, dirty, and broken. Moon the Magic Loser closes on October 19. Check it out.

Also see: Rob Pruitt at Gavin Brown's Enterprise and Liz-n-Val's newspaper works.

images courtesy Canada.

Rob Matthews

The Dumbest Man Over Austin TX

The Dumbest Man Over San Antonio #3

Rob Matthews’ The Dumbest Man series from 2004 seems to have begun as a cynical critique of the multi-millionaire adventurer/aviator Steve Fossett and developed into a study of selfish and arbitrary pursuits made by those with money to burn. Fossett attempted to go around the world in a balloon six times and was finally successful on the seventh. Since Matthews completed this series, Fossett has disappeared and while pronounced legally dead, no one has found his plane or his body. It was also the most expensive rescue effort on US soil, costing $1.6 million.

What I like about The Dumbest Man series is that Matthews takes a subtle conceptual approach, but that his jumping off point is not easy to pinpoint. The Dumbest Man Over Austin TX was actually the first drawing I saw of his, knowing nothing about the Steve Fossett angle. The drawing, of Fran’s Hamburgers in Austin, TX, was of particular interest to me because I used to live near Fran’s and I always loved its back-story. As the story goes, Fran opened Fran’s after divorcing Dan, who runs Dan’s Hamburgers. I always imagined the statue of this young girl with a guitar on Fran’s was a kind of f-you to Dan, who didn’t have a cool statue.

The Dumbest Man Over San Antonio #2
all drawings: 2004, graphite on paper, 6" x 8"

Since many of the works of the series are scenes of Texas, I decided to pull these out as a group. Texas, despite it’s many great attributes, really drives it home when it comes to such oddities and excesses. For some reason, this series makes me think of other Texas treats like the new $1 billion+ Dallas Cowboys stadium, border crazies, megachurches, Shrub, and the Big Texan.

Matthews currently has a solo show up through Nov. 15 at Daniel Cooney Fine Art and is in Vocabularies of a Metaphor at Hosfelt Gallery in San Francisco. He also has a blog: Matthews the Younger, where you can find links to his works and more.

Stacy Fisher

I had the good fortune of meeting and working with Stacy Fisher this year in conjunction with The Longest Day, in which she had two great works. On this Thursday, September 12, she will be in a group show called The Grey That Thinks Itself Into Your Head Without Asking at Pace University's Peter Fingesten Gallery. For more info on her check her website and see the interview below.

JL: You once told me that you worked on sketches while on vacation. With works like Mohawk and Untitled in mind, I was curious as to what you might be drawing. It also seems like such a nice notion, to go away and make work, casually, comfortably outside of the studio. Could you tell me a little bit more about this process? How important is it for you to work in different places?

SF: I have always been an artist that loves to draw. I like the immediacy of putting ink on paper and documenting ideas, objects and people. When I work in the studio I don't typically use references for what I am making, I rely more on what I remember about the way something looks, or the details I want to exaggerate. When I am out of the studio, particularly outdoors, I don't like to read because I find I just want to look at things. I've noticed that if I make a drawing of a place that I have a much clearer memory of being there, much more than looking at a photograph I've taken. And though I would never necessarily enjoy taking photographs of strangers, if I'm somewhere like a beach, where people are occupied with activities but remaining some-what still, I have an instinctual urge to find compositions and draw them. It is also amusing at the time, when you can compare the actual person to the person you've drawn. It isn't about documenting them specifically, but an overall moment.

JL: You seem to have a very diverse body of work so far. What is it that fosters new ideas, directions, and different ways of thinking about our own work. Is there a part of you that thinks, "how will these 'fit in' with the rest of my work"?

SF: A friend of mine recently burst into laughter after walking into my studio, saying she never knows what to expect when I invite her over. I asked her reluctantly if that was good or bad, and she said it was good because so many artists make the same work over and over and don't explore new ideas. I definitely think about how the work is tied together, and am always surprised, when digging through old work, to find early sketches for sculptures that I might be currently making. I believe there is a certain sensibility that is carried through. When I start a new body of work, I try to take what I was most excited about in the previous work and really try to get to the heart of that interest. Aesthetically, I really try and push my expectations for what something might look like, and how it could be changed to look like something new.

JL: How important is it that there is a connection between your sculpture, paintings, drawings, etc.?

SF: The connection between my drawings, painting and sculpture is very important in that one informs the other. My abstract paintings greatly influence my representational sculpture, and my abstract sculptures rely heavily on shapes and textures in my landscape drawings. I find that if I'm working one way two dimensionally that I work the other way three dimensionally. I'm not exactly sure why, but I think it has to do with the exchange of information.

JL: Works like Green and Plaid Sculpture and Tennis Bricks and Sloping are the result of a very whimsical and sometimes bizarre combination of objects. Could you talk about your attraction to everyday objects and the compulsion to transform, combine, and reproduce them?



SF: When I choose objects to recreate it's often because I have an amplified visual fondness for them, and I either can't dispose of them (the tennis balls) or I shouldn't necessarily own them (metal trash can lids or bricks). It's a little bit like drawing people on the beach-a way of documenting and remembering the way something is or may be. In the end, I use sketches and clay models for determining how they will look rather than the model objects themselves. I like the sculptures to appear as active as possible, so I play around with angles and space relationships when choosing what objects to group together and while the work is in progress. I also consider how the objects are normally used and like to skew their purpose, just enough, to make them look either more stoic or slightly startled as sculptures. I would say I experiment more in terms of scale and painting than I do with the combination of elements. In the new works like Green and Plaid Sculpture, I'm not recreating actual objects but am making my own objects under the influence of my own work thus far.

JL: What influences or sources find there way into these works, artistic or otherwise?

SF: I have come across a couple of ideas that I like from other artists, over time, on the topic of using everyday objects. Claus Oldenburg compared the relevance and desire of recreating objects to portrait painting. An article I read about Frank O'Hara describes his poetry, as quick-paced as it is, as a wish to stop time.

On the Beach, 2008, marker on paper, 10" x 12"
Red & Green Collage, 2006, paper, cardboard, oil pastel, 5" X 4"
Tennis Bricks and Sloping, 2005, paper mache, resin, Magic Sculpt, flock, paint, 17" x 48" x 7"
Book Painting, 2005, acrylic paint on book pages, 8.5" x 11"
Fire Pit, 2007, ballpoint pen on paper, 11" x 14"
Green and Plaid Sculpture, 2008, plaster wood, hardware, paint, 26" x 26" x 5"

John Jerome O'Connor

Itchy Face (1), 2008, 13" x 9", colored pencil on photograph

Terror, 2002, 4 x 3", acrylic and ink on newspaper

Random Map, 1999, 52" x 96", graphite, colored pencil, ink, gesso on paper





Nostradamus, 2005, graphite and colored pencil on paper, 53" x 83"

John Gacy 1 & 2, 2006, collage, 9" x 9"
all images courtesy Pierogi, Brooklyn

I have been a big fan of John O’Connor’s work for a while, especially seeing them in the Greater New York 2005 context. He was gracious enough to let me post some of his earlier works that haven’t seen too much light of day. I should have the chance to catch up with him in the future and discuss some of the works.

His third solo show at Pierogi opens September 5...