Here is the second installment of our monthly interview series with Red Dot artists. This month, we take a look inside the world of digital media artist, Kathy Casey. To learn more about Kathy Casey's work, visit her website. 1. Your pieces have so many layers and so much texture. Where does the texture come from? What inspires you in your choice of imagery? I just love texture. Don't know where it comes from. I love the look of telephone poles covered with thousands of stapled flyers in various stages of disintegration. I love peeling paint and the surface of stucco. I love really bumpy knit sweaters I even love texture in my food. I like Madrona trees because the bark peels off like old paint. I guess part of it is the revelation of what lies underneath or what has been before. It weathers and disappears eventually. That process of disintegration is melancholy but that is the process with which we live daily. As far as inspiration it comes from everywhere. In art school Chagall was a favorite. His world was just magical to me, I also greatly admired Picasso, so inventive, a huge visual vocabulary but quite a jerk of a human being. Gaudi, the Spanish architect because he's so fanciful. I liked the old masters, Raphael, that angel of draftsmanship and Caravaggio, partly because he was a rather sinister fellow and Hans Holbein, painter of kings, so rich and opulent. Lots to love in those Dutch painters, of course, Vermeer who is sheer visual poetry. The American abstract expressionists are fascinating because of they embodied an artistic revolution and had so much energy and audacity. In daily life I always have my eyes peeled. I might see something on TV and think that color combination might be interesting to explore. I love poetry in part because of an appreciation of poets ability to conjure an image verbally. A poem might spark an idea. I am influenced by folk art and so called "tribal art" from all over the world but especially from Africa, amazing textiles produced there. The Quilts of Gee's bend. Those ladies down there in Alabama make some of the most extraordinary pieces of modern art I have ever seen. I used to be inspired more by the world of nature (flowers etc.) and still am to an extent but I am finding the human-made world fascinating lately, especially big machines and bridges. Other inspirations for imagery come from buildings. I am intrigued by the light of the windows of skyscrapers at night. Each one has a different quality depending on which lights have been left on. I am also intrigued by aerial views of cities. Love that gridded structure. I became intrigued by the Steel Bridge this summer. The structure is so layered and it needs painting desperately but I took lots of pictures of it this summer and that peeling paint, well...and just to the north there is that fascinating series of grain elevators. There is so much complex shadow-play going on in that thing. History and current events are also a source of curiosity and commentary in my work. 2. How has your art evolved? Have you always worked in the digital space? I've been doing art for a long, long time. My degree is in traditional painting. When I was in school I loved Georgia O'Keefe and her floral closeups. They were so mysterious and compelling and very abstract. A lot of people say they have a sexual connotation. I don't know except that flowers are there for the reproduction of the species so... She was an early influence. I used to do a lot of very abstract floral images. I liked the idea of using imagery from nature but restructuring it to make it unrecognizable and mysterious; something that evoked rather than represented the original image. I've always loved texture and am continually intrigued by color. That has stayed with me as I have moved into working digitally, I love the colors you get on the computer. I got involved with computers in the early '90's. In the "old days" I used to work on a machine that wouldn't show color while you worked. Took up too much memory. Arghh! Adobe Illustrator was the first program I learned, so only flat colors in those days. When I discovered Photoshop and got a machine that would process color as I worked it was a revelation! I made the decision to go "all digital" sometime in the late 90's and have never looked back. I love using technology. I love the challenge of learning what the programs can do, what they can't do and how to coax them to my bidding if they don't quite do what I need. It provides constant learning and really can produce magical results. 3. How do you approach a piece? Walk us through your process. I start with the format. I love working in a square. That beautiful rhomboid. I love the calm symmetry of a square, it's sleeping, inert until I get to mess with its insides. I then usually create a grid for structure. (This is something from my graphic design background). Since I work so abstractly it helps to organize the composition. I think often about the golden mean within the composition and make efforts to structure things at times with that in mind. I then determine the color palette and start painting in Photoshop. I have made hundreds of brushes with the brush feature in the program and I play with the parameters of the brushes for different effects. I also use the pattern maker feature and adjustment layers and masks and just start to lay in the elements. One of the great features of the layer mask is that you can "erase" without destroying the original content so if I change my mind I can come back to where I was if need be. I will also play with reordering the layers in the file and sometimes a happy accident happens with that little function. Lately I have been incorporating photographs into the work. I like to take a color photo and use the Threshold feature to turn it into a flat black and white image. I like the gritty quality this creates as well as the abstraction that occurs with a realistic image. 4. Why do you choose to work in your medium? What do you like about your medium? I like the challenge of software. Understanding what I can do and what I might be able to make it do. As I mentioned above I love the color I get on the computer. RGB color is so vivid and vibrant and I am finding that the prints that are made these days really reflect what you get on the monitor to a very large extent. I also love that I can incorporate digital photography into my work and manipulate it so that it becomes very abstract. It allows me to challenge visual perception in ways that I don't think I would have thought about without using the computer. 5. What do you like most about being an artist? My traditional training in art school taught me to really understand how to see in a critical fashion. I love noticing negative space and details that the untrained eye might miss. I am grateful for having taken Art History. That is a resource that I draw on all the time. I am fortunate that I have been able to make a living as an artist without having to become a sous chef. I am always learning. 6. What do you dislike about being an artist? It's not fun when you get stuck. You know, artist's block. I hate that. It's hard trying to market the work outside of the graphic design business. Sometimes I wish I had a skill like nursing (always in demand) but my Mom was a nurse and it's a hard job. I would have been terrible at it. 7. What does a general day look like? I am usually working by 8:00-8:30 either on the graphic design or the paintings. I try to keep a regular schedule. But I don't know that I have a "typical" day. I take lots of classes too just because I like to learn new things and challenge myself so those impinge on my time in a good way. 8. What are your artistic goals for the next year? I will continue to explore painting digitally but I am also branching out to other avenues of expression. I have gotten very interested in poetry in the last few months and have taken several classes and I am going to continue to explore theatre and acting which was my first major in college. Performing is a great experience because it is collaborative and social. To learn more about Kathy Casey's work, visit her website. Red Dot artist Consu Tolosa is heading into her final show for the 2015 holiday season. See her mixed media pieces live this Saturday from 11am until 6pm at the Formal Holiday Artisans Fair. Consu will be joined by over 50 other artisans at the Red Rose Ballroom (1829 NE Alberta St) and admissions is free. See you there!
Jennie O'Connor is an intuitive painter who plays with colorful textures in her art. Her work is mainly acrylic and much of her work incorporates collage. You can find more information about O'Connor at her website. 1. You started painting after retiring from a career in mental health. How did you first pick up the paint brush? Actually, I began getting involved in art a couple years before I retired. I have a friend in Seattle, where I lived at the time, Cathe Gill, who is a wonderful artist and teacher. I took my first watercolor class with her and also started taking drawing classes at that time. I loved Cathe’s paintings and wanted to create beautiful paintings too and of course I could not. I hated what I painted and as a result didn’t pick up the brush very often. But it was a start, and I very slowly began to paint, taking more classes after I moved to Portland. Really it was taking classes that kept me motivated and after a few years I ventured into the realm of acrylic painting and then got into a collage class quite by accident and just had a blast. 2. How has your art evolved? As I mentioned, I was very sporadic from the start. It really wasn’t until until about four years into it that I began to get more serious. I think the turning point was when I found that I was having fun painting with acrylics, making collage papers, and texturing my paintings. 3. How do you approach a piece? Walk us through your process. I have found that it does not work for me to do a lot of planning before I start a piece. I am definitely, an intuitive painter. Start by applying color or collage papers, building and layering as I go along. At some point I have to stop and evaluate. Is the painting heading toward being a nonobjective/nonrepresentational abstract or will it work out as a representational abstract. I bet I have at least 20 paintings in progress in studio, when I get stuck or am not sure what I want to do next, I will just set the piece aside. I will often work on 3 or 4 pieces in one work period, partly too, because I’m impatient and want to continue working while something else is drying. 4.What do you like most about being an artist? Being retired, art has become one of the main focuses of my life. My main focuses, outside of family and friends, has been cooking and gardening. Some time ago, I realized that I create paintings much like I garden and cook. As an example, my best meals seems to happen when I pull everything out of the frig and come up with a meal. Usually this is out of necessity, because the food needs to be used and I hate to waste food. So I also see myself as an intuitive cook, and gardener. And it’s just fun to see how it will turn out. It’s fun for me to sort of roll up my sleeves and dive in and see what happens, if that makes any sense. 5.What do you dislike about being an artist? I am really not a very good verbal communicator. I also hate finding places to display my art……I am for sure really bad at self-promotion and not so good at social media either. (Though I do have a web site and an Etsy store.) I think I’d like to hire someone to do it for me but that seems so lazy and I’m just not sure what to do about it really. This is all so ridiculous, given my history as a counselor. But even as a counselor I was pretty good one on one, or working with couples, which is what I loved the most, but ask me to speak to a group or promote myself, I was lousy! 6. What does a general day look like? The ideal day for me would be to get out and walk first thing, make breakfast and then paint; but recently I've had some ankle issues and that has slowed me down. So I like to go straight to my studio and do some work before my husband gets up. For sure, I am the most creative in the morning. I find it very hard to get motivated in the afternoon, so it’s important that I find time to paint in the morning. 7. You’ve had an etsy shop since February 2012. What have you learned in the past few years running etsy? Any advice to artists just getting started in etsy? Etsy takes a lot of work, optimally the site should be worked on everyday. Recently, I have been very lax about working on my site. It just seems like I haven’t had the energy for it but that will change. I’ve heard that it takes a minimum of 100 listings to get noticed, I’ve reached that and it has helped but certainly more listings would be better and of course renewing listings frequently so that there is action on the site every day. 8. You sell original paintings and also prints and cards of your work. How did you decide to sell reproductions? How do you decide what to reproduce and what not to reproduce? Every year for the last 12 years I have painted a painting to be printed for our Christmas cards. Each year I have had cards left over and eventually started selling them at shows which made me think about taking some of the paintings that I had had professionally photographed made into prints and cards. (These are paintings, that I’ve entered into shows and probably not the best way to choose.) I’ve done okay, but not great. I still have at least ten cards to get on the Etsy site. Also, I haven’t pursued making giclees either, but it’s for sure a possibility. And well really, I can’t even say that prints or cards are that great of an idea but I’m doing it for now anyway. 9. What are your artistic goals for the next year? Get my Etsy site more active….sell more. Look into the new site, Amazon Homemade. Improve my web site. I’m lazy about that too. Get a handle on social media. A big thank you to everyone who came out Friday night to help us celebrate the opening of our latest Red Dot show, PDXTRAOrdinary.
If you missed the reception, you still have plenty of time to catch the art live. The show will be up at the Architectural Heritage Center until January 30th. The museum's hours are Wed-Sat, 10AM - 4:30PM. Jennie O'Connor took part in the Affordable Art Show. Kathleen Schildmeyer is taking advantage of the amazing weather we're having this fall and getting outside to paint.
We are so excited to announce our upcoming Red Dot Artists At Work show, PDXtraOrdinary, November 6th through January 30th at the Architectural Heritage Center in SE Portland. Eleven Red Dot artists come together to explore how Portland inspires them. Each created works inspired in some small way by the city. Artists include Kelli Calderwood, Kathy Casey, Mary Hill, Cheri Hyde, Diana Jackson, Maggie Maggio, Jennie O'Connor, Kathleen Schildmeyer, Jeni Sellers, Laurel Swetnam, and Consu Tolosa. Meet the artists and see the work at our opening reception, November 6, 6-8pm. The Architectural Heritage Center is located at 701 SE Grand Avenue, and there is ample street parking available nearby. Red Dot Artist Jennie O'Connor is keeping busy this summer first with Artists Outstanding in Their Field and now she'll be joining over 50 other artists at the Affordable Art Show in Hillsboro this upcoming Saturday Oct 3rd. Most of the work at the show will be under $100 and is a great opportunity to art lovers and art buyers (first timers or seasoned collectors) to find some amazing work. The Affordable Art Show runs all day from 11 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday, Oct. 3, at NW Events & Environments, 2900 N.W. 229th Ave., Hillsboro. Check out Red Dot artist Jennie O'Connor this weekend August 15th and 16th at Artists Outstanding in Their Field. This weekend event will be taking place in beautiful Damascus. Check it out!
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January 2016
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