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Spraygraphic Interview with Artist Nancy Goldring
By Spraygraphic | May 9, 2008
Spraygraphic’s Chuck b. interviews artist Nancy Goldring about her term foto-projection, her art work, and her interests.
Spraygraphic interview with Nancy Goldring
SG: Please tell us about yourself?
NG: Let’s leave the first question for last. I can’t imagine what I might begin with that would be of interest to someone who doesn’t know me or my work. (Though I have had an interesting life.)
SG: Where do you currently live and work?
NG: I currently live and work in New York City – have been here since the early 70’s, though I feel at home wherever I am making art.
SG: What mediums do you work with?
NG: There are no media I wouldn’t try, though probably I shouldn’t work with oil on canvas - I don’t think I’ll ever be a good painter. Presently I work with drawing - relief collage – photography (analog) – projection – what is now called "installation" but when I first began making large site-specific slides projects some 20 years ago, there was no term for what I did.
SG: Describe your working process when creating a new work.
NG: The process evolves out of desire to conjure an image whether a memory, a dream, a place I am currently able to see – (such as the view from my window). If I were to generalize, the work unfolds in the following manner, though each series has it’s own development, it’s own requisites. I never work in a formulaic way and the process remains essentially about invention.
I draw (from memory, imagination, dreams, or perception) – for weeks, generally with graphite or pencil on hand-made papers until the image takes form.
I then translate the drawing into a relief collage – it usually requires revision and adjustment – again for some weeks.
I isolate bits and pieces of slides I have taken – that relate to the images in question (for example, in the most recent piece: Place Without Description, I employed slides taken in Ljiang China, as that composition derived from a particular view in the mountains, overlooking the Yangtze River and a Buddhist monastery.
Working in the dark, I project these fragments onto the relief drawing using 4 or 5 slide projectors. When the image seems to meld into a new whole, I take a photograph with a large format camera (of the slide fragments on the collage). By changing slides and re-photographing I develop a series of variations (which I call foto-projections because they are photographs of projections)– suggesting different weather, different times of day, different scale, mood, etc. The number of images in each series is potentially infinite.
When I have a commission, these projections are accomplished in large scale (installations – such as Imagining Egypt, Tunnel Visions, Legend, etc.)
SG: What kind of things do you do when you get blocked or find it hard to create something?
NG: Blockage comes from exhaustion or when I haven’t been able to work for a while. The only antidote I know is to look at work – a trip to the museum or finally taking time with an artist I need to know or revisit.
SG: Where are you currently finding your inspiration?
NG: I am working on drawings that appear to br at the edge of disappearing – cityscapes, landscapes that emerge so slowly that you are never sure if you are seeing "something".
SG: Can you please tell us a little about foto-projection.
NG: Foto-projection precedes photoshop – but those who have grown up with computers will probably feel an affinity for what I do. Film and slide projection, however, is profoundly different from digital work. There is a 3 dimensionality to foto-projections, a sense of depth that comes from the density of the image.– rather the way old movies differ from video or digital projection, which look to me like the shroud of Turin or Hamlet’s father. My way of working grew out of a desire to use information – graphic, photographic, projected – as if it were all equally valid, and interchangeable.
SG: Can you please tell us a little about your recent work, Vietnam: Re Building.
NG: Re Building doesn’t feel very recent – as it was made 10 years ago after traveling through Viet Nam. During a rest-stop on a bus trip to the north, I went off to look around and came upon a brick "factory" – which meant about 8 women were at work carrying piles of newly dried bricks into a store house. Their shadows played across the exterior, and after a short conversation in sign language, they seemed not to mind if I photographed them at work. The structure or composition of the piece then grew out of that specific moment– and the themes that emerged as I worked with drawings and projections concerned my own past involvement with the great destruction during the war, (I visited My Son which had been nearly totally destroyed by the American bombing), the rebuilding that was going on still, the memory of the devastation and the oblivion among some of the young people who nevertheless lived with the consequences of their past.
SG: Where else has your work been seen?
NG: I have always shown my work – for the earliest shows in New York City, Italy, India, Poland, the Czech Republic, Israel, etc. You can check my website – for a list of selected shows, reviews, etc.
SG: Where will it be seen next?
NG: My next project is a large Studiolo, for the city of Parma, Italy to be built in Sept. 08. You can see a model of the installation with projection under Current work in progress on my site. The project may participate in the architectural Biennale of Venice, prior to opening in Parma.
SG: What is your dream art assignment?
NG: I enjoy making large scale projects. In 2005 the city of Parma commissioned me to do a study of their "monuments" – which meant spending time in the place, documenting it, getting to know many people – and considering the historical sense of "monuments" and examining what are the contemporary implications.. This resulted in a show of some 50 photographs – my first exhibition of photographs - , and the foto-projection series Palimpsest: Studiolo, which will now be built in the fall. (the project is documented in a book by Mazzotta, 2005 Palimpsest). This is as close as I come to a dream project: simply the chance to work the way I would like to and have people respond positively to what I have done.
SG: What is your favorite color?
NG: Favorite color – mauve – because it is perhaps the most difficult to describe – except for what it is not.
SG: Who is your favorite artist? And Why?
NG: When invited many years ago to be artist in residence at RISD I was invited to a party for faculty. The party game was to say your "favorite work of art". On the spot I said; the Parthenon frieze.
Today I couldn’t come up with only one without a sense of irony.
Important are: Pontormo – for his ability to render powerfully charged moments in line, Mantegna – for the way he conveys narrative and plays with perspective, early Mondrian for making the "subject" dissolve, James Turrell for achieving unfathomable space, and the sculptor of the portrait of Jayavarman VII in Cambodia – the most beautiful sculpture ever made. That’s more than you asked for.
SG: What book/magazine are you reading this week?
NG: This week I am reading the catalog of the exhibition in Ft.Worth, Picturing the Bible, the New York Review of Books – current issue, and Sacred Games, by Chandri a novel that takes place in Calcutta.
SG: Ever do a self portrait? Where is it now?
NG: I just made a new self-portrait (there have been several: see Symi, Studiolo from 1985 – they are in various collections –one I think is in the Houston museum). by projecting an old photography a friend made of me onto the construction site across the street from my studio. Just the eyes over the city at night.
SG: Where is your favorite place to hang out?
NG: The movies.
SG: Any final words of advice?
NG: At the risk of dating myself my advice is to stop worrying about Art Careers – and make art. Careerism is deadly boring, destructive, and trivializes art. I suppose that answers your first question. I love what I do – don’t know what I will do in the future, but doubtless more of the same.
ART:
1. palimpsest-model-for-installation
2. palimpsest fauxscape
3. palimpsest lute
4. palimpsest street
5. re-building my son
6. re-building sky shadow
7. studiolo-model
Topics: Artist Interviews, Women Art |
