When I was in art school I made the mistake of saying out loud that I thought Andy Warhol was pretty much a talentless hack. Oops. I will caution you not to make the same mistake; the effect was something like I imagine shouting blasphemies in a church service would create. Im still boorish and opinionated, but over the last few years I’ve settled into a good community of local artists; people I can speak with comfortably without pretense or fear of judgment. It’s Thursday afternoon and I’m sitting in a coffee shop talking to Catherine Carilli, someone who’s been a very good friend of mine for several years now. I attended the opening to her show last Friday night hoping to interview her then, but it was very busy and I didn’t want to draw her away from conversations about her work with actual patrons (I love her work but I’m poor). JD:Your opening was really busy; how do you feel about the way things came together? Like we all do you were preparing up until the very last moments. Did you like the look of it when you were finished hanging? CC:Yeah, I felt really good about it. I thought the look of the show was spot on. I had wanted to complete one more work on paper, I’m always afraid I don’t have enough. JD: You filled the space nicely, the show looks fantastic. I know you sold one piece right away because I got caught behind the counter and completed the sale. CC: It was an amazing night. I sold three pieces: Canyonlands; one of my works on paper, a large charcoal drawing on canvas, and a small encaustic called The Key to the Universe. JD: I’m noticing some very different qualities from the work in your last couple of shows. The color palette is similar, and the linear nature of your abstractions, but there are a number of very straightforward and recognizable images here: an elephant, a bird. CC: That’s nothing new, though maybe some of the images are bolder. Look at this piece from my last show. If you look closely, you’ll see a yarrow plant. I took my sketchbook into the mountains with me, where I draw the environment. I like to do that, I think it’s really important for an artist to know how to draw, to represent the real world before going into some type of new contemporary art. Right now in the 21st century you can do anything and call it art. That freedom of expression is important, but because it’s also important to simply be able to draw I incorporated some of those images into my work. JD: I do see that, but I still also see some development from the work in your last couple of shows. Not only is the imagery more readable, there’s also an emphasis on geometric patterns. CC: Yeah, but y’know, I’m kinda’ going back to an older style with that; I’m incorporating some of the ideas from work I did in the ‘90s. I feel like this work is a kind of breakthrough. I’m working with the best elements of my work over the years; the imagery with the geometric form and the calligraphic marks that I’ve used in the last few years... I’m moving in the direction I want to go. This work is about my life. On a personal level I feel like I’ve always struggled with my place in the universe, and understanding the universe hasn’t been easy for me. How things work, how relationships work, communities and fitting in… I wanted to do something fun, random imagery but also something that’s exact, put together in a specific way that represents where I’m at. It can be difficult to interview a friend. Our conversation meandered from opinions on art to personal matters before finally coming back around to Catherine’s show. At some point in the middle, when we were talking about the freedom of art in the modern age, Andy Warhol came up again. I still don’t like that guy, but in the presence of a friend as well as a contemporary artist my opinion was better regarded, and she articulated my point better than I ever could have… CC: I don’t like him either. The reason I dont like him is that even though he was brilliant he was mean-spirited. All of his artwork is just very sarcastic about humanity and the art world. Ok, that sounds better than talentless hack, but whatever. I highly recommend watching the film, “Factory Girl”, in which Andy Warhol is exposed as a pretty big jerk and extremely shallow. I also highly recommend seeing Catherine’s show, Organizing the Universe, in its final weekend at NEXT.
Posted on: Sat, 22 Feb 2014 00:58:44 +0000
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