Randy Horst

Lorelei Shingledecker: To start, I’m interested in your use of geometric shapes with imagery, especially with the St. Sebastian series. In both those works and the works involving still lifes (food, clouds, etc.) and religious imagery (from Charles Cathedral), you’re redefining the role a simple shape (whether the shapes are perfect or distorted) can play. Will you provide some thoughts around this?

Randy Horst: I’m intrigued with the idea of dualities where one element means more than one thing at a time. That manifests itself in a number of ways within my work – flatness and illusion, real and pictorial, seriousness and humor, heaven and earth, etc. Circles fit into this by being incredibly versatile in their associations. Living in Montana for 15 years increased my interest in Native American Horse cultures. They used the circle to symbolize the universe, the sun, and their communities – it was considered a sacred shape. In the exhibit the circles mean many different things. On the most basic level they create a polka dot-like pattern when repeated that helps to flatten an image.

Chartes Spectrum #1: In Search of Heaven, 2007. Mixed media collage.

In the St. Sebastian series they form radiating rings of a half bull’s-eye and they’re also physical piercings in the paper. Thus they’re both decorative and symbolic of human wounds. The bamboo skewers as arrows were primarily arranged to be dynamic forces piercing and pinning both the figure and the paper. Any specific shapes their arrangements imply are more the by-products of seeking that effect. Since the holes are based upon geometric shapes, the arrow arrangements naturally take on similar geometric qualities.

The Chartes Cathedral pieces are digitally combined and altered photographs. The clouds are earth bound as well as suggest of heaven. The foods and flowers speak to both pleasures on earth and the perfection and abundance promised in heaven. In the “Chartes Spectrum #1″ pieces the Biblical characters, originally intended to be stoic and inspirational to medieval man, are made more human by the addition of the circles which both decorate and disfigure them. The figures in the “Chartes Spectrum #2″ series originally sit at the feet of the saints. They’re much smaller than their Christian heroes – held back by their earthly flaws. Gothic cathedrals were understood to be God’s house on earth, and thus reflect the promise of heaven. Both Chartes series are meant to explore our ideas of salvation.

The St. Sebastian series are quite “photographic” in their appearance. You’ve created a lot of movement with your use of shapes in invoking the persecution he endured. There is also powerful focus on his hands. Will you elaborate on your intent when creating these paintings?

St. Sebastian, 2008. Mixed media on BFK.

There is a notable shift in your two series. The Chartres Cathedral works are more like contemporary graphic design and it’s seemingly more layered, which is interesting. Can you talk about where your mind/heart were during this time and how this shift evolved?

RH: Professionally I have been both an artist and graphic designer. I think the Chartes Cathedral series reflects more of the graphic design side of me. I was using the same software I use for graphic design, so I’m not surprised those images reflect my graphic design sensibilities. The Chartes Cathedral series came first and were more of an experiment with images I had taken while in France without a particular purpose at the time. Their success helped to point me towards the St. Sebastian series, which I wanted to be more personal and with greater emphasis on the artwork as a physical object.

What inspirations do you point to nowadays when continuing your work, and what has inspired you in the past?

RH: I’ve been teaching art history for quite awhile. The reason I was visiting Chartes Cathedral had to do with that. My familiarity with and interest in St. Sebastian also comes from teaching art history. However, I’m not interesting in making artwork that copies the past. It’s the struggles we all face, often daily, that keep me interested in using the human figure. The emotional life and narratives of Biblical and Christian characters are rich in their interactions with others and in their relationship with God. I’m just mining them for ideas and imagery, as artists have done for hundreds of years, while also reflecting the pictorial and media approaches relevant today. In doing the work I’m exploring my own humanity, reflecting on my own relationship with God, and enriching my understanding of the broader Christian narrative.

How do art-making and peacemaking intersect for you?

RH: The aspect of peacemaking that seems to resonate the most with me is learning how to be at peace. It’s a focus on what’s behind deeds rather than a list of deeds. My father was a social worker. When I was growing up we’d have many conversations about life – how to cope with challenges, how to deal with others in good times and bad, and how to be at peace with oneself. I’m still learning how to personally deal with these questions and much of my art is an extension of that internal dialog. I’m personally still a ‘work in progress’, and making artwork helps me explore and better understand the joys and pains of being human. I hope, with any luck, the work kindles insights for others too.

Is there anything else you’d like to add?

RH: Even though I’ve given answers to your questions, I don’t consider my answers to be the definitive ones. All viewers are encouraged and welcome to make their own associations and draw their own conclusions. For me, the success of the work is not in getting everyone to see or understand it the way I do, but in making imagery that’s open to a unique dialog with each person and their circumstance.

Sunday, March 11, 2 to 4 pm
Cohen will present an informal artist talk, and blessings will imparted by Rabbi Marcia Prager and Pastor Amy Yoder McGloughlin.

About her work, Zoe Coehn has said, “My search for meaningful connections to the history of Judaism led me to explore the iconography and earth-based belief systems of the Ancient Near Eastern cultures from which early Judaism developed. I synthesize invented imagery along with found iconography relating to earth, trees, water, sky, gods, and goddesses, imagining what visions my ancient ancestors may have had as they traveled desert landscapes as nomads and cultural go-betweens.”

Zoe Cohen

Douglas Witmer: You seem to take approaches with your work that allow you to move freely between and across certain kinds of boundaries or definitions.  How aware are you of those boundaries when you are beginning work?  Is it something you set out to highlight or address?  What do you learn in the process?

Zoe Cohen, "Drawing Water" series, temporary drawings made with water from the Schuylkill River, 2011.

I generally do start a project with a clear idea of the concept and approach. The actual image-making is usually more improvisational once I’ve determined the meaning and message that I want the materials and imagery sources to convey. When I’m starting a project, I don’t tend to ask myself “what boundaries will I cross with this project?” but rather I consider what connections I want to make, what meanings I want to exist inherently in the work based on the materials, the process, or the source imagery.

DW: You have written, quite beautifully, I think: “I am bound by conscience and conviction to extend my reach beyond art worlds, and into the wider world that is already art.” Describe some of the approaches you have taken in this regard. Where do you find that which is “already art” for you?
 

Zoe Cohen, "The Listening Station," a public art project, 2006.

The participatory projects I have created (The Listening Station, Show Someone How You Feel About Something, and Drawing Water) have all been based on the desire to both isolate and elevate everyday interactions into something more meaningful, and to bring awareness to the creative potential inherent in everyone. So, the act of listening, of communicating by making a drawing or sending a letter in the mail, the process of pulling a bucket of water out of a river, are all things that I have simply pointed to as “already art” by designing public activities around them. I do love my role as artist in these projects, the process of developing the idea, designing the way in which participants will be engaged, but in some ways it’s more of a curatorial role. I am pointing to something that I think is important but letting the participants determine the content.

As I said, I’m also noticing how this idea comes into my other work, the work I consider more “traditional” or at least more studio-based. I usually work from source imagery that is taken from other pre-existing symbol systems or natural forms. Again, I feel that I am choosing and selecting from someting that already exists, and showing how it is meaningful or important. The source imagery for the What Was Our Vision series, and for the wall drawing, comes directly from Ancient Near Eastern art. I’ve selected symbols and patterns that feel interesting and important to me, and use them to express something more contemporary. Other recent and current work is based on magnified images of cells, of body tissues, or micro-organisms. The images already existed in the world as art, either as sacred or profane imagery, or as naturally occurring beautiful forms, and I am reaching into that world to create my art.

Zoe Cohen, "Show Someone How You Feel About Something," a public art project, 2007

ZC: I consider most of my work to be of creating the world I want to see. I also connect a lot of my work with the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam ( repairing the world). Tikkun Olam is based in the Jewish mystical idea that the world was created purposefully incomplete or flawed, and that humans were put on the earth to complete the act of creation. So while I often feel that am trying to “repair” some of the damage we have done ourselves, I am also simply fulfilling the role of being fully human, by creating.

I want to live in a world where people interact meaningfully in public spaces, where we send each other drawings, where we recognize the beauty of the natural world, where we understand and mediate the impact we have on the environment, where we feel connected to each other and the land we live on and from. I want to live in a world where we can draw new conclusions from ancient texts and images in order to learn from our past and create a more vibrant future. Most of all I want everyone to know that human connection and creativity is available to them at any time. Creating situations for people to experience this truth is the basis of my work.

West Philadelphia artist Zoe Cohen works across a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, and conceptual and community-based art.

“What Was Our Vision” is a series of intimate works on paper, originally created during the artist’s 2008 residency at the Philadelphia Cathedral, and subsequently shown at Philadelphia’s Museum of Jewish Art. The 15 mixed-media works on paper are based on the artist’s visual research into the belief systems of the Ancient Near East.

For her exhibition at The Museum of Art and Peace, Cohen has completed a new large unique site-specific wall drawing that expands upon the imagery, both in size, but also in terms of the resonance of meaning. Utilizing an entire exhibition area with plentiful daylight from large lunette windows, Cohen’s drawing combines imagery suggesting (super)natural elements impacting a landscape. On one wall, a “sun” spreads its rays towards a facing wall bearing a large image which can be read as wind, rain, or smoke. Both walls are connected by mountain or mound images taken directly from the artist’s works on paper.

Randall Stoltzfus, "Orans"

The Museum’s inaugural exhibition presents the work of Brooklyn-based artist Randall Stoltzfus.

The exhibition features several of the artist’s recent paintings as well as a series of hand-manipulated digital prints.

Using a personally-developed style of applying the paint to the canvas, Stoltzfus slowly and intuitively builds richly-textured images that suggest nighttime landscapes in which light and dark engage in a compelling relationship.

Jump to exhibition views–>

In her 2006 essay about his work, the critic Barbara Rose said, “The points of light that coalesce to make up Stoltzfus’ nostalgic images of forests and lakes bring to mind the Impressionist technique of breaking up colors into individual dabs of paint. However, unlike the Impressionists and post Impressionists, Stoltzfus is not interested in the optical mixture of color or in high key hues and pastels. There are no visible figures in his works, although if one looks at the images long enough, strange faces and ghostly apparitions emerge…The name of his website, www.sloweye.net, suggests his intention to slow down vision, recalling Andre Gide’s advice to his readers “Do not understand me too quickly.” Indeed, the artist has also said that his involvement with the slow techniques of traditional oil painting allow him to “calmly concentrate on what moves me.”

More recently Stoltzfus has taken a unique approach to digital printmaking. In a project he refers to as “souping-down technology”, Stoltzfus utilizes nearly obsolete large-format inkjet printers, open-source software to reconfigure printer drivers, and modified ink cartridges filled with ink he makes himself. The images are printed on aluminum leaf with further additions of aluminum and gold leaf applied by hand.

Randall Stoltzfus was born in 1971 and raised in rural Virginia. He studied painting at American University in Washington, DC. Since then his work has been shown internationally, including solo exhibitions in New York, Virginia, and in Italy, where he was an artist in residence at an active insane asylum. He lives and works in Brooklyn, NY. For more info about his work, visit: www.sloweye.net.